by Jay Amberg
Monuglu leans forward with his gold-plated case open and says, “Yenidje, Herr Professor?”
Kirchburg takes a cigarette without comment. Monuglu snaps the case shut, brings out an old-fashioned Zippo, and lights first Kirchburg’s and then his own cigarette. Monuglu inhales deeply, sits back, and exhales over his shoulder.
“I trust that the Glavines are well,” Kirchburg says, smoke escaping his nostrils.
The Aegean Association, existing only as an umbrella organization, depends on outside sources for much of its funding, and Glavine’s father, William, Sr., has been footing bills for the Selçuk-Saint John’s excavation site for the past seven years. “I haven’t seen father or son since the April board meeting,” Travers admits. “But Bill and I have talked half a dozen times.” He smiles and shakes his head. “Between work and the new baby, he’s a little busy.” Eight months earlier, Travers was one of 425 guests at Bill Glavine’s third wedding. He and Glavine had first met at Georgetown when as undergraduates they both tended bar at The Tombs, the campus hangout. After college, Glavine went to work for his father, eventually taking the family construction company international and making hundreds of millions of dollars. Travers and Glavine reconnected when during the technology boom Motorola was building additional factories worldwide. After Travers’ departure from Motorola, he joined the Glavine Foundation board. And he accepted Glavine’s offer to visit the excavation sites in Turkey, even though Glavine was more than a little vague on the details. After all, Glavine’s new wife had just given birth to her first child, his fifth, a boy.
As he reaches for his raki, Travers adds, “Bill’s father is convalescing well, but the second stroke has slowed him down a lot.”
Kirchburg raises an eyebrow, rocks his foot, and nods to the bartender, who slips the gin and tonic onto the table. He lifts the glass, holding it with his fingertips as the cigarette dangles between his fingers. “To the history we unearth, gentlemen,” he says.
“Here, here,” Monuglu says before taking a long pull on his raki.
“Joseph,” Kirchburg says, “you will, no doubt, immediately note what needs to be done at the Saint John’s excavation site.” He swirls the ice in his glass three times before sipping the drink. “I am to understand, am I not, that you are prepared to provide the Glavines’ consent to my decisions?”
Travers shrugs. He has, in the last twenty-four hours, realized that he doesn’t know exactly what’s on Bill’s mind, much less his father’s. Thoughts of the shadows following him and his room’s search make him hesitate. “What, Professor Kirchburg,” he asks, “is the problem?”
Kirchburg sips his drink and licks his lips. “She will be here shortly.” He glances at Monuglu, who blows smoke at the chandelier.
The jackhammer’s thunder fails to drown the music which has taken a turn into Seventies British disco.
Travers looks at the grape motif in the stained glass of the arched upper windows of the bar. “And she is?”
Kirchburg mashes the half-smoked butt of his cigarette in the ashtray and strokes his beard. “Both Fräulein Altay and Herr Lee should have been here by now,” he says, glancing at his gold Tag Heuer. “It’s typical of her to be late, but Charles is usually punctual. Isn’t that true, Nihat?”
“He is,” Monuglu says. He takes out his cigarette case again, but Kirchburg shakes his head.
Yes, he is, Travers thinks, watching the man who has to be Charles Lee stride briskly into the bar. A fit, good-looking guy about Travers’ height, with short brown hair and a square face, he has that American self-assurance that shows in his gait. His khaki suitcoat is unbuttoned, and his red and blue striped tie jounces as he moves. He carries a can of Coca-Cola in his right hand.
Monuglu rises to greet Lee.
“I apologize, Nihat,” Lee says, shaking Monuglu’s hand. “A necessary delay.” His drawl makes the last word sound like dahlay. He nods to Kirchburg. “Leopold, mein Freunde.”
Waving his cigarette case, Monuglu introduces Travers. Lee’s handshake is firm. He is tan and well-built, with shoulders as broad as Monuglu’s and a waist as thin as Kirchburg’s. His suit is freshly pressed, his tie’s windsor knot impeccable. A miniature gold eagle, wings spread in flight, is pinned to his lapel. His small eyes are blue, but a far deeper shade than the Austrian’s. Although he’s a few years younger than Travers, his age is starting to show in lines around his eyes.
