Valley of Thracians (34 page)

Chapter
60

In all the years she had known him,
Katya had never seen Vlady brandish a gun. Boris’s partner was the mastermind
of their illicit activities, capable of organizing petty thefts and
cross-border smuggling missions. He had planned the museum heist, as well as a
string of other robberies and break-ins. Vlady never stopped scheming, dreaming
of how he would make the ultimate hit that would eventually allow him to live
the life of a rich man and leave his life of crime. It was due to Vlady’s
efforts that Boris had likewise become involved in illegal adventures. Deep
inside, she realized that she reviled Vlady. The man was short-tempered,
impatient with his many failures At
times,
Vlady could
turn violent, physically injuring those he distrusted or any who had slighted
him. But she had never before seen him hold a gun. Where did that come from?

Vlady pointed his gun at Scott,
signaling him to hand over the Thracian treasure. He ignored the two others in
the chamber. They were insignificant bystanders, expendable if necessary. Right
now, he demanded possession of the artifact.

Scott’s expression was one of shock, not
at being threatened with a weapon but rather by again seeing the woman who had
incarcerated him for so long. His eyes burned with disgust, something that
Katya could not begin to understand. She wondered why he had rejected her
advances in Belogradchik, dismissed her attempts to get close. How could he
ignore her then—or now—when she had done so much to care for him? Was he not
thankful for her efforts?

The older American man took a step
backward, holding up his hands and pleading softly for Vlady not to fire. The
woman, though, stepped forward boldly and addressed Vlady and Katya in
Bulgarian.

“I would put down the gun, if I was
you,” the woman said. “The authorities will be here any minute.”

“Nice try,” Vlady chuckled, his throaty
laughter echoing in the chamber. “Nobody’s coming to rescue you, and this park
has already closed to visitors. Your only hope is to hand over the artifact
without making problems. It’s mine, and you’d be wise to give it to me before I
use this weapon.”

“The item doesn’t belong to you at all,”
the woman argued, taking another hesitant step toward him. “This artifact is a
national treasure. It belongs to all the people of Bulgaria, not to thieves and
antiques smugglers. It’s my job to make sure it’s the real thing and to return
it to its rightful place in a museum where everyone can enjoy it.”

“What a nice little story,” Vlady said,
raising the gun and aiming it directly at Sophia. “It’s too bad that none of
you will see the day when this treasure will again be on display.”

There were footsteps in the corridor,
getting steadily louder as a group of people approached. Simon heard them
coming, hoping and praying that it was the Bulgarian police. Perhaps that was
whom Sophia had called after all. She had stepped forward to protect them
against this gun-wielding couple, so she must be okay. He had been wrong to
doubt her motives.

Four men in dark suits entered the
chamber, adjusting their eyes to the dim light. One of them, a bald-headed man
with gold-stud earrings and a huge physique, seemed slightly familiar. Another
man was obviously the group’s leader. With barely a glance at Simon and Scott,
he went directly to Vlady and held out his hand for the gun.

“You’ve done your job very nicely, my
friend,” Alexander Nikolov said in Bulgarian to Vlady. “Thank you very much for
leading me to the package that you promised to deliver so long ago.”

Nikolov’s arrival was enough for Katya
to realize that she had been right to distrust Vlady. It was clear now that
Vlady had been in constant contact with the antiques dealer, updating him
regularly about their progress in recovering the Thracian artifact. Vlady must
have been in cahoots with Nikolov and his gang from the very beginning. Boris
had innocently served as Vlady’s accomplice in crime, while in reality, Vlady
had sold Boris out.

Crippled and confined to a wheelchair
for the rest of his life, her brother was left with nothing, while Vlady,
unscathed and aligned with the country’s most-wanted criminal, would
undoubtedly be paid well for his services after finally delivering the goods.
She couldn’t shake the fact that Vlady had betrayed her brother!

“You idiot!”
Katya screamed, leaping at Vlady. With a ferocity that took him by surprise,
she attacked his face with her sharp fingernails. Clawing him like a wild
mountain bear, she drew blood in deep parallel gashes as he held up his free
hand in ineffectual efforts to hold her off. Striking out with her nails was
something Katya usually reserved for self-punishment, penance for her many
failures. Now her nails served as agents of revenge for Vlady’s betrayal of her
brother and how he had ultimately deceived her as well.

Caught off-guard and shocked at the
assault, Vlady lifted the pistol high over his head to keep the weapon away
from his partner’s sister. Ignoring the pain of his facial wounds, he held her
off while the others looked on in stunned silence. Katya turned her focus to
Vlady’s weapon. She tried to reach up and seize the gun.

