The Chi Rho Conspiracy

by Rene Fomby

  But one page of the report couldn’t have been any clearer, and that one page turned the entire case on its head. Halfway down the page, the DNA sample was listed as “saliva.” And two thirds of the way down, next to the word “hymen,” the doctor had checked off the word “intact.”

  the templar treasure

  63

  Kayseri, Turkey

  Their tour guide was waiting for them at the base of the stairs as soon as Sam stepped off the plane. She paused for a brief moment before descending the stairs, quickly checking him out while trying not to make it too obvious. Her guide for this adventure was wearing a loose-fitting white cotton shirt, untucked over navy slacks. Sam thought the white contrasted nicely with his natural tan.

  “Welcome to Kayseri, Miss Tulley,” he said, taking her hand and bowing slightly. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mehmed Çelik, and I’ll be your guide for the next few days. You can call me Mike.”

  “I’m happy with Mehmed, if that works for you. And it’s just Sam, by the way. This is my mother-in-law, Margaret Ricciardelli, and my daughter Maddie.”

  “Madeleine!” Maddie insisted, lacing her tiny arms across her chest.

  “Sorry. Madeleine,” Sam corrected herself. Leaning closer to Mehmed, she whispered, “We’re going through a little phase right now, I’m afraid.”

  “No, I understand,” Mehmed laughed. “I have two of my own back home in Ankara. Quite the handful, but well worth it. Most days.”

  Sam smiled at him and reached down to take Maddie’s hand. “So, what’s the game plan for today?”

  “I’m thinking we should take a car out to Göreme. It’s a beautiful day for a ride, and you can take in the sights and get a better feel for the unique geography of this part of Turkey as we approach the park. I have you booked into one of the local cave hotels, which is a lot more appealing than it might sound at first. Then, early tomorrow morning, I have a helicopter lined up to take you straight to your meeting in Ankara.”

  “That sounds wonderful. I have to say, though, I can’t wait to see Göreme. Margaret has been going on and on about it the whole flight out here.”

  “I still have such fond memories from the time I visited there with Luke when he was just about Maddie’s age,” Margaret explained.

  Mehmed smiled. “I may be prejudiced, since the fairy chimneys and underground cities are a major focus of my research at the university, but I don’t know of anywhere else on the planet that packs so much history into such a small but beautiful setting.” He motioned toward the waiting limousine. “Why don’t the three of you get settled into the back, here, and we’ll get your luggage off the plane and be on our way.”

  “We each packed a small overnighter, sitting just inside the door,” Sam said. “The rest can stay on the plane until we catch up with it in Ankara. I’m assuming we’re dressed appropriately for the trip?”

  Mehmed glanced quickly at the two ladies, each wearing flowing blouses over slacks and comfortable loafers. “You’re dressed perfectly. We’ll be doing quite a bit of climbing up and down stairs, both at the fairies and at one of the underground cities we’ll be visiting, so the shoes will work out very well. You may want to think about head scarves, though, if you’ll be visiting any of the mosques in Ankara or Istanbul later on in your trip.”

  “I’m afraid we’re going to have to skip Istanbul this time around. Maddie—Madeleine, sorry.” Sam caught the sour look from her daughter. “Madeleine tends to get a bit antsy if we’re gone for more than a day or so. And, of course, I’ve been warned about the troubles there.”

  “Barley says he misses me if I’m gone too long,” Maddie explained.

  “I’m sure he does,” Mehmed agreed, not having the slightest idea who Barley actually was. “I understand. But really, Istanbul is a treasure that should be savored over a week at the very least, not just rushed through in a day or two like so many of the tourists try to do. Plus, the coastline just south of the city is remarkable in and of itself, especially the cities of Troy, Pergamon and, of course, Ephesus. And so far, the coastline has escaped all of the religious nonsense that has swept through my home city, Istanbul.”

  “Wasn’t Pergamon the home of the Throne of Satan?” Sam asked.

