Deadly Icons: Azrael Harvests Art Thieves

By Chet A. Kisiel

.THRILLER FANS WILL LOVE MILTON,

Untested  Milton Lessing is sent to Cyprus to find the killer of his insurance firm's local manager and his uncle and a precious stolen icon, Milton is no ordinary hero of crime stories. He is shorter than average, bespectacled, a scholar of human nature and criminology, but, as the son of a cop,  he can handle himself.

On the plane, he meets Joe, who reminds him of the philosopher Zeno of Cyprus. Joe tells Milton his daughter Elena, an archaeologist,   can help him find the icon.

Milton enters a world of villainy. His arrival causes panic among people who have dark secrets, including the company secretary, the crooked financial adviser of a Russian countess, a real estate developer, his sales manager, the wife of a local politician, whose affair would ruin her husband's career, the hidden Mr. Big, whose terrible secret is the motive behind the theft,  and the master fence and his artist, who painted the fake.

A cryptic character known as The Voice sends an assassin to kill Milton, and others entangled in various schemes; each separately plans to eliminate the nosy detective.

Enter Elena, the most beautiful woman Milton has ever seen, but icy and remote, a dead ringer for Aphrodite. He with his razor-sharp mind and she with her remarkable psychic powers complement each other to a T and form a great duo.

From the abbot of a remote monastery, who seems too eager to get the insurance money, they learn that a Russian monk had visited there ostensibly on a spiritual quest but left with just the knapsack on his back.

On the way back from the monastery, a cement truck tries to ram them into a gorge, but Elena saves them with her driving skills.

At the Bacchus café, Elena introduces Milton to her friend Sabazjos, who reminds Milton of Dionysus and becomes another ally.

Milton dreams that his new friends are reincarnations of Zeno, Aphrodite, and Dionysus. Are they real, or are they from another time and place?

When Milton tells Callia, museum director, a dark femme fatale,  about the Russian connection, she arranges for him to meet Countess Bolkonskaya, scion of the local Russian community.

The inspector, meanwhile, summons Milton to the morgue and shows him two corpses, a monk, who was found hanged in the monastery that Milton had visited, and a petty thief, who took Milton's picture in the hotel. Who is behind these unrelated murders? The police throw Milton under the bus. The inspector is livid and suggests that Milton leave the island before the "deadly icon" claims more lives.

At the countess's Milton meets Gregory, her financial adviser, and her wicked servants Boris and his wife, Olga. While viewing the countess's dazzling art collection, Milton asks questions about The Holy Trinity, a precious icon he suspects is fake. Has he stumbled on another art scheme? Is this another deadly icon? Gregory is nonplussed and invites Milton to a party on board his yacht.

Milton goes to the party, meets a cross-section of the New Russia,  and during the drunken merrymaking slips below to search the staterooms. While examining the contents of a closet, he feels a hand on his shoulder, turns around, and everything goes black.

Milton's friends watch in dismay as the lights of the yacht recede into the blackness of the night. Milton has been kidnapped! Who can save him?

Travel to exotic Cyprus to find out and meet a host of memorable good and evil characters in this epic, informative, and gripping, action-packed thriller that asks the big existential questions, contains many surprises and has an inspiring message..

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Chester Kisiel
• Release date: Aug 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386443995

Chet A. Kisiel

Biography Chester A. Kisiel received his A.B. and M.A. in Government from Brown and Harvard University and his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Chicago. He has taught at Staten Island College (CUNY) and international schools and has written, collaborated, and translated books in sociology, economics, philosophy, Jewish studies, religion, and art. He is a world traveler and public lecturer on politics and popular science (astronomy, cosmology). He is retired and lives in Gdansk, Poland with his wife and two cats (Albert Schweitzer:"there are only two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."). His hobbies are Italian, Dante, astronomy, world history, philosophy, music and good books. His favorite authors are Dante, Shakespeare, Balzac, Stendhal, and Graham Greene. The thriller Deadly Icons featuring the unlikely hero Milton is the first of a series, soon to be followed by Italian Venture.

Book preview

PROLOGUE. A deadly icon begins its journey

They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage.

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

October, Northern Cyprus

On a sunny morning at the beginning of October, at the tip of Cape St. Andreas in Northern Cyprus, a man rang the bell of a villa that stood alone against the shimmering Mediterranean. A huge man who looked like a heavyweight boxer admitted him.

Good morning Rufio, or is it Canio? I can never tell the two of you apart, the visitor said in greeting.

I’m Rufio. Canio is outside. There is always one of us on guard duty. Come in, the professor is expecting you.

The visitor was fifty-five-years-old, tall, thin, ramrod-straight, with gray eyes, a prominent nose, and a Sir Aubrey Smith mustache. He was the third son of Lord Alfred Montague, Bart. of Weymouth. Athelstane was an Eton man, where he acquired enough character on those famous playing fields to guide him through life and to overcome any Waterloo he might encounter. To him, life was like a voyage on a sailboat, where one had to tack to the wind. His elastic, chameleon-like morality enabled him to blend into any situation. In contrast to the sturdy oak, which a gale could bring down, he was indestructible tumbleweed that the wind just swept along.

