Bone Box

by Jay Amberg

  Kirchburg’s voice becomes more conciliatory. “Joseph,” he says, “the Aegean Association and the Glavine Foundation must work together to discover what has occurred at this site.”

  “The police are investigating…”

  “Not that,” Kirchburg interrupts, his tone again sharp. “The work itself. The site must…” His phone rings, and he steps away to answer it without excusing himself. “Ja,” he says. “Sehr gut. Jawohl.” He flips the phone shut, turns back to Travers, and says, “My diggers have arrived.”

  Kirchburg leads the six men from another Aegean Association site directly to the knoll. They begin, under his supervision, to uncover the supplementary site. Travers remains seated on the column for awhile, heat rising all around him. A few birds begin to sing again. Asar steps out of the restoration house for a moment, gazes up toward the knoll, glances at Travers, and goes back inside the building without saying anything. Travers would like to ask her what she knows, but he’s not sure he can trust anyone. When he goes down to the main gate to get a bottle of water, a uniformed policeman stands with Kirchburg’s sentries under the Gate of Persecution. Men in baggy pants and loose shirts talk and smoke across the street, but no reporters or TV crews are around.

  Travers crosses through the ruins again and sits with his back against the trunk of one of the pines by the restoration house. The water is cool, and the scent of pine reminds him of his childhood. The sounds of picks and shovels as well as Kirchburg’s intermittent commands fall from the knoll behind him. With his knees pulled up, Travers can feel the flash drive against his thigh. He wonders what’s on the drive—photographic evidence or Altay’s notes or both. He has to get to Istanbul fast without drawing attention to himself. He needs to talk as well as walk, and the only person in the country he might speak with about the flash drive has gone to ground.

  25

  Just before noon, Nihat Monuglu strides through the Saint John’s Cathedral ruins, smoking a Yenidje and gazing at the columns and brick walls. His gray pants and white shirt remind Travers of Kenan Sirhan. He’s neither ghost nor reincarnation, but even their rolling gaits are similar. Travers meets him near the washtub Asar was using to clean artifacts the previous afternoon.

  Monuglu does not shake Travers’ hand. “Joseph,” he says, “this is a bad thing, a Turk dead at an archeological site run by infidels.” His voice is devoid of the glib amiability of their dinner in Istanbul.

  Travers agrees with him but not with his choice of words. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s too bad.”

  Monuglu dunks the tip of his cigarette in the tub, where it fizzes in the brown water. “What is happening on the hill?” he asks as he places the soggy butt on the tub’s rim.

  Travers glances up toward the knoll. “Herr Kirchburg,” he says, “is uncovering archeological trenches that were filled in.”

  “And Sophia Altay, where is she?”

  “She went out this morning and has not yet returned.”

  “Really?” Monuglu asks. He scratches his mustache. “Where did she go?”

  “No one seems to know.”

  “And Charles Lee?”

  “The hotel, apparently. He had business he needed to take care of.”

  Nodding, Monuglu takes an old coin from his pocket. “Show me where you found the body.”

  “I didn’t actually find it. I was at the top of the curtain wall and saw it…him at the base.”

  “Show me,” Monuglu repeats. His tone isn’t quite antagonistic, but he definitely wants Travers to know that he, Monuglu, has authority—and Travers does not. It was obvious even in Istanbul that Monuglu wasn’t merely some glad-handing government greeter, but how much power he really wields isn’t yet clear to Travers.

  Travers leads Monuglu over to the curtain wall where a ten-foot section has been cordoned. Sixty feet below, a uniformed policeman with an autmatic rifle stands outside a taped-off semicircle, but no detectives or technicians remain in the area. Monuglu climbs on top of the curtain wall, gazes down at the rocks, turns, and looks at the spot from which Sirhan likely tumbled.

  “When did you discover the body?” He turns the coin between his middle finger and thumb. The coin’s battered face shows the profile of a man wearing a laurel.

  “At dawn. I couldn’t sleep so I walked over from the hotel.”

