Blue Voyage

by Diana Renn

  “Did you honestly think I wouldn’t get caught?”

  “I did,” she said. “I wrapped them well and put them way down in the bottom of your bag. And I figured you had your aunt with you, and having been married to an archaeologist, she’d know what to do or how to get you out of trouble fast if your bag was searched. I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

  “Well, it was a big deal,” I said. “It was actually a huge pain to get out of there, and really stressful for my aunt—she ended up in the hospital. And I could have gone to prison.”

  “What?”

  “I have a record of shoplifting. I am, actually, a suspicious person.”

  Sage stared at me, her mouth open.

  “Hi, my name’s Zan, and I’m a former shoplifter. Google me sometime. I went viral.”

  Sage shook her head. “I had no idea. But why does that matter here?”

  “The police weren’t going to let me off easy for having those artifacts on me. I think they questioned me harder and kept us longer because of my record back home.”

  “But you got out.”

  “I got lucky.” Suddenly I thought of Inspector Lale, and Nazif’s suggestion that I might consider trusting her after all. Maybe he was right. I could still be back in that holding cell if it weren’t for her.

  “And you know what?” I went on. “I’m extra lucky because even without my criminal record back home, if those figurines had been authenticated as real—which they really are—then I would have gone to prison for sure. Did you even think of all that when you put them in my bag?”

  Sage sighed and buried her face in her hands for a moment. Then she looked up with a pained expression. “Honestly, I had no idea you would have so much trouble. I bought the figurines with Lazar’s money and was supposed to give them to him. I didn’t expect him and his partner Vasil to show up on the Anilar. They weren’t on the boat the whole time. I was supposed to deliver them to Riza, and he would give them to Lazar. It all got so complicated, so fast, especially when the urn came into the picture and Lazar asked me to get it.”

  “Riza? He’s in on this?” So that’s why that hot first mate had been interested in Sage and not me. He already knew her. But my flash of jealousy faded almost instantly. Who cared how hot the guy was? He was an antiquities smuggler, too.

  Sage nodded. “He kind of got me into this mess in the first place.”

  “Okay. Go on. Lazar showed up on the Clarksons’ boat?”

  “Right. I don’t know why. But I realized I wanted to get away from all of this. Seeing your family, and you—I just missed my normal life so much. And I felt like everything I was doing was wrong.”

  Something inside me softened, remembering how I felt around Nazif, how I felt this powerful urge to be normal and honest and good.

  Sage twisted her hands in her lap. “So I thought I’d sell the figurines out from under Lazar and get out of the whole business after that. I swam to the Anilar, the night you came with me, to tell Riza I didn’t have the figurines. But he’d seen me buy them, through his binoculars, and he told Lazar and Vasil. That asshole.” She shuddered. “That’s what Vasil was demanding when he dropped us off at the boat. Not a tip. The figurines, and then the urn.”

  I remembered how harsh Vasil had sounded that night, and how rattled Sage had seemed.

  “I got scared,” she said. “I knew I had to get out when the police started closing in. So I put the figurines in your bag, thinking I’d get them from you later, sell them, and buy my way out of the country, away from Lazar.”

  “You don’t just have an expired visa,” I pointed out. “You have a fake name. What’s that about, anyway?”

  “Like I said. It’s complicated.”

  “I understand complications,” I said. “Better than you think. And I might be able to help you find a way out of all this. But maybe you’d better start from the beginning.”

  35

  We left the room to get away from its stagnant air, and Sage led me up to a tiny enclosed garden. It was about the size of my hotel room, with only a bench and some potted plants, and surrounded by stone walls. Like a prison yard, I couldn’t help thinking. But at least we could see the sky, and an overhang from the roof provided shelter from the rain. We dragged the bench beneath it and Sage began to speak while the rain poured down in front of us.

  She started at the beginning—the very beginning. In ancient history: Hawthorne, Oregon.

