Gold of Kings (26 page)

H
ARRY HAD FIGURED THEY WOULD
need to hit the island's northern side sooner or later. And do so quietly. He had visited the place twice while on salvage ops in the eastern Med. The southern side, the Greek side, was a European nation in the making. Investment capital was flooding in, as well as waves of tourists from all over Europe.

North Cyprus, on the other hand, was the Wild West of the Med.

What had actually caused the island's partition depended on who was talking. Harry had heard both sides and figured there was enough blame to spread around, with plenty left over for Britain, Turkey, Greece, and the United Nations. The latest began some forty years ago, when the mainland Greek government made threatening moves and Turkey responded by landing seventy thousand troops on the island's northern shores. As the military pushed south, almost two hundred thousand Greek Cypriots fled in their path. Bloody reprisals began in the island's southern half against Turkish families who had lived there for centuries. In the north, many Greeks who refused to leave their homes were never heard from again.

Forty years later, North Cyprus remained a pariah state, shunned by the UN and officially recognized only by Turkey. Adding fuel to the
flames, North Cyprus had opened its doors to emigration from Turkey, drawing fifty thousand new inhabitants from the poorest farming villages of Anatolia. These families occupied farms whose titles still belonged to Greek families.

Recently there had been an even more volatile set of newcomers. Smugglers operating throughout the Arab world saw North Cyprus as a safe haven. They invested in new houses and apartments erected on Greek-owned land. Every time a new Middle East crisis brewed, speedboats crisscrossed the Mediterranean, ferrying families and goods and guns.

As soon as Harry told the taxi driver at Larnaca Airport what he had in mind, the three of them had an ally. The driver was short and severely bowlegged. His shock of white hair was startlingly bright against darkly tanned skin. Harry had been hoping for an older guy. He figured someone who had lived through the troubles might be more sympathetic.

The idea had come to him while reading the
International Herald Tribune
article on the Bosphorus ferry. What they needed was a way over the border without being noticed. At the time, Harry hadn't been thinking specifically about the assassin. He was just using a treasure dog's love of guile.

The driver's English was limited to a few words and a lot of hand gestures. He pointed to the women's shorts and said, “No good for Agios Mamas.”

Harry asked, “You ladies pack any long pants?”

“It's hot,” Storm protested.

“It'll be dark in a few hours. Things will cool off.”

But the driver wasn't done. He flattened his hands down both sides of his face, then formed a knot below his chin. Harry interpreted, “And you'll need head scarves.”

The driver took them around the outskirts of Larnaca and stopped at a market for locals. He personally selected two brightly colored scarves and bartered on their behalf.

When Harry then said he needed three backpacks, the driver gave him a knowing squint. “You no come back?”

“You have a problem with that?”

“My family is from Salamis. You know?”

“In the north.”

“Yes. Now city's name is Famagusta. My father, he stay to…” The driver stood as if holding a rifle at parade rest.

Harry supplied, “He stayed to guard your home.”

“Home, land, sheep. Many sheep. We farm sheep, olives. My father…” The driver blew on his fingers. Dust in the wind. “Never word. Nothing.”

“I'm sorry.”

The driver motioned with his chin to where the women returned from changing in a café restroom, carrying a sack of drinks and sandwiches. “Your friends, now they are ready.”

“Maybe you should come too.”

“When land is ours, yes. Land, farm, sheep. Now, is nothing.” The driver handed Harry two long candles he had purchased in the market. “You light these for me, yes? In church. One for father and one for family.”

“I'd be honored.”

The driver clapped him on the shoulder. “Is good.”

Harry handed a backpack to each of the women. “Take only what you can carry. We'll replace the rest later.”

The drive to the border took another forty minutes. The road paralleled the Trodos Mountains. Storm sat in front and constantly shifted about, watching the mountains, the driver, the road, the broad central plain they traversed. Heading north.

The
Tribune
's article had stated that after thirty years of padlocks and steel shutters and graffiti, the Church of Agios Mamas was to reopen. For two weeks.

The most famous church in Cyprus was over one thousand six hundred years old. The church itself had long been an icon, revered as a place of prayer and miraculous healings. But for the past thirty years the Turkish army had used it as a grain warehouse.

Three years earlier, a Greek Cypriot had flown a hot-air balloon up next to the border and shot the church through a bazooka lens. Photographs of the decrepit weed-strewn building had been cut from the local magazine, mailed to displaced friends and relatives, and posted on thousands of walls around the world. The church was home to more
than the remains of Cyprus's patron saint. It symbolized all that had been lost in the island's division.

