“And you think the old man knew about this?”
“Of course not. He just thought we wanted to see the Christian shrines down there.”
“And exactly why has Mazare chosen to come over to the dark side?”
“The most convincing reason of all. Tomas has been stingy with him. I’m offering a sizeable cut of the proceeds.”
When Tomas told me about the notion of a hidden Assyrian treasure it had seemed like a stretch, but this new revelation of Ward’s entered the realm of make-believe. People had combed these passages for thousands of years; a hidden tomb would have been found long ago. There was as much likelihood of an undiscovered tomb filled with treasure existing in an underground Turkish city as of the Grail turning up in Cleveland. A fanatical desperation to make a colossal find had caused him to lose his grasp of reality.
An idea occurred to me, however. The honeycomb of chambers and passages these underground cities were famous for had many connecting stairways and holes in the floors. Some of the holes had served as latrines or wells, but ladders had been used in others to climb down to more hallways below. If I kept on the alert I might be able to drop down into one of them as I passed it and get away. It offered me a slim chance.
“What’s the point of taking me?”
“You’re our insurance policy,” Ward said.
“Tomas would be happy to see the end of me. I told you that before.”
“He’s down there with two other men and they’re all armed. We’ll put you out in front to bargain with him. If they start shooting, you’re our cover.”
And you’ll never get that far.
Ward looked at his watch. “Tomas has been down there for almost two hours. We have to leave.” He pointed in the direction of the old man, lying still on the floor. “Pick him up,” he said to me. “We can’t leave him here.”
“Do your own dirty work. I’m not touching him.”
Ward glared at me. “Choose your poison then. Eris’s potion or Lazarus’s knife. I’d recommend Eris. She’ll give you a quicker death.”
Mazare spat some more words out and walked over to where the old man lay.
“Mazare says he’ll carry the old man,” Eris said as Mazare lifted the body effortlessly, the old man weighing little more than a boy. His lips had turned blue and his head swung awkwardly. I turned my eyes away. Mazare’s partner stayed above to watch out for any inquisitive neighbors.
In the cellar, a rough doorway had been cut into the stucco wall. We pushed the door open and entered a tunnel. A string of white Christmas lights had been tied to hooks in the ceiling, providing a dim illumination. Shelves had been stacked on either side of the passage, piled with round cheeses wrapped in burlap, dusty jars of olives, and preserves. It was noticeably cooler down here.
The shelves also held an assortment of clay vessels. I recognized them immediately as antiquities and guessed that the elderly man had found them in the course of making this corridor and stashed away a few valuable finds of his own. The tunnel had been shored up with timbers. Every ten feet or so, sprays of grit dropped from the ceiling as Shim’s heavy tread hit the ground. I wondered how stable the structure was.
The passage ended abruptly. A circular rock, like a large millstone with a hole dead center, blocked our way. The object was clearly man-made. “The original doors,” Ward said. “They used those holes to shoot arrows through.”
We stood back while Shim, grunting with the effort, rolled the door to one side, revealing a second corridor. Here, the electric light ended. When Ward flicked on his jacklight a rat scurried into a fissure in the wall, its long, naked tail looking like a snake sliding into its hole. The stone walls here were rougher and the ceiling lower. The tunnel smelled of ancient spores and fungal growths, the scents of decay. A primitive trench had been cut along one side of the floor. Shim was forced to walk stooped over. We’d entered the underground city.
Farther along, the wall had been sanded smooth. A mosaic had been applied to it, considerably damaged but still intact. It was composed of Byzantine Christian symbols and themes, among them a prominent cross. Below it a square hole had been chipped out of the rock. I figured it had once served as a primitive altar. I knew that in Cappadocia, these settlements went back 3500 years to the Hittite empire and possibly even earlier. Over the centuries many cultures had used them, added on to them, left their own indelible mark. The labyrinth of rooms and halls provided an excellent defense system and could offer protection from sieges above ground for months. I thought I could see the carbon imprint of smoky torches that had once been fixed into these walls.
