The Buried Cities

by James Frey

  “I know where it is.”

  We all look at the girl, Kelebek. She is standing beside the old woman. “The door,” she says, in case we have not understood her meaning. “I know where it is.”

  Yildiz says something in rapid-fire Turkish. I don’t understand all of it, but I get that she’s telling the girl to be quiet. She sounds almost fearful. Kelebek silences her with a curt nod of her head, then says, “My friends and I have spent many hours here. I can take you to the door.”

  “You play here?” Brecht says. “Despite the legends?”

  “I am not afraid of legends,” Kelebek says.

  Brecht laughs. “Brave girl,” he says. “Very well, then. Let’s be on our way.”

  Kelebek shakes her head. “It is getting dark,” she says. “We must wait until morning.”

  “What difference does it make?” Ott asks. “Underground it’s always dark. We’ll have to use flashlights whether it’s day or night.”

  “We won’t,” the girl says. “You’ll see. Tomorrow. Tonight, we camp.” She doesn’t wait for a reply from any of us, but turns and walks out of the room and down the stairs. Brecht laughs again. “I suppose we have no choice,” he says, and starts off after Kelebek.

  Ott looks at me and Boone. “Are we taking orders from a child now?” “Unless you know where the door is, I think we are,” he says.

  Ott grunts. I look over at Yildiz, who still seems upset by what’s happened. “Are you all right?” I ask her in Turkish.

  She nods, but the worried expression is still on her face. She leaves the room, followed by a still-fuming Ott. Boone and I are alone. “Do you think she really knows where this door is?” I ask him. “Or that there’s really anything down there anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Boone says. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  This doesn’t make me feel any better. I’m used to Boone being the optimistic one, the one who believes everything will work out. In only a short time, I’ve come to welcome his particularly American attitude. Or maybe all the months I spent with the dour Russians rubbed off more than I realized. Whatever it is, I suddenly need him to tell me it will be all right. I take his hands and hold them tightly in mine, staring into his eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” he says, giving me one of his lopsided smiles, which, despite my worries, makes my heart skip a beat. “We’re on an adventure, remember? Like Tintin.”

  I nod. “In search of buried treasure,” I say.

  He kisses me. I do feel better, at least a little. Mostly, I realize, I’m tired. So much has changed in the past weeks, both in my life and in how I think about things. Huge changes that have broken my world apart. I’m here now to, what, try to find a way to piece it back together? Truthfully, I don’t know. My goal has been to find the second set of plans for the weapon. What happens after that, I’m not sure. “Come on,” Boone says, taking my hand and leading me out of the room. “If we stay up here any longer, everyone will wonder what we’re up to.”

  Part of me resists leaving. I know we can’t stay in the fairy tower forever, but just for a moment I want to pretend that we can, that we can live in the sky with only the sun and the moon and the stars. I want to forget about weapons, and fighting, and especially about Endgame. I want life to be normal. But I don’t even know what that looks like, and so I go with Boone, leaving the mural and the narrow windows behind and returning to the real world.

  Outside, the others are waiting. The sun is low in the sky, the early winter dark coming on quickly. The temperature is dropping now that the sun is fading, and soon it will be night. We need to figure out our shelter.

  Kelebek, it seems, has already thought about this. “Come with me,” she says, and starts walking toward a cone of rock that rises out of the ground ahead of us. There is a single opening in the volcanic rock wall, a black mouth into which the girl disappears. We follow her inside and find ourselves in a spacious room. Just how large it is becomes apparent when Kelebek strikes a flint and lights some tinder placed inside a fireplace that is carved into the rock. The smoke disappears up a hidden flue.

  Brecht looks into the fireplace. “It must vent outside somewhere above.”

  He and I dart outside for a moment and look up. Sure enough, approximately 25 meters above, we see tiny plumes of smoke exiting from a seemingly solid spire of rock.

