“Me too,” she grinned. “Maybe the chef can make something decent tonight. I’m tired of hiding on this ship.”
“You wouldn’t have to hide if you would have just had the balls to kill your husband when I asked you to.”
“I told you, Nicolai is nothing to worry about. We’re going to do this.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“No,” whispered Nicolai staring at the camera feed. “This can’t be. They saw her, I saw her. She was killed.”
“She’s alive, Nicolai. Do you know this man with her?” asked Luke. Nicolai looked at the photo, squinting.
“It’s very grainy,” he said.
“Here,” said Cam. “I snapped a shot on my phone.” Nicolai stared at the photo and then turned, gagging into the empty waste basket. Frank handed him a cup of water, patting his back with empathy.
“Nicolai? Who is that?” asked Cam.
“My wife’s brother. I thought he was dead. She told me he was dead. She went to London about three years ago for his funeral. She didn’t want me to go. She said there would be too many people I didn’t know and it would make it more difficult for her. She lied to me. She lied about everything.”
“She wasn’t one of us, Nicolai,” said Marguerite. “She was never one of us. She was English of Greek descent, or so she said, but she wasn’t from the island. That makes a big difference.”
“But she lied,” he said with a pained expression. “What else did she lie about? Did she lie about the children? Did she lie about loving me?”
“I don’t know, son,” said Marguerite. “But we need you now. Your people need you. This had nothing to do with whether or not you’re related to Alexander. Whatever they’re building on that island is something they think will bring in millions, if not billions of dollars.”
“What could that possibly be?” he asked filled with emotion and sadness.
“I think I know,” said Ian walking toward them. He had an arm full of tubes, filled with rolled up plans. “I took everything we had, all the photos and had them blown up. I sent them back home for the engineering team to review.”
“And?” said Luke and Cam at the same time.
“It’s nothing to do with mining. It has nothing do with digging really.” He walked toward the massive windows at the front of the hotel. Taking out the binoculars, he pointed to the island. “Look at that and tell me what you see.”
“I see the island, Ian. What the fuck am I supposed to see?” said Luke.
“Luke, close your eyes and then open them using the binoculars. What do you see?”
“It looks like a pair of eyes,” said Cam. “It looks like eyes staring back at us.”
“That’s right,” nodded Ian. “Now, look at the natural crevice formed below, near the beachline.”
“A mouth. What the fuck are they doing?” asked Hex.
“It’s a theme park,” whispered Nicolai. “They’re building a theme park on our island.”
“That’s right,” smirked Ian. “Your island is ideally situated for a half-dozen countries to access daily on ferries. They can spend the day, spend their money, eat their way through the food, and go back the same day and stay in those countries.
“This was never about weapons or alliances. It was about commerce. The problem was that Nicolai refused to sign anything allowing theme parks to be built on the island. You said, and I quote, ‘they would destroy what the gods built’, end quote.”
“I did say that. How did you know that?” he asked.
“It was written down in your wife’s handwriting on one of the plans. I think she used it as motivation. She and her brother were able to collect nearly twenty million dollars in financing to make this place rival, I dare say, our own famous American theme parks. This one was going to be based on the Greek gods. There was to be the Aphrodite tunnel of love, the Hades maze, you could even battle Zeus if you dared. They had it all planned out.”
“Yes, including making me appear to be crazy. Murdering, or pretending to murder my wife in front of my own eyes and taking me hostage. For what? For some stupid theme park that would have never worked. That’s not why people come to Greece!”
“Maybe they thought someone would. All those people vacationing in Greece with small children who don’t like looking at the ancient structures and hearing the ancient stories,” said Luke.
“Then teach them,” he said with tears in his eyes. “We teach them. That’s how we keep this alive!”