He read history at Oxford, from which he was allowed to graduate in two years on account of his connections. At the age of twenty-five, he had acquired the wisdom of Ecclesiastes and doubted whether a man has any profit from his labor on Earth. His sole ambition, if it can be called that, was to get through life pleasantly with the least possible effort.

He served an apprenticeship with the London law firm Wooley and Fish and became a solicitor, an occupation he never took seriously. He never pleaded nor practiced in a court of law. His knowledge of the law was superficial, but his instinct told him that it was better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.

He married Fiona Roehampton, a member of his class. They lived childless alongside each other for thirty years in his ancestral home in Weymouth. She died one morning at breakfast, but Athelstane didn’t detect anything wrong from behind The Times. For years they had never exchanged more than a few words with each other during the day.  At noon he suspected something was amiss when the parrot kept making a racket. He shouted at Fiona, Get off your ass and shut up that bloody parrot! After he had repeated this exhortation several times with no result, he put aside the newspaper and walked up to her. He tapped her on the shoulder, but she keeled over into the bowl of gray juice, in which floated her stewed prunes. She had been dead for three hours.

At the funeral, Gregory Arpadov, a Russian con man whom Athelstane had met in London, told him that Cyprus would be the ideal place for him. There he could follow the sun and the easy money, fleecing the lower-middle-class British ex-pats, who are awed by the aristocracy. So Sir Athelstane moved to Cyprus and with his overweening self-confidence sheared the star-struck lambs in various clever schemes.

The Englishman entered the large foyer of the villa, where a diminutive man in his late thirties met him. He measured no more than 158 cm (5’2) in his stockinged feet and 163 cm (5’4) in his elevator shoes or cowboy boots. He had intelligent gray eyes, shaggy brown hair with dabs of gray, and the first signs of a pot belly that betrayed his aversion to exercise and physical effort.

"Ah, Signore Montagu, Buon giorno. Entrare, prego![1]!

Thank you, Professor.

The Italian led his guest into the spacious sitting room of the villa and motioned to him to take a seat in one of the armchairs.

She is waiting for you, the pint-sized Italian said and winked.

I’m eager to see her.

I’m sure you’ll agree that the wait was worth it after you see her. Rufio, go to the atelier and bring her here.

Rufio soon returned bearing a large portmanteau and placed it next to his employer. Amilcare Mancini, former professor of art at Rome and Naples Universities and eminent art critic, opened the portmanteau and with evident pleasure removed the object of the Englishman’s visit.

Egad, it’s beautiful! the Englishman exclaimed in admiration as he viewed an icon that Mancini held up for him to examine.

"It radiates a certain holiness, almost like the original. Look at the expression on the face of the Virgin, La Bellissima Donna Santa Maria.[2]. The icon can easily pass for the original St. Luke. Even the most discerning eye wouldn’t detect any difference. A forensic test would discover the forgery, however."

What do you mean, Professor? the Englishman asked with concern.

A chemical test would reveal that the paints used in this icon were not the same as those used by the original artist.

That might occur if the painting was put up for sale. In this case, the icon will be hanging in the monastery just like the original. The monks will never notice the difference, the Englishman explained to his satisfaction.

"I dare say not, Signore Montague, but tell me, why to go to the trouble to replace the original with this excellent fake, but a fake nonetheless. Why not just steal the icon?"

Professor, my principal wishes to take as few chances as possible. If the icon were stolen, the monks would discover the theft within minutes or hours. There would be an uproar and a good chance that the police would catch the thief. The icon wouldn’t get off the island. Everybody would be looking for it.

"E vero.[3] Incidentally, who is your principal? Is he the same person for whom my artist painted the other fakes?" 

No. My employer wishes to remain anonymous. Our agreement was for you to deliver the fake icon and for us to pay you one million euros.

The Englishman handed the Italian an attaché case.

It’s all here. Do you wish to count it?

It’s not necessary.  After all, we have done business before, haven’t we? the Italian said and smiled.

Do I detect a note of irony? the Englishman replied and raised his eyebrows.

If you can’t tell me who your principal is, then why does he or she want this particular icon? And by the way, how are you going to make the switch?

He or she believes in the holy power of the icon. There is a legend that St. Luke painted the icon with the Virgin Mary as the model. After he had started the painting, it miraculously painted itself. The Virgin blessed the icon and said her blessing would remain with it forever.

The belief in this legend must be  intense if he or she is willing to pay so much for the icon.

It is. We have bribed someone in the monastery to make the switch. By the by, I’ve never met the brilliant artist to whom I owe this and the other masterpieces you delivered to us.

"Momento. Come this way.

The risks of antique fraud are relative. Other criminals risk the absolute. You've never heard of a fraudster involved in a shootout, of the Come and get me, copper! sort. Or of some con artist needing helicopter gunships to bring him down. No, we subtle-mongers do it with the smile, the promise, the hint. And we have one great ally: greed. And make no mistake. Greed is everywhere, like the weather.

