Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train

by Maria Hudgins

  “I want Lacy to see the pottery. Is the room still open?” Paul peered down the building’s long central hall. Gülden led them to a small square room with workbenches around three walls. On the way, Lacy glanced through open doors at bunk beds, backpacks, and clothing strewn everywhere. One small room had an apartment-size stove and refrigerator.

  “The finds on this side,” Gülden said in perfect English, “are from the Hittite level. These, over here,” she indicated with a sweep of her hand, “are Dr. Hannah’s. They’re older, of course.” Paul’s side of the room was populated much more sparsely than Bob Mueller’s.

  Lacy surveyed the Hittite side first and immediately spotted specimens she couldn’t wait to study. Not only were the sherds made from several different clays, but the paints ranged from reds and browns through blues, greens and yellows. Though not in her field, several small female figurines carved from stone and a couple of small rings in shiny yellow metal nevertheless captured her interest.

  As soon as she looked at the skimpy array on Paul’s bench, she did a double-take and moved in on what proved to be a curved piece of bone. “Ohmigod.”

  “A piece of skull,” Paul said. “Wish we could find the rest of it.”

  “It’s not that. It’s the red.” The fragment was dotted with a bright scarlet pigment. In all likelihood, it had once been completely covered, but now most of the paint had flaked off. “May I pick it up?” She looked at her two companions for permission.

  Paul nodded.

  Lacy grabbed a magnifying glass and carried the piece to a gooseneck lamp. “It’s cinnabar. I’ll have to test it, but I’m sure it’s cinnabar. How old is this?”

  “We haven’t done carbon dating yet, but I’m thinking fifteen hundred B.C.”

  “Did they trade with Spain that long ago? Or with the Far East?” Mentally, Lacy ran through all she knew about sources of cinnabar. A few deposits were found in the mountains of western Turkey, but she knew of no evidence the mineral was ever mined in antiquity.

  “Hell, no. They never went more than a few miles from home.” Paul moved closer and took the magnifying glass from her.

  She handed him the skull fragment. “Looks like I’ve already got my work cut out for me.”

  Paul grinned and shook his head. “You are amazing.” He turned to Gülden. “Show Lacy where she can sleep.”

  Gülden nodded and started for the door, Paul still studying the cinnabar-speckled piece of skull. As Lacy stepped into the hall, following Gülden, Sierra called out, “Bus leaves in one minute! Move it!”

  Lacy happened to be looking back at Paul at that moment. At the sound of Sierra’s voice, she caught a distinct tightening of his shoulders as if someone had dumped ice water on his head.

  Chapter Seven

  The bed Gülden showed her was nothing but two inches of foam on a sheet of plywood. A couple of plastic crates stacked against the wall served as dresser, bookshelf, and nightstand. Down the hall a good thirty feet from her room, a self-contained shower stall occupied a space next to the door to the kitchenette. It stood in the passageway separated from the hall by only a plastic curtain printed with Disney characters. Behind a narrow door on the other side of the kitchenette, a toilet was installed on a definite slant in a tiny space and surrounded by crumbling linoleum in clear violation of a dozen building codes.

  Gülden had left neatly folded clean sheets on the foot of the bed. She picked up her little bag of clothes and started for the end of hall where Sierra stood, twirling the van keys around one finger.

  “I’m putting you out, aren’t I?” Lacy said to Gülden. “You’ve been staying here, and you’re leaving because of me.”

  “No, no. My tent is in the camp, next to my husband’s,” the older woman said. “I have stayed here only a few times when I needed to work late. Sleep well.” With that, Gülden stepped through the door Sierra held open for her, then quickly shut behind her.

  * * *

  What followed was quite possibly the longest night of Lacy’s life. The moment the van pulled away, the students began the party. Music from speakers hidden in one of the bunkrooms was cranked up to a volume that could have been heard for miles. Her ordeal continued through her shower when a young man she’d never seen before threw back the shower curtain and grinned. Lacy’s arms endeavored to cover a triad of privates. He said something like, “Sorry,” but stood back, still grinning, head wobbling drunkenly, while she diverted one hand from its crucial position over her right breast to yank the curtain closed. That caused her towel to fall off the curtain rod into the water at her feet. She bundled herself into the wet towel and padded out. Why bother with the towel? She might as well walk stark naked down the hall and get it over with.

