by Jay Amberg
51
As Travers climbs the Alfina Cave Hotel’s steps, he can smell the smoke of Nihat Monuglu’s Yenidje. All of the cave rooms are accessed only by exterior stairwells connecting concrete terraces, and his room is on the highest terrace. Monuglu sits on an old metal patio chair in the shadows in front of Travers’ door.
The terrace lights are off, and the glow of Monuglu’s cigarette jiggles as he says, “Sit down, Joseph. We don’t want to disturb the other guests.”
Travers takes the chair to the left of the door, settling into the darkness. He is sweating from his walk. Altay dropped him along the road a mile outside of Ürgüp. At the outskirts of town, he hid the new flash drives in plastic bags in separate spots under the rubble of a derelict wall. It’s late now, everyone gone from the Local and the street outside the Alfina deserted.
“You are taxing my patience,” Monuglu says. As he inhales, the Yenidje burns brighter. “You have embarrassed my men and abused my hospitality.”
At the very least, Travers thinks. “I apologize, Nihat,” he says—and he means it.
Smoke curls into Travers’ face as Monuglu turns his head toward him. “It was necessary,” Travers says, blowing the smoke away.
“How is Doctor Altay?” Monuglu asks.
“Good, all things considered.”
“Yes. All things considered.” Monuglu drags on his cigarette again. “I would like to speak with her myself.”
“I don’t think that will happen, at least not in the short run.”
Monuglu drops the butt onto the concrete and grinds it out with the sole of his shoe. “She would be better off speaking with me.”
“Just the same,” Travers says, “she isn’t exactly sure whom to trust right now.”
“Did she give you any Turkish artifacts…anything at all?” Monuglu is not even a shadow with the Yenidje extinguished.
“She has, I think, learned her lesson.”
“Just the same,” Monuglu says, “we will check before you enter your room.”
“Of course,” Travers says.
As Monuglu reaches over and taps the burn hole, he asks, “From a blue and silver Peugeot motorbike?”
Travers winces. “Yes.”
As Monuglu takes a cell phone from his pocket, he mutters, “At least they got that right. My men knew she would contact you. But they were expecting someone with less—what is the French word?—élan.” He punches one number, barks “Evet,” and places the phone face up on his thigh. “I don’t think you will be taking any more walks,” he says.
“They do me good. In the last few years, they’ve kept me sane.”
“Sanity,” Monuglu scoffs. “You Americans are obsessed with it. But you still do crazy things.”
Travers hears shoes scuffing up the steps.
“The Göreme police wanted to ask you more questions about the Austrian’s murder,” Monuglu says. “But unfortunately I could not produce you.”
The scuffing stops at the top of the stairs. A light flashes on and finds Travers’ face just as he turns away. He’s pulled from his chair, pinned against the wall, and frisked. A sharp stench like onions gone bad clogs his nostrils.
“Hayır,” he hears, and, as the hands let go, he leans back against the wall. He can see only weaving red and yellow spots. The smell of onions recedes as that of smoke intrudes.
“Do not take any more of your walks without my knowing,” Monuglu says.
“I…”
“Is that clear?” The voice, close to his left ear, is suddenly irate.
“I can’t promise…”
A heel stomps Travers’ left foot. Biting his lip to stifle the scream, he crumples to the concrete.
52
Travers descends the Alfina Cave Hotel’s steps like a child—right foot first, then left to the same step, and right to the next. There’s no other way to do it. He can barely walk. Any pressure on his left foot slings pain from his toes to his hip. He slept fitfully for a few hours, washed his hair in the sink, shaved, and dressed in his last clean shirt.
Hulk Minor trails him as he hobbles toward the hotel’s office. It’s early, and there’s not much traffic out on the street. Two veiled old women are straightening chairs on the Local’s patio. A hot breeze ruffles his hair. Before he opens the office door, he turns to Hulk Minor, extends his hand, and says, “I’m Joe. What’s your name?”
