The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set

by N. S. Wikarski

  She stood on tiptoe to check the peep hole in the door. A globular face was staring back at her.

  “Oh jeez!” She jumped back, startled. Then she fumbled with the lock.

  “Hey, toots.”

  “My name’s not…” she trailed off. “Oh, never mind. Come on in.”

  Erik sauntered past her, hands dug deeply into his jeans pockets. Looking around at the suite assigned to Cassie, he said, “Guess now we know who Maddie’s favorite is.”

  “What? You guys don’t have rooms this nice?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t speak for Griffin, but mine’s a broom closet.” He scratched his head. “I think she’s still ticked at me.”

  “Why?” Cassie scurried to the foyer mirror to comb her bed head back into shape.

  “We have what you might call a complicated relationship.”

  Cassie paused to look in the mirror toward Erik’s reflection. “You mean she doesn’t like you either?” Her tone was teasing.

  “Love—hate. Depends on the day.” His eyes swept the sitting room again. “Right now, I’d say accent is on the hate. There was an alleged incident where a hotel room in Venice might have gotten set on fire while I was retrieving an artifact. The Arkana was stuck with the bill. In case you didn’t know, Maddie hates writing big checks.”

  “Alleged?”

  “That’s the way I remember it.” Erik folded his arms across his chest, refusing to offer any further information.

  Cassie’s brain still felt fuzzy. She went to the sink in the luxurious marble bathroom and began splashing cold water on her face. “How long have you been here?” she burbled through the water.

  Leaning against the door, Erik replied, “Since yesterday. I had to get a few things squared away on another project. As long as I was here, I decided to kill two birds. Thought I’d give you a couple of hours to get some sleep before swinging by.”

  Cassie reached for a towel. “What time is it anyway?” She patted her face dry and moved back into the sitting area.

  He checked his watch. “Around five PM local time.”

  “Feels more like four AM to me after being out all night.” She rubbed her head. “I think I need an aspirin.” She dove into her duffle bag in search of the tiny green bottle. “When’s Griffin supposed to arrive?”

  “Last I heard, he caught the flight after yours. Should be here any time now.”

  As if on cue, someone knocked tentatively on the door.

  Erik went to answer while Cassie downed two aspirin and a glass of water.

  “Hello all,” Griffin chirped brightly. Apparently, he was one of those lucky people who could sleep on airplanes. He looked around Cassie’s suite. “I must say Maddie outdid herself in arranging our accommodations this time. Absolutely first rate.”

  “You too, huh?” Erik asked glumly.

  To Griffin’s puzzled look, Cassie replied, “He’s bent out of shape because he got assigned a broom closet.”

  “Ah, I see,” the scrivener nodded sagely. “She still must be upset about the Boetian vase incident.”

  “Guess so,” Erik replied sourly. “I wonder how long it’s gonna take her to forget about it.”

  “I fear she’s rather like an elephant in that regard,” Griffin commented.

  “Guys, check this out,” Cassie called out eagerly. “There’s a balcony.” She threw open the double glass doors and rushed outside to a picture postcard scene. Her room overlooked the oldest section of the city with its mosques and minarets. Beyond them lay the blue ribbon of water that was the Bosporus Straits.

  “What a view!” she exclaimed. “I was in a fog during the taxi ride from the airport. When I got here, I dropped off to sleep right away, so I didn’t get to see the city. It’s amazing!”

  The two men came out to join her at the railing.

  “Yes, Istanbul does have some interesting features,” Griffin observed. “Over there is Hagia Sophia, the church of Holy Wisdom. Its huge dome is an architectural wonder. At the time it was built in the 6th century, the structure was the largest cathedral in the world and remained so for a thousand years. It was converted to a mosque at which point the minarets surrounding it were added. Now it’s a museum.”

  Cassie studied the four slender towers that surrounded the building. “That’s something I’m not used to seeing. I’ve seen cathedrals before, but not with little towers around them. In fact, they’re all over town.”