  Monuglu steps down from the ledge and stands silently when the call to prayer begins. Travers looks out over the mosque’s dome toward the sea. The sun is close to its zenith; the dome and the water glow, but the fields between waver, more mirage than landscape.

  When the call to prayer ends, Monuglu stares at the coin for a mo-ment. “This part of Turkey,” he says, “is the cradle of civilization. The Europeans…” He glances at Travers. “…and the Americans who come here agree but do not really understand.” He scratches his mustache again. “Look out there.” He points beyond the mosque. “You will see all of history. A mosque, Christian ruins, a Roman city, the remains of a Greek temple. But you will not comprehend its meaning. A man is dead…” He looks Travers in the eye. “…because you search for ancient artifacts. You do not understand. You go on digging. For what?” He holds up the coin, which gleams darkly. “We Turks do not even know what we have.” He flips and catches the coin. “The boy who sold me this outside the gate had no idea what he possessed.”

  Travers thinks he understands part of what Monuglu is saying—that life, the life that you are already leading, is more important than any artifact. But he wonders if Altay would agree with Monuglu. “Is it, the coin, real?” he asks.

  “Does it matter?” Monuglu closes his fist. When Travers doesn’t answer, he adds, “I must see what Herr Kirchburg is doing on the hill.”

  As they walk up the path, Monuglu puts the coin in his pocket, takes out his gold-plated cigarette case, and lights a Yenidje without altering his pace.

  “I have to get back to Istanbul,” Travers says, “to make my report.”

  Monuglu nods. As they turn from the path toward the knoll, they can hear Kirchburg’s clipped German over the clang of shovels in dirt. The diggers are already down to shoulder level in the trench that was nearest the edge of the bluff.

  “The police told me to stay in Selçuk.”

  “Yes, I know,” Monuglu says. Breathing hard, he stops walking, drags on his cigarette, and exhales. “They are interested in you. And you would make a convenient—what is the word?—scapegoat. The desk clerk saw you leaving the hotel only thirty minutes before you reported the body. The time of death has not been established exactly, but it is earlier.” He picks a speck of tobacco from the tip of his tongue and flicks it away. “A larger problem is your disappearance for more than three hours last night after your fight with Kenan Sirhan.”

  “Fight?” Travers looks into Monuglu’s eyes.

  “You deny that you and Kenan had an argument?” Monuglu’s words are more a statement than a question. “That you shouted at each other outside Sophia Altay’s house?”

  Wondering how Monuglu got that bit of misinformation, Travers shakes his head. “Yes,” he says. “No. I mean, yes, I deny it. And no, there was no argument. Kenan yelled at me.”

  Up ahead, Leopold Kirchburg’s voice sounds strident as he stands on a dirt pile. The diggers’ heads disappear as they lean into their work, and then their shovel blades flash and dirt flies.

  “About what, my friend?” Monuglu’s last word isn’t particularly amicable.

  Travers smiles. “I don’t know. It was Turkish. Except for the end.”

  “The end?”

  “He called me a Son of a Greek.”

  Monuglu drops his cigarette and grounds it with the heel of his polished black shoe. “He was angry at you.” He claps Travers hard on the shoulder. “But you do not know why?”

  “I have no idea. Something about my being
American.”

  Monuglu waves his hand as though he is making a pocket of air vanish. “But at least you can explain your disappearance.”

  “I took a walk,” Travers says, not quite able to keep a defensive note from his voice.

  “After your dinner here with Doctor Altay?”

  “Yes… No. Kenan and Kirchburg got here before we could eat.”

  “Ah.” Monuglu nods. “That’s too bad. You enjoy your dinners with Doctor Altay?”

  “I do.”

  “And then you and Kenan did not have the argument.”

  “I told you, Kenan yelled at me.”

  “And then you took a walk alone in the Turkish countryside?”

  “Yes,” Travers says, unwilling to explain what was on his mind. “Under the stars.”

  “Ah, the night sky,” Monuglu says. “It is beautiful in this part of Turkey.”