  “Ingenious,” he says. “And all done without modern technology. The builders must have scraped that chimney out one spoonful at a time.” We go back inside. Kelebek and Yildiz are kneeling by the hearth, opening packs and taking out food. Already, dishes of dates and olives are laid out. Small paper-wrapped parcels follow, and are unwrapped to reveal dolmas—grape leaves stuffed with a mixture of ground lamb, spices, mint, and raisins. Smelling them, my mouth begins to water, and I realize how famished I am after our trek.

  We sit cross-legged on the floor, eating with our hands and drinking water from our flasks.

  “Don’t worry about water,” Kelebek says when she notices me taking small sips. “There are wells here. The water is good.”

  “You’ve explored here often?” I ask her. She reminds me a bit of myself—wary of letting too much of herself show—and I hope to earn her trust by getting her to talk.

  She nods, but says nothing further.

  I lean over. “I used to go into the caves by my home when I was your age,” I whisper, as if I am telling her a great secret. “My grandmother told me they were filled with monsters. She thought that would keep me away, but it only made me want to see them for myself.”

  This story earns me a smile. Kelebek glances at Yildiz. “She does not like it that I come here.”

  Yildiz looks up and frowns. Kelebek and I laugh together.

  “What do you think is hidden here?” Kelebek asks me.

  I don’t know what to tell her, and so I say, “I am not sure. What do you think it is?”

  “Something important,” she says. “Something worth a lot. I remember the last time people came. During the war.” She looks at Brecht, and her face hardens. I wonder what she’s remembering. I think for a moment she will tell me, but she doesn’t. Suddenly she’s as wary as she was before.

  “We are not like those people,” I assure her, but she only shrugs and resumes eating.

  When we are done, Brecht goes outside again. This time it’s to smoke a cigarette. I find him sitting atop a tall rock, the flat surface of which is reached by a set of steps carved into the back. I climb up and join him. Above us, the cloudy afternoon sky has cleared, and the stars are visible against the cold blackness of space.

  “One of the things I missed most while in Taganka was being able to see the night sky,” Brecht says. “The daytime sky is more or less always the same, except for clouds. And they are random. But the night sky, it changes in an orderly fashion as the stars move across it. When I was a boy, my grandfather taught me the names of the constellations. Often he would wake me in the middle of the night and take me out into the yard to look up at the sky, so that I would learn what it looked like at different hours and in different seasons. My mother always knew when he did it because the next day I would be late getting up for school.”

  He takes a puff on his cigarette and blows the smoke out. “I hope to do the same with Bernard.” Then he turns his head to look at me. “And what do you hope for?”

  I think about it. “I don’t know,” I tell him. “For now, finding the second set of plans.”

  “Yes,” he says. “But what then?”

  This is, of course, the question hanging over all of us. We have each come here for our own reasons, reasons that may ultimately be at odds with one another. Brecht, I think, is mostly driven by scientific curiosity, a wish to finish what was started when he and Evrard Sauer realized what they had found. Also, I think, he hopes that the weapon might be used to buy the safety of his daughter and grandson, if that becomes necessary. Ott, too, I think, believes that the weapon can be used as a bargaining chip. He hides this behind
talk of using it to prevent another war, but I believe he would be just as happy to use it to start another one.

  When I don’t answer Brecht’s question, he tries another tack. “The world is filled with legends about items with unbelievable power. Items that have been hidden to prevent greedy men from finding them and using them for their own ends. Always someone finds them, and always the outcome is ruin.”

  “You think we should leave whatever is hidden here alone?”

  “Everyone who goes in search of power believes that they will be the exception,” he says. “That they will be the one with the wisdom to use the power for the right purpose.” He stands up. “But what do I know? I am a scientist, not a philosopher.”

  He leaves me alone on the rock, looking up at the stars. But I am not alone for long. A few minutes later, Boone joins me. He sits down beside me and takes my hand. Alone in the dark, we can do this without worry, and I lean against him.

