* * *
SIGHING, ANNJA STRETCHED OUT on
her back on the bed in the little hotel in the middle-class bedroom suburb
called Batikent, west of the city center. She'd wanted to go on to Sincan, farther
out the recently added Metro line, mainly because it was farther, but a
friendly middle-aged English-speaking woman in a conservative but Western skirt
suit had advised urgently against it. Apparently both the district and the city
were notorious hotbeds of Islamists. It wasn't a good place for a Westerner to
be. Especially, all but needless to say, an unescorted woman.
After calling Baron she'd found a fountain in a deserted cul-de-sac and taken a
quick field-expedient bath, clothes on. She'd been able to get her face, hands
and hair reasonably clean, at least as far as appearance was concerned. And she
had smeared the bloodstains enough that she hoped they'd look like some kind of
fashion emergency, not the medical kind. Evidently it worked; nobody had
screamed and pointed at her and fainted. In fact people looked pointedly away
from the crazy Western woman. Which suited her fine.
The hotel she'd found near the Metro station wasn't bad. The staff spoke
English. The rooms were clean, the water in the shower was hot and plentiful
and her room had satellite television.
She'd spent an anxious half hour channel-surfing to make sure there hadn't been
some kind of huge political upheaval in Turkey that had almost caught her in
its overkill. But the absence of tanks or screaming mobs on the streets had not
been a deception, at least as far as world or local news knew.
She was bone tired. She used the somewhat harsh soap offered by the hotel to
cleanse herself all over, including her hair. It was good enough to get the
crusted-salt feel and more important the smell of blood out. Yet her mind was
spinning like a helicopter rotor. She knew how to compose it by meditation. But
right now she let it freewheel.
She wanted to know what the hell was going on. She had clues—way too many, far
too frightening. But how they fit together was a different question. It was
still altogether possible that she'd been a happenstance observer of the
results of some unfortunate lifestyle choice by General Orga that had absolutely
nothing to do with her or Charlie Bostitch or Ararat coming home to roost. The
fact that he was involved in negotiations to allow a thoroughly illegal
undertaking meant he'd strayed from the narrow path by definition. Annja
doubted it was the first time.
But even if Orga's negotiations with the Americans hadn't got him killed, his
assassination was altogether too likely to entangle them anyway.
She didn't know much about Turkish politics. Wilfork had told her how the
powerful Turkish army—NATO's second largest—stoutly defended the country's
official secularism, even against a civilian government increasingly influenced
by Islamism. He also told her that, despite a long military alliance,
resentment against the U.S. had grown both in the army and among the populace
at large over the Iraq invasion and subsequent U.S. support of the Kurds in
that country.
Because the general had been assassinated, instead of being arrested and
bundled off to stand trial, she dared hope that Turkey's ruling faction wasn't
actively hostile to the expedition, or maybe they were unaware of it. That
enhanced their odds of escape.
It wasn't as if she were uninterested in her own hide. But she had gotten
herself out of plenty of tight situations. What really worried her was the rest
of the party, cooped up in that oh-so conspicuous Sheraton Tower. Especially the innocent and otherworldly Levi—not to mention her television crew, for
whom she felt personally responsible.
I hate this, she thought. She could wait: that wasn't the problem. What
bothered her was the sense of utter powerlessness.
Yet for the moment she was powerless. She could not do anything more than make
herself get the best night's sleep possible, to be fit and ready for whatever
tomorrow would bring. Which she had a feeling was going to be…stressful.
Drawing a breath deep to the center of her being behind and below her navel,
she tensed every muscle in her body. One by one she relaxed them, starting with
her feet.
She was asleep by the time she got to her upper arms.
Annja's cell phone rang as she
was getting dressed after another quick shower, mostly to refresh her and get
her fully awake and alert.
"Hello?" she said, flipping open the phone. She continued to dress in
the clothes she had washed in the bathroom sink and hung up to dry on the
shower-curtain rod.
"It's Baron," the familiar voice said. "We're clear of the
hotel."
Relief hit her so hard she had to sit down on the bed. She got that weak.
"I take it we can talk in the clear."
"That's a big affirmative. No worries. I had to pull plenty of strings
with both the Turkish government and our own. I won us a little operational
space. Now the bad news—we have to get out of town quickly. We've got powerful
interests on our trail."
