by Vincent Czyz
Drew swept a field of about ninety degrees, probably hitting nothing but rotting wood and rusting iron. When his trigger clicked uselessly, he reloaded and belly-crawled as rapidly as he could toward the bow of the ship.
A second later, bullets chewed up the gunwale where he’d been. Ashraf popped up again and fired in enviably controlled bursts.
Suddenly, the boat pulled forward and began to straighten out.
The Sicarii targeted the wheelhouse a third time.
Drew saw Ashraf spray the area around a muzzle flash. It blinked out. Ashraf dropped down and rolled away from the gunwale. Return fire sent chips of wood flying.
Drew jumped up and took the offensive. Braced for the jump of the weapon, he aimed low and fired in rapid bursts until the magazine was empty. Then he rolled all the way to starboard.
The trawler continued to pull away from shore.
The hull of the ship took a few dozen more rounds, but the shots tapered off and then ceased altogether.
Drew lay on his back, breathing hard, sweat trickling down the sides of his face. He wiped it away and looked at his hand. Blood. Wiping again, he jerked his head back when his finger encountered something sticking out of his face. A splinter.
“Mustafa!” Ashraf called.
Mustafa answered in English: “Ihab is dead!”
Drew closed his eyes wondering how long the respite would last.
Sayid had recovered from the blow he’d taken to the head in time to hear the firefight. It sounded as though Mustafa’s boat had rumbled away. He smiled, although he was tied up like a sheep on the holy day of Eid Al-Adha.
He heard the engine of another boat turn over into a rough idle. The Frenchman must be stealing the one docked next to the Sadat. He also heard—oh, happiest sound of all—sirens. Never did he think he would be elated to hear the approach of the Egyptian police.
Suddenly he was grinning into the silenced muzzle of a pistol.
“I broke my promise, Sayid. You’re the last to die.” Raymond squeezed the trigger.
9: 16
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
MUSTAFA AND ASHRAF had taken Ihab’s bullet-ridden body out of the wheelhouse and covered it with an oily blanket.
“How will I tell his wife?” Mustafa stood over the lumpy shape. “And Walid! He was my nephew! How will I tell his mother?” He shook his turbaned head. “Peace be upon them.” He returned to the wheelhouse.
Drew had pulled three splinters out of his face and sponged off with water from a bucket that Mustafa had dipped into the sea. The salt’s sting was perversely refreshing. “How did they find us?”
“They found Sayid,” Ashraf said. “It was he who warned us.”
The Sadat had holes everywhere—in the deck, what was left of the wheelhouse, the gunwales. Brass casings rolled and clattered as the boat rode swells. Chipped wood scattered at their feet made it look as though some sort of construction were going on.
“Bad news,” Mustafa called from the wheelhouse. “We’re being followed.”
Ashraf cursed in Arabic.
“Can we outrun them?” Drew asked.
“We have a leak, and we are losing oil pressure. I cannot run the engine at full speed.”
“Turn off our lights!” Ashraf snapped. “And keep me informed of their position!”
Drew pulled his cell phone out of a pocket and turned it on. It beeped to let him know there was a message. Yasemin. Now?
Drewjuh’um, I have been overbearing, too critical, narrow-minded, too proud to admit it. Enough flaws? I’ve made up my mind. Let’s talk, but *only* when you are ready. I am a fool, but I am a fool for you, too.
If there was anyone he wanted to see right now it was Yasemin. She was the only one who could do something about stoppering the vacuum Zafer’s death had left.
Tucking the phone under his chin, he dug through his wallet. He slipped out the card Zafer had gotten from Nabil in Cairo and punched in the numbers with his thumb.
“Alo?”
“Raymond…?”
“Oui.”
“Back off or I’ll sink the scroll in the Mediterranean.”
“I’ll keel Kadir.”
“You’re going to kill him anyway.”
“As God is my witness, eef you give up the scroll, we won’t harm him or you or your Egyptian friends. Zafer is dead. How long do you think you can last without him?”
Drew felt his face flush with rage. Stephen was dead. Zafer was dead. Tariq, Ihab, Walid.
