Helen's Crown

By Fernando Cabrera

On a dusty hill, a treasure is uncovered. In a gray tower at the close of World War II, a mission is accepted. In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, an archaeologist makes a fateful discovery. Victor Gund tears a veil of secrecy decades in the making--a secret that nations will kill to protect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781645447948

Book preview

A Hill in Turkey 1873

Bey Omar Hassan Al-Haji was Nishan and Miralai of the empire, a colonel and lord. Omar Hassan had once been Pasha and Ferik, a high general of the Khahkan. His master was known as the King of Kings, the lord of the lands and seas, Sultan of Sultan, and Sha of the Ottoman Empire—but that was many years ago before Bey Omar’s troops panicked and fled before the walls of Sevastopol. It was during the time when French, British, and Italians had to save his empire from the Russians. Infidels had come to the aid of the mighty army of the Prophet, which had once stood before the walls of Vienna and eclipsed Rome.

Now Omar Hassan did what he was told, and what he was told was to stop the foreigner from stealing what the Turks had won. It really was a shame because he liked the foreigner. He certainly enjoyed the afternoons speaking to the little man about the stories he told of his life in the Baltic, of the peculiarities of the heathen Russians, and of the gold that flowed down California’s rivers. Bey Omar wondered, Had this man really survived a shipwreck, or was this another one of his exaggerations? Omar Hassan decided he did not care.

The German was the most interesting man he had ever met. He spoke over twenty languages and was passionate about his quest. It was the quest that had led him to the Anatolian shores after a lifetime of wonderings, speculations, and lies.

The German was not the first to search in these shores for the legend, and once the world heard of his discovery, many others would follow. Omar Hassan did not care who came, and he did not care about some Greek legend, but the treasure, that was something all men cared for, and Omar Hassan had dreamt many a night about that treasure since the announcement of its discovery. It was the stuff of dreams, and that damn infidel foreigner had found it, and now he dared to try to steal it and profit from it. Bronze shields and cauldrons, spears and swords and gold; thousands of rings, brooches, pins, and two crowns.

Omar Hassan did not care where they came from, who wore them, or how many times the German had heard the stories while a child. If true, then these wonderful things belonged to a time before the Turks became the defenders of the faith, to a time before the Prophet brought light to the world. The treasure belonged to the heathen Greeks and to their oldest story, and that by itself was reason enough for Bey Omar Hassan to hate it. Anything that reminded him of the Greeks he hated—but this was a lot of gold.

Bey Omar Hassan Al-Haji looked at his guards and motioned to one to open the door. Inside the small antechamber, a slim-faced clerk looked up from his ledgers. The sweat trickled down his wide forehead and down his cheek. He wanted to ask the intruders who they were, but there was no time. The man accompanied by the guards spoke first.

I am Bey Hassan, and I am looking for Herr Schliemann, and after you tell me where he is, consider yourself under arrest.

A Zoo in Berlin

19 April 1945

Oberst Heinz August von Goren had soot on his face and blood on his sleeves. He looked across the field to the scared and charred landscape and realized he had a hard time remembering how it used to look. He knew this place as a child, having lived most of his life in Berlin. His family had lived not far from here, and it was in that house where von Goren learned of the death of his older brother in a field in France during the Great War.

It was that death that had convinced him to join the army at the age of sixteen. Unfortunately for von Goren, his unit did not reach the Western Front on November 10, 1918. The following day the guns went silent for the first time in four years, and Heinz von Goren had not had an opportunity to even load his weapon.

The years that followed the war were a disaster for the German army and the officer corps. For the unemployed and hungry von Goren, everything seemed hopeless and bleak. Then one day he saw strength and pride marching down the streets. He saw the clean-shaven Nordic faces and heard the exultations that explained that the defeat was not of Germany’s doing. Everything made sense for von Goren, and he found a new home that day. He donned a brown uniform and followed.

For fifteen years von Goren followed the rise of the party. There were setbacks and minor successes, and then one day the world turned a blind eye, and Germany found a new cause. Then came the times of victory upon victory, and von Goren reveled in them. He was a cog in an invincible machine until the cold and the Russians slaughtered his unit.

Russian units were now on the edge of his beloved Berlin and ready to deliver the coup de grâce. The Russians would come, and they would be unstoppable, but Heinz von Goren would do his duty. He looked across the field into the zoo and wondered how many, if any, of the animals remained. There were once hundreds of species in this place. Now the dominant feature was the tower, his tower: gray, cold, large, imposing, and reeking with the smells of nearly forty thousand Berliners.

