embrace from afar. “Guys? This is the Holy Mountain, not Brokeback Mountain.”
Dial laughed at the comment. “I should’ve known. Where there’s Payne, there’s Jones.”
Jones stepped forward and shook his hand. “Nick fuckin’ Dial. I knew I recognized that big-ass chin of yours. What in the hell are you doing here?”
Dial grinned. “Jon asked me the same damn thing.”
“And I’m still waiting for an answer,” Payne reminded him.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll get to it in a moment. First, how are Marcus and Petros?”
Jones grimaced. “Which is which?”
“Marcus is the kid.”
Jones answered. “The kid’s fine. The other one, not so much.”
Dial, who hadn’t seen Petros’s death, needed to have things explained. Andropoulos filled him in the best he could, including how Jones had saved his life by shooting the other attacker.
“Speaking of which,” Payne wondered, “who are those guys?”
Jones added, “So far, we’ve killed four of them.”
“Only four?” asked Dial, who was quite familiar with their Special Forces backgrounds. “I’m guessing there are a lot more than that.”
He took a few minutes to describe the Spartans, the murdered monks, and the missing cops. He didn’t have time to go into all the specifics of the case, but he told them enough so they would understand what was going on. “We still aren’t sure what the Spartans are looking for. But whatever it is, it must be big. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have risked this type of exposure.”
Jones glanced at Payne but said nothing.
And Dial happened to notice. “What?”
Payne grimaced. “Nick, let’s take a walk.”
“Why?”
“Because we need to talk.”
The two moved away from Andropoulos, so the young Greek couldn’t hear what was about to be said. And Jones made sure of it by keeping an eye on him. Over the years, Payne and Dial had shared confidential information to help each other with various missions and assignments. And this was one of those times when they needed to speak in private, for both of their sakes.
“What’s up?” Dial asked.
“I want to tell you why we’re here. But only if it’s off-the-record.”
Dial stared at him, wondering where this was going. “Fine.”
“I think I know what the Spartans are looking for. It’s probably the same thing we’re looking for.”
“Which is?”
Payne reached into his pocket and pulled out a copy of the treasure map. “A colleague of mine recently called me from Russia and asked for my help. By the time I responded, it was too late. Someone had killed him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Payne shrugged it off. “D.J. and I poked around a little bit and figured out why he was murdered. He was looking for this.”
Dial took the map from Payne and studied it in the beam of the headlight. He instantly recognized the geography of Mount Athos. “Is this a treasure map?”
Payne nodded. “The man who killed my colleague was a hit man who used to work for the FSB. When I questioned him, he said he’d been hired by someone with a Mediterranean accent. We assumed he might be Greek, but we don’t know that for sure.”
“Why Greek?”
“Because the treasure is Greek. That is, if it even exists.”
Payne gave him a quick summary of the story of Richard Byrd, Heinrich Schliemann, and the possible existence of the lost throne. In addition, he filled him in on all the other treasures that could have been removed from Constantinople before the fire, everything from gold relics to ancient manuscripts.
“I think you’re right,” Dial said. “Our two matters are probably related.”
“I know. So what are we going to do about it?”
Dial gave the question some thought. “As far as I’m concerned, Interpol is here for one reason only: to catch the men who killed the monks. Everything else is a nonissue to me.”
Payne nodded in appreciation. “Glad to hear it.”
“And,” Dial said as he pointed at the map, “since my suspects seem to be heading toward this location, it might be nice if we could tag along with you.”
“That’s fine with me. Unless . . .”
“Unless what?”
“Unless the kid is going to be a problem.”
“You mean Marcus? He won’t be a problem at all. D.J. just saved his life. I really doubt he’s going to ask to see your visitor’s pass.”
Payne smiled. “Good. Because there’s one other thing I’ve been keeping from you. And it’s kind of hard to explain. . . .”
71
Payne asked Allison to step out of the shadows where she had been ordered to wait.
Dial stared at her in disbelief. He wasn’t expecting Payne’s big surprise to be a female. “You brought a