The man stares at him with bleary brown eyes. He’s unshaven and disheveled, his white shirt yellow under his arms. He shakes Travers’ hand but remains silent.
The desk clerk, a thin young man with a crisp shirt and a gap between his front teeth, is more jovial. When Travers asks him for a taxi, he glances at Hulk Minor in the doorway before saying, “Of course, sir. Where are you going?”
“The Göreme police station,” Travers says.
“Göreme polis,” the clerk repeats, his smile beginning to look forced.
Hulk Minor pulls a cell phone from his pocket.
“I’m guessing my friend will be going with me,” Travers says. “Two of us.”
His smile crashing to a grimace, the clerk says, “Yes, sir. Of course.” As he picks up the desk phone’s receiver, Hulk Minor is already speaking fast Turkish into his cell. By the time Travers reaches the door, the two Turks are speaking tersely to each other.
Outside, Hulk Minor brushes by Travers and lumbers over to the Mercedes. In half a minute, he has it turned around and idling next to Travers.
“Thank you,” Travers says as he gets into the front seat.
The air-conditioning blows the smell of stale cigarettes into the backseat. Travers doesn’t even glance at the derelict wall when they pass it, and neither man says a word as they wind along the road toward Göreme.
Travers gazes at the infrared transmitters jutting from the television vans lined across the street from the police station. As soon as the Mercedes stops in the lot next to the side entrance, Travers swings the door open. He pulls himself out and, leaving the door ajar, limps toward the vans.
“Dur!” Hulk Minor shouts, but there’s no way to stop Travers without tackling him in the parking lot, and the men talking across the street by the vans have already noticed him.
When Travers slaps the BBC van’s windshield, the man sleeping in the driver’s seat jerks forward and grabs the steering wheel. He has black hair and dark brown eyes that bug as he turns toward Travers.
“Sorry,” Travers says through the half-open window. “Are you the reporter?”
“Who the hell are you?” The man looks Pakistani, but his accent is British.
“Joe. Joseph Travers. I need to talk to a reporter.”
The man leans back to get a better look at Travers.
“I need to speak to a reporter,” Travers repeats. He looks around. The technicians from the other vans are sauntering toward him as a group. Over in the parking lot, Hulk Minor is standing by the open passenger door of the Mercedes talking on his cell phone. “Tell him I have information about the murders here and in Selçuk. That I want to talk about the ossuary, the bone box.”
“Her,” the guy says as he reaches for his cell phone.
“What?”
The guy taps the number 1 on his phone. “She’s a woman. Allison Wade, mate. You must have seen her on the telly.”
Travers watches Hulk Minor enter the police station’s side entrance.
“Al,” the guy says into the phone. “Sorry to wake you.” He smiles. “I’ve got a bloke here. Joseph Travers, he says his name is. Wants to talk to a BBC reporter.” He laughs. “Truly. I shit you not.” He laughs again. “Will do.” He hands the phone out the window to Travers.
“Hello,” he says.
“Joseph Travers?” He hears rustling as though she is getting out
of bed or already dressing.
“Yes.” The other men from the vans are gathering around Travers in a loose circle.
“From the States?” Her voice is husky, perhaps from sleep. “From the Glavine Foundation?”
“Yes,” he says. “I need to talk with someone on air about what’s happening, the ossuary and the killings.”
“Good, yes. I’m Allison. Al, to friends.” There’s more rustling. “Wait right there, Joe. May I call you Joe?”
The man in the van’s cab is smiling at him, his eyes flashing and his teeth bright white.
“Sure,” Travers says. “But I’m about to be dragged into the Göreme police station again. As soon as I come out, though.”
“You’re not turning yourself in?” She sounds genuinely aghast.
“No.” He wonders for a moment who’s playing whom here. “More questions, that’s all.”
“You’ll do an interview immediately upon your release?”
“Yes. Right here in front of the police station.”
“An exclusive?” She sounds breathless.
“What?” He sees Hulk Minor exiting the police station’s front entrance with two uniformed officers. “No,” he says. “A statement, answer questions.” He smiles at the grinning man in the van’s seat. “But, yes, an exclusive interview later. Definitely. I promise. They’re coming for me now, Al.”
