Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train (4 page)

“Toast man!” she greeted him.

“Huh?”

“You still look like a piece of toast.” In Egypt, Lacy had told Paul his persistent monochromisity reminded her of toast. His wardrobe consisted almost exclusively of tan shirts, tan or khaki cargo shorts or pants, and brown steel-toed boots, their leather cracked with age. His hair was brown, his eyes like caramel candy, his skin smooth and evenly tanned. His arms, she noticed, were several shades darker than they had been the last time she’d seen him, and the hairs were bleached white.

Paul saw her looking at his arm and laughed. “Burnt toast, maybe.” He steered her toward a rocky outcrop in the shade of an olive tree. “I have to talk to you. Have a seat.”

From the van behind them, Sierra called out, “What do you want me to do with your bag, Lacy?”

Lacy didn’t know how to answer that. She looked at Paul.

“Leave her stuff on the ground. I’ll take care of it,” he said.

Lacy avoided looking toward Sierra. Right now she didn’t want to deal with the issue of where she’d be staying. The sun glinted off Paul’s round glasses and into her own eyes. He planted one boot on the boulder next to the one Lacy sat on.

“It’s been an ungodly awful morning,” he said. “Max, our backer—our benefactor, I guess you’d call him—is dead. He died this morning.”

“I’m so sorry.” Lacy felt a jolt as the image of the body on the slope flashed through her mind. She assumed Paul was talking about a wealthy man, probably an American, who bankrolled the dig but wasn’t personally involved. If he died this morning, that would mean he actually died last night because it wasn’t yet morning in America. “How did you hear about it?”

“Because he died
here
. In that tent over there.” Paul pointed toward the cluster of tents where Lacy now saw several people milling around.

“He was
here?”

“His foundation funds a number of projects, but this year he said he wanted to get his hands dirty. Instead of only collecting finds and prepping them for the museum, he wanted to do the hard work with us.”

“How old was he?”

“About fifty-five, maybe sixty.”

“Awfully young for a sudden death like that. What was it? Heart attack?”

“We don’t know yet. Might’ve been. Henry, his secretary, went with the ambulance to the hospital and he isn’t back yet. Hopefully, he’ll have something to tell us about why he died.”

A soft breeze swirled through the cluster of almond trees and cooled Lacy’s sweaty hair and neck. “Had he been sick?”

“Nope. He was fine last night. I talked to him after dinner about how to handle … oh, never mind. Not important now. He was fine last night but when Todd, our photographer, went to his tent this morning to find out why he hadn’t come to breakfast, there he was. Still in bed and stone cold dead.”

“Could you tell how long he’d been dead?”

“
I
couldn’t. Maybe they’ll be able to make an estimate at the hospital.” Paul poked a blade of grass through his front teeth.

“What about his family?”

“Bob Mueller is trying to call them, but there isn’t much family. The wife’s not mentally competent. Alzheimer’s or something. I don’t exactly know. And then there’s Max’s father, who,” Paul took a deep breath, “had a stroke last week. He’s still in the hospital, in a coma. So Bob’s trying to get through to someone from the Sebring Foundation but they’re in New York where it’s only,” Paul looked at his watch, “four a.m.”

“I guess it sounds crass, but what does this mean for your funding?”

“I don’t know, but now is not the time to ask. Very uncool to say, ‘Sorry about Max but what about our money.’”

“Right.” She looked out across the dig site where several workers were engaged in routine work, probably because they didn’t know what else to do.

“We can meet payroll this Friday, but after that, who knows?”

“Wait a minute. Did you call him Max?”

“Yeah,” Paul said, wrinkling his nose quizzically. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his middle finger, a habit Lacy hadn’t thought about for nearly two years. She wondered if it was Paul’s unconscious way of flipping a bird to the world.

“And he’s head of the Sebring Foundation?” Lacy felt adrenaline rush to her feet and fingertips. “Max Sebring? Given name, Maxwell Sebring?”

“We all called him Max,” Paul said. “But yeah, it was Maxwell, actually.”

“Maxwell Sebring couldn’t possibly have died here this morning because Maxwell Sebring died on my train this morning, somewhere between here and Konya!”

* * *

Paul stared at her.

Lacy waited for him to ask for an explanation of her strange statement, and when he didn’t she studied his face.
Omigod, he thinks I’m kidding!
He must think I’m a total hard-hearted jerk, waiting for him to ask me to explain so I can spin out some ridiculous pun or something.
“Paul, have a seat. Let me tell you what happened on the train this morning.”