  Mehmed looked impressed. “Yes, the Book of Revelations claims that ‘Pergamum’ was the home of Satan, and of his throne, which most scholars believe refers to the Altar of Zeus. Unfortunately, the altar was dismantled by the Germans in the nineteenth century and taken to Berlin, where it was finally reassembled and placed in the Pergamon Museum in 1930, just in time to be an inspiration for their little dictator.”

  “I’ll have to go see it when I visit Berlin,” Sam suggested.

  “Well, you’ll have to wait a bit. The exhibit was closed in 2014 for a complete restoration, and currently the reopening is planned for 2020, maybe later if they keep uncovering new problems, new setbacks in the restorations.” He opened the car door for them. “But we can discuss more of this in the car, on our way out to the park. Time is wasting, as you Americans say.”

  “Speaking of languages, I’d have to say that your English is outstanding,” Sam noted. “Did you spend much time in America?”

  “Yes, after what you would call high school, I moved to the United States to study antiquities and Turkish history, particularly the many religions that have found a home in Turkey. After earning a doctorate at Harvard, I came back to Turkey to teach in the university in Ankara. Someday I hope to be named head of my department, but as you may know, whether or not that happens is all a matter of politics. And while Harvard might seem prestigious in the States, around here it comes with some significant baggage. Anti-Western prejudice. Which is raging all throughout my country these days, I fear.”

  “Well, some things are the same no matter where you go. I’m sure you got a lot of that in the States, the anti-Muslim bigotry.”

  “Yeah, but there’s not a lot you can do about that, either, other than just try to ignore it. And try to learn a lot about other cultures. Which is in fact pretty much the definition of what I’m trying to do at the university. With all that in mind, I see that your luggage is safely packed away in the boot, so it’s time to hop in and get this party started.”

  Sam gave him a big smile and a gentle pat on the shoulder as she and Margaret climbed into the back seat, Maddie settling into a car seat mounted between them. Mehmed joined them, taking the rear-facing seat just across from Sam.

  As they started off, Maddie tugged insistently on Sam’s right arm. “Mommy, can I have my ‘pad?” she pleaded, pointing toward Sam’s purse.

  Margaret gave Sam a studied look. “Do you think it’s wise for her to have one of those things at her age? I’ve read where it can really affect their development—”

  “Oh, pshaw,” Sam answered, pulling out the iPad and handing it to her daughter. “It can’t be all that much worse than my being perched in front of the TV set as a little girl. And I’ve only loaded educational apps on the thing, so now Maddie’s already at a second or third grade level in reading and math. Plus, it really helps mommy out every now and then,” she added enigmatically.

  Margaret arched an eyebrow but decided to let the subject drop. For now. Looking down, she did note that Maddie had pulled up a GPS-enabled map of the area, and was carefully studying their route. So if her granddaughter was going to wind up dealing with one of those devil machines, at least it seemed she was using it wisely.

  Meanwhile, over the next hour, Mehmed kept them busy by pointing out various interesting sights along the way, giving them a brief overview of the history and geography of the area.

  “We are just leaving the main section of Kayseri, a town of a little over a million people that has been continuously inhabited for well over five thousand years. It was originally a Hittite trading colony called Mazaka, sitting squarely in the middle of a major crossroads of the Great Silk Road, the primary trade route between the Far Ea
st and the Mediterranean. Later on, Kayseri served as home to the various kings of Cappadocia, bracketing periods of Persian and Greek rule. The current name, which is a bastardized Arabic spelling of Caesarea, or Caesar, was given to the town by the last King of Cappadocia, Archelaus. Today it is a very fast-growing industrial center and is responsible for much of Turkey’s industrial exports.”

  “Oh my, what in the world is that? It looks like some kind of spaceship.” Margaret had been dividing her time between listening to Mehmed’s narration and taking in the sights of the city. She was pointing to a large metal building, with massive slabs of gray steel thrusting up boldly from just above ground level and curving up over the roofline. The building was topped on each side by what looked very much like giant construction cranes that had toppled over, bending along the same gentle curves as the roof.