The island's situation was grave and growing ever more entrenched. One of Kofi Annan's last efforts before retiring as UN secretary-general had been to broker a peace accord. Annan had wanted to make a reunified Cyprus the jewel in his legacy's crown. He had failed. Turkish Cyprus had voted in favor, but the Greek Cypriots had turned Annan's proposal down flat. The Greeks wanted their land back. They wanted a unified island under a single government ruled by a Greek majority. They wanted the fifty thousand Turkish immigrants to be expelled. Until then, they were determined to use their growing power within the European Union to keep Turkish Cyprus isolated. Shunned. Banned from the worlds of finance and tourism and politics and progress.

Recently North Cyprus had elected a new government. This new government wanted to renegotiate. As a symbol of good faith, the new Turkish Cypriot government cleaned up the church and erected a temporary border crossing.

Up to now, rules governing the border changed from week to week, sometimes hour to hour. The Greek side instituted some change, and the Turks retaliated. One day, visas went from being free to costing five hundred dollars. The next, visa applications went from a few verbal questions to running twenty pages. The following week, only non-Cypriots could pass. Then only EU citizens. Or Cypriots could cross to the other side only once a year. Or only for a week, a day, or sunrise to sunset, or they could remain only within the confines of Nicosia.

Not everyone within the new North Cyprus regime was in favor of change. A lot of people made a lot of money from the status quo. These opponents couldn't stop the event, but they could make it as difficult as possible. The church and the border crossing would reopen for just three days. No vehicles were permitted to cross. All visitors were required to walk the five miles from the border to the church. Journalists and photographers were forbidden.

Harry knew they had arrived because the traffic simply congealed. People began pulling to the side of the road—buses, campers, farm tractors pulling trailers piled high with people. They passed dozens of people in wheelchairs. Hundreds.

“Ladies, scarves.” Harry handed out the packs, asked the driver, “You'll take care of the suitcases?”

“Is no problem.” He accepted the payment, shook Harry's hand, waved to the ladies, and was gone.

They were close enough to the front for Harry to watch the system collapse. The border was a pair of barbed-wire fences thirty feet high, with fifty yards of no-man's-land between the Greek and Turkish sides. When the Greek soldiers lifted the bright yellow barriers, the crowd surged forward. At the procession's head walked a row of black-robed orthodox priests. Each priest held an icon, a framed portrait of some bearded saint. As they approached the Turkish side they lifted the icons over their heads. The Turkish soldiers cranked open the gates, then shouted and gestured for the oncoming crowd to split in two and head for the pair of grey trailers set up as temporary customs sheds.

The priests kept moving straight ahead.

The soldiers shouted and gestured angrily. The crowd kept coming. The soldiers raised their weapons. Taking that as some kind of signal, many within the crowd raised up icons of their own. Thousands of icons, their heavy gold frames glinting in the sun. The people who weren't carrying icons held bunches of candles. No one spoke. They simply kept moving.

Beside Harry, Emma took a long, tense breath.

An officer stood on the back of a jeep and shouted something. The soldiers backed off, moving to the side of the road. The people surged forward.

When they made it past the barrier and were into North Cyprus, Emma said quietly, “This was your big idea?”

“I guess I didn't totally think it through,” Harry said.

Emma started to say something more, but Storm said, “We're in and there's no record. Harry did right.”

Emma looked at the younger woman but said nothing more.

A mile farther on, Harry took over pushing a wheelchair because the old guy wheeling his wife looked totally done in. Harry's head was growing so hot he was about ready to ask for one of the lady's scarves. The sun burned through his shirt and evaporated the sweat almost before it formed. What the old lady in the chair thought of the heat, dressed as she was in head-to-toe black, she didn't say. She sat with her
gnarled fingers curled around her own personal icon, milky eyes fixed on the horizon. Her husband's gaze was as tightly locked as his wife's. A dozen or so tall white candles emerged from one coat pocket.

Emma asked Harry, “Want me to take your pack?”

“I'm good.”

“You are, you know. Better than you give yourself credit for.”

Storm glanced over and smiled. After that, Harry didn't mind the sun so much.

As they crested a rise, Harry took time to look behind. The road was packed, far as he could see, by a silent tide of people. In the far distance, people continued to pass through the border.

As they approached the church, something remarkable happened. The road became rimmed by Turkish Cypriots. So many people they managed to gently shoulder the Turkish soldiers to the background.

An old man stepped forward and murmured words as he handed the woman in the wheelchair a plastic cup of water. For the first time since the procession had entered North Cyprus, the woman's gaze shifted from the church just ahead. Her eyes followed the old man back to the side of the road, then she turned and looked at her husband.

