Truthseekers (32 page)

A tear rolled from Sophia’s cheek but she quickly checked herself. David decided to ask a question he knew the answer to just to help her breathe again.

“Why do you think they let any of you live?”

“Before they left and with us watching, they tattooed both my boys with the Chevron and Circle, then Black decided to take Yanni. He said that I must be quiet and raise Stevos or all of us would be killed. They said that they were watching always and knew who we were and would tell us, when we were to come with them. I pleaded and pleaded but nothing ever changed.”

She took a deep breath and was physically starting to shake. Stacey got up and comforted her.

“I have two sons Sophia. I can’t imagine how you coped.”

“I just did, my child. I had to. Stevos was the one. I wondered how he could ever change things and I had great hopes for him. We never told him about his brother and sister. My husband fell into hopelessness and disinterest in life, or who he was, and he hated the church. Of course we never saw the priest again. Then one day when Stevos was 19 another terrible thing happened.”

Minos had started to cry and the group looked at him. He apologised and wiped his eyes, yet he could not stop the tears. Sophia looked resolute, and simply said:

“Yanni returned.”

43

The bottle of ouzo was half empty. Most of it from Rocko, but even he had become so engrossed in this story that he had stopped drinking. Phillip and Lone Bear looked stable and David smiled and nodded at Sophia. Outside Abbey noticed the wind pick up. It was like this mid morning at this time of year in Crete. There was often a gentle breeze that let you know the Earth was alive.

Sophia drew breath:

“A young man arrived at our door. It was dinnertime and the three of us had sat down. I had made kleftiko, Stevos’ favourite dish. He had been out that day chopping wood with my husband and they were enjoying a few jokes. It was one of the few times I had seen my husband somewhat happy. The young man felt so familiar and when we invited him inside his whole demeanour changed.”

Sophia cleared her throat as a lump started to appear.

“He told us he was our son. His life had been hell because we had let him down. He spoke not in a Greek accent but another, harsher accent. He was tall and blond like my son Stevos – they looked similar. I believed him and went to him straight away and he struck me down. I fell heavily, but was still conscious. My husband was in shock, but Stevos launched on Yanni and a terrible fight occurred. Yanni grabbed the cast iron pot that was on the stove and he smashed it on Stevos’ head. Stevos fell and Yanni dropped and kept hitting him. I tried to get up, but I just couldn’t. I had snapped my femur bone but I didn’t feel the pain. My husband finally gained his sense and screamed and leapt on Yanni, but Yanni was younger, so much stronger, and incredibly strong and in the struggle he pulled a knife off the table and stuck it through my husbands heart. My husband died in a pool of blood looking into my eyes and saying he was sorry. I finally managed to get up but Yanni had run away, realising what he had done, and Stevos was just lying there also bleeding. I screamed and screamed and it seemed forever but finally help came.”

David reached over beside Stacey and comforted Sophia. She was a tough old warhorse he thought.

“So Stevos died and Yanni is still out there?” David enquired.

Looking up at David with wistful eyes Sophia said:

“I have never again seen Yanni, but Stevos survived.”

“He… he did… where is he, Sophia?”

“Why, he is out back of course, in his room,” she replied looking up at David.

David drew breath. He could feel every hair on his body stand up on end. He knew everyone in the room felt the same. The direct bloodline of the greatest individual in history was just metres from him. They had been through hell and back to find him and here he was. With the greatest respect for the lady who had just bared her soul he asked; “May we meet him?”

“Of course,” she said.

44

Sophia stood and led the group out the back of the small home. Once through the kitchen door there was a small paved way to an exterior building. It was only a couple of metres from the main house and David could hear music playing. It was a Dean Martin song. The steps up to the small out-building, obviously built later than the house were covered. At the door was a small flowerbed where some azaleas and tulips grew.

It wasn’t a big room, David thought, judging by the perimeter outside, and getting seven people in there might be a squeeze. He wondered how the man himself would react to all of them, and how the others were feeling, given they were about to meet the son of God, or at least his bloodline as it was. He looked at Rocko who simply smiled and said, “Just another day at the office.”

