Golden Chariot

by Chris Karlsen

  He allowed her a peek to a side of him she doubted he showed too many. For him to open up this way was a special moment and she chose her words with care. “I suppose their dreams were similar to ours.”

  “I don’t speak of literal dreams.”

  “I know.” Charlotte understood. “Life dreams, you mean. I’d say they were much the same as today in many respects. The common sailor probably dreamed of owning his own ship someday. Perhaps he hoped his sons might be lucky enough to apprentice with a tradesman. I imagine he felt if they learned a craft they’d never have to go to sea and lead the hard life of a sailor. I’m sure he dreamed his daughters would marry well.”

  She used the moment to learn more about Atakan’s background. “What about you? What did your father want for you?”

  “My father was in the military. He was deployed to distant bases for long stretches of time. From when I was a small boy, he insisted I attend university. I was to learn a profession that wouldn’t keep me away from my family for months and months.”

  Charlotte refrained from commenting on the irony of Atakan’s choice of professions. His work for the Ministry kept him away on archaeological sites for months on end.

  “And yes,” Atakan said, “he was happy to see my sister married to a good man.”

  “Our dreams aren’t changed by time.”

  He lingered by the tank for a few long seconds. She’d love to ask him what his dreams were but didn’t think he’d tell her. She had the feeling he revealed as much as he was willing to and she was smart enough not to push him for more.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Athens

  The phone rang on Stevan’s desk. He answered on the second ring.

  “Stevan...” It was Waterman.

  “Aaron, how are you?”

  “Never mind how I am. What the hell is going on?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You ordered the hit on that Turk, Ekrem Zeren. I’m not a moron. It took me awhile to figure out you were behind the murder. You lied when I asked you point blank. Why?”

  “You didn’t need to know. It was a personal vendetta, like yours with the Dashiell woman.”

  “I don’t appreciate being bull-shitted. Now Heather, Zeren’s girlfriend, is missing. Charlotte’s family is upset. They’re worried about her safety. Frank said Elizabeth has asked her ex-husband and son to use any influence they have to find out more from the Istanbul police.”

  Stevan swiveled his chair around and poured a snifter of cognac from the decanter on an antique chiffonier.

  “Do they have a contact with the Istanbul authorities?” He passed the snifter back and forth a few inches under his nose, enjoying the spicy bouquet.

  “Of course not. How the fuck would they?”

  “Sounds like a personal problem.”

  “I don’t want problems with our plan, personal or otherwise. Give me a goddamn straight answer. Are you involved?”

  Stevan stroked the picture of his daughter, Aphrodite, he kept on his desk. “This is news to me,” he said and sipped his cognac.

  “Is there a chance your associate, the one you hired to kill Zeren is responsible?”

  “I didn’t hire him to take her. Why would I be interested in the woman?”

  “Look, none of this is part of our deal. We agreed to have Charlotte disappear and take the fall for the theft. Your contract murder nearly killed her in the process. I’ll let that stupidity go. The girlfriend is a different story. It means more cops poking around. The whole operation is taking an ugly turn. I don’t want anything to happen to Charlotte before the job is finished.”

  “Calm down. Everything is going as planned. Zeren’s woman is not our concern,” Stevan said.

  “I don’t like it. I’m warning you, anymore surprises and I’m out. The deal is off.” Aaron slammed the phone down hard.

  Stevan set the snifter on the desk and removed the mother-of-pearl inlay box from his bottom drawer. He gave Aphrodite the Victorian jewel case for her sixteenth birthday. She kept her personal treasures in it, including her diary.

  He lifted the lid and took out the photos of her and Ekrem. How happy she looked. How she loved him. I love him too much to live without him, she wrote in the last entry of her diary.

  The hatred welled up again in Stevan. He remembered how he humbled himself in his humiliating phone call to Mustafa Zeren, Ekrem’s father, pleading with him on Aphrodite’s behalf. Stevan heard the conversation in his head as fresh as the day it occurred. Staring at her picture, he replayed Mustafa’s cold response.