Eventually we came across several empty chambers. We halted at one of them and waited while Mazare carried the old man in and laid his body on the floor.
In the next chamber Ward pointed to a lioness carved in relief on the back wall. It was so well executed that when Ward played his light on the image, the lioness appeared to leap out of the rock face. The artist had deliberately used the natural contours of the rock to define the animal’s body. The lion reared on her hind legs, her open mouth displaying a row of ferocious teeth. On her stomach was a carefully depicted row of teats.
“That’s Phrygian,” Ward said, his excitement palpable. His mood had changed again. He seemed exultant now, as if the sight of the lion had confirmed all his hopes, and his previous bad temper had channeled into elation. I thought I could even detect a hopeful gleam in Lazarus’s dead eyes.
Nahum’s words came back to me. “Where is the den of lions?” Had I been wrong? Were we on the right track after all? If so, how did Nahum, a scribe living in Assyria, learn about the hidden tomb? I supposed it was possible he could have accompanied the Assyrian king on his campaign into Anatolia.
As we made our way down the corridor, Mazare spun around suddenly and motioned for us to stop. We’d arrived at two small rooms cut into the walls, facing each other. About a hundred feet ahead the passageway ended in a T-shaped intersection. Mazare whispered to Eris. “He wants us to turn off our lights,” she said. “The tomb is to the left.”
The lights clicked off, leaving us in total blackness. As our eyes adjusted, we could see a faint glimmer coming from the left branch of the intersection.
Mazare clicked his light back on and directed the beam toward the floor. He spoke again to Eris. “He’ll go up first,” she said. Ward directed all the others into the rooms but insisted I stand out in the passageway in plain sight. Ward and Eris got behind Shim in one of the rooms; Lazarus took the other. When I tried to force my way in, he pulled out his knife.
If Tomas was here after all and a hail of bullets came my way, all I could do to protect myself was flatten my body against a wall. Mazare inched along the left wall until he’d almost reached the arch of the intersection. He beckoned to me. I stayed put. Then he said something—“Come,” I thought. But I must have imagined it. He shrugged and holding his flashlight with one hand, dug into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and punched in a number.
For a second I wondered why he would try to make a call down here. In the next instant I realized what was about to happen and ran full tilt toward him.
Thirty
Ablinding flash lit up the corridor, followed by a long boom. I heard Ward yell in the second before the ceiling blew up. Moments later I was thrown face down on the floor. I tried to move but my left leg was caught under something. I twisted my upper body and feeling with my hand could tell that the object pinning me down was a coffee table–sized chunk of rock that had sheared off and dropped on me. My leg had been cradled by the trench and so hadn’t been smashed to smithereens when the rock fell. There was no pain and I could move my foot. I tried to grip the edge of the stone with both hands. But my position gave me little leverage and I couldn’t shift it even an inch.
I wasn’t able to see a thing. The rock dust was so thick I could barely breathe. I undid my shirt and tugged it off, wrapping it around my nose and mouth.
When we’d first entered the tunne
l I’d tried to keep track of our direction and figured the passageway extended under the cliffs the old man’s house backed on to. That meant there was little chance anyone in the village would have heard the explosion. Eventually someone would venture into the tunnels and see the rockfall, but it would be far too late for me. Fate had already delivered so many low blows I’d lost count. And now, when I was finally free of my tormentors, I was condemned to die in this dusty hell.
Probably no more than ten minutes had passed, although it seemed much longer, when I heard the first sounds. A kind of groaning and babbling. I recognized the torturous attempts to speak that could only have come from Shim.
A dim light shone above me. Through the drifting dust I saw that the epicenter of the blast had occurred near the two small rooms. The force had been so strong, it had pulverized the rock. Stones the size of eggs up to small boulders jammed the passageway, extending up to a yawning hole in the roof. I couldn’t see how far back the pile of rubble went. Had I not run when I did, it would have buried me alive.