  “So my dad drank. A lot,” Sage said in a small voice. “He hit my brother and me. I got out of the house as much as I could as soon as I was old enough. Worked part-time. Saved all my money. I had an uncle who was a lawyer, and with his help I got emancipated at seventeen. I moved in with him and my aunt until graduation. I changed my name. Sage was my late grandmother’s name. It means ‘wise,’ and she always said I was. Plus, I like it. I never felt like an Amy. It’s an ordinary name, and I’ve never felt very ordinary.”

  “Where’d Powell come from?” I asked.

  “Powell’s Bookstore, in Portland. I liked to read and to hang out there. Anyway, after graduation last year, I just wanted to get as far away as I could. I applied for every scholarship I could find. But I didn’t have a great GPA because of everything I was dealing with at home, and working. The only place I got a partial scholarship was the Istanbul International School. I still had to pay some money, but at least it seemed possible to go there. So I went for it, even though I didn’t have all the money yet. I figured I’d just find some under-the-table work. And it started out great. I fell in love with Turkey right away. My town was so ugly. My family history was so ugly. But everywhere I looked around me in Istanbul, I saw beauty.”

  I nodded. I’d had glimpses of that beauty. On the rooftop at night, staring out at the view and listening to the call to prayer. Glimpsing the silver slice of the Bosphorus River and the mansions on either side of it. Breathing in the intoxicating mix of smells at the Grand Bazaar. Watching the whirling dervishes. Dining outside at Orhan’s house on the coast. Turkey had a surplus of beauty.

  “I ran low on money sooner than I’d expected,” she went on. “Turkey is expensive. Then I got conned.”

  “How?”

  “I went out with this guy, and he came up short for the bill. He asked if I could loan him money, and he made me go to an ATM with him. Then he pulled a gun on me and made me empty out my account. I had to hand over everything to him—not that it was a lot, but it was all I had—and he ran off. I reported him to the police, but the money was gone forever, and I didn’t even know his real name. I couldn’t afford the next quarter of school. So I dropped out and found a job with this tourism company that was looking for native English speakers for videos to use in a phone app game. They needed actresses. I’d acted in high school, and I thought it’d be fun. And it was, for a while.”

  “Is that where you met Riza?”

  She nodded. “We hit it off right away, and started going out. He found me a group apartment with some of the other foreigners who worked for the tourism company. Then he said there was a way I could make more money. He said he did some contract work for this guy Lazar and his team, easy money, and I could do the same.”

  “Who else works with Lazar?” I demanded.

  “Lots of people. But the main players are Vasil, his right-hand man, and some insiders in the police force who give him confiscated artifacts or look the other way, for a fee. And he has a whole team of artisans he works with to disguise real objects as fakes so they can be sent to his clients or moved around the country without attracting attention. Repackaging artifacts so they can be smuggled is an art in itself. He works with pros and pays them well to keep quiet about it. And if they don’t keep quiet?” She swallowed hard. “Every once in a while, someone ends up dead. And that keeps everyone quiet.”

  “Except you,” I said softly. “Why are you telling me all this? You
know I could turn you in. I could even get reward money for it. Interpol is behind all the efforts to crack this case.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “Assuming I can’t leave the country now, since I’m broke, I figure either you’ll turn me in, or Lazar will find me eventually, or the police will track me down. I’m in checkmate. But someone should know the truth. I want it to be you.”

  I thought of the workshop Nazif and I had broken into the night before. “Is Lazar’s lab in the Lycian Society headquarters?”

  “That’s only one of them. He has a few others around the country. That way he can cater to clients in all different regions.”

  “And are his clients in the Lycian Society? These Onyx people?”

  “Some of them, yes. Riza told me. I’m not supposed to know their names. Lazar kept us low-level smugglers away from the clients, to protect them. Riza only knew more because Lazar was grooming him for a better position in the network.”

  “Where is Lazar getting all these artifacts from?” I asked.

