by D J Mcintosh
Bennet and I would be away for a couple of weeks. What to do about Loki? Introducing her to a new family seemed harsh, although better than sticking her in some boarding kennel—if they’d even take her. Diane Chen was a good friend of mine, a theater actor when she could land a part, a sometime fortune teller, and a barista at my favorite watering hole—Kenny’s Castaways. I remembered she loved dogs.
“I can’t take a dog,” Diane said when I called. “My landlord would throw us both out on the street. Wish I could. She sounds really cute.”
I hadn’t enlightened Diane on Loki’s parentage—wasn’t sure what she’d think of caring for half a coyote. “How about staying at my place? Luxury digs and all.” I laughed. “And of course, I’d pay you.”
“Seriously! You’re near Madison Square now, right? That’s awesome. Save me the bone-cracking commute. How long for?”
“Couple of weeks. I’m going to Turkey.”
We arranged for her to stop by later in the evening to meet Loki and get the spare key. When she arrived and saw Bennet, her look of surprise was priceless. Bennet, meanwhile, eyed Diane’s magenta hair and midnight-blue fingernails with suspicion.
Later, after Diane had left, came the inevitable question. “Are you sure she’s trustworthy?”
I detected a bit of jealousy there, and couldn’t help grinning. “That’s funny. Pot calling the kettle black or anything? I’ve known her much longer than you.”
She shrugged as if she didn’t care.
Meanwhile, my antiquities friend had come through with an introduction to Alice Jacobs, and so the next day I drove to her home in Pennsylvania on the outskirts of Bethlehem. We chatted about what I had in mind, and I gave her all the information I had about Trithemius’s tome. She was discreet enough not to ask why I wanted the pages reproduced.
“It’ll take me at least three weeks,” she said. “I’ll have to find blank endpapers similar to the page leafs Trithemius would have used. That’ll be expensive, of course, since I’ll have to use material from the same time period.” Duplicating the original inks would also take a while, Alice told me. And she’d have to choose pages that contained only text: illustrations would present too much difficulty. We talked for a long time, and by the end of it I felt satisfied that she’d do an excellent job.
I texted Ali again to say that I was traveling in the next few days to Pergamon, staying at the Hera Hotel, and needed his advice urgently.
February 22, 2005
That evening I took Evelyn out for dinner. She wasn’t in the best of moods but she’d dressed up for the occasion and brightened considerably when she heard where we were going: Ilili, a place I relished too. It served some of the tastiest lamb and Lebanese sausage in the city.
She admired the light-filled space, the walls covered with copper-colored squares of cedar, the oval tables and red leatherette chairs.
We chatted about nothing in particular until our food was served. I felt a familiar pang of concern to see how badly her fingers were twisted from the arthritis; at times, she had difficulty using her fork.
“I’m going to Turkey for a couple weeks, dear,” I said finally. “Can’t hack any more dark winter days. Planning on doing some sightseeing at Pergamon.”
“I know it, John.”
I set my fork down. “How did you find out?”
“That girl came to visit. Yesterday. Bennet. The one who is writing the article about you. She is very sweet. She brought me a lovely scarf.”
“Oh? She didn’t mention that to me. What did she say?”
“She was very excited to be going with you to be her expert on the old ruins. ‘Much better than taking one of those tours,’ she told me. Samuel, he would have liked her.”
I was far from an expert on Turkish antiquities. I cast around for some reply that sounded convincing. “She’s taking her responsibilities as a writer very seriously by documenting everything firsthand.”
Evelyn narrowed her eyes and gave me a long look. “It’s time you had a companion. You are too much alone. And kids are better with younger fathers.”
“Kids? Whoa. I barely know Bennet.” I tried desperately to change the subject. “Did she say exactly where we’re going?”
“Istanbul and Pergamon.”
I let out a sigh of relief. The last thing I wanted was for Evelyn to know about Kandovan.
