Bone Box

by Jay Amberg

  43

  When the two techno-boys start talking, Sophia Altay stops keyboarding. In her Spanish tourist guise, she is the first customer in the internet café. She had a difficult night followed by a disquieting morning. Abrahim’s injury and his reaction to Saint John’s letter perturbed her. She knew that Saint John’s words would speak to him, but she expected the antithesis of his devastation. He became upset, then incoherent, and then stubbornly unwilling to talk. A document which should have given him hope made him so disconsolate that she finally had to shut off the computer and guide him most of the way back into Göreme. When she left him by the road, he acted as though he were leaving on a long journey—or forever. He clung to her, muttering good-byes. This morning, she woke in the darkness before dawn with a premonition of disaster. Her chest was tight, her breathing short. Though she tried a series of yogic exercises, none worked. When she reached town, military police and television camera crews were in the streets.

  Now, a boy she has not seen before has brought tea and news to his friend who opens the café each day. She wipes her sweating hands on the gold silk scarf tied around her waist, a scarf that accentuates her hips but could also be used to cover her head should she need to change her appearance quickly. The boys are talking freely because they think she does not understand Turkish. Every word they are saying makes her heart pound. If they have any of their facts right, something has gone terribly wrong.

  She leans forward, feigning deep concentration, sets her fingers on the keyboard, types utter gibberish, and listens: Two backpackers fucking their brains out in a cave found a corpse. The dead man was a German who worked for that archeologist who discovered the Christian tomb in Ephesus. The poor bastard was castrated and mutilated. His nose was sliced off and his eyes gouged out. His cock was in his mouth. An American also connected to that German archeologist was arrested in the middle of the night. He fought the cops. A fucking stupid thing to do. He had to be beaten into submission. The American was unconscious when they carted him off to the hospital. Or the police station. Nobody’s sure where they took him.

  Altay’s chest feels like it’s caving in on itself. She straightens her back and lifts her head, but it does little good. Her mind races even faster than her fingers. The murderer had an accomplice, a woman. A fucking French woman who somebody said just turned herself in. She’s the one that castrated the bastard. Bit his cock off while he was still alive. The techno-boys laugh nervously at that detail, then take quick sips of their tea. The visitor, who keeps shifting his weight from foot to foot, continues. A military convoy came to keep order. Those MPs are tough sons of bitches. TV crews are arriving from all over the world. Especially the States. The whole world’s watching. Göreme is going to be famous.

  Altay stops keyboarding and logs onto the CNN site. There’s still stuff about Leopold and the ossuary, but nothing yet on a murder in Cappadocia. Nothing on the BBC site either. Göreme’s not yet on the media map much less the center of anything, and she needs information fast. Who was killed? Where and when? Why? Was Joe Travers arrested? Would Joe fight with the police? What would he tell them? If it wasn’t Joe, then who was it? She logs out, gathers her bag, and freezes. Abrahim, she thinks. Oh, merde! Abrahim!

  44

  Sunlight blinds Joseph Travers for a moment when he steps out the police station’s side door into the parking lot. A crowd of reporters and onlookers has gathered beyond the military police cordon. Travers walks gingerly, the swollen toes of his left foot pressing against his walking shoe. The sun feels hotter than it did the day before, and the crowd’s murmuring rings in his bad ear. The uniformed men who trashed his hotel room march on either side of him. As Nihat Monuglu leads him to an old black Mercedes 280, reporters shout questions at him in English, German, and Turkish. He keeps his head raised, scanning the crowd, but he doesn’t say anything.

  He is not handcuffed. In fact, he’s not sure whether he’s still officially a prisoner. During the six hours of questioning, the lead interrogator, a thin man with a pockmarked face and garlic breath, threatened Travers repeatedly but never hit him. Travers did not ask for or receive any help or counsel from anyone. Early on, the interrogator got in Travers’ face and shouted in bad English a lot about Travers rotting in a Turkish prison and wishing he were dead. His rapid-fire questions all led to a single point: a quick confession would make the whole ordeal far easier for him. The interrogator had no good-cop counterpart, but Monuglu periodically appeared in the bare, dank room, arms folded across his chest, saying nothing. Neither the interrogator nor Monuglu paid any attention when Travers repeatedly insisted that there would never be a confession because there was nothing to confess.

