the screen again and sighed. “I was pretty excited at first, but it appears that whatever the clue is, it’s beyond us right now.”
Anna took a deep breath, then checked her watch. “I have to go. I have an editor to convince to let me run this story. In the meantime, you two need to figure out where that tomb is.”
Lourds nodded. “We will. But you be careful. You certainly won’t make any friends with your announcement.”
Giving him a wan smile, Anna approached him and gave him a hug. “No, but we are not going to let Nevsky get away with killing Boris, are we?”
Lourds hugged her back and looked at her. “No, we’re not.”
“Good. And when the time is right, invite me to the wedding. I would like to be there.”
Lourds smiled at her. “Then consider yourself invited.”
That caught Marias’s attention at once. “Wait! What wedding?”
47
Museum of the University of Athens
Plaka, Athens
Hellenic Republic (Greece)
February 21, 2013
Across the street from the museum, on a building rooftop two blocks away, Linko watched Lourds escort Anna Cherkshan to a waiting taxi. They talked briefly and Linko hoped they would leave together. Things would be simpler if his two targets stayed with each other.
That wasn’t meant to be though. Lourds put the young woman into the car and stepped back. A moment later, the taxi drove away.
Linko kept his binoculars trained on the American professor. Now that he’d found the man, he was determined not to lose him again. Anna Cherkshan’s death was just waiting to happen. It was only a matter of time.
Linko had wanted to take his chances with capturing Lourds, but Nevsky had forbidden that as well. Whatever the American professor was looking for, Nevsky wanted the man to find it and Linko to take it from him immediately afterward.
He let out a breath and sighed in frustration as Lourds re-entered the museum.
***
“Hello, Thomas. Hello, Adonis.” Professor Ian Westmoore waved at them through the satellite link to Berlin. Westmoore was in his seventies, a rotund man with a long, white beard and hair swept back from his high forehead. His glasses magnified his eyes and made them look too large for his face.
“Hello, Ian.” Lourds smiled at the man. The British professor was a favorite of his, and he had curmudgeonly down pat when it came to dealing with students.
“So, you want to know about death societies in Ancient Greece?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you have come to the right man. I just attended a seminar on the death cults of the Celtic Priests. They sacrificed to the gods, and often their victims were young nobles. It didn’t make them very popular with the ruling class, as you can imagine.”
Marias laughed. “I suppose not.”
“So, what can I help you with?”
Lourds leaned forward to speak into the microphone. “We’re working with a document regarding Alexander the Great.”
Westmoore nodded. “A good subject. Plenty of meat there for a scholar to feed on, but you’re going to have to find a whole new wrinkle to interest the pedagogical crowd.”
“I think we have something. Have you ever heard of a legend or story about Alexander receiving weapons from Hades?”
“The god of the underworld?”
“Yes.”
Westmoore seemed puzzled and interested at the same time. “Never. This is something new. What do you have?”
“A scroll by Callisthenes—”
“The original or one of his replacements, or Callisthenes after his death was faked?” Westmoore smiled. “You realize you have your choice there.”
“We do realize that, but we’re confident that we have one from the original. The scroll says that Aristotle took Alexander to the Oracle of Delphi, then to visit Hades to get the weapons.”
Westmoore scratched his beard thoughtfully. “In those days, you could offer a tribute to Hades anywhere, but there’s only one temple where someone could have gotten anything from Hades. You have discovered there was only one temple, correct? That no one else dared build a temple to Hades?”
Lourds nodded. “We have.”
“There is a scroll I have read, researched, and done papers on that talks about the temple of Hades. Unfortunately, I can’t definitely say whether it was written as truth or fabrication. So many things about the Greek myths have gotten all tangled up as the Greeks told the stories, then the Romans after them. Let me send you a copy when we finish talking.”
“Thank you.”
“But you’ll have to let me know how this quest of yours turns out.”
“Happily.”
Westmoore grimaced. “I don’t think it’ll end all that happily. I think you’re wasting your time, but if someone’s funding your research, you