Jonathan Gash, The Great California Game

The two men went to the back of the villa, where there was a vast atelier. The bright Mediterranean morning sunshine cast its beams through the gently curved bay window and reflected rays from a sixteenth-century horseman’s silver breastplate hanging on the wall. On an old large weather-beaten oak commode, there were potteries of all sizes and shapes from different epochs. Thick tapestries of various colors that served the artist as models hung from the walls. On shelves to the ceiling were anatomical plaster casts and torsos of gods and goddesses, cupids and other mythological beings. Scattered around the room in disarray were countless sketches in ink and crayon and canvases of various sizes with oil paintings in different stages of completion. Easels and stools, some tipped over, color boxes, bottles of turpentine, squeezed out tubes of paint, brushes of all kinds, and other objects of the artist’s profession littered the studio and hardly left enough room for the Italian and Englishman to squeeze in.

"Buon giorno, Maestra,[4]"  Mancini addressed a tall, dark-haired woman.

The artist smiled with a vacant look.

Who is this strange woman, Professor?

This is Sofonisba Anguisola, a great artist; however, she lives in a world of her own.

Anguisola, from an ancient Italian aristocratic house, inherited the talent of her ancestor. She was thirty-five-years-old, beautiful, tall, with dark shoulder-length hair, an aquiline nose, and small, black, piercing eyes. She wore a green and white ankle-length Renaissance gown splattered with paint of various colors. Her great namesake, one of the few women artists to whom Vasari,[5], the world’s first art critic, accorded appreciation, illustrated the constraints under which women created in those days. Here is the moving tribute to Sofonisba from her second husband:

To Sofonisba, my wife, who is among the illustrious women of the world, outstanding in portraying the images of man. Orazio Lomellino, in sorrow for the loss of his great love, in 1632, dedicated this little tribute to such a great woman.

Orazio Lomellino, Inscription on Sofonisba's tomb in Palermo at the Church of San Giorgio dei Genovese.

Amazing. Where did you find such a treasure?

I discovered her during my work as an art critic, actually, in an insane asylum. Let me spare your sensitivities about why she was confined.

Mancini did not tell his guest that when Sofonisba was eighteen, she slit her uncle’s throat after he raped her. He and her father had been sexually abusing her since she was twelve. Finally, something snapped in her. She escaped, but the police hunted her down. After a scandalous hearing, she was declared insane and confined to the Sigmund Freud Asylum for the Criminally Insane near Vienna.

From what I see, women are just as talented as men in the arts, Sir Athelstane asserted with admiration.

I question whether society suppressed women’s creative talents. Take Kandinsky[6] and his mistress Gabriele Minter. His work was far superior to hers.  There are also Robert and Clara Schumann; he was the great composer, she was the performer. Although Sofonisba inherited the talent of her ancestor, her talent, like her ancestor’s, is limited to portraiture and imitation. She also inherited the madness that existed in the line, like the famous Habsburg chin.

Aren’t you expressing a male chauvinist opinion of women in the arts?

By no means. In contrast to the woman’s genius, man’s is more creative and imaginative. Man’s imagination also reveals itself in promiscuity and sexual perversions. Nature has made woman the way she is to keep a lid on things. If women were as promiscuous as men, the human race would drown in an ocean of licentiousness. That is why women are so conservative in love and prefer mediocrity to the so-called ‘man of genius.’ Not by accident, the woman disdains the great man. This attitude is Nature’s braking mechanism on the vehicle of humanity. In her rejection of the superior man, the woman acts to prevent man from becoming a demigod or archangel. What will happen when the final separation of sex from reproduction lifts this lid?

Egad, that is a politically incorrect opinion, Sir Athelstane exclaimed.

Political correctness is circumcision of the soul. For every Beethoven, there are thousands of pedophiles and other perverts. Is the trade-off worth it? It depends on your point of view.

I see your point, but this complete separation of sex from reproduction has already taken place. Today, both eggs and sperm are for sale like shoes. There are no controls. The market has already set prices. A Harvard egg costs more than a Columbia University one.

It will be a catastrophe. With no father, no mother, no sex, and no love will such an individual have a soul? Mancini wondered. 

Mancini did not tell Sir Athelstane how he met Sofonisba and what made them come to Northern Cyprus. Seven years ago, at Rome University, a beautiful young woman from an aristocratic family, Francesca Este Gonzaga, knocked on his door during his office hours. The girl, one of his students in his course History of Beauty, had come for his assistance in writing her class thesis on Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Italian Painting. After several visits, the professor became bewitched. He told her he was not merely an academic, but also a man and declared his love. The young woman burst into scornful laughter and stormed out of his office. Subsequently, whenever Professor Mancini entered the lecture hall, he encountered smirks and titters. He heard mocking laughter behind his back. An article appeared in the student newspaper entitled Professor Midget and the Dark Queen. After the rector summoned him, things became unbearable and Mancini’s position increasingly untenable.