  “Ekrem cannot marry her. How would it look, the son of a Minister of Parliament marrying the bastard daughter of you and your whore?”

  Ekrem’s termination of the relationship broke his Aphrodite’s heart. Stevan’s beautiful girl hung herself. Her suicide destroyed her mother’s spirit. She refused to speak to, or see, Stevan after the funeral.

  “I waited for this, Mustafa. Five long years I suffered through the pain of birthdays my daughter wouldn’t celebrate, struggled with my anguish as the date of her death came around. Now I’ve destroyed what you loved most, your oldest son.”

  He placed the photo in the box, closed the lid and put it back in the drawer. From his center drawer, he pulled out another picture of Ekrem. This one showed him with Heather. They sat at an outdoor café on the Koc University grounds. A private investigator Stevan hired took the picture. Mustafa approved of this woman, this foreign professor.

  Stevan laid the photo on his desk. Pleased, he made a call.

  “Maksym, it’s me, Kryianos.”

  “I wondered when you’d call.”

  “I wanted to give you time with Ekrem’s woman. Has she told you anything useful on Atakan Vadim?”

  “No. If Ekrem shared information with her, she’d have told us days ago.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “Yes...for now.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Sevastopol

  Maksym eyed the naked woman with disinterest. As women go, Heather Hilliard wasn’t the type he preferred. She was too bony, too frail, and too annoying. He’d raped numerous women. Eventually they stopped fighting and crying and let him finish swiftly. Not Ekrem’s woman. She whimpered the entire time. The stupid fool wouldn’t stop, even after he’d struck her several times.

  “Cut her down,” he told the two men who’d questioned her.

  The taller man sliced through the rope with one cut and Heather crumpled to the cement floor. She rose onto her knees but kept her head hung. Her blonde hair fell over her face covering the bruises on her chin and cheeks.

  “Water...please,” she begged, rubbing her red and raw wrists. “Please,” she appealed to Maksym, clasping small hands around his boot.

  Maksym smiled and squatted next to her. “Thirsty? Then, you shall drink,” he said. Cupping her chin in his palm, he tipped her face so she could look in his eyes.

  “Give her some water,” he ordered the second man.

  The man lifted her off the floor by the hair. She staggered as her legs went out from under her.

  “Drag her,” Maksym told them as he stood, watching.

  Each man grabbed her by the arms and half-dragged, half-pulled her along as she stumbled outside to Maksym’s pool. They took turns holding her as they stripped their clothes off. When they were naked too, they shoved her into the pool, jumping in after her. One restrained her. The other pushed her head under the water and held it there as she flailed, fighting to raise her head for a gulp of air. At Maksym’s nod, they let her up to breathe then repeated the process several more times.

  “Enough,” Maksym said. “Pull her out.” He waited until she stopped coughing and gasping for air. Again, he squatted next to her on the pool deck. “This is how I will kill you, but not here, not in the warmth of my pool. I will take you to the sea. The water is dark and bitter cold. It is a miserable death but after my men are done...” He laughed softly. “You may welcome it.”

&n
bsp; Maksym stood. “She is yours. When you’re finished give her to the others.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Bozburun

  Charlotte broke from the crust removal work on the copper pot and shut off the small compressor for her air drill. In the mood for a music change, a taste of Enrique Iglesias sounded good, something hot and upbeat like Bailamos or Rhythm Divine. She pushed her goggles up to the top of her head, tugged the protective face mask down, and took her earphones out.

  Next to her, Atakan continued working on an oil lamp, listening to his iPod. He stopped when Charlotte plucked the bud from his right ear.

  “I’m tired of listening to the same songs over and over. Want to switch iPods?”

  “Sure.”

  They exchanged with each other and went back to work. After an hour, she stopped and pulled both hers and Atakan’s earphones down so they hung around their necks.