  “Museum warehouses and storage rooms, mostly, with the help of local looters that he contracts. They also get confiscated items stored at police departments. Insiders there pass them back to Lazar.”

  Thunder rumbled overhead. “And do you know if an Inspector Lale Demir is one of these insiders?”

  “I honestly don’t know who the contacts are,” Sage admitted. “Riza doesn’t either.”

  “So why do the clients want these illegal things?”

  “The Onyx members are a weird group,” she said. “They actually don’t consider these artifacts Turkish.”

  “But that’s crazy. The artifacts come from here.”

  Sage shrugged. “Some people want to own a piece of history. But a lot of them truly believe that the artifacts belonged to past civilizations, before the Turks were even here, so they belong to the world.”

  I thought about Uncle Berk’s article in the British archaeology magazine. “And I bet they believe Turkish museums aren’t taking good enough care of these treasures, right?” I guessed.

  “Exactly. So these collectors call it ‘recovering,’ not ‘stealing.’ Most of them think they’re actually doing something noble, saving objects from neglect or invisibility. They’re working with smugglers and looters and mafia types in Lazar’s organization to get them and move them, and they’re paying them big bucks for their help.”

  “And they’re disguising the real artifacts as fakes?”

  “Yes, or packaging them among fakes,” said Sage. “Then, once the goods are out of the country, they end up in private collections or other storage facilities. The ones who see themselves as heroes probably take good care of them. They might restore them, or take special steps to preserve them, because they feel that’s where Turkish museums fell short. Some of the members travel around the world to view each other’s private collections. Eventually, they might get ‘discovered,’ like someone says, ‘Wow, my grandfather had this rare sculpture in his attic! Turns out it’s worth a lot!’ And then it gets sold at auction or donated to a museum in their own country, and they get a little plaque with their name on it and some fame.”

  I gave her a long look. “Did you know all this when you started?”

  “No,” she insisted. “I just needed enough money to stay in Turkey and to finish my program. I thought I’d quit when I earned it. Then this cruise job came up, and Riza was going to go on that other boat, and I thought, great, paid vacation! But then I realized how wrong this business was, and all I could think about was getting out of it.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, listening to the rain, not looking at each other. The storm was intensifying, washing dirt into a grate in the center of the small patio garden.

  “Where’d you go when you left the boat?” I asked next.

  “I ran. I camped out by a small beach hotel down the coast. I went back to the cliff tombs to look for the urn. When I was absolutely sure it was gone, I came back to Istanbul to figure out what to do next, because I knew I could stay with my friend here at the hammam. I sold the earrings I bought from the baklava seller to a guy I know at a gold shop, but that gave me just enough money to buy food. The earrings weren’t worth much.” She sighed. “Also, I thought I’d be harder to find in a big city. Obviously I’m not. Lazar and Vasil are here. I was sure they’d stay on the coast longer.”

  “Not if they thought you might come here with the urn,” I said. “They think I’m a magnet and that I’ll draw you out. They’re stalking me, watching for you, hoping you have the urn, too.”

  “Ugh. The urn.” Sage picked up a pebble from the ground and hurled it at one of the stone walls. “I wish I’d never heard of that urn. It really is a cursed object. I should have just lied and told Riza it wasn’t even on the boat! Then all of this could have been avoided.”

  “I hate the urn, too,” I said. “If it weren’t for that urn, my uncle would still be alive.”

  “I thought he died hiking.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you? Did you know he did a job for Lazar?” I told her what Nazif had told me.

  Sage paled. “Oh my God, Zan,” she said. “I’m sure Lazar has something to do with your uncle’s death. It makes sense. Especially since Lazar’s headquarters are in Cappadocia!”

  “They are?” I jumped up from the bench. “Not at the Lycian Society?”

  “He does some water transport on the coast, but it’s easier to be inland and escape through less vigilant border controls over there. And a lot of the coastal smuggling is just smoke and mirrors, to distract the authorities and keep them busy while his real work goes inland. The seahorse urn is supposed to be in Cappadocia with the rest of a cache of artifacts. One of his top clients is expecting to pick it up there, just two days from now.”

