Bone Box

by Jay Amberg

  “Et cum spiritu tuo,” Travers answers.

  “Ossa,” Abrahim whispers. “Sanctus servator ossa.”

  “Yes,” Travers says. “Rest, Abrahim.” He glances around the room, knowing that he won’t detect whatever electronic bugs Monuglu has planted. “Don’t say anything more. I will send Sophia.”

  72

  In the clinic’s hallway, Nihat Monuglu takes Travers by the elbow and leads him past Leopold Kirchburg. Separated by one of the guards, Kirchburg glares at Travers. His face is florid, and his shoulders are rounded forward as though he’s going to implode. Sneering, he says, “Du bist ein toter Mann.”

  Abrahim’s last words still running through his mind, Travers ig-nores the Austrian. He knows something that not even Sophia Altay does. He also understands what Monuglu admitted to him on the way into the clinic. Everything from the moment he arrived in Istanbul is fitting together—all one event with voices, human words, flowing through it, words both near and far in time and space. The first follower wasn’t really the first—only the first Travers noticed. From the carpet peddler at the Blue Mosque to this clinic’s technology, it has all been a single moment. He needs to confirm a couple of his hunches, but he already has heard what he needs to hear and possesses what he needs to possess. His strength is that he has no vested interest, that in his isolation, his emptiness, Christ’s voice and John’s words have spoken to him beyond the bounds of pursuit and profession, creed and country.

  Outside the clinic, night has fallen. As Monuglu pushes open the front door, he growls, “Did you learn anything I should know, my friend?”

  Travers stops on the clinic’s cement stoop. “Yes,” he answers. He assumes that Monuglu or one of his operatives heard every word, though probably no one comprehended Abrahim’s Latin. “We need to talk.”

  “True,” Monuglu says.

  “Abrahim will tell you whatever you want to know if you bring Sophia Altay to him unharmed.”

  “Doctor Altay is a Turkish citizen,” Monuglu says, turning on the sidewalk so that he faces Travers. He raises his palms as though he has been a mere bystander, an objective observer, the last week. “My job is to protect her as well as the antiquities.” He scratches his mustache. “As you know, I take my responsibilities seriously.”

  “Is…was saving Abrahim a responsibility you took seriously, my friend?” Travers asks.

  “Yes,” Monuglu says. “Absolutely.”

  Travers smiles at Monuglu, steps from the stoop, and limps along the sidewalk past him toward the parking lot where the Hulks are leaning on the Mercedes and smoking. Stars are spreading overhead, glinting like those of his childhood mountains. Travers’ smashed toe sparks with each step, his burn throbs, his stitches itch, his elbow stings, and his head aches, but each breath pulls his sense of being alive through the pain.

  As Travers crosses the parking lot, Monuglu takes hold of his shoulder. “Whatever happens, do not,” he says, “speak about any of this on television. I…”

  “I have no desire,” Travers interrupts, “to speak publicly to the media again. Not now…”

  “Not even when this is over.”

  “Not ever.” Travers shakes his head slowly. “Nihat, you are my friend. One of the few I have right now. The bones and the documents may cause… But you know that I pose no threat to you or your country or your religion.”

  “That is true.”

  Travers reaches over and touches Monuglu’s shoulder. “The bones will tell their own story, whatever it is. Just as the letters do.” He pats Monuglu’s shoulder gently, almost affectionately. “And you will protect and then make public not only the bones but both those letters, too—the original, authentic versions. This, my friend, you’ll do.”

  73

  Sitting alone in the backseat of the Mercedes, Travers drinks from the bottle of water Hulk Minor gave him. As the car heads up the narrow cobblestone street toward the Sarihan Cave Hotel, the staccato thrum of its tires over the cobblestones drums pain into his bones. The amphoras in the garden remind him of his debacle at the news conference, but his mind is clear. He has made his phone calls and sent his text messages—and now he is ready to meet Charles Lee in the hotel’s lobby. When the Mercedes stops at the hotel’s main entrance, Travers leans forward so that his head is between the two Hulks. “Thanks for the ride,” he says as he raises the bottle. “And this.”