  Atakan turned his air drill off. “You want to switch back?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m curious.”

  He waited for her to explain.

  She grinned slow and wicked. “Do you have this music on a CD at home somewhere?”

  “Yes,” Atakan said, his eyes narrowing. “Why?”

  “You ever put the deserty stuff on when you have a woman over and play sultan and harem girl?”

  His mouth dropped open and he appeared speechless.

  This is a first.

  “That’s a most indecent thing for a woman to ask a man,” he said, at last. “Is your brother not disturbed by your boldness?”

  “You don’t know Nick,” she said, laughing at the suggestion. “So, what’s the answer?”

  “I will not dignify such an impertinent question with a response.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” She’d bet there was a fiery blush beneath his tan.

  He handed back her iPod. “If I ever see your brother again, I shall speak to him about this,” he said sternly as he replaced his artifact in the secured storage cabinet. “I’m going to the showers.” Shooting her an indignant look, he grabbed his phone from the table and headed for the door.

  “See you later, Sultan.”

  #

  Ursula hid by the side of the dormitory. She’d kept track of Atakan’s movements for the past week. A creature of habit, he showered and shaved about this time every day, unless on the boat. She noticed he locked up his phone when he went to the Suraya for a diving assignment. But when he showered, he put it in an unlocked carry-on bag he stored under his cot.

  Damla stayed close to the camp after she told him of Atakan’s routine.

  Land duties were posted a day in advance. Whenever Charlotte and Atakan were assigned to the lab, Ursula volunteered for the pottery tables. Sorting and labeling the broken pieces was the dullest, least popular detail. No one ever asked for the job, so when Ursula did, Refik agreed, no questions asked. The area where the pottery fragments were identified and bundled was outside under a canvas canopy with open sides. It gave her an unobstructed view of the lab.

  When Atakan left, she guessed he was on his way to the showers and called Damla.

  He was quick to join her outside the men’s dorm. “Cough loud, if you hear the shower turn off,” Damla said.

  While he rerouted Atakan’s phone, her hands trembled, certain they’d be discovered. She finally shoved them into the pockets of her shorts and kept her eyes fixed on the shower. If Atakan, hard-nosed as he was, came out and found them, he’d interrogate her. He’d be severe and unsympathetic, but he’d do everything by the book and follow the Ministry’s rules. He wouldn’t cause her physical pain.

  Not so Damla. If caught, he’d resist Atakan and anyone else and somehow manage to get away. His type always escaped. She envisioned him blaming her for not warning him like he told her. The crazy scenario of the big Armenian hunting her down and punishing her filled her thoughts. She lived in a non-violent world surrounded by historians and scientists. The day he crushed her wrist at the café, he’d hurt her and didn’t care. She wasn’t sure what he meant by the threat about her having value in horrible places. It didn’t matter. He wanted to frighten her and it worked. After today, she’d tell Stevan again how she felt about the brute.

  Damla finished fast and Ursula directed him to the edge of camp. They moved along the hillside behind the kitchen which blocked them from view. Behind her, she heard the door to the showers creak open and close.

  “This spyware captures his calls. So what? Half of those are likely government numbers you could get without all this sneaking around,” Ursula said.

  “You don’t know a fraction of what the system does,” he said. “Number captures are not the only function. The device records all communication, including text messages and any pictures he takes. He has no secrets.”

  Ursula wasn’t listening. She was busy dancing out of a determined yellow jacket’s range, wildly swatting at it.

  A puff of air touched her cheek. Damla made an open-palmed grab towards her, his clenched fist inches from her face. She screamed, and he quickly pressed a finger to her lips, stifling the sound.

  Heat waves radiated from the dry ground penetrating through the thin rubber soles of her flip-flops. She froze, ignoring the uncomfortable warmth on her feet, afraid his hand would travel downward. The top of her bathing suit had slipped with her frantic gyrations and nearly exposed her breasts.

