Immortal at the Edge of the World (14 page)

Istanbul was where the collection I wanted to see was located, though. I imagine it would have been less of a psychic burden had it been in London or Irkutsk or Cairo instead, but I don’t get to decide these things. And by the time we were halfway there I decided I wasn’t going to be changing my mind about going there. If I disappeared as advised, it was going to have to happen after my trip to the museum.

Then I remembered I had promised Tchekhy I would place a call to Mike Lycos, my FBI contact. If I had attracted the official attention of the United States government, Mike was the best person to talk to about it.

He was not pleased to hear from me.

“Are you on fire right now?” he asked.

“No.”

“Is there someone holding a gun to your head?”

“Not in any literal sense.”

“It is three in the morning, Adam. Please tell me you’re bleeding from somewhere.”

“Oh, sorry. I’m calling from a different time zone.”

“Let me clear this up for you: The world is round.”

I laughed. “I’ve noticed. I’m sorry I woke you, but stop whining for a minute. I need to know if you’ve sniffed anything about me around the office lately.”

“About you? No. Not since your file got accidentally deleted five or six times and then thrown into a fireplace. But it’s a big office. Why, should I have? What’d you do?”

“Someone was asking questions about me, said he was FBI. We figured he was lying. I just wanted to make sure.”

“What’s the guy’s name? I can check tomorrow. Like when the sun is up and shit.”

“No name. And he died in an explosion.”

Mike sighed. “Was that explosion in
any
way related to the questions he was asking about you?”

“Might have been, yeah.”

“Hang on.” I heard grunting and the sound of a door opening and closing, and then I heard cicadas. He’d stepped outside. A
fwoosh
sound indicated he was also lighting a cigarette. “This explosion,” he said. “Was it in New York City by any chance whatsoever?”

“It might have been.”

“In a pawnshop that looks like a front for a terrorist cell?”

“A what again?”

“Adam, remember when I told you not to go financing terrorism or it’d make me look bad?”

“No, no, there wasn’t . . . just a hacker, that’s all.”

“Maybe you’d be surprised to learn that nowadays we at the Bureau consider cybercrime a potential terrorist act.”

“Wait, why did you even think to bring up New York? Aren’t explosions a little more common than that?”

“Lucky guess. So okay, that’s great, is there anything connecting you to the explosion other than this stupid phone call you just made?”

“No, but the dead body inside the pawnshop belonged to the guy who was looking for info on me.”

“The supposed FBI agent.”

“Yeah.”

“Well he wasn’t. We don’t know who he was. Thought maybe he was the guy who owned the place since he’s in the wind.” There was a pause. If we were face-to-face he’d be giving me the kind of stare you give when you think if you do it right the other person’s head will explode. I could almost hear it. “That’s your friend, isn’t it? The owner?”

“Yeah.”

“Adam . . .”

“He isn’t
anybody
. He just knows a lot about me.”

“And you aren’t going to tell me who he is, are you?”

“Of course not. But look, I’m being followed. And if the dead guy wasn’t with the FBI, I don’t know who’s behind it. I’m pretty sure everyone I know is in some danger right now.”

“So you’re calling me to confess to knowledge of a crime that is currently being investigated as an act of terrorism
and
to notify me that knowing you might put me at risk? I already knew that.”

“Just don’t send me any more stuff or anything, I guess. For a while. Just in case.”

“Send you any more what again?”

“Like the tape.”

“What tape?”

“Or . . . sorry, the DVD, disc, whatever we’re calling this kind of thing now. I swear the technology changes every week. It’s really hard to keep up.”

“Yeah, buddy, I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It felt like something bounced through the bottom of my stomach. “A little while ago a package was sent to me. Had a security camera recording of . . . you know what? Never mind. I thought you sent it to me—my mistake.”

“Of what? Don’t stop there. I’m already going to jail if anyone on my side of the law is listening to this.”

“You remember Robert Grindel?”

“I remember investigating Grindel after the fact, yeah. He died along with a lot of other folks on a private compound out in the desert, but I don’t know much more than that because it’s classified.”

“But you’re the FBI.”

“Yeah, genius, it’s classified above my grade. I figured you knew more but since I don’t actually care about a rich dead guy I never much bothered to ask.”

“Let’s say there was security camera footage of what happened the night Robert Grindel died. If the whole thing was classified, who do you imagine might have access to that footage? Like, the kind of access that would allow them to make a copy of some of it and mail it to somebody?”

There was another long pause on Mike’s end. I heard a second cigarette getting lit, and wished I had one of my own. “You are in some serious fucking shit, bud,” he said after some consideration.

“I’m getting that same impression, yes.”

Mirella, who had been ignoring my phone call as much as that was possible—the cabin wasn’t terribly huge—waved her hands in front of my face to get my attention. “The captain said we’re about to descend,” she said, pointing to the intercom.

I wasn’t supposed to be on the phone during takeoff or landing. I didn’t know why this was so, but I was willing to accept the opinions of people who understood this technology better than I did.

“Mike, I have to go. Keep your head down for the next few weeks, okay?”

“You do the same. And maybe stop associating with criminals so much. I’d like that.”

I hung up.

“You look like you’ve gotten some bad news,” Mirella noted as I moved to a proper seat and belted myself in.

“I did.”

“Would you like to talk about it?”

Getting that tape had motivated me to do a lot of things, like visit with scientists and research museum collections. I thought I had been acting in my own interest, but now there was the idea that someone other than Mike had sent it, and that someone might be connected to whoever was following me, and I couldn’t shake the idea that I’d been manipulated all along. That included the trip I was about to embark upon.