  “What were you and Brecht talking about?”

  “Opening Pandora’s box,” I say. “Finding the lost Ark of the Covenant. Wearing the Ring of Gyges.”

  Boone whistles. “That sounds like some conversation.”

  “He asked me what we plan on doing with the weapon.”

  “Ah,” Boone says. “And what did you tell him?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “What would you have told him?”

  “No fair,” he says. “You’re trying to get me to answer the question for you.”

  He’s right. And I do want him to answer it. He doesn’t.

  “Are we still Playing Endgame?” I ask.

  “I’m still the Cahokian Player,” he replies.

  “And I am still not Cahokian,” I remind him.

  He pulls me closer. “One thing at a time,” he says. “Let’s see if this key of Brecht’s really is a key, and if the door is even a door. And what the hell is the Ring of Gyges, anyway?”

  “It’s from Plato,” I tell him. “Don’t they teach you anything in your American schools?”

  “Just readin’, ritin’, and ’rithmetic,” he says. “So, what does it do?”

  “Makes the wearer invisible, so that he can do anything he likes without being caught. The story asks us whether or not people will behave morally if they don’t fear being caught or found out.”

  “And what’s the answer?”

  “Plato says it depends on the nature of the man.”

  “The weapon could change everything,” Boone says after a moment. “For us. For the lines. For everyone.”

  Before I can reply to this, Brecht appears behind us. Instinctively, we pull apart.

  “You need to come down,” Brecht says. “There is a problem.”

  “What’s happened?” I ask as Boone and I get to our feet.

  “It’s Ott,” he says. “He’s disappeared. And so has the girl.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Boone

  When we get back inside, Yildiz runs up to us, speaking wildly in Turkish. She’s talking so fast that I can’t understand a word she’s saying, but Ari does.

  “She says Kelebek went to get water. A few minutes later, she realized that Ott was gone as well.”

  “Maybe he just went out to smoke,” I suggest. “Or walk around.”

  “The key is gone too,” Brecht tells me. He holds up the box containing the weapon pieces. It was tucked into my pack, but someone has obviously removed it.

  I look at Ari. We should never have left the box unattended. It was a stupid thing to do.

  “We have to find him,” I say. I turn to Yildiz. “Do you know where the well is?”

  She nods enthusiastically, and beckons with her hand. “Come,” she says.

  The three of us follow the old woman as she leaves the room and goes outside. She hobbles quickly in the opposite direction of the stargazing rock, heading for the doorway of another fairy tower. Once inside, she begins to descend a set of stairs that spiral down into the earth. It’s dark, so Ari, Brecht, and I turn on our flashlights. The beams cross one another as we hurry behind Yildiz, casting looming shadows on the stone walls.

  The stairs corkscrew down, as if a giant has plunged them into the dirt. I estimate we descend about 50 feet before they stop and we find ourselves in a tunnel just tall enough for me to walk in without having to bend over. It’s maybe four feet wide, and we have to walk single file. “They designed these tunnels so that enemies would have to enter one at a time,” Brecht says from behind me. “It made them easier to pick off.”

  “That’s very reassuring,” I tell him. “Anything else we should watch out for?”

  “Oh, all manner of traps,” he says. He sounds excited. “Pitfalls. Falling rocks. In the other city Sauer and I explored, there was a room that filled with sand, burying anyone who became locked inside it. The architects of these places were very clever.”

  Ahead of me, Yildiz begins calling out Kelebek’s name. I try to quiet her, in case Ott is hiding somewhere, but she ignores me, her frantic cries echoing through the stone tunnel. There is no answer, and she calls out some more.

  My fear is that Ott took the key and followed the girl, then forced her to show him the door and open it. But since we don’t know where the door is, we could be going in the totally wrong direction. All I can do is continue to follow Yildiz as she races through the tunnel. When we come to a fork, she does not hesitate as she takes the path to the left. Then there are more stairs, another tunnel. The whole time we are moving, she continues to call out Kelebek’s name.

