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
