by Jay Amberg
When the scratching and the tufa shower increase, he rises and moves to the center of the cave. Altay’s boot appears in the oval, her leg swings down, and she drops onto the altar. A leather strap crosses her khaki blouse. Her eyes are radiant even in the twilight. “I never get used to the rookeries,” she says. “There’s nothing between you and sky.” She pulls the strap over her head and lifts the narrow aluminum cylinder from her back. “Now, Joe,” she says, “there are two people who know where the letters are.” She hands him the tube.
The aluminum is smooth and cool in his hand. He raises his eyes to hers. “Are you ready?” he asks, taking hold of the strap.
Her smile is troubled as she looks down at the tube swaying by his side. “Are you?” When he doesn’t answer immediately, she goes over to her supply cache and pulls out a bottle of water and bread wrapped in white paper. As she returns, she says, “We don’t have to do it this way.”
“Yes, we do,” he says. He goes over to the altar and lays the aluminum tube on it. “I do.”
As he returns, she twists the cap off the water bottle and drinks deeply. She then gives him the bottle, unwraps the pide bread, takes a round flat piece with sesame seeds, and offers it to him.
“Thanks,” he says, “but I’m not hungry.” He raises the bottle and gulps the water.
She looks at the pide for a moment, takes a bite, and chews it. After she swallows, she says, “I’m not hungry either,” and hands him the bread. “Eat. Please.”
He takes the bread with one hand and returns the bottle with the other. The pide tastes of butter and sesame. When they’ve shared three pieces and finished the water, he asks, “You’re good with the plan?”
“It’s what we have.”
“And the bones, they’re worth the risk?”
“You’re the one taking the risk!”
He nods, aware that she didn’t answer his question.
“We have to see it through,” she says. “All of it.” She stows the bottle and the remaining bread and then roots through her supplies. “I understand,” she adds over her shoulder, “that we’ll never be able to prove that the relics are Christ’s. But people want something to believe in. And those beliefs will prove stronger than any scientific evidence.”
He sits on the altar below the sheared oval of night sky. But the bones, he thinks, don’t say who Christ and his disciples really were. Their words do. It’s human thought, preserved in words, that has influenced people down through the millennia—from Hammurabi’s Code to the Upanishads and the gospels and the Koran and all the religious and political declarations and manifestos that have followed. “Our words,” he says, “mark us as deeply as our bones do. More deeply.”
She pulls out the woven red and gold bag she carried when they first had dinner on the rooftop in Istanbul. She places the bag on the altar next to him and takes from it brown paper and twine, materials that remind him of his mother sending packages from Prescott to her family back East. “Maybe they do,” she says, but her attention is focused on the task at hand. Without turning from her work, she adds, “Maybe some day, despite all the damage that’s been done, the letters will…” She stops unraveling the twine and shakes her head. “I still don’t trust him, Joe.”
“We have to,” he says to her shoulder. Trust has been the issue all along.
She finally gazes into his eyes. “I know,” she says. “I know.” She shakes her head again and then looks away from him at the faint images on the roof.
He reaches over, barely touching her arm. His eyes are burning, mostly from the tufa dust and lack of sleep. He can’t find any light words so he says simply, “Abrahim is waiting. And you’ve got a long way to go.”
She nods without turning again. As she finishes her work, he limps across the cave. He rubs his eyes but can’t stop the burning. He has to push hard to roll the blocking stone away from the entrance. Pain throbs yet again. When he’s finished, he gazes up at the saints clinging to each other. The hovering angel stares quizzically down at him, as though only a fool would remove a blocking stone.
77
Abrahim shines the flashlight on the sarcophagus, but his hand is shaking and the beam wavers across the carved circle, six-pointed star, and equal-armed cross on the tomb’s lid. Unlike those carved on the ossuary he discovered, these symbols appear in a line rather than lie one within the others. The underground crypt at Saint John’s Basilica smells more of dust than of decay. The carved stone sarcophagus, about five times the size of a bone box, stands in the center of the eight-by-eleven-meter cruciform area. The ceiling is low, and the walls are eroded brown brick. A shaft of faint early morning light crosses the sarcophagus from the crypt’s entrance, but shadows fill the four alcoves where the other, smaller tombs stand. A layer of powdery grit, more tan than red, covers the stone floor.
