The Mystery of the Black Whirlpool (a Detective-Story-in-Progress)
Parts 1 and 2 of a murder mystery/case of international intrigue, set in 2014 Romania
1
Too much color, Grigoris thought. It’s all an overload…
The detective craned his head over the massed crowd of diplomats, dignitaries and waylaid tourists that waddled through the church like so many obedient ducklings, expecting a pond just around the next candle-lit corner. His mind was absorbed, even confused, by the neatly symmetrical frescoes of the magnificently-preserved monastery, all narrating miraculous tales or harrowing tribulations from the Bible, painted centuries before for the edification of Moldavia’s illiterate peasants and flock-tenders.
Already Greece’s most famously obscure detective, Grigoris would have been confused enough by the stimulation of the frescoes; but his mind was doubly preoccupied, by a more opaque mystery. Why had he, of all people, been chosen to replace the esteemed historian Dr. Papachatziou, at the very last minute, for the previous evening’s keynote speech marking Greece’s hallowed national day, just down the road at the university in Iași?
Sure, Grigoris knew as much (perhaps, more) than most of his countrymen about the lecture’s subject- the Philiki Etaireia (the infamous secret ‘Society of Friends’ that had fomented Greek liberation from the shadows, beginning exactly 200 years before, in 1814). Yet the question of why his eccentric colleague, Hellenic Navy Commodore Stathis, had nominated the private investigator for the speaker’s role was unclear. He’d barely had time to agree and pack a suit before flying the previous morning from Athens to Bucharest, where a Greek Embassy car collected the detective and delivered him to the northern Romanian university town.
Grigoris ruminated over the enigma as he halfheartedly followed the plodding assembly. With the speech safely over, there was nothing more to do here; he would be back in Athens the next evening, after this obligatory side trip to the Bucovina Painted Monasteries and some winery visit were finished. The tour guide, a courteous, rotund Romanian man with the bearing of a schoolmaster, had led his flock past the twin dazzlements of the exterior and interior wall frescoes that wrapped Sucevița Monastery in a kind of living comic-book for the faithful. Grigoris fidgeted as the tour guide expounded salient facts.
“My friends. Sucevița Monastery, where we stand now is near the village and river of the same name, and almost 20 kilometers from Rădăuţi, which is in Suceava County,” the guide said routinely. “You will all remember your lovely breakfast this morning at the hotel in Suceava town.”
Some of the visitors nodded; Grigoris remembered alright. The hotel wasn’t exactly the Communist relic he’d feared, but it had hardly lived up to his discerning Athenian tastes, either. A natural cynic of diplomacy, he’d been annoyed by all this sugared talk of the enduring Hellenic-Romanian friendship that the professors and ambassadors had regurgitated in their introductory speeches, right before his own presentation in Iași the evening before.
Even before that hour, he’d bored of touring the city (admittedly, grand in some of its old buildings) and pressing the flesh with dignitaries and lecturers who were hopelessly unaware (or at least, politely pretended to be) that Grigoris was a simple private detective, in no way a proper replacement for the great Professor Papachatziou… Still, he survived the lecture, and the audience had clapped respectfully. Only a few had bothered him with questions- most of which he’d answered easily.
“The holy Sucevița Monastery was built around 1585, and as you can see from the fortifications, served also as a princely estate,” the tour guide continued. “Let’s proceed to the gift shop, and then see the graves of some of the founders.”
Gathering his ducks in a row, the tour guide waved towards the other end of the church, causing a candle to flicker and sizzle. Suddenly, Grigoris saw her from across the crowd: the same strange woman who’d asked that undiplomatic rhetorical question, after his lecture the evening before in Iași; the probing question about his opinion of Count Kapodistrias’ 1813 ambassadorial visit to Switzerland, on behalf of the Russian tsar, which secured Swiss independence from Napoleon and neutrality; surely, and especially considering that the subject of his lecture, the Philiki Etaireia, came into existence soon after in Odessa- surely, an enlightened thinker like himself might consider the prospect of Ukrainian neutrality as a preferable solution to the current turmoil that country faced… the woman had even compared the American president to Napoleon, for good measure. Grigoris had considered it likely that she was neither Greek nor Romanian…
It was the sort of question to be expected of a diplomat, or worse, and Grigoris had deflected it, while most of the audience seemed amused or irritated by the woman. Who was she? Only later that night, while reconstructing the strange incident in his mind, did Grigoris realize that she had arrived in the middle of his speech… he had then considered the possibility that she had misidentified him for the planned speaker, Dr. Papachatziou… That might explain somethings. But not the most important detail- that is, of why she’d raised the provocative question precisely then.
