Valley of Thracians (4 page)

“No, I don’t know anything at all,” the
manager insisted, making efforts to calm his voice and forcing a thin smile.
“It was three years ago, and that is a long time, quite a long time. We know
nothing, I
mean,
I know nothing at all about this.
There is nothing to know.”

“Who else was asking about him?”

“You must be mistaken. Nobody has asked
about him, and there is nothing to tell about him. That is all.”

The hotel manager stood up, indicating
that the meeting was over and the professor was expected to leave. Simon was
shocked at the abrupt change in the man’s attitude. He was certain Nikolov had
recognized his grandson’s name. The repeated denials only convinced him
further.

“Please, what can you tell me about
Scott’s disappearance?” he asked, almost pleading for the manager to reveal
what had caused this reaction. “Was he a guest here at your hotel? Was he
possibly a member of your staff? Why were his belongings discovered here, of
all places?”

“You must leave now,” Nikolov said
forcefully, ignoring the questions. “I have a wedding to attend. You must go.”
And that was the end of their conversation.

A few minutes later, Simon stood outside
the resort hotel’s entrance, waiting for a taxi to transport him back to Varna.
There was something wrong; he was quite sure of that. He would contact Stoyanov
from the police again, although he really didn’t have anything more than a gut
feeling to indicate that the hotel manager knew something that he refused to
disclose. Perhaps Stoyanov could look into Nikolov’s whereabouts at the time of
Scott’s disappearance. Or was that too much to ask, too far of a leap in
connecting the dots in the mystery of his grandson’s final days in Golden
Sands?

“Varna?” he asked the taxi driver as he
opened up the car door.

“
Dobre
,
dobre
,” the driver responded with a
toothy grin.

The taxi lurched forward through the
hotel’s parking lot, shoving Simon back in his seat as it picked up speed. Lost
in thought, he barely glanced at the passing scenery.

A shiny black sedan with tinted windows
pulled into the street shortly after the taxi and followed it at an
inconspicuous distance all the way back to the city.

Chapter
7

“There are some very shady people
around, but Bulgaria is a beautiful country and that’s why I live here.”

The English gentleman was drinking a mug
of ruby-colored Kilkenny ale at the Irish pub on Varna’s Slivnitsa Street, part
of a pedestrian zone that stretched from Sea Garden Park to the shops on Knyaz
Boris I Street and onward to Nezavisimost Square. Sitting across the outdoor
picnic table from the Englishman, Simon wiped the froth of dark Irish stout
from his own lips, and then stabbed his fork into a tasty dish of fish and
chips, deep-fried to finger-licking perfection.

“What do you mean, shady?” Simon asked
the man warily, thinking of his own experiences the previous day in Golden
Sands.

“You aren’t from around here, so I warn
you to be extra careful with whom you do business,” the Englishman said
quietly, as if taking Simon into his confidence. “Some of my friends have
gotten the shaft in their dealings in Bulgaria, so you just need to watch out.”

Simon had stopped at the pub for the
convenience of its familiar menu and the comfort of dealing with an
English-speaking staff. Sitting outside on the porch on the Sunday afternoon
and overlooking the passersby on the street, he had willingly offered the seat
across the table to the middle-aged Londoner, who had introduced himself as
Dave Harris as he made his own order of a mid-afternoon pint. Simon hadn’t
expected his companion at the table to be so talkative. For a short while, he
was able to forget about his own worries.

“Many of us Brits have invested in
Bulgaria,” Dave began. “Back in the days before Bulgaria joined the EU, it
seemed like a property market on the up, where a minimal outlay guaranteed you
good capital appreciation. My word, you wouldn’t normally consider Bulgaria as
the ideal location for your second home overseas, but at the time, it seemed
like the best investment. It’s a shame that this hasn’t been the case for all
of us. Some of my friends, eager for a good deal to safeguard their economic
future, were wiped clean by discreditable dealers, dishonest contractors, and
shoddy builders. It’s a wonder there are any Brits left in this country at all,
but, as I said, I love it here.”

Dave told Simon that he had moved to
Bulgaria in the summer of 2006. He had invested in a small rural property not
far from Varna where it was but a short drive to the seashore. In his
mid-fifties, Dave still worked for an international export company based in
Britain, but most of his time was spent in his new home, which he was already
preparing for his retirement.

“We were smart, my wife and I. Like
many, we didn’t have the funds to buy some plush villa in the countryside,
fully renovated with a backyard swimming pool. We heard about a property in
this village, but before we handed over any money, we came out to see the
house, to assess its condition and the restoration work required. Only then did
we make our down payment. We were smart to have a reliable English-speaking
solicitor review the contract. Never buy something sight unseen, that’s my word
of advice. But, unbelievably, many of my compatriots were not so intelligent.”