At the top of the rock pile a spray of stones shot out. I yelled at Shim to stop before another landslide hit me. More stones dropped but this time slowly, and eventually his meaty hand pushed through. He cleared a larger space and then his hand disappeared. Eris squeezed through the gap and clambered down the pile, soon followed by Ward. Both of them were covered with the yellowish rock dust.
There was no sign of Lazarus. Ward looked at me and said, “Now, that suits you, Madison, pinned like a dead insect to the floor.”
“How did you survive?”
“The main thrust of the rockfall hit the other room. It blocked us off too, but Shim could move a mountain if he wanted to.”
“Lift this thing off me. My leg’s caught.”
“In your dreams,” he said.
Somewhere along the line, I’d persuaded myself that I had some value to them, for what future agenda, I still didn’t know. Using me as a shield from Tomas and his men was no longer an issue. Ward knew he’d exhausted any information I could give him. That meant Laurel was history too. I closed my hand over a sharp piece of rock. I’d think of some reason to get Ward close and smash it into his head. If I was going to die down here, so would he.
Shim cleared a much larger space and squeezed through the pile of rocks. Ward shone his light in the direction of the entrance to the other room. I thought I could see a dark crack that may have been the outline of the doorway. While the other two stood back, Shim got to work pulling away the stones. Eris called out for Lazarus but received no response.
Shim managed to shift a huge slab, throwing it to one side like a feather pillow. A cry emerged from his throat and he fell back from the stomach-turning sight as if he’d been smacked. Lazarus’s head and shoulders were revealed, one side of his face caved in, the white bones of his skull exposed, his blood-smeared mouth open as if he’d just yawned. It was filled with rock dust. His knife blade had pierced the soft tissue under his jaw, the rockfall coming down with such force it had pushed the knife in up to its hilt.
The memory of what Corinne had told me about Hanna Jaffrey came back to me. That she’d been stoned, her face battered almost beyond recognition. And now Lazarus, entombed in his pyramid of rocks, had met the same fate.
“Throw the stones back, Shim. Might as well give him a decent burial,” Ward said grimly.
They did pry me loose after all. I was too emotionally drained at that point to wonder why. I limped behind them. We turned left at the T-shaped intersection and saw the source of Mazare’s light, the one he’d persuaded us had been used by Tomas. It was a large floodlight sitting on the floor. I saw no electric wires so assumed it had a powerful battery. Mazare had destroyed it by kicking the glass in when he fled.
This tunnel ran at what I judged was a forty-five-degree angle to the main passageway we’d followed. We had no idea where it led, but Mazare had taken it so an exit had to be ahead. Ward coughed continuously on our way back. Our one jacklight began to flicker. If we found no way out, soon we’d have to feel our way through. After trudging along for a stretch, Eris pointed to a faint circle of illumination ahead that grew brighter as we approached. It turned out to be one of the holes we’d seen in the cliffs when we first arrived at the village. We burst into the sunlight, took a moment to get our bearings, and made for the car.
The Merc was gone, of course. They’d left the blue van but we had no keys. Eris got to work breaking into the van and hot-wiring the ignition while Ward fumed and Shim stood guard over me. Ward’s sat phone had survived the ordeal unscathed; he made a quick call on it before we left. He told Eris to get in the passenger side while he drove. Shim waited until I got in the back and stuffed himself in beside me. I wondered whether Eris had lost her little trove of chemicals but decided I’d rather not find out at this point.
Ward’s white-hot rage at being bested by Tomas was so pronounced you could cut the atmosphere inside the car with a knife. Mazare had lied, double-crossed Ward, and remained loyal to Tomas after all. The prospect of gaining a lot of money had been a ruse that he and Tomas knew Ward would swallow. It gave me some satisfaction to see the confident professor, always in control, coming apart at the seams. Away from his comfortable life in New York he was on shaky ground and he knew it.
Deeply ashamed over falling into the trap, Ward kept an angry silence all the way, breaking it only once to comment, “Once we’re in Iraq everything will change. We’re the ones holding the cards there.” He’d made one gargantuan mistake with this foray into Turkey. I hoped his certainty that he’d succeed in Iraq would prove as baseless.
