"It's bat-shit
crazy," Tommy said. "But no worse than most of the wild-goose chases
we get sent on."
"If the Kurds don't kill us," Trish said. "Or the right-wing
fundamentalists."
They had gathered in Annja's room in the Sheraton Tower, just around the
curving corridor from the suite where they held their meetings—or
"briefings," as Bostitch preferred to call them. Annja wasn't sure
whether he was following Baron's ex-military lead or his own inclinations. For
all that Bostitch presented himself as an aw-shucks folksy businessman, the
graduates of his leadership academy sure seemed to see themselves as holy
warriors.
Though smaller than the suite, Annja's room was hardly less luxurious. She sat
cross-legged on the wide bed. Tommy perched on the desk. Trish sat in one of
the comfy chairs while Jason alternately paced like a caged leopard and stood
gazing moodily out at the lights of the city.
"Might that mean it's a good idea to try our best to get along with the
others, then?" Annja asked.
"Hey, we weren't that bad," Tommy said. "Don't bust our
balls."
"I don't know whether to thank you or call you a pig," Trish said,
laughing.
"Whatev. You know what I mean."
"Actually, you did fine," Annja said. "I just want to encourage
us all to keep that up. You guys have been in the field. You know how once you
start getting tired and thirsty and sick of being either too hot or too cold
all the time, tensions tend to rise. So either we need to just bail on this or
do our best to keep things from getting too tense."
"You'd do that, Annja?" Trish asked. "You seem to have, like,
the most at stake here." She seemed honestly surprised.
In a heartbeat, Annja almost said. She decided it would be unwise. And anyway
it wasn't really true. Although what Trish probably thought she had at stake in
this expedition—the prospect of her own show on the network—barely registered
in Annja's determination to see this through if possible.
"If I thought it was the right thing to do, yes," Annja said and that
was true. Annja always did what she thought was right, whatever it cost her.
And there had been times when it cost her greatly.
"What I don't see," Tommy said, "is how they can take all this
Creation shit seriously."
"No kidding," Jason said. "Was it a pair of each kind of animal
that went onto the Ark? Or seven of some and two of others? Doesn't Genesis do
it both ways?"
"Yes," Annja said.
"Isn't the Bible, like, full of contradictions?" Trish said.
"It is. And I have to hand the literalists credit for their ingenuity in
dreaming up explanations for a lot of them. Or maybe intellectual
double-jointedness."
"I thought a lot of the fundamentalists just got by with announcing every
word of the Old Testament is true, without actually reading much of it,"
Tommy grumbled.
"That's true, too. I don't know how well that applies to our employer and
his associates, though. They seem to be a studious bunch."
"Huh," Tommy said. "Maybe they should study the evidence a
little closer. I mean, look at the pictures they got."
He pulled his phone from its hip holster. "I was looking at some of the
pictures online on my own. Take this oblique shot here from 1949. Tell me it
doesn't totally look like somebody used Photoshop to add a toy tugboat in among
some rocks. Badly."
"Dude," Jason said. "I could be wrong, here, but I'm pretty sure
they didn't have Photoshop in '49."
"Whatever. You know what I mean. Cut-and-paste job with scissors and glue
then. And what about this overhead from a satellite, with the so-called
'Anomaly' conveniently outlined in red pen? Give me a break. This just looks
like someone took a picture of a random ridge and drew a boat shape around it.
It looks like a fucking whale. Using that technique you could demonstrate that
anything longer than it is wide is Noah's Ark."
"All right, you're right," Annja said. "All this is true. We do
still have some fairly good artifacts that somebody close to Charlie brought
back. And Levi—Rabbi Leibowitz—thinks there's
something
up there, if not
a stranded ship."
"Yeah," Jason said. "But what about this rabbi guy, anyway?
What's his story?"
"I think that's more a marriage of convenience. But Levi's based in Brooklyn. I think he's basically apolitical. He's into this because he thinks there
is
a mystery up here that could be really, really important to history. And I do,
too."
"Whoa," Tommy breathed, mock-reverent. "Annja Creed,
Chasing
History's Monsters
' resident buzz-kill specialist with all her skepticism,
thinks there's really something there?"
