Chyna Stone Adventures: First Three Novels

by K. T. Tomb

  When they checked into the hotel, the concierge handed them copies of their itinerary for the next day. Lana had booked them on three consecutive tours for the palace grounds in an effort to buy them enough time to locate the clue they were looking for and the chance for some mild excavation if that was at all necessary. However, Sirita’s procurement of government authorization had trumped those arrangements. Chyna handed the papers to the concierge and asked her to forward copies to the management at the archaeological site and arrange transportation for them to get there in the morning. Ever frugal, Lana confirmed with the woman that their new official visitor status would qualify them for a refund on the three tours that had been booked and with a wry smile, the concierge nodded her agreement.

  Upstairs in their rooms, they were all relieved to have a night without boggling over cryptic clues or planning their next move, it was a chance to detox from the harsh week they had spent travelling the Egyptian desert. Compared with the hot, sandy landscape of Luxor and its environs, Boğazkale was like a completely different world. The town was surrounded by rolling, green hills that was home to mountainous local people. They raised sheep that they grazed easily there and grew crops and fruit in the fertile valley. Looking at the town, it was easy to see that modernization, even as a result of booming tourism, was the last thing on these people’s minds. It was refreshing to be in the unspoiled, rural surroundings of heartland Turkey.

  After enjoying a generous continental breakfast and some of the best coffee any of them had ever had, Chyna and her team left the hotel to meet briefly with the manager at the site of the palace ruins. Once the pleasantries were over, he directed them towards the palace plaza so they could begin the search for their next clue. The plaza is an immense, flat, stone platform that still exhibited the signs of the grand columns and walls that would have once made up the structure of a great palace. Three thousand years ago, the Hittite empire was a vast civilization that spread over most of modern day Turkey and Syria as well as a portion of western Iraq, so it was expected that the king’s palace in the empire’s capital would be colossal; which it was.

  They stood together in the center of the plaza and looked around them. The palace grounds had four distinct gates, one at each of the cardinal points of the compass. From where they stood they could see that each gate had two pillars which was guarded by a statue of a sphinx.

  “Since Egypt lies to the south of here, I think we should start with the southern gates,” suggested Lana.

  So they made their way to the south gates of the compound. After fifteen minutes of careful searching, none of them could find a marker or a cartouche like the ones they had found so far. Disheartened, they stopped looking for a minute and came together to regroup.

  “Why do we think we would find an inscription like the ones we found before?” Chyna suddenly asked. “Ankhesenamun never came here.”

  “That’s right,” Oscar agreed. “The clue is here; we know that because it’s where she probably told her messenger to put it.”

  “Yes,” Lana said. “For sure, it’s where she wanted them to put it; that was clear in her last clue. But if someone else concocted the clue and placed it here, then certainly we should be looking for a different style of encryption.”

  “Okay,” Chyna said. “Let’s go look again, more carefully this time.”

  They returned to the pillars and searched the vertical structures as well as the sphinxes. It wasn’t long before Oscar stepped back and started snapping photographs.

  “I’ve found it,” he announced.

  When they gathered around the sphinx he had been investigating, they all saw the mark on the back of the sphinx’s head. It was pale, weathered by time and the elements but it was still visible. Inscribed in the stone was the Hittite numeral for the number ‘9’ and directly below it in much clearer markings and modern numerals was ‘410085’. They then turned their attention to the sphinx on the left side of the gate and sure enough there were also inscriptions in the same spot on the statues’ head. It was the Hittite numeral for ‘12’ followed by a brighter carving ‘289799’.

  Invigorated by the find, they rushed to the Eastern gates. The statues there had only a single Hittite digit each; the one on the left said ‘19’ and the one on the right was ‘20’. They went to each of the other sphinxes in order and recorded ‘1’, ‘14’, ‘2’ and finally, ‘21’.

  “I think we’ve found what we came looking for guys,” Lana surmised. “Let’s get back to the hotel and look closer at these numbers over lunch, I’m famished.”