  My head was spinning. Cappadocia. Had Uncle Berk traveled there to deliver the urn with the fake documents? Had he failed to do that, fought with Lazar, and lost his life? I could see how my uncle needed money, like Sage, and could have agreed to do a simple appraisal—but then the game had changed on him, and he found himself in over his head.

  “If we could get the urn,” I said, thinking out loud, “and give it back to Lazar—in front of an embassy official, and maybe some museum expert who can authenticate it on the spot—we could shut down his whole operation.”

  “Perfect,” said Sage. “Except for one problem. I lost the urn. Remember?”

  “Maybe not. Let’s go back in time,” I said. “Is there anyone else who could have gotten to it first? Or come back to look for it before you did?”

  “There weren’t any other tourists out that morning,” she said. “It was so early in the day. Only the people from our boat were there. It would have to be one of them.”

  “Okay. What about Fiona and Alice?”

  “Alice doesn’t walk so well. And her eyesight’s poor, she said. But Fiona walked around near the trailhead. The boulders where I hid the urn could have been seen from there. So I guess there’s a chance she could have seen me getting the urn from the base of the precipice and hiding it. It’s a possibility.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed. It was hard to picture Fiona, this nice English lady, taking the urn and not immediately returning it to Aunt Jackie. It was harder still to picture her sneaking it past Alice when she went to take her mother back to the boat, but at this point we couldn’t rule anyone out.

  “What about the Lobsters?” Sage asked. “Milton seemed pretty sure-footed, for an old dude.”

  I remembered the scratches I’d seen on his arm, and how Selim had given him an antibiotic ointment. I hated thinking these stand-in grandparents might have found the urn and kept it quiet. “It’s possible,” I agreed, reminding Sage of the scratches. “They could have pushed through those bushes near the front part of the precipice, if they went back after lunch. So they’re on the list. But what ab
out Nils and Ingrid? They like finding stuff. They spent half their time hunting for rare birds.”

  “True. They also had binoculars and walking sticks,” said Sage. “So, yeah. I guess that makes five people who could have the urn in their luggage, even as we speak!”

  “But everyone likes my aunt. If they’d found the artifact, they would have given it to her.”

  “You don’t know that,” said Sage. “Sometimes people do bad things even if they start out with good intentions. And sometimes they do bad things for reasons that are just . . . complicated. It doesn’t mean they’re evil.”

  I understood all too well how someone who was basically good could make a poor decision and get in too deep. I had done it. Sage and my uncle had done it. Even my dad had done it, I realized, although it pained me to think it. It was a stupid decision to have the affair. If he wanted to leave Mom, he should have done that first instead of cheating on her. But he hadn’t set out to hurt anyone. It had just ended up that way.

  “Fortunately,” I said, “all the suspects are in one place now. The Hotel Mavi Konak.”

  Her eyes lit up. “They’re all at your aunt’s hotel? Why?”

  “Bedbugs infested the Swissotel. My aunt had given them all her card, so they ended up with us.”

  “So you’re thinking of, what, just asking them if anyone took it?”

  “I doubt anyone would admit it,” I said. “If they didn’t take it, they’d be insulted I asked them. If they did take it, they’d probably lie and cover it up, because they’d be too embarrassed.”

  “Or because they’d want to keep it for themselves,” Sage said. “So how are you going to find this thing?”

  “I’m a part-time maid these days. I’ll look through their stuff when I’m working.”

  “Great idea. And what do I do?”

  “Lie low here. If I find the urn, I’ll call the embassy right away. Then I’ll set up a meeting with Lazar, like he asked me to do if I found you. Only it’ll be like a sting operation. I’ll get an embassy official and one of their police contacts to witness the handover of the urn. They’ll have to arrest him on the spot. Then you can come out of hiding.”