Trish hooted. "Could you try to be more insulting, Tommy?"
He huffed and shook his head. Annja found herself just naturally envisioning
him with a baseball cap turned backward on his head. "Sorry," he
said.
"Speaking of climbing to the top," Jason said, "what do you make
of the chances of old Charlie making it up alive? He looks like he'd be all out
of breath walking across the room."
"Well, he did say he'd been climbing around Solomon's Throne in Persia—I mean Iran," Annja said. "Also illegally, by the way. He's tougher than he looks.
I think he actually goes through his own academy physical-training courses in
the summer."
"He must do a lot of training to keep that shape, then," Tommy said.
"Like, at the buffet tables."
"And happy hour," Trish said.
"And what's with this Wilfork guy?" Jason said. "He looks worse
if anything."
"Tommy says he smokes like a chimney," Trish said. "He always
sees him when
he
sneaks out for a smoke."
"Dude," Tommy said aggrievedly.
"He's probably tougher than he looks, too," Annja said. "When he
was filling me in on the whole Turkish political situation, he said he'd spent
his whole career chasing from one trouble spot to the next."
"Yeah," Trish said. "He's a pretty famous crisis
journalist."
"As long as he doesn't have a crisis with his heart halfway up the damned
mountain and we have to beg the Turkish army for a medevac chopper," Tommy
said.
Jason grunted. "Be lucky if we didn't get a helicopter gunship," he
said.
"Also, what's up with that whole mountain-peak thing, anyway?" Tommy
said. "Fifteen thousand feet? God's supposed to have flooded the Earth
three miles deep?"
"That's what our associates believe," Annja said.
Tommy shook his head in wonder. "Whoa," he said.
* * *
THE NEXT FEW DAYS PASSED slowly
for Annja. It was a relief not to have the hassles of organizing and outfitting
an expedition into hostile territory as her responsibility. Ankara's
unseasonable warmth gave way to the equally unseasonable chill that had already
descended on the rest of the country. Yet not running the show had one big
drawback—it left her without much to do.
Although a vast and highly modern mall, the Karum, stood right across the
street from the hotel, Annja had never bothered to venture inside. She didn't
feel enough attraction to brave the crowds. She was not a shopping goddess, nor
even particularly interested in shopping beyond what was necessary to keep her
clothes from wearing out to the point of falling off her body. She'd rather be
sitting on her couch in her apartment poring through her stacks of printouts of
papers submitted to obscure journals of archaeological arcana. Like Rabbi
Leibowitz, basically, but with a few more social skills.
But she could always wander the archaeological sites and museums. Fortunately,
as she'd mentioned to the
CHM
crew, the city abounded in those.
Even they palled eventually. Two days after the
CHM
team's arrival from New York she decided to head south on foot through the section called Kavaklidere, which
was a former vineyard. Its most prominent features now were her own enormous
hotel, the high-rise Karum and, several hundred yards south, the equally
ostentatious tower of the Hilton.
She spent a pleasant, if cool and windy, day in the botanical gardens. The park
occupied a hill south of the big hill,
Kale
, on which the Ankara Citadel
stood a few blocks north of the Sheraton. Hill and park alike were dominated by
the Atakule Tower, named like so many things for Kemal Atatürk, founder of the
modern Turkish republic. The tower was a spindly white four-hundred-plus-foot
spire with a sort of space-needle flying saucer at the top—a similarity
acknowledged by the presence of the UFO Café and Bar within, along with two
more upscale-looking restaurants.
After the brief warm spell autumn had returned with vindictive force that
hinted at a truly brutal winter to follow.
In her puffy down jacket Annja found the breezes blowing down from the Köro lu
Mountains to the north, already well-socked-in with snow according to the
Internet, bracing rather than uncomfortable. Although no blossoms survived in
the park's beautifully designed and tended gardens, and the merciless winds had
stripped the leaves from the deciduous trees, the park was planted thickly with
evergreens, tall pines and fir trees. And even the bare limbs beneath which the
numerous hill paths twined created interesting, intricate shapes against a
lead-clouded sky.