  They returned to the hotel, freshened up in their rooms and met back in the restaurant for lunch. After they had eaten, they ordered three bottles of Turkish beer and spread a large sheet of blank paper out on the table in front of them. Lana wrote the numbers down and they stared at them for several minutes.

  “What does it mean?” Oscar asked.

  “I don’t know,” Chyna said. “Lana?”

  “Why are you asking me?” She asked defensively. She was just as bewildered as the rest of them.

  They puzzled over it for the better part of an hour before Chyna slapped her forehead and started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Oscar asked.

  “Have you ever tried solving one of those cryptic crosswords in the New York Times?” she asked them both.

  “Yeah, they’re damn near impossible,” Lana remarked.

  “Sure are!” Oscar agreed.

  “My Dad used to insist that I do them every week,” Chyna said, smiling. “They were torturous but even if it took me all week to finish one, he was adamant that I do them.”

  She shook her head and laughed again before continuing.

  “He always told me the trick was not to think too hard about what the clue meant,” she said. “That the answer was always simpler than the puzzle made you think. The trick to the cryptic crossword is getting it into your head that it really isn’t that cryptic at all.”

  “What in the name of Josie Wales does that have to do with this?” Oscar exclaimed.

  “The numbers represent the letter of the alphabet,” Chyna finally revealed. “And when you’ve finished doing the math, if you start with the number from the sphinx that stands to the right of the southern gate and end with the one on the sphinx from the left of that same gate, the word it spells is ‘Istanbul’.”

  “Well I’ll be damned!” said Oscar.

  “That’s absolutely amazing,” Lana summarized.

  “It is,” Chyna agreed. “But I can’t figure out the two sets of numbers we found at the southern gates.”

  Oscar looked closely at the two sets of six digit figures for a minute then said, “You leave that to me, Boss lady, I think I know what they are.”

  He took his phone from his pocket and quickly opened the internet browser application; then he typed in the two sets of numbers and initiated a search. After a few minutes, a broad smile spread across his face.

  “Well, it only took us two and a half hours but I think we’ve got it, ladies,” he said. “I thought that the six digit sequence looked a lot like coordinates and once we figured out that the clue was referring to Istanbul, that thought started to make a whole lot of sense because if the numbers are coordinates they would actually fall in the region of the city. With a quick check, I just confirmed it. Those numbers are the coordinates of the Hagia Sophia, presently a national museum of Turkey.”

  “You’re a damn genius, Oscar!” Chyna exclaimed.

  * * *

  Fully convinced that Lana and Oscar had earned the time off, Chyna stopped at the concierge desk on her way back to her room to plan a surprise for them; instead of a refund on the tours, she arranged for them to take a sightseeing hot air balloon tour of the town.

  While they went out to enjoy the sights, Chyna made all of the arrangements for the next leg of their trip. She booked their flights to Istanbul for the next afternoon and made reservations at her favorite hotel, The Ottoman Imperial which
she knew to be a stone’s throw from the Hagia Sofia. A quick call to Sirita got the rest of their luggage and equipment on an express cargo flight to Istanbul along with courier delivery directly to the hotel suite. Happily anticipating an end to their lengthy investigation, Chyna booked a limousine to pick them up at the airport. Then she placed a call to the Hagia Sofia and asked to speak to the Head Curator. She was informed that she would be speaking to Mr. Rashid Abdullah and that he had been expecting her call.

  Chyna knew that it was strange that the curator would even know who she was, much less for him to have been expecting a call from her and she was immediately on her guard. What did he know that she didn’t?

  “Miss Stone,” the eloquent voice of the museum curator came over the phone. “I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to speak to you. I am delighted to finally have it.”

  “How could you have been waiting for this call, Mr. Abdullah?” Chyna asked. “We have never met and I doubt that you know why I’m contacting you now.”