Several weeks after the encounter with the university administration, a singular event changed Mancini’s life. At an exhibition of modern artists in Munich, he saw a remarkable painting. Mancini inquired about the artist, Sofonisba Anguisola. His quest brought him to the Sigmund Freud Asylum for the Criminally Insane outside Vienna. After several visits to the artist, whom Mancini diagnosed as an idiot savant, but not hopelessly insane, the idea came to him that if they combined their talents, his Mancini’s, as an art expert, and Anguisola’s, as a brilliant artist, they could change their lives. He, Mancini, would no longer be scorned and might become worthy of love and gain his revenge on upper-class society that in the person of Francesca had rejected him; and she, Anguisola, would live a life of dignity, instead of being treated like an animal in a cage, and be free to develop her remarkable talent. They, two social outcasts, would become the legendary blind man and a cripple, who both were invited to attend the king’s feast. They couldn’t make it on their own, but the blind man carried the cripple on his back and together they made it to the feast.

Mancini bribed a guard and rescued Sofonisba. He resigned from the university and made his base in Northern Cyprus, which has no extradition treaties since only Turkey recognizes it as a country. Thus began a remarkable cooperation that ran untroubled until the events connected with the icon of St. Luke.

The Englishman’s eyes fell upon a canvas with dimensions of approximately 200 x 250 cm.

What is that shockingly realistic painting of Christ?

"That is The Descent from the Cross by Peter Paul Rubens,[7]  which for four centuries has been missing. The larger 400 x 300 version of this painting hangs in the Antwerp Cathedral."

You’re not trying to tell me that this painting is a fake? the Englishmen asked in astonishment.

Why yes, this is an example of Sofonisba’s work. The lost painting, which now has been found again, was inspired by the Scriptures and shows the descent of Christ from the cross.

Are you going to bring this painting out of retirement?

I plan to do that. La Duchessa del Mantua Eleanora Gonzaga commissioned the original miniature, which was subsequently lost. Now, the painting has been found and will make its reappearance.

Won’t the critics and experts unmask you?

A German, whom I know, a collector, will pass off the painting as his, which he will say had been covered by a thick coat of varnish. Professor Manfred Hoffmeister will authenticate it, saying that he recognizes the hand of the master. This is the so-called droit moral or expert’s authentication that is accepted in Europe. The painting will make its appearance as a young Rubens.

What about the forensic tests?

The painting is so good that the tests won’t be conclusive. Sofonisba used a canvas of a minor master of the period from which she removed the paint.  Even with a somewhat questionable pedigree, the Rubens will still fetch a handsome seven-figure price. The trick is to get the painting listed in the catalog of a gallery. One has to give it a pedigree. The procedure is similar to money laundering.

It’s hard to believe that such a fabrication can go undetected.

The paintings of Han van Meegeren,[8] the most famous counterfeiter of the twentieth century, so resembled the works of Vermeer  that after they entered circulation in museums, they were sold at auctions as works of the master.

What do you mean by entering circulation in museums, Professor?

Before he was murdered by a blow to the back of the head in Rome in strange circumstances, in his book the famous counterfeiter, Eric Hebborn, described in detail this criminal procedure with the participation of museum experts, who often cooperate with sellers of counterfeit paintings. The financial temptation is just too great to resist.

Yet, don’t the counterfeiters all get caught in the end?

Just the ones we know about have been caught. It’s like murderers. How many murderers are on the loose? Besides, if Germania hadn’t lost the war, van Meegeren might never have been caught.

What do you mean, Professor?

When the Allies confiscated Hermann Göring’s art collection, among the paintings was a Vermeer the German had bought from the Dutch counterfeiter, who fooled even the German experts. Van Meegeren was arrested for collaboration with the Nazis. He proved his innocence by painting another Vermeer in jail. He identified a dozen or so Vermeers as his work. His sentence was reduced to a charge of fraud, but he died in prison in mysterious circumstances. In my opinion, he was murdered, perhaps by an owner of one of the Vermeers that hadn’t been identified or by a gallery owner. We’ll never know. 

From what you say, I gather that this is a dangerous business?

The prices of masterpieces have reached astronomical heights. Whenever anything becomes this valuable, crime enters into the picture, and no pun intended, even violent crime.

Don’t you worry about your safety in this business?

That’s why I’m in Northern Cyprus, which doesn’t have any extradition treaties.

Yes, I see. Is art fraud very extensive?

Interpol and other law enforcement agencies rate it second only to drug trafficking. In my opinion, it might even take first place regarding the amount of money involved. It all depends on what you mean by art.

Could you explain that, Professor?

When we speak of ‘art,’ we tend to think of paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. When we include antiquities, ethnographic objects, Oriental and Islamic art, like Ming vases, and miscellaneous items such as rare books, coins, armor, and medals, we have a vast field. In this sense, the art world is a microcosm of the larger social world, of which it is a part.

I fail to understand the meaning of your last remark.

The world of art is a mirror in which man is reflected in all of his aspects, good and bad: his self-delusion, greed, gullibility, violence, the triumph of the human spirit when the forgeries are effective, and the pursuit of beauty and the transcendent, which remain just out of man’s reach, like the fruit out of the reach of Tantalus. Of all the pictorial arts, painting makes the most fascinating appeal to most of us.  It has the glamor of the colors of the world, and in the long procession of the centuries, the art of the painter, scarcely less than that of the writer, has recorded beings as well as facts, nature and human nature, the yearnings and conceptions, the hopes and griefs of men’s dreams, and the ardor of many a faith.

