Reilly studied the map for a beat, then looked up at Tess. “If you’re wrong, we’ll miss him.”
Tess thought about it for brief moment, then nodded. “We might miss him anyway if we need to monitor the whole mountain. I really think it’s the right call.”
He held her gaze, enjoying the radiance lighting up her face, feeling her enthusiasm and her confidence infuse him. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll let them know.”
Tess smiled, clearly pleased with his response. As he pushed himself out his chair, she said, “We should be there, you know. Waiting for him.”
Reilly turned and was about to say something when she cut him off.
“Don’t.”
He looked lost. “What?”
“Don’t start. With the spiel.”
He was genuinely confused. “What spiel?”
“You know, the spiel where you say you’re going out there but I should stay here because it’s way too dangerous, and I say, no, you need me there ‘cause I understand all the Templar mumbo jumbo, then you insist that’s not gonna happen, I counter-insist that without me you might miss the one clue that’ll lead you to him, then you play dirty and tell me that I should really be thinking about Kim and be a good mom, I get all peeved at you for bringing it up and insinuating I’m a bad mom …” A playful, questioning look spread across her face. “Are we really going to do this? Seriously? ‘Cause you know I’m gonna end up coming along anyway, right? You must know that.”
Reilly just stared at her, looking baffled, her verbal fusillade still ricocheting inside his skull. Then, without saying anything, he just raised his hand in defeat, turned, and walked off.
She was still grinning as he left the room.
Chapter 26
Jed Simmons drifted back to consciousness with the dry mouth and the grogginess of a big, boozy night out. The sight that gradually fell into focus, though, quickly dispelled any vague illusions that this was the result of anything even remotely enjoyable. He was in the front passenger seat of some kind of SUV that was driving through unfamiliar terrain—vast, sun-soaked plains that seemed to stretch forever. The sensation from his right wrist confirmed the uncomfortable feeling. It was tied to the door’s armrest, a plastic snap-cuff anchoring it in place.
The voice of the man in the driver’s seat brought the whole nightmare crashing back.
“Wakey wakey,” his abductor said. “There’s a bottle of water and some chocolate bars in the bag by your feet. You should have some. I imagine you must be feeling pretty dried out right now.”
Simmons was too tired—and too angry—to resist. From all the time he’d spent in the desert in Jordan, he knew how crucial it was to remain properly hydrated, for both mind and body, both of which were currently in a lousy state.
He reached down to the bag with his free arm, and as he leaned over, he felt something uncomfortable around his waist, something he hadn’t felt before. He looked down and shifted in his seat, checking it out with his free arm, trying to suss out what it might be. There was something there, under his shirt.
He was moving to pull his shirt up when the man said, “The less you disturb it, the better.”
Simmons’s arm froze. He raised his gaze at his abductor.
The man was just staring at the road ahead, concentrating on the driving, his face impassive as slate.
“What … you did this?”
The man nodded.
Simmons was afraid to ask, but the words spilled out of his consciousness, slowly, as if from beyond his control.
“What is it?”
The driver thought about it for a beat, then turned to Simmons and said, “On second thought, maybe you should have a look.”
Simmons eyed him for an uncomfortable beat, unsure about whether or not he really wanted to see it, whatever it was. Then his resistance broke and he pulled his shirt up.
He had something on, around his waist, just above his trousers. A belt of some kind, a couple of inches or so wide, made up of tough, shiny material, like sailcloth. It seemed innocuous enough—until he pulled out the shirt some more and spotted the padlock that connected two brass eyelets that had been sewn into it and kept the belt locked tight. Then he saw something even more alarming: a bulge, on the front part of the belt. There was something sewn into it, something hard that felt no bigger than a pack of cards. There was no access to it that he could see, no pocket or zipper or Velcro flap. It was embedded inside the belt.
A stab of dread tore through him.
“What is that?” Simmons asked, his temples suddenly pounding outward. “What have you done?”