“We shouldn’t go to Istanbul,” I said. “This is a mistake.”

“I don’t think we have a choice about landing, but we can always leave again as soon as we refuel.”

“Yeah, we could do that.” I looked her in the eye. “How good are you at your job, really?”

It was an offensive question, but she took it. “I’m the best.”

“Good. I think tonight you’re going to have to be. I’m going to do the stupid thing and stick with the plan.”

“It’s stupid why, exactly?”

“I just learned I’m not the only one who cares about what I’m doing here.”

“You already know you’re being followed.”

“Yeah. And they’ll probably keep doing that. But just in case, bring your sharp things. I don’t like walking into traps without a weapon, and you’re the only weapon I have.”

Chapter Nine

“Running away is always a valid option,” I told Hsu. “You will care surprisingly little about how many songs are written about your bravery when you are not alive to hear them.”

*
 
*
 
*

I am apparently a tremendously generous contributor to the Istanbul Archeology Museum, because despite having postponed my meeting at least twice with the associate curator, he was not only incredibly polite to the point of embarrassment, he opened the entire museum to me—should I wish to view the entire museum—two hours after the building had been locked down.

You can add museums to the list of things I’m not all that fond of. I don’t mind popping by one from time to time to view artwork, but I find unsettling the notion of putting old stuff on display just because it’s old. For one thing, the title cards on the pieces are almost always inaccurate. I don’t blame anybody for this, because you figure out what you can with what you have, and if all you have left of an entire civilization is a few statues and a clay pot fragment or two, you’re going to screw up some details. I get it. But when what I remember as a mighty warrior tribe is reduced to half a carved stone face misidentified as belonging to a culture that didn’t exist for another two hundred years, it can make me bitter. I imagine if I could convince enough museums to believe me, I could do some correcting for them.

Another thing I don’t like is that some of the stuff on display is mine. I can’t usually prove it, but I know my stuff when I see it.

The Istanbul Archeology Museum was set up in what I remember as being a palace for the Ottoman sultans, sometime after Mehmed II finally ended the Roman Empire. I’d never been inside it before and I didn’t really care for what the Ottomans did to the city in general, so I wasn’t feeling particularly wistful as I walked the cavernous, darkened halls.

The associate curator introduced himself as Mr. Acar and he was, as I said, phenomenally good-natured. He greeted us at the great hall entrance, did a lot of handshaking and bowing, and had many nice things to say about the emperor Justinian I, whose name I had stolen on a whim back when I was picking a name for myself. Had I known I was going to be traveling to the city Justinian helped build, I’d have gone with something less pretentious.

And of course he had to give us a tour. I didn’t want a tour, because again, me and museums and old things. But he was the kind of polite that was really hard to say no to without being rude. I was getting very close to being rude.

“Is Alexander the Great buried in this?” Mirella asked Mr. Acar. We were staring at an enormous stone rectangle with carvings all around it depicting—with the usual hagiographic exaggeration of the time—the great life of Alexander. Mirella was thoroughly enjoying the entire tour—genuinely, it seemed—and also doing her best to pretend to be the girl-on-my-arm rather than my bodyguard. It was a decent disguise, and I kind of liked having her on my arm. She even called me “dear” without grimacing. It was sweet.

“No, no miss,” Mr. Acar said. “It’s not clear
whose
sarcophagus it was, but certainly not Alexander himself. He was long dead before this great thing was carved.”

Alexander was a dick, by the way.

“Then why . . .” she asked, pointing to a scene where Alexander routs Persians all by his lonesome.

“It’s for the ego of the person who
did
commission it,” I said. “Comparing oneself to Alexander or Constantine was a popular pastime.”

“Eh, yes, I suppose that can be said,” Mr. Acar decided.

“Maybe we can move on?” I asked.

“Yes, of course! If you would follow me!”

Mirella sidled up next to me and took my arm. “Be nice. I can’t be polite for both of us, I don’t have the energy.”

“This is me being polite.”

“You’re terrible at it. All the trouble you went through to get here, I imagined you loved museums. Where is your pixie?”

“Not sure. She’s flying around here somewhere. I’m sure she’s fine.”

“I’m sure she’s fine, too, but I ask because I was hoping she could tell me who else has entered the building. I don’t believe we’re entirely alone.”

I turned to look over my shoulder, which is what one does when someone says there’s somebody following. I know I’m not supposed to, but even sixty thousand years later I still haven’t been able to condition myself to stop. Mirella hissed at me, and I turned back and continued to act interested in what Mr. Acar was saying.

“And here is a bust of Alexander. This is
also
a very important piece for our museum.”

“Ooh,” Mirella cooed, “is that what he really looked like?” She had this way of leaning forward and shaking her breasts that made her cleavage practically blind whoever she was facing. In someone else I’d have suggested it was how she got what she wanted. In her I think it was meant as a weapon.

I took a look at the bust Mr. Acar was standing next to and before he had a chance to respond—due to the weaponized cleavage in front of him—I was answering. “Yes, pretty much.”

This was met with confusion on our host’s part. “It’s . . . very possible, yes,” he agreed. He looked askance at me for a moment or two, and I really wanted to tell him how I knew what Alexander looked like. “Continuing! Up ahead is the Kadesh Peace Treaty, one of the most important . . .”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Acar, but would it be possible for us to skip ahead?” I asked. I had really had enough of this.

He looked gravely wounded, as if I was saying this because of some personal fault of his.