  Mehmed looked over at the building and smiled. “No, that’s not a rocket ship, although some people do complain that it looks pretty alien for these parts. That’s Kadir Has Stadium, home to Kayseri’s two soccer clubs. The stadium holds over thirty thousand soccer fans, and a number of cafes and restaurants. It has a large hole in the roof that can be closed, if necessary, during bad weather. A truly magnificent building, if you go in for that sort of thing. Me, I prefer a more traditional architectural style.”

  He pointed toward the front of the car. “Up ahead, we’ll come to a fork in the road. The most direct route is to take the southern road, which is what most people do. But there’s not much to see along that road, so I asked our driver to take us a little further north, along the Kizilirmak Nehri, which translates to ‘Red River.’ Historically, the Kizilirmak served in ancient times as the boundary between Asia Minor and the rest of Asia. It was later the border between Lydia and Media, until Croesus of Lydia crossed it to the east to attack Cyrus the Great in 547 BCE. Croesus, of course, was defeated, and that allowed Persia to expand all the way to the Aegean Sea.” He saw their eyes beginning to glaze over and smiled. “More importantly to us today, it’s a much prettier trip. I personally think it’s some of the most beautiful scenery in all of Turkey.”

  They sat in silence for a while, enjoying the expansive view out the windows of the limo. After passing through the small village of Tahirinli, they soon came to another small town and turned south, away from the river. Here the landscape became more arid and severe.

  “I think you’ll be able to appreciate now why I suggested the northern route,” Mehmed explained. “This is pretty much all you’re going to see until we get near Göreme. And Göreme as a city is really not all that interesting, either. It’s a town of about two thousand people. Its original name was actually Korama, but the government changed the name for marketing reasons when the nearby Göreme Valley emerged as a major tourist attraction.”

  “That’s where the—” Sam glanced down at Maddie, who was now fast asleep. “That’s where the penis rocks are located, right?”

  “Well, yes, but we like to call them the fairy chimneys, or hoodoos.” Mehmed pointed to a map he spread out between them. “The valley is actually an ancient volcanic landscape, sculpted over many millions of years by erosion, creating mountain ridges, valleys and the hoodoos. The ‘penis rocks’ as you call them. The volcanic rock, called tuff, makes the ground very easy to excavate but also quite sturdy. As a result, for many thousands of years people have been coming to the area to carve out cave homes, some of which are pretty elaborate. And, of course, the underground cities, which we’ll visit later in the day. That’s when the heat begins to build up, and it’s a much more accommodating temperature for us under the ground.”

  “So what caused the—hoodoos—to be shaped like that?” Margaret asked.

  “The hoodoos, which the locals originally called kales, or castles, are actually the result of the weathering of two layers of rock. The top layer is denser, and eroded much slower than the bottom layer. At the same time, the top served as a kind of cap to protect the column of softer rock below it. As a result, you often wind up with a cone of hard rock, usually darker, perched on top of a column of softer, lighter material, giving the immediate impression of, as you say, a phallus. Not all of the rocks wind up taking on that shape, of course, but it’s common enough that ‘penis rocks’ is the general first take on the area. And the government, again for marketing reasons, pretty much encourages that.”

  Sam was intrigued, and couldn’t wait for their short car ride to the valley to be over. “But there’s more to the rocks than that, isn’t there?”

  “Absolutely!” Mehmed was glad to be moving on to his main academic interest, the hermit caves and other related cave dwellings. “As I said, people have been carving homes into the rocks for millennia, and in fact you’ll be staying in a hotel tonight that is actually just a collection of some of those ancient homes. But first we’ll be taking a look at the hermit cells carved into the hoodoos themselves. Have either of you ever read much about the Christian hermit movement?”

  Sam and Margaret shook their heads no.

  “Okay, then, let’s start at the very beginning.” He pushed the map aside. “The word ‘hermit’ is derived from the Greek word ‘eremos,’ which variously means ‘desert,’ or ‘uninhabited.’ In Christian theology, the religious basis of an eremitic life is rooted in religious conviction, and springs from the Desert Theology of the Old Testament, the forty years God’s people spent wandering in the desert to force them to have a change of heart in their commitment to God and His commandments. The hermits felt that they could only achieve a true understanding of God, a true relationship, by escaping the distractions and temptations of the immoral world. By starting their own forty-year ascetic journey through the desert.