A pair of middle-aged North Cypriot women stepped forward and pressed flowers into their hands—the old couple, then Storm, then Emma. One of the women smiled and patted Harry's hand where it held the wheelchair. On and on the greetings came, a soft defiance against two regimes who had forgotten how the vast majority of Cypriots had lived in harmony for centuries.

The Greeks responded with gifts of their own. They parceled out their loads of candles, until by the time Harry pushed the wheelchair through the church entrance, every set of hands he saw held either flowers or candles or both.

At his word, Storm and Emma remained in the growing throng outside the church. Harry pushed the wheelchair inside and swiftly checked the place out. As expected, the church revealed nothing of any use. Faint shadows of ancient mosaics covered the walls and floors, but the decorations had long since been scraped off and sold on the black market. He lit the taxi driver's candles, set them on the stand, and returned to the ladies just as the priests began the service.

They slipped away as soon as dusk hid them. The road into Turkish
Cyprus was strewn with buses and parked cars and taxis waiting for return fares, much the same as on the Greek side, only dingier. Storm and Emma clutched each other as they followed him, stunned to silence by a combination of the church service and sheer exhaustion. Harry found a taxi driver who agreed to take them to Lefkosa, as the Turkish side of the divided capital was now known. Before starting off, they all turned and gave the church another long look—Harry, the ladies, and the driver.

Black fields stretched out beneath an almost full moon. A farmhouse in the vague distance cast a dim glow. Departing cars marked the road with headlights. The only other earthbound illumination came from the church, which was rimmed by candles. Thousands of candles. The church windows glowed like lanterns. The surrounding meadow was a sea of flickering lights. As he slipped into the taxi, Harry heard the crowd begin to sing again. There was an ancient cadence to the melody, one that carried the weight of centuries. Their taxi trundled off the verge and headed away, into the night.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, STORM LISTENED
to Emma's soft breathing in the bed next to her own and recalled life in Palm Beach. Five-thirty in the morning was as close to Gothic as Palm Beach ever came. Mist often blanketed the predawn waterfront. The yachts docked along billionaires' row were vague etchings of wealth sketched from impossible dreams. Storm usually ran six miles, less if the humidity clogged her lungs. She often took it slow on her return down Worth Avenue, using parked cars as stretching rails and stopping for a bagel and coffee at her favorite side-street deli. She'd window shop with her breakfast, the street quiet enough for her dreams to thrive. The passage back to her shop and apartment were flanked by personal favorites. Chopard, the French jeweler, stood to her left, Bottega Veneta to her right. Across the street beckoned Hermès and Jimmy Choo. A girl could do a lot worse for neighbors. That morning she reflected on the utter strangeness of having a lifelong dream finally fulfilled, journeying through danger and mystery, searching for treasure. Yet here she lay, still bone weary after a full night's sleep, yearning for the life she had left behind.

A man's heavy tread marched down the hotel hallway and stopped in front of their door. Storm had not realized that Emma was awake until the woman slipped from bed and moved to the door in one fluid
motion. One hand held a pistol down by the trailing edge of her Redskins T-shirt. “Yes?”

“It's me.”

Emma unlatched the door, the pistol glinting in the light filtering through the hotel room drapes. Harry stood holding a tray with coffee and toast. He took in her thigh-length nightshirt and gun and smirked. “I believe I've had that very poster on my wall.”

Emma slipped the pistol back under her pillow as Harry stepped inside, shut the door, and deposited the tray on the table between their beds. “When you're ready, there's a place down the street where we can rent a car. I thought I'd go check out Salamis while you hit the newspaper archives.”

“Thirty minutes,” Emma said.

“I'll see you ladies downstairs.”

When he was gone, Storm accepted a cup from Emma and said, “I've been lying here missing the way things used to be.”

“That makes two of us.” When Emma drained her cup, the cords of her neck stood out in taut precision. “Okay if I take the bathroom first?”

 

THE TRIP TO SALAMIS WAS
probably pointless, but needed to be done. Harry liked how Storm had seen him off, no unnecessary instructions, no reminders of things he'd never forget, just off and go. He was less pleased with Emma's response—the guarded words, the tension. Not to mention the gun and the gaze to match.

Which was why he wanted to make this trip alone.

