The Mountain Mother Cipher (The Arkana Archaeology Mystery Series Book 2)

by N. S. Wikarski

  Chapter 35 – Lyrical Interlude

  Daniel drew out a handkerchief to mop his forehead. He felt exhausted from fighting the heat and the altitude. They’d been searching for days, working their way methodically through the villages that dotted the eastern slope of Mount Ida. Climbing ever higher. Mosques and churches and shrines. They’d covered every inch of the interior and exterior facade of each structure.

  Hunt was clearly growing tired of the quest though he hadn’t lifted a finger to help. Today his principal occupation had been to locate a fresh supply of raki once he’d emptied the bottle that Ilhami had brought along in the car.

  Daniel walked up to the exterior of yet another obscure shrine which their guide had selected to show them.

  “Here, you come inside here, please!” Ilhami beckoned to the Scion insistently.

  Hunt trailed absently in their wake. Now well into his second bottle of liquor, his gait had become a trifle unsteady.

  Daniel wasn’t impressed by the structure that confronted him. A small round building, windowless with a single arched doorway that stood open to the elements. Erected of rustic grey stone and mortar, it seemed to have sprung from the rocky terrain underfoot.

  “This is church of Aiya Anastasia,” Ilhami informed them. “Very old. Nobody come here now.”

  The Turk stepped aside to allow Daniel to pass. Daniel knew that Aiya meant something like “saint” in Turkish. He walked into the cool, dim interior. There was nothing to see. One stuccoed room with a flaking, faded fresco of what appeared to be an angel. In front of the fresco stood an iron votive stand with several dozen glass candle holders. No one had come here to pray for a very long time. He could tell by the thick layer of dust that coated the tops of the burned out candles.

  The Scion lit his flashlight to inspect the ceiling and walls. As he expected, there was nothing to be seen. No lily symbol that would guide him to the artifact his father so desperately wanted him to find. He sighed as weariness overtook him.

  Stepping backwards out of the little stone church, he walked around its perimeter, followed closely by Ilhami. He looked first at the rounded roof and then at the foundation. There were chips and irregularities in the surface of the stone but nothing that seemed to be a distinct mark of any kind.

  As Daniel came back around to the front of the shrine, he noticed another car climbing up the dusty trail. A young couple got out. They appeared to be in their twenties. Perhaps newlyweds on vacation. The man held a video camera.

  “Hello,” the woman greeted them. Her accent was American.

  “Hello,” Daniel replied.

  Ilhami bobbed his head.

  Hunt tipped his cowboy hat but said nothing.

  The three men moved several yards away to allow the couple privacy as they toured the shrine. They were deeply engrossed in a guide book that gave the history of the site. The woman was reading aloud from it while the man filmed the church.

  Hunt had a calculating gleam in his eye as he leaned over to whisper in Daniel’s ear. “Hey, what say I get ‘em to clear out in a hurry?” He opened his jacket to briefly reveal the gun resting in a holster beneath his arm.

  The Scion grew alarmed. “Mr. Hunt, you can’t be serious!”

  The mercenary shrugged. “Ain’t nobody around to tell on me. This trip’s been mighty dull so far. How about I stir things up a bit? Throw a scare into ‘em.”

  Daniel gripped Hunt’s wrist. “You’ll do no such thing! I’m afraid I must insist.”

  Hunt raised his eyebrows, shaking his hand free. “You gonna insist?” For a split second Daniel thought the man was about to strike him, then the mercenary broke into a lopsided grin. “Aw shucks, can’t you tell I’m just pullin’ yer leg? When you gonna learn to take a joke, boy?”

  Daniel only relaxed by a hairsbreadth. Hunt’s face was flushed, exhilarated. There was liquor on his breath. Despite his protests, Daniel wondered if Hunt might not have been serious about terrorizing the young couple. He seemed to like to scare people. He also seemed to like to kill people when the opportunity presented. If he thought he could get away with it, Hunt might have shot the couple for sport.

  Shaking off the chilling notion, Daniel said, “Mr. Hunt, why don’t you sit down in the shade of that tree for a while. I won’t be much longer.”

