Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train

by Maria Hudgins

  “How do you know where the boundaries are?”

  “Experience. After you’ve done this for a few years, you just know.”

  As they circled the perimeter, Lacy glanced around every few minutes to see if Sierra was still watching them. Her yellow T-shirt made her easy to see and only once did Lacy fail to spot her. On that occasion she waited a minute and caught a glimpse of yellow at one corner of a tent. It disappeared in a flash.

  Paul pointed out which areas were Hittite and which were Neolithic in age. She had expected the older, the Neolithic, to be downhill or underneath the Hittite, but she saw hardly any difference in elevation. Paul said, “You have to study the layers. The layers weren’t laid down perfectly horizontally so you have to go by the color and texture of each layer.”

  “Paul!” A thin man with a determined gait approached them across the middle of the excavation, sticking to the high ground between pits. The man paused, reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a dispenser pack of breath mints. He shook a few into his hand and popped them into his mouth, then removed his hat and Lacy saw his grey hair was pulled back from a seriously receding hairline into a ponytail.

  As he walked toward them, Lacy reached a decision. She grabbed Paul’s arm and whispered. “Don’t tell him about the man on the train.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just don’t.” Lacy didn’t exactly know why not. She was following her gut. Given Paul’s reaction to her story, she felt sure she’d hear the same thing again. It was a reasonable idea. Soon, she’d have everyone in the camp on their guard against telling her anything that might bolster her crazy idea that two Maxwell Sebrings had died today. Something was really wrong here, and she might have to work it out by herself.

  Paul introduced her to Bob Mueller, the director of the dig.

  “Lucy? Nice to finally meet you.”

  “Lacy.”

  “Paul has told me a lot about you. He says you’re the world’s best when it comes to color.”

  “This is quite a change from the tomb in Egypt.”

  “I dare say. Yes.” Mueller looked around. He grabbed her by the arm and started to pull her away, but Paul stopped him.

  “Wait up. Have you talked to anyone in New York yet?”

  “I called Alan at home. Woke him up. He’s trying to take it all in, but he went kind of silent when I told him. Shocked. Couldn’t even talk for a while.” A breath mint bobbed on the tip of his tongue. “He’ll call me back after he contacts the others. Office doesn’t open ‘til nine, though.”

  To Lacy, Paul said, “Alan’s the Sebring Foundation’s associate director.”

  “What about his family?” Lacy asked.

  “What family?” Mueller settled the hat back on his head. “His father’s in a coma and his wife doesn’t know what year this is.”

  Paul drew Lacy to him, draping an arm over her shoulder. “Still, there must be someone we should tell. A family member, his wife’s nurse, or someone.”

  “Alan’s going to call them. We can let him handle it.” Grabbing Lacy’s arm again, he pulled her away from Paul. “Let me show you around, Lucy.”

  Mueller led her through the maze of excavated trenches and onto a small hill from which they could see miles and miles to the south. The dig lay behind them. Climbing and talking, he blew whiffs of orange mint across her face. He paused at the summit and reseated his wide-brimmed hat on his head. Lacy glanced up at a brilliant sun, high overhead. Her own hat was still in her duffle bag under the tree. Ahead, a broad plain stretched to the horizon, cut only by a green river valley with patches of trees.

  “Take your mind back to five hundred forty-seven b.c., Lisa.” Mueller gazed southward, both hands outstretched and sweeping the landscape in a dramatic gesture. “What do you see?”

  Lacy had no idea how to answer. She wondered how many ways he would find to mispronounce her name.

  “I’ll tell you what I see,” he said. “I see a small battalion of the Persian army marching across this plain, heading south. These soldiers have just fought alongside Cyrus the Great and conquered the Lydians to the north. I see them stopping by that river down there for the night.” His arms spread wide like a Hollywood director, he seemed lost in a world of his own making. “Cyrus isn’t with them because he’s still back there,” he snapped his thumb backward, over his shoulder, “conquering the rest of the Anatolian Peninsula. He has more work to do, but he’s sent these men home early.” He turned to face her. “Why?”