  As he hobbles out the car’s door, stars gleam above the escarpment the Sarihan is carved into. The air is calm—still hot but no longer oppressive. Voices fall from the terrace, an incomprehensible potpourri of languages. And the smell of roasting lamb reminds him of how little he has eaten.

  Lee, standing at the opposite end of the pale stone and wood-paneled lobby, talks with the handsome, square-jawed CNN reporter. Lee turns the moment he sees Travers, stops speaking mid-sentence, and meets him by the front desk. “It’s about time y’all got here,” he says as he pulls a cell phone—a smart new Samsung model—from his pressed blue jeans’ left front pocket.

  Travers nods but doesn’t say anything.

  The desk clerk, another dark-eyed beauty, lowers her head and shuffles papers.

  “You’ve seen the Turkish kid?” Lee asks.

  “Hello, Charlie,” Travers says. “Abrahim? Yes, as my text said, I have. And Leopold.”

  “And Altay,” Lee says. “What about her?” He rotates the cell phone counterclockwise between his thumb and fingers.

  Travers scans the lobby, pausing for a moment to make eye contact with the CNN reporter.

  “What about Altay, Joe?” Lee repeats. He squeezes the phone as though it’s a hand exerciser.

  “I haven’t seen her today,” Travers says. As always, he’ll speak only truth to Lee. “Or even talked with her.”

  Lee grabs Travers’ arm with his free hand. “What in the hell are y…?” He glances at the reporter, tightens his grip, and pulls Travers across the lobby toward a potted palm.

  Travers looks into Lee’s eyes. “Let go of me,” he says quietly.

  Lee loosens his grip but continues to stand close to Travers. “But you know where the bones and the letters are?”

  “The bones. Yes, I do. The Turkish kid told me.”

  “They’re here?”

  “No. Back…” Travers takes a deep breath. “The Turks think the kid might be a goner. And not even Sophia knows the bones’ location. I’m the only one.” He tilts his head toward Lee. “And that changes things.”

  Lee leans back and eyes Travers. “It surely does.”

  Travers lowers his voice. “I’m thinking of making a trade.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. That Turkish kid, Leopold, all those reporters—everybody wants those bones. The holy relics of the Christ.”

  Lee squeezes the phone again.

  “But like you said in Selçuk,” Travers adds, “hell will freeze over before the bones are ever actually authenticated.”

  Lee nods. “There’s no way to prove whose bones they are. Not be-yond doubt, anyway.”

  Travers touches Lee’s elbow. “But Sophia’s scrolls,” he says, “the originals, can be authenticated.”

  Lee cocks his head.

  “Their value…”

  “If they’re real!” Lee interrupts.

  “Oh, they’re real, all right, Charlie.” Travers glances again at the CNN reporter, who is still standing at the other end of the lobby, feet set apart and hands clasped behind him, staring at Lee and Travers. “And when they’re authenticated, they’ll be beyond value.”

  Lee glances from Travers to the reporter and back. “You’re not going on TV again!” His whisper is fierce.

  Travers scratches his chin. “I didn’t come to Turkey to cash in. You know that. But the opportunity…”

 
; Lee waves his index finger in front of Travers’ face. “You’ve got to…”

  Travers brushes Lee’s hand away. “I know what I’m going to do,” he says. “And I know the risks. Leopold already threatened to kill me. In front of Nihat Monuglu.”

  Though Lee raises his finger again, his voice softens as he says, “You can’t do this alone.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I can make arrangements.”

  “I don’t want your help.” An edge comes into Travers’ voice.

  “I’ve got assets.”

  “No, Charlie. I’m doing what’s best for me.”

  “I get that.” Lee glances down at the Samsung he’s holding. “But make sure you talk to me. We’re on the same side.”

  Travers smiles. “You’ve said that before.”

  “We’re in this together.”

  “You’ve been telling me that practically since I got to Turkey. And I understand now. Completely. But I’m doing what I have to do.”

  “You’ve still got to stay in touch.” Lee holds out the phone.