A Glavine Foundation memo informed Travers that Lee, the new Associate Director of the Eagle Consortium, was a faux good ol’ boy with lots of family money, political connections, a stint in the Air Force Reserve, and a law degree from Regent University. The Eagle Consortium itself is staggeringly well-endowed. The Glavines support the Saint John’s dig; Eagle’s funds underpin all of the Aegean Association’s excavations. The Consortium’s pockets are deep, but the donors, CEOs and politicians and Christian religious leaders, want to know the bottom line for the projects they support. The markets haven’t fully rebounded, funding for Middle Eastern projects is down, and they want bang for their remaining philanthropic buck. And, the memo concluded, they also want to ensure that Association sites bolster American interests in the region.
Lee sits down, takes a deep drink of his Coke, and leans forward. “I was detained, gentlemen,” he says, “because I got wind of the fact that our bird has flown the coop. Left Istanbul on the afternoon flight to İzmir.”
A smile fleetingly passes Monuglu’s face.
“Typisch,” Kirchburg mutters. His eyes narrow, and color rises on his pale skin.
“She didn’t contact you?” Lee asks.
“No,” Kirchburg scoffs. “Of course not.” He swigs the rest of his gin and tonic. “She understood the importance of this meeting.”
“I do believe you’ve got a point, Leopold,” Lee answers, looking at Travers. “Either she doesn’t have a lick of sense or something’s out of whack at Saint John’s.”
8
At dusk, Sophia Altay shovels dirt back into the trench. Her boots and blue jeans are dusty. Her breathing is deep and steady; her whole body sweats. Everything from her socks to the scarf holding her hair is damp, but the strenuous work is helping her think. She was absent from her site one day, and her life is altered. A single day. The ossuary that she herself has covered again with dirt is authentic. She is certain of it, absolutely sure. The symbols and the inscription both indicate it, and the location is exactly where she finally understood it must be.
Gnats swirl about her head in the gathering darkness. A blister between her thumb and forefinger has torn open, but the stinging, like the shoveling, focuses her thoughts. Abrahim and Kenan are the two men she trusted most, the only two she would allow to do the work while she was gone. Normally, they worked well together despite their vast differences—age, appearance, upbringing, education, emotion, inclination, outlook, all of it. They shared the same goal, though, and they were both absolutely loyal to her, or so she thought. And so, despite what has happened, she still hopes. The weight of the discovery was simply too much for them, especially Abrahim. Kenan, too, in his own way.
She steps back, leans on her shovel, and catches her breath. The area looks like someone has hastily begun to backfill it, but it’s all she can do under the circumstances. When Kenan showed her the ossuary, she knew that nothing would ever be the same. When he told her what happened after the discovery, she knew she was finished as Saint John’s director. As she flung dirt into the trench, she realized that her career didn’t matter. It’s all she knows and all she cares about, but it’s insignificant in light of the discovery. She must determine what to do based on the situation she finds—not on what she wishes it were. Whatever happens, this is the moment of her life. Of this, she is sure.
In spite of Kenan’s tirade about his thievery, disloyalty, and disappearance, the boy, Abrahim, can’t have deserted her. In fa
ct, she knows that he will be in touch soon. Yes, the discovery would have overwhelmed him. The import astounds her, and she is far more inured to it than he. Kenan and Abrahim should never have opened the ossuary without her. Never. And, though Kenan insists Abrahim did it, she knows better. She sent Kenan away for the night as soon as he brought her to the ossuary not simply because she was angry at him—though she was, deeply—but because she needed to work and think, which she couldn’t do with him hovering about her.
Her understanding of others, particularly males, has been both her blessing and her curse since she was a girl. She can read Kenan and Abrahim and all the other diggers. She knows Leopold Kirchburg’s arrogance all too well. She’s aware that Charles Lee’s ideology and dogmatism prevent any real and deep effectiveness. Nihat Monuglu is, whatever else he might be, a Turk. Bill Glavine needs to impress others with his wealth and is himself impressed by power—and, therefore, neither impresses her nor wields power over her. William Glavine, the father, is the only one who truly understands archeology even though construction made him rich. But he is infirm and, she realizes, no longer making Foundation decisions alone. He could stay her execution, insist on sending an envoy first, but that is all. Finally, she at first misjudged the new American, Joseph Travers, because of her own anger. And she must not let her emotions negate his or anyone else’s potential usefulness.