She told him the story including her buying the man a ticket and finding the trench coat, but leaving out some details, like the policeman from New York. Paul’s eyes darted to the dig, to the tents, to the field behind them. Obviously preoccupied with his own problems, he kept watching that open field as if hoping for a cloud of dust announcing the return of Sebring’s secretary. Lacy wondered if he was even listening.

“So! Here I am, all stoked to tell you about the death of Maxwell Sebring on my train this morning and you tell me Maxwell Sebring died here! At about the same time.”

Paul glanced over his shoulder again, then looked at her, his head tilted. “I don’t know what to say, Twigs. What can I say? You say it happened, it happened.”

“Is that it?” Lacy ignored his use of the nickname she hated and popped up, spinning around on the toe of one boot. “Is that all you can say?”

“Incredible coincidence.”

“Coincidence?”

“They do happen.”

“No! I miss a flight and the plane crashes. That’s coincidence. Two American men with the same name die, in Turkey, less than a hundred miles apart, on the same day. That’s not coincidence. That’s something else.”

“Like what?”

“Oh for God’s sake. I don’t know! But there has to be a connection.”

“Sit down.” He patted the boulder beside him. “The connection is obvious. No mystery. A connection, but no mystery.”

Lacy sat, jiggling her left foot to work out the adrenaline.

“Max flew into Istanbul about two weeks ago. He probably spent a couple of days in the city before coming out here. While he was there, he may have lost his trench coat. Or maybe the bum you saw on the train stole it. Yesterday, the guy decides he needs to go east, and he hops a train but can’t buy a ticket so he takes his chances on avoiding the conductor. Hey, he’s a bum! He’s dirty and his clothes smell, but his nice new trench coat is clean. No mystery.”

“You should have seen the look on his face.”

“Sort of a haunted, wasted, defeated look? That’s how bums look.”

“If I hadn’t bought
him that ticket, he’d have been thrown off at the first stop and he’d be alive right now.”

“Knock it off, Twigs. Bad logic.” Paul stood, glanced across the field behind them one more time, and grabbed her wrist, pulling her up from the boulder. “Let me show you around.”

Chapter Five

Lacy’s only previous work in archaeology had been in Egypt two years earlier, and the contrast between the settings was stark. The tomb she helped to analyze in Luxor fairly vibrated with color. Color on the walls, color on the ceilings, color on the coffins and the pottery and the linens. She had to brace herself each day for the onslaught of color. Kheta Tepe—that was what Sierra called this site—was drab. Unpainted mud-brick walls,
plain clay pottery
reduced mostly to sherds, box-like pits with sharp corners that appeared not one bit different from the soil all around.

“How do you know where the boundaries are?”

“Experience. After you’ve done this for a few years, you just know.”

As they circled the perimeter, Lacy glanced around every few minutes to see if Sierra was still watching them. Her yellow T-shirt made her easy to see and only once did Lacy fail to spot her. On that occasion she waited a minute and caught a glimpse of yello
w at one corner of a tent. It disappeared in a flash.

Paul pointed out which areas were Hittite and which were Neolithic in age. She had expected the older, the Neolithic, to be downhill or underneath the Hittite, but she saw hardly any difference in eleva
tion. Paul
said, “You have to study the layers. The layers weren’t laid down perfectly horizontally so you have to go by the color and texture of each layer.”

“Paul!” A thin man with a determined gait approached them across the middle of the excavation, st
icking to
the high ground between pits. The man paused, reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a dispenser pack of breath mints. He shook a few into his hand and popped them into his mouth, then removed his hat and Lacy saw his grey hair was pulled back from a seriously receding hairline into a ponytail.

As he walked toward them, Lacy reached a decision. She grabbed Paul’s arm and whispered.  “Don’t tell him about the man on the train.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t.” Lacy didn’t exactly know why not. She w
as following her gut. Given Paul’s reaction to her story, she felt sure she’d hear the same
thing again. It was a reasonable idea. Soon, she’d have everyone in the camp on their guard against telling her anything that might bolster her crazy idea that two
Maxwell Sebrings had died today.
Something was really wrong here, and she might have to work it out by herself.

Paul introduced her to Bob Mueller, the director of the dig.

“Lucy? Nice to finally meet you.”

“Lacy.”

“Paul has told me a lot about you. He say
s you’re the world’s best when it comes to color.”

“This is quite a change from the tomb in Egypt.”

“I dare say. Yes.” Mueller looked around. He grabbed her by the arm and started to pull her away, but Paul stopped him.

“Wait up. Have you talked to anyone
in New York yet?”

“I called Alan at home. Woke him up. He’s trying to take it all in, but he went kind of silent when I told him. Shocked. Couldn’t even talk for a while.” A breath mint bobbed on the tip of his tongue. “He’ll call me back after he contacts
the others. Office d
oesn’t open ‘til nine, though.”

