The Turkish National Police
wore bulky camouflaged smocks that looked blue-tinged in the weird afternoon
light, with sun slanting in bright white slashes through rents in the clouds,
only to be diffused by billows of blowing snow. Over them they wore even
bulkier dark blue ballistic vests. One or two wore maroon berets. The rest wore
small helmets. Annja thought they looked funny, more like batting helmets than
combat headgear.
There was nothing remotely comical about the black HK33 assault rifles the
troops carried. They milled around the three expedition vehicles, which had
pulled to the shoulder short of the roadblock and stopped, but so far had shown
no sign of trying to enter or search any of them. Leif Baron and Larry Taitt
had gotten out of the lead car to talk to them. Charlie Bostitch was just
climbing out.
"Is it time to panic yet?" Jason Pennigrew asked Annja. He smiled,
but the smile was tight.
"I'll let you know," Annja said with a lightness she didn't feel. Her
main actual objection to panic at this point was that it wouldn't do any good,
not that it wasn't called for.
"I'm just trying not to think about
Midnight Express,"
Tommy
Wynock said.
"Thanks for that image," Trish replied.
In the back of the bus the Young Wolves were pressing their noses to the
windows and looking a lot less certain than they had a little while ago. Even
Levi had set down his book and was gazing out with mild interest.
Annja didn't know yet whether anyone on the expedition packed any weapons. It
wouldn't bother her if they had, not as much as she was pretty sure it would
the television crew; given where they were going, into seriously hostile
territory, it would make a good deal of sense. But the problem with weapons was
if you needed them, and didn't have them, you were screwed. If they came out at
the wrong time—such as in the face of overwhelming firepower, especially
overwhelming
official
firepower in some third-world country whose
outlook toward human rights was that there was no such thing—you were also
screwed. She hoped the Young Wolves, if they did happen to be packing, had
sense to leave the heat in their pants. Or wherever.
She found herself muttering all that to her seatmate. Levi smiled
unconcernedly. "As we Jews say, it sucks to be the jug."
The front passenger seat of the lead car opened. "So who gets to sit up
front when Himself rides in back, I wonder?" Wilfork murmured. The mystery
passenger had entered the vehicle while most of the party were getting hustled
onto the bus back at the truck stop.
What emerged into the uncanny light was a very stout man of medium height,
wearing a dark blue business suit with the jacket opened. The wind instantly
whipped a dark striped tie over one shoulder. He had on a red fez, which under
other circumstances might have amused Annja even though it wasn't an uncommon
fashion accessory in Turkey.
He bustled importantly up to where one of the maroon berets was standing with
hands on hips scowling at Bostitch and his chief enforcer, Baron. At the sight
of the tubby guy in the fez he straightened at once.
"Oh-ho," Jason said. "What have we here?"
"Must be some kind of major dude," Tommy said. "Otherwise the
cops'd hand him a beat-down for stepping up to them like that."
Annja cast a quick look back at the Young Wolves. She reckoned them to be big
law-and-order guys. But they might've reserved that for U.S. cops. Their own pallor and posture suggested they were as nervous about the National
Police, whose manner definitely seemed to live up to their internationally
fearsome reputation even if they hadn't actually done anything yet, as Annja
herself was.
The man in the maroon beret actually saluted. Then he turned and started
barking orders at the camo-clad troops.
"Whoa," Tommy said.
"Yeah," Josh Fairlie agreed.
The National Police started hustling back to their vehicles. The tubby guy
bustled back toward the bus. He was grinning hugely beneath a colossal black
moustache.
The driver opened the door for him before he reached it. Either he knew the man
or figured, wisely, that anyone who could make the National Police hop like
that was not somebody a mere bus driver wanted to keep waiting. An icy gust
whipped fine snow into Annja's face.
The man mounted the steps and stuck his head in the door. "Never to fear,
dear friends!" he called out in thickly accented English. "Atabeg is
on the case! The police, they pull back and let us go."
"Thank God," Josh said. He seemed to have the most acute
understanding of all his crew of just how deep a pot they were in.
"Yes, yes!" the newcomer chortled. "Thank God! And also Mr. Atabeg."
"Thank you, Mr. Atabeg," the whole bus chorused as one.