Once out of Lefkosa's snarl, the road ran straight and flat and hot under a milky Mediterranean sky. The map called the baking plains the Mesarya. To his left, the Kyrenia mountains ran high and sharp, carving out a patch of sky. Harry found himself recalling mornings on the sea. He had always been an early starter. The seas were often calmest then, the water clearer. He loved the early morning dives, when the light still wasn't strong enough to filter down below about thirty feet. He loved to stop at the point of liquid twilight and float in the blissful nothingness. He had made some of his biggest hauls while the rest of the world was still dragging itself out of bed.

Soon as Harry pulled into a Salamis parking lot, he knew the trip was useless, at least as far as finding clues to the treasure. Storm's findings had been reasonably precise. The early Christians had been relegated to a forest outside the city walls. They formed a separate community, away from the Roman and Greek temple cults that dominated Salamis. They supported themselves as woodcutters and suppliers of charcoal and pine resin, which was used as an early antiseptic. They were excluded from most city activities, and persecuted on occasion. The forest was still there, but had been reshaped into a city park. Families picnicked and kids played and dogs barked. There was no way Harry was going to walk through a city park and come up with a prize.

Still, he spent a couple of hours scoping out the ruins. Salamis had been almost completely destroyed by the earthquake of AD 332, and the peninsula that had formed its harbor area had disappeared beneath the waves. When Constantine's mother arrived ten months later and offered royal support, the survivors had chosen to rebuild three miles farther inland. Harry walked the ruins, reveling in the silence and the timeless quality of a billion buried secrets. Part of what made him a good salvager was loving the tales attached to the prizes, like the nine-tenths of an iceberg that remained hidden from almost everyone else.

A rock bounced down the coliseum wall, making him start. Sean suddenly seemed impossibly close. The brusque old man stumped alongside Harry in his impatient gait, as though angry his aging body could no longer keep up with his mind. Just as he had walked that last night, leading Harry into the church, trying to cut off Harry's argument by entering hallowed ground. Only Harry had been too hot to pay any attention to such niceties, and he had lifted the church's roof with his angry blast. But Harry was paying full attention now. And the hairs on the nape of his neck rose with the certainty that he no longer walked alone.

The Roman road ran arrow straight from the submerged port to the Coliseum. Overhead the wind drifted through the pines. It was a remarkably natural sensation, walking through ruins seventeen centuries old, communing with the dead. Sean's voice seemed as clear as the murmuring trees and the waves lapping the bitter shoreline. Harry didn't mind that he couldn't make out a single word of what old Sean said. The meaning came through anyway, written on the ancient stones
and the floating clouds and the deep hush of days beyond count. It was all tied together, threads woven on the loom of mystery. Death and life, treasure and love. All of it.

By the time Harry returned to the car and headed back to Lefkosa, he knew exactly what needed doing.

 

LEFKOSA REMINDED EMMA OF MEXICO.
She had vacationed once in Acapulco. She had loathed the other tourists' frantic laughter almost as much as she had the tequila. She'd started walking the city, delving into the regions beyond the reach of tourist dollars. The second day of her self-guided tour, she'd been stopped by a couple of
federales
who spoke passable English. They had found it hilarious, this Anglo agent walking the city's backstreets, searching for she knew not what. So they'd let her play “ride along,” and that night she'd helped subdue a bank robber. After that, they'd basically adopted her. She'd gone to both their homes for cookouts. A relative had taught her how to dive in Acapulco Bay. At the end of her holiday, three carloads had come to see her off.

Lefkosa held a dusty down-at-heel air, like the areas leading from the glitzy Mexican beaches back inland toward the barrios. Only Lefkosa contained no resort area. It sat at the base of the island's northern mountain range, on a flat, hot plain beneath a sky turned milky with dust. To her left she could just make out the official border crossing. The car rental agent had told them the border had been closed for two weeks. No reason why, no timetable for reopening. She stared at the towering gate with its banners and flags. Beside it, razor wire glinted around the rooftop of an abandoned building with bricked-up windows, now a part of the no-go zone.

Storm said, “Harry Bennett is a good man.”

Emma stared at her. “Talk about out of the blue.”

“Oh, right. Stand there and tell me you haven't been thinking about him.”

Emma kept walking.

“He's got his eye on you, girl.”

“What about you two? He obviously thinks the world of you.”

“The feeling is mutual.” Storm said to the street ahead, “One mo
ment I feel like I've known Harry all my life. Then he does something, and I don't think I know him at all.”

“I don't follow.”

“Most people see trouble coming and then
run.
Harry goes into attack mode. The man I think I know disappears and somebody else takes his place. A primeval warrior. Barely tamed.”

“Your knight in shining armor.”

Storm stopped and looked at her. “That's how it feels.”