“It’s a small bomb. Nothing fancy. A bit of Semtex and a detonator. Remote-controlled.” He pulled out his phone and held it up for Simmons to see, then slipped it back into his pocket. “Just big enough to blow a hole the size of my hand through your belly.” He held up his hand, fingers extended as if they were clasping an imaginary baseball, to graphically drive the point home. “If and when it blows up, the odds are it won’t kill you instantly. You could live for a minute, maybe even more, and you’ll actually be able to see the crater it will have made. Not very pleasant though,” his abductor added. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Simmons felt like he was about to throw up. He shut his eyes and tried to take in some air but found that he was having trouble breathing. He couldn’t understand what this thing was doing on him, but a meek “Why?” was all he could manage.
“Motivation.”
Simmons just stared at him, his mind strangled with fear.
“Motivation to behave,” his abductor told him. “We’re going to be doing some sightseeing, and I need to make sure you don’t do anything stupid. So I’m hoping that the threat of having your guts blown straight out of your back will be a reliable motivator for you to do as you’re told. It usually does the trick.” He slid a sideways glance at Simmons, seemingly studying his reaction, then added, “Oh, and don’t try to undo the buckle. It’s locked shut.” He smiled. “Just think of it as a chastity belt. To block out any wild urges you might have.”
Simmons slumped back in his seat and looked ahead, drowning in despair. The occasional car trundled past in the opposite direction, but there were few vehicles on the road, which was narrow and uneven.
“Where are we going?” he finally asked, not really sure what difference it would make.
“Up to the mountains. I think the fresh air will do you a world of good,” the driver replied, a hint of a grin now breaking through. “You look a bit pale.”
A flash of recall sparked inside Simmons’s mind. “You know where the monastery is?”
“More or less,” the man replied, and left it at that.
THE GUIDE WAS WAITING for them at the designated spot, which, as it turned out, wasn’t too hard to find. In-car GPS navigation was a great boon, both for avoiding the main roads through Kayceri in order to evade any potential roadblocks, and for meeting up with someone Mansour Zahed had never met, in an obscure location he’d never been to.
The route he’d chosen, a detour that added more than an hour to his journey, bypassed the city and approached the mountain from the west, snaking through a few sleepy towns and cutting through the national park and wildlife preserve of the Sultan Marshes before climbing into the rolling foothills that surrounded the rugged, dormant volcano.
The mountain was an imposing sight. Ever since its distant silhouette had first appeared in his windshield, more than an hour earlier, Zahed had found it hard to take his eyes off it, its majestic, postcard-perfect profile looming ever bigger and beckoning him with every mile. Like Kilimanjaro and other dormant volcanoes, it was a freestanding mountain, an immense, flattened cone of rock that presided triumphantly over the flatlands through which it had arisen. And even though it was the height of summer and the temperature readout on the Discovery’s dashboard was showing a scorching ninety-five degrees, a crown of snow still embellished its peaks.
He pulled into the meeting place, a
tired gas station on the outskirts of the town of Karakoyunlu. The guide, Suleyman Toprak, was waiting there, standing next to a battered Toyota Jeep that had evidently spent many years being thrashed around mountain trails on the kind of bone-jarring, off-road excursions for which it had been designed.
Zahed pulled in behind him. He reached into the back of the car and found a handgun, which he tucked into his jacket’s pocket, in full sight of Simmons.
He looked at his captive and gave him a stern, cautioning finger, out of view of the guide, who was now approaching their car. “Don’t forget to follow the script. Your life—and his,” he warned, pointing at the man, “depend on it.”
Simmons’s jaw muscles tightened visibly, then he gave him a grudging nod.
Zahed studied him for a beat, then said, “Okay,” and stepped out of the car.