Dave told of British couples who had
been carried away by the hype and promise of real estate advertisements they
had seen in Britain, promising off-plan overseas properties in Bulgaria as a
worry-free, highly profitable investment. Dealing with real estate agents,
often remotely, the couples had purchased flats in as-yet-uncompleted
developments, some of them in Bulgarian spa resort towns or near the ski
slopes, only to hear repeated reports of delays, excuses for unforeseen
expenses, and demands for additional funding. There was a world of difference
between initial price quotes and the final cost of purchase and restoration. An
enormous amount of bureaucratic paperwork was required to gain permission to
buy property in Bulgaria, and sometimes papers and contracts inexplicably went missing.
A number of the projects went bankrupt, and the Brits lost entire investments
without ever having set foot in Bulgaria. Cases had gone to court, but dealing
with the Bulgarian legal system was yet another unpredictable process.

“Do not believe a word they say,” Dave
said, thinking of the unscrupulous agents who had tricked his friends. “They
will basically tell you anything they think you want to hear, give you the
world until they have your money. Once they have your money, you’re in deep
shit. It becomes extremely difficult to get them to fulfill their promises.”

Dave nodded in greeting to other
English-speaking clientele drinking at the nearby tables. And then he continued
to relate stories about foreigners uprooting their lives and moving to Bulgaria.

Simon was surprised to learn that
despite the nightmarish hardships Dave described, there were tens of thousands
of British and Irish expatriates living in the country. Many of them, like Dave
and his wife, lived in villages and enjoyed the quiet, relatively inexpensive
rural life. Other expats preferred living in Sofia, Varna, or the other cities
where a richer cultural and urban environment made it easy to overlook the
occasional shortcomings of a former communist country desperate to catch up with
the rest of the world. For many, Bulgaria was a second home, while others had
bravely relocated, leaving Britain for good. All of them apparently enjoyed the
fact that there was so much on offer in a relatively small country—mountains,
beaches, ski slopes, picturesque historic villages, and Roman ruins. In many
cases, as Dave freely shared with Simon, what united the expats—despite an
unwavering devotion to their adopted surroundings—were the common frustrations
they encountered when dealing with the Bulgarians themselves.

“As for Bulgarian builders, don’t even
get me started!” Dave exclaimed, enjoying the sounding board he had in the
visiting American. “My neighbors, an elderly couple from Kent, have spent the
last two months cleaning up the mess left behind by their hired crew of
builders. It seems the local workers have never heard of masking tape. They
spray painted my neighbors’ restored farmhouse, leaving paint all over the
frames and speckles on the glass. The work they did left a lot to be desired. Some
interiors were painted in entirely different shades of color, and other areas
were not finished at all.

“Quite frankly, the level of workmanship
here is utterly appalling,” Dave concluded.
“So shoddy, with
no attention to detail and everything done on the cheap.
I highly
recommend doing your own restoration work.”

Simon nodded, thanking Dave silently for
the unsolicited advice about Bulgarian house repairs. “Yet, you said you love
it here,” he said, hoping the Brit would steer clear of the negative aspects of
life in Bulgaria for a change.

“Yes, I do,” Dave said, setting down his
empty beer mug and indicating to the waitress his desire for another round,
which Simon politely refused. “Bulgaria has a very interesting history; there
is much to see and explore. I hope you’ll have a chance to tour the sights, to
see more than just the shore here in Varna, because this is not typical of what
this country is all about. What did you say you’re doing here in Bulgaria,
Professor?”

Feeling a bit lightheaded from the
Guinness, Simon had no hesitation in sharing the reason he had come to
Bulgaria. He told Dave about Scott, how his grandson had come to be in the
country and how he had disappeared. He informed his British acquaintance of his
talks with the U.S. embassy staff, the Varna police officer, and finally, the
unsettling and unexpectedly rude conclusion of his meeting with the hotel
manager in Golden Sands. He couldn’t explain to Dave why he was so determined
in his quest at this specific time, preferring to leave that to himself at this
point.

“What did you say the manager’s name
was?” Dave asked.

“Alexander Nikolov.”

“Hmm, the name is not familiar, but I’ll
ask around. I have good connections among the expats, and I also know some of
the who’s who in Varna high society. Maybe someone knows something about him or
about the Happy Sunshine Resort. Very strange—and quite suspicious—how he
reacted to your conversation about your grandson. Give me your contact details,
and I’ll give you a call if I learn anything about this fellow. My word, you’re
not doing anything illegal, are you, Professor?”

“No, why would you suggest anything like
that?” Simon asked in surprise.

“Well, ever since you mentioned your bad
experience at the hotel, I’ve noticed this pair of Bulgarian men sitting at
that café across the street. I think they’ve been there since the moment
I sat down with you, but I didn’t realize who they were observing until now.”

