The Eighth Day (43 page)

The old man nodded. “You’re the Imam,” he acknowledged. “And I am the Chairman. Since this is a
business
meeting, the young man will be heard.” He turned to Danny. “How did my grandson die?”

“He
killed
him!” Zebek insisted.

“Is that true?” Mounir asked.

“No,” Danny replied. “It’s not true at all.”

“Then tell me what happened,” Mounir ordered.

While one of the Elders quietly translated for those of his colleagues who did not speak English, Danny explained that Remy Barzan had been hiding from Zebek—even as Danny fled from the same man.

Twice Zebek attempted to interrupt him, but on each occasion he was silenced by Mounir.

“Remy had some arrangement with the soldiers at a checkpoint up the road,” Danny reported. “They came to the house, once or twice a week. I don’t know if they were looking in on
Remy
or if they were watching the house for someone else, but . . . Remy was used to them. Then—I don’t know if they were soldiers or some guys
dressed
as soldiers, but they showed up at the house one day and . . . Remy saw them on the security monitor. He wasn’t worried about them. He went out to talk to them! Then they started killing everyone.”

Zebek scoffed.

“And you?” Mounir asked, his eyes locked with Danny’s.

“I ran. I hid.”

“And you don’t know who they were?”

“Yeah, I do! They were Zebek’s!” Danny exclaimed.

Before Zebek could deny it, Mounir patted the air with his right hand. “How do you know?” he asked.

“Because I saw him.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Zebek warned.

“He was riding in a Bentley.”

Mounir held Danny’s eyes for a long moment, then took a deep breath and turned to Zebek with a questioning look.

Zebek thought for a moment, rubbing his jaw where Danny had hit him. Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke. “You said it yourself, Mounir: this is a business meeting. What happened—or didn’t happen—between Remy and me . . . has nothing to do with why we’re here. I’d suggest we get on with our business and leave these other matters for another time.”

Mounir turned to Danny. “Is it true what he says? What happened to Remy has nothing to do with why we’re here?”

Danny shook his head. “It has everything to do with why you’re here.”

“And how is that?” Mounir asked.

Danny took a deep breath. “I sent you a report,” he told him. “You’ll get it in a few days—in the mail. Meanwhile . . .” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the floppy disk on which he’d copied Rolvaag’s report, replete with the JPEG files. Sliding the floppy down the table to Mounir, he said, “It’s all on that.”

Mounir gave the floppy to an older man who was seated beside him. The older man slipped it into a laptop and called up one of the files. Mounir glanced at the monitor, which showed a comparison array of tree rings from different times and places. “What is this?” Mounir asked, a look of bafflement on his face.

Zebek leaned back in his chair, the better to see the monitor. A puzzled expression flickered on his face and then hardened into something else as his eyes widened in recognition of the image on the screen.

“Let me tell it from the beginning,” Danny suggested. “Or it won’t make sense.”

Mounir gave him a go-ahead nod.

“This guy called me about a month ago,” he began, with a gesture at Zebek. “Said his name was Belzer and would I meet him at the airport . . . ?”

It took him a long time to get the story out. He kept forgetting details and so had to loop back to make sense of things. Once or twice, the translator asked him to stop, so that he could catch up. But in the end, it all came out. “The point being that our friend here substituted a fake for the Sanjak that Sheik Adi carved—because that was the only way he could get the money he needed for his business. Chris Terio and Remy Barzan found out about it and had the wood tested by Dr. Rolvaag. You can read Rolvaag’s report, but the conclusion is obvious. Mr. Zebek is . . .” Danny thought about it. “A menace.”

The room was airless and still, the loudest noise an occasional click on one of the keyboards. Then Zebek started to applaud, clapping his hands in slow sarcasm. When he had the attention of everyone in the room, he put his fingers together in a prayerful way and began to speak in a matter-of-fact voice. “He invades our meeting, armed with a submachine gun. He attacks your Imam with his fists. And still you listen to him?” He paused. “Isn’t it obvious,” Zebek asked, “that this man and the others—this Terio fellow and Remy Barzan—isn’t it obvious they have their own agenda?”