  At one point after the interrogator took a short break—Travers wasn’t sure exactly when because time was playing tricks on him—the questioning abruptly refocused on what had happened to Travers on the street in Selçuk. Travers admitted that he figured out during the bus tour that Günter Schmidt was one of the men who attacked him. When asked if he was aware that Schmidt had worked for Leopold Kirchburg, Travers responded that he had no way of knowing that. The interrogator pounded the gray metal table and screamed that Travers was a liar—that every word he’d said was a damned lie.

  Half an hour before it ended, the interrogation suddenly stopped being adversarial. It became, bizarrely, a reasonably friendly interview about why Travers came to Cappadocia, what made him take the tour, and what he still planned to do in the area. Finally, the interrogator picked at a sore at the corner of his mouth and told Travers that a car was waiting for him outside.

  Monuglu opens the Mercedes’ door for Travers and slides into the backseat after him. The uniforms get in front. The lot has been cleared of other vehicles, but a wooden cart holding clay pots stands under the overhanging branches of a tree. An MP waves the Mercedes through the cordon. When the crowd shuffles to let the car out, Travers notices a woman in traditional Turkish dress who briefly lowers her gold silk veil just enough so that he glimpses those stunning feline eyes.

  As the camera crews scramble to their vans, the Mercedes turns a corner and heads out of town. A military transport truck pulls in behind the Mercedes but slows so that no other vehicles can follow. The Mercedes speeds up the hill past the open-air museum, the tourists along the road gaping angrily. Travers gazes out the tinted window at the dark entrances to the cave churches dotting the tufa spires. Monuglu takes a Yenidje from his cigarette case and lights it without opening a window. He drags silently on the cigarette, the car’s air conditioner blowing the smoke back into the space between Travers and him. Travers sits back and turns from the smoke.

  “I cannot determine,” Monuglu says, “if you are a lucky man or an unlucky man.”

  Travers turns toward him but says nothing. Monuglu’s shirt is rumpled, and he needs a shower.

  “Certainly a man who talks with you is unlucky.” Monuglu picks a piece of tobacco from his lips and flicks it on the floor. “At least that was true of Kenan Sirhan and the Austrian.”

  Travers looks out at an orchard sloping down into a narrow valley.

  Monuglu takes a deep drag on the Yenidje. “It seems,” he says, exhaling through his nose, “that you are once again my problem.”

  The Mercedes climbs a steep hill and makes a sharp turn at speed. Travers glances over his shoulder, but there’s no one coming after them.

  “It would have been more convenient for my friends in Göreme if you had confessed.” Monuglu shrugs. “Or if more of the evidence had pointed to you. Once the Austrian was connected to your mishap in Selçuk, everything fit, motive and opportunity…” He shakes his head. “…except for certain details. God is in the details—who was it who said that?”

  “Gustave Flaubert,” Travers answers, though he knows the question was rhetorical.

  Monuglu glowers at him for a moment. “Yes, the Frenchman,” he says. “The A
ustrian’s cock was half bitten off. Have I mentioned that?” He pulls on the Yenidje and exhales a billowing cloud in front of Travers. “But you returned to your hotel from your nocturnal walk in the same clothes you left in. They had no trace of blood.” He stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray. “A dark blue T-shirt with blood stains was found this morning in a garbage can outside a hostel. The examiners also found tissue and blood under the Austrian’s fingernails. But the blood type is not the same as yours, and the DNA testing will, I am sure, exonerate you completely. Which is too bad for the Göreme police. You were so very convenient.” He finally cracks his window. “And then there is the matter of the French woman.”

  Travers flinches.

  “It seems that during lunch, she eavesdropped—is that the word?—on your conversation with the Austrian. She was, I do not know why, more interested in you than in the tour guide who was entertaining her friends.”

  Thinking, Oh, the French girl, Travers sinks back in his seat.