Sophia knocked quietly on the door. She turned and said; “I like to do that.” Then she opened the door and they stepped in.

It was relatively dark inside and David found himself blinking to adjust to the light. His heart was pounding and he could say nothing. As his eyes adjusted to the room he was trying to comprehend what he was seeing. Abbey held his arm and squeezed it so hard he nearly yelped. He felt the group give out a breath at once.

Lying in a cot was a disabled and mentally handicapped man in his mid-thirties. His body was contorted and he had no comprehension of them being in the room. Next to him a machine monitored his vital signs, its constant tick slightly out of time with the music. The man was blond, but quite dishevelled, with a few days’ growth on his face. His eyes were shut.

“I don’t understand,” said David.

“You see David, Stevos has been in a coma since that day. He came out for a few seconds once and fitted. His body seemed to contort from then on. He can’t speak, he never opens his eyes. He was blinded by Yanni in one of them anyway. In many respects he is already dead. But I care for and love him as my son. He is all I have left of my family. He has been like this for nearly twenty years.” Sophia smiled sweetly. She had expected this reaction.

Abbey moved to the side of the cot and put a hand on the body lying there: “Hello Stevos. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Lone Bear started shedding tears, as did Stacey. Rocko helped Lone Bear out of the room. He was devastated. “I could have stopped this,” he said to Rocko. Rocko simply replied, “It’s the way it’s meant to be.”

The others followed out and Sophia closed the door behind her.

“I’m sorry David. I’m sorry for your troubles. I know this was not what you were expecting. I’m sorry for all you went through.”

David grabbed the old woman by both arms and looked her squarely in the eyes.

“It is you that has been through the most. You are one of the bravest and most courageous women I know. Sophia, do you have a photo of your family at all, before all this happened?”

Sophia looked at him slightly confused. “I do. One photo. I can’t stand to look at it, but for some reason I have kept it all these years.”

“May we see it?”

Sophia went to a drawer on the sideboard, where she had got the ouzo. Out of the drawer she pulled out an old wrinkled photo. It was a typical family shot from that time: faded colour and a man and a woman, Sophia, standing with three very small children all facing the photographer.

“This is my Stevos, and Ana,” said Sophia pointing to one of the boys and the girl. “…and this is…”

“Yanni,” David spoke.

“Yes,” replied Sophia.

David looked at Rocko with one of those looks that old friends share between each other. Rocko nodded and then said the others.

“OK, we need to get Phillip and Lone Bear to hospital. Stacey, can you, Minos and the Professor do that. David what do you want us to do?”

David thought for a second and then said: “Abbey, let the Eagle know we are coming down again and we will be there in just a few minutes. Sophia you may wish to come with us.”

Abbey let the Eagle know they would be back down to the site. Minos went outside and got his vehicle to take the others to the hospital. Sophia had gone into her bedroom. She came out having changed into a large jacket and put on walking shoes. She closed the house, asking Minos to stay with Stevos and let the Professor drive the others to the hospital. He complied feeling that this day was indeed one of those that were unusual in life, even though he was keen to get back to the Palace himself and ensure its security.

The others walked back to the Palace and entered via the police guard there, where they met the Condor who walked them back to the Tripartite Shrine. There was the Eagle sitting on a rock. He had been talking to an awake John, who was propped up against the wall he was on obviously in tremendous pain. He couldn’t even hold his shoulder wound and whilst the Eagle had applied a bandage temporarily stopping
the flow of blood, even John could tell he would need amputation. He wondered how long the Eagle would make him sit there. As the Eagle saw the others approaching he said:

“This guy here is a defiant bastard you know. He even thought he had killed me years ago. I told him I was his ghost. He missed me once, he never saw me today, yet he knew because he hid and was not with his men at the front and that is why he lost. Because he is stupid.”

David stepped over the wall and said to the Eagle; “May I borrow your knife?”

The Eagle looked inquisitively at David and handed him his unsheathed knife. It was a big knife and razor sharp.

“He hasn’t got any fight left in him, David.”

“Don’t worry,” David responded, “I’m a pacifist.”