“What agenda?” Danny asked.

Zebek didn’t even look at him. “He works for a business espionage firm called ‘Fellner Associates.’ They’re trying to destroy my company to get at its patents.”

“Bullshit!” Danny exclaimed.

Mounir patted the air with his right hand, then pointed at the monitor in front of him. “And this?”

“What about it?” Zebek asked.

“Are you saying these files are a lie?” Mounir asked.

Zebek frowned. “You mean this report from the—what is it? The Oslo Institute? The dendrochronologist’s report?”

Mounir nodded. All the Elders fixed Zebek with their gaze.

He made a little moue and said, “No, I don’t think the report is inaccurate. I’m sure it’s quite correct.” He paused to let the words sink in.

“Then . . .” Mounir began.

“I’m sure the wood is just what this scientist says—fifty years old! One hundred years old! In any case, much too young to have come from the Sanjak.” He paused again. “But what does that prove?” he asked. “That the Sanjak is a fake? Hardly. The only thing it
proves
is that Terio and Barzan gave this man, Rolvaag, a piece of wood that came from something other than the Sanjak.”

“Like what?” Danny asked.

Zebek shrugged. “A cigar box, perhaps.” Then he shook his head. “I can’t believe we’re still listening to this,” he said.

The Elders burst into argument among themselves. Unable to understand a word, Danny turned to Zebek. “You’re a seriously fucked-up man, y’know that?”

Zebek looked away.

After a bit, Mounir raised a hand, and the room fell silent. “We need to resolve this before any further business can be conducted.”

“I quite agree,” Zebek told him. “You need to decide who to believe. Your Imam—or this . . . this maniac from America.”

Even Mounir smiled at the characterization. “Then it’s settled,” he said, rising slowly to his feet. “Your plane is at the airport?”

“My plane?” Zebek repeated.

“I was told you have a private plane.”

“Well, yes,” Zebek said, “but—”

“Then I think we should go.”

“But where?” Zebek demanded. “Where do you want to go?”

Mounir ignored the question, turning instead to the other Elders. He spoke to them briefly. Then, one by one, they got to their feet and followed him out of the room.

The plane took off a little after seven
P.M
., flying to the southeast with its fuel tanks fully loaded. The pilots had been told they were going to Athens, but that turned out to be a ploy. An hour into the flight, Mounir went to the cockpit and announced a new destination: Diyarbakir.

Though he tried not to show it, the change seemed to unsettle Zebek, who fell strangely silent. Danny was quiet as well. It was his first trip in a private jet, and he would rather have been almost anywhere else. For one thing, there was no cabin service, which meant no food. For another, and as he’d tried to explain to Mounir, there was no reason, really, for him to go
anywhere
—except home. He’d given the Elders Rolvaag’s report, and he’d told them everything he knew. Why should he have to accompany them to Diyarbakir?

“Because one of you is lying,” Mounir replied.

It was a long flight, the European equivalent of New York to Denver. Somewhere over the Caucasus, Zebek got up and walked back to where Danny was sitting and sat down beside him.

“You could have written your own ticket,” Zebek whispered.

Danny glanced at him, then looked away into the darkness beyond the window.

“You still can,” Zebek announced.

Danny turned to him. “Aren’t you worried I’ll hit you again?”

Zebek shrugged. “I said you still can.”

Danny looked around for another seat, but they were all taken.

“This is about dreams,” Zebek murmured. “Not some
salary
. I’m talking about all the money you could ever want, all the money you could ever spend.”

Danny shifted in his seat.

“It isn’t just the money, it’s the time,” Zebek continued. “The time an artist needs to find his way. Think of it as Paris . . . with Paulina, if you like—”

Danny turned to him. “What are you so afraid of?”

The question made Zebek jump, a little hitch in his shoulders, as if a static charge had run through him. “I’m not afraid of anything. But you should be. I think Mounir is taking us to Uzelyurt—”

“What for?” Danny asked.

Zebek shrugged. “There’s going to be a grand assembly—a sort of town meeting—to decide which of us is telling the truth. Frankly, I don’t see how it can possibly go well for you.”

