by Alex Archer
“This could be a trap.” Jennifer folded her arms and regarded him defiantly.
“I don’t think it is.” Roux believed the story Bogosian had told about the location of the Nephilim. The painter had been given no room to lie, and Roux had put him in considerable pain.
“Then you’re a fool if you think you can just walk in there and buy it.” Her voice sounded ragged.
“The man who has the Nephilim doesn’t have any idea what he truly has,” Roux said. “He’s an art collector. He has an interesting piece. I have more than enough money to acquire it from him.”
“What if he doesn’t want to sell it?”
Roux knew wealth meant more to most people than simply owning something. “He’ll sell it to me,” he said confidently.
“What if he doesn’t?”
Roux smiled. “Then getting it will be a little harder. Not impossible.”
“Let me go with you.”
“You’ve done enough.”
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
“What I shouldn’t do,” Roux said patiently, “is allow you to risk your life any more than you have.”
Tears welled in Jennifer’s eyes. “You’re being bullheaded.”
“I am.” Roux gently stroked her face with his forefinger. “But I care about you.”
“This isn’t dangerous. You said it’s not dangerous.”
“I know. But I need to do this myself.” Roux drew his hand back. “Wait here. I’ll call when I have the painting. Then we’ll go celebrate.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Be well until I return.” He left without a backward glance.
* * * *
“How does the map work?”
Annja felt pressured by Garin’s question, but she knew that came more from herself than from him. After saving the reconstructed image, she lifted the pieces off again, put them into a new file and started manipulating them.
“I don’t know. Yet.”
Garin leaned in closer to her. She was aware of his cologne and the heat coming off his body. She didn’t know if those things were attractive or threatening.
“If it’s a puzzle once,” Garin said, “maybe it’s a puzzle twice.”
“Now you’re an expert?” Annja mocked.
“I’m just saying.” He sounded as irritable as a bear awakened from hibernation.
Anxiety coursed through Annja. She pushed the pieces together. She realized there was no way all the pieces fit as one thing. She studied them and saw other ways they fit together.
Five of the pieces lay together in an interlocked design.
They’re complete, she told herself. Accept that. Now what do you do with the other four pieces?
Slowly she began putting them together. It was harder. She could get any three of them together but she couldn’t get the fourth to drop into place. The fourth piece had a section of design that fit over the other three pieces, and also allowed it to fit with any of the other two.
“It doesn’t go there,” Garin said. “It has to be something by itself.”
His words triggered a sudden understanding. Working smoothly, Annja fit three of the pieces together, then placed them over the last piece.
All the designs fit exactly.
“A hidden room,” Annja whispered, understanding. “Wherever this is, it has a room below.”
“But where is this?” Garin asked.
Annja looked at the grouping of the first five pieces. “This looks like a cross.”
Another memory clicked into place.
Annja walked out into the main museum lobby and looked at the mosaic of Constantinople on the wall. She searched the buildings represented there.
McPhee hurried over from one of the exhibits he was working on. “Is there something I can assist you with, Ms. Creed?”
Annja pointed at the cross-shaped building near the center of the city. “What church is that?” she asked.
“That’s the Church of the Holy Apostles,” McPhee answered immediately. “It was built in 330 by Constantine the Great. It was supposed to be a repository of the twelve apostles of Jesus. Unfortunately, at least this is what legend tells us, only the relics of Saints Andrew, Luke and Timothy were ever housed there.”
“Is that shape unique in the city?” Annja asked.
“Yes. Why?”
“The church fell, didn’t it?” Annja said. Bits and pieces of the story came back to her.
“It did. After the invasion of the Ottoman Turks the church was destroyed and a mosque was built on the site. It was called Fatih Carmi, the Mosque of the Conqueror. Most people know it simply as Fatih Mosque.”
“There was another structure in that area,” Annja said.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Something was there. Probably underground.”
The curator stared at the mosaic and thought for a long moment. Then the doubt cleared from his face, and he turned to look at her.
“There were catacombs in that area,” he said. “Burial facilities for the clergy and their servants. I’d just assumed the bodies were relocated and the catacombs were filled in.”
“But the catacombs might still exist?”
“I don’t know.”
“I need to talk to someone who does know,” Annja declared.
* * * *
Roux sat at a table in a bar across the street from the large brown building on Bagdat Avenue. He sipped wine and tried to keep the urge to do something at bay.
Over the past few days, since Jennifer had come to him and told him about the Nephilim painting, he hadn’t been able to rest. His sleep had consisted of brief minutes of pure blackness that he’d been able to seize.
For the first time in a long time, he wished that Garin were with him.
It’s your fault that he’s not here, he told himself angrily. Why would he stay for something he doesn’t understand? You wouldn’t.
Roux rubbed his burning eyes. He clung to the thought that the artifact was close to hand. Once he had it in his possession, he could fix the mistake he’d made all those years ago.
He would finally have some peace.
