All three of them had worked late into the night at the consulate, and they’d ended up not bothering with hotel rooms and crashing there instead. Tess had spent her time trying to get a clearer handle on where Conrad and his gang could have been heading, while Reilly and Ertugrul had spent long hours poring over all the local surveillance intel that had come in from both CIA and Turkish sources, looking for anything out of the ordinary that might suggest complicity with the Vatican bomber. Additionally, calls had had to be made to their superiors in New York City as well as to Langley and to Fort Meade, home of the NSA, where chatter was being analyzed and voice intercepts combed for anything that could help answer the one pressing question: how the bomber was getting from Istanbul to his intended destination.
By the time the sun came up, none of it had borne fruit. All they had to go on was the most recent update from the local polis telling them what cars had been stolen in and around Istanbul in the last forty-eight hours. Unsurprisingly, there hadn’t been that many, given the short time frame. Fifty-seven vehicles were on the list. Reilly and Ertugrul had been able to eliminate more than half of them on the grounds that they wouldn’t be suitable for a ten- to twelve-hour drive. They’d then waited while the data was fed into the police’s MOBESE information and security network, linking over a thousand surveillance cameras across the city to a license plate recognition and vehicle tracking center. Several of the cars on the hot list had been picked up on video at various locations, and given that Reilly and Ertugrul knew which direction the bomber was headed, they were able to narrow it down even further, to fourteen vehicles of interest. Then shortly after dawn, word had come in from Air Combat Command that they’d agreed to let them have one of the Global Hawks. It was on the ground at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, in the Persian Gulf, being readied for its sortie, and was expected to be in position over the target area by mid-morning. The list of hot cars had been relayed to the drone’s controllers in the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base in California, where computers would analyze the drone’s video feed for any matching vehicles.
There was nothing more they could do except wait. And hope. And try not to dwell too much on what had happened so far and what mistakes they thought they might have made.
Reilly swung his gaze to the seat facing him. Tess felt it and looked up from her laptop. Even after a virtually sleepless night in the discomfort of a consulate meeting room, the sparkle in her look and the mischievous curl at the edge of her lips was still there. He had to smile, but it was a weak smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
Tess caught it. “What is it?”
He was too tired to go into it. Instead, he deflected the question and asked, “Any verdict yet?”
She studied him for a beat, as if debating whether or not to let it go. Then her eyes flicked down to her screen and she said, “I think so. I’m not sure it’s enough to help us find Conrad’s grave without knowing on what side of the mountain that monastery is, but it might.”
“Show me,” he asked, leaning forward.
Tess spun her laptop around so he could see its screen, and pointed at the map on it. “In his dying missive, the monk says they said that Conrad and his men were going to Corycus, which is down here, on the coast.” She indicated a small town on the south coast of the country. “It’s called Kizkalesi today.”
“He could have been wrong,” Reilly said. “They could have lied to him.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. I mean, it makes sense—they didn’t have too many choices. By 1310, the Order had been abolished. They were wanted men in Western Europe, so they couldn’t go there. They couldn’t head east, either, since the Muslims had taken back the whole coast and torn down their fortresses.”
“So where were they going?”
“The only logical place for them to go: back to Cyprus. Conrad probably still had friends on the island. The pope’s men weren’t powerful there. He could lay low there in relative safety and plan their next move. Which means that wherever they were on that mountain, they’d have to head south, to one of these passes through the Taurus Mountains, to make it to the coast. The question is, which one?”
Reilly nodded, not really focused on what she was saying.
She studied him for a beat, then said, “You freaked me out back there, you know that?”
His face wrinkled. “What are you talking about?”
“Outside the Patriarchate. The way you charged at the guy, the way you stormed off after him like a one-man army … jumping in the river.” She paused, then added, “It’s not your fault, Sean.”
“What’s not my fault?”
“What happened at the Vatican. The bombs and all that. Hell, I’m more responsible for it than you are.” She leaned in closer, and tightened her hand around his. “I know you want him. And I want you to wipe that bastard off the face of the Earth even more than you do. But you can’t keep going ballistic like that. You need to keep your rage in check or you’re going to get hurt. And that scares the life out of me. I don’t want that to happen.”
He nodded quietly. At some level, he knew she was right. He was letting his anger cloud his judgment. Only problem was, with someone like the bomber, Reilly knew that half measures wouldn’t be enough. He had to be reckless if he was going to have a chance at taking him down. It was part of the job description. But it was also something about which he didn’t necessarily need to keep reminding Tess.
He half-smiled. “It’s no big deal, honest. I have had a bit of training in that kind of thing, you know.”
Her expression didn’t soften. She wasn’t buying it. She pulled her hand back. “I’m serious, Sean. I don’t want you dying on me. Not here. Not now. Not ever. We’ve still got a lot to do together, don’t we?”
Her comment took him by surprise and made his mind wander back, to what they’d been through months earlier. After a moment, he said, “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
A sadness darkened her face. “But I did. I bailed on you. And I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about that. But you understand, don’t you? You understand why I had to go, right?”
Sound bites from their parting conversation echoed faintly in his ears. “Has anything changed?”