  Leroy gave Daniel a sour look and wandered off to take a seat on the grass. He opened his bottle again.

  Ilhami tapped Daniel on the shoulder. “Back here is cemetery. You come look here.”

  Strewn across the green hillside were a series of headstones. Unlike the neat, orderly rows of a modern cemetery, the rocks were scattered haphazardly Many were sunken into the ground.

  Hunt called out, “Brother Hammy. Y’all come on over here and set yourself down for a spell.”

  The guide looked questioningly at Daniel.

  “Go with him,” the Scion suggested, secretly glad to be rid of the duo while he inspected the rest of the site.

  The Turk happily ambled over to the tree in whose shade Hunt was reclining. He sat down cross-legged on the ground and took a long draught from the bottle which the mercenary held out to him.

  By this time the young couple had departed. After filming the exterior of the shrine, they got back into their car and headed down the mountain.

  Daniel turned upland to inspect the markings on the headstones. Even though he tried to ignore the conversation of his companions, it was impossible.

  Hunt was apparently in a jovial mood fueled by too much raki and the fantasy of killing innocent tourists. He put his arm around the Turk and said, “Brother Hammy, how’d you like to learn a song?”

  “I like American songs.” The guide smiled amiably.

  “Well, this ain’t like no song you ever heard before. In fact, it’s about somethin’ that happened right here in your own backyard.”

  “Here?” Ilhami asked doubtfully.

  “Yup, it happened a long time ago when you all was fightin’ the Russkies. During the Crimean War.”

  “Crimean?’ The guide repeated the word carefully. “What this means?”

  “It’s that little spit of land that hangs out into the north side of the Black Sea. A lot of big battles got fought there so that’s why the war got named after it. Anyhow, this here song is called ‘Abdul The Bulbul Emir.’”

  “Emir,” Ilhami repeated. “I know this word and Abdul is man’s name.”

  “That’s right,” Hunt nodded encouragingly. “So this fella Abdul is Turkish and he gets into a tussle with this Russian dude who steps on his toe and they end up killin’ each other.”

  Ilhami’s face was puzzled. “They die because one man steps on toe of other?”

  “It’s supposed to be a funny song, see but there’s two versions of it. The clean one and the dirty one. I learned the dirty one a long time ago when I was in the army. You’re gonna love it.” Without further prelude, Hunt launched into the song.

  Daniel paused in his search to listen. The mercenary’s voice was a passable baritone. The tune was catchy until Daniel actually started to realize what the song was about. After hearing the first two stanzas he scampered as far away from his companions as possible. The lyrics were filthy. There were many slang words which Ilhami didn’t understand. Whenever the Turk seemed puzzled by a line, Hunt obligingly paused in his performance to explain its meaning in salacious detail. Even though the Scion hiked to the outer boundary of the cemetery he still couldn’t get out of earshot. He tried to distract himself by inspecting a particularly interesting headstone. He pored over the single cross chiseled into the rock as if it contained the entire book of Genesis and all the prophesies of the Diviners besides. Daniel remained fixated on his task until he could hear Hunt’s voice subside. By this time, Ilhami was rolling on the ground with laughter.

  As Daniel came back down the hill, he saw the Turk sit up eagerly.

  “Now you teach me. Is good song!”

  The Scion groaned inwardly. Ilhami’s morals
were already questionable without Hunt corrupting him further.

  Daniel interposed himself between the two men. “It’s getting late,” he suggested mildly. “Perhaps we should be moving on.”

  “Whatsa matter, boy?” Hunt asked thickly. “Air gettin’ a little too blue fer you?” He shook his bottle disappointedly, realizing it was empty.

  “The day will be gone soon, Mr. Hunt. We don’t want to be stranded up here after dark, do we?” Daniel turned to Ilhami. “Where should we look next?”

  The Turk regarded his doubtfully. “Is all.”

  Daniel squinted at him. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  Ilhami shrugged expressively. “Aiya Anastasia. Last place to look on mountain.”