Roux knew he’d pushed himself too hard when he only then noticed that the two men who had been sitting at the table next to his hadn’t been talking. They’d been mostly noncommittal, like men waiting for something together.
His senses flared to life. The server hadn’t gone near them to check on them, either. That suggested they’d arranged for her to stay away.
Without a word, he dropped money on the table and started for the door. But it was too late. The men got up to follow him.
Then another man stepped through the door. He looked to be in his thirties, lean and muscular. He looked enough like his ancestors that Roux recognized him at once even without the green-scimitar tattoo on his neck.
“Roux,” Saladin said.
“You’ve got the wrong man,” Roux said automatically. But he knew he’d played it wrong the instant he’d come to a complete stop. A stranger would have kept walking.
“I don’t think so,” Saladin said. He smiled. “You see, I found the Nephilim painting only days ago. I haven’t been able to decipher its secret.”
“That’s because there is no secret,” Roux stated flatly. “It’s a fool’s errand.”
“Yet you’ve looked for it for a large chunk of your life.”
“Merely the vanity of an old fool.”
Saladin smiled, but the effort was cold and distant.
Knowing he had no real choice and no real chance of success, Roux reached under his jacket for the pistol in his shoulder holster.
But Saladin lifted a device and fired. Instantly two darts sped out and sank into Roux’s chest. They trailed microthin wires behind them. In the next instant they pulsed fifty thousand volts.
Roux felt his body convulse as every muscle screamed in protest and clenched. Then his mind slid into blackness.
38
Trying to get information from the
mosque proved fruitless. Annja wasted nearly three hours waiting for someone to tell her that the old catacombs area wasn’t accessible from the mosque. The underground tunnel that led to the crypt area had been sealed centuries earlier.
Garin had been ready to give up but Annja was determined. She walked along the crowded street in the direction the crypts had lain. She’d discovered two buildings that might be above the catacombs. When she’d talked with the first building manager, the man had claimed no knowledge of the crypts.
A woman in her fifties managed the second structure. That building was renting out office space to small businesses.
“I don’t know anything about crypts,” the Armenian woman said in heavily accented English. She wore a long dress, a scarf, dramatic makeup and large hoop earrings. An unfiltered cigarette dripped ash from her mouth. “But there is storage space below.”
Annja’s spirits rose. “Could I see it?”
The woman looked from Annja to Charlie and then to Garin. His suit obviously inspired her.
“This job is a good one,” she said. “I don’t want to get into any trouble.”
“You won’t get into any trouble,” Annja assured her.
“If I send you on your way,” the woman replied, “I won’t get into any trouble.”
“We just need to—”
“How much do you want?” Garin’s voice overrode Annja’s. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a wallet thick with currency.
They haggled briefly, then a price was agreed upon.
“I always thought that place was creepy,” the woman said. “I told my boss that I felt something down there wasn’t right. He told me that it used to be part of the piracy network that filled the city. I believed him. At least, I thought I did. But I’ve never been at ease when I had to go down there for supplies. Is that what you’re looking for? Ghosts?”
“No,” Annja replied. “I’m not much of a believer in supernatural things.” She knew that was ludicrous to say, especially in light of the fact that she carried a sword that had reforged itself.
The woman introduced herself as Naz as she reached for a huge ring with many door keys on it.
In the storage room, Naz slid one of the many wire racks to the side and revealed a heavy trapdoor in the floor.
“It’s down here. My employer told me it was used a lot in the old days by pirates and black marketers. The building next door has access to the tunnel, too. They store things down there, as well.” She kicked the door’s iron ring. “But you’re not going to find anything. Only extra supplies are down there.”
“We’re paying you to take a look,” Garin said. “We’ll be back quick enough.”
Annja reached into her backpack and took out a flashlight. She switched it on. Then she leaned down and caught hold of the iron ring. As she pulled on the ring, she leaned back to put as much weight into her effort as she could.
Garin, a flashlight from his own pack in hand, caught the iron ring in his other hand and pulled. Together they lifted the trapdoor from the floor. There were no hinges. It came straight up. They placed it on the floor a short distance away.
Annja shone the flashlight into the opening. Irregularly spaced bricks jutted out to form hand-and footholds. The tunnel floor was at least ten feet down. It was made of brick, as well.
The thick stench of trapped, damp air filled Annja’s nose. She took a final deep breath and climbed down.
* * * *
“We could go in after them,” Drake suggested.
Salome took a deep breath, then focused on not exercising that option. “Is that how you’d handle it?”
Seated in the luxury car beside her, Drake shook his head. His gaze seemed centered on the mosque down the street.
“No,” he said. “I’d be patient. We’ve got the building surrounded. They can’t get back out of there without us knowing about it. It’s better if we wait.”
“Then why are you suggesting we go after them?” Salome tried not to let her anger show. They’d only just arrived in Istanbul after trailing Garin’s plane around the world. Drake had a team on the ground in the city that had tailed Garin and Annja Creed from the airport. So far keeping watch over the woman had been easy.
