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Dmitri Marinov lived in a small, sparsely furnished apartment on the uppermost floor of the retirement home. The facility looked nice enough on the outside, a three-story building painted a cheerful red and yellow, with a well-tended garden area in back, but the interior was utilitarian and depressing.
Marinov was a wiry man who looked to be at least in his eighties. He was happy to have visitors, especially visitors with an offering of Black Ram whisky, but when Slava explained that the Americans accompanying her were making a documentary film about the Tsarichina excavation, his demeanor changed. His eyes narrowed warily, his utterances became more guarded.
“He asks why you have come to him,” Slava said.
“Tell him that we know he was the one who had originally brought Tsarichina to the attention of the authorities. We want to hear that story, in his own words.”
Slava dutifully translated Maddock’s request, but Marinov’s expression did not soften. He was silent for a while, as if trying to decide what answer would work best to rid himself of these bothersome guests. Finally, he spoke a few more words.
“It was a long time ago. I don’t remember.”
Maddock frowned. He had been hoping that the old man might be enticed with the prospect of being featured on Max’s television show—he felt certain that Riddle would approve, provided of course, they were able to get him back in one piece. Marinov however, seemed immune to the allure of fame.
“Maybe he’s camera shy,” remarked Bones.
“Maybe.” Maddock turned to Slava. “Tell him who you are.”
“You mean, tell him that I am Maria Ionova’s daughter?”
“And Colonel Ionov’s granddaughter.”
At the sound of the name, Marinov perked up, and he took a second look at Slava. When she spoke to him, his head shook slowly from side to side. There was recognition in his old eyes, but if anything, his countenance grew darker with barely restrained ire.
“He says I look just like her,” Slava translated. “My mother, that is. But he blames my grandfather for what happened. For turning the search into a circus. For pushing him aside, and then making him an object of ridicule.”
“Ouch,” muttered Bones. “I guess we just ripped off a scab.”
“At least he’s talking to us,” Maddock said.
Slava continued speaking in Bulgarian, with increasing ardor, but the old man remained unmoved, nodding his head to punctuate his refusal. Slava finally slumped her shoulders in defeat. “I told him that we want to tell the truth about what happened, to expose Nikolov as a fraud, but he refuses to help. He says he wishes he had never told anyone about his dream, and just wants to be left along to die in peace.”
Maddock sighed. He had one last card to play, and if it didn’t work, nothing would.
He unslung the backpack from his shoulder, opened it and removed the cup of Khan Krum, and then placed it on the table in front of Marinov.
Even before he could tell Slava what to say, the old man’s face lit up. He rattled off a question.
Slava shook her head, affirmatively. “He asked if we found this at Tsarichina,” she explained. “I told him we did.”
The old man pounded his fist on the table in what Maddock took to be a gesture of vindication. Maddock slid the cup closer, gesturing that it was all right for Marinov to touch it, and as the old man’s fingers curled around the stem, Maddock said, “Ask him if he’s ready to talk, now.”
Slava did, and this time, the old man met her gaze without obvious rancor. Slava did her best to keep up with the torrent of words that followed. “He says we already know the story. He says he had a dream in which Vulchan led him through the hills to a cave where there was treasure from the time of Tsar Samuil. ‘Take this treasure, Dmitri,’ Vulchan said. ‘It is your birthright. Lead the Bulgars as once Samuil did.’”
The old man fell silent as Slava explained all this. When he resumed, a little of his earlier self-righteousness was evident in his tone.
“He says that he recognized the hills from a childhood visit to Tsarichina, and that is what he told my grandfather. But when they went to Tsarichina, they could not find the cave. My mother told my grandfather that they should look in a different place. Then the others came, talking about crazy things. They weren’t even looking for the treasure. That’s why they never found it.”
“But you knew it was there,” Maddock pressed.
The old man’s eyes darted back and forth. “When they found nothing, I thought my dream was just that—a dream. Now I know that what I saw was true.”
Maddock looked over at Slava. “I don’t know if this will translate, so just do your best.”
She shook her head once.
Maddock returned his gaze to Marinov. “Bull crap.”
Slava choked in surprise, but then spoke a single word. “Gluposti.”
The old man bristled defensively, but Maddock didn’t give him an opportunity to make a rebuttal. “You knew the treasure was there all right, but it wasn’t because of any dream or psychic vision. You found something... A map or an old letter... Maybe even something from Vulchan himself, telling you to look for a cave in Tsarichina. I’ll bet you turned the place upside down looking for it, and when you couldn’t find it, you concocted that crazy story about having a psychic dream.”