  The question caught her off guard. Mueller’s blue eyes shot sparks into hers. Like a vindictive freshman chemistry teacher she had known, he looked as if he wanted her to guess and guess wrong, so he could humiliate her with the right answer, as if anyone with an IQ higher than moss would have known it. “You tell me,” she said.

  “Does the name Croesus mean anything to you?”

  “As rich as Croesus? My grandmother used to say someone was ‘as rich as Croesus.’ He was a king. King of Lydia.” As soon as Lacy pulled this factoid out of some deeply buried brain cell, she was shocked to hear herself mouthing the same word Mueller just used, Lydia.

  “Exactly!” Mueller, now adopting the stance of an umpire, jabbed one finger toward the northwest, “Lydia!” and the other toward the southeast, “Persia! Home!”

  “So you think Cyrus’s army marched through here on their way home.”

  “And what would they have been taking home with them?”

  “Riches? Plunder?” Lacy felt like the hired foil on an infomercial for a kitchen gadget. “Gold?”

  “Of course. Cyrus and his men plundered the Lydians’ capital, laid waste to Croesus’s palace and did what with the plunder? No one knows! Bits and pieces of Lydian treasure have come to light over the years, but nothing like what must have been there at the time. Only a small fraction. Cyrus and his army stayed on the peninsula for some time, completing their conquest, but he’d hardly want to carry around the riches of Croesus from battle to battle, would he?” Mueller bent forward until the brim of his hat brushed Lacy’s forehead. The scent of orange breath mint washed over her. “He’d get it the hell out of here! Send it home.”

  As if he realized he’d let himself get too worked up, he took a deep breath and straightened up. “My theory is, he sent a small contingent home early with the booty. Mostly gold, I imagine. Probably weighed it first so the men couldn’t filch any of it. But what lay between here and home? Assyrians. Babylonians. Cyrus hadn’t conquered them yet but his soldiers would have had to cross their lands. Would they want to try it carrying a ton of gold?”

  “A ton?”

  “I have no idea how much. A lot. But you understand what I’m saying. I’m saying that the riches of Croesus did not make it back to Persia. Only bits and pieces have been found in Turkey, in the part that used to be Lydia, so what happened to it?” He paused, giving Lacy enough time to make a guess if she were so inclined, which she wasn’t. “They hid it. Somewhere between the palace of Croesus,” again he swept his arm to the northwest, “and the land of the Assyrians.” He nodded southward.

  “But why here?”

  “I don’t know if it was here exactly,” Mueller said, clipping his words as if she had touched a sore spot. “But if you draw a line on a map straight from Sardis, the Lydian capital, to the north end of the Persian Gulf, it goes directly across here. They had to come through here more or less because you’ve got the Mediterranean Sea on one side and mountains on the other.”

  “And you think they buried Croesus’s treasure here?”

  “Not exactly here, of course. But somewhere near here.”

  “Is that why you chose this spot for your dig?”

  Lacy heard a sharp whistle and turned toward the sound. Paul stood on one corner of the excavated area, his thumb and middle finger between his teeth. “Come down!”

  * * *

  Paul led her toward the van where a young man with dust-colored dreadlocks waited, prying dirt off his boots with a stick
. “Tyler is driving a load of stuff back to the house. The dorm. Most of the workers are staying there because it’s more comfortable, but some of us stay here. I’d recommend you stay in the dorm. So do you want anything out of your bag before Tyler takes it? It’ll be waiting for you there tonight.”

  Lacy felt her face flush. She felt that Paul was trying to get rid of her. She wanted to stay here. Was Sierra the reason? Were they staying together?

  “I’d rather stay here, actually.”

  Paul swiped his hand across his mouth. “Problem is, we don’t have any empty tent space that I know of. We don’t like to put more than two people to a tent. And some people have brought their own, so even if they aren’t already sharing I can’t ask them to share, if it’s their tent.”

  She looked around the encampment at more than a dozen tents. One was much larger than the others and patched multiple times with canvas that didn’t match. Some were too small to accommodate more than one person. All of them seemed to have been pitched in random directions, like Monopoly houses dropped from the sky. She sighed. “Let me get my hat.” She rummaged through her duffle bag and pulled out her canvas hat, a tube of Banana Boat Sunblock SPF 50, and a hairbrush.