  Griffin assumed full lecture mode. “Five times a day, the muezzin, a man appointed to lead prayers, will climb the stairs of those minarets and call the Muslim faithful to praise Allah.”

  Cassie squinted in the late afternoon sun. “The tops look so sharp from here; it’s almost as if they’re trying to poke a hole in the sky.”

  Directing her attention elsewhere, Griffin pointed. “Over there is the Blue Mosque, built by a sultan named Ahmet who wished to outdo the splendor of the Hagia Sophia.”

  “It doesn’t look blue to me,” Cassie noted.

  “That’s because you have to be inside to see the blue tiles that it’s named for,” Erik offered. “That green space around the mosques is where the Hippodrome used to be. It was like the Coliseum in Rome. Chariot races and lots of blood sport for the masses. Not to mention a few riots and massacres.”

  “People had an odd idea of fun back then.” The pythia shook her head.

  Erik continued. “On the other side of the Hagia Sofia is the Topkapi Palace. Sultan central. Now it’s a museum, too. The harem is always a big tourist draw.”

  “Hmmm.” Cassie scowled in disapproval. “I’d rather not know about what went on in there.”

  “Actually, it’s quite a fascinating place,” Griffin chimed in, “and not for the reasons you would imagine. The harem was a microcosm of Ottoman society with its own bureaucracy and political power struggles. The sultan’s mother, the Valide Sultan, had a great deal of influence over her son’s decisions in governing the empire. Sultan Padishah Ahmet is even quoted to have said that the world lies at the foot of the mother.”

  Erik snorted sarcastically. “Harem life was pretty good for the sultan’s mother but not so good for his brothers.”

  “Why not?” Cassie turned from the railing to look at him. “Being related to the head honcho couldn’t be all that bad.”

  The two men glanced significantly at one another.

  “You tell her,” Griffin instructed Erik.

  “Sure.” Erik grinned. “Back in the bad old days, there was cutthroat competition to be the next guy in charge, and I mean that literally. Multiple wives meant lots and lots of half-brothers all itching to take the crown, or turban anyway. Succession by murder.”

  “That’s awful.” Cassie gasped. “You mean they’d kill their own relatives to become sultan?”

  “Well, what do you expect? Overlord culture rules applied. The world had become a dog eat dog kind of place. After Sultan Mahomet III murdered all his brothers and most of their mothers, he came up with a kinder, gentler way to deal with the problem of his own sons.”

  “If you can call it kind,” Griffin muttered.

  Cassie shot him a puzzled look but said nothing.

  Erik leaned his elbows on the railing and continued. “Instead of killing all the guys who might be future competition for the throne, the reigning sultan decided to shut them up in a part of the harem called The Cage.”

  Cassie blanched. “Was it an actual cage?”

  “No, it was more like house arrest, but they were always watched by guards and weren’t allowed outside. Of course, they were provided with female company to pass away the time.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t find that idea any less disturbing,” the pythia grumbled. “The women couldn’t have been any more happy to be shut up for a lifetime than the men were.”

  “Yeah but they got to go outside sometimes,” Erik corrected. “Shopping trips to the bazaar.”

  “Swell,” Cassie reto
rted.

  Griffin concluded the story. “In the long run, the practice of caging rivals for the throne wasn’t a success. By the time a prince was allowed to assume power, he was usually incompetent to rule if not outright insane from having spent all his life in confinement. Although one poor sod endured fifty-six years in the cage, others chose a quicker release by committing suicide.”

  “I can believe that,” Cassie agreed. “It’s all so creepy.”

  “It was a violent time, and the men in charge could only retain their power by using violent means.” Griffin sighed. “Even by the standards of overlord culture, this city has had a frightfully bloody past.”

  Cassie turned from the railing and flopped down in one of the balcony chairs. Her companions followed suit.

  “What made it so frightfully bloody?” she asked.

