The Emerald Tablet

by Meaghan Wilson Anastasios

  Ben skidded down the cobbles outside the pointed arch of the Grand Bazaar’s Nuruosmaniye Gate and belted into the wide arcade that transected the covered market. It took a beat for his eyes to adjust after the sudden transition from the bright light of day to the dim atmosphere inside, and he was momentarily blinded by the brightly lit displays of shimmering gold in the windows of the jewellery shops lining both sides of the main street bisecting the bazaar.

  The arcade curved slightly and sloped upwards from the gate. Ben could see Garvé ahead, weaving through the slow-moving crowds of shoppers perusing the gilded treasures on offer. The Frenchman glanced over his shoulder, slowing for a moment until he caught sight of Ben on his tail. Even from that distance, Ben could see his eyes widen with surprise when he saw that he hadn’t managed to shake his pursuer.

  That’s right, you bastard. There’s no escape!

  Instincts from many years past kicked into gear. A rush of adrenalin pushed Ben forward, his muscles burning.

  The Frenchman skidded around a corner, turning right and heading into the heart of the bazaar’s maze of lanes. Think you’ll lose me in there, do you? Ben smiled grimly. Not on your bloody life. One street back from the intersection Garvé had taken, Ben turned right, barrelling down a laneway lined with stores bedecked with leather goods and cobblers’ wares. Ahead was an ornate marble fountain that sat at the centre of what Ben knew was a junction with another arcade that would take him to the street Garvé had followed.

  He tore around the corner. Sure enough, ahead he saw the Frenchman turn onto the same street, checking as he did to make sure Ben wasn’t still following him.

  Get out of sight, Ben thought. Let him think he’s free. Let him relax. He ducked behind the fountain and waited until he was sure Garvé would have moved on. I’ll find you anyway.

  Once he knew he was clear, Ben resumed his pursuit. He could trace the Frenchman’s frantic passage through the bazaar by the wake he’d left behind him – shopkeepers huddled together, gesticulating and chattering.

  When he reached the terminal point of the lane he’d been following, he stopped. Left or right? he wondered.

  An old man sat on a low, rush-bottomed stool outside a shop on the corner of the two streets, its interior stacked high with neatly folded kilims and carpets.

  ‘Excuse me, sir?’

  ‘You’re Turk?’ the man asked, incredulously.

  ‘No. American. Could you please tell me – has someone passed here in a hurry? A foreigner with red hair – wearing a blue suit.’

  The old man nodded. ‘Yes. He came this way.’

  ‘Where did he go?’ Ben asked impatiently.

  ‘Passed by, then he went in there.’ He extended an arthritic finger towards a door set in the wall between two shops. ‘Don’t know what he wants in there, though. Nothing to buy. No shops.’

  I know exactly what’s in there, Ben thought. And given there’s only one way in and one way out, I’ll wager you don’t, you fucking prick.

  48

  Istanbul

  Ben took the timber steps leading up to the bazaar’s roof carefully. Three flights up, the stairwell terminated at a metal door which was usually secured with a sliding bolt, but now stood ajar. He approached the doorway cautiously.

  If the bastard’s on the other side, and shoves the door, I’m done. He looked back down the steep flight of rickety stairs. The next thing to stop his fall would be the marble floor.

  Ben crouched and reached for the lower corner of the door, which hung open above the uppermost steps. Slowly, slowly, he inched it open, bracing himself for the moment Garvé would shove the door back towards him, expecting it to make an impact and send Ben tumbling backwards.

  Nothing. He released the breath he’d been holding and crawled up the rest of the stairs on hands and knees. Keeping his head as low as possible, he peeked over the door’s lower sill.

  On the other side, a short flight of stairs led to a narrow walkway that crossed the myriad small domes that covered the bazaar. Put in place so workmen could repair the ancient roof when it succumbed to damage caused by earthquakes, floods and fire, the walkway mirrored the chaotic map of the arcades in the market below. Except that here, all the paths were cul-de-sacs.

  Searching for another doorway that would lead him back down to ground level, Josef Garvé had found himself at one of those dead ends.

  ‘Dead’ being the operative word, Ben thought.

  He stood, no longer concerned about being seen. In a single movement, he took the pistol from his pocket.

  ‘Garvé!’ Ben shouted, aiming the gun at the Frenchman’s head.