  Travers looks again into Lee’s eyes.

  “Here.” Lee proffers the phone. “Take it.”

  Travers shakes his head as he gazes at the phone.

  “You need somebody at your back.”

  “Probably,” Travers says, still staring at the phone. “But, no thanks.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out his old Amish, which is turned off. “I’ve got a phone.”

  Lee rubs his eye with his free hand. “It’s a piece of shit. And you never even have it on.”

  “Yeah. That’s a fact.” Travers smiles again. “Most of the time I don’t even carry it.” He nods at the Samsung. “But I’m not taking your phone.”

  As Lee raises the Samsung, he pats his bulging right front pocket with his other hand. “It’s my backup. I always carry a backup.” He shrugs. “Y’all know the old slogan: Be prepared.”

  “I was never a Scout, Charlie.” Travers turns, beginning to step away.

  Lee thrusts the phone in front of him. “I…” His voice remains controlled, but the tendons in his neck look taut. “You’ve got to…”

  Travers stops and stares at the Samsung.

  “Just take the damned phone.”

  Travers smiles at Lee, the levels of irony in this moment, in Lee’s offer and in the phone itself, dancing before him. “Yeah, Charlie,” he says. “You’re right. Again.” He takes the phone and slips it into his pocket. “I promise I’ll put it to good use.”

  74

  At Ürgüp’s outskirts, Travers passes the crumbling wall in which he hid the flash drives. The stones glow in the light of the rising crescent moon. He has made his final calls, and he has left everything but Charles Lee’s phone in his Alfina Hotel cave room—his clothes, his belongings, even his wallet and passport. When he reaches a dirt road, he turns and walks from the town’s last ambient light into the buzzing night filled with dark tufa spires rising into sky. Stark, muted beauty spreads ahead of him. The air smells fresh and dry. He is not being followed because, as he understands, there is no longer a need for shadows.

  On the dusty trail, shadows of another sort, memories of people, rise about him like apparitions dissipating in the Cappadocian breeze. Thoughts of Jason are twined with those of Tom, of Mary and Christine, of his mother and father and sister, of friends from school and work, and of Sophia and Abrahim, who will, if Travers has finally gotten it right, reunite in a couple of hours. He looks at the moon framed between two fairy chimneys. The moon and stars may be wheeling as always through the heavens, but at this moment they appear still—stuck in the inevitability of their course. The killing must end, he thinks. In the morning. At first light.

  Time swirls and wisps as he walks. Though he is physically exhausted, his breathing is steady; the pain, though persistent, finds a rhythm. Finally, a lone willow looms ahead like a cascade of deeper darkness. As he approaches along the dirt track, something flaps in the branches. Something else scratches against stone nearby. Scant light carves outlines of bushes and sharp rock cliffs. An engine purrs far in the distance.

  The figure that emerges from the shadows is small, covered, a wo-man moving gracefully toward him. “Joe,” she says as she touches his forearm.

  “Sophia,” he answers, and he follows her through the brush, up an incline, and along a sandy path between jutting rocks. As the sinuous trail rises and the land falls away, they climb over boulders and across the face of the escarpment. The trail narrows to the width of his shoulders, vertical rock on his left and vast emptiness on his right. His breathing quickens, and dizziness hovers at the edges of his mind. A long way up, they pause by the low mouth of a cave just before the trail seems to jut into stars.

  “Here,” she says, touching his arm again. She has not used her customary stealth to ensure that no mark has been left on the trail.

  He nods, reaches into his pocket, and ducks into total darkness. When he emerges, he glimpses light in her eyes. She takes his hand as they round the hairpin bend, their faces close to the tufa so that he doesn’t have to gaze into the void. He holds tightly to her small, rough hand. He could not have made it this far alone, and no one unfamiliar with the terrain could follow them farther, at least not in the dark.

  75

  Charles Lee and Leopold Kirchburg stand in the unlit parking lot behind a motorbike rental shop. Lee has led the Kraut here to this empty back alley five blocks from either of their hotels because this meeting has to be absolutely private. No rooftop patios this time. In fact, the meeting will have never occurred at all. “That’s why I’m making this work,” he says.

