by Nathan Swain
“This guy is the real deal,” Eastgate said. “Some very scholarly shit in here.”
Olivia winced at the colorful language. What a crude man he could be.
“A little respect please,” Olivia said. “We’re still in a traditional culture.”
“Of course,” Eastgate said, tipping his baseball cap.
“My friends, may I introduce my friend and the proprietor of this store,” Karzan said. Eastgate turned, expecting to see a gray-bearded man with a monocle and bow tie. “This is Brody.”
A casting director could not have chosen someone more out of place. Brody appeared to be in his late 20s. He had sandy brown hair and dimples. From his suntan, Eastgate would have thought he was a surfer.
“How ahh yah?” Brody said, his New Zealand accent unmistakable.
Without letting a beat pass, Eastgate introduced himself. “Hiya, Will Eastgate.” He had learned in the Special Forces the importance of not appearing rattled by new information and acquaintances, no matter how odd they seemed. He turned to Olivia. “This is Professor Olivia Nazarian.”
“Excellent, all right,” Brody said. Olivia baldly smirked at Brody’s Kiwi manner. “Care for a toke?” Brody asked, offering them a hit from a joint of hashish.
“I’m good,” Eastgate said, appreciating the irony of the situation. We’re running for our lives and this guy is high as a kite.
“Olivia, care for a smoke?”
“No, thank you. No one needs to see that.”
“Suit yourself. What can I do for you all?” Brody asked, scratching his nipple underneath a fraying tank-top.
“Brody, my friends are in need of directions to a very special place. Perhaps you can help them?”
“I hope so,” Brody said, ever the obliging Kiwi.
“Brody is a cave diver,” Karzan said to Eastgate and Olivia, finally revealing why he had taken them to meet this enigmatic person. “I recall you spent time cave diving up near Elazığ, what was it, a year ago, a year-and-a-half ago?”
“Right on. Elazığ. Let me think. Yeah, that was, like, a year ago man, good memory.”
“Did you find any interesting cave diving around Lake Hazar?” Karzan asked.
“Duuuuude,” Brody said. “Noooooo.”
Karzan frowned, fearing he had let down Eastgate and Olivia.
“Lake Hazar is a total bummer. The people around there say there was, like, this amazing cave dive right off of the shore. But, like, the authorities or whatever closed it down like recently man. Said it was unsafe or something.”
“Did the people say anything else about it?” Eastgate asked.
“Sure, they said it had, like, religious significance. Like something out of the Bible, man.”
“No kidding,” Eastgate said, turning to meet Olivia’s glance.
“Um, Brody, man,” Olivia said. “Do you happen to know where that cave was?”
Brody stared into space for a moment. “Nah, man, sorry. Total bummer.”
Olivia wasn’t surprised. He’s probably too stoned to remember his middle name.
“Oh, wait, Lady O. I just might have something for you.” Brody walked to what presumably was his back office, or maybe his bedroom, and returned with a stack of maps. “You know, I think those cool Bedouin guys or whatever told us where it was. Let me check my map of, here it is, Lake Hazar. Cool.”
Brody opened up the map. “Let’s see here, yeah, circled it right here. Even put an arrow on it.” Brody excitedly drew circles around the arrow with his index finger. “Wow!”
Eastgate scanned the map. The arrow pointed to a specific point where the water appeared to run up directly against the outer walls of the canyon on the southeast edge of the lake. Next to the arrow, Brody wrote: “Spooky Bible cave dive. Closed. Bummer!”
“Brody, can we have a copy of this?” Eastgate asked. “It might be fun to check out.”
“Dude, keep it. I won’t be going back to Lake Hazar any time soon.”
“Groovy man, thanks,” Eastgate said.
“Just do me a favor, bro.”
“Sure man, whatever you want.”
“Could you buy some dope for me up in Elazığ? There’s a guy up there with some real sweet bud.”
Eastgate looked up at Brody and grinned. “We’ll do our best, my man.”
Brody pumped his fist. “Alright. Sick, bro. I’ll get you the cash.”
Brody disappeared to the back of the shop. Karzan was beaming. “I told you this was the right man.”