  “This spot was a battleground for nearly all the overlord kingdoms during the past two thousand years,” Griffin explained. “The Bosporus is the only waterway that connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Istanbul itself straddles two continents. Anyone intent on building an empire in this part of the world would eventually have to pass right through it. First, it was conquered by the Greeks, then the Persians, then the Romans, then the Crusaders and finally the Ottomans in the 15th century who held it until the country became a republic in the 1920s. As the conquerors changed, so did the name. Initially, it was Byzantium, then Constantinople, and finally Istanbul.”

  “OK, I’m sorry I asked.” Cassie rubbed her head distractedly. “Too much information. I already had a headache before you guys got here, and I think my brain just reached its capacity for processing new data.”

  “When did you eat last?” Griffin asked solicitously.

  “Not since I left Chicago,” she replied glumly. “I have a thing about airline food.”

  “Maybe a meal would help,” the scrivener suggested. “I confess I’m a bit peckish myself.”

  “We might as well order room service and eat out here,” Erik said. He walked back into the room and returned with a menu. “At least if we charge it to Cassie’s room I won’t get an earful from Maddie about my expense account.”

  “Surely, she’s allowed you a per diem for meals?” Griffin asked.

  Erik gave a short bark of a laugh. “Like you said, man, elephants.”

  Chapter 10 – Flooded with Information

  Half an hour later their room service order arrived, and the Arkana team hungrily dove in. Cassie’s headache evaporated once she started eating.

  Griffin looked at Erik’s plate disparagingly. “Thousands of miles from home and all you can think to order is something as prosaic as a hamburger?”

  “It’s a cheeseburger,” the security coordinator replied defensively taking a large bite. “I like cheeseburgers.”

  Cassie and Griffin had opted to try a sample of Turkish dishes called meze.

  “What’s that you’re eating?” Cassie scrutinized an interesting item on Griffin’s fork.

  “Its name is patlican salatasi in Turkish. I believe it’s cold aubergine salad.”

  “What’s that in English?”

  “Oh, sorry. You Yanks would call it eggplant.”

  Cassie smiled. “I can’t pronounce any of the names, but these dishes sure are good.”

  “Just don’t drink the tap water,” Erik cautioned.

  “He’s right about that,” Griffin concurred. “Bottled water only.”

  Cassie sat back in her chair taking a break between courses. She watched the aquatic taxis and commercial ships making their way up the thin blue ribbon of water separating two continents. “It’s hard to believe a place as pretty as this has seen so much death.”

  Erik looked up briefly from his burger. “You mean all the battles? That’s nothing.”

  She fixed him with a stare. “What do you mean?”

  “Some places just seem to attract disaster. And this one had a dark history long before the first Greek decided to settle here.”

  Cassie turned her attention to Griffin. “What’s he talking about?”

  Griffin hurriedly swallowed a mouthful of food. “He’s referring to the flood.”

  “The flood,” the pythia repeated skeptically.

  “Yup, the flood,” Erik echoed, shifting his focus to his french fries.

  Cassie gave a huge sigh. “OK, I’ve eaten. My head’s clearing up. Tell me the rest.”

  “In the beginning…” Erik intoned pompously.

  “You’ve no doubt heard of the flood in the Bible?” Griffin dabbed his mouth with a napkin.

  “You mean Noah and two by two and the ark?”

  “The very same.”

  “Of course, I have. So what?”

  “There’s a very good possibility that a flood of epic proportions really happened and that it happened not very far from where we’re sitting.”

  “Get out!” Cassie blurted, intrigued.

  “Other cultures have recorded the story of a similar catastrophe. The most well-known is the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh. But there is also a Sumerian deluge myth and the Akkadian epic of Atrahasis. Of course, by the time these stories were written down, the event itself was several thousand years old.”

  “Then what did happen here?” Cassie sat forward, looking at Erik inquisitively.

  “Let him tell it, I’m still eating,” the security coordinator growled.

  “Very well.” Griffin cleared his throat. “You may think of global warming as a modern occurrence, but it’s quite old. The catastrophe of the Black Sea flood was the result of global warming on a scale that is nearly incomprehensible. You see until quite recently a large part of the northern hemisphere was covered in ice.”