Emma pulled her forward. “Harry is a treasure hunter. A deep-sea salvage man. I'm…”

“You're lonely.”

Emma wanted to deny it. But the lie would not emerge. “What about you?”

Storm shook her head. “There's a difference between being alone and feeling lonely. I'm a pro at this game.”

“What, you're saying nothing is ever going to break through and get to you?”

“Someday I'll tell you about my early home life. I've tried men. My scars run too deep to ever give them a decent chance.”

They passed a café filled with men, only men. Hookahs bubbled. Dice rattled across a backgammon board. The café froze as all the men watched them pass. Emma gave the men five seconds of heat, then changed the subject with “Tell me again what we need from the newspaper.”

“The Smithsonian maintains an archival record of archeological finds around the world. I spotted a mention of a mausoleum discovered beneath the ruins of what may have been a fourth-century church. The mausoleum walls had carvings the author called curious. Vines and treasures and a shield he could not identify.” Storm pointed at the newspaper's faded logo on the structure dominating the next block. “The source they quoted was this paper. The discoverer was an amateur archeologist, a former British commandant who had retired here.”

“When was this?”

“Winter of '75.”

“So, around the time of the partition.” Emma had her foot on the newspaper office's front step when her phone rang. She fished the phone
from her purse and checked the readout. She didn't recognize the number, but the area code was downtown DC. She passed through the door Storm held open for her and said, “This is Webb.”

“Agent Webb, this is Evan Raines.”

“Hold on.” She cupped the phone. “I have to take this.”

“When you're done, find me in the archives.”

Emma nodded and headed back toward the sunlight. “Go ahead.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, sir.” Evan Raines ran the FBI's National Security Branch. Since his remit covered the Intelligence Directorate, he was Jack Dauer's direct superior, only removed by six levels. The National Security director also ruled over the Counterterrorism Division, Counterintel, and Weapons of Mass Destruction. The fact that Evan Raines personally placed this call was a very big deal.

Raines said, “That makes things easier. We need to talk.”

“I'm listening.”

“Off-the-record.”

“Absolutely not.”

“As your superior—”

“You're wasting your breath and my time. Anything you say is official and will be passed on to my partner in Interpol. If you can't handle that we have nothing to discuss.”

“Your partner.”

“That is affirmative, sir.”

He sighed. “I'll be back to you in ten.”

“Make it twenty.” Only when she cut the connection did Emma realize her heart was racing.

The newspaper receptionist was a slender man in his twenties who directed Emma up three floors to the archives. She found Storm seated at a long, scarred table surrounded by stacks of yellowed news-print. The papers had become compressed over time until they looked ironed flat. Storm said, “Can you believe it? They don't even have microfiche.”

“I just got a call from the FBI. I need to check in with Interpol, then talk to the FBI again.”

“Take your time. I'm fine here.”

“Hakim is going to want to know when you will talk with him.”

Storm's attention had already returned to the pages spread out before her. “Tell him tonight.”

“I'll be downstairs by the front entrance.”

Emma coded in Hakim's number as she descended the stairs. Hakim answered with “Where are you?”

“I've had to give Harry my word I won't discuss any details of where we go or what we find. Not with you, not with anybody.”

The contrast to her American superiors was jarring. No argument, no verbal shoving. Just, “Harry Bennett knows you are an intelligence officer, yet he relies on you to keep your word. That level of trust is remarkable.”

She didn't have time for the burning lump that filled her heart cavity. “Evan Raines just called me.”

Hakim digested that, then, “Deputy Director Raines has a reputation for being extremely honest and outspoken. It is said these are the reasons why he will never be made director. Assigning him to speak with you sends a clear message.”

“What should I do?”

Hakim's smile filtered through the system. “Your American hard-ball approach has worked well so far. They have responded in less than two days. Raines has phoned you in the middle of the night his time, which suggests they have just reached a decision and feel the matter is so pressing they do not have a moment to lose. I would advise you to continue in the same vein.”

“Are you sure?”

“The harder you push, the faster they must react, and the more we might learn. Good luck.”

 

“AGENT WEBB? EVAN RAINES. WHERE
are you now?”

“I'm not at liberty to say, sir.”

“That's hardly the proper way to begin our dialogue.”

“With all due respect, sir, your picking up the phone doesn't change a thing.”

He didn't take that well. “I'm trying hard as I know how to make amends, Webb. I suggest you limber up and bend a little.”

Emma did not respond.

“Look, we all know Jack Dauer made a serious error in judgment.”

“I want a formal written apology, one that censures Dauer.”