Chapter 73
Batur had been watching Samir since he arrived in Istanbul. “Try to keep my son in line,” Reso instructed him. Batur was having trouble completing his assignment. The timid Kurdish orphan he had rescued from poverty so many years ago had turned into a complete ass. That he was a womanizer and possibly sadistic was not what troubled Batur. It was his paranoia. The nervous twitches and glances every time he entered a room. The constant fear of ambush. Reso believed Samir had some promise as a covert operator. But it was clear to Batur that Samir was beginning to crack from the pressure.
From a nearby office building, Batur used high-powered surveillance equipment to watch and listen to Samir’s call with Reso. Batur was not surprised by Samir’s betrayal. Batur had been reporting to Reso for days that Samir was over his head, ranting to himself constantly about Olivia and the American. The way he knocked over the table and ran to the taxi—Batur couldn’t believe this clown had the gall to try to intimidate him in his own arsenal.
“He will need to go back to his hotel,” Batur told Reso after Samir jumped into the taxi. “He has all of his equipment there.”
“Good. Meet him there. Stop him from doing any further damage,” Reso said, his voice sounding weaker than usual. Batur had no idea what Reso was up to. He learned years ago not to ask questions focused on “why.” His job was to worry about “how.” But Reso seemed more irritated than usual with the inevitable ups and downs of this operation. His son’s incompetence was a heavy burden for Reso, Batur assumed, as it would be for any father.
Batur paused for further instruction from Reso. On such matters, he needed absolute clarity. “Use whatever force necessary short of death,” Reso said.
Perfect, Batur thought. He didn’t want to kill Samir. He had seen enough Kurdish blood spill for ten lifetimes. But he would put the fear of God into Samir for his impudence. And the only way to do so would be to beat him within an inch of his life.
Batur was qualified for the task. He had grown up on the outskirts of Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of Turkey’s Kurdish people. As a boy, he had been small for his age, and was picked on mercilessly by the other boys in his neighborhood, where fighting and football were the only sources of entertainment and prestige.
But despite his meager stature, Batur was innately egotistical and ambitious. So, he trained himself to fight. He watched the gangs of grown men brawl in the city’s slums. He observed how they carried their arms and planted their feet. He memorized punch and kick combinations. The dirty tricks he learned were the most profitable, like eye gouging and ripping ball sacks. They were emblematic of the most important lesson he learned on the streets: nothing was off limits.
Then a miraculous thing happened. When he turned fourteen, Batur grew two feet and gained 40 pounds. In six months, he was a behemoth. Armed with his technical skills, he went neighborhood by neighborhood beating the local toughs and gang leaders to a bloody mess. He ultimately won the reputation as the best fighter in Southeast Turkey.
Despite his Kurdish ancestry, the bureaucrats in Turkey’s Department of Sport recruited him to train for international competition as a boxer and wrestler. But he soon received a more attractive offer. In 1982, the leader of the insurgent Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, selected Batur to serve as his personal body guard. It was a high honor and suited him perfectly, combining his skill at fighting with his hatred for the Turkish government. His career put him in touch with the most influential Kurds in the world, i
ncluding Reso Zana.
Fighting to create a Kurdish state in Southeast Turkey, Batur ended up taking two bullets to the head. But they did not slow him down. He only stopped his work with the PKK when the party leader was thrown in prison.
It was then Batur began trafficking arms. He performed some odd jobs, mostly shake-downs of corrupt businessmen or drug dealers. There was an occasional assassination or two. The money was more than he could ever spend.
It had been a good, violent life, and he was getting close to retirement, with plans of moving to Los Angeles to live with his only child, an adult daughter. That would come in time. At the moment, he still had many lessons to pass on, including to Samir.
From the balcony of his hotel suite—one floor above Samir’s room—Batur could see traffic moving swiftly through the narrow causeways of Old Istanbul. He checked his watch. He had five minutes before the taxi would arrive with Samir. Flecks of gray speckled his neatly cut hair and mustache. His chest and shoulders were massive. They made up for his expanding belly, which seemed to encroach a bit further each month over the belt of his trousers.