Tess took in a deep breath and glanced out the window. It wasn’t a question she was keen to think about. “What if it doesn’t happen for us?” she finally said. “Will we ever be able to really move beyond it, or will it be a hole in your life that I’ll never be able to plug?”
Reilly pondered it for a beat, then shrugged. “Given what we do, what’s brought us out here again … It all makes me wonder whether or not we should have even tried.”
Counfusion and surprise flooded her face. “You’re having second thoughts now? About us having a baby?”
“It’s probably a moot point now, isn’t it?”
“What if it wasn’t?”
He thought about it for a moment, and surprised himself by realizing he wasn’t so sure anymore. “I don’t know. You tell me. I mean, this is what we do, isn’t it? You, with your long-lost mysteries that seem to bring all kinds of whackos out of the woodwork. Me, with my job, running down guys who get wet dreams about slamming planes into towers. What kind of parents would we have been?”
Tess waved it off. “What are we gonna do, give it all up and play Scrabble every night while sipping chamomile tea? Like you said, this is who we are. It’s what we do. And regardless of that, we’d be great parents. I don’t doubt that for a second.” She gave him a slight grin and tightened her hand around his again. “Look, don’t worry about it. You’re a guy. You’re not supposed to get these things. Just leave that part of it to me, okay? All I need you to do is tell me we can get past it if it doesn’t work out for us on that front … and make sure you don’t make yourself too big a target for that creep in the meantime. Deal?”
An acute sense of tiredness overcame Reilly. He nodded with a faint smile, his eyelids now feeling like they were made of le
ad. “Deal.”
Despite her words and despite his exhaustion, images of the carnage at the Vatican kept swooping through the dark recesses of his mind. He shut his eyes and decided that maybe a nap wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all, and leaned back against his headrest. But much as he needed to sleep, it just wouldn’t come, and might not for a while, he knew.
Not until the hunt was over.
Chapter 28
Alpine meadows and vast orchards of vine and fruit gave way to a harsher, rockier terrain as Zahed and Simmons followed the guide’s battered SUV up the mountain.
The paved road, its tired asphalt fissured and patchy from the big seasonal swings in temperature, was barely wider than their cars. After a couple of miles, it turned into an even narrower path that mules would have a hard time climbing, but none of that seemed to faze the guide. He kept on going, the Toyota’s tired diesel engine straining against the bone-rattling incline, its suspension springs stretching and compressing like four big Slinkys, leading them farther up the desolate mountain, until the trail finally came to an end in a small clearing at the foot of a big rock slide.
Sully glanced up at the midday sun, then checked his watch.
“We’ll leave the tents and everything else here for now and travel light,” he told Zahed and Simmons. “We’ll be able to cover more ground that way. But we’ll need to be back down here by sunset, which is in about eight hours’ time.”
“I hope you managed to pick up some hiking gear for us?” Zahed asked.
“I think I’ve got everything you need.” He retrieved a big duffel bag from the back of his car and handed it to Zahed. “T-shirts, shorts, fleeces, socks, and shoes. Let’s go, gentlemen,” he smiled. “The mountain’s waiting.”
ONCE THEY MADE IT UP the narrow path that snaked along the steep rock face that abutted the clearing, they had a relatively easy trek for the first hour, traversing several yaylas, the high-altitude meadows that ringed the volcano in a series of undulating hills. Despite the August sun, the air felt more crisp and dry with each new meter of altitude, a marked difference from the humid furnace at the base of the mountain. Scattered herds of animals—sheep, cattle, and the Angora goats the region was famous for—grazed peacefully in the arid grassland, while overhead, flocks of pink rose finches swooped past for a look before resuming their aerial ballet.
Despite the pastoral serenity surrounding him, Zahed was not at ease. Time was draining away, time in which Reilly and the rest of his enemies could pick up his trail and close in on him, and yet here he was, out on a leisurely hike with sketchy information and little more than a hope that the stranger he’d selected hastily knew what he was doing.
Simmons hadn’t said much throughout the climb, which was just as Zahed had instructed him to do. Sully, however, and much to Zahed’s irritation, more than took up the slack, yapping almost nonstop, clearly suffering from another form of diarrhea.
The terrain soon became more challenging as the slope steepened and the meadows gave way to slippery bowls of scree and coarse volcanic rock. High above, a series of jagged rock spires delineated the valley head. Two hours into the climb, the guide suggested they take a break in the shelter of a thicket of trees. He handed them some water bottles and spicy sujuk sandwiches, along with some energy bars, all of which they consumed heartily while taking in the breathtaking view.
The Anatolian Plain stretched out far below them, an infinite, striking golden-beige plateau that was punctuated by an array of unusual shadows from the late-afternoon sun. Hot air balloons drifted slowly by, multicolored gumdrops gliding over the distant valleys and the hidden canyons. Even from this distance, one could make out the distinctive features that made the area one of the most unusual—and spectacular—landscapes on the planet.