  “Oh, my dear Miss Stone,” Rashid admonished. “There is so much that I know that you are not yet aware of. But I can promise you that when you get to Istanbul, I will fill you and your team in completely. When will you be arriving in the city?”

  “We will be there tomorrow afternoon,” she replied, dumbfounded.

  “Excellent, could we meet at the museum at around six o’clock? We will be closed to the public by then and we can talk without interruptions.”

  “That’s sounds fine, Mr. Abdullah. We’ll see you then.”

  “Yes, Miss Stone. Again, thank you for calling.”

  It took a while for Chyna to shake off the shock of the telephone call to Rashid Abdullah. She knew that their meeting was destined to be a remarkable one and soon her apprehension turned to anticipation. After a few minutes she picked up the phone again and placed another call. Anthony Stewart answered right away.

  “Guess it was too much to ask that it would come to an end in Boğazkale?” he joked.

  “That would have been too easy, Tony,” Chyna replied.

  “So, what’s your next move?”

  “The clues are sending us to Istanbul and I’m sure you won’t mind that.”

  “I really can’t complain. What time do you get there?”

  “We’re taking an afternoon flight for once and we should be there by three o’clock. We meet with Hagia Sofia’s curator at six so how about I meet you for dinner around eight at the usual place?”

  “That sounds awesome. I miss you Chyna, more than I usually do.”

  “I’ve missed you too, Tony. This is new; usually we’re so good at letting go.”

  “Must be old age, Babe.”

  “Don’t even go there. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  * * *

  The next morning all three of them are relieved to be able to sleep in for once. Feeling rested and relaxed and ready to get back to the search, they boarded the little plane to Istanbul at noon and by three o’clock the plane was taxiing to the gate at the airport in Istanbul. They got into their limousine and took the scenic ride to the Ottoman Imperial Hotel. At five thirty, they met in the lobby and walked over to the great Hagia Sophia Museum to meet its mysterious curator.

  When they arrived at the steps of the museum, there was a woman waiting to let them in through the front doors. She introduced herself as Zubeida, Rashid Abdullah’s secretary, and showed them into the museum’s lobby.

  “Mr. Abdullah will be with you in five minutes,” she said.

  Soon after, he appeared from a side door and walked toward them with his hand extended. He shook their hands and turned to Chyna.

  “Miss Stone, it is a true honor to meet you and your associates. I have been looking forward to this for a long time.”

  “So you said yesterday but I still don’t understand how it is that you knew we would come here.”

  “Follow me into my office, so that I may explain everything to you more comfortably and privately.”

  As they entered Mr. Abdullah’s opulent office, they noticed that there are three well dressed men waiting in the office for them. Instinctively, Chyna reached into her black leather jacket and released the safety strap that held her SIG Sauer® M-11 pistol inside it’s holster.

  “No need for that, Miss Stone,” Rashid said, reassuringly. “We are all friends here. Please have a seat. May I introduce to you most of The Guardsmen: Westman, Southman and Eastman. Unfortunately Northman is not yet here.”

  “The Guardsmen?” Oscar asked. “As in the Guards from the riddle who are supposed to lay down their swords?”

  “You see?” Abdullah exclaimed to the three men. “This is what I’ve been telling you. They are very clever and talented people. The time has truly come.”

  The men nodded their heads in agreement and murmured among themselves in Arabic.

  “I’ve been telling them how sure I was that you were the right people to retrieve the Book from us. We have been waiting a long time for people like you to find us.”

  “Mr Abdullah…”

  “Rashid, please.”

  “Rashid, No offense to you and your friends here, but I hope you understand that we have absolutely no clue as to what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, I understand, Miss Stone. I’m just so excited, I’m finding it hard to settle down and tell you the story. Let me get started right away.”

  “Please, we would appreciate it.”