“Long enough to make sure you don’t get that fucking scroll,” he hissed.
“We will catch you, mon ami.
We will kill you. We will take the scroll. We will kill Kadir.”
“Whatever happens, I’ll make sure I destroy the scroll before you get it.”
There was a pause—a telephoned shrug. “Then you will be safeguarding the Church and doing our work for us. But I doubt very much that you will. You want the scroll to stay intact much more than we do. Eef you want to save Kadir as well as the scroll, then you have one choice.”
“Kadir was Zafer’s friend, not mine. The little bastard is as greedy as Serafis. He deserves whatever he gets.”
“I see Zafer has taught you how to bloof.”
“Bluff my ass. You made a big mistake, Raymie. You should have killed me, not Zafer. He would have given you the scroll without a second thought. Kadir was like a brother to him. Do you hear me, Raymond?” He spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. “You … killed … the wrong … man.”
Let him wonder, Drew thought. Thumbing a button, he ended the call and cocked an arm as though he were about make a throw from the outfield to third base. Stopping himself, he retracted his arm and tapped a name in his contact list.
“Drew? You didn’t have to call right away …”
“Yazz, listen, I only have a minute.”
“I’m listening …”
“I want to try, too. Nothing has changed since I tried to back out of the divorce before the papers were signed.”
“I’ve been a stubborn eshek all these years. A proud, stubborn donkey. I guess I always understood, I just couldn’t admit it.”
Drew laughed. “Look, I’m not in Istanbul, but we’ll talk when I get back, okay?”
“Drew … please be careful. I love you so much—”
“It’ll kill you if I die, huh?” He was looking down at glimmers of moonlit water through the holes in the gunwale.
“Allah korusun! Don’t even say that. Where are you?”
“Alexandria. Off the coast. I love you, too, but I have to go now.”
“Drew! What’re you doing in Egypt? Why can’t you tell me?”
“Yazz, please, just wait for me.”
“How long, Drew?”
“I’ll call soon, I promise. But not on this phone. You won’t be able to reach me again at this number, okay?”
“Drew I can’t take this—”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“Seni chok seviyorum, Drew.”
“I love you very much, too. I’ll call soon. I promise …”
He ended the call and hurled the phone into the water. He barely heard the plunk over the sound of the wind and the boat’s engine.
“Ashraf!” Mustafa pointed.
The other boat was visible, a silhouette gliding over the moon-tinted sea.
“How is our oil pressure?” Ashraf spoke in English, probably so he didn’t have to repeat everything.
“I have only slowed the leak. We cannot run the engine at top speed.”
“Then we will fight.”
Sweeping away brass shells with an angry foot, Ashraf walked across the deck and opened up the “instrument” case.
“Holy shit, is that a bazooka?”
“RPG.”
Sporadic gunfire started up, and Drew fell to the deck. He couldn’t believe it was happening again. Not submachine guns this time, automatic pistols. More accurate. The wheelhouse took most of the lead.
&nb
sp; Ashraf was on one knee at the back of the squared-off stern, the long tube resting on his shoulder. The business end of the launcher was capped by a mini missile—a sleek grenade. He glanced at Drew. “Stay down and stay back.”
Drew hardly saw Ashraf’s face except for the white of an eyebrow, like a curving scar on a shadow.
Ignoring the bullets zipping past, the big Egyptian took his time, but the way the ship was bouncing on the swells, aiming the RPG couldn’t be easy.
“Zafer says hello … and good-bye.”
Drew wasn’t ready for the explosion—the back end of the launcher erupted in fire—and he thought Ashraf had somehow pointed the weapon the wrong way. No, he realized, that was blowback.
Risking a bullet to peer over the gunwale, Drew saw a thin trail of white smoke as the projectile hissed over the sea—and disappeared.
Ashraf swore, dropped to the deck, and crawled away.
The gunfire became more frantic, like a hard rain suddenly picking up.
“I can’t aim this thing when we are going up and down like we are riding on the back of a fucking fish!” Ashraf turned and shouted instructions to Mustafa in Arabic.