  Daniel felt the color drain from his face. “You mean there are no more?”

  “Where we are is very high up mountain. No more churches above this.”

  The Scion slumped down on the grass and buried his head in his hands. “I just need to think for a few minutes.”

  “Take yer time, boy.” Hunt leaned back against the tree trunk and dipped his cowboy hat over his eyes.

  Daniel conjured a mental image of the lecture his father would give him if he returned home empty-handed. There had to be something he had overlooked. But what? He turned to the guide. “Are you quite sure there’s no place else? Think very hard.”

  Ilhami screwed up his eyebrows in a look of intense concentration. After several seconds of facial contortion, he gave Daniel a sheepish smile. “Is all churches. No more here.”

  Daniel rose with a heavy heart.

  The guide added in a small voice, “Maybe we go to big rocks, yes?”

  The Scion whirled to stare down at him. “What big rocks?”

  Ilhami was taken aback by his intensity. “Long time ago before sultans. Somebody put big rocks in circle.”

  “You mean a stone ring of some sort? Megaliths?”

  “Just big rock circle. You want we go look there?”

  “Does it face east?” Daniel asked eagerly.

  Ilhami nodded doubtfully. “On same side we are. Yes. Only up high. We have to drive long time.”

  Daniel looked at the position of the sun overhead. “Can we get there today and still have time to drive down the mountain?”

  The Turk nodded. “If we go now.”

  Daniel roused the dosing Hunt with the toe of his shoe. “Then we go right now!”

  Chapter 36 – Captivating Companions

  The trio of relic thieves held Cassie at gunpoint while they conferred unintelligibly in Turkish about what to do with her.

  The girl took stock of her situation. Surprisingly, she didn’t feel afraid. She flashed back briefly to the moment when Sybil had first broken the news that their parents were dead. She’d been plenty scared then. A scared, confused little kid. And when Sybil herself died, Cassie felt like a slightly older but equally scared and confused kid. Then the Arkana entered her life and everything changed. Faye and Maddie and Erik and Griffin were her people now. She thought of them and felt a grim resolve she hadn’t known she possessed. Nobody was ever going to screw with her or her people again. Not ever! She had an idea.

  “Hey! Any of you guys speak English?”

  They stopped chattering abruptly. The two younger men gaped at her.

  “I speak little bit,” the man with the cap answered. “Where your friends?”

  “They aren’t here,” she lied. “How do you know about my friends?”

  The man laughed. “We see what you do. You bury something in ground. Why you bury gold like that?”

  Cassie shrugged, appearing innocent. “It was a joke. A joke we were playing on some people we know.”

  The man gave her a shrewd look. “We play different kind of joke. We take gold things out of ground and sell them. We not put things in ground.” He glanced back briefly at his companions. “Except sometimes people. We put them in ground if they take from us.”

  Cassie maintained a stony expression. Animals could sense fear. These guys weren’t that much farther up the evolutionary ladder.

  “Where your friends?” the man with the cap asked again.

  The girl brazened it out. “They’re waiting for me at the Jeep. I had to go back to the stone circle because I dropped my room key.”

  The Turk fished in his vest pocket. “This your key?” He held it out for her to see.

  “Yes, that’s right. Can I have it back?”

  The Turk chuckled. “I keep for now.” He placed it back in his pocket. “Why you follow us?”

  “To get my key back, of course.”

  The Turk didn’t appear convinced. “You think you take key back from us by yourself?”

  Cassie gave a little shrug. “Well, I wasn’t going to rush you if that’s what you mean. I just wanted to see where you went and then I was going to get my friends and have them take it back.”

  The man said nothing.

  “My friends are waiting for me.” She tried to sound bold now. “If I don’t get back to them, they’ll come looking for me.”

  The man smiled grimly. “They not find you.”

  Cassie couldn’t believe her own composure in the face of the threat. She felt nothing but an absolute stillness at the core of her being. It helped her keep a clear head. She took a step forward. “I’m worth more alive than dead.”

  The Turk paused to consider. “What you mean?”

