The Templar Salvation (2010)

by Raymond Khoury

  They were soon trudging past the cone house where the man had been gunned down. The blood spatter had soaked into the soft, porous rock by the doorway, its faded appearance already making it look like a remnant from the distant past. There were no cops cordoning off the area, no yellow tape, no crime scene investigators poring over every indentation in the tufa. There was no need for any of it. It was all pretty cut and dried, and if the Iranian were to be caught, he wasn’t going to face a trial by jury.

  As she went by, Tess found herself shivering and couldn’t shake the image of Abdulkerim’s face bursting with anguish the moment the bullets ripped through him. She’d barely met the man, barely gotten to know him. She realized she knew nothing about him, whether or not he was married or had kids. And now he was dead. All within hours of her meeting him.

  They climbed up to the church. Using flashlights borrowed from the hotel, Tess pointed out the mural in the apse’s half dome to Reilly before leading him down to the crypt. She was still shivering as they entered the burial chamber, which was just as they’d left it. Being there was making her relive the scene. It was as if she were watching herself in a 3-D holographic diorama, a haunting replay with Abdulkerim’s worried face front and center.

  Reilly must have sensed it. “You okay?” he asked.

  She shook the disturbing images away and nodded, then showed him Conrad’s open grave. The broken pieces of the cooking pot were lying beside it. Nothing had been moved.

  Reilly glanced around the room. “What about these other graves?”

  She raked the beam across the markings on the walls. “Church dignitaries and benefactors.”

  “They could be hiding something else.”

  “Maybe,” Tess told him, her tone skeptical. “Short of digging them all up, it’s impossible to tell. The thing is, if that’s where Hosius’s stash is buried, I think they would have left something behind, some clue to point to it. Otherwise, it could be lost forever. But they’re just names, and none of them stand out as being out of place.”

  “Okay. So there’s the mural and this crypt. Anything else?”

  Tess shook her head. “We looked around the rest of the church before we left. That’s it.” As she said it, she remembered something—something that had occurred to her back when she was online and getting Hosius’s letter translated, at the hotel. She went back to what he said. “The mural.”

  Almost in a trance, she led him back up to the apse. She studied the mural again, aiming her light at the Greek lettering above the painting.

  “It’s just weird,” she said, almost under her breath, “having lines from a Sufi poem here, in a church.”

  “Sufi being … ?”

  “It’s a mystical form of Islam,” she explained. “Very popular in Turkey. It was, anyway, before it was outlawed in the 1920s.”

  “Hang on, a Muslim saying in a church?”

  “Not exactly Muslim. Sufism is different. It’s so different that hardcore Muslims like our Saudi friends and the Taliban consider its followers dangerous heretics and have totally banned them. They’re terrified of them because Sufism is very pacifist and tolerant and liberal—and it’s not about worship. It’s a personal experience, it’s about seeking one’s own path to God and trying to reach spiritual ecstasy. Rumi, the mystic who wrote this poem, was one of Sufism’s founding fathers. He preached that Sufism was open to people of all religions and that music, poetry, and dancing were the way to open the gates of paradise and reach God—a god who’s not the god of punishment or the god of revenge, but the god of love.”

  “Sounds groovy,” Reilly smirked.

  “It is. Which is why Rumi’s really popular back home. Massively popular. I even read somewhere that Sarah Jessica Parker does her aerobics to rock ‘n’ roll versions of his poems. He’s been turned into this New Age guru, which doesn’t really do justice to the intensity and depth of his writing, but it’s understandable given that he wrote things like, ‘My religion is to live through love,’ which, you’ve got to admit, is pretty radical for a thirteenth-century Muslim preacher.”

  “I can see why the Saudis don’t want his message to spread.”

  “It’s sad, really. Tragic. It’s a message that could do a lot of good out there right now.”

  Reilly stared at the fresco again. “Okay, but heretic or not, we still have a Muslim-lite line of poetry on a thousand-year-old church wall. Which, like you said, is pretty weird. What does it say anyway?”