Herr Kirchburg stands to Abrahim’s left. The ubermeister bows slightly, but only because the top of his head would otherwise scrape the crypt’s ceiling. He is sweating profusely; his breath makes quick coughing sounds that unnerve Abrahim.
Sophia Altay stands on Abrahim’s right. Her head is covered with the blue scarf she wore when she appeared in the infirmary and rescued him just as Joseph prophesized. The bleeding stopped just after, or perhaps even during, Joseph’s visit. And then the demonic voices ebbed, the terrifying Power retreated, and time itself whisked away. He floated within a dream, a vision that became a miracle when Sophia, her face covered in blue limned with gold, stood at his bedside. One by one, she released the restraining straps. She stood him, wobbling, and helped him dress in new white pants and a shirt and shoes. The shoulder she lent held his balance. The room’s chant was soft, Gregorian, an almost inaudible humming. It was all wondrous, a redemptive moment, but one for a saint, not a sinner like himself.
She held his bandaged hand as they rode through the darkness in a long black car driven by a hairy giant, a bear of a man who smelled like the Power’s smoke in the interrogation room…and before. He wept rapturously as the small, droning airplane carried them among the stars above a world dotted with minute lights. His body and spirit borne aloft, he flew beyond thought until they began their descent into İzmir. He then remembered clutching the sacred scrolls he had stolen, huddling through the night in the alley doorway, and quaking with fear—and his tremors returned as the airplane bumped down twice before settling onto the tarmac.
The giant was gentle with both of them and extremely respectful with Sophia as they crossed to an even longer black car parked in the shadows farthest from the terminal. The Aegean whispered rhythmically, but he could not understand her. His tremors increased as he became more acutely aware of where they were headed and why.
At the first light of false dawn, Herr Kirchburg, the ubermeister himself, stood waiting for them at Saint John’s Gate of Persecution. Though he was alone, without any of his hellhounds, his presence perturbed Sophia. Their loathing boiled over, and they hurled spite and invective at each other until the giant stepped between them. And then, the three of them—all of them—deferred to him, Abrahim.
He led them through the ruins to the sealed crypt, Saint John’s famously empty grave. The giant opened the vault, but, upon Doctor Altay’s request, remained above ground to guard against any intruders. And so he, Abrahim, took the flashlight and descended ahead of Sophia and Herr Kirchburg to the resting place he had chosen for these most sanctified and treasured and alarming relics.
Now, Sophia’s hands are folded in front of her, and her fingers are laced. Her breathing appears measured, but her face is crushed with ire and her squinting eyes fire contempt at the ubermeister who has, yet again, eclipsed her moment of discovery.
“Achtung!” Herr Kirchburg shouts as he thrusts the black steel pry bar at Abrahim. “Beeil dich!” As always, he is demanding that another do the work under his dictums.
Shiv
ering, Abrahim takes the bar. When he passes the flashlight to Sophia, their eyes meet. Her eyes open to him and gleam, offering permission rather than demanding obedience.
“Geh!” Herr Kirchburg commands. Though the crypt is cool, sweat runs down his temples.
Sophia raises the light so that it shines steadily on the tomb’s lid, and Abrahim jimmies the bar so that the lid begins to slide to the right, creating a dark slash between it and the tomb. Herr Kirchburg wipes his face; his grinding jaws cause his beard to twitch. As Abrahim slides the lid another five centimeters, Sophia purses her lips. Then, suddenly, Herr Kirchburg is clawing at the lid, yanking it to the side.
“Nein, Herr Direktor!” Abrahim yells.
When the ubermeister shoves him out of the way, the pry bar clangs to the floor, causing a cloud of dust to swirl up toward Sophia’s light.
“Leopold!” she shouts, looking over her light at Abrahim’s arrangement of the bones: the broken femurs form a cross within a six-pointed star, and the skull lies in the center.