  Finally she gets an answer. The girl’s voice comes back, echoing through the tunnel. She doesn’t sound scared, which makes me feel a little less worried. When we emerge from the tunnel into a small room, we find her standing calmly in front of what looks like a trough carved into the rock. It’s filled with water. Then I hear the muffled sound of someone loudly cursing. It seems to be coming from beneath the floor.

  “Is that Ott?” I ask.

  Kelebek nods. “He threatened to harm me,” she says coolly.

  “How did he get down there?”

  Kelebek steps on one of the stones, and it tips beneath her foot, pivoting on an unseen hinge. Ott’s voice becomes louder for a moment, then is dampened again as the stone slides back into place.

  I kneel beside the stone and test it with my hand. Once again it tips. This time I stop it from closing by holding it open. I shine my flashlight into the darkness below. Ott’s face is illuminated as he looks up at me from the bottom of a narrow pit about 15 feet deep. He shields his eyes with his hand.

  “Get me out of here,” he says. “I think my damn leg is broken.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to force the girl to open the door for you,” I suggest.

  “I didn’t,” he says. “I went after her when I realized she’d taken the key.”

  I look at Kelebek.

  “He’s lying,” she says instantly.

  “Search her,” I tell Ari.

  Ari moves toward the girl, who backs away and pulls a small knife out of somewhere in her clothes. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Looks like he’s telling the truth,” I say as the girl pokes her knife at Ari.

  “Of course I’m telling the truth,” Ott snaps. “Now get me out of here.” “We’ll need to get some rope,” I tell him. “And something to make a harness out of.”

  I hear a grunt, then some more cursing. This time, it comes from Kelebek. Ari has disarmed her easily, and now has her arms around the girl, who is thrashing wildly and clawing uselessly at Ari. Yildiz is talking to her in Turkish, trying to calm her down, but the girl is too busy being angry to listen.

  “Stop it!” Ari says. “Nobody is going to hurt you.”

  Kelebek, probably more worn out than she is ready to listen, stops struggling. When she’s no longer trying to break away from Ari’s grasp, Ari slips a hand into the girl’s pockets. She pulls out the key from the weapon case.

  “Why did you take it?” she asks.

  “
I didn’t,” the girl says. “I took it from him.”

  “Before you tricked him into stepping on the stone?” Ari says. Kelebek nods. “I told him I would open the door for him. He gave me the key.”

  “She’s lying!” Ott bellows. “I was going to take the key from her, but I stepped on that damn trapdoor and fell in here.”

  I look at Ari. I honestly don’t know which of them to believe. Based on what I know of him, it’s far more likely that Ott took the key and tried to get the girl to open the door for him. But something about the way the girl is acting makes me think she might not be telling the truth. Normally I would say that she’s just frightened and intimidated, but I’m not sure those are feelings she’s capable of.

  Ari lets go of the girl, who immediately steps away and glares at all of us like an angry cat. When Yildiz attempts to put an arm around her, Kelebek shrugs her away and stands with her arms crossed over her chest.

  “I’ll go back and get some rope from our packs,” I tell Ari. I look down at Ott and say, “Sorry, but you’ll have to sit in the dark for a little longer.” I let go of the rock, and as it slides back into place, once again sealing him in the pit, I hear him muttering in German.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I say.

  It’s easy enough to find my way back through the tunnels. I memorized the route on the way in, and now I just reverse it. Ott is in no immediate danger, and I know Ari can handle whatever might happen, so this time I go a little more slowly and appreciate the enormous amount of work that went into creating this place. I try to imagine how it was built, how long it took to carve the stairs and tunnels out of rock, to go so deep into the ground. It’s an amazing feat of engineering. I think about how much Jackson would love this place. Then I remember that my brother is dead, his body lying in a crypt beneath a church in France. I push that thought from my mind and climb the last set of stairs, back to the surface.