  “You mean as in glaciers?” Cassie offered helpfully.

  “Precisely. Around 10000 BCE, the last ice age was coming to an end, and those glaciers began to melt. The process took thousands of years. During that period, the Black Sea was a body of fresh water called the New Euxine Lake.”

  Cassie looked out at the Bosporus in surprise. “But how’s that possible? Doesn’t this channel connect the Black Sea with the ocean somehow?”

  Griffin smiled knowingly. “That’s quite correct, but at the time of which I’m speaking, there was no strait here. Just a rocky shelf separating the Sea of Marmara to the south of us from the Euxine Lake to our north. There was a tiny rivulet called the Bosporus that let fresh water out into the sea.” He paused, looking out at a boatload of sightseers bobbing on the strait.

  “Sumeria is often credited with being the cradle of civilization, but it’s far more likely that the signal honor belongs to the coastline of the Euxine. Humans had left their gatherer-hunter ways behind and become settled agriculturists all along its shores. They set up villages that traded with one another for hundreds of miles around. We assume they were peaceful matristic communities though we can’t be sure. The Arkana is in the process of collecting evidence to that effect. The pleasant life along the Euxine may, in fact, be a memory fragment that eventually found its way into the Bible as the Garden of Eden—a land which was supposedly fed by four rivers. It can’t be proven, of course, that the writers of Genesis were referring to the Black Sea basin, but it is fed by four major rivers: the Dnieper, Dniester, Danube, and Don. An interesting coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “Get to the good part,” Cassie urged. “How did the lake become a sea?”

  Erik leaned back in his chair, propped his feet on the balcony railing and closed his eyes.

  Griffin forged ahead. “As I mentioned, the glaciers had gradually been receding and dumping an enormous quantity of melted ice into the world’s oceans. It was only a matter of time before the sea level rose higher than the fragile little outcropping of rock which separated the Sea of Marmara from the Euxine Lake. The salt water first began as a trickle through the tiny outlet of the Bosporus. The trickle grew into a stream, then the stream grew into a river, and the ri
ver finally grew into a cataract that became unstoppable.”

  Cassie jostled Erik’s arm to waken him. “Are you listening to this?”

  He yawned and resettled himself “I’ve heard it before. Wake me up when he’s done.”

  The scrivener rolled his eyes and resumed. “Try to imagine a waterfall cascading with two hundred times the force of Niagara Falls and a velocity of over fifty miles an hour. The sound of the water crashing across the breach in the sill would have echoed one hundred and twenty miles away. The lake’s water level would have risen so rapidly that the shoreline may have expanded by as much as a mile a day, drowning everything in its path. One can only imagine the catastrophic impact this would have had on the people who lived along the shores of the lake.”

  “I’ll say,” Cassie exclaimed in shock. “They wouldn’t have known what hit them.”

  “Those living closest to the Bosporus would probably have drowned, of course, but those farther away may have had time to pack some meager belongings, collect their kin and livestock and flee.”

  “Where did they all go?”

  “It depends on which side of the lake they inhabited. The ones to the north and west were luckiest. They fled up the river valleys into the heart of Europe. Since those river valleys were incredibly fertile, the people who emigrated there were able to continue living as peaceful agriculturists. Others were not so fortunate.”

  “That sounds pretty ominous.”

  “Indeed it was. To the east and south, the Black Sea is rimmed with mountains. Anyone lucky enough to scale them would find their problems just beginning. Those who skirted the Caucasus Mountains and fled to the northeast would have ended up in the Eurasian steppes. A very inhospitable landscape for farming.”

  “What did they do if they couldn’t farm?”

  “They became nomads and grazed what little livestock remained. Scarcity became a way of life. There was never enough food to go around, so eventually, they raided nearby groups and stole their livestock. Their neighbors retaliated, and raiding became a way of life for everyone on the steppes. A harsh landscape produces harsh people.”