  The aroma of cannabis smelled strongest at the door to the bunkroom next to the pottery room that held the finds. Lacy wondered if any of these students had seen the movie about the kid thrown into a Turkish prison for smuggling hashish, then realized the movie was before their time. In fact, it was before her time, too. She hadn’t actually seen it, only heard about it.

  Back in her little cubicle, she checked the foam mattress for bedbugs and spread the clean sheets Gülden had left her.

  Of course she couldn’t sleep, Aside from the party noise, the board beneath the mattress hit the protuberant end of every bone in her slender body. Face down, her knees, pelvic bones, and sternum took the brunt of the pressure. Lying on her back, her spine, like a suspension bridge, was left to span the distance between her buttocks and her shoulders. Lying on either side was worst of all because her full weight lay on her downside shoulder and hip. For once, Lacy wished she had a thick blanket of body fat.

  Like a swarm of bees, questions about the man on the train buzzed through her restless brain. What was wrong with Paul’s idea that the man must have run into Max Sebring as the wealthy benefactor passed through Istanbul and that the wretched man had simply swiped the trench coat? She recalled his face and wished she had a photo, because the image, she feared, would soon fade from her mind. Was he, as Paul suggested, a bum? He spoke English. What sort of bum goes to Turkey to do his bumming? Why would any man go to Turkey, with sufficient funds to get there, then become a bum? Might he have been caught without a passport, no friends to send him money, no credit cards, no phone? Why wouldn’t he get help from the American Embassy?

  The look on his face. Lacy could still see the fear, the weariness, the panic, more clearly than she could remember his features. Whatever had made him jump the turnstile and hop that train was no sudden hankering to see an old friend. It was something critical. Life or death.

  Lacy couldn’t stand that bed another minute. Her watch said 2:18 but the music and laughter showed no signs of abating. She pulled a flashlight from her bag, picked up her thin blanket and a pillow, and left the building in search of a quieter spot, if not softer. On the back side of the bunkhouse, she found the noise somewhat dampened by the building itself, and picked a spot on a grassy slope. Wrapping herself in the blanket, she jammed the pillow under her head and returned to her thoughts.

  Who knew Max and how well? Certainly Henry Jones knew him well after twenty years. And Bob Mueller. Bob’s association with Max Sebring went back at least ten years when Bob worked at Sebring’s museum. Since then, Max had been his backer. Impossible. To think that Henry and Bob wouldn’t know Max Sebring? How many others at the camp knew him as well? The man who died at camp that morning was Max Sebring. Had to be.

  Lacy reached a conclusion. The man on the train wasn’t Max nor was he a simple King of the Road, either. The man on the train knew Max (had his trench coat) and knew of some impending danger. To Max, or to himself? If to Max, it couldn’t have been coincidence that Max died when he did. He must have been murdered. The man on the train didn’t make it to the camp in time to warn him because he himself was murdered. Now it looked like a conspiracy. Lacy put the brakes on her imagination.

  The music stopped, at last, and the night sounds crept
in, surrounding her with hoots and yelps and eerie moans, like none she’d ever heard before. The chill in the night air forced her to pull the blanket up until it covered her nose. She rephrased her original question. Who was the real Max Sebring had become who was that man on the train and what did he know?

  She had to find out where he was now. From the train, the ambulance would have taken his body to a morgue or a hospital. Officials would have pronounced him dead and performed an autopsy. Or would they? She remembered what Henry said about Muslim burial laws. The police would’ve examined whatever evidence they gathered on the train and alongside the tracks. If they found any identification on the body, they would’ve notified next-of-kin. Next of kin, assuming he was American or British, would not have arrived in Turkey this soon. If she hurried, she might be able to find out what she needed to know from the police, the medical examiner, or the hospital. She might even find a way to meet whoever came to claim the body. Where would these places be and how could she get there? Might she talk Paul or Sierra into driving her or lending her the van? What about the language barrier? She’d been in Turkey long enough to handle simple communication but she’d need more than that. Paul would be of no help. He knew less Turkish than she did. Oh well, she’d find a way. She had to.