Tell me something I don't know, she thought. After a breath she realized he was
waiting for some kind of confirmation she had heard and understood.
"I copy," she said, feeling lame. "How are you getting us out of
the country?"
It was his turn to let her hear dead air. "What are you talking
about?" he said incredulously.
"I mean, how are you getting us clear? The expedition's over. We need to
save our hides."
"Leave Turkey? Not going to happen. We drive on," Baron said.
"You've got to be…kidding me."
"Negative. This mission's a go."
"That's—"
She stopped herself. She was going to say
bat-shit crazy
. But she didn't
talk that way. And she was sure nobody talked that way to Leif Baron.
Nor did she want to, truth to tell. Not after he'd gotten her friends and
companions safely away from the Sheraton. She knew far too well how many ways
their mysterious enemies could have turned that gleaming white tower into a
death trap. She'd dreamed of at least half a dozen of them.
"You're not thinking of backing out on us, are you, Creed?" Baron's
voice was harsh.
"No. Uh…no."
It was a lie, of course. She was
thinking
about it. But she wasn't about
to admit it.
Because she wasn't about to
do
it.
I can't abandon Tommy, Trish and Jason. Or Levi. Nor did she like to think of
herself as a quitter. And anyway, the Anomaly was still waiting, fifteen and a
half thousand feet up a frozen mountain. It had gotten into her brain like a
burr beneath a saddle. It would itch her until she learned the truth. Whatever
that was.
She pulled in a deep breath. "Tell me how to rendezvous with you,"
she said.
"That's more like it," Baron said. "I didn't think you'd wimp
out on us."
* * *
ANNJA HADN'T BROUGHT MORE
possessions to the hotel than she carried on her. She didn't exactly have any
packing to do. Not vain, she still spent some time in front of the mirror
trying to comb her hair out with her fingers. She figured it wouldn't be too
discreet wandering the streets and subway looking like Medusa.
She had the TV on as background, a sort of synthetic company. The hotel had a
CNN
Headline News
feed in English. The volume was turned low so as not
to distract her.
Words nonetheless penetrated her subconscious. "—second car bomb, near the
Haci Bayram Mosque in Ankara's Ulus district, awakened new fears of a resurgent
of terrorist activity…"
Heart in throat, Annja spun. Ulus lay west of the castle, to the north across
the city center from where the hit on Orga had taken place. And coincidentally,
from the hotel where her group was staying. She saw somewhat washed-out news
footage of a compact car burning fiercely with whitish-looking flames and
surrounded by rescue vehicles with flashing lights and heavily armed men in
camouflaged battle dress.
"Two people are known dead in the attack at this hour," the
television told her. The screen showed a gurney carrying a poison-green body
bag being wheeled toward an ambulance. "Another dozen have been
injured."
Head spinning, stomach suddenly surging with bile, she sat heavily on the bed.
It's just a coincidence, she told herself sternly. There can't possibly be any
connection.
But the little voice at the back of her skull kept reminding her in an
insidious whisper what a clever diversion a bombing like that would make for a
mass escape. Just the sort of trick a seasoned special-operations vet might
pull.
No proof, she thought. No proof. Her stomach wasn't waiting for more proof. She
had to struggle to keep the bile down. A bitter taste and stinging sensation
filled her mouth.
"I don't have time for this," she said aloud. She pushed herself off
the bed and headed for the door.
She left the TV on, offering its unseen witness to an empty room behind her.
* * *
"LOOK! THERE'S
ANNJA!"
Trish Baxter came running down a motley line of parked vehicles to hit Annja in
a surprisingly strong hug next to an elderly schoolbus, sagging on its springs,
with sun-burned white paint flaking away from its metal. Tommy and Jason
followed, Tommy in his usual sturdy walk-through-a-wall way, Jason seeming to
saunter as usual even though his long legs ate up ground at a good rate. Their
breath steamed in the chilly air.
It was about ten in the morning. The sky overhead was blue, whisked by
horsetail clouds. By Metro and city bus Annja had made it clear across Ankara, from the western suburbs to the development strung along the road to Kirikkale. On
the way she had watched through grime-streaked windows as what seemed like mile
after mile of ramshackle squats, some three stories tall, huddled close
together as if leaning together for support. It gave her a fresh cause of
discomfort along with the free-floating misgivings she had about the whole
Ararat expedition.