He wished he could have a cigarette right now, but it had been weeks since he last smoked. During those weeks, the air raids had been constant. Tomorrow would be twentieth of April—the führer’s birthday—a holiday in years past but today a prelude to the final act.

The alarms across the city began their familiar mournful wail. Oberst von Goren knew he had just minutes to get back within the safety of the tower.

He took one last look at the open spaces and headed into the bleak bastion. He knew that when the bombs stopped the Russians would come, and then the forty thousand souls in the tower would be at the mercy of the Slavs. He adjusted his cap, buttoned his coat, and walked into the south gate as the first bombs began to slam the city.

Dawn on a Moscow Street

1994

The alarm clock rang for a third time. To Victor Gund, the screeching of the mechanical tone sounded like an air horn from a factory. His eyes were bloodshot and his tongue so dry it stuck to the roof of his mouth. How the hell could the Russians drink so much? He barely remembered the last few hours of the previous night. He had made it up to his room from the ballroom somehow. The trail of discarded clothes from the door to the bed told the rest of the story.

He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. Slowly the reason for the reception came through the fog of his memory: the closed-door meeting, the discussions, the back-and-forth with the curator, and finally the reception. The reception was nothing more than a publicity stunt to make the world press believe that both parties were negotiating in good faith and making progress—but there had been no progress. One week in Moscow and he was no further along in hammering out an agreement for the return of the artifacts as the day he left the Pergamum Museum’s offices.

The meeting had been more frustrating because earlier in the day he had finally been allowed to see the pieces, though not all of them since there were over nine thousand artifacts in the collection. He had been shown the cauldrons, weapons, rings and brooches, and the two crowns. The crowns were remarkable, certainly the property of a ruler, perhaps even the most famous woman in antiquity.

He knew, of course, that the initial archaeological claim that this treasure belonged to the house of Priam and the royal family of Troy during the Greek assault, as told in the Iliad, had been disproven. He did not care. The link to the story might not exist, but the treasure was real. It came from the site of the fabled city, and that provenance alone made it priceless. The workmanship was exquisite, and he could picture a bejeweled Helen standing on the great tower’s ramparts watching the fate of the city work itself out to its inexorable conclusion.

For Victor Gund, the treasure was a link to his own past growing up listening to his father’s constant retelling of the Trojan myth, the battle of men and gods, and birth of the first European tale. For a man with little formal education, Ludwig Gund had always had a love for the classic stories, and he passed that love to young Victor. The son was so infused with Troy and its vast realm of characters that he used it as his doctoral thesis when the time came.

The old man had died years before, having never fully recovered from his time as prisoner of the Russians following the fall of Stalingrad. Ludwig had been one of the six thousand prisoners of war who walked back into Germany, from an original army of over one hundred thousand who surrendered. The defeated soldier had lived just long enough to find a menial job, a pretty wife, and father the future Dr. Victor Gund.

The day before Victor’s eighth birthday, a family friend found Ludwig dead in his favorite chair still holding a worn copy of the Iliad. Victor had inherited that book, and it was his nightly companion on his trip to Russia. He looked for answers in the dog-eared and ripped pages. This story had caught the imagination of men and had set the basis of much of Europe’s character. He opened the book to find his father’s handwritten note, written in the last days of the siege of Stalingrad as the old soldier tried to forget about the Russians, the cold, and the hunger. Ludwig had written a few simple lines as he thought about that other war in a corner of Anatolia thousands of years before. The note, stitched to the inside of his great coat, survived Stalingrad and the imprisonment that followed and had always been kept inside the copy of the Iliad first by Ludwig and then by his son.

Victor peeled back the delicate pages.

Sing, O Goddess of the greatness, which was Troy.

Sing of its pastures where fleet-footed steed raced; of its fields below Ida’s mighty crest. A city on a golden shore bestride two continents.

Sing of her walls raised by a god, which for a decade resisted the Greeks.

Sing of her towers, which once looked upon a plain of war and from whence a king lamented his brave son.

Sing of her stubbornness and of her wealth.

Sing of her fall brought on by wits more than by brawn.

Sing of that night when her cauldrons were doused and her houses burned.

Sing of the mothers without sons and husbandless wives as they cried beneath lecherous Hellenes.

Sing of the glory, sing of the love, sing of the treasure both flesh and ore, which forced us not to forget…

For forty-eight years, most of the world had been deprived of what he had seen yesterday morning. Few knew and fewer admitted to the possibility that the liberators had become plunderers. In 1993, set against a backdrop of the collapse of their empire, the Russians had let the world gaze upon the treasure of Schliemann. Neither bombs, fire, nor time had destroyed it. It was shown complete and newly unpacked from decades in storage.