He smiled, bobbed his head, waved cheerily and withdrew. As he waddled back to
the car Tommy said, "What do you suppose
that
was all about?"
"No clue," Jason said. "Just be glad he's on our side."
"Amen, brother," Josh said.
* * *
THE CITY OF SIVAS LAY in
eastern Anatolia, halfway between Ankara and Erzurum. Erzurum being the point,
Annja gathered, at which things would get really interesting.
"Once upon a time," she murmured, half to herself, "this
would've been a caravanserai."
"And nowadays," Jason Pennigrew said, "it's a crappy building
made out of cinderblocks, with attached truck-stop café."
"The Brits call a place like this a transport caff," Trish said
brightly.
"Ah, the Pommies," Wilfork sighed, plummily seating himself in a
booth with a cracked vinyl back. "Masters of euphemism."
The restaurant on the strip development outside Sivas had been closed when they
pulled in. Apparently Mr. Atabeg, probably with help from money, had talked the
motel management into unlocking the restaurant and letting the group in to fire
up the grills and cook themselves a late meal. Like a lot of fairly similar
facilities Annja had visited in the interior USA, the look and general feel of
the place suggested it had been all chrome-and-Formica shiny and clean when
new. It was chilly and shabby now. About a quarter of the fluorescent lights
were lit, casting a jittering, dispiriting illumination that made the place
feel closed. The diner smelled of stale cooking oil and illicit, harsh
cigarette smoke.
As if to add to the ambiance, Wilfork lit his own smoke.
"Do you mind not smoking in here?" Jason and Josh said in unison.
They looked at each other and grinned sheepishly.
"Yes," the journalist drawled. "In fact I do mind not smoking in
here."
He took a deep drag. "Welcome to Sebasteia," he said.
"What was it called in the Bible?" Eli Holden asked. He sat with most
of the other acolytes around a table in the middle of the room. He was a wiry
guy, an inch or two shorter than Annja, with red hair curly on top and shorn
short on the sides of a head that seemed to sprout on a stalk of neck from
shoulders well-roped with muscle. He had lots of freckles and his eyes were a
murky green. He said little. When he did the others listened, with what seemed
more like wariness than actual attention. He seemed to specialize in doing what
he was told and asking no questions—which made this one doubly surprising.
"It belonged to the Hittite Kingdom in those days," Levi said.
"Not much is known of the place before Caesar's fellow triumvir Pompey
built a city here called Megalopolis, or Big Town. Around the end of the first
century, though, the name was changed to Sebasteia, deriving from
sebastos
,
a Greek translation of the title assumed by the first Roman emperor, Augustus.
The current name evolved from that. The name Sebastian originally meant, 'a man
from Sivas.'"
"Wow," Tommy said. "You mean everybody named Sebastian's named
after this dump?"
Levi smiled and bobbed his head. "Yes. Exactly."
The Young Wolves looked at him as if they didn't know what to make of him, as
if a winged squirrel had landed in their midst or something. Annja didn't think
they'd normally be the types to take too kindly to being lectured by a know-it-all.
Especially one who happened to be a Jew. Yet if anything they had been well
trained to obedience, and Rabbi Leibowitz had been hired by their master
Charlie precisely
to
know it all.
Anyway, unlike way too many intellectuals and academics of Annja's experience,
there was no smug air of superiority about Levi when he engaged in one of his
info-dumps. It all came out matter-of-factly. If you asked what he knew, he
politely told you. And her associates from New York were staring at the rabbi
about the same way the acolytes were.
"No fooling?" Josh asked, a little weakly.
"No fooling," Levi said solemnly.
Annja was with Tommy. She hadn't known about the origin of the name Sebastian,
either. She disagreed about his opinion of Sivas, though. She could see how
he'd be a bit prejudiced right now. The adrenaline rush of their early-hour
escape from the potential death-trap of the Sheraton Tower had subsided into
the usual ash-and-cold-water gruel of depression and vague dissatisfaction; the
sudden vengeful fall of winter further chilling their spirits; and the
encounter with the surly, heavily armed National Police more a cattle-prod
shock to the fear gland than anything to produce even another temporary
adrenaline-dump high.