A single shot was fired and reverberated
in the tight quarters of the burial chamber. Striking the ceiling, it caused a
plaster shower from above. Katya stepped back, her anger spent. As shocked as
the rest of them, Vlady held one hand to his bloodied face and forked over the
revolver to Nikolov’s bald-headed associate. Everyone remained silent, as
silent as the long-dead Thracian ruler to whose memory an ancient artist had
painted such a colorful mural in tribute.

“It’s you,” Scott said in English,
staring at Nikolov with growing recognition and hatred. “You stole my passport
and had your muscleman guard beat me. I lost three years of my life because of
you!” He was furious, but unlike Katya, he did not leap forward to attack the
person who had caused him so much pain. While it was the bald man who had
actually inflicted his wounds, Scott’s anger was directed solely at Nikolov,
who had given the orders that resulted in his beating.

“You’re the hotel manager from Golden
Sands,” Simon said, also recognizing the man. “I talked to you when I was in
Varna. You barely gave me the time of day when I was trying to determine
Scott’s whereabouts.”

“Ah, yes,” Nikolov said in English,
turning to acknowledge the foreigners. “You came to me in search of your
missing grandson, and now, here he is. He is holding the very item that caused
his disappearance. I am pleased that he has seen fit to find it for my benefit.
Now, my young American friend, if you would kindly hand over that item, we can
finish with all this unpleasantness and everyone can go their merry way.”

Hearing the authoritative tone in
Nikolov’s voice, and realizing that the men in the black suits were armed with
weapons much more powerful than Vlady’s old revolver, Scott stepped forward and
handed him the silver artifact. Nikolov took it without a word of thanks and
swung it carelessly, as if it was just a scrap of old metal.

“A wise move,” he said, nodding at
Scott.

Nikolov muttered something in Bulgarian
to his men. While neither Simon nor Scott understood the directive, Sophia
immediately realized the explicit danger of this whispered command. Nikolov had
instructed his men to “clean up.”

Nikolov’s henchmen quickly moved into
action. One of them grabbed Sophia’s wrists as she tried unsuccessfully to
escape his grip. The bald-headed goon approached Simon, causing Scott to jump
forward and stand between the huge man and his grandfather. Simon took a deep
breath, not fully understanding what was happening.

“Not so fast, Nikolov!”

Due to the commotion caused first by
Katya’s attack on Vlady, and then by the sudden moves of the dark-suited men,
none of them had noticed the sound of additional footsteps approaching in the
corridor. Suddenly, the lights in the chamber switched on to their brightest
intensity and the hall was filled with people and noise, a definite
demonstration of authority. Scott noticed at least three armed policemen and
two other men, one of whom stepped forward to approach Simon.

“Aren’t you from the American embassy?”
Simon asked
,
amazed at whom he was seeing. Strangers
were appearing in this burial tomb at an incredible rate, and, surprisingly, he
was recognizing them one by one.

“Yes, we’ve met a few times already,”
answered Brett Thompson, the embassy’s deputy consul.

One of the new arrivals retrieved the
precious Thracian artifact, and another officer snapped Nikolov’s hands into
cuffs. Nikolov’s team was disarmed, and the officers prepared to lead them, as
well as Katya and Vlady, out from the tomb.

As she was being dragged away, Katya
mouthed one word repeatedly, a name. She took one last look at Scott, the man
to whom she had devoted three years of her life. She had cared for him, acted
as his nurse, brought him groceries, and delivered him the narcotics that were
required by his condition. She had done so much for him, keeping him warm and
safe in the mountain cabin, yet there were no words of thanks, no appreciation
was expressed on the occasion of this final good-bye. Tears streamed down her
cheeks as she realized she would probably never see him again. The loss was
overwhelming; it shook her deeply. She mouthed his name, over and over, willing
him to look at her, to come to her, to comfort her. The name she said silently,
so that only she could hear it in her innermost soul, was the name of her
long-lost husband.

“Hristo,” Katya whispered, one last
time, and then she was escorted from the chamber.

Only Thompson and the older man who had
entered the tomb with him were left standing with Simon, Scott, and Sophia.

A big smile lit up on Thompson’s face as
he spoke to the American professor. “I want to thank you for your unwavering
belief that your grandson was still alive all this time. You had the guts to
continue the search for him three years after we closed his file, his
disappearance unsolved.

“Thanks to your perseverance, not only
has Scott Matthews been found, but we have also managed to recover the
priceless Rogozen Drinking Lion. And that is due, in part, to the assistance of
Sophia Ivanova, your lovely travel companion.”

“Sophia?”