She pulls off her scarf and shakes loose her hair. Balancing the shovel across her shoulder, she gazes at the cairn they built with the stones that first told her that this must be the place. There had to have been a first century dwelling, set apart, a place removed from both the bustle of the city and the settlement atop the hill. A place with good light and a view of the sea, but separate—a place where prayer might be offered each day. For most of a year, she walked the area with Abrahim almost every evening, often in silence, noting the contours and the tableaux. And eventually, he or she or both felt their way back through the centuries. Digging only in the evening when the day’s work was done, they took months to find the right stones—and then months more trenching along the periphery toward the bluff to discover this spot. Now she gazes at the cairn, a pyramid more than two meters high topped by a cut hexagonal rock that could well have been a capstone. The other stones are smooth, twice the size of bricks, and gray-brown. Though not uniform, they are similar enough that they must have served as sections of walls violently torn down but then left, as though they were too sacred or too accursed to be taken elsewhere.
The breeze tickles the damp strands of hair on her neck. It’s a glorious evening, the canopy deepening and the stars blinking in the wind. Her life is utterly insignificant beneath this vast beauty. But her moment in time, this critical moment, is upon her.
9
Nihat Monuglu leads the group on foot the seven blocks to Galata Tower. As they pass the restaurants with their café tables spilling out onto the street, Charles Lee and Leopold Kirchburg talk on their phones. Joseph Travers’ Amish is back at his hotel, turned off. Lee’s announcement cut an abrupt edge into Kirchburg’s evening, and he’s barking terse, imperious German. Lee quizzes someone, his words a mixture of good ol’ boy amiability and legal jargon. And there are no followers, or at least none as blatant as those earlier in the day.
At one corner, a dervish in white robes and a brown cylindrical hat is performing on a makeshift stage. In the shadow of a nearby wall, a crippled old woman covered in black sits begging. A scrawny dog lies asleep at her side. Lee and Kirchburg hurry ahead to get away from the music blaring from an old casette tape player, but Monuglu, pausing with Travers, fires up a Yenidje and claps Travers on the shoulder. “Welcome to Turkey, Joseph,” he chortles. “Welcome to Turkey! My country, the land and the people, will change your life.” He then leans in closer and whispers, “I wonder, my friend, why you did not tell these gentlemen that you already met Sophia Altay.” As he chuckles softly, Travers, smelling raki and cigarette smoke, stares at the whirling, sweeping dance. “But do not worry, Joseph. It will remain a secret. A secret between friends.”
Built as a watchtower by the Genoese almost a hundred and fifty years before their favorite son made his famous voyage to the New World, Galata Tower has the look of an uncircumcised priapism. The restaurant on its ninth floor is circular. The ceiling is conical, and the large central chandelier is surrounded by smaller ones. The four men take a table by a window looking back across the Golden Horn toward the docks, New Mosque, Spice Bazaar, and Suleyman’s Mosque. In the fading light, Travers can barely make out the spot along the wall where he broke into laughter that afternoon. Lee and Kirchburg, seated opposite Travers and Monuglu, finally pocket their phones. Monuglu orders more raki for Travers and himself. Kirchburg has another Tanqueray and tonic, and Lee a Coca-Cola straight from the can. He wipes the rim with his napkin before popping the top.
They share a meze plate heaped with meats, cheeses, vegetables, hardboiled eggs, peppers, shrimp, and yogurt. Monuglu tells them the story about how the first man to fly took off from Galata Tower and glided on mechanical wings across the Golden Horn, but the unspoken subtext is Sophia Altay’s flight and what it means to each of the men. The background music features an over-orchestrated version of the Beatles’ ‘Blackbird.’ And the raki doesn’t taste to Travers any less like licorice.