  “This morning, as news of the murder and your arrest spread through the town, she came forward to tell the authorities that your lunch conversation with the Austrian had been almost friendly.”

  His name was Günter Schmidt, Travers thinks.

  Monuglu takes another Yenidje from the case and tamps it against the back of his wrist. “Indeed, she mentioned that at the end of your lunch you forgave the Austrian for something and gave him a message for someone.” He brandishes the Yenidje in Travers’ face. “Failing to admit that you knew that the Austrian worked for Leopold Kirchburg was your only error the entire time you were questioned.” He slips the cigarette into his mouth but doesn’t light it. “In any case, the young woman’s testimony destroyed the convenient revenge mo-tive.” He smiles. “You seem to have a way with French women.” His smile falls into a frown. “Which brings us back to our earlier…conversation. How is Doctor Altay?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Travers is tired of questions—Monuglu’s, the interrogator’s, and anyone else’s. His toe burns where the nail ripped, his stitches still throb, and his head feels like he’s been kicked in the temple.

  “But your walk last night. It was to see her. To speak with her in private.”

  Travers exhales slowly, blowing a pocket of clear breath into the smoke. “No,” he says. “It wasn’t. I haven’t had any contact with Altay since I arrived here. None at all.”

  Monuglu rolls the Yenidje between his thumb and first two fingers. “Really?” he asks, and it seems to be a genuine question. “A reasonable man would conclude that when you slipped out of town you were on your way to see her.” He snaps the cigarette in two and then mashes the pieces in his palm. “Certainly the Austrian and at least one other person made that assumption.”

  “I went for a walk.”

  “Ah, another of your strolls to look at Turkish stars.” Monuglu gazes at the crushed cigarette as though he’s not sure how it got into his hand. “You like the night sky here in Cappadocia as much as you did in Selçuk, do you?”

  “Maybe even more. I’ll let you know.”

  “But you admit,” Monuglu says, “that the Austrian must have followed you into the countryside, thinking that you would lead him to Doctor Altay.”

  When Travers doesn’t respond, Monuglu throws the crumpled Yenidje out the window he cracked. “So, as I have stated, you are once again my problem. People around you die, but you are not, it seems, the cause. When you are near, people disappear. Or reappear.” He smiles morosely. “That sounds like a bad American song. Mister Lee, who, I trust, you had a productive meeting with, is already here, and Leopold Kirchburg will arrive soon. And that young Turk, the one who also vanished from the Saint John’s site, I wonder if he is enjoying his tour of Cappadocia as well. The police visited his room this morning, but he was not there.”

  The Mercedes winds down a hill into a town far less touristy than Göreme. A bent old man leads a donkey up the hill. Two old women draw water from a roadside faucet into large metal containers. Beyond an open gate, another old woman sits on a wooden stool in the shade of a tree and shakes a large bowl filled with grain. The car turns into the driveway in front of the red-brown Alfina Cave Hotel built into a rock massif. After pulling behind a cluster of trees in the courtyard, it stops near the office entrance.

  Travers hears the call to prayer, waits for it to end, and then asks, “Why the hell did you do that…stuff…at the hotel last night?”

  “It was a bad night.” Monuglu scrapes his fingers through his mustache. “And I needed to be certain that, if you were in trouble with the police, you did not have in your possession any antiquities that belonged to the Turkish Ministry of Culture and the Turkish peoples.” He lays his hand heavily on Travers’ shoulder. “And what I told you is true. I am your friend.” He lifts his hand and waves at the Alfina’s entrance. “Look, I have arranged new accommodations for you. A place away from all those reporters. My men…,” he gestures toward the front seat, “…have gathered your belongings, even your suitcase from Istanbul, and brought them here for you. And, Joseph, they will be staying here at the hotel in case you need anything.”

  45

  “He was your boy, Leopold,” Charles Lee says. He has his right hand on the silver Mercedes L360’s steering wheel. He’s tapping the top of the window well with the fingers of his left hand. He’s got his Ray-Bans on to reflect the glare, both the sun’s and Kirchburg’s. He picked up Kirchburg at the airport in Kayseri so that they could have this little chat before they got to Göreme. The Mercedes rides well even on this two-lane road that’s supposed to be a major highway. Some lone mountain juts off to the left, but it’s all wasteland to the right.