  Garvé flinched, hand reaching for what Ben assumed was a weapon beneath his jacket. ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’ Ben shouted as he jogged along the walkway towards him.

  ‘Or what, Benedict?’ Garvé scoffed. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Ben’s peripheral vision was fading to grey as fury made his mind spin. With a fist calloused by years of manual work, he grabbed Garvé’s collar and crushed it between fingers white with rage, pressing the muzzle of his gun into the Frenchman’s temple.

  Behind Garvé, the path ended abruptly and beyond that, the bazaar’s domed roof plunged steeply towards the street below. Unsummoned, a vision of his dead wife Karina came into Ben’s mind, and he pushed the Frenchman backwards so the heels of his shoes were tipping over the edge of the walkway as he teetered on the brink of a dizzying fall.

  I want to see you spinning . . . spiralling through the air. Think you can fly, Frenchman? Ben shoved him again, dragging him back at the last moment.

  Garvé stumbled, glancing backwards. Despite the peril, his voice was steady. ‘As I said, Benedict, what are you going to do? These moments of personal crisis – it’s always interesting to see how people react.’

  Ben’s throat constricted and the words that came out were hoarse and spoken through clenched teeth. ‘Imagine . . . you’re me . . . what would you do?’

  Garvé attempted to laugh. ‘Me? Be you? Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Wrong answer.’ Ben drew back the pistol and smashed it into the Frenchman’s mouth.

  Garvé’s lips were shredded, sandwiched between teeth and metal. Blood cascaded down his chin, along with white chips of the teeth Ben had shattered. He spat, covering Ben’s shirt in a filthy shower of blood and gore.

  Through tattered lips, Garvé spoke, his words thick. ‘You see how easy it is for me? I took your friend . . . your lover . . . and most of all, your beautiful wife. The German, Ricard? You know it was me who told him where to find your wife, don’t you? You see, there’s nothing I can’t do . . . nobody who’s out of my reach.’

  ‘Yeah. You’re right,’ said Ben, lifting the gun, now sticky with Garvé’s blood. ‘Which makes this easy . . .’ He drew back the hammer.

  ‘Ben! No!’ Footsteps behind him.

  ‘Help!’ Garvé shrieked. ‘Officer! This man has attacked me!’

  ‘You, shut up!’ Hasan shouted. ‘I know exactly who you are and what you’ve done! Ben?’

  Ben could hear Hasan’s laboured breathing behind him. ‘Stop right there, Hasan!’

  ‘You know, if you kill him, I won’t be able to protect you. A foreigner murdered – and a wealthy one, at that. There’s no hiding that.’

  ‘Then walk away. Leave.’

  ‘Too many people have seen you, Benedict. How do you think I found you?’

  Ben’s heart was hammering in his chest. ‘I don’t care anymore. I want this to stop.’

  He looked at the man in front of him, the lower part of his face destroyed with gory bubbles of air bursting as he tried to breath in and then out through his shattered mouth. But above that, lifeless black eyes considered his captor clinically and Ben knew that if Josef Garvé were to survive this, he would never be free of him.

  As the Frenchman leant away from Ben, his weight was approaching a point of critical mass where gravity meant his body would break free of Ben’s grip
and tumble over the edge.

  Just let go, he thought. Let him go. For Karina.

  Then he thought of her. Essie.

  A soothing voice was at his shoulder. ‘Let me take him, Ben. He’s going to be in jail for years. Trying to smuggle nuclear material, and collaborating with the Israelis? He’s finished.’ Hasan rested a hand gently on Ben’s back. ‘Please, Ben.’

  Essie. Although he knew there was much about her he didn’t know, she was real. And she was waiting for him.

  Ben dragged Garvé away from the precipice and flung him down onto the concrete walkway.

  ‘Thank you, Benedict.’ Hasan hoisted Garvé to his feet. ‘You’ve done the right thing.’

  ‘You think so?’

  As the Turkish officer led the Frenchman away, Ben sat on the edge of the path, his legs hanging over the iron rooftops of the bazaar below. He buried his face in his hands and wept.

  49

  Istanbul

  ‘He’s not happy,’ said Hasan, lighting a cigarette clamped between manicured fingers.

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t be, would he?’ Ben replied. ‘Can I have one?’

  After the confrontation on the rooftop, Ben was deflated. He struck a match and lit up, inhaling the burning smoke deep into his lungs.