Toprak, a gregarious man in his late twenties, looked like he’d ridden Doc’s DeLorean straight in from Woodstock. He had a thick mane of long, black hair that was parted in the middle and a geometric goatee that looked like it had been chiseled into place. He was in khaki cargo bermudas, a white, collarless shirt that was open down to his navel, and hiking sandals. An array of leather necklaces lurked beneath a luxuriant field of chest hair.
“Professor Sharafi,” he called out to Zahed.
Zahed acknowledged him with a small wave and a nod.
“Suleyman Toprak, but you can call me Sully,” the guide said with a big, toothy smile and a quasi-American accent that seemed to owe more to watching American television than to any actual time spent stateside. They shook hands.
“Ali Sharafi,” Zahed said, his expert eye giving the locale a quick scan. He didn’t spot anything out of place. “I’m so glad you were available at such short notice.” He’d chosen him out of several local guides who had Web sites touting their services, and booked him before leaving Istanbul.
“I’m glad you called,” Sully replied. “This sounds like fun.”
Zahed gestured at Simmons. “This is my colleague, Ted Chaykin.” Zahed had chosen names that his captive wouldn’t easily forget, as per his training, but it still gave him a perverse internal tickle to watch Simmons’s reaction to the ones he’d chosen.
The guide said, “Great to meet you both. I hope you had a good drive.”
“No problems, except that Ted’s got some stomach problems. We had to stop a few times on the way.” Zahed grimaced with mock empathy. “He’s usually much bubblier than this.”
“It happens sometimes,” Sully nodded. “Nothing a strong glass of raki won’t fix. And fortunately, I keep a bottle in my car. For when we get back, of course.” He flashed that big smile again and gave Simmons a conspiratorial wink, then turned to Zahed. “So this monastery you said you were looking for,” he asked. “You said you had more information about where it might be?”
Zahed pulled out a small notepad on which he’d written the information that Father Alexios, the grand archimandrite of the library, had found and translated for him shortly before he’d pumped a bullet through the priest’s forehead. “We’re still looking for more clues, but at the moment, the best thing we have to go on is the journal of a bishop from Antioch who described visiting the monastery back in the thirteenth century.”
“Great, just give me a second.” He dove into his car and came back holding a large climbing map, which he spread out on the Toyota’s hood. “We’re here, and this area here is the mountain,” he told his new clients, indicating the places on the map.
“Okay, well … what we know is this. The bishop describes how he went north, from Sis, which, at the time, was the capital of the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia.” Zahed was talking with great nonchalance and assurance, as if this were all second nature to him. “And Sis, as you probably know, is the old name of the city of Kozan.”
A flicker of recognition lit up in the guide’s eyes. “Kozan. That’s here,” he said, indicating its position on the map. “About a hundred kilometers south of here.”
“Exactly,” Zahed continued. “The bishop then visited the fortress of Baberon before crossing into Seljuk territory through the Cilician Gates.”
“That’s the Gulek Pass, over here.” Sully pointed it out. “It’s the only easy way to get across the Taurus Mountains.”
“Then he says he headed northeast, toward Mount Argaeus, and, I quote, ‘ventured into the mountain, past orchards resplendent with apple, quince, and walnut, across pastures strewn with sheep and goats, then across a steep incline and a small forest of poplar trees. We then climbed past a glorious waterfall before reaching the most pious of monasteries, dedicated to St. Basil.”
The guide’s face clouded. He studied the map, his mind visibly scrolling through all the visuals he had experienced over the years. After a moment, he said, “Well, if he was traveling from Baberon, he probably followed this road, it’s been a trading route for centuries.” He pointed out the area he was referring to on the map. “And on this side of the mountain, I can think of three, even four spectacular waterfalls that he might have been talking about. Same for the trees; there are several pockets of them in this area.” His tone lost its bounce. “You don’t have anything more?”
“Well, he describes the sunset over the distant horizon, which tells us that he was somewhere here, on the west-facing ridges of the mountain. But there is something else, an intriguing reference to something he saw along the way,” Zahed told him. “Something he describes with highly reverent terms as being a stone from the vessel of the Lord inscribed with crosses and the sign of Nimrod.”