Having spent so much time indoors of late Annja was content to walk briskly
with no fixed goal in mind, stretching out her long legs. When she grew tired
and chilled she bought a steaming cup of cocoa from a kiosk and then sat in the
lee of the small building to read e-mail and check the latest news on her
BlackBerry.
Nothing seemed likely to impact her situation directly—although as always the
pot of occupied Iraq seethed on the verge of bubbling over, as did the U.S.'s perpetual grudge match with an Iran now backed openly by China and a resurgent Russia. If either of those situations did explode the best and possibly only shot at
survival for the expedition would be to run like hell for the Bosporus. But
Annja saw no reason to expect they would do so now.
Still, she felt a tickle of unsourced unease in the pit of her stomach. That's
probably what I get for reading the headlines, she thought, and put her phone
away.
The park closed at sunset, which came early this time of year. Ankara lay at
about the latitude of Philadelphia, though considerably farther from the
weather-tempering influence of a big ocean and considerably nearer to the
monster-storm hatchery of the Himalayas. She had just reached the exit when a
voice called, "Annja Creed? A word with you, please."
She stopped. Does every sketchy character in the world know my name? she
wondered. Although she tried to keep her face and posture as relaxed as
possible her body badly wanted to tense like a gazelle that thinks a wind shift
at the watering hole has just brought a whiff of lion. The range of people who
might conceivably wish her harm, or even just to talk to her in a
none-too-friendly way, ranged from Turkish civic or military authorities less
well-disposed to their endeavor than General Orga to any number of unsavory
characters from her past. Among whom, of course, was the ever-prominent if
publicity-averse billionaire financier Garin Braden, who might have felt a cold
wind of mortality blow down his spine as he lay in his huge canopied bed that
morning. When Braden wasn't trying to get the sword from her he was battling
with his long-time nemesis Roux and dragging Annja into the battle.
Her interlocutor appeared to be no more than a solidly built man of
intermediate height and apparently advanced age who stood by the white-enameled
wrought-iron gates dressed in a camel-hair coat and a fedora that clung,
despite the wind's best efforts, to a head of hair that, though as gleaming
white as his trim beard, still managed to suggest it had once been blazing red.
He smiled a bit grimly as she looked at him, and nodded.
"I have information that might prove vital to you. It concerns the
expedition you are involved with."
Her eyes narrowed. "Please believe me," he said, holding up gloved
hands. "I assure you I have no official capacity in this country. Nor in
any other, for that matter. Nor have I any financial propositions to make to
you. Nor any other kind, should you be worried about that."
His manner was disarming. Annja wasn't so easily disarmed. Then again, that was
literally true; and her ever-active curiosity was excited. As for his disavowal
of official standing she was far from willing to take that at face value. He
spoke with an accent she couldn't identify—which itself was strange, given her
expertise in languages, and wide travels.
Then again if he were some kind of Turkish secret cop all he'd have to do was
snap his fingers and burly goons would magically appear on all sides of her,
she thought. She knew it from past experience.
"Please allow me the honor of buying you dinner," he said. "In a
suitably public place, of course. That should reassure you as to my
intentions—although I doubt you have much to fear from the likes of me."
Her stomach growled. Her metabolism required frequent feeding. It hadn't gotten
one in too long. Still, she was wary.
"All right, Mister—"
"You may call me Mr. Summer."
"Where did you have in mind?"
"Where but in the tower?" he said with a twinkle in his dark green
eyes.
* * *
THE LIGHTS OF ANKARA by evening
rotated almost imperceptibly by outside the window beside their table.
"It is good of you to indulge an old man's whimsy," her companion
said around a mouthful of grape leaf stuffed with ground lamb and pine nuts.
"The fare in the restaurant at the pinnacle, above us, is of higher
quality. Or at least greater pretense. But this establishment, I daresay,
offers quite acceptable local cuisine."
"I'm fine," she said. "I can get French-style bistro cooking
anywhere. Good Turkish food, not so much." Although I halfway wish we'd
stopped at the UFO Café, just on general principles, she thought.
The restaurant revolved once every hour and a half. It seemed to give Mr.
Summer the pleasure a thrill ride gave an addict.
"I love the toys of our modern era," he said, green eyes gleaming, as
if to confirm her impression.