  The two men stood side by side and watched as a pair of uniformed officers transferred a locked metal crate from the tray of an open-backed truck to a small delivery van.

  ‘What excuse did you use for seizing his property?’

  ‘Excuse?’ Hasan tilted his head back and gazed at Ben archly, black brows lifting over his golden-brown eyes. ‘If what you told me about the contents of that box is true, then I don’t need one. Attempting to transport something across the border that poses such a threat to the health and safety of the people of Turkey is a very serious crime. Besides, now it’s evidence.’

  ‘Thank you, Hasan. I hope handing it over to me doesn’t cause you too much trouble.’

  The Turk shrugged. ‘It’s nothing.’ He drew deeply on his cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs before releasing it to dissipate into the air.

  ‘Won’t you need it to prosecute him?’

  ‘We ran the Geiger counter over it. Sent it off the dial. And we documented the readings so we don’t need the actual object. It should be enough to keep the Frenchman locked up in a cell for a while so we can find a way of charging him with the death of the people he had killed in Topkapı and Niğde . . .’

  Ben’s blood ran cold. ‘Niğde?’

  ‘You knew him, I think. He used to work at Eskitepe. Cem Yıldız – the curator at the Akmedresi.’

  ‘Ah, shit!’ Ben exclaimed.

  ‘A man was seen leaving the museum washing blood from his hands,’ Hasan continued. ‘Stocky. Dark hair. When they found Cem, the investigators knew from his wounds it was the same attacker who’d killed Fatih in the archives. And with the testimony of the witnesses, they knew it wasn’t you who did it. You’re clear of any suspicion.’

  ‘Cem . . . was he . . .?’

  ‘Yes. The local officers had never seen so much blood. Whoever killed him was a butcher.’

  ‘Schubert was his name. Ricard Schubert. And, yes, he killed Fatih in Topkapı.’

  ‘Any proof of that?’

  ‘From the horse’s mouth. But you’ll find that horse doesn’t have much to say for himself anymore. He met a pretty nasty end.’

  Hasan scrutinised Ben intently. ‘At your hands?’

  Ben said nothing.

  ‘Ah. I see. Added to what I saw of you today . . . well, it seems there are always new things to learn about you, Benedict Hitchens.’ Hasan inhaled a deep draught of cigarette smoke. ‘I’m pleased to hear that’s the last we’ll see of him, anyway. I thought he must have been working his way through our population of librarians. Can’t afford to lose them all.’

  ‘Cem was a curator. Not a librarian.’

  The Turk waved his hand dismissively. ‘Same thing.’

  ‘And the woman?’ Ben could barely bring himself to ask. ‘There was a woman – Sebile. In Tyana . . . Kemerhisar. Did the bastard follow us there as well?’

  Hasan looked confused. ‘Who?’

  ‘A woman who lived in the town.’

  ‘Not that I heard. Would her death have been noticed?’

  Ben thought about Sebile’s largely solitary existence. ‘She lived alone.’

  ‘Nothing’s been reported yet,’ he replied. ‘Maybe she escaped.’

  ‘If that animal was after her, I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ Ben said.

  Hasan walked over to the van and opened the driver’s door. ‘Here,’ he said, tossing Ben the keys. ‘It’s a vehicle we seized from a smuggler. Nobody will miss it. Keep it as long as you like and bring it back when you’re done.’

  Ben checked that the crate was well secured in the back. ‘Did you open it?’ he asked.

  ‘After what you told me? Not on your life.’

  ‘What are you going to tell Garvé about where it went?’

  ‘It’s evidence, so usually it would be sent to our storage facility on the outskirts of the city.’

  ‘With his contacts, even if he’s in prison he’ll be able to pressure for its return.’

  Hasan laughed. ‘You’ve obviously never been to our warehouses. The men who oversee them are well-meaning, but utterly overwhelmed by the scale of their responsibilities. Documentation is – ah, what’s a polite way of putting it? – fairly relaxed. I’d estimate that ninety per cent of what’s there isn’t recorded properly. And you’ll note I said “warehouses” – plural. There are literally millions of objects stored there. When they can’t find it, the administrators will just attribute its absence to carelessness and sloppy handling.’

  ‘If you’re keeping an eye on illegal movements of stolen antiquities, why are you happy to let this one go?’

