The Heist

Everybody did. Nick’s bold escape from the U.S. Courthouse was all over the news an hour after it happened and had immediately vaulted him to the top of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. That was two days ago. Now he was on Interpol’s global hot list as well.
    “They want a fresh perspective on the case,” Kate told Jake as she analyzed her piece of chicken. Was it a thigh? A breast portion? Or a rat that had fallen into the deep fryer? She decided it didn’t matter and took a bite. “So I’m on vacation, which I’ve started by sharing a bucket of chicken and a few beers with my dad.”
    “And you expect me to believe that you’re happy.”
    “Of course I am,” she said. “I’m with you.”
    “I’m touched. And if you were still sixteen, this is where you’d be asking me for the keys to my Jeep and twenty bucks.”
    “Trust me, Dad. I couldn’t be happier than I am right now.”
    If she’d been a more introspective person, the kind who enjoys exploring her understanding of herself, she’d have wanted to examine that assertion in more depth.
    “I’m here because I don’t spend nearly enough time with you,” Kate said. “I’ve got a big trip planned and I want your advice. You’re the world traveler in our family.”
    “I’m impressed that you’ve taken being sidelined so well. I don’t mean to rub salt in your wound or anything, but the curiosity is killing me. How did Fox escape from three marshals on his way to court?”
    She gave her father the broad-stroke details of Nick’s escape from the men’s room while under guard. “He had one of hiscronies build a fake stall with a swiveling center partition right in front of the closet door and then paper over it.”
    “How’d they do it without anyone noticing?”
    “By being completely out in the open about it. There was a crew in there for a week remodeling the restrooms. People in the courthouse had wanted those restrooms spruced up for years, so they were glad to see it finally getting done and didn’t question it.”
    “So Fox slipped out dressed as a woman?”
    “Nope, there was a hiding place built in the closet. Once the marshals raised the alarm and went looking for him, he walked out of the men’s room dressed as a judge. We’ve got that much on security camera footage. How he slipped out of the building after that is a mystery.”
    Jake looked at Kate skeptically over his beer can as he took a sip. “One that you aren’t the least bit interested in solving.”
    “It’s not my problem.”
    “That’s the right attitude,” he said. “You caught him, they lost him, let them deal with it. So where are you going on your trip?”
    “Greece.” She opened her laptop and hit a few keys, bringing up on the screen a detailed map of the country.
    “I’ve been there many times. It’s a breathtaking place. What part are you visiting?”
    “Mount Athos,” she said.
    He finished his beer and set the can down. “It’s the oldest monastic settlement on earth, going back to the seventh century A.D. , built within a mountainous, inhospitable, rocky peninsula that is thirty miles long, ranging from four to eight miles wide, and pounded by the Aegean Sea on three sides. It’s technically part of Greece, but it’s actually an autonomous state where two thousanddevout bearded monks and hermits live in centuries-old fortified monasteries, ancient stone huts, and caves. They abide by the laws of the Byzantine Empire, even though it fell five hundred sixty years ago, and they still mark their days by the Julian liturgical calendar. But you know all about that, right?”
    “Of course,” she said. “It sounds charming.”
    “Then you also know that females have been forbidden on Athos for nearly a thousand years. That prohibition is so strict that it extends to all female creatures, including cows, horses, and hens. They’d ban female reptiles and birds, too, if they could find a way to do it.”
    “And that’s why I think Nick Fox is there,” Kate said. “Because it’s the one place on earth that I can’t go.”
    “That’s a big reach, Kate.”
    “There’s more. I know that a few months ago he applied for a visa from Athos under the alias ‘Father Dowling,’ and under the guise of doing research on Byzantine monastic architecture. The visa was granted. I’d assumed he did it as part of some larger scheme to steal some of their priceless and poorly protected artifacts, holy relics, ancient manuscripts, and