  The frowzy-headed Tyler threw her bag into the back of the van and drove off. Its trail of dust receded across the fallow field along the same general path Sierra had taken, but in reverse.

  “It’s almost lunch time,” Paul said. “Let me show you around.” He steered her into a cluster of tents.

  “Bob Mueller thinks he’s going to find the treasure of King Croesus, does he?”

  “Oh my God.” Paul winced and dipped his head. “He’s already told you. I wanted to warn you, but I didn’t have a chance. The guy’s a nut case. It’s all I can do to keep a straight face sometimes.”

  “So laugh. Why not, if it’s so ridiculous?”

  “Because he invited me here. This is a lucky break for me.” He led her on, walking backward to face her and stumbling over an empty bucket, kicking it aside, as he went. “I’m finding Neolithic artifacts. Tools and pottery. There’s more than enough material for several papers. I’m not known well enough to get my own grant but after this I will be. It’s a start. And the more I learn, the more I think southeastern Turkey is the place I need to be.”

  “So you’d be surprised if he found Lydian gold?”

  “I’d be speechless.” Paul nudged her toward a gap between tents where the native grass was trodden into dry strings. “Bob Mueller knows his field work. His techniques are flawless and he’s good about teaching them to the college kids we have working here. But he’s a soldier of fortune wannabe. He’s bored with mundane grub work and that’s what most archaeology is. Before he started this dig, he spent several years around Mount Ararat looking for Noah’s Ark.”

  “Didn’t find it, I suppose.”

  “No, but while he was there, two other groups did find it. In two different places. They find Noah’s Ark every few years,” Paul said with a grin.

  Lacy smelled grilled onions. “This is making me hungry.” She lifted her nose and inhaled. “Who does the cooking here?”

  “Süleyman. Kitchen’s this way. I’ll introduce you.” Paul led her around the side of the largest tent and the aroma grew stronger. He pointed to another tent on their left. “This is Max’s tent.”

  Lacy stopped. A blue tent, intermediate in size, it was neither the largest nor the smallest, but it appeared new. Some of the newer ones looked like igloos, all polyester and aluminum. The older ones were canvas and had gabled roofs. Most of the tents stayed erect by means of a jumble of criss-crossing ropes and pegs. A sleepwalker’s nightmare, the ropes of one tent frequently anchored at the base of its neighbor. The opening to Max’s tent had been left unzipped, its mesh flap hanging to one side. She lowered her head and peeked in. Cozy.

  “Go on in.”

  “Are you sure it’s all right?” With Paul’s reassurance, she bent to step over the threshold and found she could stand up inside with inches to spare. The thin walls gave the interior a blue glow. A cot with an aluminum frame stretched along one side. A sleeping bag draped off the edge of the cot and onto the plastic floor, its soft fleece lining splayed open. With a shiver, Lacy realized it must be exactly as they had left it when they pulled Max’s body out that morning. A folding table held his toiletries, a couple of legal-size envelopes, and a copper tray with loose change, batteries, and a tube of lip balm. A metal-framed captain’s chair stood before another folding table. On it, a laptop computer and several individually wrapped granola bars. An entire case of Pepsi-cola in cans sat on the floor beside that table.

  Paul’s gaze followed Lacy’s. “Max had a thing for Pepsi. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get real Pepsi here, so he had a couple of cases shipped over. They got here a week before he did.”

  Max had kept his clothes in plastic milk crates neatly lined up along the wall opposite the door. Lacy noticed that one crate held pants and shirts, a second held his underwear and socks, and a third was full of dirty clothes. She assumed they were dirty from the way they were crammed in, unfolded. She knelt beside the crate of shirt and pants and examined a few labels. TravelSmith, Magellan’s. All his clothes looked new and all were purchased from safari-type clothiers. This made sense if, as Paul said, this was Max’s first adventure into real down-and-dirty archaeology. A pair of loafers and a pair of steel-toed boots, both size twelve, and a pair of flip-flops lined up next to the dirty clothes crate.

  Max had wisely arranged his clothing along the only wall in the tent that had no window. It looked as if the mesh screens on the windows and door would keep out bugs, but not rain. Beside the row of crates lay a rolled-up rug.