  Kirchburg is perspiring even though others are doing all the digging. His gray blond hair is matted, and his neck is red. With his back to Travers and Monuglu, he doesn’t see them approach until they’ve passed the cairn that marks the site. The diggers are thickset men sweating through sleeveless T-shirts. Their labor looks more like ditch digging than archeology.

  “Guten Tag, Herr Kirchburg,” Monuglu says. “You are back at work quickly after what occurred this morning.”

  Kirchburg takes a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his forehead. “It is necessary.” He looks at Travers. “Important, to find out what So…Fräulein Altay was doing here.”

  “Of course,” Monuglu says. “But you do not seem to be proceeding with your usual caution.”

  Kirchburg folds the handkerchief. “I am following the contour of her most recent trench. I will use the most exacting techniques when I discover what she…if she has covered something up.”

  Facing Monuglu and Travers rather than the trench, Kirchburg doesn’t at first notice that four of the men have already stopped digging. The other two, a bald man with thick tufts of graying hair on his shoulders and a heavy man whose arms look stubby compared to his torso, scrape the tips of their shovels in the dirt. Seeing Travers staring, Kirchburg wheels, takes a half step toward the trench, stops himself, and stuffs his handkerchief in his pocket. The outline of a rectangular stone a meter long and three-quarters of a meter wide is visible in the dirt.

  “Aus!” Kirchburg yells. “Aus, aus!”

  As soon as the men are out of the trench, Kirchburg clambers down with a trowel and whisk broom. He kneels, brushes dirt from the stone, and then digs around its periphery with the trowel, pushing the dirt behind him with the brush. His technique is fast but not fastidious. The diggers wipe their faces and lean on their shovels. Monuglu takes out his cigarette case but doesn’t open it. Travers looks west at the light firing the wavering fields.

  “Ossuary,” Monuglu says, tapping the cigarette case against his palm.

  “What?” Travers asks.

  “A bone box. Used by Jews in the first century to rebury their dead.”

  The lid, the color of sand, is decorated with a symmetrical cross surrounded by a circle within a six-pointed star. The smooth stone is barely eroded. As Kirchburg clears a mini-trench like a dry moat around the box, Travers can see that the sides of the box taper inward from the lid. When Kirchburg removes enough dirt to reveal an in-scription, he sits back, drops his brush and trowel, and wipes his hands on his pants. He then reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a photographer’s loupe.

  The diggers look at one another but don’t say anything. Travers slips his hand into his pocket and touches the flash drive. Monuglu squats and squints at the writing etched into the stone. Kirchburg leans forward, the loupe to his eye, and examines the inscription from right to left. Suddenly, he leaps back as though he has licked an electrical socket.

  Monuglu braces his hand on the pile of dirt and then, with startling speed and agility, hefts his bulk into the trench. He hunches over next to Kirchburg, peering at the engraved letters. His head shoots up. His cigarette case falls into the dirt as he, too, steps back against the trench wall.

  Kirchburg throws himself forward, clawing at the lid’s corners with his long fingers.

  “No!” Monuglu shouts. “Nein!”

  But Kirchburg is already shifting the lid, getting the tips of his fingers under it, lifting it free. Breathing hard, he holds the lid to his chest. Color flushes his cheeks; sweat rolls down his face and beads in his beard. Even Travers standing above the trench can see that the box is empty, but Kirchburg stares into it, checking every corner. Finally, the lid still clutched in his arms, he straightens and gazes up into the sun-splashed sky. A groan, half sigh and half growl, rises from his throat.

  Monuglu turns and looks up at Travers. His thick finger points at the inscription. “Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ,” he says.

  26

  As Travers looks on, Charles Lee inspects the os-suary standing on Sophia Altay’s desk. Lee traces his fingers over the decorated lid—the interconnected cross and circle and star. He then runs his fingers from left to right along the inscription. “Can you read it?” he asks Travers.

  “No. It’s some form of Aramaic.”

  “It’s also a fake.” Lee’s tone is even, but his eyes are fixed on the ossuary’s symbols.

