Austin glanced longingly at the doors and corridors that offered possible escape routes. There was no way he and Carina could break away from the crowd. With each stop, Buck and his friends drew closer.
Austin put himself in the shoes of the pursuers. The three men would move in and separate him from the crowd. Two men would finish him off with their knives. The third would grab Carina.
Buck and his thugs were all former special ops men. Their training would have included knife fighting and assassination. A hand clamped over his mouth to prevent him from calling out. A quick thrust of a blade between his ribs. By the time bystanders realized murder had been done, Austin would be breathing his last. Buck and company would slip away in the confusion that would follow.
If he was going to make a move, he’d better do it soon.
The tour group stepped into a large carpeted room. The walls were decorated in seventeenth-century blue-and-white tile. A wide sofa covered in gold brocade sat on a platform under a gilded canopy supported on four columns. The walls were decorated in a combination of baroque and rococo style. Light filtered through the stained-glass windows in the upper section of the domed room.
The guide said they were in the throne room, or royal saloon. At one end of the chamber was another platform where the concubines, wives, and the sultan’s mother sat during affairs of state or to enjoy music and dancing.
The crowd began to break up, removing the human buffer Austin and Carina had been using to fend off Buck and his gang. As the group dissipated, Austin faced the three men with only a few tourists in between them.
Now or never.
Austin whispered to Carina to play along. He took her by the hand and sidled up to the guide.
“Would it be possible for us to leave the tour?” Austin said. “My wife is not feeling well. She’s pregnant.”
The guide took in Carina’s slim profile. “Pregnant?”
“Yes,” Carina said with a demure smile. “Only a few months.”
Carina spread her fingers across her flat abdomen. The guide blushed and hurriedly pointed to a doorway. “You can go out that way.”
They thanked him and headed for the exit.
“Wait!” the guide said. He lifted his walkie-talkie to his lips. “I’ll call the guard to escort you.”
He spoke into the hand radio. The guard would arrive in a few minutes. He told them to stay with the group in the meantime.
Buck had seen Austin talking to the guide. When the guide spoke into his radio, he assumed that Austin had called for help.
“Let’s do it,” he said to his men.
Austin was guiding Carina from one part of the room to the other, trying to put space between them and their pursuers. He was learning that hide-and-seek wasn’t made to be played in the open.
The three men closed in. Buck was close enough so that Austin could see the murderous gleam in his eye. Buck reached under his jacket.
A burly security guard entered the royal saloon, and the tour guide pointed out Austin and Carina. Austin played his ace card.
Pointing an accusing finger at Buck and the two other men, he roared at the top of his lungs. “PKK! PKK!”
The PKK was short-hand for Partiya Kerkerên Kerdistan, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organization that wants to set up an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey. The PKK had been staging a violent campaign against the Turkish government since 1978, attacking government property and tourist areas and, in the process, killing thousands.
The guard’s amiable expression vanished, and he fumbled for the revolver in its belt holster. In Turkey, shouting PKK was the equivalent of throwing gasoline onto an open fire. The guard had finally got his gun out.
The guard saw the knife in Buck’s hands. Holding the revolver with two hands, he shouted in Turkish. Buck turned and saw the muzzle pointed at his chest. The knife clattered to the floor, and he raised his hands in the air.
One of Buck’s men was aiming a pistol at the guard. Austin threw a battering ram shoulder block into the man’s midsection, and the gun went flying. They crashed to the floor, and Austin drew his arm back and nailed the man with a short punch to the jaw.
The throne room had emptied out. The tour guide had ducked into a doorway and was calling for reinforcements on his radio.
Buck slipped his hand under his jacket and came out with a gun. It was a fatal mistake. The middle-aged guard was a Turkish army veteran. Although he was thick around the middle, he remembered the discipline that had been drilled into him. Austin got to his feet, yelled “PKK” again, and pointed at Buck.
The guard turned, calmly aimed at Buck’s torso, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet caught Buck square in the chest and sent him crashing onto the sultan’s divan.
Austin scrambled to his feet, grabbed Carina, who had been frozen in place, and guided her toward the exit door. They flew along a corridor, made a blind turn, and retraced their steps to a small room that had a door in the corner. The door led out onto a terrace that was drenched with sunlight.
Standing on the terrace were the two men who had chased them through the abandoned village. Austin stepped in front of Carina to protect her. As the men started toward Austin and Carina, the harem door burst open and Buck’s men stepped out into the open with guns in hand. They blinked in the bright sunlight and didn’t see the Turks reach under their jackets for guns, which had silencers attached. The guns coughed simultaneously. Buck’s men crumpled to the deck.
While one Turk kept his gun trained on the door, the other took Austin’s arm.
“Come,” he said. “It’s okay. We’re friends.” He gave Austin a friendly pat on the back and winked at Carina.
The other man took up the rear. He was talking on a cell phone and frequently glanced over his shoulder to see if they were being followed.
The Turks hid their guns when they entered the public area and led the way through a maze of buildings and courtyards to the palace gate. A silver Mercedes waited at the curb with its engine running. The lead Turk opened the passenger door.