He paused a beat to let Slava catch up with the translation, then resumed, cutting off Marinov’s retort. “You figured you could get the government to find it for you. Even if you didn’t get to keep it, you’d be famous as the person who discovered it. Hell, people might even have bought your crazy story about being descended from Tsar Samuil.”
He stopped again, watching the old man’s eyes, seeing the truth of his accusations mirrored there. “But then everything went out of control,” he went on. “You couldn’t very well admit the truth. The best you could hope for was that they might stumble across the treasure, and then you would be vindicated. But it didn’t happen. Until today.
“We found this cup along with a small chest of coins in a cave below the Tsarichina Hole.” He tilted the cup so that Marinov could see the inscription inside the bowl. “But we think this is a map that may lead to even more treasure. If you know anything about that, now is the time to tell the truth.”
The old man’s frown continued to deepen as Slava translated, but when she finished, he leaned forward and peered into the cup. Maddock could see the old man’s eyes moving as he read the inscription. Finally he sat back, and began speaking.
Slava smiled and turned to Maddock. “He says he will tell you what he knows, but only if you give him the credit for finding Vulchan’s treasure.”
Maddock grinned and stuck out his hand. “Deal.”
Marinov didn’t need to wait for a translation. He shook Maddock’s hand and then rose from his chair and went over to a small bookcase in the corner of the room. After rummaging in a small box for a few minutes, he returned with a slim volume gripped in his gnarled hands. The red cloth cover was faded and tattered, the spine cracked and split, and when the old man opened it and placed it flat on the table, Maddock saw that several yellowed and brittle pages had come loose from the binding. Marinov flipped through them, revealing page after page of handwritten entries.
“This book has always been in my family,” Slava said, translating his comments verbatim. “It is the record of Vulchan’s fight against the Turks. It tells of how Vulchan found the treasure of Tsar Samuil. Some of it he gave to the people, but the rest he hid away, keeping the location a secret, even from his most trusted lieutenants. However, to ensure that the location would be remembered, even if Vulchan himself was killed, he described the location of a cave in the Balkan Mountains, north of Sofia.
“He did not say exactly where it was,” the old man went on. “But his description of the area around the entrance was very detailed. In my family, we always knew that the place it described was Tsarichina, but in the exact spot where Vulchan’s cave should have been, there was nothing. I searched for it when I was a young man, even though the Communists would have taken the treasure from me, but I never found the cave Vulchan described.” He paused as if to reflect, and then added, “If ever there was a time of great need for Bulgaria, that was it.”
“Maybe the entrance caved in,” Corey suggested.
Slava shook her head. “It is possible. The Sofia valley has had many powerful earthquakes throughout history. It is a seismic hotspot.”
Marinov continued. “Eventually, the Communists fell from power. That was when I came up with the idea to contact the authorities, claiming that I saw Vulchan in a vision. You know the rest.
“Vulchan wrote that to find the treasure, one would first have to find the cave. I always thought it meant that the treasure was in the cave, but now I think what he meant was that the map to the treasure—” He gestured to the skull cup on the table, “was hidden in the cave.”
“That doesn’t put us any closer to finding the treasure,” Maddock countered. “We still don’t know what the map is trying to tell us.”
Marinov stared at him, but as Slava translated, a smile touched his lips.
“I know,” he said, confidently, tapping his chest as he spoke. He then pointed to the inscription in the cup again. “Vulchan spoke often of having God’s eyes upon him.”
“Let me guess,” Bones muttered. “Prohodna.”
The old man’s eyes flashed with recognition, but he nodded and uttered a negative, followed by a short declaration.
“No,” Slava translated. “He was speaking of a church.”
“Oh, well that narrows it down,” Bones said. “You can’t throw a frisbee in this town and not hit a church.”
“But in the time of Vulchan,” Slava went on, “there were no churches. The Ottomans either destroyed them all, or turned them into mosques.”
As if sensing the gist of the conversation, the old man spoke again, and Slava quickly translated. “In 1858, an earthquake struck Sofia, nearly destroying the entire town. The Ottomans abandoned the city, and the Bulgarians were quick to reclaim the churches that had been converted into mosques. Repair work began almost immediately, paid for, in part at least, by Vulchan himself. He was especially fond of the Church of St. George, in old Serdica.” She paused, then added, “I told you about it last night.”
“The one in the courtyard behind the government buildings?”
Marinov spoke again. “Vulchan traveled all over Bulgaria, but when he came to Sofia, he always came to pray at the Church of St. George. In the sight of God. Those are the words he would always use. The treasure of Tsar Samuil is hidden there, and if we go to the church, this map will show us exactly where to look.”