Before the detective could ponder this further, the strange woman had somehow crept from the far side to his very neck, and whispered in his ear:
“I have important news for you. It’s safer we take a drive- I’ll meet you in front of your hotel in Suceava in exactly one hour.”
“What?” replied Grigoris in surprise, but she stepped on his foot, silencing him. Who was this woman, and how the hell did she know where he was staying- and in a town well out of Iași, the only place he had ever seen her- and even then, briefly and from the comforting distance of a podium?
As the tour guide rattled off dull facts about the monastery’s past as a scriptorium, Grigoris felt it welling up inside of him- the only passion he could not control, the natural curiosity about the unknown adventure that defined him as an investigator. He looked, but the woman had vanished.
Impulsively, Grigoris decided to lose the milling crowd as they descended on the gift shop. If I’m being chased, he thought, I may as well make chase too…
Going out of the dazzling church and back into the mid-morning spring sun, he quickly found a taxi back to his hotel.
2
Exactly one hour passed: Grigoris barely had time to wash up and re-emerge from his room down to the cheery hotel’s lobby, where the unknown woman was waiting.
Again, the detective was surprised. In the church, she had been wearing a long and bucolic white dress, with her black hair hanging in plaited braids, in perfect Orthodox parishioner fashion; now she was dressed in dark jeans, hair pulled up under a baseball cap and sporting big designer sunglasses on her unsmiling face. A gaudy white handbag hung over her stomach. It suddenly dawned on the detective that she had probably been staying at that very same hotel- and thus, had been following him since Iași…
“Get in,” she murmured, pointing to the passenger seat of an old Volkswagen out on the curb. “We don’t have time.”
“What? Who… are you?” stammered Grigoris, not knowing whether to laugh or take her seriously.
“Today, I’m your best friend,” the woman said simply. “You are in great danger. I explain later.”
If overweening curiosity was the main temptation of Greece’s most famously obscure detective, Grigoris also had a second failing (though one not beyond redemption), which was his tendency to favor the absurd, when that outcome presented itself. The present juxtaposition of events – an unexpected trip to an unvisited country, his own ‘replacement’ speech on a bygone secret society, the appearance of an unknown woman warning of great danger – taken together, it was the sort of temptation that the detective lived for. His trip to Romania, so far academic and lacking in any actual case, had been dull; perhaps this strange invitation would redeem it.
Grigoris got in, and the woman drove quietly off, taking the southern road out of Suceava, passing its cement apartments and occasional newer structures and scrubs of grass. When Grigoris tried to ask questions, she just stared at him and turned up the radio. She would not say where they were going, and he had not bothered to research this part of Romania, never expecting to pass through it… He followed the road signs and occasional signs of life, in case he had to retrace his way back. The road was narrow and the countryside, poor. They passed a sad-looking small town signposted as Targu Neamț; the dilapidated buildings, somewhere between medieval and Soviet visible from the road nerved Grigoris. With every passing moment, they were getting farther from any sort of civilization.
“Where are we going?”
“Quiet!” the driver commanded. “We’ll be there soon!”
Indeed, just minutes later, they pulled off the road and into a larger and more agreeable town, situated in a bowl created by the surrounding large hills. The streets were not grand like Iași, but it was tolerable.
“Where are we?”
“Piatra Neamț,” the woman replied. “We’ll have lunch, and then I’ll drive you back to Suceava.”