Austin and Carina got into the backseat and discovered it was already occupied.
Their old friend Cemil smiled and gave a soft-spoken order to the driver. The Mercedes pulled away from the palace complex and merged with the Istanbul traffic flow.
“Those were your men?” Carina said.
“Don’t worry. They are not angry about the tire your friend ruined. It was their own fault. I told them to keep watch on you, but they got too close.”
“I’ll pay for a new tire,” Austin said.
Cemil chuckled. As a Turk, he explained, he could not refuse the offer.
“I apologize if my men frightened you,” he said.
He explained that after he had seen them in the cisterns, he had heard disturbing rumors. Hard-eyed mercenaries had arrived in town. They had come into the country unarmed so as not to attract attention and had acquired weapons from a local dealer, who was a friend of Cemil’s. More worrisome, they had arrived the same day as Carina and Austin and were staying in the same hotel.
He had sent his men to keep an eye on his friends. After his men had been ditched in the abandoned village, they had returned to Istanbul and kept an eye on the hotel, figuring Austin and Carina would come back for their luggage. They had followed Austin from the archaeological site to Topkapi only to lose him when he and Carina had ducked into the harem. They had seen Buck and his men go in after them and had run around to the exit.
Carina planted a big kiss on Cemil’s cheek. “How can we ever thank you?”
“There is one way. I made a bad business decision that has come to the attention of the international authorities. It would be helpful if you vouched for my character should the situation become awkward.”
“It’s a deal,” Carina said.
Cemil’s cheerful manner changed. “Your hotel is no longer safe. My men will pick up your luggage and move you to an inn where you will be oka
y for the night. I have a lot of friends in Turkey, but people are easily bought and sold, and I could not guarantee your safety indefinitely”
“I think Cemil is saying the climate here is no longer healthy,” Austin said.
“Your friend puts it very well,” Cemil said. “My advice is to get out of Istanbul as quickly as possible.”
AUSTIN WASN’T one to disregard good advice. But he had unfinished business to attend to. The Mercedes dropped them off at the Bosphorus dig, and arrangements were made to pick them up in two hours.
Hanley was in a shed that had been set up as a conservation laboratory. The plaster casts were laid out on a table. They were dark gray in color.
“I painted the ridges and raised areas to make them stand out,” Hanley explained. “Fascinating stuff. Where did you say you got it?”
“These designs were etched into a Phoenician statue. We’ll run them by an expert when we get home,” Austin said.
Hanley bent over the plaster of paris replica of the cat that had been entwined around the Navigator’s legs. “I’ve got three cats back home, so I got a big kick out of this,” he said.
Austin was looking at the swirling lines that were the cat’s stripes when his eye began to see patterns that didn’t seem random. He held a magnifying glass over the cat’s rib section. Almost lost in the feline’s stripes was an opposing Z symbol. Unlike the others, which were horizontal, this one was upside down.
He handed the glass to Carina, who studied the mark and said, “What does it mean?”
“If this is a symbol for a ship, it’s either sunk or sinking.” Austin stared at the pattern of lines and whorls. “I think this is more than artistic whimsy. We’re looking at a map. Those lines depict a coastline. The indentations are bays and coves.”
He borrowed a digital camera and a tripod. Carina held the casts at a vertical angle. Austin shot dozens of photos and downloaded the pictures on a borrowed laptop computer and sent them to a NUMA e-mail address.
While Hanley and Carina wrapped the casts in plastic foam, Austin put a call in to Zavala at the airport. Zavala said he would meet them the next morning for the flight back to the United States. The damaged Subvette had been loaded onto its cargo plane.
The Mercedes arrived with their baggage and took Austin and Carina to a small hotel that overlooked the Bosphorus. They turned in early, too tired to enjoy the view, and fell asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow. When they arose early the next morning, the Mercedes was waiting to take them to the airport.
Zavala welcomed them on board with a fresh pot of coffee.
Less than an hour later, the Citation was airborne and heading west at five hundred miles an hour.
“How was Istanbul?” Zavala said as the plane sped over the Aegean.
Austin told him about the encounter with Buck and his gang at Topkapi, the mad dash into the harem, and the rescue by Cemil and his men.
“The harem! Wish I could have been there,” Zavala said.
“Me too. We could have used you when the shooting started,” Austin said.
“That’s not what I had in mind. I wish I could have been there when the harem was full of beautiful women.”
Austin should have known better than to expect any sympathy from his womanizing friend.
“I understand there’s an opening for a eunuch,” Austin said.
Zavala clamped his knees together. “Ouch,” he said. “Thanks but no thanks. I think I’ll go up and chat with the pilot.”
Austin grinned at his partner’s discomfort. His light mood only lasted a moment. Buck and Ridley were dead and their cohorts neutralized, but if Austin’s suspicions about Viktor Baltazar were correct there would be more hard-eyed men in his future.
Even worse, the baby-faced killer was still on the loose.
NUMA 7 - The Navigator
Chapter 34
ANGELA FELT AS IF someone had walked over her grave.