For the remainder of our dinner I managed to deflect any further forays into the question of matrimony. Before we left the restaurant I asked a waiter to snap a picture of us on my phone. Then I took Evelyn home, made sure she wouldn’t need anything while I was gone, and gave her a long hug goodbye. She was only in her late fifties, but when her illness got the best of her she seemed more like a fragile eighty-year-old.
A weight settled on my shoulders as I walked out of her building into the gloomy February night. A feeling that I’d never see her again. No matter how hard I tried to shake it, that feeling followed me all the way home.
The next morning things rapidly got worse.
Twenty-Five
February 23, 2005
Bennet had gone out to do some errands for our trip and I was thumbing through source books deciding which I could take without overloading my luggage when I heard a not too subtle knock on the door. “Who is it?” I said, not recognizing the face peering through the eyehole.
“Detective Shea, Suffolk County police force. Madison. Need to talk to you.”
He’d brought a small army. Two uniformed NYPD officers stood on either side and behind him were a man and a woman, both wearing navy blue jackets emblazoned with FBI in yellow block letters. Loki ran over, growling. I scooped her up before she had a chance to do any damage.
The two uniforms stepped in, followed by Shea and the others.
“What’s up?” I said.
“Need to take a look around. It’s official,” Shea said.
He thrust a paper at me. I scanned it, saw it was a search warrant, and passed it back with my free hand. “I don’t see why this is necessary. I’m a suspect now?”
He grinned. “More like I need to weed people out. It was a homicide. I like to be thorough.” He nodded to the FBI officers. “They’re helping me out here with some forensics. Which way’s your bedroom?”
Odd that he’d ask for my bedroom first. I showed him where it was and the poker-faced FBI officers trooped into the room with their heavy bags.
“Have a seat,” Shea said. He and the uniformed cops remained standing. I plopped myself down, Loki squirming in my arms. Ordering me around in my own place irritated me. It felt like a home invasion and I suppose that’s what it was, although of a genteel variety—so far.
Shea’s gaze lit on the glass cabinets where I kept some of Samuel’s less valuable Iraqi artifacts. “Where’d those come from?”
For a second I worried that Strauss had made good on his threat and accused me of stealing his artifacts. But I dismissed the idea almost as quickly—Strauss had been pleased when I told him I was going to Turkey. “Most of them belonged to my brother. He was an archaeologist. Some are mine.”
“Is that your whole collection?”
“I have more in secure storage.”
“I’ll need to see those too. ’Fraid we’re going to have to take these with us. Get them checked out.”
I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice. “No way. Surely you don’t think I’d be dumb enough to keep stolen goods here. They’re all completely legitimate. I have the documentation on them. You can have someone come and check all that out if you want. And you couldn’t just throw them into bags anyway. They’d have to be packed by an expert.”
Shea sat down opposite me, probably to lower the tension a bit. Perhaps sensing he’d gone too far, he said, “All right. I’ll have the techs photograph everything today and send someone over to check out your storage. Do you have a safety deposit key for the ones you’ve stored?”
“It’s a number code. I’ll have to go to the vault with whoever you send. I gather
this is all because items were stolen from Tricia Ross?”
“I can confirm that,” Shea said, “but won’t give you a description of the missing articles. You can see why there’s an issue … given your past history.”
“I’d never set foot in her home before. Her neighbor can attest to that.”
“Still got to check it out.”
“And you’re referring to my past history saving a stolen antiquity and restoring it to the authorities? Talk to Paul Gentile, he’s a detective with the NYPD.”
He gave me a lukewarm grin. “Already have. He speaks well of you.”
Shea spent the next while asking for details on what had transpired during my two forays into Iraq. I had a feeling it was just to keep me talking.
On Shea’s request, one of the techies snapped photos of the artifacts in the cabinet while I photocopied the provenance documents. I let Loki run around at that point—I was pissed off enough not to care whether she got in their way.
Shea insisted I stay in the living room while the techies did an extensive search of it and the rest of the apartment. I sat and watched them create an unholy mess, taking virtually everything out and leaving it on the floor. They missed my hollow book, though, throwing it in with the others scattered across the floor. I got some satisfaction from that.