Simon slowly turned in his seat, looking
beyond the strolling families, teenagers, and young couples on the tree-lined
pedestrian mall that constituted Slivnitsa Street. Sure enough, in the
café across the way, parallel to the Irish pub, there were two men
sitting at a round table, gazing at him from the distance. As Simon stared at
them, one of the men quickly turned his head, but his companion never took his
eyes off of Simon as he smoked casually on a long, thin cigarette.

No, they couldn’t possibly be watching
him, Simon told himself. Dave must be mistaken. Those men were simply enjoying
the fine June weather like the rest of Varna’s residents. There was no reason
in the world that they would take an interest in a retired American professor.
Simon turned back to glance at the excesses of an unfinished Guinness on the
table. He thanked Dave for the interesting conversation and informed him that
he would be returning to Sofia on a Bulgarian Air flight in the morning.

“If you ever come back to Varna, be sure
to give me a call,” Dave said, rising to leave. “And I’ll definitely make some
inquiries about that rude manager, Alexander Nikolov. Something about your
confrontation with him just doesn’t sound right. I’ll let you know if I come up
with anything.”

Chapter
8

“Dad, are you all right?”

“Of course I’m okay.”

“I didn’t see you online all weekend,”
Daniel typed.

“I was in Varna. Just got back to Sofia
this morning,” Simon responded, his fingers warming to the Skype conversation.
Something was wrong with Daniel’s camera and microphone setup, so they
communicated in text.

“You need to tell me when you go away
like that,” his son typed back. “I was very worried.”

“No need to worry. What time is it
there?”

“Dad, I’m very worried about you
traveling around Bulgaria by yourself. I don’t understand what you’re doing,
why you’re doing it, and why now?”

That was quite a long sentence for a
text message, Simon thought. He hadn’t been able to provide his son the precise
answer in a phone conversation, so how could he ever give him anything more now
over the Internet from halfway across the world?

After Daniel made his father promise to
contact him on a daily basis and to keep him apprised of any additional
travels, they bid farewell and the chat box closed.

As he did every time he logged onto
Skype, Simon went down his list of contacts to see who else was online. His
interest centered on a specific listing at the bottom of the program. But as
before, that contact was not available at this time. This didn’t surprise him,
yet he was hoping that one day, just one day, there would be a green icon
promising him the chance to communicate with that person. It was yet to be.

Simon had an agenda, a plan of whom to
meet and where to go. Everything had been meticulously arranged in
advance—contacts made and meetings scheduled from overseas. He wasn’t sure what
the results of this quest would be, whether he would be any closer to his
missing grandson, but he was certain that he was taking the necessary first
steps to find Scott.

After the lack of results from the trip
to Varna, he was hopeful that his next meeting would be more productive. It was
scheduled for that afternoon in downtown Sofia, leaving him with nearly a full
day to take in some of his surroundings, to see a bit of the city. As long as
he was here, he might as well get a feel for the Bulgarian capital.

“Can you point me in the direction of
the center?” he asked the clerk at the front desk. “And please tell me how long
will it take to walk there?”

“It’s about a twenty-minute walk,” the
young man replied, indicating the appropriate direction.

The intensity of the bright June
sunshine surprised him. He adjusted his baseball cap to keep the sun out of his
eyes. The hotel was located near a major intersection filled with electric
trams, delivery trucks, and cars jockeying for position at the traffic lights.
A wide pedestrian bridge sloped upwards over the main traffic artery; this was
the path he wanted. He walked slowly up the incline, pausing for breath at the
top.

He grinned when he saw the familiar
yellow arches of a McDonald’s franchise located on a traffic island below the
bridge. The international fast-food corporation certainly hadn’t wasted any
time before entrenching itself in the opening markets of Eastern Europe, he
thought. Even though it was the middle of a Bulgarian workday, the
drive-through lane of the restaurant was backed up and the picnic tables were
filled to capacity. He watched the traffic for a moment and then continued over
the bridge.

A colorful poster on a metal stand
caught his attention. It was labeled “Thracian Treasures of Bulgaria,” but the
rest of the explanatory text was in Bulgarian. The poster pictured what
appeared to be the entranceway of an ancient tomb, with female figures carved
in high relief on its stone walls. He couldn’t determine what he was seeing
from the Cyrillic explanations, so he continued walking.

That poster, to his surprise, was the
first of many as part of an outdoor exhibition on the pedestrian bridge. One
row of poster stands faced him at intervals of every few feet, while another
row ran in parallel on the other side. All of the high-relief images pictured
ancient treasures, discovered over the years in various locations around
Bulgaria.

