“The other news, according to Ruppe,” he continued, “is that they kept our names and involvement out of the paper. Apparently, there is widespread outrage at the theft, which is being viewed as a deep insult to the Muslim community.”
“Even after our near-death experience, that’s okay with me,” Loren mused. “By the way, what exactly did they end up stealing?”
“They made off with a battle standard that belonged to Muhammad. Apparently, the outrage would have been even more magnified if you hadn’t liberated the second black bag.”
“What did it contain?”
“A cloak of Muhammad’s, called the Holy Mantle, along with a letter written in his hand. Part of what is known as the Sacred Trusts.”
“It’s terrible that somebody would try to steal such relics,” Loren said, shaking her head.
“Come on, we better go see the rest of this town before anything else disappears.”
They exited the lobby of the hotel and entered the bustling streets of old Istanbul. Pitt noticed a man in mirrored sunglasses staring at Loren as he passed on his way into the hotel. Tall and sporting a near-ballerina figure, Loren seldom failed to attract the male eye. Dressed in light slacks and an amethyst blouse that nearly matched the color of her eyes, she looked vivacious despite the turmoil of the night before.
Walking down a block or two, they stopped and peered in the window of an upscale rug shop called Punto of Istanbul, admiring an elegant Serapi carpet that hung on the wall. Strolling to the end of the street, they crossed the Hippodrome, a long, narrow park around which the chariots raced in the Byzantine era. Just beyond was the mosque of Sultan Ahmet I.
Completed in 1617, it was the last of Istanbul’s great imperial mosques. The exterior featured a rising cascade of domes and semi-domes that climbed in height and grandeur until culminating in a massive central dome. By the time Pitt and Loren had entered the mosque’s arched courtyard, most of the morning worshippers had been replaced by camera-toting tourists.
They made their way into the prayer hall, its expansive interior dimly lit by high banks of stained-glass windows. Overhead, the curving domes were covered in a maze of intricately patterned tiles, many in shades of blue, which gave the building its nickname, the Blue Mosque. Pitt studied an archway filled with familiar-looking floral tiles, which were manufactured in the nearby city of Iznik.
“Look at that design,” he said to Loren. “It’s nearly identical to the pattern on the ceramic box we pulled from the wreck.”
“You’re right,” Loren agreed, “though the coloring is a little different. Congratulations, it’s more evidence that your wreck sank around sixteen hundred.”
Pitt’s satisfaction was short-lived. Eyeing a green-tiled wall on the opposite side of the prayer hall, he spotted a man in sunglasses looking in his direction. It was the same man who had gawked at Loren outside the hotel.
Without saying a word, Pitt slowly herded Loren toward the exit, consciously staying close to a group of German tourists on a guided tour. He casually surveyed the crowd scattered about the mosque, trying to discern whether Sunglasses had any partners. Pitt noticed a thin Persian man with a bushy mustache shuffling along nearby, a serious scowl on his face. He appeared incongruous among the other tourists standing with their necks craned toward the ceiling. It seemed unlikely that the Topkapi thieves would have tracked them down so quickly, though Pitt recalled the threatening words of the woman in the cistern. He decided to find out for sure.
Following the Germans out of the prayer hall, Pitt and Loren pulled on the shoes they had removed earlier and followed the tour group into the courtyard. Pitt watched from the corner of his eye as the Persian followed suit.
“Stay here,” Pitt told Loren, then turned and quickly strode across the marble tile toward the man.
The Persian immediately turned, pretending to study a nearby column behind him. Pitt strode right up and gazed down at the man, who stood a head shorter.
“Excuse me,” Pitt said. “Can you tell me who’s buried in Ataturk’s tomb?”
The man at first avoided Pitt’s gaze, peering instead toward the prayer hall exit where Sunglasses now stood. Spotting a shake of the head, he turned and faced Pitt with a look of contempt.
“I wouldn’t know where that dog lies,” he spat, his eyes glistening with an arrogant intimidation born of a hardened life in the streets. An undercover police agent he was clearly not. When Pitt noticed the telltale bulge of a holstered handgun under the man’s loose shirt, he decided not to press the issue. He gave the man a cold, knowing look, then turned and stepped away. Walking back to Loren, he half expected a bullet in the back and silently hoped the crowds and mosque security were sufficient deterrents to spare an immediate attack.
“What was that about?” Loren asked as he returned.
“Just checking the time. Come on, let’s see if we can catch a cab.”
The German tour group was slowly moving toward the courtyard exit, but Pitt grabbed Loren’s hand and dragged her past them, slipping out before they converged on the doorway. Pitt didn’t bother looking back, knowing full well that Sunglasses and the Persian would be in pursuit. Prodding Loren to the street, he got lucky and commandeered a cab that was off-loading an elderly pair of tourists out front.
“To the Eminonu ferry docks, as fast as you can,” he directed the cabdriver.
“Why all the rush?” Loren asked, slightly agitated at being hustled into the car.
“I think we are being tailed.”
“That man you spoke to inside the mosque?”
Pitt nodded. “And another fellow wearing sunglasses who I saw earlier outside our hotel.”
As the cab pulled into traffic, Pitt looked out the back window. A small orange sedan screeched up to the curb with a lone driver inside. Pitt looked across the mosque grounds to see the German tourist group still congregated around the mosque exit. He smiled as he spotted the Persian clumsily fighting his way through the thick crowd.
“Why don’t we go to the police?” Loren asked, a rising note of alarm in her voice.
Pitt flashed a reassuring grin. “What, and ruin our one and only relaxing day in Istanbul?”
11
The yellow taxi quickly melted into traffic, leaving the domed mosque and its minarets in the rearview mirror. Had the driver turned north and wound through the crowded maze of the historic old city, he would have easily lost the orange sedan to thick traffic. But the judicious cabdriver, thoughtful to make good time, instead turned south and headed toward a divided motorway called the Kennedy Caddesi.
The pursuers desperately attempted to catch up. The orange sedan sped away from the mosque after picking up its two passengers, nearly getting sideswiped by a tourist bus as it wove through traffic.
“I think they turned right,” the driver said in a hesitant voice.
“Go,” Sunglasses directed from the front passenger seat while nodding at the driver to follow his instincts.
The car turned south, bolting through a red light, before slowing behind a procession of crawling vehicles. Seated in the backseat, the Persian suddenly pointed down the road, spotting a yellow cab two blocks ahead turning onto the Caddesi.
“I think that is their cab,” he shouted.
The driver nodded, his knuckles tightening around the steering wheel. There was little he could do to prod his way through the clogged traffic, and he anxiously cursed the surrounding vehicles while the seconds ticked by. Finally spotting a break in oncoming traffic, he burst down the left lane for a block, then nosed back into the right lane. The traffic moved forward, and he quickly entered the Caddesi, flooring the accelerator and weaving down the highway like a Formula 1 racer.
The highway looped around the eastern boundary of Topkapi, hugging the Bosphorus shoreline. Traffic moved briskly as the road turned north then west along the Golden Horn, a natural water inlet that divided the European sector of Istanbul. Pitt looked down at the waterway, admiring a large green dredge ship that was churning the waters off the shoreline. As the cab approached the Galata Bridge, which stretched north over the