  There it was. He was interested. She pressed her advantage. “I mean ransom. For me and the golden bee. I work for an organization that will pay you.”

  The Turk ogled her, walking around her in a slow circle.

  She read his thoughts and nipped them in the bud. “And I mean intact. You don’t get to sample the merchandise. If you touch so much as one hair on my head, the price goes down.”

  That stopped him short. Apparently money trumped lust. His two associates were whispering to each other trying to understand what was being said in the foreign tongue.

  The man with the cap rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

  The girl slowly lowered her arms. “Name your price. My people can afford to pay you twice what you’d get on the black market for that artifact.”

  “Plus they pay extra for you,” the man corrected her.

  “Absolutely!” She nodded and folded her arms across her chest. Cassie thought about her teammates standing above and hearing every word she said. She spoke a little louder for their benefit. “Now take me someplace where I can write a ransom note. It has to be in my handwriting so my friends will know it came from me. You should enclose the room key with the note as extra proof. One of your men can take the message to the hotel where we were staying.”

  The Turk’s face took on a crafty expression. “If you play joke on us, we bury you. Maybe you not dead when we bury you. Then we have good joke.”

  Cassie returned his stare without flinching. Animals can sense fear. In a humorless voice she said, “I’m not joking. You deliver me to my friends unharmed and you’ll get the money just like I said.”

  The Turk turned to address his companions. After a lengthy and very heated conversation they fell in line and headed down the forest path. The man with the gun nudged Cassie forward.

  ***

  The Arkana team let out a collective sigh of relief as they watched the party disappear around the bend.

  “That chick must have brass ovaries!” Erik’s voice was filled with admiration.

  “You usually refer to her as a kid,” Griffin reminded him.

  Erik grinned. “No kid would have had the brains or the nerve to do what she just did. She’s definitely been upgraded in my book.”

  The three of them rose to follow at a safe distance.

  “Game faces, guys,” the Security Coordinator told the others. “Time for us to save a kick-ass damsel in distress.”

  Chapter 37 – Rustics Retreat

  The sun was well past its zenith by now. Its beams slanted downward to the forest floor. The
Turks and their captive traveled in silence for about a mile. They followed a single well-worn trail though several other paths criss-crossed theirs along the way. Eventually they came to a small stone cottage hidden among the evergreens. It was a single-story building with a low-pitched roof that hung over a wooden porch. The structure was run down. The stucco was grayish and cracked in many places, exposing the stone wall underneath. Broken terra cotta tiles had slid off the roof and lay scattered around the foundation.

  The man with the cap pushed the weathered wooden door open. It wasn’t locked.

  The Turk with the rifle shoved Cassie through the entrance. She looked around as her eyes adjusted to the dim interior. The whitewashed walls were as gray as the exterior. Black streaks from innumerable cooking fires ran up the wall above the hearth. There was a central room with two deeply recessed casement windows. The glass was so grimy it afforded very little light. A pair of doors led off to other rooms which Cassie guessed to be bedrooms or storage areas. The house smelled musty as if it had been abandoned decades before.

  “You live here?” she asked the man with the cap.

  “Sometime we stay here,” he replied cryptically. “Now you sit.” He gestured toward one of the chairs drawn up next to a rough plank table in the center of the room. This might once have been the kitchen though there was no running water or electricity that Cassie could see. An unlit oil lamp sat in the middle of the table.

  The man with the cap walked over to a cupboard and began rifling through drawers and shelves. After a few minutes, he returned with the nub of a pencil and a torn piece of paper.

  “Now you write,” he commanded, handing Cassie the objects.

  His two companions stood looking over the girl’s shoulder as she formed the unfamiliar characters on the page.

  The Turk named an outrageous sum of money for the ransom. Cassie and he haggled over the price until the girl convinced him to ask for something reasonable. She thought that agreeing to his terms too readily might make him suspicious. He settled for a smaller sum which she dutifully copied down on the page. She guessed that her companions must be somewhere outside by now. Again she deliberately spoke in a loud enough voice for them to hear.