“Put Ravi back on!” she shouts. “He’s got to shoot them taking you.”
53
His hands folded on the table, Travers sits alone in the stark interrogation room. The hour or so he has been left alone in the room has given him time to think through what he will and will not say to the media. The walls, cream fading to gray, are bare. The dark steel table and chairs gleam harshly in the overhead light. Scuff marks mar the wall, but the room is clean, kept that way, perhaps, to isolate a person totally from other people and from the world out there. The wiry interrogator with the pockmarked face, the same guy who had questioned him in this room the day before, seemed haggard this morning, more exhausted than Travers. His questions covered no new ground except for intermittent inquiries about a young man who was on the Cappadocia tour bus but made no contact with the other tourists. Travers provided the interrogator with no information he didn’t already have.
Travers’ thoughts turn now to what he wants to tell his son, Tom, about what’s happening to him here in Cappadocia and what he’s about to do. The mugging in Selçuk prevented his calling the other night, and he doesn’t want Tom to get the only news of his father from CNN. Travers hasn’t been back in touch with Bill Glavine, either, since their call in which Travers asked to talk directly with Bill’s father.
Travers wonders, too, what Jason would be doing were he still alive. What music would he be into? What gadgets would he be tinkering with? What large ideas would be sweeping him away? What grand but implausible schemes would be taking him? These are thoughts that Travers has had before, ones that inevitably usher in sadness.
And, Christine, Travers thinks, what is she doing at this very moment? Sleeping? Or waking to the darkness before dawn? And even Mary—has her pain made immeasurable by her son’s suicide in her car abated any? And vanished Abrahim, out there somewhere, according to Sophia, torturing himself? And Kenan Sirhan and Günter Schmidt, both lost to some deadly game Travers is part of but still doesn’t fully understand? And so many others. Only love has made me whole again, John the Apostle said. I have come to love my neighbor and my enemy. In this stark room, as much a cell as any cell, there is no sign of neighbor or enemy whom he should love. Or of the world outside.
Finally, the door behind him opens, and he turns to see Nihat Monuglu step into the room. His white shirt and brown pants are clean. He has shaved, but his expression is dour.
Travers stands, bracing his hand on the tabletop to keep weight off his left foot. The pain is constant, but putting pressure on the toes spikes it.
“You arranged a press conference?” Monuglu asks.
“No. Not exactly.”
“Yes,” Monuglu says. “Exactly. The reporters are waiting outside.” He pats his pocket but doesn’t take out his cigarette case.
Travers doesn’t smile, aware that he has put Monuglu in an untenable position. The Turk can keep him, uncharged with any crime, locked in the station while the reporters become increasingly impatient; he can escort him forcibly away, hobbling like some wounded prisoner of war through a picket line of video cameras; or he can let him speak to the world. None of the options will enhance tourism or foreign relations or Turkey’s standing with the European Union, but letting him talk is the least damaging.
“I will say nothing negative about Turkey, the government, or you personally,” Travers says. “After all, you are my best friend here in Göreme.”
Monuglu glares, seemingly wary, but unable to find any irony in Travers’ voice. “Do not…” he begins, but then stops. “I will be at your side at all times. Remember that.”
54
Travers squints in the sunlight. It’s even more of an event than he imagined. A dozen reporters and their camera crews stand before him in the parking lot. Behind them, a crowd stretches across the lot in a semicircle. There are old men with white beards and children with bright clothing, veiled women and sunburnt backpackers. Leopold Kirchburg is easy to pick out because he’s taller than most of the others. His head is tilted to the right, his face pale above his beard. To his left in the same patch of shade under a tree, Charles Lee stands, hands clasped behind his back, slowly rolling his neck. Both men are frowning.
Travers scans the reporters, finds the woman with the BBC microphone, and nods. Her blonde hair falls to her square shoulders. Her face is round and pink; her wide blue eyes are focused on him and Nihat Monuglu, who stands so close to him that his right elbow touches Travers’ left arm.