Meanwhile, Sofonisba, who had understood hardly anything of the conversation, became impatient. She grasped – rather seized – a pallet charged with prismatic colors, put her thumb in it, with her other hand snatched a brush and dipped it into the various tints with an astonishing rapidity of movement. She stepped back a few paces and gazed upon the still unfinished young woman of Giorgione[9]  and then with a few expert strokes applied some light blue, which seemed to make the air circulate her head. The Englishman and Italian watched the artist in rapt concentration.

The artist muttered to herself and applied a few more strokes here and there, and the picture seemed to come to life.

What did she say?

The Eternally Feminine draws us upward, as Goethe said. Her greatest ambition is to paint the perfect woman and to surpass Botticelli[10 in his painting of Venus. She also said that man could make even the desert bloom; the only obstacle is in his head.

Where can one find such a woman? the Englishman asked.

One doesn’t look for her. She will come herself by a mysterious power of attraction to the one who will make her immortal, the attractive force of the elective affinities of which Goethe wrote, the little Italian said in a voice that expressed anticipation, hope, and mystery. Come, let us leave Sofonisba to her work.

Mancini and his guest left the atelier and went back to the sitting room.

Professor, thank you for the icon. Now I must return to Kyrenia Harbor, where a yacht is waiting for me.

"Grazie, Signore, for the one million euros. Addio."

They shook hands. The Englishman took with him the portmanteau that contained a deadly icon, a copy of the holy icon of St. Luke, thus setting in motion a chain of remarkable events that would affect the lives of many people. The Italian professor went to his study, turned on his computer and logged on to The Art Loss Register to check on the latest stolen paintings.

Chapter 1. Two suspicious accidents

WEDNESDAY First Day

Southern Cyprus, 7 a.m.

Two weeks later, a blue Volvo station wagon drove up to the outskirts of Ohmodos village. It stopped in front of an old dilapidated stone house that more resembled a hovel than a home.  A burly man got out of the car and walked toward the house.

An old golden rust-colored hunting dog, Vizsla breed, which loves everybody, ran up to him wagging its tail.

I’ve got a treat for you, Ulysses, a sop for Cerberus.

From his pocket, the man pulled out a lanate-laced souvlaki. The dog devoured the poisoned sausage eagerly. The visitor lit a cigarette and waited several minutes. Then he watched in satisfaction as the dog’s back legs started trembling and shaking. It looked up at him with distressed eyes, wondering what happened. Soon it began to vomit, white foam forming in its mouth and nostrils until it collapsed in the slimy pool that had formed beneath it.

Then the man walked up to the house and pounded on the door.

Seventy - five – year - old Neophytous Papacharalambous rubbed the sleep from his eyes, tucked his undershirt into his trousers, hitched up his suspenders, and opened the door. Before him in the half-light, he saw a tall, menacing man in sunglasses, who seemed to fill up the entire doorway.

Are you Dimitris’s uncle? he asked in Greek.

Yes, what do you want?

Dimitris sent me for the manila envelope.

I don’t know anything about any envelope.

That’s the wrong answer!

The man stepped forward and broke Neophytous’s neck with an expert karate chop and carefully searched the house. He soon found the manila envelope that his employer had sent him for under a loose floorboard covered by a scatter rug as well as a video cassette and tape, which he also decided to take. Amateurs, he said to himself. He carefully fitted the loose floorboard back in place and covered it with the scatter rug.

He slung the old man’s frail body over his shoulder like a straw-stuffed scarecrow and propped him up behind the steering wheel of his 20-year-old brown-white, rusty Isuzu pickup. He poured Zivania into his mouth and sprinkled the liquor all over him, threw the half-empty bottle on the front seat next to him. He wiped his prints off the bottle, revved up the engine and sent the pickup down the road crashing into a large carob tree. Then he put the body of the dog into the trunk of his car to dispose of later and drove away for his next appointment.

Paphos-Limassol road, 10 a.m.

Dimitris Papacharalambous, handsome 30-year-old manager of the Paphos branch of the Old Reliable Insurance Company, in excellent humor was driving to a rendezvous with a blackmail victim in Aphrodite Hills at the Pithari Tavern in his brand new silver metallic Mercedes Benz™ 200C.

He pushed down slowly on the gas pedal and listened with pleasure as the engine purred to his command. With smug satisfaction, he recalled how everyone in the office had congratulated and envied him when he showed it off. This next payment would be just in time because his stock market investments had turned sour, and he had run up some other debts. He could use this money to invest in the hot stock tip he got from Mario, the car salesman. The profit from that would pay off the loan on his insurance policy and the money he had borrowed from his uncle, Neophytous. He thought how cleverly he had put them in a corner from which they could not escape. Two other people in addition to him had the manila envelope. If the blackmail victims dared try anything, someone would expose them. They had too much to lose, so he thought that he was safe. 