Grigoris nodded and looked around, expecting a restaurant. He was surprised when instead the woman parked sharply by a railway station and ushered him out. For the first time, Grigoris looked up and noticed the high, arcing line of glassed-in orange cabins that crisscrossed the city skyline, terminating on a commanding hill opposite. Before he could respond, his hostess had bought tickets and was nodding for him to join her. As no one was waiting, they simply entered the next orange cabin when it reached the base station, and were quickly aloft.
“What is this?” said Grigoris, laughing. “And who are you, anyway?”
“This is the Piatra Neamț Telegondola- they built it five years ago. I am Svetlana, Third Secretary at the Russian Embassy in Bucharest.”
Grigoris laughed again. He felt like he was in a film, but he did not yet know quite which one… The absurdity quotient of the present situation was such that he did not know how to proceed. And so he returned to what had originally bothered him- the woman’s odd question after his speech the day before. But, he realized he still had a small advantage: having arrived late to his speech, the alleged diplomat might have assumed she was dealing with the real Professor Papachatziou. After all, the university had not even had time to amend the printed programs… Grigoris decided to test it out.
“Why did you ask me that question about ‘Ukrainian neutrality’ yesterday? Had you read the program – or even arrived on time – you would have known the lecture was partly to celebrate the bicentennial of the Philiki Etaireia and the Greek Independence Day, but mostly to highlight the role of Moldavian Prince Michael Soutzos in the Philiki Etaireia, as he is, after all, the subject of my new book... I’m not a diplomat, you know- if you want Athens to thank the Russian side for the Greek War of Independence, just speak to the relevant authorities!”
“I saved your life with my comment,” interrupted the woman with fierce finality. “There’s no way they’d have dared it after that- you were set up for assassination, and like a stupid intellectual, still you only talk about unimportant details! I am trying to prevent an unhelpful international escalation of tensions- even if you are too dumb to realize it!”
Grigoris’ jaw fell open. What was she talking about? Dizzy already from the confinement of the glassed-in gondola cabin and struck by the spectacular 360-degree view of city, plains and mountains, the detective’s mind reeled as he tried to understand this new claim. Was it more commentary of the same provocative nature as the lecture-hall question, or was it hard intel? And did this Svetlana actually believe she was speaking to the missing Dr. Papachatziou, or to the actually-present obscure detective? She had not challenged his reference to the professor’s new book, so he assumed he had fooled her- but of course, he could not be sure.
“But,” he began, confusedly, “were you coming to the lecture expecting to make that statement, or did”-
“Yes, I was ordered to ask such a question. So, ‘Mr. Professor,’” Svetlana said, accenting the title oddly, “did it never occur to you that you were being set up? Anyway, because of the interference of my question, it became too difficult for them to execute their mission… it would have been too obvious. Ha! You’re welcome!”
Grigoris did not know whether to thank this suddenly talkative woman, whose English was suspiciously excellent, or laugh, but he decided to keep his identity cloaked for as long as possible. All he knew was that he was strung up in the air, halfway between the heavens and the earth, and gently rocking in the afternoon breeze, watching empty orange cabins pass to one side, returning to their terrestrial origin.
“Relax!” he admonished. “No one would waste their time to kill me.”
“That’s your opinion. But even well before last month, when the Western-backed mobs overthrew the legitimate president of Ukraine in that Maidan provocation, extremists have been playing a very dangerous game… anyone who is in the wrong place at the wrong time can be a useful target for such people.”
“For what purpose?”
“Our services, with the friendly support of Turkish colleagues, received certain information that some of the Ukrainian neo-Nazis, and their Hungarian brothers here in Romania, who seek to unite the west of this country with Hungary someday, had targeted your Greek Independence Day speech. It was to have been a typical ‘false-flag’ assassination of a politically uninvolved person... depending on interest, some would have blamed the assassination on Russia, or Turkey, or both.”
“But to what end?” said Grigoris. “This is too much!”