Now, having coordinated with Leif Baron by phone—fortunately without need of
talking in improvised codes, as Baron had assured her they could safely do
now—she had made it to the truck stop on the road from Ankara to Kirikkale, in
mountainous country a few miles short of the town of Elmada.
Annja hugged Jason and Tommy in turn.
An eighteen-wheeler with German flags flying from two aerials drove slowly past
in a cloud of fumes and headed out on the highway. Some of the rest of the
expedition came striding back, soles crunching on the white pumice gravel that
covered most of the parking lot.
With his long legs the out-of-shape-looking Charlie Bostitch moved faster than
he looked able to. He forged out front, pushing forward a hand and a big old
smile. Leif Baron strode purposefully beside him. Larry Taitt, wearing a dark
blue Rehoboam Academy windbreaker over white shirt and dark tie, came loping
eagerly after them.
"The lost lamb returns to the fold!" Charlie said. "Welcome
back, Ms. Creed. I understand we owe you quite a debt."
She shook his hand as perfunctorily as she could. "I thought I'd better
let you know what happened."
"Good thing you did," Tommy said. "We'd've been stuck in that
tower."
"You should've seen the way my man Leif got us out of there," Jason
said.
"Yeah," Trish said, laughing. "We went out in these big rolling
bins under piles of old sheets."
"It was so cool," Tommy said. "Slick."
"Little bit nasty, actually," Jason said. "Way better than the
alternative, though."
"Yeah. The place was swarming with these goons in bad-fitting suits and
shades," Tommy said.
Annja's mouth tightened. That description matched the three men she'd left dead
in the Mercedes in Kavaklidere. Of course, it matched innumerable thugs she had
known all throughout the world. She didn't disbelieve in coincidence, but she
didn't believe in it
that
much.
Annja shook Baron's hand, and Larry's. Evidently the godless television crew
and their godly cohorts on the expedition were all good buddies now, comrades
of shared danger and a shared escapade. She hoped that would endure. She didn't
like the suspicions rolling around in the dark depths of her mind concerning
Baron's methods of pulling her friends and associates out of danger. Nor the
way his eyes, barely visible behind his own Oakley sunglasses, seemed to linger
on her after he released her hand.
"So where's our transport?" she asked.
Baron slapped the peeling white paint of the battered schoolbus. "Right
here," he said.
* * *
"I FEEL LIKE SINGING BAND
CAMP SONGS," Tommy said as they jounced along a questionable stretch of
highway. It was a fairly major road here between Kirikkale and Sivas, four lanes wide and newish-looking blacktop despite the rough ride. It got a lot of
traffic, including many burly eighteen-wheelers roaring both ways. Annja
suspected the contractors of skimping on rebar.
The wide, flat-angled snowfields of the eastern Anatolian Plateau stretched out
around them. Mountains like walls of white ice rose to the left and right. They
seemed set to converge somewhere beyond sight ahead of the unlikely procession.
There lay their destination.
Ankara to Ararat wasn't much more than three hundred miles as an airplane
might fly. Terrain and roads added plenty of distance to that, not just
horizontally but vertically. Out front rode a glossy new Mercedes SUV, carrying
Bostitch, Baron, Larry Taitt and their new local facilitator. Next came the
weary white schoolbus that carried Annja, the
Chasing History's Monsters
trio, most of Bostitch's acolytes, Wilfork and the ever-amiable but bemused
Rabbi Leibowitz, along with their personal luggage. Bringing up the rear rolled
a pickup truck, once red, now faded pink, and piled with the rest of the
expedition gear.
Tommy was playing an electronic game. Trish texted her friends. Jason sat
reading a paperback novel.
Annja sat in the window seat next to the rabbi. Levi read some kind of book in
Hebrew. Annja fretted, which she usually didn't do. It was cold in the bus, and
noisy. She thought that if this vehicle had really served as a schoolbus,
Turkish schoolkids smoked way too many cigarettes. The residual emanations from
the upholstery made her eyes water.
"We can teach you some hymns," said Josh Fairlie, one of the bulk of
the expedition graduates of various levels of the Rehoboam Christian Leadership Academy, along for whatever tasks needed to be done. "Would that do
for you?"