  “Abdulkerim read it out for us.” She highlighted the Greek writing above the wall painting and translated it aloud, remembering the Byzantinist’s words. “’As for pain, like a hand cut in battle, consider the body a robe you wear. The worried, heroic deeds of a man and a woman are noble to the draper, where the dervishes relish the light breeze of spirit.’”

  Reilly shrugged. “’A hand cut in battle.’ There’s your reason. Can’t be that many poems with that line in them.”

  “Sure. But Rumi died in 1273. He had to have written it long before Conrad lost his hand.”

  Reilly reflected on the lines. “What does it mean anyway?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve got the rest of the poem here, I pulled it up online.” She fished a bunch of printouts from her rucksack and found the right sheet. “Here we go. The poem is called ‘Light Breeze.’ It says, ‘As for pain, like a hand cut in battle, consider the body a robe you wear. The worried, heroic deeds of men and women seem weary and futile to dervishes enjoying the light breeze of spirit …‘ “ She stopped. Her face crumpled up with confusion. “Wait a sec. This is different from what’s on the wall.”

  “Read it out again?”

  Tess concentrated on the Greek letters, comparing them to what was on her printout. “The mural says the heroic deeds are ‘noble,’ not ‘weary and futile.’ And it’s the deeds of ‘a man and a woman,’ not of ‘men and women,’ plural. The rest of it’s very different too.” She paused for a beat, concentrating on the parallel sentences. “Whoever put that inscription up there must have been trying to tell us something.” Her breathing quickened. “Maybe it’s telling us where the rest of the chests are.”

  “The result of Conrad’s ‘worried, heroic deeds’?” Reilly asked.

  “Not just Conrad’s. It says the deeds of ‘a man and a woman.’ Could that mean Conrad and some woman?” She frowned, deep in thought. “Was there a woman with him? And if there was, who was she?”

  “Hang on, weren’t the Templars monks? Like with vows of chastity and all that?”

  “You mean celibacy, and yes, they were celibate. No women allowed in their world.”

  “And they did this voluntarily? At a time when there was no ESPN?”

  She ignored him and brooded over it for a few seconds, then pulled out a pen from her sack and scribbled down the version from the mural on the sheet of paper, next to the printout of the original.

  She compared them again. “Okay. Let’s assume the changes were made for a reason. To point us somewhere. So whoever wrote this changed the deeds from being ‘weary and futile’ to being ‘noble.’ What if that refers to recovering the stash of Nicaea and keeping it safe?”

  “Keep going.”

  A wave of heightened awareness flooded through her. It was a sensation she loved, the feeling of being in the zone and knowing it. “The deeds aren’t weary and futile, they’re noble. To ‘the draper.’ ‘Where’ the dervishes relish the light breeze of spirit.”

  “I’m all ears, Yoda,” Reilly said.

  “What if it’s telling us who was looking after them?”

  “The ‘draper’?”

  “A draper where the dervishes live.”

  “Which is …”

  “In Konya, of course.”

  Reilly shrugged. “I knew that.”

  “Shut up. You don’t even know what a dervish is.”

  His expression turned mock-sheepish. “It’s not something I’m proud of.”

  “A dervish is a member of a Sufi brotherhoo
d, you Neanderthal—a Sufi order. Rumi’s followers are the most famous of them. They’re known as ‘whirling dervishes’ because of the prayer ritual that they do where they whirl around like spinning tops, which they do to reach a kind of trance-like state that lets them focus on the god within them.”

  “‘The god within them,’” Reilly noted, serious now. “Sounds kind of gnostic, doesn’t it?”

  Tess raised an eyebrow. “True.” She flashed him an impressed look and said, “Maybe not so Neanderthal after all,” then mulled the idea over for a beat. The spiritual message was indeed similar. She parked the thought for the time being and said, “Rumi and his brotherhood were based in Konya. He’s buried there, his tomb is now a big museum.” Her mind was already two steps ahead of her mouth. “Konya. It’s got to be in Konya.”