There were pictures of tombs and
pictures of the icons and relics found in those tombs: ancient urns, murals of
half-human figures, small and large nude statues, intricately cut jewelry, and
well-preserved sarcophagi. A remarkable gold mask with full facial features
stood out from the other images, its striking beauty incredibly brilliant after
so many millennia of being buried and hidden from view.

Thracian treasures.
He had just been talking about Thrace. He remembered drinking the Thracian
Valley wine and his conversation with the Bulgarian woman who lectured on
Thracian culture. Her spirited explanations of Thrace’s role in Bulgaria’s
history had left him eager to learn more. He took one last look at a poster
depicting a ceremonial drinking horn of some kind and then continued toward the
center.

On the far side of the bridge the
walkway sloped downwards, leading him to a wide, stone-slab plaza surrounding a
huge auditorium. Having consulted a free copy of
Sofia Insider
tourist
magazine at the Hilton, Simon realized that this must be NDK, the National
Palace of Culture. This was Sofia’s major convention center—a complex of
theater halls, meeting rooms, and exhibition areas. The building was immense
and ultra-modern. It looked like an alien spaceship had landed in the midst of
the Bulgarian city.

The plaza was a hub of activity, with
people of all ages walking down sidewalks flanked by colorful flowerbeds and
around fountains and cascading flows of water. Elderly residents sat on wooden
benches, quietly observing the scenes, while young mothers pushed baby
carriages toward metal tables at outdoor coffee shops. Teenagers skirted past him
on their skateboards, executing fearless leaps down the stairs as if performing
to an appreciative audience. A woman wearing tall high heels hurried ahead,
trying desperately to keep pace with her pair of leashed pug dogs. The hubbub
of city traffic was easily forgotten by those relaxing and enjoying the June
sun in the plaza.

 
His leg was troubling him again. He hadn’t
planned on this much walking; apparently the center of the city was more than a
twenty-minute walk from the Hilton. He looked around, searching for a bench
where he could sit down and rest, but at this side of the plaza, among the
trees and flowerbeds, there was nothing. Suddenly a glimpse of a familiar sign
in the distance caught his eye and beckoned him forward. He hurried through the
park and across the street.

The familiar aroma of Starbucks coffee
made him forget the discomfort in his leg, and he felt right at home ordering a
vanilla latte. This had been his daily vice back on campus, where he would stop
by a Starbucks between classes and leisurely review the literary submissions of
his students. He loved inhaling the scent of freshly brewed coffee more than
drinking the hot lattes themselves. Often he would linger in the campus
cafés, enamored by the comforting atmosphere he found within, distracted
from the demands of his teaching if only for a short while.

“Professor, is that you?”

He turned to greet the woman he had met
at the Hilton bar. “Sophia,” he said, surprised at seeing her.
“Sophia from Sofia!”

“What a coincidence running into you
again. How are you?”

“I’m fine. What happened, did someone
again stand you up?” he asked, remembering the circumstances of their first
meeting.

“Oh, no, nothing
like
that at all,” she said, smiling at him. “I taught an early class today and am
on my way back to my apartment, which is not far from here. Do you mind if I
join you?”

Sophia sat down with her own unsweetened
latte, which she stirred constantly as it cooled. She was dressed more casually
today, in light-colored slacks and a blue sleeveless blouse. “So, Professor,
you never told me why you’ve come to Bulgaria.”

He hesitated, wondering how much of his
personal circumstances he should reveal to the inquisitive woman. But then he
remembered talking about his trip with Dave Harris in Varna. The English expat
had offered to check for information about the Golden Sands hotel manager.
So, why not?

Over the next few minutes, between sips
of his vanilla latte, he told Sophia of his grandson’s disappearance and of his
own mission to learn what had happened to Scott.

“I am meeting someone downtown shortly.
He may have discovered more information. I have other meetings scheduled as
well. I’m trying to fully understand everything that occurred from the moment
Scott arrived in Bulgaria until he went missing.”

“You keep saying disappeared, but the
police, they say he is dead?”

“I have this gut feeling that Scott is
still alive, but no one believes me. The police certainly don’t. The embassy
staff isn’t open to other possibilities. Neither are Scott’s parents. But I
need to check everything. Scott could be anywhere, and most likely he’s still
here in Bulgaria. He may be in need of help, and no one else seems to care. I
can’t let him go, I can’t drop this,” he said with conviction.

“Where is your meeting?” she asked.

“On the steps of some
downtown church.
I think it’s called the Alexander
Nevski Cathedral.”

“Ah, yes, the most famous place in all
of Sofia. I’ll take you there now, if you’d like.”

 
“I don’t think I can walk any farther,” he
said, running a hand over the sore muscles of his leg.

“Oh, don’t worry. We’ll take a taxi.”

“Are you sure it’s not out of your way?”

“It would be my pleasure to go with
you,” she said, reaching across the table to touch his arm.