"So what's this vital information you have for me?" Annja asked. Mr.
Summer had made light conversation, mostly asking how she found the city and
eliciting her views on the city's historical artifacts. His own knowledge of
these seemed beyond encyclopedic; she wished she were able to take advantage of
his knowledge. But she sensed that this meeting would be their one and only.
She had carefully eaten until her hunger was almost assuaged before bringing up
anything potentially controversial.
"Simply that your expedition poses great danger."
She frowned. "To me?"
"To you and to your companions, yes. To be sure. But also, quite possibly,
to the world."
Her frown deepened. "Isn't that overstating things just a bit?"
He smiled thinly. "I wish I thought I was. For if your employers find what
they seek it can be used to start the third—and likely final—world war. All the
elements are in place, awaiting only a sign. Do you understand?"
She took another bite of rice and chewed slowly to give herself time to think.
"Maybe," she said in a neutral tone. "I'm aware there are
Christian millenarialists in my country who believe that Jesus Christ is
waiting for a particular set of prophesied conditions to come about in order
that he can return."
"And bring the Armageddon."
She shrugged. "That seems to be the general plan."
"You realize that certain such people are in what we might call a position
to expedite the Last Battle?"
"Too well, as it happens. Are you telling me my employers are some of
those people?"
"Not necessarily. But regardless of the particulars of their own belief,
or their own degree of influence for that matter, if they conclude they have
found that which they seek it could be more than sufficient for those who
unquestionably do hold such beliefs and power."
She sighed and put her fork down. "If I let myself be intimidated out of
an expedition," she said, "what kind of an archaeologist am I?"
"Spoken like the true heiress to Indiana Jones and Lara Croft," he
said, shaking his head with a sad smile. "Unfortunately, this is not a
movie."
"I can't bring myself to accept the argument that there are some things
humankind was not meant to know, Mr. Summer. However it's couched."
"There is a certain nobility in your position, Ms. Creed. Even if it
arises from a courage born of ignorance. Have you considered what the
consequences might be if you learn a truth your employers
don't
like—for
you and your friends?"
Anger stabbed through her. She let it pass without grabbing onto it. He seemed
to mean well. He was clearly well educated and well-off—like some kind of
Middle Eastern magnate, in fact, although he didn't strike her as Arab or
Persian.
He had a most convincing manner. He also knew way too much. Yet words could
never hurt her. Could they?
"Yes," she said, more tightly than she intended. "I have. But
I'm just not prepared to throw over a commitment, professional and personal,
simply because some mystical stranger utters Apocalyptic warnings. Please
understand that."
He finished his food and laid knife and fork carefully across his plate.
"I do," he said. "I also hope, most urgently, that you will
reconsider. You are a most estimable young woman."
"Thank you. But I have to tell you it's highly unlikely. Thank you for the
dinner, though. I enjoyed it thoroughly. The company as well as the scenery and
the food."
He smiled and rose, taking up his hat and coat. "Please give my regards to
young Roux and his apprentice Garin."
A light went on in Annja's skull. If that was the proper metaphor for something
that felt like a hefty whack with a sledgehammer. Had that garrulous old fart
Roux been running his mouth to his poker buddies again? she wondered furiously.
The man with the silver-brushed red beard was laughing and holding up his
hands. "Peace, please. Don't be so hasty to blame Roux. Although indeed,
it's easy enough to do. I come entirely on my own initiative. And he's not
breathed a hint of your secret to me, although he's far too enamored of mystery
and mumbo jumbo for their own sakes not to drop heavy hints. Unfortunately he's
also so cagey that he never goes further, no matter how drunk one gets him. I
will confess I've tried."
"Then how?"
"My dear child, when one's eyes have seen as much as these eyes have, one
need see little indeed to discern the truth."
He touched his hat. "I bid you good evening, and leave you with my sincere
wish that the gods go with you and keep you. I fear you shall need it."
He was gone then, disappearing around the curve of the corridor, before Annja
had untangled his cryptic statement well enough to notice what else he'd said.
"Who calls Roux young?" she wondered aloud. She shook her head.
"The old dude's got to be delusional. It's the only possible
explanation."