The Sadat came about, exposing its port side to the Sicarii boat.
Reloading while flat on his back, Ashraf waited for the gunfire to subside. He got up on a knee, aimed over the gunwale, and fired again. The grenade exploded in the water three or four yards in front of the pursuing boat.
Another hail of bullets drove him face-first into the deck.
“Why do they not run out of fucking ammunition?”
Drew’s cheek, like Ashraf’s, was pressed against the deck. “If their automatic weapons and pistols are both 9mm, they’re probably emptying their submachine gun clips and reloading their pistols.”
“I had not thought of that.”
“What about us? How many more grenades?”
“Two.”
“I have an idea.” Drew had seen spotlights on either side of the bow. He would have to point them by hand, then get away before Mustafa turned them on. Without waiting for Ashraf ‘s approval, Drew bellied toward the bow.
“Where are you going?”
“The spotlights!”
A bullet whined past Drew’s head. Shit! He’d felt it cut the air. Glancing up, he was relieved to see the port spotlight still intact.
Drew glared over the gunwale. The shadowy boat, lit by muzzle flashes as though it had attracted fireflies, was gaining on them. He swiveled the light to where he estimated its beam would hit the Sicarii wheelhouse. Ducking back down, he scrambled toward the starboard lamp. It had been shattered by gunfire.
Ashraf shouted to Mustafa.
A shaft of light instantaneously joined the bow of the trawler to the bow of the Sicarii boat. As expected, the small-arms fire intensified.
“Keep the light on them, Mustafa!”
Ashraf aimed. The beam had slid from the bow of the pursuing boat to the starboard side—the Sicarii were maneuvering away. Drew intuited— or imagined—Ashraf timing the rise and fall of the boat underneath him. “C’mon …”
Ashraf fired.
The spotlight exploded and went dark, but the rocket was already a tracer scorching the salt air. Fire erupted and thunder cracked as their pursuers’ wheelhouse exploded.
“They are dead! Dead in the water!”
Gunfire from the damaged boat ceased.
Ashraf reloaded and went down on one knee again. He used the burning wheelhouse to guide his last shot, but the boat bucked just as he pulled the trigger, and the grenade disappeared into the sky.
Ashraf shrugged. “We didn’t sink them, but they can no longer follow us.”
Drew looked back at the burning ship, which was now veering away from them. Had they killed Raymond? And what about Kadir? Had Drew just signed his death warrant?
BOOK 10: 1 - 13
KONSTANTINOUPOLIS
Is your faith based on the ‘fact’ that your Jesus said that he would rise again after his death? On his predictions of triumphing over the grave? Very well, let it be so. Let us assume for the moment that he foretold his resurrection. Are you ignorant of the many who have invented similar tales to lead the simple-minded astray? Zamolix, Pythagoras’s servant, convinced the Scythians that he had risen from the dead though in fact he had hidden himself in a cave for several years. What about Pythagoras himself in Italy—and Phampsinitus in Egypt? Now let’s see, who else? What about Orpheus among the Odrysians, Protesilaus in Thessaly and most of all Herakles and Theseus? But quite separately from all these risings from the grave, we must look carefully at the question of the resurrection of the body as a possibility for mortals. Undoubtedly you will admit that these other stories are legends, just as they appear to me, but you will insist that your resurrection story, this climax to your tragedy, is true and noble.
— Celsus, circa 170 AD
10: 1
GÜRSEL’S RULE
BOATS STINK. OF OLD OIL. OF DIESEL FUEL. Of rotting wood soaked in seawater. Of rot in general. A sulfurous, oily, briny reek. The head stinks most of all. And it’s not just because that’s where the piss and shit get dumped. In Drew’s experience, limited mainly to diving boats, the head was always a nauseating compilation of every foul smell on the boat.
Another thing about boats: they were noisy. The smaller the boat, the noisier it was. In some places on the Sadat, it felt like the engines were rattling the ship apart. The smells or the noise—maybe both—had given Drew a headache with the tenacity of a barnacle. Sleeping on a fishing boat wasn’t much fun either. Two consecutive nights.
