In the wake of the Çaril Kytur investigation, with its threats of lawsuits and damaged reputations, Balthazar Warnick had not refrained from saying I told you so. Yet Magda herself had, been surprisingly cool about the whole thing. Her colleagues chalked it up to the general unpleasantness of the experience, another good reason to avoid the Soviet-controlled Balkan states like the plague.
And eventually the whole thing blew over. George Wayford’s family settled for a scholarship endowed in his name. And Magda wrote the landmark paper that was published in Antiquities, the monograph that became the framework for Daughters of the Setting Sun. From what should have been a career disaster, Magda Kurtz emerged not only unscathed, but triumphant.
Some of her colleagues remarked how obviously nobody knew the whole story; and of course they were right. Because Magda told no one about the lunula. Not Haring, not Balthazar Warnick, not even June Harrington.
In the wake of the failed expedition came long months when she researched her secret treasure. She traded her dimly lit carrel in the Colum Library stacks for a battered wooden desk in the upper reaches of the Museum of Natural History, then went to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Finally she made her way to London, for two weeks’ study in the dusty cool recesses of the British Museum. This was followed by a week of visiting private collections in the Scottish countryside, including a sojourn at Dalkeith Palace outside of Edinburgh, where she viewed the legendary skulls owned by the Dukes of Buccleuchs.
What she learned there sent her to Athens. In a cafe shadowed by the Acropolis she met with Christos Eugenides, an eminent archaeologist friend of Michael Haring’s whose involvement in the thriving black market trade between the Aegean countries and the rest of the world had long been supported by the Benandanti.
“These are very good, you should try them.” Christos speared a prickly star the size and color of a tarnished nickle. “Baby octopus. Quite wonderful. Or the bekri meze—you might like that.”
Magda’s smile was more of a grimace. The sun and heat and effort of translation and travel had given her a permanent headache. She felt feverish and disoriented. The scent of olive oil and fried fish was nauseating. As a panacea, she sipped grimly and steadily at a glass of fiery tsipoura.
“No thank you. Michael said you might tell me more about an object I found—”
She could feel it nestled at her throat, cool as a blade for all the numbing heat. She parted her collar and let her fingers rest upon the crescent’s smooth edge. Christos Eugenides leaned forward.
“Ah—ah.” His voice rose sharply, as though he had been kicked.
“You know it, then.”
Christos Eugenides had already drawn back into his plastic chair. “This is not within my provenance,” he said curtly. “I’m quite sorry. Michael must have misunderstood—”
“He said you knew about Cycladic figurines—”
“This is not remotely Cycladic.”
“—and other things.”
He removed a bill and several coins from his pocket and set them on the marble surface. “I have an acquisitions meeting at the university at six o’clock. I’m quite sorry not to have been more helpful.” He rose.
“Then can you recommend someone else?” The lunula slid back into the folds of her blouse. “I’ve come all this way…”
“Surely the Museum Library is quite—”
“I’ve read enough. I need to talk to someone who’s seen one of these—”
“There is no one.”
She waited for him to go on but he said nothing more, only stared fixedly at her throat. Yet despite his tone and words, he seemed reluctant to leave. After a moment he turned to face the endless parade of automobiles, the sand-colored shadow of the mountain looming above them. Exhaust fumes mingled with the stench of fried fish, and Magda raised her glass to her face, breathing in the harsh smell of tsipoura. For a long moment they stood there, silent. Finally Christos sighed.
“Spyridon Marinatos.”
“Who?”
“Spyridon Marinatos. In Akrotiri on Thera—that is, Santorini. He is excavating a city on the south shore of the island, beneath the village of Akrotiri. It is a Bronze Age city…”
His voice drifted off into the drone of traffic and the carnival sound of a radio blaring bouzouki music.
“Marinatos?” Furiously Magda scribbled the name into her battered notebook. “Spiro Marinatos?”
Christos shook his head very slightly, as though hearing some more distant music. “Spyridon. Nea Kameni,” he said softly.
“Nea—what?”
“Nea Kameni. ‘The New Burnt Land.’ It is a fabulous city, buried like Pompeii or Herculaneum beneath the volcanic ash from the great cataclysm of 1450 B.C. He believes it was the capital of the great lost Minoan culture.”
For an instant the roar and rush of traffic, of blazing wind, died away. His next words sounded unnaturally loud in the abrupt silence. “He believes he has found Atlantis.”
Magda put her pen down and rubbed her throbbing temples. “Oh, please—”
Christos Eugenides shot her an angry glance. “This is all quite true, Miss Kurtz. The site is thousands of years old and I assure you more spectacular than anything you have ever seen. It is a more important archaeological find than Pompeii or Tutankhamen’s grave.”
He paused, his gaze lingering upon her neck, then added in a very low voice, “You are aware, I am quite certain, that the Minoan culture is at the very heart of worship of the great goddess. Perhaps the most ancient culture of the Mediterranean. And we know next to nothing about it at all.”
At the word goddess Magda’s mouth grew dry. “Of—of course,” she said, and gulped the rest of her tsipoura. The raw liquor scorched the back of her throat. “Yes, of course—and this Marinatos will see me? I can catch a plane to Santorini?”
Christos Eugenides shook his head. “I do not know if he will see you or not. You will have to find someone with a boat. It may be difficult; Spyridon is not a popular man right now. His political views are considered reactionary and dangerous.”
“Can you give me the name of someone with a boat?”
He turned and walked to the edge of the patio. “I can give you nothing, Miss Kurtz. I am quite sorry.” But as he stepped down onto the sidewalk he hesitated, then said, “Santorini—that is not the correct name. In Greek it is called Thera.”
He walked quickly toward the corner, his last words hanging in the sullen air before the wind and dust swallowed them.
Thera: Fear.
She had not gone to the island. Instead she returned to her room in the cheap pensione she’d found in Monastiraki, the old Turkish quarter near the site of the ancient Agora. There she finished another bottle of tsipoura and tried vainly to find some English-language news on the ancient radio. She knew she shouldn’t be drinking. She felt sick and frightened and exhausted, ready to give up this entire crazy quest to learn something about her stolen artifact. She wished she could leave tonight, but she’d booked a return flight for two days hence and couldn’t afford to change it.