  “Nein,” Kirchburg says, “Herr Schmidt was not my employee.” His long legs are bent in front of him, but his hair still almost grazes the car’s roof. He turns and stares hard at the side of Lee’s face. “He was my…our staffer last year. Not this year.”

  Lee glances at Kirchburg whose pinched face is flushed, his finically trimmed beard almost aglow. “Then what in God’s name was your ex-employee doing out here?” he asks.

  “Perhaps you can tell me.” Kirchburg keeps staring. “After all, we are on the same team.”

  Lee passes some rattletrap flatbed truck that looks about forty years old. Neither of them has ever believed that same-team shit, but their interests have coincided—at least until Sophia Altay’s gal-boy dug up that bone box. “Yes,” he says, his tone not at all conciliatory. “I do believe we are. And, no, I don’t know why Schmidt was here.” He waves his hand at the vast barrenness.

  “What do you know?” Kirchburg asks.

  Lee guns the Mercedes. The car flat out flies through the Turkish countryside. Kirchburg is an effete intellectual snob who tries to get the upper hand in any argument, but that’s not happening this time around. “I know y’all look pretty bad, leaving Selçuk and shucking your Aegean Association duties.”

  Kirchburg puffs out his narrow chest, and his hair brushes the Mercedes’ roof. “The ossuary’s contents—the bones—are here!”

  “Sophia Altay is here, and it looks like you’re too busy sniffing after her bones to take care of Association business.”

  “I…”

  Lee slices the air with his hand, cutting Kirchburg off. “Y’all don’t get what you’re stepping into. Schmidt’s murder was brutal. And the media’s on it like bottle flies on dung. They’re swarming Göreme.” He pauses, looking directly at Kirchburg. “The local police have already connected Schmidt to you and to the theft of the files from Joe Travers in Selçuk.”

  “I had nothing to do with any of that.”

  Lee sniggers. “That ossuary you left at Saint John’s—and those bones that’ve gone missing—they’re all snowballing into one helluva story. Nihat Monuglu is in town with a couple of his gorillas. And the Turkish military. And Arabs. And I
sraelis—the Mossad, Leopold. And it looks to every mother’s son like y’all created this whole shit storm.” He takes the wheel with both hands, closing his fingers tightly around the leather guard. “Do you have anything more on that bone box?”

  Kirchburg does not answer at first. He looks out at the rolling countryside. “Sophia…” he murmurs.

  “Jesus, shit!” Lee says. The Kraut may be brilliant, but his narcissism makes him thick as a brick. The issue here is the bone box’s contents, not Altay’s sweet ass. “A man, one of your gofers, was murdered at Saint John’s on your archeological site. Since then, it looks like you had two goons mug the Glavine Foundation rep for some damned computer file. Then one of the goons, who just happens to be your countryman and employee, gets himself killed in a particularly gruesome way. When this gets out, Leopold, all of your funders, but especially my Eagles, are going to have your butt in a sling.” He drums his palms on the steering wheel. “The Aegean Association will collapse, and you’ll be the king of squat.”

  “You know that is not what happened. And not what will happen.” Kirchburg’s tone is disdainful. “I would never be involved in something that sordid.” His face is so flushed now that red blotches are appearing above his beard. “Herr Travers stole an artifact from m…from an Aegean Association site. Schmidt apparently stole it from him. I told you, I had nothing to do with any of it.”

  In a way, Lee marvels at the Kraut’s belief that his word is, ipso facto, all that matters. But if he sticks to that particular story, the American and European media will fry him. “It wasn’t an artifact, and Altay gave it to him,” he says. “And, it doesn’t change the fact that it looks to everybody like y’all had your funder’s rep knifed.”

  “Sophia Altay…,” Kirchburg mutters.

  Lee comes up behind a minibus like the ones hippies used to drive, lays on the horn, and blows by the beater. “What have you dug up on the ossuary?” he shouts.