More than thirty million years ago, during the Cenozoic Era, the entire area had been smothered by volcanic eruptions from Mount Argaeus and a couple of other volcanoes. They’d dumped lava all over it on and off for tens of thousands of years. Once the eruptions had petered out, stormy weather, rivers, and earthquakes all colluded to churn the deposits and turn them into tufa, a soft, malleable stone made up of lava, mud, and ash. Centuries of erosion then carved the plain into valleys and canyons, and lined them with an astonishing landscape of undulating, sensuous rock formations that looked like mammoth dollops of whipped cream, endless fields of massive cones of rock, and “fairy chimneys,” strange spires of bone-white tufa that looked like asparagus tips topped by gravity-defying caps of reddish-brown basalt stone. And if nature’s work wasn’t phantasmogoric enough, man had added to it by burrowing into the tufa wherever he could. Small holes poked out of rock formations of all shapes and sizes, windows to the most unlikely of human habitations, entire valleys carved into warrens of underground cities, hermit cells, rock churches, and monasteries.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Sully asked.
“Very,” Zahed replied.
The guide took a swig from his canteen and said, “You’re from Iran, right?”
“Originally, yes. But my family left the country when I was seven.” He lied with ease. It was a profile he’d used before.
“The name of this whole area, Cappadocia,” Sully said, “it’s originally Persian, you know. ‘Katpatuka.’”
“‘The land of beautiful horses,’” Zahed told him.
Sully nodded. “Long ago, they used to be all over the place. Not anymore, though. But it must have been something, to come across wild horses roaming free in a landscape like this.” He let his eyes wander over the outlandish terrain below, sucking in slow, deep breaths, then said, “Have you had a chance to explore the valleys?”
“This trip wasn’t really planned in advance, and we have to get back to the university very soon.”
“Oh, you’ve got to find some time to do it while you’re here,” Sully enthused. “It’s not like anything you’ve seen before. It’s another planet down there. And it’s all because of this monster here,” he said, pointing up at the peak of the extinct volcano that loomed over them.
Zahed shrugged with fake chagrin. “We’ll try.”
Sully nodded, then a cocky grin spread across his face. “You haven’t noticed where we’re standing, have you?”
Zahed glanced around, unsure of what Sully was talking about. He caught Simmons’s eye—the archaeologist was looking up at the trees.
“Poplars,” Simmons said. “They’re poplar trees.”
“Yep.” Sully was enjoying this. “And if you’d care to follow me, there’s this rock I’d like to show you.”
HALF AN HOUR LATER, they reached it.
It was a large, upright, rectangular rock, roughly cut to shape like a massive grave marker, about eight feet tall, tucked away in a narrow hanging valley that separated two ridges. Its front had several crosses carved into it, along with a diamond shape in its bottom right corner. Close to its top, a hole of about seven inches in diameter had somehow been drilled through it.
Zahed studied it curiously. “What is it?”
Simmons was also examining it closely. The sight had injected some life back into him. “There are quite a few of these farther east, near the border with Armenia. Some people think they’re drogue stones—anchor stones that ancient mariners used to suspend from the backs of their hulls to slow their boats down and make them more stable in stormy seas. But given that we’re far inland … they think they’re from Noah’s Ark. Jettisoned before it settled on Mount Ararat.” His tone had a tinge of mockery and pity.
“You don’t agree?” Zahed questioned.
Simmons gave him a look of quiet surprise. “You really think I would?” He scoffed. “It’s almost as if you don’t know me, ‘Ali.’ ” That last word had a bite to it.
Before Zahed could play it down, Sully waded in, oblivious to Simmons’s little game. “You don’t believe in the Ark?”
The archaeologist sighed. “Of course not. The story of the Ark was never meant to be taken literally. It’s i
n the book of Genesis, for God’s sake, and …” He shrugged, as if he didn’t even know where to begin on that one. “This rock, for example. It’s basalt. Volcanic. Local. And the Ark—according to the Old Testament—was meant to have set off from Mesopotamia. No volcanoes there. And you’d expect drogue stones to be made out of material from the place the ships set out from, not from where they landed, no?”
Sully asked, “So what do you think they are?”
“Pagan stones, from long before Christianity. There are many of them scattered across Armenia and eastern Turkey. The crosses were carved into them much later, when Christianity took over from paganism. This is where the Christian concept of tombstones with crosses carved into them first started. First with the pagans. Then with Christians.”
“And the holes?”
“Just niches for lamps.”
Zahed scanned the area, then said, “Okay. What about the waterfall?”
“I think I know which one we need,” Sully said. “It’s the only one that makes sense, given that he passed this way.”
IT DIDN’T TAKE TOO LONG for them to reach the waterfall. And an hour after that, they were exploring the ruins of the monastery.
Not that there was much of it left to explore.
After seven hundred years of abandonment, there was little to show that it was anything more than a series of primitive caves, albeit ones with cuboid shapes and with more-or-less rectangular openings in their walls. An infestation of wild grass and thick, tall bushes shielded the ruins from view, and when Sully, Zahed, and Simmons did manage to cut their way through the overgrowth and enter the rooms of the monastery, there was nothing there beyond bare, cold walls and the ghosts of long-faded murals depicting, they assumed, Biblical scenes.