Batur removed a white cloth from his duffel bag and placed it into a glass jar. He emptied a container of chloroform into the jar, sealed the lid, and shook it. With the saturated cloth, he would render Samir unconscious, blindfold and gag him, and apply some tried-and-true torture techniques before moving him to a more secure location. When Reso was ready, he would signal Batur to let Samir go. It was a simple plan.
Five minutes later, Batur heard the door to Samir’s hotel room slam shut and the television went on. Good God, Batur thought, he’s a bull in a china shop. It was laughable that Reso believed Samir could act with sufficient judgment and stealth to do this line of work. I wouldn’t trust him to wipe his own ass.
Batur patiently walked down a flight of stairs to Samir’s floor. On the landing, before opening the stairwell door, he pulled a pair of yellow plastic gloves around his massive hands. They fit poorly, but it didn’t matter. He placed a surgical mask over his mouth. The elastic string chaffed against the top of his ears. Batur took a deep breath, and opened the door separating the stairs from the hallway.
Samir’s naiveté was laughable. His room was two doors down. He didn’t even know enough to book a room far from a stair well.
Samir’s television was still on. Batur waited outside the door with his back against the wall. When the door opened, Batur would place Samir in a suffocating headlock, haul him inside the room, and subdue him with the chloroform.
A man and woman, white, probably European, walked by. Continuing to face Samir’s door in case he walked out, Batur bent down and pretended to be cleaning the carpet in the hallway. They boarded an elevator without batting an eye.
It’s incredible what people see but don’t understand, Batur noticed. Many people have probably seen a murderer lie in wait for his victim, even as they go about their regular lives. Most people had no idea how the world worked.
Another five minutes passed. Batur was feeling more tired than usual. He raised a gloved hand to his mouth and yawned. The television inside Samir’s room continued to blare. It was probably a porn movie, he thought. Samir was a sexual deviant.
He heard the footsteps of another hotel guest come down the hallway. He crouched down again, pretending to clean. It was probably another European tourist. The shoe steps brushed quietly against the carpet. It sounded like an old woman.
Just as he expected the footsteps to continue past him, they stopped. A long pause followed. At that moment, Batur knew the fool Samir had outsmarted him and that he was a dead man.
Samir plunged a knife into Batur’s neck with his right hand. He pinned his wallet against the key pad of the hotel room door with his left. A moment before blood began spouting, the light on the key pad blinked green. Samir kicked Batur’s struggling body into his room and pushed him into the tub in the bathroom. Batur’s hulking body landed with a crash, dislodging one of the tub’s claw feet and crushing the floor tile underneath. Somehow, he landed face up, his right arm slung over the side of the tub.
Samir knew he hadn’t finished the job. Batur’s eyes blinked and darted side to side. He breathed heavily. The knife hadn’t severed Batur’s artery. It would have taken just a nudge to do it. But Samir decided to let him struggle.
As his life force slowly drained from his body, Batur’s gaze rested on Samir’s eyes. Only the devil’s eyes could be so cold.
Chapter 74
Elazığ glowed in the soft morning beams of daybreak. Karzan shook Eastgate and Olivia awake in the back seat of his Crown Victoria sedan. They switched cars the night before in Tabriz, where disguise was no longer an issue. The road from Tabriz to Diyarbakir passed through the heart of Kurdish territory. There, Karzan had influence with the local power brokers, and many friends nearby.
“The entire US First Infantry could be guarding you,” Karzan had bragged, “and you would be no safer than you are with me.”
Still, Olivia was up all night marking the kilometers to the border, and when they crossed into Turkey, she shuddered at the mural images of Iran’s Supreme Leader in the rearview mirror, which happily grew smaller and disappeared into blackness. Iran was not a place she wished to return, unless a secular, democratic revolution preceded her visit.
Turkey was a different proposition. It was the most Western Islamic country in the world. Except for the occasional head scarf, most young Turkish women dressed like women in Cambridge.