  “What?” Travers asks. Lee’s background in archeology isn’t any stronger than his own.

  Lee reaches out and traces the decorations again. “Discoveries this powerful in archeology are most often frauds. At the end of the day, they don’t amount to a bucket of spit.” Though his voice remains calm, his index finger trembles as he touches the ossuary. “Even if the box itself is from the right period, the inscription is probably bogus. Establishing authenticity will be hard got. Maybe impossible.”

  “But…”

  Lee looks at Travers, his eyes suggesting that Travers is some kind of rube. “Leopold wants it to be the real deal, but that doesn’t make it so.”

  Travers gazes at the ossuary, at its cross and circle and star. Kirchburg certainly was ecstatic at the discovery, but he was also irate that the ossuary was empty. He did not let Monuglu or Asar or any of the other Turks handle it except to haul it down Ayasuluk Hill. He decided that Altay’s desk was the best place for the box, and, after cleaning its exterior himself, is now making self-congratulatory calls on her patio where his cell phone’s reception is better.

  “And your buddy, Nihat,” Lee continues, “whatever he really thinks, he’s got to treat the box like it’s legit until it’s proved otherwise.”

  Travers nods. On that point at least, Lee’s right. Monuglu has gone to the Ephesus Museum in town to speak with the curator before news of the ossuary leaks out. The combination of Sirhan’s death and the bone box’s discovery will bring media attention to Selçuk in ways the town, Monuglu pointed out, will find difficult to handle.

  “But if it’s real,” Lee asks, “why would your Ms. Altay cover it up and fly the coop?”

  That’s exactly the question Travers has been thinking about. The ossuary must have contained something that either she is hiding or that she lost. Bones are the obvious possibility, but she definitely wasn’t carrying a pile of bones when she left. She was pressed and uneasy, and she didn’t have much of anything with her except her computer and some clothes. And what if the ossuary did contain bones? All theological hell would break loose. Christian dogma is going to take a major hit in any case. The Jews used ossuaries, Monuglu informed Travers, to rebury the dead. The mere existence of the bone box, if it’s genuine, throws Jesus of Nazereth’s resurrection and ascension into question. His divinity—the foundation of Christianity—would be undermined, if not destroyed. Finding Christ’s remains would be the greatest archeological discovery in history, but a host of powerful people, religious and secular, would have every reason to
deny the bones’ existence—or, at the very least, question their authenticity. “Why do you think Altay left?” Travers asks.

  Lee brushes his hand through his hair. “Because she planted that box,” he says, “and somebody found her out. She was going to use the discovery to save her job, at least for a spell, and while she was in Istanbul somebody figured out the hoax.”

  “Who?”

  Lee turns back to the ossuary. He runs both hands along the edge of the lid but doesn’t lift it. “You tell me,” he says. “According to that Turkish woman, Altay’s top employee didn’t come to work yesterday. But Altay forgot to mention that fact to anybody. Then her driver has a fatal accident. And now she herself has flown.”

  Travers admits to himself that Lee’s points are true, but he knows a thing or two—the existence of the flash drive and the anxiety in Altay’s eyes—that Lee doesn’t.

  Lee looks again at Travers, his eyes an even darker blue. “Don’t be an acorn cracker. Ms. Altay may have done that famous French femme fatale job of hers on you, but something’s rotten here at Saint John’s. Follow the stench, and you’ll find your missing fem.”

  27

  As the veiled woman carrying the woven red and gold shoulder bag passes along the path, the young man sitting under the cypress watches her. An aluminum tube is lashed to the backpack lying beside him. This is the first time he has been to Cappadocia, and the tufa fairy chimneys and the web of caves amaze him. Too preoccupied to hike up into the hills, he has spent much of his time at the internet café trying to make contact. But he did visit the open air museum. The churches hollowed out of solid rock chanted hymns to him across more than a millennium. The restored frescoes in the Dark Church whispered prayers. He felt both safe and less alone in the seven-story nunnery with its tunnels and blocking stones for dangerous times.