The marksman had taken up his position on a cliff overlooking the road. When the car came into sight, the telescopic sight of his Armalite rifle zeroed in on the front, near side tire of the Mercedes. The crack of the rifle was followed almost immediately by the blow -out of the tire so that it would have been impossible for anyone listening to hear two separate sounds.

Dimitris struggled desperately to regain control of the car, which went into a spin, but there was nothing he could do to save himself. The car crashed through the railing on the right-hand side of the road and plunged down the almost vertical face of the rock, ejecting the driver. It hit the ground one-hundred meters below, rolled over several times and then burst into flames just opposite Petra tou Romiou, the spot where Aphrodite is said to have been born from the sea. A massive wave crashed over it with a hiss. 

THURSDAY Second Day

Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Clothilda Nesselrode, a tall, skinny, flat-chested birdlike woman in her late thirties, who wears thick horn-rimmed glasses and ties her raven black hair in a bun, rushed into the office of Milton Lessing, insurance investigator.

The boss wants to see you right away..

What’s it about? Milton asked because he hated surprises.

I think he’s got a case for you.

He had been looking forward to this good news ever since he arrived in Frankfurt several days ago. He preferred doing investigative work in the field to sitting in the office looking for weak points in insurance claims. 

Call him and say I’m on my way.

Milton is the only child of a German-American father, Sigismund (Ziggy) Lessing, and a Polish-American schoolteacher mother, Faith Wanda Bednarek. If it is true that a person derives his character from his father and his intelligence from his mother, Milton was ideally suited to be an investigator. He was well equipped to make his way through life, with a brilliant head on his shoulders and a strong desire to succeed.

Milton’s father had been a Detective Sergeant on the Providence, Rhode Island Police Force, where he earned the moniker Bloodhound Lessing, because when he picked up the scent in a case, he never let go.  This determination, coupled with his impetuosity brought about his doom when at the age of forty-two he was killed in a shootout with drug dealers without waiting for backup. 

Faith instilled in her son a love of music and the arts, though he did not display a particular talent in that direction. His mind was analytical, not artistic. Milton means, mill town, and Milton was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where Samuel Slater established the first cotton mill in America. The other meaning of the name is the surname of the English poet, John Milton. By giving her son this name, Faith also harbored the hope that he would leave a mark in one of the arts or sciences. The second name means, rich and hard, brave power, and by this name, Faith hoped that he would face the adversities of life bravely. She named her son well. 

Ziggy had never read any educational treatises and had not heard of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, or John Dewey. His educational philosophy consisted in teaching by the example of shock and awe. One day he told his 10-year-old son that if he wanted to survive in this world, he shouldn't trust anybody.

Milton just nodded and said, Yes, Dad.

Another time, on one of their many father-son camping trips, Ziggy got up very early in the morning and left Milton with the following note:

Hello Son,

I have taken the food and gone home. I left you a canteen filled with water and a compass. Home is north-east. Watch out for the snakes; some of them may be poisonous. Don’t worry about the camping equipment. We’ll buy new stuff later. Good luck.

Your loving father.

P.S. I told you never to trust anybody.

When Ziggy came home without Milton, Faith went into hysterics. She threatened to call the police until Ziggy reminded her that he was the cops. Then she shouted that if he didn’t find Milton, she would leave him. He said that he would go and look for Milton early in the morning.

At dawn, before Ziggy could set out, a dirty Milton returned. His eyes were red from crying, and he was full of scratches, but he was safe, and he had made it. More importantly, he never forgot the lesson that his father had impressed upon him.

After this adventure, Ziggy decided it was time to enroll Milton in the Boy Scouts. Milton enjoyed scouting, and under Ziggy’s tutelage made Eagle Scout in his senior year of high school.

One day Milton came home from school with a black eye and broken glasses.  When his father asked him what had happened, Milton tearfully admitted that the schoolyard bully, Jens Swensen, had thrashed him, saying he didn’t like his face. The teacher and principal refused to do anything about it, saying boys will be boys.

Ziggy took immediate action to remedy this situation. He took Milton down to the station and enrolled him in martial arts under the tutelage of the police instructor Sergeant Billy Wang-yo-Wing, who taught Milton how to use an opponent's strength against him. 

A few months later, Milton came home from school and proudly announced to his father that he had whipped Jens Swensen, who wouldn't be causing any more trouble.

Ziggy had to answer a summons from the principal to explain his son’s brutality against poor Jens. Ziggy told him that when Milton complained about Jens’s brutality, neither the principal nor Milton’s teacher did anything about it, saying boys will be boys. Milton’s principal had no answer to this.

When Milton reached puberty, his father decided to have a man-to-man talk with his son.

Son, I think it’s time we talked about the birds and the bees. Do you know what I mean?

Yes, Dad. My teacher explained to us how many species are disappearing each year due to man’s influence on the environment.

No, Son. I want to talk to you about SEX. The first thing you have to remember is that you have two heads, one on your shoulders and another one between your legs. The little one between your legs is stupid, but he wants to take charge. He just wants to get his no matter what the consequences. You mustn't let him rule your life.

No, Dad.

Another thing, Son. Remember the 80/20 rule.

What’s that, Dad?