Karzan pulled the car to the side of the road at a switchback so Eastgate and Olivia could take in the view. Elazığ was charming. The air was fresh and crisp with the scent of pine. The city was an inland peninsula, surrounded on three sides by Lake Hazar. As the sun began to climb in the morning sky, the ivory-colored minarets of the İzzet Pasha Mosque came into view, poking above the surrounding flat building tops like white candles on a birthday cake.
“The city sits on a plain,” Karzan said. “About three thousand feet high.”
“The Sumerian word for ‘plain’ is edin,” Olivia said, nudging Eastgate in the arm. “Many scholars, me included….” Eastgate interrupted her. “I’ve read your book, remember. They believe the Eden referred to in Genesis 2 is derived from the Sumerian edin.” Olivia nodded approvingly.
“There is Harput,” Karzan said, pointing north. “The name you originally asked about, yes?”
Olivia was elated. Harput was where Rich’s journey to Eden began almost 200 years ago. How exciting to be traveling in Rich’s footsteps.
Eastgate smiled. He too was feeling the thrill of discovery, the joy of chasing history. Improbably, they had escaped Iran, and the Flaming Sword appeared to be nowhere in sight. Eden, it appeared, was within their grasp—a hidden jewel, sparkling somewhere ahead of them under the ecstatic glow of the morning sun.
He warmly placed a hand on Karzan’s shoulder. “Nice work, Karzan. Now what do you know about this place?”
“Harput? I know it was built by the first Armenian kings about five kilometers from present day Elazığ.”
“How big of a city was it? How many people?”
Karzan shook his head. “Harput was not a city so much as a citadel. It translates from Armenian to mean ‘rock fortress.’ The rest I know is only legend.”
“What legend?”
Karzan grinned sheepishly, as if he was about to tell a children’s folk tale. “Armenian legend is that the fortress of Harput was built with a very special purpose.” Karzan stopped, hesitant to say more. But it was clear Eastgate and Olivia were glued to his every word, so he continued. “That purpose was to guard an ancient secret entrusted to the Armenian kings.”
“Secret?” Olivia asked. “Don’t leave us in suspense.”
“No one knows,” Karzan said, laughing nervously. “The Armenians knew how to keep a secret.”
The scholar in Olivia wanted to head to the local archives to investigate the original Harput. But with Eden a stone’s throw away, now
was not the time to scratch that academic itch. “Any theories?” Olivia asked.
“Folk tales only. The Armenians like to say the fortress was built to guard the Garden of Eden.”
The hair on Eastgate’s arm went straight. “Interesting theory.”
“Some claim to have found a direct line from the descendants of Noah to the Armenian kings,” Karzan said. “It is the Armenians, they claim, who are the chosen people of God.”
“I wish we had time to research it,” Eastgate said, looking anxiously at his watch.
Karzan got the message. “Of course. I believe there is a package for you at my brother’s house. We must go.”
Eastgate was soon alone in a shed on the property of Karzan’s brother. Fields of poppies surrounded it. The shed contained sophisticated chemistry gear. He had spent enough time in Afghanistan to recognize a heroin lab when he saw one. As sympathetic as Eastgate was to the cause of Kurdish independence, it was clear Karzan and his brother were no choir boys.
The package waiting for Eastgate was a crate of gear sent by Jarrett, which Eastgate had asked for back in Chalus. At the time, he only had a vague idea of what he needed and he hadn’t even thought about how Jarrett would pay for it. Someday I’ll have to ask him for the bill.
He scavenged the shed and found an iron wedge he used to open the crate. He pried open the top, sending a chunk of splintered wood flying across the room. Inside the crate were weapons for a marine environment: an A29 underwater revolver, whose rounds sat inside a jacket covered by a float, and an Mj underwater defense gun, which fired a metal dart with fins.
Good so far. They were both weapons Eastgate was familiar with from his advanced marine combat training with the SEALs.
Eastgate picked through the Styrofoam peanuts in the crate, being careful not to litter the floor of the shed. He stuck his full forearms deep into the crate searching for the additional gear, but it was empty.
He couldn’t believe it. He had specifically asked Jarrett to include one set of light scuba gear.