All that, plus the not-very-inspiring nature of the closed truck-stop café, may
have colored his judgment on Sivas. Or not. The city lay in a wide valley along
the Kizilirmak or Red River, amid wide winter-fallow grain fields and sprawling
factories, whose lighting, actinic blue through blowing snow, suggested they
never lay fallow. It might have been a pleasant setting in spring.
A gust of wind threw some larger clumps of snow against the big front window,
making everybody jump and turn. The door opened, admitting a swirl of wintry
air. Charlie Bostitch stomped in, hugging himself and blowing, followed by Leif
Baron and Mr. Atabeg. Larry Taitt brought up the rear like a puppy following
its humans. Charlie wore a tan London Fog trench coat, Larry a black version of
same, Baron a bulky jacket and a pair of earmuffs clamped over his bald dome.
Atabeg wore just his suit and fez and seemed comfortable as well as
indefatigably cheery.
"Well, we're good for the night," Baron announced, moving into the
center of the room. "We won't have to show our passports, either."
"Under the circumstances," the local guide said, "the management
saw the wisdom of such a course of action. Atabeg helped them see the way, of
course."
"Whatever," Jason said. He stood up out of a booth. "So who's
cooking?"
"We can play rock-paper-scissors for it," Tommy said, holding up a
fist.
Baron showed teeth in a brief smile. "Not necessary. Zeb and Jeb—kitchen.
See what they've got and report back."
The twins disappeared into the kitchen. One of them came back a moment later.
He was still wearing his heavy jacket open over a blue shirt. So was his
brother, so it was no use for identification purposes.
"They have ground beef in the freezer and even burger buns," he
reported.
"It's a truck stop," Trish said to no one in particular. "What'd
you expect?"
"Something Eastern European, given most of the long-range lorry drivers on
this route," Wilfork said. He stubbed the cigarette out in a red ceramic
dish. "Still, burgers do seem peculiarly appropriate. Cook on!"
Everybody else agreed. So did Annja, somewhat to her surprise. She enjoyed
eating the food of the area she was working in, and particularly liked Turkish
food, as it happened. But sometimes a hamburger just sounded right.
Trish seemed to read her expression. "Me, too," she said. "We're
such Americans."
Josh frowned. "You say that as if it's a bad thing."
"What about you, Rabbi?" Annja asked hastily. "Are you all right
with burgers?"
"Hold the cheese," he said with a smile.
What Annja thought was the other twin came out wearing a white apron.
"Good news," he said. "We have the makings for milk shakes, too.
Chocolate, vanilla. Strawberry if you don't mind it made out of
preserves."
"Any soy?" Trish asked.
"No. 'Fraid not."
Trish made a face. "I'll take yogurt. It's Turkey. Surely they have
yogurt."
The twin nodded. "There's yogurt."
"Well, I don't know about anybody else," Charlie Bostitch said,
"but I could go for a milk shake. What about you, Ms. Creed?"
"Absolutely," she said with a smile.
Trish turned her a look as if to say, you traitor. Annja started to smile it
off, but then got a weird unsettling feeling Trish was actually mad at her.
She shook her head. You're getting weird and silly, she told herself. Fatigue
poisons are messing with your mind and emotions, that's all.
Everybody else wanted milk shakes, even Jason and Tommy. The twin returned into
the kitchen, from which the sound of sizzling beef now came. Everyone seemed to
sink into a sort of mellow fugue state. Pleased to be alive and free and safe
for the moment.
Whatever happened next.
"So," Trish said,
peering out the window at the landscape rolling by the battered, drafty,
rattling bus, "do you think these sheep are where they get angora from? I
mean, it's named after Ankara, right?"
The provincial capital of Erzurum lay in high country at the eastern end of
Anatolia and Turkey. Annja, who had been charmed by Sivas, ancient Sebasteia or
not, was less enamored of Erzurum.
They passed through mountains and tall mesas, and between them snow-covered
plains dotted by occasional herds of depressed-looking sheep, huddled closely
together against wind that was often snow-laden and never seemed to let up
buffeting the bus.
"We're a long way from Ankara, man," Tommy said. He sat with his Mets
cap turned around backward and a disgruntled look on his face.
"It's still the Anatolian Plateau, isn't it, Annja?" Jason asked.
"Yes."
