Berat narrowed his eyes. “You mean you’re going to take it for your government?”
Riley shook his head. “I can assure you it will be kept safe.”
The man made a sound of derision. “You can’t tell me you will donate it to the Turkish museum.” He emitted a harsh laugh.
Riley made to speak, but the man pushed on. “Our group has made sure this treasure hasn’t fallen into the wrong hands. We’ve been protecting it for generations. It’s been where it is for almost three thousand years and it should continue to stay where it is.”
“Look, I’m in full agreement with you,” Riley said, “but we are under time pressure. Some rather dangerous men are after it. They’ve already murdered Professor Hobbs and your friend, Eymen Bulut. They will stop at nothing to get the copper scroll and then they’ll take every last bit of treasure for themselves.”
Ellis spoke up. “In fact, if we found you, then they could find you too.”
Berat nodded calmly. “Yes, I was about to leave town and hide out.”
“Do you have the copper scroll?” Riley asked him.
“No, but I do hold a clue to its whereabouts.” He looked at Abigail. “Can you translate the scroll? Is that what you’re doing here?”
“Yes,” Abigail said. “I’m going to translate it when we find it.”
“You’re going to translate it, and then you’ll all go and find the treasure. Is that right?”
“That’s right,” Riley said. “But we’re not going to take the treasure. We just want to make sure those men don’t find it.”
Abigail rubbed her eyes with one hand. This wasn’t going as well as she had hoped. This man obviously had no intention of handing over a clue easily. Besides, when he said he didn’t have the scroll, she noticed his eyes flickered. She had the sensation he was lying, but she couldn’t be sure.
What if he did have the copper scroll? And what if she was in close proximity to it now? A small thrill of excitement ran through her.
“So, you can read ancient Greek?” Berat asked Abigail.
“Yes, I can. It’s one of my main areas of expertise. I can also read some Lydian. Is the scroll in ancient Greek or Lydian? Or is it bilingual?”
The man laughed, a short guttural laugh. “You’re trying to trick me. Are you sure you weren’t followed?” He walked over to the window to look out before returning to his seat once more. “So, these dangerous men who are trying to steal the treasure—how many of them are there?”
“We have no idea,” Riley admitted, “but I’m sure there are more than enough to get the job done. It’s essential the copper scroll doesn’t fall into their hands.”
Berat narrowed his eyes. “If I give you the next clue, you’ll follow it to the copper scroll, and then follow the copper scroll to the treasure. You’ll make sure these other men don’t get it?” Before anyone could respond, he added, “And I suppose they want the treasure to fund terrorist activities?”
“Correct,” Riley said.
The man appeared to have made up his mind. “All right, you’ve convinced me. I’ll fetch the next clue. Are you certain you weren’t followed?”
Riley assured him that they hadn’t been followed, but Berat was already halfway across the room.
Abigail was pleased the man had finally relented. For a moment, she had feared he wasn’t going to give them the clue and she wondered what Riley and the others would do in a situation like that.
Abigail saw the man as he opened the door, for a split second wondering why he had something strange on his face.
She only barely registered it was a gas mask as something was thrown into the room. The door slammed shut.
The last thing Abigail remembered was coughing.
13
SELCUK
Riley came to his senses before Thatcher and Ellis. His eyes stung and his throat was burning, but that didn’t stop him from getting to his feet and hurrying over to Ellis. “Berat has taken Abigail.”
Ellis looked around groggily while Riley shook Thatcher awake. Riley tried the back door and then the side door, but both were locked and the window had bars on it.
Thatcher aimed a good kick at the side door, but Riley said, “Not that door. There could be alarms inside the shop. We should go out the back door.”
It took a while before they managed to knock the back door down. It led straight into a storage room. The air was fresh and Riley gulped in deep breaths.
“What do we do now?” Ellis asked him.
“I’m tracking her cell phone. I’ll find her location.”
Ellis put a restraining hand on Riley’s arm. “We should search the place. Maybe he’s got some evidence lying around.”
“Evidence of what?” Riley said.
“We won’t know until we find it.” Ellis’s tone was boarding on belligerent. “Besides, you shouldn’t go running after the woman just because of your, err, emotional involvement. We can always find another translator.”
“Not one as highly qualified as her, surely,” Thatcher said.
Riley shot Ellis an ice-cold glare. Ellis shifted from one foot to the other and looked away. His comments were subordinate, although if Riley were to be honest, there was more than a modicum of truth in his remarks.
“When we find Abigail, we will find Berat. We won’t need any further information after we question him. We’re wasting time. Let’s go. Unless you have any other objections, Ellis?”
Ellis shook his head. Riley strode to the car and wasted no time turning on his device to track Abigail’s phone. “She’s heading north,” he said. “And moving fast.”
“Let’s hope Berat hasn’t taken her phone and thrown it into a passing bus,” Ellis said.
Riley’s heart was racing. Never had he been so perturbed on a mission. “We will follow the tracking device. He’s obviously got the copper scroll and he wants Abigail to translate it.”