  “Conrad died here. Konya’s—how far is it from here?”

  Tess tried to remember what Abdulkerim had said. “A couple of hundred miles west of here.”

  “Not a small distance to cover in those days. So how did it get there? Who took it there?”

  “Maybe the same person who wrote this,” she said, gesturing at the Greek lettering on the mural. Her mind was still leapfrogging ahead in search of answers. “But Konya was Sufi territory back then. Still is. If Hosius’s stash was taken there, whoever did it must have been close to the Sufis—or been a Sufi himself.”

  “Him- or herself,” Reilly corrected her. “Remember, a man and a woman. Could our mystery woman be this Sufi?”

  “Could be. Men and women are considered equal in Sufism, and many Sufi saints were mentored by women.” She thought about it for a long second, then said, “We’ve got to go there. We’ve got to go to Konya.”

  Reilly gave her a deeply dubious look. “Come on, you don’t really think that—”

  “These changes were made for a reason, Sean. And I really think there’s a strong chance it’s telling us that Hosius’s trove was handed over for safekeeping to some Sufi draper in Konya,” she insisted. “That’s where we’ll start.”

  “How?”

  “Professions are often handed down from generation to generation in this part of the world. We need to find a draper whose ancestor was in one of Rumi’s lodges.”

  Reilly seemed far from convinced. “You really think you’re going to find a family of drapers that goes back seven hundred years?”

  “I know I’m going to try,” she taunted him. “You got a better idea?”

  Chapter 53

  KONYA, TURKEY

  A few precocious stars were ushering out the setting sun as a taxi dropped Reilly and Tess off in the heart of one of the oldest settlements on the planet.

  Every stone in the city was soaked in history. Legend had it that it was the first town to emerge from the great flood, and archaeological evidence showed people living there continuously since Neolithic tribes settled in the area more than ten thousand years ago. St. Paul was said to have preached there three times from as early as A.D. 53, setting the city onto a stellar path that reached its peak when it became the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate in the thirteenth century—the same time that it was home to Rumi and his brotherhood of dervishes. The city had declined precipitously since its glory days under the sultans, but it was still home to the second-most visited attraction in Turkey, with more than two million visitors streaming in every year to pay homage to the great mystic. His mausoleum, the Yesil Turbe—the “Green Tomb”—was the spiritual epicenter of the Sufi faith.

  It was also where Tess decided they’d start their search.

  She knew it wouldn’t be easy. Sufism was still banned in Turkey. There were no lodges to poke around in, no elders to ask. At least, not out in the open. Sufi spiritual gatherings were only conducted in strict privacy, away from uninvited eyes. The threat of prison sentences still loomed large for potential offenders.

  Sufism had been outlawed in 1925, soon after the father of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, founded his republic out of the ashes of the religion-driven Ottoman Empire. Desperate to demonstrate how Westernized his new country would be, he strove to ensure that his new state was strictly secular and put up an impermeable wall between religion and government. The Sufis, whose lodges wielded influence at the highest levels of Ottoman society and government, had to go. The lodges were all shut down, with most turned into mosques. Public rituals, which were perceived by Ataturk and his government as too backward and a drag on the Western-inspired modernity they aspired to, were banned, as was any teaching of the tradition. In fact, the only visible manifestation of Sufism in the country left today was in the folkloric dance performances of the sema, the whirling prayer ceremony of Rumi’s followers that had, ironically, now become one of the main touristic emblems of the country. And that was only after they had been grudgingly re-allowed in the 1950s, following an inquiry by the curious wife of a visiting American diplomat who was keen to actually see one. And so the bighearted faith ended up being banned by both the fundamentalist regimes farther east in countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, for being heretically liberal, and by the progressive Turks, for the opposite reason.

