The group worked their way through the many houses that were scattered along the uphill path to Mount Kynthos, the tallest point on the island. Nancy was nearly out of breath by the time she reached the summit. But when she stood overlooking the entire island, she knew it was worth the climb. The mixture of green fields and smooth marble ruins made Delos a land that time forgot.
“You’ve been awfully quiet,” Mick said, coming up to her and placing his hands on her shoulders.
“I guess I’ve been daydreaming,” Nancy said. “Can you imagine what it must have been like to live on this island two thousand years ago?”
“So you’re drawn to faraway places, eh? I’d love to show you Australia sometime.” Mick stepped around to face Nancy and took her hands in his. “Promise me you’ll come visit.”
Nancy laughed. “Oh, sure. I’ll just jet over when I have a free weekend.”
“I’m not kidding,” Mick said, his expression serious.
He actually meant it, she realized. “Mick, I’d love to see Australia, but—”
“Don’t worry about details,” he said, placing a finger over her lips. “We’ll work it out.”
Nancy was thoughtful as she and Mick followed the others down the hill toward lush palm groves. Soon they arrived at a walkway lined by six grand sculptures of lions stretching toward the east.
“This is called the Terrace of the Lions,” Zoe explained.
“It’s hard to believe they’re two thousand years old,” Bess said.
Still thinking of Mick’s invitation, Nancy didn’t say much as the others commented on the statues. Mick was suddenly quiet, too. He wandered to one of the far lions while George, Zoe, and Bess strolled on, heading back toward the harbor.
Nancy was about to follow when she spotted a photographer with curly black hair poised behind the base of one of the lions. She moved around the lion until she was face to face with Dimitri.
“Yásou,” he said, greeting her in Greek as he adjusted a camera tripod. “You are one of the American girls staying in Mykonos, no?”
“That’s right,” Nancy said, her eyes skimming over Dimitri’s bags of equipment. He was using a sophisticated camera with a long lens. “No more pictures of tourists?” Nancy asked him.
“Not today. Today I’m taking beautiful photographs, which I will make into postcards in my studio,” he said proudly.
This guy loves to exaggerate, Nancy thought. “Don’t you need special equipment to make postcards?” she asked.
“Of course,” he agreed. “But my studio is the best on the island of Mykonos. One of the best in all of Greece! It has everything I need.”
Including everything you need for forging passports? Nancy wondered, remembering the envelope she had seen Niki hand him on the beach that morning.
“I’d love to see it,” she said, watching Dimitri carefully. “In the States I’m an amateur photographer.” She was bending the truth, but she thought that Dimitri might believe her.
Instead, he seemed to withdraw. “My equipment is far too technical to interest you.”
“I’m a fast learner,” Nancy insisted.
“It is not a good idea,” Dimitri said, forcing a smile.
Nancy had the distinct impression that there was something in his studio that Dimitri didn’t want her to see.
Just then Mick came around the statue and took Nancy’s hand. “We’d better get going if we want to catch up with the others,” he said.
After saying goodbye to Dimitri, Nancy and Mick continued down the stone-paved path toward the boat landing. During the ride back to Mykonos, she mulled over the encounter with Dimitri. If his studio contained equipment that could make postcards, it had to be fairly sophisticated—maybe sophisticated enough to create a good replica of a passport page.
That thought was still nagging at her when the teens sat down to a late lunch at the hotel’s taverna. Zoe had decided to join her father, so Nancy, Mick, George, and Bess shared a table.
“You look as if you’re lost in space,” George told Nancy as she passed around a platter of moussaká, a casserole made of layers of eggplant and ground meat covered in a zesty sauce.
“I’ve been thinking about Bess’s passport and wondering who on this island could pull off a forgery,” Nancy said. Lowering her voice, she shared her thoughts about Dimitri’s studio. “All that ‘special equipment’ could come in handy for passport forgeries—especially if he has three American passports to work with.”