  He moved his finger and leaned a fraction closer, close enough for her to smell the cigarettes on his breath.

  “Such wide eyes, so blue,” he said, laughing. The husky barrel sound filled the quiet corner of camp. He opened his hand and flicked the dead yellow jacket from his palm.

  “I favor blue eyes.” He stepped back and turned toward an old herd path that bordered camp.

  Ursula shivered and rubbed the goose bumps from her arms as she watched him leave. When he looked back once and blew her a kiss, she spun and ran with no destination in mind, other than out of his sight.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Atakan vigorously toweled his wet hair as he walked to the men’s quarters. The choked, feminine scream stopped him. He paused and listened, unsure if he heard right. A deep male laugh reverberated off the rocky hills. Like fingerprints, everyone on the project had a unique laugh. He’d recognize each person’s without seeing their face.

  This was a stranger’s.

  Slinging the towel over his shoulder, he smoothed his hair back and headed in the direction of the sounds. He crossed the short distance between the showers and the rear of the camp. The couple wasn’t far ahead. Atakan positioned himself in the shade of the kitchen to observe them. If they turned, the pale colors of the towels around his waist and on his shoulder would blend with the building’s light wood.

  The interaction between Ursula and Damla didn’t make sense to him. She acted afraid of the man. So what were they doing together?

  Atakan remained until Damla left and Ursula raced back toward the center of camp. What had they done?

  He checked the kitchen first to see if Damla delivered any fresh supplies and found nothing new. Walking fast, he headed to Refik’s living quarters and office. Refik was on the Suraya and had been all day. It was doubtful he’d leave his quarters open, but Atakan shook the knob on the office door as a precaution. It was locked. Damla couldn’t have left supplies there.

  Atakan returned to the lab where Charlotte passed a drill with a light touch over the dented handle on a metal pot.

  She stopped her work and glanced at him.

  “Did Basri come in here?”

  She tugged the iPod earphones out. “What?”

  “Did Basri come in here?” he repeated.

  “Basri?”

  “Damla.”

  Charlotte shut the drill off. “No, why?” She two-fingered her mask down and pushed her goggles onto her head.

  “Did you see him walking in camp while I showered?”

  “No. You only left fifteen minutes ago,” she said, checkin
g her watch. Then, she looked him up and down, stopping at the towel that rode low on his hip bones. “What’s going on? You’re running around naked except for a towel, which is slipping by the way, in a tizzy about Damla.”

  “Nothing specific, I saw him leaving by the back way. Why not the front, unless he was up to something?”

  “I eliminated every building but our living quarters,” he said, retying the loosened knot on his towel. “This man is worrisome. I need to find what he was doing.” Atakan left the lab considering what he should do next.

  “Wait for me,” Charlotte called out.

  Outside Atakan paced, thinking, while she finished. He suspected Damla was here to meet Ursula.

  “Come with me,” he told Charlotte when she met him.

  Atakan stepped inside the men’s area and verified no one else was there before Charlotte followed. “Do me a favor,” he said after another quick search of the room and finding no delivery made.

  “Okay.” She sat on the foot of his cot with her back to him while he dressed.

  “Check your dorm. Make sure nothing was left by Damla—”

  “All right.” She stood to leave.

  “Don’t go yet. I need you to do one more thing. Find out what kind of phone Ursula uses.”

  “Why?”

  There was unwelcome obstinance in Charlotte’s tone. He didn’t need attitude from her.

  “What is going on with you?” she demanded, her back still turned.

  “I can’t explain. Just trust me,” he said, zipping his jeans. “You can turn around now.” He pulled a light blue cotton shirt from the small dresser he shared with Gerard. Putting it on, he buttoned it and flattened the front with his hands.

  “Wow, don’t you look nice.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’m meeting a friend later.”

  “Will you be bringing him to the café tonight?”

  “Charlotte, please hurry and get the phone info. I don’t know when Ursula is coming back.”