Twenty-percent of the he-men have their pick of eighty-percent of the girls. The other eighty percent of the softies have to content themselves with the plain, unattractive twenty-percent left over.

Like mom, Dad?

Your mother is an excellent woman, never forget that. She also brings in a steady paycheck. Never marry a beauty queen. You’ll have to sit on your porch with a shotgun to protect what’s yours from the wolves. Follow my example. No wolves are after your mother, and I can concentrate on my work.

Yes, Dad.

"That just proves that all of this women’s lib stuff is malarkey. Deep down a woman longs for a real man who will sweep her off her feet, a man who is virile and will offer protection for her and her children. Years ago, there was a film called The Sheik starring Rudolf Valentino. In it, he rides into the leading lady’s life, sweeps her up, and rides away with her into the sunset. The women went gaga over this guy."

Yes, Dad.

"There was an old song I heard once that I thought was stupid: If you’ve only got a mustache. With experience, the song is right. The guy with the mustache or beard or unshaven appearance sends a clear signal to the women that he’s pumping testosterone, that he can deliver the goods. And if you just want to look unshaven, you’ll also look manly and save a lot of money on razor blades over a lifetime."

You won’t save any money, Dad.

Why not, Son?

Well, the razor blade will shave only so many hairs. If you shave less often, it will wear out just as fast, and you’ll have to buy new ones just as often."

I hadn’t thought of that.

This boy will go far.

Over the objections of Faith, when Milton entered high school, Ziggy took Milton to the police shooting range and introduced him to Sergeant Clarence Dead Eye Wilson, the instructor, who taught Milton all about firearms, how to use them, and especially how to respect them. Milton took to these lessons like a fish to water and soon was an expert marksman. 

After the lessons in martial arts and marksmanship, Ziggy decided that it was time to teach Milton about life.

Do you know what this is, Son? Ziggy asked, plunking down a deck of cards on the table.

Don’t be silly, Dad. It’s just a deck of cards.

Oh. Is it, really? It’s more than that. It’s life. On the surface, it looks simple, but underneath it is full of subtleties and pitfalls. One of the best examples of this is the game of poker. There are several kinds of poker, namely five-card draw, seven-card stud, hold ém, draw lowball, and seven-card lowball or razz.  To begin with, I’m going to teach you five-card draw.

After Ziggy had explained the rules, and they had played a few practice hands, Milton exclaimed:

This game is so easy that a child could learn it,

Well, then, let’s play.

They played for a few weeks just keeping a running score on a pad when Faith had gone shopping or to visit girlfriends.

This is getting boring. Let’s play for real money. I bet I can double my allowance, Milton boasted.

You're on, Son.

In the beginning, they played with varying fortunes, but before long, Milton started losing. He attributed this to a statistical quirk and upped the stakes, expecting to be victorious any moment. His fortunes continued to worsen until he had gambled away one year’s allowance. After one painful loss, his eyes filled with tears and he cried out in frustration.

I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m doing everything right, but my luck refuses to change.

‘Luck is only part of it and not even the biggest part."

What else is there? I’ve mastered all of the rules, Milton replied with irritation.

It’s easy to shoot a bird that files in a straight line.

Don’t speak in riddles, Dad.

A river is awesome until someone finds a ford. Then it becomes just an ordinary body of water. We didn’t choose to be put in this vale of tears, but since we’re here, we’ve got to manage as best we can. We have to go on. The world is filled with fools and nasty sorts who want to do you harm. To get the better of them or even just to survive, we’ve got to hide our depths. We can't let anyone know where our ford is, figuratively speaking. We’ve got to become inscrutable. In such a case, the half that is hidden becomes more than the whole that is showing. Do you follow me?

You mean that you must never let people know what else you may have up your sleeve.

Something like that. People will respect you more if you don’t lay it all out. Your mistake in the poker game was that after a while I became familiar with your style of play. I didn’t have to see your cards to beat you.

There is more to this game than I thought.

Just as there is more to life than we think.  To teach you a lesson, I’m not going to give back the money I won from you. Otherwise, the lesson would be meaningless. You could get a part-time job after school to make up the loss. I know somebody in a pool parlor who’s looking for a boy to do odd jobs around the place. I’ll tell him I found somebody like that. What shall I tell him, Son?

Nothing just yet, Dad. Let me think it over, said Milton who had something in mind 

Ziggy did not return to the subject because he was put on a case that demanded all of his attention., but Milton didn’t forget.

A few weeks later, Ziggy received a summons from the principal, Abigail Whipple.

When he entered the principal’s office, he found Milton, Jens Swensen, and Jens’s parents. They accused Milton of being a card shark and defrauding Jens of his lunch money at cards. And when Jens made a ruckus, Milton whupped him, sure as shooting, Jens’s father Gustav-Adolf complained. He demanded that Ziggy or Milton pay all the money back.

In his defense, Milton explained that Jens himself insisted on playing when Milton explained to him the rudiments of poker and suggested that Jens was too stupid to win the game. Jens, with an ego bigger than his brain, took up the challenge, and that was his doom.  Milton learned that one could best an opponent by touching his vainglory.