We drove to Erkilet Airport outside the city of Kayseri, where the plane was waiting for us, and flew into Amman. After a couple of hours stalled there we got the go-ahead to proceed to Baghdad. This surprised me. I’d assumed we’d drive in from Jordan. Ward’s connections with the powers that be must have been in pretty good shape.
When we arrived in Baghdad the plane sat for at least an hour on the landing strip. A stern American official in uniform entered, took a good look at me, checked my passport, and left. I assumed he was clearing me to enter the country. We stepped off the plane into a blast furnace and onto a paved area full of cracks and peppered with weeds. It had to be over one hundred degrees. How soldiers could bear this heat in full battle dress, carrying eighty pounds of gear, I couldn’t imagine. I sucked in a breath and got a mouthful of grit. A white Humvee with tinted windows waited for us, the vehicle dented and battered and covered with dust.
Two musclemen occupied the front seat, modern barbarians wearing helmets and ACU jackets over sweat-stained undershirts and khaki jeans. ID tags flopped on chains around their necks. Both were clean-shaven and had buzz cuts. One wore a series of patches in a row on his left sleeve. They carried weapons that looked dangerous enough to destroy whole buildings.
I glanced over at Ward. “Who’s the advance guard?”
“Private contractors. You can’t survive around here without them.”
“They look kind of young.”
“What are they going to do, get some low-life job back home?
You’re looking at a thousand a day here.”
“So exactly where are we going?”
“To the al-Mansour Hotel. You can’t complain. It’s a five star.”
A hotel? That was a surprise. I’d feared it would be some kind of detention center. If Ward was forced to be my jail warden, I guessed he wanted as much comfort as possible.
“You won’t be cuffed when we go into the hotel. Stay beside us. Our friends here will walk behind all the time, so it definitely isn’t worth making any stupid moves. If you try to venture out anywhere beyond the hotel you’ll walk straight into a firefight.”
We roared out of the airport onto a stretch of highway. How many times had Samuel traveled this exact route into the city? I pictured him whiling away the night in the teahouses, drinking chai, eating sweet flatbread and sizzling kabobs. Admiring the glitteri
ng domes of the mosques. Sauntering beside the slow-moving brown waters of the Tigris, sitting out in the sharayua—the little riverside parks. Spending time with his cherished friends in the souks and the old Jewish quarter.
“The city has a way of seducing you,” he once wrote to me. “When you leave her you think of your acquaintance as a brief fling, a transient attachment. But you find her returning again and again to your thoughts. Before long you’re devising ways to get back. She appeals only superficially to the intellect; her real attraction is carnal. Like a mistress you’re incapable of releasing no matter how much trouble she causes. And for me there is also the history.”
I wondered what he would say now, seeing the wreck she had become.
The window looked out onto stretches of bleak terrain interspersed with islands of greenery, each one with a clutch of farm buildings. Closer to the road, the landscape resembled the backdrop for a Mad Max movie. Mangled guardrails; craters; piles of cinder and rubble from holes blown in the asphalt; a dead donkey, the stink of the carcass reaching us even through our closed windows; crumpled trucks and cars; the hulls of destroyed tanks. Dust and ash covered everything. People in traditional dress shuffled tired feet along the ditches, searching for God knows what. At one point I thought I could see a patch of blackened, dried blood on the pavement.
We drove through the outskirts of the city to its denser core, passing many ruined buildings. In some the first floor was perfectly intact, the large Moorish windows and buff bricks entirely unscathed. In stark contrast, the upper floors were a nightmare tangle of charred wood and tortured girders. I’d see long lines of buildings mostly intact punctuated by one that had been completely destroyed, like a missing tooth in a perfect row. Fetid heaps of garbage lay everywhere.
We entered what must have once been a Parisian-style roadway with a grand boulevard separating the lanes. The center partition had at one time been graced with rows of majestic date palms. Most of them had been hacked apart, their trunks sticking up like javelins rammed into the ground, their brown fronds rotting in piles. I noticed Ward looking at them too. “What happened there?” I asked.
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