  ‘Well, it was brought into the country, wasn’t it? Now, if you were trying to take it out – that would be something else altogether.’ He took another drag of his cigarette. ‘What do you plan to do with it?’

  ‘Haven’t decided yet. But don’t worry. It’ll be safe.’ A plan was formulating in Ben’s mind, but he knew better than to share it. He trusted Hasan, but he also knew that the fewer people who knew about the tablet’s destination the better.

  ‘I suppose I should thank you for helping me foil an act of international terrorism on Turkish soil, shouldn’t I?’ Hasan turned and looked out through the high, wrought-iron fence that encircled the police headquarters towards the lokanta on the opposite side of the street. His eyes narrowed. ‘So. That’s her, is it?’

  Ben was silent. Barely visible in the back corner of the crowded restaurant was an identifiably foreign woman with blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, her head bowed over a bowl as she ate.

  Christ! Ben cursed. Of course he knows what she looks like now, you idiot! He was the one who showed you the recent photo of her. That’s what started this whole damned thing.

  ‘You know,’ Hasan continued, ‘there’s still an outstanding warrant for her arrest . . . multiple warrants.’ He paused a moment as he dropped his cigarette onto the paving stones and ground it beneath his heel. ‘If you were planning to offer her a bed for the night, I’d be compelled to come to your home and take her into custody . . . say, tomorrow morning.’

  Is he saying what I think he’s saying? Ben wondered.

  ‘I should let you know, though,’ Hasan said. ‘In light of the seriousness of her many . . . many . . . crimes, and her demonstrated ability to elude capture, tomorrow I’d be obliged to blockade the road to your yalı. But manpower at the moment is stretched . . . I regret to say that I couldn’t call on my colleagues in the naval police to cover your home from the sea. So if she were to decide to depart the city along the Bosphorus . . . well, that might make things very difficult for me. And it would be a terrible shame if she were to slip through my fingers yet again. Wouldn’t it?’

  50

&nb
sp; Istanbul

  A blue haze from the charcoal grills burning on board the boats docked at Karaköy drifted over the row of vehicles waiting for the ferry’s arrival. Ben’s stomach growled, his appetite suddenly roused after hours of dormancy by the enticing smell of grilled fish being prepared for the ubiquitous Istanbul snack of balık ekmek.

  ‘I’m starving,’ he said without looking at Essie. ‘The ferry’s not leaving for a bit. D’you want one?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she replied. ‘Still full from the beans and rice at the lokanta.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  As a bow-legged fisherman miraculously kept his balance on the deck of his swaying boat and sliced open a crusty loaf of freshly baked bread to cram it full of lettuce, onion, tomato and fillets of charred fish, Ben watched Essie out of the corner of his eye. He became a walking cliché at the sight of her – his breath accelerated, his heart pounded and blood rushed to his head. No matter how determined he was to remain unaffected by her, it was impossible. His desire was a blight that gnawed at his insides with jagged teeth.

  Ever since Hasan had all but promised him an undisturbed night to spend with her, Ben’s mind had been whirring. For a start, he had no idea what plans she had for herself. He’d driven down to the docks, but hadn’t extended an invitation to her to join him on the ferry to the Asian side of the city. Yet, she was still by his side. Even if she did elect to come with him, he had no idea what he’d do once they reached his home. There was no denying the physical hold she had over him. But he was still humiliated and angry after the two-act betrayal that had plunged his life into disarray. Finding a way to forgive that wouldn’t be easy.

  Then again, she did save your life, he reminded himself. That has to count for something.

  The journey from the Negev had been so frantic, they’d scarcely had the chance to speak, and certainly not about the things that had occurred between them in the past. He hadn’t even had a straight answer from her about why she’d risked so much to come back and rescue them. Even if Josef Garvé never did work out that she’d been directly involved in the events that led to his arrest, the pilot of the helicopter she’d hijacked would surely let him know that she’d re-routed the flight back to the desert to retrieve the two men the Frenchman had left there to die. And given what Ben had just done to Garvé, knowing she was responsible for setting him free would be the nail in her coffin. Although he knew from personal experience that she was an accomplished and very convincing liar, there didn’t seem to be any plausible way to fudge her way out of that one. All she could hope was that Hasan was right and Garvé would be behind bars for a very, very long time.