There was no reason for the icy coldness between her shoulder blades. She often stayed after hours and had never felt nervous about working alone; there was something comforting about being surrounded by the wisdom of the ages.
She thought she had heard a voice call out. She wasn’t sure. She had been focused on the Meriwether Lewis material.
The only other person in the building was her boss. Perhaps Helen Woolsey had said good night.
Angela sat back in her chair and breathed a sigh of relief. She had been playing a waiting game, hoping Woolsey would leave the building by the time the Trouts returned. She could barely contain her excitement. She had much to tell them.
She cocked her ear. Silence. Something didn’t seem right.
Angela rose from her chair and walked across the silent reading room. She stepped into a darkened corridor and flicked on the light switch. The hall remained in darkness. She’d have to call the building superintendent in the morning. She started down the corridor, walking toward the glow that seeped out around the edges of Helen’s door.
She stopped and knocked softly. No reply. Helen must have forgotten to turn off her light. Angela opened the door and entered the office, only to freeze in midstep.
Woolsey was still at her desk, her hands folded neatly on her lap, her head angled back like a broken doll. Her mouth was wide open, and dead eyes stared at the ceiling. Reddish purple bruises marred her pale throat.
A silent scream echoed inside Angela’s skull. She put her hand to her mouth and fought the impulse to vomit.
She slowly backed out of the office. Her instinct was to run toward the front door. She stared down the unlit corridor, but a primeval sense of danger stopped her from bolting into the gloomy shadows. Instead of heading for the entrance, she sprinted back into the interior of the building.
Adriano’s hulking figure stepped from the gloom. He had jammed the light switch with a pocketknife and had expected the young woman to panic and rush into his arms. But she had turned and run the other way like a rabbit retreating into its warren.
Adriano’s blood was up after killing the Watcher. That had been easy. The thought of a challenge cheered him. The kill was much more enjoyable when it came at the end of a hunt.
He passed Woolsey’s office and glanced in at his handiwork. Woolsey had been the latest in a long line of Watchers embedded in the Philosophical Society. The Watcher system went back centuries. Watchers were quietly engaged in centers of learning around the world, their only job to sound the alarm at the first hint that the Secret had been uncovered.
Two centuries before, another philosophical society Watcher had warned of Jefferson’s findings. The Watcher was one of the academics Jefferson had asked to translate the words on the vellum. The destruction of Jefferson’s papers was supposed to have ended his quest, but the connection to Meriwether Lewis was discovered and that loose end had to be tied up by assassins dispatched to the LouisianaTerritory.
Woolsey could not have known that her first call as a Watcher had set in motion the chain of events that would lead to her demise. Her job was to report any serious queries about Phoenician voyages to America. She had dutifully relayed news of the Jefferson file. By the time she received instructions to turn the file over to a courier, a State Department representative had come by to collect the Jefferson material. She angrily put the blame on her assistant, but was told not to mention the incident to Angela. When she called again to report the Trouts’ visit to Angela, she sealed her death warrant.
Woolsey was told to make sure Angela stayed late. Adriano had showed up at the museum after hours, dispatched the librarian, and unsuccessfully tried to ambush her assistant.
He continued along the corridor, methodically trying each door. The offices were all locked. He came to a four-way intersection and sniffed the air like a keening hound.
Click.
The sound of a latch closing was barely audible. Adriano’s senses were at their height during a hunt. He turned to his right, following the passageway to a door, which he opened, and step
ped into a dark room.
Adriano had never been in the library but knew its layout well. After Angela had discovered the file, he had sent people to scout out the building. He considered himself a professional and wanted to acquaint himself with a potential killing field.
He knew that the darkened room housed thousands of books stacked on tall bookshelves that were laid out in parallel rows.
Angela had ducked between two rows when she heard the door open and close. She had been headed toward an exit at the rear of the room. She was sure the pounding of her heart would give her away.
Adriano hit the wall switch and the room was flooded with light.
Angela dropped to her hands and knees and crawled to the end of the row, then along a narrow aisle between the ends of the shelves and the wall.
Adriano’s hunter’s ears picked up the shuffle of knees and palms brushing the floor.
He strolled along the aisle. He took his time, pausing to peer between the rows of bookshelves before going on. He could have found Angela in a second, but he wanted to prolong the hunt and increase the terror of his prey as long as he could.
After checking out several rows, he saw an object on the floor and walked between shelves for a closer look. It was a shoe. Another lay a few feet away. Angela had slipped into her stocking feet to muffle the sound her movement.
Adriano chuckled softly and flexed his fingers.
“Come to me, Angela,” he crooned like a mother calling for its child.
At the unexpected sound of her name, Angela scrambled to her feet and ran for the exit door. Quick steps padded behind her. A hand reached out and grabbed the back of her blouse. She screamed and pulled free. Adriano had purposely let her go. He liked to play with his victims.
Angela ducked between stacks and plastered her back against a bookshelf.
Adriano turned down the next row of shelves and his baby face peered over the tops of the books.
“Hello,” he said.
Angela turned and saw the round blue eyes. She tried to scream, but the sound was caught in her throat.