“I’m not,” Drake replied smoothly. “That course of action would be a mistake. If we flush them, try to catch them inside the building, we could lose them. There are too many hiding places and things will become hectic very quickly.” He glanced over at the computer screen that showed the video surveillance they had on the building. “It’s better if we’re patient.” He looked at her. “Better if you’re patient.”
“I know.” Salome made herself breathe. It was hard.
“Besides, we don’t know if Annja Creed has even found anything,” Annja said.
“She does have a remarkable knack for finding things.”
“Then let’s hope she finds this thing for us.” Drake took Salome’s hand in his and kissed her fingers. “If she does, we’re only a moment away from having it. It will be like we found it ourselves.”
“I know.” Salome made herself wait, but her eyes never left the computer screen. One way or the other, it wouldn’t be long.
* * * *
The passage ran a hundred feet and dipped slightly as it progressed.
Annja played her flashlight beam from side to side across the tunnel. It was almost ten feet tall and almost twelve feet wide. As Naz had informed her, there were a lot of boxes and crates in the tunnel that held supplies and equipment. There were also rats. Several of them squeaked and fled from the flashlight beams.
Concern tightened Charlie’s features. Maybe there was even a little fear there. “We’re very close now. You have to be very careful. The horn has been hidden away for a long time.” He frowned. “It would have been better safely forgotten about.”
The tunnel ended as it widened out into a room twenty-five feet across. Annja thought she could see where the stone had been chipped away for the crypts that had once honeycombed the walls. The dead had been laid in that place to wither away to dust. The thought chilled Annja for just a moment, then she concentrated on finding the entrance to the lower room.
If it existed.
She played her beam over the floor, searching for any kind of discrepancy that might reveal a hidden door. Nothing immediately met her eye. Whoever had put the room together had gone to considerable trouble to disguise the hidden level.
Charlie had dropped to his haunches against the wall in the entryway and simply watched. Annja didn’t ask him why he wasn’t helping. She just accepted that he wasn’t going to.
Despite her thorough search, it was Garin who found the concealed access.
“Here,” he called.
Annja got up from her hands and knees and went to him.
Garin aimed his flashlight beam at a section of the floor near one wall. That section looked like the rest of the ground except the symbol that had joined the three images from Thomopoulos’s sketchbook showed on the floor. Garin wiped away layers of dust and spiderwebs to reveal it.
“I can’t believe you found this,” Annja said.
“Me neither.” Garin shook his head. His eyes never left the spot on the floor.
“How did you find it?” Annja blew dust away in an effort to reveal an outline of the door she felt must be there.
“I felt it,” Garin said. “I passed over this section of the ground, and I felt something under the floor.”
“It’s his nature,” Charlie said. “He’s been around artifacts like this before. He’s sensitive to them.”
Annja kept blowing dust until a crevice finally revealed itself. As she blew, dust sifted through the crack and left behind a thin, empty line in the stone.
Satisfied that she’d found the secret of the floor, she reached into her backpack and took out a small pry bar that she’d packed for the excursion. She worked the bar around the floor section.
“There should be a release,” Garin said.
“It’s all right. I feel the same way.”
“Can you move the light over here?”
Garin did.
A moment later Annja found the locking mechanism. It was a simple pin construction that she easily negotiated. The mechanism slid a couple of inches, then clicked open. She pushed the pry bar under the edge and levered it up enough to wedge her fingers under.
When she lifted it, she stared down into the hidden chamber.
39
The chamber was thirty feet across and seven feet high. The low ceiling made Annja feel slightly claustrophobic after she dropped down inside and stood. She shone her flashlight around the space, and her breath froze in her lungs.
The room was filled with paintings, statues and books.
“I guess the church was better off than everyone thought,” Garin said drily. He shone his flashlight around, as well, then followed it to stacks of goods.
“Many churches had wealth,” Annja said automatically. “The Church of the Holy Apostles was ransacked by European forces in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade. They took everything they could find.”
“Nothing’s sacred when gold is involved,” Garin said. “I’ve certainly taken my share of it when opportunity presented.”
Annja politely refrained from saying anything.
“Why hasn’t the old man come down?” Garin asked as he rummaged through the hidden treasure.
“I don’t know.”
“He acts like he’s scared.”
“Maybe he has good reason to be. Maybe we should be.” Annja tried not to think like that too much.
“That’s nonsense. All we had to do was beat Roux here. If you believe what that old man has been saying.”
“Do you?” Annja asked.
Garin was silent for a moment. “I don’t know.”
“Some of the artifacts you and Roux have searched for have had incredible powers.” That was the part that Annja kept trying to wrap her mind around. Her sword was proof of that.
“They have.” Garin shifted a stack of crates one by one.
“What’s the most powerful thing you’ve ever seen?”