  As morning light tapped on her eyelids, a long, low growl sent shivers up her spine. Her eyes popped open, and the growl came again but sounded closer. It took her a moment to remember where she was and why. Lacy, lying on her side, was afraid to lift her head and look lest her movement precipitate a full-on attack. A twig snapped. Another growl. Then nothing for what seemed hours. She strained her ears for sounds coming from the bunkhouse—any reassurance that someone was awake. She debated whether she should jump up and run, never mind what it was, just get the hell away. Or if she should slowly, quietly, lift her head to venture a look.

  Something wet touched the back of her bare arm. A foul odor, like rancid meat, drifted past her nose. She heard another growl, but the tone of this one rose at the end like a question.

  Twisting her head slowly, she saw it. A dog. It looked like every dog she’d seen since she came to Turkey. Buff-colored Anatolian sheep dogs lived wild all across the country and made themselves useful by herding sheep, but were never, according to Muslim law, petted or allowed inside a human dwelling. Subsisting on scraps and whatever wildlife they could kill, the arrangement hardly seemed fair but it had been that way for centuries, so apparently it was working. Again, the dog touched her arm with his nose and sniffed. At least he was no longer growling. Make that she. Turning her head a bit farther, Lacy found herself staring up at a double row of engorged teats. Where were her puppies? A childish temptation to run off looking for the pups gave way to the grown-up realization that finding them would guarantee an encounter with motherly fangs.

  Instead she stood up slowly, shook out her blanket, and headed for the bunkhouse, from which she now heard groggy morning voices.

  * * *

  The van picked them up at seven. Lacy had found nothing in the kitchenette but a one-liter bottle of cola and a paper-wrapped chunk of furry cheese. She spied salt and pepper shakers on the back of the stove, indicating a meal of some sort had been prepared or consumed here at some time in the past. One of the students, bloodshot and disheveled, told her they would get a proper breakfast at the dig.

  Riding in the back of the van without throwing up from the stale alcohol breath of her fellow passengers presented one more challenge. So Lacy sat on the bare metal floor of the van in a more or less fetal position with her nose buried between her knees. Some of the students wanted to know more about her, but most simply sat there, hung-over heads bobbing with the bumps in the road. Answering their questions with a minimum number of words and one breath, she returned her nose to its niche between her upraised knees before inhaling.

  “How long have you known Paul?” one asked.

  “A couple of years. We worked together on a tomb in Egypt.”

  “Was that before his wife died?”

  “No, after.” Lacy and Paul had never talked about his wife or how she’d died, caught in the crossfire between warring factions in Palestine. Lacy found out by snooping on the Internet, from news articles she read when they worked together in Egypt. Although she’d given him ample opportunity to tell her about it, he veered around the subject as if it were a black hole. Apparently these kids knew about it. Who’d told them?

  Paul waited for them under a tree, the sole of one boot planted against the trunk and the morning sun glinting off his round metal-rimmed glasses. Lacy piled out as soon as the van door slid open. “How was your night?” Paul pushed away from the tree with the planted foot and ambled toward her.

  “Compared to what?” Lacy looked straight into his eyes. “Compared to being skinned alive and rolled in salt, I’d say it was about the same.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “I slept outside. Actually I lay outside, with swarms of bugs and noises that ran the gamut from screeches and screams to a particularly frightening sort of moan. I woke up to find a large animal looking down at me and drooling on my neck. But that was infinitely better than trying to sleep in that house. Like sleeping on the track at the Daytona Three Hundred.”

  “I’ll figure out something better for you.” Paul grabbed her duffel bag and steered her toward the big tent with a hand on the back of her waist. This morning he smelled of soap. “And it’s the Daytona Five Hundred, by the way.”