But the male techie’s eyes lit up as he ran his fingers along a center shelf of the cleared bookcase. My heart sank. Then came the click and one of the back wooden panels dropped down to reveal the wall safe hidden behind. The friend who’d sublet the apartment had it installed for his own stuff but it now contained the treasure chest my brother had given me when I was a child. I’d completely forgotten to tell Shea about it and now it would look as though that was deliberate.
Shea jerked his thumb toward the safe. “Open for us please and then stand back.”
“I just forgot about it,” I said, knowing how weak that sounded. “Sure.”
I punched in the numbers and the door swung outward. The techie reached in and pulled out the chest. He crouched, opened it up, then spread a large clear plastic bag on the floor and laid out the contents: my seven gold coins, a copper medallion with an image of a vulture stamped on it, a cameo in its enameled box, a stone cylinder seal, a golden key.
Shea heaved a sigh. “You’ve got papers for these?”
“No. They were a gift from my brother. I’ve had them since I was a child. My former housekeeper can vouch for that.”
“No papers. I’ll have to take them in.” He nodded to the techie, who put each object into a separate zip-locked bag.
“I’d like you to photograph them all right now, in case there’s any damage done while they’re in your possession,” I said curtly.
“Okay, Jess.” Shea nodded at the woman, who proceeded to snap pictures of every item.
I cursed myself silently for keeping the chest here rather than leaving it in the vault. I hated the thought of losing the pieces, even temporarily. Of all the possessions of my childhood, these were the most precious to me. “When will I get them back?”
“When I’m satisfied they aren’t stolen.”
They were packing up now. Before leaving they took a swab of my saliva. “We’ve got your fingerprints on file,” Shea said, “but no DNA. Appreciate your cooperation. I’ll send the antiquities expert over tomorrow. And I’ll be in touch.”
My place was an infernal mess: drawers left open, their contents strewn about haphazardly, cushions overturned, carpets rolled up, books heaped on the floor. The minute the door closed behind them, I marched into my bedroom. The bed had been completely stripped and some of my clothes laid out on it in a strange kind of tableau, as if they’d been photographing them. The rest of my jackets, shirts, and pants lay in a pile beside the bed on the floor but my sock and underwear drawers seemed untouched. How weird was that? I couldn’t guess what their motive was.
Half an hour later Bennet walked in to find me slouched on the sofa amid the devastation. Her first instinct was to burst out laughing. Then I told her what had happened—and she spent the rest of the evening helping me straighten up.
The next day I accompanied Shea’s antiquities expert to the storage vault. He was an older man, a professor at Yale who’d known Samuel, and he acted like a kid in a candy store when he saw the quality of objects my brother had collected. I was curious about what had been stolen from Tricia Ross and still confounded as to why they’d photographed my clothes, but didn’t manage to pry anything new out of him. In the end, he seemed satisfied that everything was legit. I heard nothing further from Shea. All I wanted now was to escape the city.
Two days later, Bennet and I left JFK at noon on a Turkish Airlines flight bound for Istanbul.
Part Two
THE DEVIL’S THRONE
I know your works and where you dwell … where Satan’s Throne is.
—REVELATION 2:13
Twenty-Six
February 26, 2005
Istanbul, Turkey
During the flight Bennet confessed that, except for a gap year spent trekking around Europe, she’d never left the U.S. I’d wanted to go straight to Pergamon, but given her excitement about the trip it wouldn’t be fair to deny her the chance to see Istanbul. We made it smoothly through customs, found our baggage, and hailed a taxi. When we entered the old city—the site of the original Constantinople—the streets were largely empty, the historic area a lonely place in February without its flocks of tourists. Bennet’s lovely gray eyes grew wider as we passed narrow cobblestone streets, each one its own flamboyant bazaar of shops with rich kilims, oriental lamps in a rainbow of colors, copper and bronze vessels swinging from awnings. And dominating it all, like an aging monarch surveying her domain, were the spires and dome of the Hagia Sophia.
