The Balkan Escape (Short Story)_ A Cassi - Steve Berry [1]
Behind the altar were faint wall frescoes.
A hunting scene in which a boar was attacked by a horse-mounted hunter and a naked man wielding a double ax. She knew the double ax represented royal power, while the naked man signified Zalmoxix, the Thracian solar god. The artwork had triggered Varga’s mistake yesterday when he incorrectly identified them as Roman. Her mistake had come when she hadn’t made a speedy retreat.
A new man waited for her near the altar.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a narrow waist and matching hips. A tiny nose with a slight bump protruded from his round face, and strands of black hair brushed the tips of his ears. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.
“I am Lev Sokolov,” he said to her, his English infused with an even thicker Russian flavor. “I have been told to question you.”
“By who?”
“Russians. They control here.”
“The last time I looked, Bulgaria was an independent nation.”
He shrugged. “Maybe so. But the Russians control here.”
“What’s so special about this place?”
“Why are you here?”
She couldn’t say that Henrik Thorvaldsen had asked her to check out the locale. Her Danish friend, fascinated by anything lost and twenty times wealthier than she could ever hope to be, had stumbled onto the possible location of an undiscovered Thracian tomb.
Which was rare.
The Thracians were a warlike, nomadic people who’d settled the central Balkans nearly 5000 years ago. They were first mentioned in the Iliad as allies of the Trojans against the Greeks, and Herodotus cynically noted that they sell their children and let their wives commerce with whatever men they please. Two and half millennia ago they dominated the mountains of northern Greece and what would later become southern Bulgaria. Eventually conquered by Alexander the Great, then reconquered by the Romans, they were finally assimilated by Slavs in the 6th century. They developed no written language and left no trace of their existence, save for tombs littered with fabulous gold and silver treasures. Most had been found farther north, in central Bulgaria, in what had been dubbed the Valley of the Thracian Kings. But Thorvaldsen had happened on to the location of a more obscure site, to the south. A place that had once been a vital part of ancient Thrace, whose residents had named the mountains Rila—meaning “well watered.” He’d hoped that the site might prove virgin. Unfortunately, others had found it first.
And they weren’t after treasure.
“I’m on holiday and have never seen this part of Bulgaria,” she said to Sokolov.
“Ms. Vitt, you are important. You own multibillion-dollar corporation, inherited from your father. You own grand estate in southern France. Woman like yourself, a person of great means, does not take holiday in these mountains.”
They’d confiscated her passport yesterday after taking her captive, and clearly somebody had been busy.
“What do you plan to do?” she asked. “Hold me for ransom?”
“I simply ask, why are you here?”
She caught something in Sokolov’s eyes, a gentle request that she answer honestly. She wondered if the two other men, who stood on the far side of the chamber, understood the conversation. Their actions did not indicate that they were even listening.
“This is a Thracian tomb,” she said, opting for the truth.
“I wondered who built it,” Sokolov said. “How old is it?”
“Probably third to fifth century BCE.”
“We find this by accident. A demolition in another tunnel opened shaft to here.”
It was bare. No artifacts. “Was it empty?”
He nodded. “This is exactly as chamber appeared when we entered five days ago.”
At least it existed. Thorvaldsen would be thrilled.
Of course, in order to tell him she’d need to escape.
But her hunch was proving correct. She’d thought about it all night while chained to the wall. Bulgaria was rich in manganese, coal, copper,