The Templar Salvation (2010)

“I’m all ears, Yoda,” Reilly said.

“What if it’s telling us who was looking after them?”

“The ‘draper’?”

“A draper where the dervishes live.”

“Which is …”

“In Konya, of course.”

Reilly shrugged. “I knew that.”

“Shut up. You don’t even know what a dervish is.”

His expression turned mock-sheepish. “It’s not something I’m proud of.”

“A dervish is a member of a Sufi brotherhood, you Neanderthal—a Sufi order. Rumi’s followers are the most famous of them. They’re known as ‘whirling dervishes’ because of the prayer ritual that they do where they whirl around like spinning tops, which they do to reach a kind of trance-like state that lets them focus on the god within them.”

“‘The god within them,’” Reilly noted, serious now. “Sounds kind of gnostic, doesn’t it?”

Tess raised an eyebrow. “True.” She flashed him an impressed look and said, “Maybe not so Neanderthal after all,” then mulled the idea over for a beat. The spiritual message was indeed similar. She parked the thought for the time being and said, “Rumi and his brotherhood were based in Konya. He’s buried there, his tomb is now a big museum.” Her mind was already two steps ahead of her mouth. “Konya. It’s got to be in Konya.”

“Conrad died here. Konya’s—how far is it from here?”

Tess tried to remember what Abdulkerim had said. “A couple of hundred miles west of here.”

“Not a small distance to cover in those days. So how did it get there? Who took it there?”

“Maybe the same person who wrote this,” she said, gesturing at the Greek lettering on the mural. Her mind was still leapfrogging ahead in search of answers. “But Konya was Sufi territory back then. Still is. If Hosius’s stash was taken there, whoever did it must have been close to the Sufis—or been a Sufi himself.”

“Him- or herself,” Reilly corrected her. “Remember, a man and a woman. Could our mystery woman be this Sufi?”

“Could be. Men and women are considered equal in Sufism, and many Sufi saints were mentored by women.” She thought about it for a long second, then said, “We’ve got to go there. We’ve got to go to Konya.”

Reilly gave her a deeply dubious look. “Come on, you don’t really think that—”

“These changes were made for a reason, Sean. And I really think there’s a strong chance it’s telling us that Hosius’s trove was handed over for safekeeping to some Sufi draper in Konya,” she insisted. “That’s where we’ll start.”

“How?”

“Professions are often handed down from generation to generation in this part of the world. We need to find a draper whose ancestor was in one of Rumi’s lodges.”

Reilly seemed far from convinced. “You really think you’re going to find a family of drapers that goes back seven hundred years?”

“I know I’m going to try,” she taunted him. “You got a better idea?”

Chapter 53

KONYA, TURKEY

A few precocious stars were ushering out the setting sun as a taxi dropped Reilly and Tess off in the heart of one of the oldest settlements on the planet.

Every stone in the city was soaked in history. Legend had it that it was the first town to emerge from the great flood, and archaeological evidence showed people living there continuously since Neolithic tribes settled in the area more than ten thousand years ago. St. Paul was said to have preached there three times from as early as A.D. 53, setting the city onto a stellar path that reached its peak when it became the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate in the thirteenth century—the same time that it was home to Rumi and his brotherhood of dervishes. The city had declined precipitously since its glory days under the sultans, but it was still home to the second-most visited attraction in Turkey, with more than two million visitors streaming in every year to pay homage to the great mystic. His mausoleum, the Yesil Turbe—the “Green Tomb”—was the spiritual epicenter of the Sufi faith.

It was also where Tess decided they’d start their search.

She knew it wouldn’t be easy. Sufism was still banned in Turkey. There were no lodges to poke around in, no elders to ask. At least, not out in the open. Sufi spiritual gatherings were only conducted in strict privacy, away from uninvited eyes. The threat of prison sentences still loomed large for potential offenders.

Sufism had been outlawed in 1925, soon after the father of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, founded his republic out of the ashes of the religion-driven Ottoman Empire. Desperate to demonstrate how Westernized his new country would be, he strove to ensure that his new state was strictly secular and put up an impermeable wall between religion and government. The Sufis, whose lodges wielded influence at the highest levels of Ottoman society and government, had to go. The lodges were all shut down, with most turned into mosques. Public rituals, which were perceived by Ataturk and his government as too backward and a drag on the Western-inspired modernity they aspired to, were banned, as was any teaching of the tradition. In fact, the only visible manifestation of Sufism in the country left today was in the folkloric dance performances of the sema, the whirling prayer ceremony of Rumi’s followers that had, ironically, now become one of the main touristic emblems of the country. And that was only after they had been grudgingly re-allowed in the 1950s, following an inquiry by the curious wife of a visiting American diplomat who was keen to actually see one. And so the bighearted faith ended up being banned by both the fundamentalist regimes farther east in countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, for being heretically liberal, and by the progressive Turks, for the opposite reason.

From the sea of austere beards and tight head scarves all around them, it was clear that Konya was a very pious and conservative place. Contrastingly, Westerners in casual summer clothing were also out in abundance, both groups mingling and mixing casually. Tess and Reilly joined the flow of pilgrims, dozens of men and women, young and old, from all corners of the globe, heading toward the shrine. It loomed up ahead, unmissable with its squat, pointed, turquoise-tiled tower. The big, gray medieval building had been Rumi’s tekke, the lodge where he and his followers lived and meditated. The lodge was now a museum built around his tomb and those of his father and other Sufi saints.

They followed the procession through the large arched portal and into the heart of the mausoleum. Dioramas of mannequins in traditional Sufi settings filled most of the rooms, lifeless re-creations of now-outlawed practices, an eerie reminder of a not-so-distant tradition that had been stopped in its tracks.

Tess found a stall with pamphlets in various languages and picked up an English one, then perused it as they meandered past the various displays. Something in it made her nod to herself, which Reilly caught.

“What?” he asked.

“Rumi’s writings. Listen to this. ‘I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not. I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there. I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went very far but God I found not. Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there. Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.‘”

“Brave guy,” Reilly commented. “I’m amazed they didn’t lop his head off.”

“The Seljuk Sultan actually invited him to live here. He didn’t have a problem with Rumi’s ideas, just like he didn’t have a problem with the Christians in Cappadocia.”

“I miss those Seljuks.”

Tess nodded, her mind floating across the imagined landscapes of alternate worlds. “You know, the more I think about it, the more I see how much common ground there was between what the Sufis believed and what I think the Templars were going for. They both saw religion as something that should bring us all closer together, not a divisive force.”

“At least these guys didn’t get burned at the stake.”

Tess shrugged. “They didn’t have a king lusting after the gold in their coffers.”