“Halt die Schnauze!” Herr Kirchburg screams at her. His eyes are maniacal. Clasping the side of the sarcophagus, he grins and then lowers his gangly arms into the tomb.
Abrahim steps forward and raises his hand to his mouth in a silent scream.
Herr Kirchburg’s hands cup the skull, and, as he lifts it, his smile shows fixation without elation, obsession without joy. The smooth, rounded bone looks bleached in the light. The mandible and teeth are missing, and the eye sockets are dark holes. His eyes gleaming, he stares at the skull as though Altay and Abrahim do not exist. He continues to smirk, his upper lip wet. His voice rasping from the dust, he murmurs, “Mein Gott,” as he struts around the sarcophagus toward the crypt’s entrance.
Sophia steps over and blocks his way. She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders.
Abrahim’s scream becomes vocal, high-pitched, piercing. He stoops and scrabbles for the pry bar.
Herr Kitchburg lowers the skull so that its back is in Doctor Altay’s face. “Hau ab, Schlampe,” he sneers.
“Fils de pute!” she hisses. She raises her hand until her fingertips touch the back of the skull. “It belongs here, Leopold.” Her hand trembles. “Give it to me!”
Abrahim rises with the pry bar.
Herr Kirchburg scowls at Sophia, clears his throat, and snarls, “Das ist mein, Schlampe!”
Her jaw set, she stares up past the skull into his eyes.
“Sophia!” Kirchburg yells, his voice a curse. He flicks his hand, striking her cheek with his studded gold university ring.
Doctor Altay’s head snaps back. She drops the light and staggers against the wall.
Howling, Abrahim swings the bar fast and hard across Herr Kirchburg’s temple and ear. The ubermeister jerks sideways, stutter steps, and begins to slump. His mouth opens, but only a guttural rattle escapes. In the narrow shaft of light from the crypt’s stairwell, the ancient skull rolls slowly, as if stuck in time, from Herr Kirchburg’s fingers and seems to hang there for a second before plunging to the stone floor and shattering in the dust.
Herr Kirchburg’s head and shoulders strike the wall before he crumples onto the floor. Blood is already seaping from the gash above his ear. Sophia stumbles back toward the entrance and braces herself in the doorway as the giant rumbles down the steps behind her. Abrahim falls to his knees, the pry bar clanking in front of him. Still screaming, he looks up at Sophia, then down at the smashed skull, then across to the bleeding man, and finally back to the fragments of bone. His eyes are wide with what he has wrought.
78
Though the valley is dark, the tufa spires glow. The wind is rising with the sun, sweeping along the high, narrow trail and ruffling the back of Joseph Travers’ collar. Even though he takes quick careful steps, pebbles underfoot tumble down and away toward the valley. The aluminum tube is slung by its leather strap over his shoulder and behind his back. Although he is carrying nothing else and heading mostly downslope, his breathing is short and shallow. His stomach is unsettled, and his eyes are dry and burning. The day is quiet except for the murmuring breeze, the cooing of pigeons in rooks on the cliffside, and his own ragged breathing.
As he rounds a sharp bend, one hand brushing along the tufa to stave off vertigo, he hears scrabbling. Twenty yards ahead, Charles Lee crawls from the low mouth of a cave onto a cramped ledge, pulls himself to standing, and, leaning back against the rock, slaps dust from his jeans with one hand. His other hand holds the cell phone he gave Travers. His Dallas Cowboys cap is grimy, and his brown cotton shirt is stained with sweat and tufa. Dust forms epaulets on the shirt’s shoulders. He lifts the phone, glares at it, and then smashes it against the rock.
Stopping ten yards from Lee, Travers says, “I see you found your gift.”
Lee flinches, then stares up at Travers, looking first at his face and then at the aluminum tube. He throws the phone off the cliff where it clatters down into silence.
Travers slides the tube around in front of his chest.
Glancing again at the tube, Lee pulls a handheld global-positioning system from his pocket. “Y’all should’ve known I’d come for that,” he says, sneering, his teeth bright even in the day’s early light.