He leaned over the gunwale at the stern, where the bounce of the waves was minimal, and the open blue had a pacifying effect. Hanging out on the bow was like being on a carnival ride; his stomach dropped each time the boat fell into the trough of a wave. His bristly hair no longer whipped across his face in the wind.
On a day like this, with sun sparkling on the water, it was hard to believe that Zafer had been killed not forty-eight hours earlier. It was hard for Drew to believe he was now connected with as many as a dozen killings, that yesterday he had been shooting at human beings. That he might have killed one. If not more.
Christ, how had his life gotten here?
Well, yes, that was exactly how: Christ.
Mustafa came out of the wheelhouse. “The boat that will take you to Turkey is very close.” He pointed.
Drew crossed to starboard and saw it maybe half mile away. Another fishing boat.
“Where are we now?”
“Measuring by longitude, we are between Kash and Antalya.”
They had agreed to go farther east since, from Alexandria, Kash was the obvious Turkish port to make for. They also wanted to avoid Bodrum, which would have been the natural choice for someone going on to Istanbul.
Ashraf came up from below decks wiping his hands on a rag. Barefoot, wearing rolled-up trousers and a white T-shirt that accentuated his albino eyebrow, he looked like a character out of a Hemingway novel— aligned with the currents, on a first-name basis with the variant winds that blew from Africa across the Mediterranean, a fisherman who knew nothing of hi-tech weaponry or black market dealings.
The Egyptian laid a hand of intimidating heft on Drew’s shoulder and squeezed. “I will see that Zafer’s body is returned to Turkey.”
Drew nodded.
“Are you sure you do not want me to come with you to Istanbul?”
Again, Drew nodded. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he felt he had to go back alone. He didn’t imagine he could outfight or even outwit Raymond— if Ashraf hadn’t killed him last night. He was operating on instinct now, and his instinct was telling him that he was best off on his own.
The Turkish boat, a good deal smaller than their own, pulled alongside the Sadat, and crew members tossed lines to one another. Grabbing hold of a line each, Ashraf and Mustafa pulled the boats—engines at idle— together. Bumpers that looked like huge rubber bottles hung from the
sides of both boats and kept the hulls from battering each other.
“Captain Mustafa,” the Turk said, “now that I see the condition of your boat, I am thinking I must raise my price.”
Mustafa looked at Drew. “Gürsel makes a joke. Do not worry, my friend. He is a man of his word.”
Wearing the cap Greek fishermen had made famous, Gürsel stood with his hands on his hips. A tank top with black and white stripes drooped over baggy shorts that hung just below his knees. His bare feet in touch with his boat, with the grain of the wood, Drew imagined he felt the sea through his toes.
Drew kissed Ashraf on both cheeks. The two men embraced as though last night had been an initiation rite, and they were now brothers. Maybe it had been. Maybe they were.
“Ma’salama.”
Drew was pretty sure that was good-bye in Arabic. He replied in Turkish. “Allah korusun.” May God protect. The verb wouldn’t mean anything to Ashraf, but he’d get the Allah part.
He traded kisses with Mustafa as well, but there was no embrace, only a handshake.
Hefting his leather satchel, which held the scroll, the books he’d bought from Shimon, and very little else, Drew swung it to Gürsel by the strap. Minding the grinding sides of the boats, Drew jumped onto the deck and sprawled forward on hands and knees.
“Good-bye, my friend!” Ashraf untied one of the lines joining the boats together. “We will see each other again one day, inshallah.”
“Inshallah,” Drew repeated. God willing. He waved.
The boats drew apart, and the engines kicked into gear. Drew waved to Ashraf, who smiled and waved back.
“Türkche biliyorsun, deh’ilmi?” You know Turkish, right?
Drew turned to Gürsel whose tanned face was as like a sweep of desert landscape. “Iyi biliyorum.” I know it well.
“What you carry must be very valuable.”
“It is.”
Gürsel lifted his hat by the stubby visor and settled it back on his head. “There is one rule on my boat: if the Turkish coast guard approaches, all contraband goes overboard.”
“What?” Drew shook his head. “I’m not throwing my case into the sea.”