The Templar Salvation (2010)

They stepped through a doorway that led into the grand room where Mawlana Jelaluddin Rumi, the mevlana himself—the master—was buried. The cavernous space around them was breathtaking, its walls masterpieces of ornate gold calligraphy carvings, its ceilings dazzling kaleidoscopes of arabesques. At its center was his tomb. It was oversized and stately, swathed by a huge, gold-embroidered cloth and topped by an enormous turban.

They stood back and watched as teary-eyed pilgrims rubbed their foreheads on a silver step at the base of the tomb before kissing it. Others stood around the room, reading the poet’s words to themselves or sharing them in small groups, their faces alive with felicity. A great hush suffused the space, and the mood in the shrine was gently reverent, more akin to fans visiting the tomb of a great poet than to any kind of fervent religious pilgrimage. Which was what Tess had feared. There was nothing there that looked like it was going to help her locate her elusive family of drapers, assuming they’d ever existed at all. She needed to ask around but didn’t know who to ask.

They left the shrine and wandered down a broad boulevard that led deep into the old city. Shops, cafes, and restaurants teemed with locals and visitors, while kids played freely on grassy knolls. The city exuded a tranquility that Tess and Reilly had both sorely missed.

“Maybe we can find a town hall,” Tess said, her gait slow and ponderous, her arms folded with frustration. “Someplace where they keep civic records.”

“Maybe there’s a drapers section in their yellow pages?” Reilly added.

Tess wasn’t in the mood.

“What? I’m serious.” He gave her an empathetic grin, then said, “Problem is, we’ve got a slight language barrier here.”

“The only dervishes around seem to be the ones doing the big shows for the tourists. They deal with foreigners. We should be able to find someone who understands us there. Maybe we can convince one of them to introduce us to a Sufi elder.”

Reilly pointed a finger down the road. “Let’s ask them.”

Tess turned. A sign announced “Iconium Tours,” and below, in smaller letters, “Travel Agency.”

“I CAN GET YOU IN to see a sema tonight,” the owner of the agency, a gregarious man in his early fifties by the name of Levant, told them with infectious enthusiasm. “It’s a wonderful show, you’ll love it. You like Rumi’s poetry, yes?”

“Very much.” Tess smiled uncomfortably. “But would this be a real prayer ceremony or a more …”—she wavered—”touristic show?”

Levant gave her a curious look. He seemed slightly offended. “Any sema is a real prayer ceremony. The dervishes who will be whirling there take what they do very seriously.”

Tess flashed him a disarming smile. “Of course, that’s not what I meant.” She took a deep breath, looking for the right words. “It’s just … see, I’m an archaeologist, and I’m trying to understand something I found. An old book. And it talks about a draper, this is going back quite some time, a few centuries ago.” She paused, hastily pulling out a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket. “A kazzaz, or a bezzaz, or a derzi, or a cukaci,” she said, stumbling over the different ways of referring to a cloth maker that the taxi driver had given her. She wasn’t sure how to pronounce that last one and showed the agent what the driver had written down for her—in letters she could read, since another of Ataturk’s momentous reforms was to abandon the Arabic alphabet and make Latin letters the norm for writing in Turkish. “A draper who was a dervish here in Konya. Probably a senior one, an elder, that kind of thing. I know it’s a bit tricky to talk about it, but … you don’t know anyone who might know a lot about that, an expert on your local dervish history?”

Levant pulled back slightly, and his expression retreated into more guarded territory.

“Look, I’m not here in any kind of official capacity,” Tess added by way of comforting him. “This is just a personal quest. I’m just trying to understand something about an old book I found, that’s all.”

The travel agent massaged his mouth and his chin with his hand, then ran it up his face and all the way across his balding pate. He glanced at Reilly, studying him too. Reilly said nothing and just stood there, trying to appear as sheepish and unthreatening as he could. The bald man’s eyes settled back on Tess, then he leaned in and his expression went all conspiratorial.

“I can take you to a private dhikr this evening,” he told them, referring to a Sufi remembrance ceremony. “It’s a very private affair, you understand. Informal. Just friends getting together to,” he paused, “celebrate life.” He held her gaze, waiting to see if she got his gist.

She nodded. “And you think there’ll be someone there who can help me?”

Levant shrugged, like, Maybe. But his “maybe” was definitely skewed positive.

Tess smiled. “When?”

THE ELDER WASN’T MUCH HELP.

The prayer ceremony itself had been spellbinding. It was held in the grand living room of a large, old house. The dervishes, a dozen or so men and women, lost themselves in their trances and spun around endlessly, arms spread out, right hands opened upward to receive the blessings of Heaven, left hands pointing down to channel it to the earth, moving to the tender, mesmerizing music of a reed flute—Rumi’s beloved ney, the divine breath that bestows life on everything—and a drum. From a seated position, an old man, their master, accompanied them by reciting the name of God repeatedly, the part of the ceremony that was most strictly forbidden. But no one stormed the house and no one was arrested. The times were, it seemed, a-changing.

But the elder wasn’t much help—in fact, he wasn’t any help at all. With his grandson to translate, he told Tess he didn’t know of any drapers or cloth makers who had been notable dervishes, and didn’t know of any who were currently, either. Tess and Reilly thanked their hosts for their hospitality and wandered off in search of the hotel the travel agent had booked them into.

“I shouldn’t have let myself get carried away like that,” Tess grumbled, feeling exhausted and crestfallen. “There were plenty of lodges in Konya, even back then. The odds of stumbling onto the right one … it wasn’t likely, was it?” She sighed. “This could take a while.”

“We can’t stay here any longer,” Reilly said. “They want me back in New York. And we don’t even have a change of clothes or a toothbrush between us. Seriously. This is nuts. We don’t even know it’s here.”

“I’m not giving up. We just got here. I need to go to more of these ceremonies, talk to more elders.” She glanced at Reilly. “I’ve got to do this, Sean. We’re close. I can feel it. And I can’t walk away from it. I’ve got to see it through. You go. I’ll stay.”

Reilly shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. That son of a bitch is still out there somewhere. I’m not leaving you here alone.”

The comment soured Tess’s face. Reilly’s concern wasn’t unfounded.

“You’re right, I know,” she said, nodding slowly to herself, unsure about what to do.

Reilly put his arm around her. “Come on. Let’s find that hotel. I’m beat.”

They reached the bazaar district, where they asked for directions before cutting through a galleried market hall the size of an aircraft hangar. Despite the late hour, it was still buzzing. All kinds of smells accosted them from colorful piles of fruit and vegetables, bucket loads of freshly made dolmates salcasi tomato sauce, and huge sacks of sugar beet and spices of every color, the whole succulent tapestry manned by old men in patterned hats, old women in multicolored head scarves, and cay boys hawking syrupy-sweet tea. A pit stop of doner kebabs and minty yogurt drinks was hard to resist. They hadn’t eaten much all day.

“Can’t you stick around a couple of more days?” Tess pleaded, the idea of heading home and giving up the search sitting as heavily in her stomach as the thought of staying there alone.

“I doubt it.” He chucked his empty sandwich wrapper into an overflowing garbage bin and downed the last of his drink. “I still have a lot of explaining to do over Rome.”

“Rome,” Tess shrugged, her tone distant. It felt like a lifetime ago.

“They don’t even know we’re here. I need to call in and find out when we’re being picked up and see if they can pick us up from here. Besides, I want to get back. There isn’t much I can do from here. I need to be back at my desk to coordinate the intel and make sure all the alerts are properly in place so we don’t miss him the next time he