“I did,” Travers says. “And you really should’ve figured that I’d know that a phone with a GPS chip is the only sort of gift you’d give me.”
Lee looks over Travers’ shoulder up the trail toward the bend and the light washing the spires to the east. “You’re alone?”
“Yeah. All alone.”
”Altay hotfooted it back to Selçuk?”
“I don’t know where she is.” Once more, Travers will speak only truth to Lee. “She went to see Abrahim.” More truth. “And Monuglu was waiting for her.” All truth.
“You turned her in?” Lee laughs. He pockets the portable GPS. “If that don’t beat all.” His face is flushed and sweat beads above his eyebrows, but his eyes hold a hardened certainty.
Travers lifts the aluminum case and waves it so that light glints from it. “I needed this,” he says. “And she no longer served a purpose here. That’s something you understand, I think.”
Lee grins. “I do believe,” he says, “you’ve made the right move, for once.”
“Yeah, I have.”
In the distance, there’s a whooshing like fire rushing through pine trees. Travers glarces over his shoulder, where a green-and-gold-striped hot air balloon, vibrant against the pale morning sky, hoves into view five hundred yards away and two hundred feet above the cliff on which the two men stand.
Raising his right hand, Lee curls his forefinger. “Hand it over, Bubba.”
Travers grasps the strap loosely. “So that you can destroy the letters?” he asks. His breathing is slowing, becoming less shallow. “I don’t think so.”
Lee reaches behind his back and pulls a black handgun from his belt.
Travers freezes, his breath catching again. He knew he was headed into harm’s way, but he didn’t expect a gun. “Charlie,” he says, “You don’t need that.” Pulling the strap over his head and shoulder, he takes a step back.
Lee flicks off the safety and raises the gun so that its barrel points at Travers’ face.
A shiver runs through Travers, and sweat forms on the back of his neck and along his spine. He lifts his left hand, dangling the tube over the edge of the cliff. “If you shoot me, this’ll go sailing safely down into the valley.” His voice sounds more steady than he feels. “And you’ll have come all this way for nothing.”
The balloon’s burner fires again, the noise bouncing down into the valley. “What the fuck!” Lee says as he looks at the balloon drifting toward them. He then waves the gun at the aluminum tube. “Give me that, goddamn it!”
“I will.” Travers nods at the gun. “I get that you’ll kill m
e if you need to.”
“You’ve got that right.” Lee takes a step toward Travers.
Travers nods. “Your mission gives you license.”
Lee’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t say anything.
Travers takes another deep breath.
Lee’s hand tightens on the gun’s grip. Sweat snakes down his cheeks to his chin.
“The Eagle Consortium can’t have documents like these come to light.” Travers lets the strap slip in his hand so that the case again dangles beyond the cliffside. “Your superiors…” He lets the phrase hang there for a moment. “…couldn’t have been happy when you screwed up the mission.”
Lee’s finger dances on the gun’s trigger guard. He takes another step forward.
Travers inches farther out and glances up at the tufa spire ascending into the sky. A wave of dizziness breaks over him, and he doesn’t dare look down. “Your Eagles need to stop hiring incompetents.”
The hardness in Lee’s eyes cracks, and the deep blue starts to spark. With the back of his arm, he wipes sweat from his forehead.
“You bribed Kenan to betray Sophia. I saw it eating at him the whole time I was in Selçuk.”
Fire erupting in Lee’s eyes, he takes three steps toward Travers. “That goddamn drunken bug eater didn’t do the job I…”
“Still, murdering him was a critical mistake,” Travers interrupts. “You screwed things up from the get-go.” He shifts his weight so that he’s still farther out on the path’s periphery. “Was he going to give back the money and tell Sophia about the payoffs for spying on her? And the big payoff for stealing Abrahim’s discovery?”
Lee blows out his breath. His eyes harden once more, and the veins in his neck bulge. “Give me the goddamn case!”
“I am.” Travers holds up his hand, palm out, almost in a gesture of surrender.
Lee rolls his wrist, the gun’s barrel inscribing a circle in the air. Taking another step toward Travers, he raises his left hand to brace his wrist and steady his aim.