Ignoring Simon’s questioning look, the
American official continued to speak. “And finally, I want to thank both of
you, Professor Matthews and Scott, for leading us, with irrefutable proof at
last, to the capture of Alexander Nikolov, the notorious dealer of stolen
Bulgarian antiques, who has evaded the police for so many years. Rest assured
that the authorities will stage a fair judicial process for that man. Those
other two, those villagers, are petty lawbreakers—not worth getting excited
about. But Alexander Nikolov, he’s the real thing.”

 
“So, do we have confirmation?” asked the
unidentified, gray-haired man, looking anxiously at Sophia.

“I haven’t had a chance to examine the
rhyton
yet,” Sophia replied. And then she turned to Scott, who had taken the artifact
back from one of the officers when Nikolov was arrested. “May I look at it
now?”

This time Simon didn’t have a reason to
object. Sophia tenderly clasped the silver drinking horn, turned it slightly,
handling it with both professionalism and tenderness. She switched on a small
flashlight and focused it on the drinking horn’s inner lip. There she saw the
ancient Thracian inscription, written in tiny Greek letters. She read them, one
by one, her lips moving silently as she formed the words.

“Ah, yes,” she sighed. “This is it. The
inscription reads simply, ‘Mother Earth.’ This is the authentic item, the
famous Rogozen Drinking Lion.”

“Thank you, my dear,” the older man
said. “I had no doubt that this was the genuine item. I recognized it
immediately.”

“Excuse me for asking, but who are you?”
Simon asked.

“Pardon me for not introducing myself. I
am Professor Todor Smirnenski, chairman of the Bulgarian Academy of Science. I
was one of Sophia Ivanova’s lecturers in her student days. We didn’t actually
get along too well at that time, did we, my dear? In any case, in my later
years I have led a campaign to help recover Bulgaria’s most-valuable stolen
treasures. Thanks to Sophia’s great work, and assistance from the American
embassy, we have now recovered the priceless Rogozen Drinking Lion.”

“Professor Smirnenski discovered the
Rogozen Drinking Lion in 1985,” Sophia pointed out. “He asked me, due to my
academic thesis on the subject of Thracian
rhytons
and my knowledge of
the archaic Thracian language, to be the one to identify and authenticate this
treasure whenever it was recovered.”

“Yes, Sophia is the expert in these
fields. What can I say? In this case, the student has managed to far outshine
her old teacher.”

“Shall we?” Thompson said, indicating
with his hand that they should leave the artificial burial tomb and return to
the very real sunlight of the June afternoon.

Chapter
61

“So, let me get this straight,” Simon
said, looking seriously at his hostess. “Nothing was by chance? Not even our
meeting in the bar at the Hilton?”

They were sitting in Sophia’s living
room, sipping tea and eating bite-sized chocolate cookies while Scott took a
shower. In another hour, Sophia would call for a taxi to transport the two
Americans to the airport. Thanks to Brett Thompson from the embassy, all the
red tape of issuing Scott a new passport had been removed. Flights out of the
country were booked with no problems; they would reunite with Daniel and Susan
in Chicago. The end of their stay in Bulgaria had arrived.

 
“That, I must admit, was arranged,” Sophia
said. “I don’t know how well Thompson explained the situation, but while
Nikolov and his antiques smuggling have been the focus of an international
police investigation for years, they never were able to catch him in the act.
Interpol was involved, and I think the FBI was also on alert. It was known that
Vlady and his partner were mixed up in some of the smuggling, but they were
small fry. The goal was to catch Nikolov, the big fish. It was Nikolov who
contracted the museum robbery and
the delivery of the
rhyton
to him to
Varna.
The cold trail created by the years-long burial of the stolen
item didn’t result in decreased interest by the authorities. Surveillance
continued all the time. Even while Scott was trapped in that remote cabin, the
police were still on the lookout,
waiting
for Nikolov
or his agents to make their move.”

“So how does that connect to your
meeting me in the hotel bar?”

“The Americans knew that your grandson
was involved, but they had concluded that Nikolov and his thugs had murdered
Scott in Golden Sands. How else could his passport have turned up at that
resort hotel? It was a logical conclusion, but Scott’s body was never found.
When you came to Bulgaria and met with Thompson at the embassy, the Americans
decided to have you followed, to see if you would learn anything new about
where Scott was or what he had done. Maybe, if they got lucky, you would
discover where he had hidden the
rhyton
. This would benefit everyone.”

“That still doesn’t explain how you
became involved.”

“I don’t know how much I’ve told you
about my past, but I’ve assisted the police and Interpol before. I’m considered
a local expert on Thracian artifacts. They asked me to tag along on your
journeys, to authenticate the
rhyton
if you found it.”