He was built spare, older than the others, with a shock of thick, dark brown
hair worn a little longer, and fair skin. He'd apparently served with the army
in Iraq. He made no claim to have been Special Forces, and Annja, who knew a
bit about the breed, guessed he wasn't.
Sometimes, as now, he seemed to kid around. Annja wasn't sure if she liked that
better than the near-overt hostility of blond ex-marine Zach Thompson or even
the suspicious cheerfulness of the twins Zeb and Jeb, whose last name was
Higgins.
"Naw, really man," Tommy said. "It was only a joke, you
know."
Josh got up and started walking forward, swaying and catching himself on the
fraying seat backs as the bus lurched over frost heaves in the pavement.
"What," he said, a smile on his lips but his hazel eyes narrowed,
"you don't like hymns? They're not good enough for you, maybe?"
"Easy, man. They're just not my thing."
Jason tucked his book away and sat up a bit straighter. The tension was getting
thicker than the residual cigarette stink.
Robyn Wilfork, who'd been sitting by himself across from Rabbi Leibowitz
staring moodily out at the snow-scape with a half-open fist to his chin, brayed
laughter. Josh almost jumped away from him, clearly offended. He was generally
circumspect in dealing with the bulky New Zealander; Wilfork was in tight with
the Man, Charlie Bostitch, and one of the foremost leadership values the
academy taught was evidently unquestioning respect for the chain of command. It
didn't mean these fit young men had to like Wilfork. Although most of them
treated him as if they were more scared of him than anything else.
"Band camp songs, is it? Capital idea!" Wilfork's hair was a nest of
disarray. The cream-colored tropic-weight suit he bizarrely still wore despite
the intense and deepening winter outside the windows—with little delicate webs
of frost beginning to form at their condensation-fogged edges—was rumpled, as
if he'd slept in it. "I know a splendid one."
Tossing back his wild mane, he sang, "Bring me my bow of burning gold,
bring me my arrows of desire. Bring me my spear—oh, clouds unfold! Bring me my
chariot of fire—"
This time Josh recoiled from Wilfork as if he'd turned into a king cobra,
reared up with hood extended. Thompson came up out of his seat as if it had
suddenly gotten hot.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he roared. "What is
that, some kind of devil stuff?"
Josh spun on him. "Language."
Thompson tried to lunge at Wilfork, who gazed at him with pie-eyed unconcern.
Fred Mallory, an olive-skinned kid with black hair cut very short and even more
muscular than Thompson, stood up and caught the ex-marine from behind in a
quick bear hug.
"It's William Blake," Trish said loudly. Annja glanced toward the
front of the bus. She briefly caught the Turkish driver's dark eyes in the big
mirror over his seat. He had a bit of panicked-horse look to him. "It's
from his poem, 'Jerusalem.' It really is used as a hymn in England."
"Bloody Americans," Wilfork said. "Don't even know their own
religion. Aleister Crowley, now, he wrote some ripping hymns."
"Crowley?" Josh Fairlie blinked. "Wasn't he a
Satan-worshipper?"
"That came later, or so they said," Wilfork declared grandly.
"Although some might say he did the best work for the Prince of Darkness
when he was still a faithful follower of the good old Church of England."
By this point Thompson's flash of anger had evaporated. Mallory released him.
The three gave Wilfork a deer-in-the-headlights look and retreated again to
their impromptu Bible study at the back of the bus.
Through it all Levi continued to read, unconcerned. Annja was almost tempted to
envy him his obliviousness. But not quite: she couldn't afford to lead life in
that state of severely limited awareness. And truthfully, she didn't really
want to.
The driver began to expostulate and wave his arms around. The bus swerved
across blacktop dusted with eddies and swirls of blowing powdered snow. Trish
gasped and grabbed the rail handhold over the seat in front of her. Zach, who'd
been standing obediently by his seat getting a quiet dressing-down from Josh,
was thrown on Jeb's lap. Or possibly Zeb's. The blond twin unceremoniously
ejected him onto the floor.
Annja's cell phone rang. She flipped it open, held it to her ear. "Yes?"
Leif Baron's clipped voice said, "We have a problem."
Her heart lurched. Because at that moment through the pitted windshield she saw
the flashing blue lights of the police roadblock ahead.