“First let me say…” Travers begins, speaking loudly so that his voice will carry to the crowd as well as the reporters, “that I will provide you with information about the contents of the ossuary discovered recently at the site of Saint John’s Cathedral in Selçuk, Turkey.” He looks directly at Kirchburg and Lee. “But let me point out at the start that I am speaking to you as a private citizen, not as a representative of the Glavine Foundation, which funds the Saint John’s site.”
Travers shifts his weight so that the electric eel slithering up his left leg won’t seize his breath. “The ossuary,” he says, “contained human remains and two documents. All were taken from the archeological site, but Doctor Sophia Altay, the director of the Saint John’s site, has recovered the documents. As you know…” he glances again at Kirchburg, “…Kenan Sirhan, an Aegean Association employee, was killed at Saint John’s, and Günter Schmidt, also employed a year earlier by Doktor Leopold Kirchburg, was murdered outside of Göreme the night before last. Because of these two deaths, Doctor Altay does not feel it is safe at this point to come forward with the documents. I was beaten and knifed in Selçuk when I was serving as a representative of the Glavine Foundation, so I believe her fears are justified.”
Monuglu’s elbow presses into his arm. Sweat serpentines down to the small of his back.
“I have, therefore,” Travers continues, “agreed to serve as her intermediary in this matter. I have read the English translations of the documents. The first was apparently dictated by Jesus of Nazareth shortly before he died.”
Murmuring flows through the crowd, and three of the reporters are already waving their hands.
“The second document, a letter written by Saint John the Apostle in Ephesus, dates from decades later. I believe that people…” he pauses, gazing over the reporters at the crowd, “…around the world and of all faiths will find the documents meaningful.”
He wipes the sweat beading along his hairline. “Doctor Altay will release the documents online at thr
ee o’clock—I’m sorry—at fifteen-hundred. I will provide printed copies in Turkish, English, French, and Spanish at the Sarihan Hotel at four…sixteen-hundred. I will at that time discuss the contents of the documents, but only after you have had a chance to read them. I will try to answer any other questions you have now.”
The CNN correspondent, a tan, square-jawed man wearing a floppy military hat, shouts, “What proof do you have that these letters are authentic, that this is not some hoax?”
Travers repeats the question in case someone didn’t hear it. Then, smiling at the man, he says, “None.”
“The bones?” a black-haired woman in a white blouse asks. “Are you telling us they’re Christ’s?”
Travers wipes his mouth. “I’m not suggesting anything about the remains,” he says. “I have not seen them, and neither has Doctor Altay.”
“Where are they?” the woman asks. “Who has them?”
“I don’t know.” Travers looks over at Kirchburg and Lee. The American has his arms folded across his chest, and the Austrian is leaning toward him lecturing heatedly. “If I find out anything more about the remains, I’ll tell you this afternoon.”
There’s silence for only a moment before another reporter asks, “Have you personally seen the documents?”
“No,” he answers, “I’ve only seen the transcripts, the English translations. But given what has happened since the ossuary’s discovery, I don’t doubt their authenticity. And, I trust that Doctor Altay has them in a safe place.”
“Who stole the artifacts from the site?” a reporter with a salt-and-pepper beard asks.
“I did not say that the artifacts were stolen,” Travers answers. “I said that they were taken.” He scratches his nose. “I honestly don’t know exactly what happened. But Kenan Sirhan and another man found the ossuary while Doctor Altay was in Istanbul. It’s likely that one or both of the men took the artifacts in an attempt to protect them.”
“Who is the other man?”
The question comes at Travers so quickly that he’s not sure who asked it. He doesn’t want to lie or to reveal the truth. “He’s called Abrahim,” he says, “but I don’t know if that’s his legal name. I didn’t meet him at the site, and I don’t know where he is currently.” He notices a green and gold hot air balloon rising in the distance. Though he’s physically a wreck, he still suddenly needs to walk, to get out into the hills and canyons.
