An Aegean Prophecy - Jeffrey Siger [62]
There was a tiny word at the very end of the note he couldn’t make out.
Andreas shook his head and talked to himself as he rummaged through his middle desk drawer looking for a magnifying glass. ‘I didn’t tell her that, but yes, that’s what I would have said. Still, she can’t go around doing that sort of thing without checking with me first. I’ll have to speak to her. I run this office, not Maggie. Great, now I’ll have the other woman in my life pissed at me.’ He found the glass and stared at Maggie’s note. The word was ‘Over.’ He read the other side of the note.
HE DIDN’T BELIEVE ME. SAID YOU’D NEVER BE THAT CONSIDERATE AND YOU SHOULD CALL HIM IF YOU WANT HIM TO COME BACK.
Andreas laughed. He picked up the phone, called the computer guru, and told him to come up and show him what he’d found so far. Then he hung up and laughed some more.
He looked again at Dimitri’s note. A phrase caught his eye: ‘and don’t want to know.’ He ran the thought through his mind. Maybe he really meant that. Curiosity can be a curse, and there’s a certain comfort in ignorance of facts you do not need to know in order to live out your life in peace. Especially those facts almost impossible for you to change, like the number of people in the world who die each year in freak accidents. Or whatever can of worms might be on Vassilis’ computer.
The intercom buzzed. ‘Hi, I’m back. Ilias is here.’
‘Who’s Ilias?’
Maggie whispered, ‘The computer guru.’
He paused for an instant. ‘Send him in.’ I’m too damn curious for my own good.
Ilias said there was a lot of information on Vassilis’ computer, even more on the disks stolen from the monk’s room, but without knowing exactly what Andreas was interested in, it was ‘needle in a haystack time.’ Still, he’d narrowed things down, or at least hoped he had by focusing on what Vassilis was working on in the thirty days before his death. ‘I’m not sure if what I’ve come up with helps, since I don’t know what you’re looking for.’
‘Any luck on finding sources for the images used to doctor the photograph we took off the USB drive?’
‘All but one.’
‘Which one?’
‘The carpet. The faces were lifted from group photographs stored on the computer’s hard drive, the painting was a recent download from a museum site on the Internet, so was the photo used for the empty chairs, but the carpet …’ He shook his head. ‘I found the image of the carpet on the hard drive, but no idea of its source. It could be buried on one of the disks or lifted from something online. Can you give me some help?’
‘Like what?’
‘Keywords. I can use them to search the files.’
‘Revelation.’
Ilias keyed it in. ‘Looks like a zillion hits.’
Of course, thought Andreas. He’s a scholar monk living on Patmos. ‘Can you limit it just to file names?’
‘Sure,’ and with a few keystrokes Ilias brought up a hundred entries.
Andreas read the list. Nothing recent, and nothing interesting. ‘Try Russia, but only recent entries.’
That brought up a lot of newspaper articles, but nothing earth-shattering. He told him to try Mount Athos. That got him what he expected, more newspaper articles but nothing more than what everyone already knew.
Andreas kept suggesting keywords, but none led to anything helpful. ‘Okay, I’ve about had it.’ He paused. ‘Try Zacharias.’
Ilias typed in the word. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing? How can there be nothing? Try searching for more than just file names.’
‘I did, there’s no “Zacharias” anywhere in the computer.’
Ilias paused. ‘But it’s a biblical name. Someone would have had to intentionally purge every mention of it.’
Like some do 666, thought Andreas. ‘Let’s check out the disks.’
There were about fifty. Not a hit anywhere.
‘It’s almost like someone’s trying to call attention to the name by its absence,’ said Ilias.
Andreas had been leaning over Ilias’ back reading off the screen. He patted him on the shoulder. ‘Sure does.’ He walked over to the window and stared up at the sky. Neither man said a word for about a minute. ‘Try “time