“And here I thought that you volunteered
to accompany me due to my charm.”

Sophia laughed and lightly touched his
shoulder. “Simon, you are a very charming man, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of
our travels, but as I told you, I’m not looking to form that kind of
relationship.”

“So, you purposely found me at the hotel
bar, and then you also arranged to meet me, seemingly by chance, at Starbucks?”

“Yes, that’s true. I hope that doesn’t
offend you.”

“No, not really, because
the main goal of my visit to Bulgaria was achieved.
I came to find my lost grandson, and in my goal, I was hugely successful. It
was only later that Scott forced me to join him on the Bulgarian treasure
hunt.”

“You know, I was almost certain we would
see Scott at the Rila Monastery. You got that phone call suggesting he was
there.”

“Yes. I should really call Dave Harris
from Varna to tell him of our success. Tell me, did you call Thompson when we
arrived in Kazanlak, and later, when we went to the tomb?”

“Yes, he was informed every step of the
way. I’m sorry, Simon, if I’ve deceived you. But in the end, we both got what
we were looking for.”

“It’s okay, really.”

“How is your son taking all this, I
mean, besides the excitement of learning that Scott is alive? Didn’t he argue
with you all along against your coming to Bulgaria?”

“Yes, he was quite adamant in his
opposition to my trip. In addition, Daniel became very angry when Scott and I
extended our stay here while we searched for the Thracian artifact. But that’s
all behind us now. I spoke with Daniel, and he regrets doubting me, doubting my
mission. While he didn’t say outright that he’s sorry, I could hear the apology
in his voice. He promised me that the two of us will talk—really talk—when we
get together in Chicago. I have a feeling we’ll be able to sort out our
differences. I look forward to talking to my son.”

“There’s one other question that sticks
in my mind,” she said, holding up the plate to offer him another cookie.

“What’s that?”

“What did Scott actually plan to do with
the
rhyton
when he found it? I mean, if Nikolov and the police hadn’t
come along?”

“I don’t think Scott ever thought that
through to the end,” Simon said. “I guess he realized that leaving the Thracian
treasure in the place where Lance hid it was not really appropriate. It’s far
better for it to be on display in a museum, where everyone can see it. That’s
where it truly belongs.”

“Well, that’s for sure,” she agreed.

“I’m eager to get back to the States
already. This has been quite an unplanned and eventful adventure. You know, I
feel like this is the second time I’m leaving. When I packed up originally at
the Hilton, I was sure that it was my last night in Sofia. I said my farewell
to the country at that time. We had already visited Vratsa and Montana in the
north, and the Rila Monastery in the south. I thought the adventure had come to
its end. Little did I know that the biggest thrills of my visit were yet
ahead.
”

“Maybe you’ll come back one day to
Bulgaria, to see the rest of the country at a leisurely pace.”

“I hope so. Someday,” he sighed, gently
touching the bruise on his cheek.

Scott walked into the living room, his
hair still wet from the shower. He adjusted the silver chain strung around his
neck, its symbol of life glittering momentarily as it caught in the light. “Did
you call the taxi?” he asked.

“It’ll only take a few minutes for it to
arrive, so we have time,” Sophia replied. “I’m sorry I won’t be able to take
you, but as I told your grandfather, I’m meeting with some of my colleagues
this evening. I’ve taken a lot of time off from my duties at the university and
now, to my dismay, I must return to my work.”

“Thank you for everything you’ve
done—for me, and especially for caring for my grandfather,” Scott said,
reaching to shake her hand.

“Oh, come now. Don’t be so formal,” she
said, standing up to hug him. “Maybe we should have a toast, to wish you a safe
journey.
How about a glass of
rakia
?”

“No!” Simon and Scott said in unison.

A few minutes later, Scott stuffed his laptop
into his backpack and dragged Simon’s suitcase to the door. Sophia called the
taxi company, and they waited for the callback announcing a cab’s arrival.

“How do you say good-bye in Bulgarian?”
Simon asked.

“
Dovizhdane
,” Sophia replied.

“Dovizh-da-what?
That’s almost impossible to say!”

“We could just say ‘see you soon,’”
Sophia suggested. “That’s a bit easier.
Do skoro
,” she said.

“
Do skoro
,” Simon repeated. “I
like that, and I’ll try to remember it.”

Sophia’s cell phone beeped, and she
stood up to hug Simon. He pushed down hard on the sofa and rose to his feet. As
he stood, his face puckered up strangely and then unexpectedly he issued a
noisy sneeze.

“
Nazdrave,”
she said, wishing him
good health.

“
Do skoro
,” he replied with a
smile. And then he embraced her and all that he had learned about Bulgaria.

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