  From the sea of austere beards and tight head scarves all around them, it was clear that Konya was a very pious and conservative place. Contrastingly, Westerners in casual summer clothing were also out in abundance, both groups mingling and mixing casually. Tess and Reilly joined the flow of pilgrims, dozens of men and women, young and old, from all corners of the globe, heading toward the shrine. It loomed up ahead, unmissable with its squat, pointed, turquoise-tiled tower. The big, gray medieval building had been Rumi’s tekke, the lodge where he and his followers lived and meditated. The lodge was now a museum built around his tomb and those of his father and other Sufi saints.

  They followed the procession through the large arched portal and into the heart of the mausoleum. Dioramas of mannequins in traditional Sufi settings filled most of the rooms, lifeless re-creations of now-outlawed practices, an eerie reminder of a not-so-distant tradition that had been stopped in its tracks.

  Tess found a stall with pamphlets in various languages and picked up an English one, then perused it as they meandered past the various displays. Something in it made her nod to herself, which Reilly caught.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Rumi’s writings. Listen to this. ‘I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not. I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there. I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went very far but God I found not. Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there. Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.‘”

  “Brave guy,” Reilly commented. “I’m amazed they didn’t lop his head off.”

  “The Seljuk Sultan actually invited him to live here. He didn’t have a problem with Rumi’s ideas, just like he didn’t have a problem with the Christians in Cappadocia.”

  “I miss those Seljuks.”

  Tess nodded, her mind floating across the imagined landscapes of alternate worlds. “You know, the more I think about it, the more I see how much common ground there was between what the Sufis believed and what I think the Templars were going for. They both saw religion as something that should bring us all closer together, not a divisive force.”

  “At least these guys didn’t get burned at the stake.”

  Tess shrugged. “They didn’t have a king lusting after the gold in their coffers.”

  They stepped through a doorway that led into the grand room where Mawlana Jelaluddin Rumi, the mevlana himself—the master—was buried. The cavernous space around them was breathtaking, its walls masterpieces of ornate gold calligraphy carvings, its ceilings dazzling kaleidoscopes of arabesques. At its center was his tomb. It was oversized and stately, swathed by a huge, gold-embroidered cloth and topped by an enormous turban.

  They stood back and watched as teary-eyed pilgrims rubbed their foreheads o
n a silver step at the base of the tomb before kissing it. Others stood around the room, reading the poet’s words to themselves or sharing them in small groups, their faces alive with felicity. A great hush suffused the space, and the mood in the shrine was gently reverent, more akin to fans visiting the tomb of a great poet than to any kind of fervent religious pilgrimage. Which was what Tess had feared. There was nothing there that looked like it was going to help her locate her elusive family of drapers, assuming they’d ever existed at all. She needed to ask around but didn’t know who to ask.

  They left the shrine and wandered down a broad boulevard that led deep into the old city. Shops, cafes, and restaurants teemed with locals and visitors, while kids played freely on grassy knolls. The city exuded a tranquility that Tess and Reilly had both sorely missed.

  “Maybe we can find a town hall,” Tess said, her gait slow and ponderous, her arms folded with frustration. “Someplace where they keep civic records.”

  “Maybe there’s a drapers section in their yellow pages?” Reilly added.

  Tess wasn’t in the mood.

  “What? I’m serious.” He gave her an empathetic grin, then said, “Problem is, we’ve got a slight language barrier here.”

  “The only dervishes around seem to be the ones doing the big shows for the tourists. They deal with foreigners. We should be able to find someone who understands us there. Maybe we can convince one of them to introduce us to a Sufi elder.”

  Reilly pointed a finger down the road. “Let’s ask them.”

  Tess turned. A sign announced “Iconium Tours,” and below, in smaller letters, “Travel Agency.”

  “I CAN GET YOU IN to see a sema tonight,” the owner of the agency, a gregarious man in his early fifties by the name of Levant, told them with infectious enthusiasm. “It’s a wonderful show, you’ll love it. You like Rumi’s poetry, yes?”

  “Very much.” Tess smiled uncomfortably. “But would this be a real prayer ceremony or a more …”—she wavered—”touristic show?”

  Levant gave her a curious look. He seemed slightly offended. “Any sema is a real prayer ceremony. The dervishes who will be whirling there take what they do very seriously.”