found the pen drive she continued into the living room. There was an old twenty five inch TV and a cheap DVD player in there. She said, "Are these your valuables?"
"I'm newly separated."
"I'd have to pay someone to take these off my hands. I expected a laptop at least."
"I don't have any. I have a PC in the corner if you want, but it's eight years old. It used to belong to my son. I only use it to surf the internet."
"Nothing else?"
"No. Wait, are you into coin collections? I have one that my father left me. I never liked it much but didn’t dare to throw it away. It's in the closet where the towels are."
She went to the closet and eyed the collection. A dozen coins sitting in a flat velvet box. I have not opened this box in decades; the sight was almost new to me. "These aren't even gold," she said.
"Silver."
She sighed. "Your father called that a collection? All right, I'll take those; they might bring in a hundred bucks or so. But Minus Two said I needed to take more out of the apartment in case I'm being watched."
"He told you about being watched?"
"Of course. He's honest. That's why I still work with him after all these years."
Now I felt guilty that I did not say anything to her myself, but she did not make a big deal out of it. "Now, what would you like me to take?" she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Take the DVD player and the PC screen. They're easy to carry."
"Sounds like a plan. But since your valuables are worthless, you'd need to sweeten the pot, honey. Six hundred instead of four. And I'm giving you a price, believe you me. I'm used to cleaning out five thou or more in one night."
"All right. I reckon burglars need to eat, too."
"Before I go I need to check for surveillance equipment. Minus Two's orders."
"Whatever you have to do."
"I don't need you for this. I'll be turning the camera off now."
"When will I see you?"
"You won't. I'll bring the stuff over to Minus Two. You make sure you bring him my tablet."
"So long," I said. She did not answer, and in the next moment I lost sound and visual. I went back to bed. I felt good, not because Lili retrieved my pen drive, but because for once I would be able to sleep late. That son of a bitch did not know where I was and would not be able to wake me up. I pulled the blanket over my shoulders and in a moment I was fast asleep.
But four and a half hours later, at seven, there was a knock on the door. Of course it was him and of course the tablet's GPS let him know where I was because I forgot to turn it off.
IX.
Doc Minus Two came in with his laptop, and did not say hello and did not say good morning. He ignored me and went straight for a little desk that stood next to the bed and immediately proceeded to power on the laptop as if this was his office and I was a visitor. He seemed as disheveled as always, and I wondered where he had spent the night. But it was not important enough to risk his wrath at my poking my nose into his affairs. He reciprocated by not asking me how I got the room and whether or not I showed anyone my ID. I did not know if this was because he already knew the answer or because he trusted me to have taken the right precautions. The first thing that came out of his mouth was, "You were an archeologist before you became a bum, is that right?"
"Yes."
"Then maybe you can recognize this." He turned the laptop screen towards me. On it was a map of a cave system, a scanned image of a black and white document. I recognized the familiar shape instantly.
"It's the Labyrinth of Messara in Crete," I said. "Near Gortyn."
"Very good. I figured it out for myself just from the Minotaur reference. I googled 'Minotaur' and 'cave', and came up with it."
"Was this map on the pen drive?"
"This map was all there was on the pen drive."
"That's it? A stupid map?"
"Yes. A stupid, well-known map you can easily find online."
I sat down on the bed. "But that makes no sense. Why send it in such a clandestine way, and with a tracking device, no less?"
"My thoughts exactly. And they encrypted it, too."
I pointed at the screen. "This map was encrypted? That's ridiculous. Why encrypt a nineteenth century map that's freely available online?"
He nodded. "No doubt it is odd. I ran it through some decryption apps before I was able to open it. Not a very strong code. I'm thinking it may be double encrypted: lets you easily get to this map so you think there's nothing more to it, but in reality it requires further encryption to get to the real message. I don't know how to approach it yet to be honest with you. I'd have to consult with some people."