Since that day in 1993, it had been the stated goal of the Pergamum Museum and the German government to reacquire the entire collection. This latest round of talks had gone as well as all the others. In other words, they had failed miserably. Victor looked at the yellow rays of light streaking in through the window and wondered why he should bother attending today’s meeting. There was no way of winning the argument with the Russians. They would never agree to a unilateral return. They insisted in trading plunder for plunder.

The Russians knew the German plunder had been extremely destructive. The armies that raced toward Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad were very selective in what was sent to the Fatherland. Whatever was deemed incompatible with the Nazi worldview was simply destroyed in situ. It was some of these very artifacts that the Russians demanded in trade for the treasure of Troy. The bastards knew the Germans could not reciprocate, and that made the next meeting useless in Victor’s mind.

No matter what his reasoning told him, Victor would still do his job. His commitment to his duty was nothing less than the world had grown to expect from a member of his nation. He would do what was demanded of him and once again deal with the intransigent Russians.

He slid off the bed as best as his throbbing head could allow him. His naked form fell forward toward the small counter in the opposite side of the room. Methodically and mechanically, he opened the package containing a few ounces of coffee. A measured amount of water was poured into the pot and from the pot into the drip coffee maker. The machine had been brought from Berlin. Even in what the Russians considered a good hotel, Victor knew there would be deficiencies. He did not have creams and sweeteners. He would not need them. Six years as a visiting scholar to the Smithsonian in Washington DC had taught him how to drink and enjoy his coffee black and bitter—American style. He could almost picture his British great-grandmother turning in her grave at the thought of her great-grandson drinking anything but tea.

He stepped back and let the machine do its work. The water was quickly brought to a boil, and soon the liquid that would allow him to start his day began to flow. Victor took a moment to catch a glimpse of his reflection on the full-length mirror by the door. He looked upon a naked figure, forty-five years old, six feet two with an ever-growing number of gray hairs at his temples still outnumbered by the black ones on the rest of his head. Physically he had once looked better, but his regular regiment of exercise had left his body fitter than many of his friends of the same age. Physical fitness as well as discipline and dedication had been ingrained in him from his earliest childhood memory in Stuttgart in what had once been West Germany.

His intellectual prowess far outshone his physical ones. In his twenties he had earned a double major in history and classical languages. In his thirties he had added a master’s degree in history and the appointment to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. It had been the culmination of a dream for the once-bright-eyed boy from Stuttgart. By the time he left Washington, he had added a doctorate degree to his collection and had become a published author. For the past five years, he had labored in Berlin’s Pergamum Museum with a desire to increase its collections and prestige and hopefully approach the renown the Smithsonian, Louvre, and British Museum had earned.

It would have once been easier for a man of his stature to accomplish such a thing. One hundred fifty years ago, the great museums of the world accumulated vast storehouses of antiquities from all cultures. The French dug in Egypt, the British in Mesopotamia, and the Germans in Greece. All over the world professional and amateur archaeologists visited known and fabled sites and simply carted away what they found. Some of the excavations had the stated aim of protecting fragile pieces of the past from the ravages of war; other ones were simply treasure hunts sanctioned by governments and universities. The Eurocentric view that only their culture could admire and protect what others had created was the accepted norm.

Nowadays every country with some old stones or shards of pottery had an antiquities bureau, and international law defended them against those who would pillage. No longer would the horses of Saint Mark’s be moved at the whim of a general, or Egypt’s obelisks and mummies spirited away to adorn plazas, halls, or lakeside museums in Chicago. The trend was for those once looted to make claims on the return of their items, and so the Smithsonian, Louvre, Vatican Museum, and the Prado in Madrid began returning some of the pieces. One day even the mighty British Museum would have to let go of the Elgin Marbles and perhaps its treasured Rosetta Stone.

There was only one way to grow a modern museum: have items donated by wealthy benefactors. Those same benefactors whose parents or grandparents had originally commissioned for the looting of artifacts now made magnanimous tax-deductible donations to their favorite institutions. It had been so with Schliemann, the small, insignificant onetime grocer from Mecklenburg who defied academia and brought to life the world of Homer and his cast of characters. It was Schliemann’s first and most famous discovery that had been donated to the Pergamum Museum. The gold and artifacts had been excavated from the side of the hill that the world had once known as Troy. The grocer turned businessman, linguist, and archaeologist found the ruins, excavated the artifacts, and then outmaneuvered the Turks into accepting a paltry sum for its ownership.