  “Well, you already know the beginning. The part of the story that has been lost to our historians is this: When the Princess Ankhesenamun arrived in Qena, she gave the Book to a tribal priest of the Hharazi people. She instructed him to take the Book north to Hattusa and put it among the treasures of the Hittite king. He was to put a guard in place to ensure the Book would remain safe until the day that a pharaoh of royal descent sat on the throne of Egypt again, at which point the guard was to take the Book to Luxor and return it to the king.

  “We all know that day never came. Egypt was ruled by warriors and commoners for the rest of its days. However, before Egypt fell to the Romans, the Hittite Empire was demolished. When the guard realized that the Empire was ending he decided to move the Book to a more stable city which would most likely survive the ages.”

  “Istanbul,” Lana interjected.

  “Yes, Istanbul. He inscribed the heads of the sphinxes with the code indicating the name of the Book’s new home and took it to Istanbul. He hid the Book below the Gate of Hell portal in the church of Hagia Sofia and positioned himself as a church guard for the rest of his days. Before he died, the guard decided that the protection of the Book was too much for one man to bear. He went to Egypt in search of the immortal priest, Imhotep, to seek his advice about the protection of the Book.

  “Imhotep and the guard selected four righteous men of four different tribes and gave them the task of protecting the book. Imhotep returned with them to Istanbul to serve as the sovereign voice over the new Guardsmen of the Book of Life. So that is how we came into being, Miss Stone. They are four men from four different tribes of people and they are governed by the immortal priest, Imhotep. I am Rashid Imhotep Abdullah, a direct descendant of Imhotep Ta-Djoser.”

  “So who are the Watchers?” Chyna asked.

  “The Watchers, Miss Stone are the descendants of the Hharazi priest. There are Watchers in every city of importance in Egypt, they ensure that anything that happens which may lead to the discovery of the Book is reported to us immediately. That is how we knew you were coming. Mohammed and Jamila are two of the six Luxor Watchers. We have two watchers in Qena as well, but Jamila was unable to contact them so she watched you herself. When you left Egypt to go to Boğazkale, she called to let me know.”

  “How did you know I would call you?”

  “It was an educated guess, Miss Stone. You and your colleagues did not strike me as thieves. So once you knew the Book was in the Hagia Sofia, it would stand to reason that you would
contact me since you did not intend to steal it.”

  “Rashid, we are very grateful to you and to the Guardsmen. You, and those who have gone before you, have done the world a great service by ensuring the safekeeping of this important relic. We hope that our intentions for it are even half as honourable.”

  “And what are those intentions, Miss Stone?”

  “It’s important for the Book to go back to Egypt, Rashid. We will turn it over to the Ministry of Antiquities and we will ask them, when they have finished their tests and cataloguing, to put it on display for the people to see and enjoy and learn about its lost history.”

  “We could not ask for more than that,” Rashid concluded.

  “Might I ask though, where is Mr. Northman?”

  “I have no idea. He should have been here a long time ago. Have any of you gentlemen heard from him?”

  The others all shook their heads negatively.

  “Oh well, we cannot wait for him. It is important for all of us to get this done tonight.”

  “Rashid, I won’t be taking the Book with me. I would just like to see it and maybe take some photographs. I will make arrangements for our friend Dr. Nassir to come and see you. He will be able to make the necessary arrangements security-wise.”

  “That is a wise decision, Miss Stone. Follow us and we will show it to you.”

  They went back downstairs to the large church and behind the velvet rope to the altar. At the foot of the altar was a round decorative tile which is called the ‘Gates of Hell’ portal. It was a secret hiding place that was constructed in most important churches where the clergy could hide anything of importance from raiders or heretics. Rashid lifted a hidden bolt and turned it until there was a loud click sound, then he pulled up and the tile was raised with ease; but when he laid the tile aside they all looked in to find nothing but an empty cavern.

  There were shouts of dismay and anger from the Guardsmen and Rashid shook his head in disbelief. When they had settled down Chyna asked a few critical questions.

  “Can I safely assume that calling the police is out of the question?”