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“Yes.”
“I am sorry, there is no archivist here.”
Sam and Remi exchanged puzzled glances. Remi got out her iPad and showed the woman the PDF file Selma had sent them, a brief on Bulgaria’s Eastern Orthodox Church. Remi pointed out the passage, and the woman read it, her lips moving silently.
“Ah,” she said sagely. “This is old information, you see. That person now works in the Palast of the Synode.”
The woman pointed to the southeast, at a building surrounded by a copse of trees. “It is there. You go there, and they will help.”
“And what is the Synode?” asked Sam.
The woman slipped into tour-guide-speak: “The Synode is home to a group of Metropolitans, or Bishops, who in turn elect Patriarchs and similarly important officials of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The tradition of the Synode goes back to the days of the Apostles in Jerusalem.”
With that, the woman smiled, and tilted her head as if to ask Is there anything else?
Sam and Remi thanked the woman, turned around, and walked to the Palast. Once inside, and standing before the lobby information desk, they explained the reason for their visit—research for a book on the history of the Eastern Orthodox Church—and they were told to be seated. After an hour, a black-robed priest with a long salt-and-pepper beard appeared and escorted them to his office, where it quickly became clear he spoke little English, and Sam and Remi even less Bulgarian. An interpreter was summoned. They repeated their story, then produced the publisher’s letter of introduction Wendy had created for them using Photoshop. The priest listened intently as the interpreter read the letter, and he sat back and stroked his beard for a full minute before answering.
“I am afraid we cannot help you,” the interpreter said for him. “The records you seek are not kept at the Palast. The person you spoke with at the cathedral was mistaken.”
“Does he know where we might look next?” Sam said.
The interpreter put the question to the priest, who pursed his lips, stroked his beard a bit more, then picked up the phone and spoke to someone on the other end. After some back and forth, he hung up. The translator told Sam and Remi,
“Personnel records for that period are housed in the Sveta Sofia . . . I’m sorry, the Hagia Sophia Church.”
“And where would we find that?” asked Remi.
“Directly east of here,” the translator replied. “One hundred meters, on the other side of the square.”
Sam and Remi were there ten minutes later, where they again waited, this time for a mere forty minutes, before being ushered into yet another priest’s office. This one spoke English very well, so they had their answer in short order: not only was the guide at Alexander Nevsky Cathedral mistaken but the priest at the Palast of Synode was as well.
“Records prior to the first Bulgarian Exarch, Antim I, who reigned until the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War in 1787, are maintained in the Methodius.”
Sam and Remi looked at each other, took a breath, and asked, “What exactly is the Methodius?”
“Why, it’s the National Library of Bulgaria.”
“And where would we find it?”
“Just east of here, opposite the National Gallery of Foreign Art.”
Two hours after leaving their car, Sam and Remi found themselves back standing beside it and standing across the street from the Bulgarian National Library. Without realizing it, they’d parked ten paces from their ultimate destination.
Or so they thought.
This time, after a mere twenty minutes with a librarian, they learned that the Methodius had no record of a Metropolitan named Arnost Deniv dying in the early fifteenth century.
After apologizing, the librarian left them sitting alone at a reading table.
“Our shell game with the coffins on Sazan is starting to feel like a cakewalk,” Sam said.
“This can’t be the end,” Remi said. “We know Arnost Deniv existed. How can there be no record of him?”
From the table beside theirs, a smooth, basso voice said, “The answer, my dear, is there are several Arnost Denivs in the history of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and most of them lived prior to the Russo-Turkish War.”
Sam and Remi turned and found themselves looking at a silver-haired man with twinkling green eyes. He gave them an easy, open smile and said, “Apologies for eavesdropping.”
“Not at all,” Remi replied.