  Though Kirchburg glowers at him, it fizzles in the darkness. “What’s in it for you?”

  “Nothing.” He’s got the Kraut by the short hairs again. “I’m giving y’all a shot at the Christ’s bones and Ms. Altay.”

  Kirchburg scratches his beard. “There’s always something in it for you Americans.”

  Lee ignores the insult—there’s too much riding on all this. When he steps out of the shadow of the shop’s overhanging roof, moonshine glints on the rim of the Coca-Cola can he holds. “Y’all can save the Aegean Association.” He doesn’t add, …and your own skinny ass, too. “I’m offering you your only chance to recover the bones that were in that ossuary. Take it or leave it.”

  “But you are going to remain here?” The Kraut’s words are more an accusation than a question.

  “Till morning.” Lee nods. “I’ve got some unfinished business with Joe Travers.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I met him at the Sarihan, but he went back to his hotel in Ürgüp.” The Kraut’s academic reasoning skills are about to leap up and bite him in his Teutonic ass.

  Kirchburg studies Lee’s face. “Is he…still involved with So…?”

  “He’s in deep shit, is what he is.” Lee swigs his Coke. “Once he went on TV, he became a target for any lunatic or fringe group. Fact is, he told me you threatened to kill him.”

  “I did not…”

  “Yeah, Leopold, he told me you did.” Lee shakes his head. “In front of Monuglu.”

  “I…we are all in danger.”

  “Yes, we surely are,” Lee says. “And that’s why your Ms. Altay is running like a scalded dog back to Selçuk for the bones. If you leave ASAP, you can beat her to Saint John’s. The helicopter’s waiting.” He’s been given an unrestricted budget to ship the Kraut’s carcass the hell out of town so that the Eagle Consortium’s business here in Cappadocia can be finished. “You’ll get the bones. And Altay will have to come to you…,” he can’t help but add, “…on her knees.”

  Something, maybe a nocturnal lizard, skitters across Kirchburg’s shoe, and he does a quick two-step. “So you are certain,” he asks, “that Soph…t
hat Fräulein Altay is going to Selçuk?”

  “Sure as Scheiss.” Lee stifles a grin. He’s been counting on Kirchburg’s obsession with Altay as well as the bones to keep him from showing a lick of sense. “Earlier, right there in the Sarihan’s lobby, Travers told me that he was going to reveal the bones’ whereabouts in the morning. And he let slip that the bones aren’t here. And God knows there’s nothing in this mudhead country between here and there.”

  Kirchburg’s boney index fingers form a crooked steeple that he taps against his lips. “And you are sure she…”

  “What would y’all do in her shoes?”

  Kirchburg’s fingers knit, and he curls his lips. “Sophia must…”

  “Leopold,” Lee interrupts, “you know the truth of what I’m saying here…”

  “Die Schlampe…” Kirchburg’s voice cracks.

  Lee covers his smirk with the empty Coke can. “And what’s the only reason why anybody would be heading like a bat out of hell for Selçuk?”

  “Die Knocken.”

  “Jawohl!” Lee scratches the side of his nose with the can’s rim. “Like I said, I’ve already arranged the transport. I can get you to Selçuk first. And you can be waiting at the cathedral’s gate for your Ms. Altay.”

  76

  Sophia Altay climbs on top of her cave church’s altar, turns, reaches up through the sheared oval, and hoists herself. She wriggles, dangling for a moment against the night sky, swings her leg up, and disappears. In the cave’s sparse light, the embracing saints and hovering angel on the arched ceiling say nothing to Joseph Travers about Altay’s abrupt ascent. Her backpack, dark computer, and supplies are all mute. He crosses the cave, kneels on the altar, twists, and looks into the sky. He can hear scratching above him but can’t see her on the spire ascending into the darkness. The sky above, the rock all around, and the land far below begin to wheel. When grainy bits of tufa rain on him, he ducks back inside and sits on the altar. Brushing grit from his hair, he waits for the dizziness to subside.