“I wonder if he’s working for Vortex?” Ellis said as he swung to avoid a bird that nearly flew into the car.
“Could be, or he could be working for himself. Did you notice he said he knew Murat, but Murat said he didn’t know the person who possessed the next clue? Eymen, Murat, and Berat were likely in some sort of group together. Berat wants to protect the treasure.”
“But given that he’s taken Abigail, it means they don’t know the translation of the copper scroll yet,” Thatcher pointed out. “Doesn’t that strike you as strange? I mean, if the copper scroll’s been in their possession for generations, wouldn’t you think they’d have had it translated at some point?”
“You’d think so,” Riley said. He scratched the stubble on his chin. “Maybe they didn’t want to know where the treasure was—they just wanted to prevent others from finding it.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Thatcher said.
For once, Ellis agreed with Riley. “Berat is a fanatic. We’ve all dealt with fanatics before. Until now, he didn’t want to know where the treasure was in case somebody tortured him to reveal the location. That’s the typical attitude of this type of fanatic.”
Thatcher nodded slowly. “You could be right.”
“Can’t this vehicle go any faster?” Riley asked urgently.
Nobody answered him. His stomach was churning. If this man was a fanatic, as they thought, then he wouldn’t let Abigail live after she had translated the scroll. Riley went cold all over.
Just then, he lost the tracking signal.
“What now?” Ellis said. “Maybe we should go back and search Berat’s place after all.”
“All right then,” Riley said, “but first we’ll see if Murat is still there. I’ll get the information out of him.”
Ellis turned the car sharply and sped back to Selcuk. They parked not far from the knife shop this time, and Riley marched straight to the door. It was shut. That didn’t surprise them given that Murat knew he was in danger.
“Let’s go around the back,” Riley said to the others. They had to walk past s
everal stores before turning left into a small alley behind the shops. Riley had counted the shops, which was just as well as it was hard to tell which back entrance belonged to which shop. “That’s Murat’s knife shop there,” he said. A broken padlock hung from the door.
Ellis pushed the door open. “Looks like our friends have already paid him a visit.”
The three men slipped inside. Ellis wasted no time shutting the door behind them.
Once Riley was inside, he could see that someone had already searched the place. Papers were strewn all over the floor, and a desk was overturned.
“Well then, there’s no point looking,” Thatcher said. “Vortex would have already found anything by now.”
“We’re going to look anyway,” Riley said. He knew his voice held a note of desperation, but he didn’t care. With every second that passed, Berat was getting further away with Abigail.
Time was running out.
Riley pulled his phone from his pocket and studied it again. “Still no signal.”
“Murat is long gone,” Ellis said. He peered inside an empty safe. The door was open.
“All right, let’s go back to where we were when we lost the signal, as we were heading in the right direction,” Riley said.
“Shouldn’t we search Berat’s shop?” Ellis asked.
Riley’s response was a curt, “No.”
They drove back. All the while, Riley kept staring at his cell phone, hoping and praying the signal would come back on. It did not.
“This is where we were before. Do you want me to keep going?” Ellis asked him.
“Yes.”
“What if the signal comes back and we have to backtrack?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Riley said. He stared at the phone for a further five minutes, until suddenly the signal did come back on. “I’ve got it!” Riley exclaimed.
Ellis shot him a quick sideways glance. “We’re out of gas.”
Riley groaned aloud. “Could the timing be any worse?”
“We can go a few more miles, but we’ll have to stop at the first gas station we see,” Ellis said.
Riley leaned back in the seat. “Sure.”
To his relief, there was a small gas station not far away. “I’ll go inside and get some sodas,” Thatcher said. “Do you want anything, Riley?”
Riley shook his head. All he could think about was Abigail. He kept staring at the phone. “Hurry, won’t you?”
Thatcher returned to the car just before Ellis did. Thatcher handed Riley a soda and simit, a local circular bread.
“Still drive straight ahead?” Ellis said.
“Yes, I’ll direct you,” Riley said urgently. “The tracking came to a stop just after you got out of the car. We have a location now.”
They soon turned off onto a smaller road, and after a mile or so turned off again onto a steep road that wound its way up a rocky hill.
“He’s taken her to a remote location,” Thatcher said.
The comment did nothing to soothe Riley’s nerves.
A small wooden bridge marked the spot where the road narrowed and became a rocky track. “We’re getting close now,” Riley said.
“What do you want me to do?” Ellis asked him. “Should we park here and go on foot?”
Riley leaned over to point to a clump of trees. “Go another half mile and then stop over there,” he said.
Ellis hadn’t gone quite half a mile when they saw a small hut up ahead, standing alone on the hillside. He immediately reversed the car and then pulled off the road behind a big boulder.
Riley was out of the car in a flash, his gun drawn, sprinting up the hill with Thatcher and Ellis hard on his heels. Riley was only halfway to the hut when he saw a man jump in the car and drive away in the other direction. Riley couldn’t tell at that distance if the man was Berat.
He sprinted to the hut door and flung it open, his heart in his mouth.