Victor admired Schliemann and the man’s dedication to his quest. In Victor’s mind, he had been born a century too late. He longed for the Belle Epoc when the great European powers ruled the world. British empiricism, French culture, and German philosophy had been disseminated to the less advanced peoples. European enclaves existed in Shanghai where few ethnic Chinese could enter. In Japan, the emperor forced the realignment of his society to mimic the Europeans and the Americans. All over Africa, India, and the Middle East, the local was replaced by the foreign, and the world moved to the European beat. To Victor this was the desired world, the world where a German citizen could step on German soil even if that soil was in Africa or some tropical Pacific island. It was the height of culture and arrogance, but it made the trains run on time, and society was learned and gentle.

He stopped looking at his reflection in the mirror and reached for the now-brewed coffee. He moved around the room sipping the bitter liquid and getting his mind ready for today’s meetings. He would do everything in his power to get Schliemann’s gold back to Berlin. That was his task and his passion. If the Belle Epoc could not return, at least he could arrange for the return of one of its greatest discoveries.

A Town in Turkey

1873

H e can’t be gone. You have not searched for him as you are supposed to!

Omar Hassan looked at the overweight bureaucrat with disdain. In another time, in another place, his insolence would have cost him his head. In the Ottoman Empire where Omar Hassan was born, lesser men learned to respect their superiors. Now this pudgy, sweaty little man with the stained fez was ordering him around.

I have instructed my men to monitor the port and the roads. We will catch up to him, Amin.

Effendi Amin began to pace the room.

He is the devil, that one. Just like the rest of them. They think us beneath them, and they rely on their money to buy influence.

Omar Hassan knew better.

They rely on their money and their armies. It has been over a century since we have been able to stand up to a European army in open battle. Until the day comes when we are able to do so again like in the days of Suleiman and Memet, we will have to placate them.

Placate them? That infidel threw me out of his room. Amin fidgeted with his fez. It is my duty to look after the Sultan’s interest in this business. I am tasked to ensure the German follows the restrictions on the digging laid out by the firman. I tell you he has found something, and it is more than just a few pieces of broken pottery.

Omar Hassan took a sip of his tea and laid the cup down on the side table.

How can you be sure, Amin? Did anyone see him take anything from the hill?

You doubt me? I tell you the workers are all talking that something has been found. The German is very particular. He gets up every morning before sunrise, bathes in the ocean under the watchful eyes of his bodyguards, and then returns to the hill to oversee the excavations. He drives the men relentlessly from sunrise to sundown every day. He has even brought in Greeks and Jews to work our holy days so that the work never stops. It never stops. The men get two one-hour breaks during the day, and I’m surprised he even allows that. Then last Monday at eight-thirty in the morning, he calls Paidos. He stops the work and tells the workers to take the day off. How can this not be proof?

Omar Hassan shifted in his chair.

What was his excuse for the stoppage of work?

He told the workers that he had just realized that it was his birthday and he wanted them to take the day off. No man that meticulous and regimented forgets his own birthday. It was an excuse to dig himself.

I agree, Amin, that the excuse seems very weak, almost like it was something thought about very quickly. Still could it be true what they are saying he found? Could there possibly be any gold in the hill?

The fat little man got up and paced the room.

The rumors are hardly to be believed, but if they are even half true, then he has found a great treasure. It is said that the Greeks fought a ten-year war in this hill centuries before our people moved west. I know of the story but like most never believed it. It’s the first of two tales told by a blind poet when our people were still riding in the steppes of Asia. The story is filled with battles of invincible Greek heroes and their vain gods. It’s the stuff of legends like the stories they tell children at night. No one believed the city to be true and certainly not to possess any of the riches the blind man spoke of. After two millennia, robbers would have picked up anything of value like they did with the pyramids and tombs all over the world.

I tell you that he has found something. Even with him calling a break, there is no way he can hide what he took out. They say there are cauldrons and silver vases, they speak of bronze spears and swords, gold pins, and gold rings.

Omar Hassan looked at the fat little man with the dirty fez and scratched the stubble on his face. He did not believe in stories, and it did bother him to arrest a man whom he generally liked. If there was really so much gold and if Bey Omar Hassan Al-Haji could recover it for the Sultan, then perhaps he could regain the Sultan’s favor and his old titles. Then the little fat man with the dirty fez would not speak down to him again.

Berlin

20 April