I’d once taken pride in the city, believing Turkey to be my original home. The history of my birthplace, its position at the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures, had become a legend in my mind, probably because I grew up so far away. As a child I’d imagined romantic spires, exotic mosques, the smell of spice, the muezzin’s song at sunset. The real Istanbul did not disappoint, but my dreams now seemed a farce. I no longer believed I’d been born there at all.
I’d booked us in at the Four Seasons Sultanahmet, a five-star neo-classical hotel close to the city’s main historic venues. We were on Strauss’s dime; why not bask in a little luxury? The decor gave it a distinctive Eastern flavor—warm, mellow colors, dark wooden accents, metal grilles, and marble floors that shone like mirrors. Bennet couldn’t hide the smile tugging at the corner of her lips as we entered the elegant lobby.
The next morning we headed straight for Topkapi Palace, an exotic fantasy of courtyards, fountains, and magnificent chambers numbering in the hundreds. The royal compound originally functioned as a small city, home to thousands of people. Through the Gate of Felicity we reached the Third Courtyard, its ancient hollow trees still sprouting green leafy canopies. The Harem Quarters entrance, almost hidden at one side of the gate, had itself once housed a multitude of wives, concubines, slaves, and guards, all living in a labyrinth of corridors and rooms. Struck by the beauty of the chambers, Bennet took wads of photos with her high-end Leica. “I couldn’t bear to part with my camera,” she’d said before we left the hotel. “I’d rather go without food than relegate it to the pawnshop. And photos are going to be as important as the prose.” As we made our way through the rooms, she’d break off to make entries in her laptop while I consulted the fat guidebook I’d bought.
“‘Muslim women could not be concubines; it was forbidden. Many in the harem were Christians from Armenia completely subject to the whims of the sultan and his mother, who behaved more like a queen than the sultan’s first wife,’” I read out. “It says here that once, in a pique of temper, a sultan ordered 280 concubines forced into sacks, taken out in boats, and drowned in the Bosphorus.”
Bennet tucked her laptop under her arm and shuddered. “The place is glorious. But imag
ine never being able to leave.”
I flipped the guidebook page and sucked in a breath. “The eunuchs had it even worse.”
“Glad we were born in this day and age, no?”
“Even if I’d lived back then I wouldn’t have qualified. The Ottoman harem eunuchs were all black men, Abyssinian or Nubian. An Egyptian Coptic monastery supplied the new recruits. The priests would cut off the boys’ testicles and penis and insert a bamboo stick as a gruesome replacement. After that, the boys commanded a very high price.”
“Disgusting.” Bennet gazed about her as though the walls could tell tales if only she listened hard enough. “Hard to believe all this beauty existed alongside such cruelty.”
That afternoon we wandered through the rest of the palace. Every new room boasted decorations of magnificent Iznik tiles patterned in cobalt blues, violets, reds, and dusky greens. We gazed dumbstruck at buildings with intriguing names like the Fruit Kiosk and the Gilded Kiosk. High, arched stained-glass windows in the Twin Kiosk shone like the radiant blue of pure lapis lazuli.
The treasury was aptly named, brimming as it did with valuables—weapons encrusted with so many jewels it was hard to imagine their actually being used, an oriental throne wide as a piano and covered with gold and precious stones, a teardrop diamond called the Spoonmaker. Uncut precious stones spilled out of golden boxes. Brooches, pendants, headdresses—each must have been worth a small fortune. Silver tea services, gold urns, elaborate armor. So many splendors they made the English crown jewels seem pallid. If there was such a thing as sensory overload, we experienced it.
Later we found a quiet place for dinner, a tiny establishment run by an expat American who’d fallen in love with Istanbul on a trip and never left. The place was crowded with Turks; they must have found the frites and mouthwatering steaks exotic. Or maybe the appeal lay in the host himself, who greeted each customer as if they were a long-lost relative.