He shrugged. "So maybe."
"Angora is made from the hair of goats," Robyn Wilfork said
authoritatively. He laid aside the copy of
Der Spiegel
he'd bought along
with a sheaf of other multilingual magazines at a truck stop west of Sivas. He sat behind the
CHM
contingent, between them and the Rehoboam Christian Leadership Academy group at the back of the bus, in front of massed luggage.
"Also rabbits, peculiarly enough."
"Seriously?" Trish asked.
"Seriously," Wilfork said, sounding sober as a bishop. Which he was,
unless he'd managed to smuggle a hip flask aboard and hit it while nobody was
looking. Annja didn't think he had.
"Is that right, Annja?" Trish asked.
"I think so. Textiles and fabric arts are a little out of my line, though.
I'm more up on old manuscripts and stuff you dig up out of the ground.
Artifacts, I mean. Not metals and minerals or anything."
"So you don't know anything about sheep."
"No."
Trish sighed and turned her snub-nosed face back to the window.
"If it makes you feel better," Wilfork said solicitously, "Erzurum did garner a modicum of fame for massacres during the Armenian genocide."
Trish had nothing to say to that.
The roadside motel where they overnighted outside of Sivas boasted beds with
the consistency of butcher blocks. Exhausted from sheer stress, Annja had slept
as she usually did—totally, deeply, bonelessly and ever alert to snap to
instant wakefulness. She had slept in worse places. Many and
much
worse.
Most of her companions on the bus, it seemed, had on the other hand slept
badly, fitfully, and were prone to complain loudly about it.
"Are we there yet?" Trish asked from the seat where she sprawled
across from Annja. She had her arm laid across the foam stuffing spilling from
the split seat top. "God, I sound like a little kid. But I'm so
bored."
"You can join our Bible study group if you want," Larry Taitt said
brightly. For the current leg of the journey Charlie Bostitch had Josh Fairlie
driving for him, Baron and the irrepressible Mr. Atabeg. Larry was in full-on
tour director mode, doing his bright-eyed, toothpaste-ad-smile best to keep
everybody's spirits up. If anything it was having the opposite effect.
Annja turned to peer out the window. Although it was only the middle of the
afternoon the iron-colored overcast sky and the sporadically falling light snow
turned everything to twilight. Half of the scene was fuzzed out by condensation
on the window caused by the cold. Hoping no one would notice, she began to draw
stick figures in the condensation. Growing up in hot New Orleans she'd had
little chance to do that as a little girl. It still secretly fascinated her.
Snow, on the other hand, had already long since lost its capacity to thrill
her. If it hadn't the last couple days would've killed it off for sure. And she
hadn't even had to be out in it much yet.
"So, Rabbi," Jason said. He sat two seats up from Annja on the far
side of the bus, with his long legs stretched out into the aisle. "What do
you think? Is Noah's Ark really up on this mountain we're going to?"
That awoke a growl from someone in the back of the bus. Annja tensed. But Levi
laid aside his own reading matter and sat up adjusting his glasses on his nose
with a happy smile. The only thing he loved as much as his studies was talking
about them.
"Well, Mr. Pennigrew," he said, "you should first understand
there are numerous Flood myths."
"That's why we're so sure of the truth of the Biblical account,"
Larry said. "Well, along with our faith, of course. But the worldwide
accounts of a deluge corroborate the Genesis story."
"Ah, but do they, Mr. Taitt? The ancient Akkadians and the Sumerians had
very similar Flood myths that predate Genesis by a millennium or more,"
Levi said.
"Sure," Jeb said. "They're talking about the same thing."
"They certainly could be recounting the same myth," Levi said.
"The staying power of myth is simply wonderful."
"Of truth," said Zach Thompson, the muscular and to Annja's mind
overly tightly wound ex-marine. "The power of truth."
"Perhaps," Levi said, head bobbing happily, eyes alight. "Ah,
but which truth?"
"The truth of God," Zeb said, sounding more puzzled than anything
else. "What other kind is there?"
"To be sure, my young friend. But how well do we discern the truth? For
example, in the Biblical account, Ararat clearly refers to a mountain range. In
all probability it has nothing to do with the giant cinder cone which currently
bears that name."