“No!” the woman protested. “Such asymmetrical warfare would ideally, for the extremists, cause a rift between Russia and our traditionally Orthodox friends in Romania and Greece, just at the time when Ukrainian nationalists are pushing the independence of their own Orthodox Church, and seek sympathetic allies in the established Orthodox world! I will explain it at lunch!”
Grigoris pondered this strange scenario as the orange cabin rolled in the breeze. It seemed ludicrous that he personally would be targeted, or the absent professor either, but he had to admit that at hypothetically, such a scenario was possible. It reminded him of some of the same geopolitical game-planning he was used to hearing from Commodore Stathis or Hieromonk Makarios, that old political advisor to the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul…
As he felt the gondola ascend further, Grigoris realized there were too many outstanding questions, and he could not resolve them with the current layers of deception in place. Assuming Svetlana was telling the truth, and some plot had existed; if so, was it meant only for the missing Dr. Papachatziou, for Grigoris himself, or for any Greek presenter who might have been there?
Further, if such a plot existed, who else knew of it? Did this somehow explain why the professor had suddenly cancelled at the last minute? But in that case, why would old friend Commodore Stathis have strongly nominated Grigoris to jump into the breach? It was all too much to unpack. He chose a simpler line of inquiry.
“Still, I can’t imagine that Western governments would allow any extremists to kill Western academics in”-
“Maybe not beforehand,” said the woman grimly. “It would depend on how well they ‘sold’ the story after the fact. Of course the West is looking to blame anything and everything on us. It would suit their interest in more ways than I can specify… but we will discuss this in the restaurant at the top, when we get out. You’ll understand this all better when I explain about the Cell of the Black Whirlpool… we should have known better than to trust our Bulgarian brothers!”
Grigoris looked at her oddly, but said nothing. He had no clue what she was talking about, and tried to puzzle it out for himself. A quiet fell over the gondola cabin, and he idly stood up, for the first time. He turned sidelong to see the distant dazzling rooftops cupped carefully withina bowl of hills below.
Suddenly, a sharp ricochet sounded and Grigoris heard another kind of noise; turning back, he stared in horror at the Russian woman, slumped over, a drop of blood emerging from her black sweater. He stared wildly at the corresponding puncture-hole in the gondola window and peered up at the hilltop in the close distance, where a man was running hastily away…
Any doubt the detective had had about some sort of a Romanian murder plot was now gone. But the mystery, he realized, was now doubly opaque: his sudden decision to stand and move from where he had been sitting, opposite Svetlana, had perhaps prevented the bullet from entering his own skull; but, there had also been the wind; in short, he could not know who was the intended target, or why.
Grigoris felt panic. He was approaching the top of a high hill where at least one armed man awaited him, in an unknown country, inside a sealed gondola cabin with an unknown – and now dead – Russian diplomat. It was an untenable situation. As they reached the top and wheeled in to unload, Grigoris had positioned the dead woman as if she was relaxing, and purposefully shut the door when it automatically opened, waving at the attendant that they’d just return to the bottom instead of getting out.
As the gondola car lurched off back down towards the earth, Detective Grigoris hastily retraced the journey time in his mind. He had no more than six minutes to decide what to do, before the Romanian Telegondola inevitably hit bottom.
As he scrambled to come up with a plan, he looked at the dead woman’s handbag, not yet touched by the creeping stain of blood clotting up her sweater. He could not likely search her bag without leaving his own fingerprints; but in whatever case, he was not even sure if he could prove she was Russian, or if her strange allegations were true…
And then, as if an answer to his doubt, a sudden sound, persistent and grating, resonated from inside the dead woman’s white handbag- probably, he thought in alarm, an incoming telephone call. But who?
Detective Grigoris stood in the compartment’s center as the gondola car swayed in the breeze and the persistent sound rang out. He looked at the handbag with dread, and hesitantly extended a hand.
Ten-four, good buddy. Message heard loud and clear.
As a matter of fact, am just working today on a completely new and different one that emerged, hopefully for a magazine. Will let you know how that goes. It is fun coming up with creative uses for world events and minor situations too. You have a good day there, and thanks for the note.
We want more Grigoris. A new detective in new places of intrigue and murder.