I went over to the desk and put my nose to the laptop screen and studied the map closely. I have seen this labyrinth map many times, mostly in textbooks I remembered from college. It even hung on one of the walls in the institution I used to work for. Anyone who studies Greek mythology has heard of it, and many laypeople, too. There was nothing special about it.
Doc Minus Two interrupted my train of thought. "Tell me the story of the Minotaur."
I suspected that he was familiar with the story, but that he hoped it would help both of us think and so I did as requested. "Poseidon, God of the Sea, decided to punish the king of Crete, one Minos, for not sacrificing a white bull he'd sent him for that purpose. And so Poseidon went and made Minos' wife fall in love with the bull. Their love child was the Minotaur, with the head of a bull and the body of a man. Not entirely pleased with the Minotaur's appearance and with his habit of eating people, Minos had him imprisoned in a massive labyrinth, out of which he could not escape."
Doc Minus Two pointed at the map on the screen. "This one."
"That depends on who you ask. But yes, many people associate this labyrinth with the story. Now, to feed the Minotaur, King Minos would send the occasional unfortunate into the labyrinth — usually Athenians. These people would get lost, fail to find their way out, and eventually meet their hungry host."
"That must have pissed off some people because they sent someone named Theseus to kill the Minotaur," he said.
"Ah, so you know the story. Yes. Theseus was lucky in one thing at least: King Minos' daughter fell in love with him. Not wanting him to end up like the other victims, she gave him a ball of thread to help him find his way back out of the labyrinth. He was of course successful, as are most ancient Greek heroes, and he killed the Minotaur. But it was also tragic, like most ancient Greek myths, because on the way back home Theseus forgot to put up a white sail, sign of a successful mission. His father, not seeing the sail, assumed he died and killed himself."
Doc Minus Two kept staring at the map. "Good story. Nice map. But why encrypt it? Why try to prevent it from falling into anyone's hands? I can't see the perps going to the trouble of killing sixty six people — and one more to go — just to make sure no one who got this map by mistake lived to tell about it. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the pen drive means nothing; just a coincidence. A distraction."
"And the tracking device?"
"Maybe I was wrong about that, too. Maybe it was an old, recycled envelope that someone patched once too many times."
"You said you'll check if the file is double encrypted."
He waved a disparaging arm. "It's a possibility, but my gut tells me it would be a waste of time." For the first time since I've met him he seemed dejected.
I shook my head. "No. If this is just a map of the labyrinth same as you can find online, why encrypt it at all? Even the weak code you cracked? And the Minotaur? The man who attacked Peterson mentioned the name. This cannot be a coincidence."
"I don't have an answer to that." He got up and went over to the window and drew the curtains open, and now the room was bathed in the morning sun and it turned everything near the window white: the bed and a chair and the carpet.
Then something strange caught my eye as I peered at the laptop a
gain, and I hurried to take Doc's place at the desk. I've seen this map a thousand times, but it never looked like the image that stared at me from the screen. At first I thought it might have been the color, the density, or the orientation, but there was something else. The original map had a system of tunnels roughly going in a closed loop, like a deformed circle, and five offshoots of various sizes sticking out from it, comprising of corridors and rooms. The map from the pen drive had another such offshoot. An extra corridor, so small it was barely visible. This did not seem right. I searched for the map online and found it to be exactly as I remembered it, without the additional section.
"Not the same map!" I called out to Doc Minus Two. "This map is different. Look." I showed him the difference.
"It's not the same map," he agreed. "You’re right. Who would have thought that something good would come out of hanging out with an archeologist?" There was enthusiasm in him now, though hardly noticeable unless you knew him well. He searched for the map online himself and found it again and again in many versions. In all of them there were just five offshoots protruding out of the deformed circle. Now he was a happy man. There was no smile on his face but I could tell because he began to rub his chin vigorously. "This map, if genuine, may be worth a whole lot more than I thought."
"Tell me about it," I said excitedly. It is extremely rare that something as fixed in historical records and as well known to archeologists as this ancient labyrinth can still surprise us. "This could be the archeological discovery of the year." I began to pace up and down the