  “The first notable Christian hermit was Paul of Thebes, who lived in Egypt around the 3rd century. Here in Cappadocia, monastic activity dates back to the 4th century, about a hundred years after Paul, when so-called anchorite communities began hewing cells in the rock around here, following the teachings of Basileios the Great. The Bishop of Caesarea. Anchorites are kind of like hermits on steroids, hermits who refuse to have almost any interaction with the communities around them. Later, after the time of Mohammed, Arab raiders routinely swept through the area, killing and thieving at will. As a result, the anchorites were forced to band together into troglodyte villages, or inhabit the underground cities such as Kaymakli or Derinkuyu, cities that had been built and later abandoned many centuries before.”

  “Is that it? Just the two cities?” Sam asked.

  “No, there are at least forty other cities, mostly in the same general area. And there may well be others we don’t know about, cities where the entrance has collapsed or has been covered up over time. One of the last hidden cities we do know about, Özkonak, was discovered just forty years ago, when a farmer stumbled onto it by accident. He was trying to figure out where the water for his crops was going. Instead, he found a large underground room which, in fact, turned out to be an entire subterranean city, going down at least ten stories into the ground. About forty meters deep. Yet another city was uncovered just a few years ago by construction workers that were demolishing some low-income housing in Nevşehir. It’s still too early to know for sure, but that may wind up being the largest underground complex of them all, even larger than Derinkuyu.”

  Margaret looked confused. “So why doesn’t the country look for more hidden cities? I’m sure there’s great technology out there for finding them. The archaeologists in Italy are always turning up buried ruins from the Roman era.”

  Mehmed held up a finger. “Yes, but the problem is, what do you do when you find one? Turkey has enough problems as it is, particularly with the terrorist issues to the west and south and all the refugee problems. Even if the country found a new city, there’d be pressure to excavate, protect, open it up to the public. And that takes money. Lots of money, money Turkey just doesn’t have right now. And as you’ll see later today, it isn’t as if the country is short on c
ave cities. There’s hardly any tourist traffic to the cities as it is. So there just isn’t any financial incentive for someone to look for them.”

  “I see,” Sam said, shaking her head. “As always, it all comes down to money. But do we know much about the history of the underground cities? Who built them in the first place?”

  “Let me answer that by focusing on just one of the cities, the one we’ll be visiting later today, Kaymakli.” Mehmed pulled the map back up and pointed out a location that had been marked with a red star. “The ancient name for Kaymakli was Enegup. It is believed that the first caves at Kaymakli were excavated by the Phrygians, an Indo-European people, sometime in the eighth century BCE. During the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, the caves were expanded to create a refuge against all the armies that swept back and forth across the open plains, a solution to a problem that has persisted all the way up to the modern era. Christians moved into the cities during Roman times to escape persecution. And in the Byzantine era, Kaymakli was once again used for protection, first from the iconoclasts in Constantinople, then later from the Muslims during the Arab–Byzantine wars. At some point the city was connected with Derinkuyu, another major underground city, through many miles of underground tunnels. These two linked cities continued to be used and expanded by the Christians during the Mongolian incursions of the 14th century, and later by groups of people—the so-called Cappadocian Greeks—who were trying to escape persecution during the Ottoman Empire.” He looked up. “Ah! It looks like we’ve finally arrived. Let’s get parked and we’ll continue the lecture when we have something to actually look at.”

  As Sam and Margaret emerged from the car—leaving Maddie behind in the car for the moment, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes— they were surprised to see that the sky was filled with brightly colored hot air balloons, floating softly across a cloudless blue sky. “Oh, santo cielo! How lovely. I’d almost forgotten what all this looks like,” Margaret exclaimed, pressing a hand to her mouth. “But I hope you don’t have any plans to get me up in one of those.”