“The sign of Nimrod?”
“A diamond,” Zahed explained. “Nimrod. From the Hebrew Bible. Noah’s great-grandson, the first king after the great flood.”
The guide’s face lit up. “A big stone with crosses carved into it. From the Ark.”
“You know it?” Zahed asked.
Sully nodded to himself as the cogs in his mind fell into place, then his face widened with a smug grin. “Let’s go find this monastery of yours.” He folded up the map and trotted off to his car. “Follow me, okay?” he shouted back. “We can drive up the first bit.”
“Lead the way,” Zahed replied. He watched the guide fire up the Toyota’s engine, then glanced at Simmons and gave him a satisfied nod. “Let’s go find that monastery, ‘Ted.’ “
Within minutes, the two 4x4s were trundling up the mountain.
Chapter 27
The waters of the Bosphorus shimmered a mesmeric gold under the morning sun as the small jet banked over Istanbul and whisked Reilly, Tess, and Ertugrul out of Europe and into Asia. The aircraft, a sleek, white Turkish Air Force Cessna Citation VII, was ferrying them to the city of Kayceri, bang in the middle of the country, where a unit of Turkish Special Forces would be waiting to take them up into the mountain.
As the aircraft streaked up to its cruising altitude, Reilly took in the receding panorama of domes and minarets with weary eyes that he could barely keep open. He’d lost count of how many cups of coffee he’d drunk in the last twenty-four hours or so, a number that would have to be multiplied by a factor of two or three to take into account the high potency of Turkish coffee. Still, he needed to get some sleep if he was going to be effective in the field op that was coming up.
All three of them had worked late into the night at the consulate, and they’d ended up not bothering with hotel rooms and crashing there instead. Tess had spent her time trying to get a clearer handle on where Conrad and his gang could have been heading, while Reilly and Ertugrul had spent long hours poring over all the local surveillance intel that had come in from both CIA and Turkish sources, looking for anything out of the ordinary that might suggest complicity with the Vatican bomber. Additionally, calls had had to be made to their superiors in New York City as well as to Langley and to Fort Meade, home of the NSA, where chatter was being analyzed and voice intercepts combed for anything that could help answer the one pressing question: how the bomber was getting from Istanbul to his in
tended destination.
By the time the sun came up, none of it had borne fruit. All they had to go on was the most recent update from the local polis telling them what cars had been stolen in and around Istanbul in the last forty-eight hours. Unsurprisingly, there hadn’t been that many, given the short time frame. Fifty-seven vehicles were on the list. Reilly and Ertugrul had been able to eliminate more than half of them on the grounds that they wouldn’t be suitable for a ten- to twelve-hour drive. They’d then waited while the data was fed into the police’s MOBESE information and security network, linking over a thousand surveillance cameras across the city to a license plate recognition and vehicle tracking center. Several of the cars on the hot list had been picked up on video at various locations, and given that Reilly and Ertugrul knew which direction the bomber was headed, they were able to narrow it down even further, to fourteen vehicles of interest. Then shortly after dawn, word had come in from Air Combat Command that they’d agreed to let them have one of the Global Hawks. It was on the ground at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, in the Persian Gulf, being readied for its sortie, and was expected to be in position over the target area by mid-morning. The list of hot cars had been relayed to the drone’s controllers in the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base in California, where computers would analyze the drone’s video feed for any matching vehicles.
There was nothing more they could do except wait. And hope. And try not to dwell too much on what had happened so far and what mistakes they thought they might have made.
Reilly swung his gaze to the seat facing him. Tess felt it and looked up from her laptop. Even after a virtually sleepless night in the discomfort of a consulate meeting room, the sparkle in her look and the mischievous curl at the edge of her lips was still there. He had to smile, but it was a weak smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
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