David walked up to John, who just sneered hatred at him. John was struggling to speak. He was very weak and couldn’t even reach up and touch David. David took John’s blood soaked t-shirt and cut it from neck to chest. He then grabbed both sides and ripped it clear to the waist. He stood back with a look of bemused satisfaction on his face.

“I thought as much.” Clearly tattooed over John’s heart was a faded tattoo. It was of a Chevron over a circle. John was Yanni, Sophia’s son, the one castrated, taken and used by the families, groomed since he was three years old, who grew such hatred to his family that he hunted them down as a teenager and killed his father and in the process put his elder brother into a coma that had lasted nearly twenty years. “You will want to see this,” David said to the others.

The Condor and Abbey stepped over the wall and looked at John in disgust. Rocko helped Sophia over the wall and as he saw John said: “Of course… John is Yanni in Greek.”

Sophia walked past John a couple of metres away and turned and looked at him. She saw the tattoo and recognised him instantly. Even through all the years and traumas he still looked like Stevos, tucked up contorted in the cot. John looked up at her. His pupils dilated. A sly grin
came on his face and he spat on the ground in the only act of defiance he could muster.

“Come now,” said David “Be more respectful to your mother.”

“David!” It was Abbey’s voice.

David turned but it all happened in slow motion. Sophia had pulled a gun from her coat. It was an ancient pistol yet she cocked it and fired, obviously a move she had practised for years. John received the bullet through his right eye. The last thing he experienced before he passed from this Earth to his own judgement day was the completion of his mother’s wrath. An eye for an eye, the irony of tragedy.

45

Black left his office in the plush Central Park district of New York. He did not take his limousine. Instead he took an old New York yellow taxi. He disdained these cars. They stank of mediocrity.

Black checked his travel documents. Passport and credit cards for a Percival Karlsson. They were perfect of course. He was only seven minutes from the office and a few blocks away when he vaguely heard it. The taxi driver looked in his rear view mirror, then shrugged at his customer and turned his eyes back to the road. What he heard was the detonation of the charges in Chant’s office. The whole building was to come down and over two hundred people lost their lives in the wreckage. Collateral damage, Black thought, as he scoured the streets through the cloudy taxi window. Included in the
news the next day were the dead, from the terrorist attack, featuring one Mr Black and a six year-old candid snapshot; the said benefactor to the New York Museum and many other of the city’s initiatives. An enigma of a man, but powerful and wealthy. The papers reported that he was obviously the target of an attack by Al Qaeda.

Black had planned for this day, but hoped it would never come to pass. At the airport he boarded a flight bound for Stockholm, business class of course. The billionaire Percival Karlsson was finally returning home to Sweden to his private home, one of nearly 30,000 islands on the fjords outside Stockholm. The private island retreat was secure and finally after years of maintenance and the occasional guest the fifteen full-time staff were to meet the elusive owner.

Here Black was to live out his days, away from the media, prying eyes, adversaries or the power his life had come to be about. The incident in Crete and discovery of the DNA trail of the greatest secret in the world would flow slowly and deliberately to the world from mouth to ear, as the elders had foreseen. The Church’s secret was going to come out and there would be a lot of fallout. Whether it could ever be saved was doubtful. Regardless of owning the media, the oil, and other industries of global power, the families were forced to break down their structures and Black knew that prying eyes and would be goody-two-shoes would come by their hundreds to uncover them. He chose anonymity and isolation. Chant had failed him and paid the ultimate price. He was not prepared to do that.

As the taxi sped on the highway to JFK, Black took one last look at the Manhattan skyline, his Manhattan, the same town where he had both built and destroyed the twin towers. Now he was destroying himself for a peaceful yet ultimately boring retirement.

“Have you seen the papers, dude?” Rocko was transfixed to CNN about the news in New York City. It had been 48 hours since the crazy day at Knossos Palace. He had of course been restitched. Lone Bear was making a speedy recovery. Phillip was pretty bruised but entertaining Stacey by doing comedy with the one crutch the hospital insisted he had.
The Eagle and Condor had left the island and David and Abbey had hardly been seen. Rocko knew they had been ‘catching up’.