  Lacy crawled across the plastic floor and reached out to touch it, already suspecting what she would find. “Wait a minute. Is this what I think it is? I don’t believe it.”

  “What?” Paul had come in behind her.

  “Can I unroll this?”

  “Go for it. Max won’t mind,” Brief pause. “Sorry. That was disrespectful.”

  Lacy laid the rug out flat. It was about three feet by four feet and predominately rust red, green, yellow, blue, and white. Silk on silk and brand new. Its geometric pattern centered on a diamond in red inside a rectangle of yellow-green surrounded by borders upon borders, each with its own unique pattern. Lacy knew that every design, every pattern on the rug meant something to the weaver, to her family history, or to her community.

  “It’s a Boracık rug,” Lacy whispered. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Is that good?”

  “It’s wonderful. This was handmade by a woman in a village near Troy. The silk thread is hand-spun, and the dyes are all natural and from local plants.” She rose up on her knees and lowered her face close to the rug’s surface. “This yellow here. It’s from the berries of a type of buckthorn that grows only in the hills of western Turkey.”

  “What species, exactly?”

  “Rhamnus petiolaris,” Lacy said, then realized he was teasing her. “Sub-species, Paulus Smartassus.” She winked and ran her hand across the soft pile, enjoying the sensual feel of it. “Wait. Where’s the tag?” She flipped over two of the corners before she found it on the third. “Here. See? It says, in Turkish, that it’s a Boracık rug, made by—I can’t pronounce it, but it gives the name of the weaver and her village.” The Turks’ move from Arabic letters to Roman in the 1930’s had made their language easier for westerners to read, but not easier to pronounce. Sounds that didn’t exist in English masqueraded as innocent kale’s or ası’s or c’s with tails or dotless i’s.

  “There’s a registration number.” Lacy’s mind raced. If she could trace this number, she could find out who bought it and when. But the registration was eight digits long, more than she could commit to memory, and if she asked for something to write on, Paul would wonder why she wanted that number. Did she really need to keep him so completely in the dark? She foresaw herself making a discreet p
robe into the problem of the two Maxwell Sebrings until she figured it out to her own satisfaction, but, given Paul’s reaction, she’d rather do it alone. She didn’t want everyone in camp putting in their two cents’ worth and muddling things. Besides, how was she to know if everyone in camp could be trusted? On the other hand, she already had told Paul. Perhaps she was over-thinking this.

  “I want to write down this number. Do you have a piece of paper or something?”

  Paul picked up one of Max’s envelopes and, seeing that it still contained a letter, tore off the envelope’s flap. He handed it to Lacy with a pencil from his own pocket. “Why do you want that number?”

  “Because the man who handles the marketing of Boracık rugs is a friend of mine. He’ll know who it was sold to and when.”

  “Aha. Will the real Max Sebring please stand up?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You’ll be wasting your time.”

  When Lacy rose from the floor, she found Paul examining the books stacked near the head of Max’s cot. He handed each volume to Lacy as he read out its title. “Hittite Pottery: A Guide, Mending and Conserving Pottery, Basic Conservation Methods. Huh.”

  “Huh, what?”

  Paul didn’t answer, but looked around the tent again, as if he was looking for something he didn’t see. “Let’s go. I want you to meet Süleyman.”

  Chapter Six

  As they neared the camp kitchen, a young girl with a head full of curls came flying toward them, banging into Lacy. “Holy crap! Let me out of here.”

  “Whoa.” Paul caught her.

  “Sorry!” The girl, wearing shorts and an oversized army T-shirt, stepped back and nodded to Lacy. To Paul, the girl said, “He’s zapping flies with his blowtorch! He nearly caught my hair on fire.”

  “Süleyman, what the hell?” Paul yelled in the direction of the kitchen and strode toward it.

  A corrugated tin roof was all that shielded the appliances and cookware from the elements. A large gas canister sat under a cabinet beside the stove along with large pots, stainless steel bowls, and cardboard boxes filled with fruits and vegetables. Over a makeshift counter, an array of utensils hung from hooks on a plywood backboard. Under the tin roof, Lacy noticed, the temperature was a good fifteen degrees hotter than outside in the sun.