To Lacy, Paul said, “Alan’s the Sebring Foundation’s associate director.”

“What about his family?” Lacy asked.

“What family?” Mueller settled the hat back on his head. “His father’s in a coma and his wife doesn’t know what year this is.”

Paul drew Lacy to him, draping an arm over her shoulder. “Still, there must be someone we should tell. A family member, his wife’s nurse, or someone.”

“Alan’s going to call them. We can let him handle it.” Grabbing Lac
y’s arm
again, he pulled her away from Paul. “Let me show you around, Lucy.”

Mueller led her through the maze of excavated trenches and onto a small hill from which they could see miles and miles to the south. The dig lay behind them. Climbing and talking,
he blew whiffs of orange mint across her f
ace. He paused at the summit and reseated his wide-brimmed hat on his head. Lacy glanced up at a brilliant sun, high overhead. Her own hat was still in her duffle bag under the tree.  Ahead, a broad plain stretched to the horizon, cut only by a green river valley with patches of trees.

“Take your mind back to five hundred forty-seven
b.c.,
Lisa.” Mueller gazed southward, both hands outstretched and sweeping the landscape in a dramatic gesture. “What do you
see?”

Lacy had no idea how to answer. She wondered how many ways he would find to mispronounce her name.

“I’ll tell you what I see,” he said. “I see a small battalion of the Persian army marching across this plain, heading south. These soldiers have just fought alongside Cyrus the Great and conquered the Lydians to the north. I see them stopping by that river down there for the night.” His arms spread wide like a Hollywood director, he seemed lost in a world of his own making. “Cyrus isn’t with them becaus
e he’s still back
there,” he snapped his thumb backward, over his shoulder, “conquering the rest of the Anatolian Peninsula. He has more work to do, but he’s sent these men home early.” He turned to face her. “Why?”

The question caught her off guard. Muell
er’
s blue eyes shot sparks into hers. Like a vindictive freshman chemistry teacher she had known, he looked as if he wanted her to guess and guess wrong, so he could humiliate her with the right answer, as if anyone with an IQ higher than moss would have known it. “You tell me,” she said.

“Does the name Croesus mean anything to you?”

“As rich as Croesus? My grandmother used to say someone was ‘as rich as Croesus.’ He was a king. King of Lydia.” As soon as Lacy pulled this factoid out of some deeply buried
brain cell, she was shocked to hear
herself mouthing the same word Mueller just used, Lydia.

“Exactly!” Mueller, now adopting the stance of an umpire, jabbed one finger toward the northwest, “Lydia!” and the other toward the southeast, “Persia! Home!”

“So
you think Cyrus’s army marched through here on their way home.”

“And what would they have been taking home with them?”

“Riches? Plunder?” Lacy felt like the hired foil on an infomercial for a kitchen gadget. “Gold?”

“Of course. Cyrus and his men plundered
the Lydians’ capital
, laid waste to Croesus’s palace and
did what
with the plunder? No one knows! Bits and pieces of Lydian treasure have come to light over the years, but nothing like what must have been there at the time. Only a small fraction. Cyrus and
his army stayed on the peninsula for some time, completing their
conquest, but he’d hardly want to carry around the riches of Croesus from battle to battle, would he?” Mueller bent forward until the brim of his hat brushed Lacy’s forehead. The scent of or
ange breath mint washed over her.
“He’d get it the hell out of here! Send it home.”

As if he realized he’d let himself get too worked up, he took a deep breath and straightened up. “My theory is, he sent a small contingent home early with the booty. Mostly gold, I imagine. Probably weighed it first so the men couldn’t filch any of it. But what lay between here and home? Assyrians. Babylonians. Cyrus hadn’t conquered them yet but his soldiers would have had to cross their lands. Would they want to try it car
rying
a ton of gold?”

“A ton?”

“I have no idea how much. A lot. But you understand what I’m saying. I’m saying that the riches of Croesus did not make it back to Persia. Only bits and pieces have been found in Turkey, in the part that used to be Lydia, so
what happened to it?” He paused, giving Lacy enough time to make a guess if she were so inclined, which she wasn’t. “They hid it. Somewhere between the palac
e of Croesus,” again he swept his arm to the northwest, “and the land of the Assyrians.” He nodded
southward.

“But why here?”

“I don’t know if it was here exactly,” Mueller said, clipping his words as if she had touched a sore spot. “But if you draw a line on a map straight from Sardis, the Lydian capital, to the north end of the Persian Gulf, it goes directly across here. They had to come through here more or less because you’ve got the Mediterranean Sea on one side and mountains on the other.”

“And you think they buried Croesus’s treasure here?”