Maddock turned to Slava. “Can you bring up a floor plan of the church? Maybe give us an idea of what to expect?”
Slava produced her laptop, and in short order, displayed a gallery of images depicting the interior and exterior of the church. It was a small red brick structure, built around a central, cylindrical rotunda, capped with a low conical roof, and surrounded by the brick foundations of ancient Roman buildings that had not survived the march of time.
The interior was even more remarkable, adorned with numerous vividly painted and restored frescoes of saints and apostles. The most noteworthy of these occupied the upper reaches of the chapel which curled overhead like a capacious umbrella. Spaced at intervals around the circumference were large arched windows.
“Another dome,” remarked Corey.
“Remind you of anything?” Bones said, nodding toward the cup. “What do want to bet that the lines inside the cup correspond to something on the ceiling of that church?”
“Or something on the floor,” said Maddock. “Is there a three-sixty photo of the church?”
After a few keystrokes, the screen was filled with a virtual reality view of the church’s interior.
“Hang on a sec,” Corey said, and brought out his tablet. “I’m superimposing the scan I did of the cup onto the three-sixty of the church.”
After a minute or two of fiddling with it, he placed it flat on the table. The screen showed the church ceiling again, along with a red outline that corresponded to the stylized skull sutures that crossed the interior of the cup.
Corey touched the edges of the screen and began sliding them back and forth. The red lines remained fixed, but the image of the church began to rotate as if it was being projected onto the inside of a beach ball. He continued turning the background, rolling the perspective down the walls and on to the floor of the chapel but nothing in the church seemed to align with the overlay.
“We’re going about this wrong,” Maddock said after a few fruitless minutes. “Does the church have a crypt?”
Slava did another quick search, then said. “No, but archaeologists did find evidence of an ancient Roman heating system called a hypocaust. It’s a network of underground ducts that carry geothermal heat up from the underground hot springs. Most of the old ducts have long since collapsed, but if there was a vent inside the church, Vulchan might have cleared it out and used it to hide his treasure.”
Marinov spoke up, prompting Slava to explain what they were doing. After she finished he gave a sagacious head shake.
“He says that sounds like something Vulchan would do,” she explained.
“Is there a map of the ducts?” asked Maddock.
After a few more keystrokes, Slava shook her head. “Here!” she said, pointing at her screen, which now displayed a general site plan of the Serdica ruins. Running through several of the various square and rectangular plots were broken lines that branched off in different directions. “Here is the church,” she explained, tapping a roughly cross-shaped structure in the middle of the screen. Her finger moved to a dotted line that transected the building. “One of the hypocaust ducts runs right under it.”
Maddock stared at the plan for several seconds, then looked over at Corey’s tablet, confirming his suspicions. “The lines in the cup match some of the hypocaust tunnels.”
Corey took another look. “You’re right. Let me just... find the site plan... There!”
He showed the tablet which now displayed the image Slava had found with the red tracery from the skull cup overlaid and scaled to match. As Maddock had predicted, the line in the cup perfectly matched the section of ancient ductwork that began under the church, but with a few conspicuous differences. The short branch-like extensions indicated junctions which continued in various directions, while the main line continued beyond what was indicated in the site plan.
“That’s what the map is telling us,” said Maddock. “If we can find our way into that duct and follow to the end, we’ll find the treasure. There’s got to be an opening inside the church.”
Corey navigated back to the panoramic image of the church, turning the image a full three-sixty. He stopped when it showed the back of the nave, which was dominated by an ornate wooden screen, adorned with painted icons. “That altarpiece could be covering the entrance to an old crypt,” he suggested.
“It’s called an iconostasis,” said Slava. “But I think you’re right. If there is an entrance to the hypocaust, that would be the place to put it.”
“We’re going to have to get in there and move the furniture,” Maddock said.
Bones scratched his chin. “It’s pretty public. Worse than the Eyes of God cave. We start poking around, and people are going to notice.”
Maddock turned to Slava again. “We’re going to need your help with this.”
“Me? What can I do?”
“Find a way to get us some time by ourselves in there. I’m sure you’ll think of something. Remember, you’re not just Slava from the tourist ministry. You’re Atanas, the hacker.”
“If this mobster, Dragomiov, really does have eyes everywhere,” said Bones, “he’s going to wonder what we’re up to in there.”
Maddock nodded slowly. “We’re only going to get one chance to get in there. Treasure or not, we have to get Max back before Dragomirov realizes where we’re looking.”
“How do you propose to accomplish that magic trick?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Maddock said, though the first seeds of a plan were already starting to sprout. “I guess I’ll have to think of something.”