Neither Milton nor Ziggy gave back Jens’s money.

The lessons and resoluteness inherited from his father together with the intelligence and sensitivity inherited from his mother combined to form an admirable character. Milton was a brave and sensitive soul encased in an unprepossessing exterior. He had goodness of heart, a transcendent quality that belongs to an order of things that reaches beyond this life. His kindness was mistaken for naiveté.  He had an instinctive sense of fair play and lacked the bitter envy that corrodes the social order. His word was his bond. He spoke with a New England accent and used American slang expressions and idioms that foreigners did not understand. Milton looked ordinary but was unique. 

Milton graduated from Roger Williams High School as valedictorian of his class and won a scholarship to Brown University. At his mother’s urging, he enrolled in the pre-med program but felt unhappy there. He felt sick every day of his comparative anatomy class at the thought that once again from the refrigerator he would have to remove the plastic bag containing the remains of a cat, which he nicknamed Hegel. Despite his distaste for surgery, he got an A from Professor Denforth Arbogast for his masterful dissection of Hegel (it’s the least I could do for Hegel, Milton thought).

In his Sophomore year, he started to keep a journal of his thoughts and observations that he entitled The Undivine Tragicomedy.

A chance encounter at the Providence Chess Club changed Milton’s life. He played chess with a strange young man named Bruce, who divined that Milton was unhappy in the pre-med program. Bruce suggested that Milton go into the insurance business, where he would learn about human nature and make a lot of money. So Milton majored in economics and world literature.

He wanted to thank Bruce for putting him on the right track, but Bruce was not enrolled in classics at Brown, as he had claimed to be, and he never showed up again at the chess club.

Milton is not the typical hero of crime novels. He is twenty-six-years-old, shorter than average (170 cm, 5’7"), slender, has brown hair, pale-green eyes, wears steel-frame glasses, has a scholarly look, and speaks softly. He does not stand out in a crowd. He is the proverbial kindly listener, who draws out his interlocutor. In women, he arouses interest, in men the haughty feeling of physical superiority. This characteristic gives him an advantage in encounters with insurance claimants.

His most characteristic feature is the eyes. Through them shines an expression people mistake for wool-gathering or absent-mindedness. His is not the absent-mindedness of an Eastern mystic. His mental life is active. His daydreaming is like a bloodhound’s on the trail of something.  His eyes express the constant inner excitement of someone who is always thinking about something. When wrestling with a problem, he often mumbles and polishes his glasses.

At Brown, liberal education liberated Milton, and he embarked on the journey away from God to nihilism. People have to be educated away from God because they have a natural tendency to believe in a supernatural being. In psychology, he learned the difference between facts and opinions. All of his previous moral values were opinions, since anthropologists have discovered that different societies have different value sets; therefore, all values are relative and conventional. In philosophy, from Professor Herwarth Windgassen he learned that God did not exist, or if He did, He didn’t matter. He may have triggered the Big Bang, but that was all. He didn’t matter in our lives. History and life, according to Nietzsche, had no purpose; all was chaos.

One day in his senior year, inspired by this new knowledge, Milton confronted his mother with the charge that she had been guilty of mental child abuse by raising him as a Catholic and infecting him with the virus of misguided religion. She burst out into tears and said she only wanted to bring him up to be a decent person. He countered by saying everybody should sue the pants off the Catholic Church and drive it into the ground.

If only your father were alive, she wailed. He’d know what to do. I love you and only want what’s best for you.

In his sophomore year, for the first time, he fell in love. The object of his extreme attention was Nancy Singer, a sculptress in scrap metal from the Rhode Island School of Design. They spent most of their time together visiting junkyards. His world narrowed to her, beyond whom he could see nothing.  He proposed marriage, but she reluctantly declined and accepted the proposal of a fullback from the Bruins football team, who was from a New York society family of multi-millionaires. She told Milton she would always dream of their lovemaking, but he was poor, and she had to think of her future. She told Milton she would be happy to see him anytime he was in the New York area when her husband Clyde was away.  Despite his success with women, this rejection hurt Milton deeply and left a wound in his soul. Sometime after this, he experienced a period of vacillation, weakness, and the melancholy of convalescence. 

As history teaches and great writers portray in such characters as Werther, Heathcliff, Emma Bovary, and Anna Karenina, bliss in love is the exception rather than the rule. For every positive love experience, there are ten debilitating ones, which destroy the individual or inflict an emotional wound so deep that he or she is never able to love again. Given the universality of the phenomenon, is this something inherent in the process of love itself? It appears that Cupid is a cruel god, who burns his votaries in a flame of passion.  Today we have self-help manuals and workshops to help the individual manage the agony of love. Wise men tell us that in submitting to such a love, we have programmed our defeat. According to Freud, the cure lies in overcoming the negative experiences of our childhood. Cupid smiles at such naiveté as he unleashes another arrow and strikes a hapless mortal in the heart.

After Ziggy’s death, Faith lost the incentive to live. She just wilted like an unwatered flower. Her immune system weakened until she succumbed to cancer.

Milton was orphaned in his senior year of