“Not exactly here, of course. But somewhere near here.”

“Is that why you chose this spot for your dig?”

Lacy heard a sharp whistle and turned toward the sound. Paul stood on one corner of the excavated area, his thumb and middle finger between his teeth. “Come down!”

* * *

Paul led her toward the van where a y
oung man with
dust-colored dreadlocks waited, prying dirt off his boots with a stick. “Tyler is driving a load of stuff back to the house. The dorm. Most of the workers are staying there because it’s more comfortable, but some of us stay here. I’d recommen
d you stay in the dorm. So do you want anyth
ing out of your bag before Tyler takes it? It’ll be waiting for you there tonight.”

Lacy felt her face flush. She felt that Paul was trying to get rid of her. She wanted to stay here. Was Sierra the reason? Were
they staying together?

“I’d rather stay here, actually.”

Paul swiped his hand across his mouth. “Problem is, we don’t have any empty tent space that I know of. We don’t like to put more than two people to a tent. And some people have brought their own, so even if they aren’t already sharing I can’t ask them to share, if it’s their tent.”

She looked around the encampment at more than a dozen tents. One was much larger than the others and patched multiple times with canvas that didn’t match. Some were too sm
all
to accommodate more than one person. All of them seemed to have been pitched in random directions, like Monopoly houses dropped from the sky. She sighed. “Let me get my hat.” She rummaged through her duffle bag and pulled out her canvas hat, a tube of
Banana Boat Sunblock SPF 50, and a
hairbrush.

The frowzy-headed Tyler threw her bag into the back of the van and drove off. Its trail of dust receded across the fallow field along the same general path Sierra had taken, but in reverse.

“It’s almost lunch time,” Paul said. “Let me show you around.” He steered her into a cluster of tents.

“Bob Mueller thinks he’s going to find the treasure of King Croesus, does he?”

“Oh my God.” Paul winced and dipped his head. “He’s already told you. I wanted to warn you, b
ut I didn’t have a ch
ance. The guy’s a nut case. It’s all I can do to keep a straight face sometimes.”

“So laugh. Why not, if it’s so ridiculous?”

“Because he invited me here. This is a lucky break for me.” He led her on, walking backward to face her and s
tumbling over an
empty bucket, kicking it aside, as he went. “I’m finding Neolithic artifacts. Tools and pottery. There’s more than enough material for several papers. I’m not known well enough to get my own grant but after this I will be. It’s a start. And the more I learn, the more I think southeastern Turkey is the place I need to be.”

“So you’d be surprised if he found Lydian gold?”

“I’d be speechless.” Paul nudged her toward a gap between tents where the native grass was tro
dden into dry strings
. “Bob Mueller knows his field work. His techniques are flawless and he’s good about teaching them to the college kids we have working here. But he’s a soldier of fortune wannabe. He’s bored with mundane grub work and that’s what most archaeology is. Before he started this dig, he spent several years around Mount Ararat looking for Noah’s Ark.”

“Didn’t find it, I suppose.”

“No, but while he was there, two other groups did find it. In two different places. They find Noah’s Ark every few years,” Paul said with a grin.

Lacy smelled grilled onions. “This is making me hungry.” She lifted her nose and inhaled. “Who does the cooking here?”

“Süleyman. Kitchen’s this way. I’ll introduce you.” Paul led her around the side of the largest tent and t
he aroma
grew stronger. He pointed to another tent on their left. “This is Max’s tent.”

Lacy stopped. A blue tent, intermediate in size, it was neither the largest nor the smallest, but it appeared new. Some of the newer ones looked like igloos, all polyes
ter and aluminum. The older ones
were canvas and had gabled roofs. Most of the tents stayed erect by means of a jumble of criss-crossing ropes and pegs. A sleepwalker’s nightmare, the ropes of one tent frequently anchored at the base of its neighbor. The opening to Max’s tent had been left unzipped, its mesh flap hanging to one side. She lowered her head and peeked in. Cozy.

“Go on in.”

“Are you sure it’s all right?” With Paul’s reassurance, she bent to step over the threshold and found she could stand up
inside with inches to spare. The thin walls gave the interior a blue glow. A cot with an aluminum f
rame stretched along one side. A sleeping bag draped off the edge of the cot and onto the plastic floor, its soft fleece lining splayed open. With a shiver,
Lacy realized it must be
exactly as they had left it when they pulled Max’s body out that morning. A folding table held his toiletries, a couple of legal-size envelopes, and a copper tray with loose change, batteries, and a tube of lip balm. A metal-framed captain’s chair stood before another folding table. On it, a laptop computer and several individually wrapped granola bars. An entire case of Pepsi-cola in cans sat on the floor beside that table.