Sunset at Galata Tower is an event, and tourists, mostly young women, mill on the balcony outside the window. The sun becomes a molten ball above Istanbul’s roofs and minarets; the Golden Horn shines in the evening light. The tourists’ laughter filters through the window. Travers came early to Istanbul in the hope of discovering magic, but instead he’s found a web of human intrigue more byzantine than that in the corporate world he left. He looks over at a woodcut on the restaurant’s wall depicting that first flight that Monuglu told them about. “Leopold,” he asks, “before Charles arrived, you were about to explain the problem with Ms. Altay.”
Kirchburg licks his lips, tilts his glass, and knocks back most of his drink. “Ja, Herr Travers,” he says, “Fräulein Altay.” He glances at Lee before looking directly at Travers. “The occasional noteworthy discoveries of archeology make it appear glamorous,” he says, “but the work is actually difficult, even tedious. Discipline is, therefore, necessary to any successful site. As is a clear chain of command. Not unlike the military. Directives are not phrased as orders, but…” He shrugs, puts down his glass, and opens his palms. “There is room for initiative and even creativity.” Disdain slips into his voice as he pronounces that last word. “But only within the context of the site goals.”
Monuglu gazes out the window as though he has no interest whatever in this part of the conversation.
“With your background,” Lee says to Travers, “think in organizational terms.” He stabs half a hardboiled egg with his fork. “With this kind of work, y’all can have only one cock of the roost. And everybody’s got to know who he is.”
As Travers nods, he wonders exactly how much information Lee has about him.
Monuglu stares at one of the tourists on the balcony, a red-haired young woman in a tight orange dress who has her hip pressed against the railing and her head tilted as she speaks on her cell phone.
“And Ms. Altay doesn’t run her site in an authoritative way?” If Kirchburg can tell Travers is baiting him, it doesn’t register in his eyes.
“No,” the Austrian says. “No. That’s not the issue.” He finishes his gin and tonic. “She expects a great deal from her workers, everyone from the conservators down to the laborers. And she inspires a certain loyalty, especially among the diggers.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Travers asks. To curb the taste of raki, he eats an olive from the meze plate, then slips the pit onto his plate.
“She’s a maverick,” Lee says, raising his fork. “Pays no never mind to Leopold’s orders. And digs all over God’s creation.”
Kirchburg looks at L
ee as if to remind the American to stop interrupting. “Do not misunderstand, Herr Travers,” he says, his voice tight. “There is nothing personal in my decision. Fräulein Altay and I are not antagonistic. I retain the utmost respect for her abilities.”
“But you’ve decided to fire her.” Travers makes it more a statement than a question.
Having finished his raki, Monuglu holds up his empty glass so that the waiter can see it.
Kirchburg places his elbows on the table, raises his hands, and drums the tips of his long, thin fingers against each other. “The situation has become untenable. Her dismissal is necessary. She is, however, a Glavine Foundation employee.”
“I see.” Travers turns to Lee. “And the Eagle Consortium supports Herr Kirchburg’s move?”
“Leopold,” Lee says, “is the only one over here with the bona fides to determine what’s what at the sites.” His voice slips into its management mode as he taps his fork on the Coke can. “The reports my people have provided corroborate that Ms. Altay is diverting resources and energy from the central task to peripheral digs.”
“Fraudulently?” Travers asks.
Lee shakes his head. “No. Not at all. But in violation of Herr Kirchburg’s explicit directives.”
Kirchburg inspects his manicured fingernails for a moment before asking, “Are you familiar with the Saint John’s site, Herr Travers?”
Monuglu has taken out his cigarette case and is rolling an unlit Yenidje Régie between his thumb and index finger.
“No,” Travers admits. He’s already well aware that Bill Glavine ne-glected to provide even a site map for him.
Kirchburg exhales slowly. “The Saint John’s site is located on Ayasuluk Hill outside Ephesus, adjacent to the present town of Selçuk. The site has been worked for decades, since 1921, to be exact. The Cathedral of Saint John has been excavated and partially restored. The current contract, agreed upon by all parties, including the Glavine Foundation, calls for work only on the citadel at Ayasuluk’s highest point north of the cathedral.”