"Aren't there, like, two different accounts of the whole Ark thing in the
Old Testament, anyway?" Tommy asked. "I seem to remember from my
Sunday school classes that one says there was one pair of each kind of animal, and
then there's like another than says there were seven types of some animals and
only pairs of others."
That was what Annja remembered as well. She felt it better to stay out of this.
Sure, her sympathies lay with her fellow
Chasing History's Monsters
staff
from New York. But she was acutely aware of being stuck in the middle here.
Taking sides wouldn't help things go smoothly, and the worst risks and hardship
still lay ahead. She knew how tensions could build up to the point of erupting
in unreasonable outbursts of anger on the most conventional expedition. This
one was anything but.
Larry laughed. "But that's easy," he said, sounding genuinely
delighted to be able to clear everything up. "If there's seven of some
kinds of animals, there's at least a pair of them, right? So there isn't any
contradiction."
Both Jason and Trish sat up straighter, ready to hit that like a bass spotting
a juicy worm. Levi spoke before they could, obliviously. Or maybe not; Annja
wondered.
"If only things were so simple," Levi said. "There are other
explanations, too, after all. The Babylonian account claims the gods determined
to flood the whole world basically because humans made too much noise, and it
bothered them. In that version the ark-builder is named Utnapishtim. He was a
friend of Gilgamesh, of Epic fame."
"Wasn't he the dude that won immortality?" Jason asked.
"Well…the standard accounts claim that Gilgamesh tried, and failed. But
certain tablets claim he made it. Then again, there's a Flood account in the
apocryphal
First Book of Enoch
, apparently dating to the second century
BCE, as you secular archaeologists like to term it, which claims it was
intended to wipe out the Nephilim, a race of evil giants gotten by angels on
the daughters of men."
"That's different," Trish said.
"Musta worked," Tommy said. "Seen any giants lately?"
"Well, of course the giants were among those who failed to survive the
Flood," Larry said. "Like dinosaurs."
The three television crew members stared at him. "Dinosaurs?" Jason
managed to say at last.
"Of course," Larry said. "Dinosaurs and humans lived together
before the Flood. That's why there are dinosaurs in the fossil record."
The
Chasing History's Monsters
trio all started to talk at once, tending
to drown each other out. Words like
insane
and
messed-up
bubbled
to the conversational surface.
Seeing the hackles rise on the Young Wolves, Annja said sharply, "Hey!
Enough."
That silenced the three. But only for a moment.
"Look," Jason said, "I still have trouble with this whole thing.
Are you people seriously saying a flood plopped this ship down fifteen and a
half thousand feet above sea level? That's like three miles. Where'd all the
water come from? Where'd it all
go?
"
"Why, the same place it came from," Larry said. "By the will of
God the waters fell from the sky. By the will of God they returned to the sky.
It was a miracle."
"But if God could do that, why bother with a flood in the first place? Why
not flick all the sinful off the Earth at once like boogers?" Tommy said.
Some of the others snarled at that. But Larry shook his head with a smile.
"The ways of God are not the ways of man."
"Wait." Annja held up her hands. "Wait, now. I don't think we're
all going to agree on things here. So can we just agree to disagree?"
"Are you going to let them get away with mocking the word of God,
Larry?" Zach asked.
"Turn the other cheek, Zach," Larry said, still indefatigably
cheerful. "That's what Charlie would say to do."
The invocation of the holy name—Charlie Bostitch's—quieted the others right
down. Annja wondered if Rehoboam Academy students—and graduates—weren't
encouraged to snitch on each other over signs of dissent or heresy.
"We have to work together," she said. "We have a tough road
ahead. Maybe even before we get to the mountain. And once we do we've got a
tough climb ahead of us. So let's all just step back and take deep breaths and
save our energy. Because we're going to need every bit of it later."
Slowly Wilfork clapped his hands. "Oh, bravo, Ms. Creed. Bravo. When controversy
rears its ugly head, dodge the issue. Intellectual cowardice to the
rescue."
Cheeks burning, Annja wheeled on him. But Rabbi Leibowitz laughed.
"Oh, Mr. Wilfork," Levi said. "These arguments have been going
on now for thousands of years. Do you think they're going to be settled this
afternoon here on this bus?"