  The breakfast buffet offered mostly standard Turkish fare. Olives, cheeses, breads and yoghurts. Lacy longed for bacon and eggs, but Muslim law forbade bacon. Besides, the bowl of scrambled eggs had crusted over. She should have been suspicious of the lone egg cup with its pristine white contents, but it looked so good, that she took it even though it was the last one, then added fresh melon slices and a hard roll to her plate.

  She took a seat across the table from Gülden Güler, who smiled a good morning and inspected Lacy’s plate. Gülden, her dark blue scarf framing her face, repeated Paul’s question about her night’s rest. Lacy pulled no punches, but described the ordeal in graphic detail.

  Gülden’s eyes widened as she listened, her teacup jittering against the table top. “Unforgiveable! They would not dare to do that when I am there. They know I would call the police. I have told them before, and they know better than to try such foolishness with me.” She scowled as she jammed her plastic knife into a pungent chunk of goat cheese. The aroma drifted across the table.

  “You have more authority than I do.” Lacy ripped her hard roll in half. “Paul says he’ll see what he can come up with.”

  Gülden tilted her head to one side. “Would you rather stay here at the camp?”

  “Anything would be better than that board they call a bed.”

  “Why don’t we exchange places?” Gülden lowered her voice to a whisper. “I can’t sleep here. Because of my back. I need a hard board for sleeping, and the pollen on the grass here—it irritates my eyes.”

  “You want me to sleep with your husband?”

  Gülden grabbed a corner of her headscarf and covered her face. Lacy realized she’d proposed something that might get her stoned to death. Slowly, the older woman lowered her scarf and Lacy could see the tears of laughter at the corners of her eyes. “No, no. My husband and I have two tents. Mine is near his, but it can be moved easily to wherever you want.”

  “Oh.”

  With a grin still erupting now and again at the side of her mouth, Gülden explained that she hadn’t been completely truthful when she said she stayed at the bunkhouse occasionally, when she was working late. The fact was that she slept there most of the time. “Süleyman and I have been married for thirty-five years,” she said. “I told you I wanted to stay near him so you would not feel as if you were throwing me out of my room.”

  Lacy wanted so badly to say yes. It made sense. It was logical. But what would Paul say? If he and Sierra Blue were sleeping together, as Lacy suspected, i
t might be awkward. But why? She had no history with Paul. Not really. Why shouldn’t he and Sierra sleep together? They were consenting adults. It was none of her business, really. Any romance between herself and Paul existed only in her head, and if she imagined Paul felt the same, it was just that. Imagined. So she’d been wrong. So what?

  “Sounds good to me. Let’s do it.” Lacy slapped her hand on the table top and grinned. She raised her spoon and brought the back of it down smartly on the egg still perched in its little cup. A cloud of white powder flew out. Lacy froze. Her first thought: Anthrax.

  Everyone inside the tent erupted in gales of laughter. Gülden grabbed the corner of her scarf again. Süleyman, standing at one end of the buffet table, danced a little jig. Lacy spied a slip of paper inside the hollow egg, pulled it out, and read it. “Ha, Ha, Ha.”

  “I’m sorry, Lacy. He pulls that on every new person on their first morning,” Gülden said. “I take no responsibility for anything the fool does.” Gülden’s eyes, however, twinkled. Lacy decided she liked this woman.

  Before she knew it, Lacy was telling her all about the man on the train. She hadn’t meant to tell anyone but Paul, and even him, not everything. She knew he’d belittle her ideas and insist there was no mystery at all. So why was she telling this woman she hardly knew? Perhaps because she needed to talk to someone who had been here when Max Sebring died. Someone who’d actually talked with him but had no close link to him. A disinterested observer. As an observer, who could be better than a conservator, trained to notice the tiniest cracks, any sort of pattern, while keeping the big picture in mind?

  From her own experience in Egypt, Lacy knew that an idol with its head missing was probably insignificant but a dozen idols, all with heads missing, was significant. Like herself, Gülden was an expert observer.

  The older woman listened without comment until Lacy finished. “It’s definitely a strange situation, I agree. But what can you do about it? What evidence do you have that it was anything more than an accident?”