14
EASTERN ANATOLIA
ONE HOUR EARLIER
Abigail awoke in a blind panic. She fought against a wave of nausea. It took her only seconds to realize she was in a trunk.
She hoped Riley was all right. Why had Berat gassed them all? And why had he abducted her? Was he a Vortex agent? But if so, why did he only take her?
Abigail was somewhat claustrophobic, but the trunk was large. She felt around inside for something she could use as a weapon but was unable to find anything apart from a large sheet.
A wave of terror overwhelmed her—was the man going to murder her and wrap her in the sheet before burying her? She fought to control her breathing as her throat constricted in fear. She tried to think logically. If he was going to kill her, surely he would have done so by now. He had abducted her. But why?
Abigail forced herself to think it through to take her mind off her fear. The man had seemed interested in the fact that she could translate ancient Greek. Was he taking her to the scroll? Or did he have the scroll all the time? Either way, the only thing that made sense would be if he had abducted her so she could translate the scroll.
Unless of course he was working for Vortex, although Abigail had no idea why Vortex would want to kidnap her. Surely they would already have translators in their employ.
She braced herself a little too late as the car went over a bump. She couldn’t hear any noise apart from the roar of the car’s engine. She had no idea if they were on a city road or a country road, but she couldn’t hear any horns blasting or any trains or other loud sounds. At any rate, it would be logical for Berat to take her to an isolated location.
Abigail’s mind went blank. It hurt simply to think. No doubt all her questions would be answered soon enough. She lay there, wishing the car would come to a stop and the man would tell her what was going on.
It was over an hour before the car did stop. Much to her alarm, the trunk stayed shut for several minutes. Was Berat taking care of some business there and then intended to drive on further?
Abigail didn’t know whether to be afraid or relieved when the trunk finally opened. She blinked as the sun shone directly in her eyes.
“Now, I don’t intend to hurt you, unless you do something silly,” Berat said. “Do you understand?”
Abigail tried to nod, but a sudden sharp pain struck her neck and traveled all down her right side. She at once clutched her shoulder. “Yes,” she said in a small voice.
“You can scream all you like and no one will hear you,” he said, “only the bears.”
“Bears?” Abigail repeated.
“Yes, there are bears in these hills,” he said, “so don’t even think about trying to run away. You won’t get far, and I’m armed.”
He pulled his jacket aside to reveal a gun.
Abigail trembled. “What do you want with me?” she asked.
The man looked surprised. “Isn’t it obvious? I want you to translate the copper scroll.”
“You have it?” Abigail exclaimed.
He didn’t respond. “Wait there and don’t move. I’ll shoot you if you try to make a run for it.” He walked over to the hut, looking back over his shoulder at Abigail as he went. Abigail hadn’t noticed the hut until then. It was a rough stone building the same color as the rocks surrounding it.
He carried some crates out of the hut and placed them in the trunk. The word, ‘Explosives’ was written in English with Turkish words beside it.
Why was he loading explosives into his car?
Berat took her by the elbow and dragged her roughly over to the hut, and pushed her inside the door. He indicated she should sit on a couch that looked as uncomfortable as the one he had in his shop, only smaller.
Abigail sat on the couch, moving her neck this way and that, trying to relieve the pain from her cramped neck.
The man handed her a plastic bottle of water. “Like I said, I’m not going to harm you. I just want you to translate the scroll.”
Abigail rubbed her forehead with her left hand. “I don’t
understand. Who are you working for?”
The man frowned deeply. “Working for? I’m not working for anybody. For generation after generation, my ancestors have kept the Croesus treasure safe from marauders. Now this group, or organization, or whatever they are, has killed Eymen. This is the closest anyone’s ever gotten to the copper scroll.”
“But the men I was with are trying to keep those men from finding the copper scroll,” Abigail said.
The man continued to frown. “I can see you believe that, but I don’t share your confidence. What government agency wouldn’t want that gold?”
“When I translate the scroll, and you find the location to the treasure, what will you do with it?” Abigail asked him.
“The word passed down from our ancestors to us is that the treasure is in a subterranean cavern. I need to find it so I can blow up the entrance, so no one can enter ever again.”
“But they will simply excavate,” Abigail said.
“I will make sure no one knows it’s there.”
A small trickle of fear ran up Abigail’s spine. Was he saying he wasn’t going to leave any witnesses? Did that mean he was going to do away with her too? Once she translated the scroll, she would know where the treasure was.
“What do you need to translate it?” he said. “Do you need some sort of dictionaries or something like that?”
“Quite possibly,” Abigail said. “Still, I might be able to translate most of it.”
The man lowered his backpack to the ground. He opened it carefully and produced a box. He opened the box to reveal another small box, and inside that was a small box carefully wrapped. The process reminded Abigail of Russian nesting dolls.
Finally, he put on a pair of cotton gloves and opened the last box.
He beckoned Abigail over. “The copper scroll.”
Abigail gasped. Before her was an ancient artifact over two and a half thousand years old. It was magnificent.
“Don’t touch it,” Berat warned her.
“Of course not,” Abigail said. She bent over it. “It’s in good condition.”
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