Neither did Danny. Zebek was the Imam, fluent in the local dialect. Danny was . . . a foreign sculptor in golf clothes with high hopes for his first show.

“So what are we talking about?” he asked. “What do you want me to do?”

“Tell them you lied,” Zebek replied. “I can fix the problem with your girlfriend—persuade her that the video was a bad joke. I can fix everything—including the problems you’re about to have with the Yezidis. But you have to tell Mounir that you lied. And you have to tell him soon. Trust me—”

Danny thought about it. Said: “Nah.”

They landed in Diyarbakir a little after two
A.M
. While the pilots took care of the Customs formalities, Mounir led everyone else out to the parking lot, where a line of black Mercedes stood idling at the curb. To Danny’s surprise, Kukoc and the Buddy/Buddy Guy emerged from the terminal. At Mounir’s direction, they ushered Zebek into the backseat of the first car, where they bookended him, one on each side.

Danny was directed into the second car, where he was soon joined by Mounir and two of the other Elders. They sat where they were for a minute or so, and then the caravan of Mercedes pulled away from the curb.

“When is the meeting?” Danny asked, suppressing a yawn. “I hope it’s in the afternoon, because—”

“There isn’t any ‘meeting,’ ” Mounir announced.

Danny got a cold feeling at the base of his spine. “But . . . I thought there was going to be some kind of town meeting in Uzelyurt. Zebek—”

“—is mistaken,” Mounir told him. “We aren’t going to Uzelyurt.”

Danny frowned.
Then where? Where else was there?

Mounir seemed to read his mind. “We’re going to Nevazir,” he said.

“The underground city?” Danny didn’t get it. He was stupid with jet lag, wrung out with worry, and physically exhausted. Putting two and two together was almost more than he could manage. “But why?” he asked. “What’s there?”

Mounir lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew the smoke out in a long, thin stream. Gazing out the passenger window, he shook his head and said, “I don’t know. Maybe nothing.”

It was a two-hour drive that wound through the hills and into the mountains, the blond earth now gray with moonlight. Eventually, the caravan turned off the main road, slowing to a crawl on a dirt track that ended in a clearing bordered by cypress trees. One by one, the Mercedes’ engines died and the Elders got out.

Wedged between Kukoc and the Buddy/Buddy Guy, Zebek was practically growling with what sounded like a mixture of anger and fear. While Danny didn’t understand a word of the Yezidi dialect, Zebek’s tone made it apparent that he felt betrayed. Clearly, he hadn’t expected to come here.

They were standing about twenty yards from a doorway that gave entrance to the hill itself. A massive pair of antique iron doors were flung open upon a black cavern. Beside the doorway, a young man stood with a box of Maglites, handing them out to each of the Elders as they entered.

Danny hurried to Mounir’s side. “What’s in there?” he asked.

The old man shrugged. “Nevazir.”

“Yeah, well, if it’s okay with you, I’ll just wait out here,” Danny told him.

Mounir grinned, then shook his head. Taking Danny by the arm, he gave him a flashlight and led him into what turned out to be a long, low tunnel that twisted and turned through a series of cavelike rooms, heading ever downward. The underground city was, as Danny had been told, a gigantic ant farm, with tunnels running off in every direction.

The flashlights’ beams sliced through the darkness, splashing against the rock walls. “Where are we going?” Danny asked, breathing through his nose in an effort not to hyperventilate. It was like being in a mine, but a mine with a hundred passageways.
What if we get lost?
Danny wondered.
What if the flashlights give out? What if . . . ?
His jet lag had vanished, consumed by an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia.

“What’s that?” Danny asked, pausing next to a massive round stone that rested precariously on a crude plinth in a sort of alcove adjacent to the passageway. As near as Danny could tell, the only thing holding it in place was a much smaller stone, wedged into the space where the plinth and the stone met.

“It was used to block the tunnel,” Mounir explained. “If the people’s enemies followed them into the city, they could seal off the passages behind them. Eventually, their enemies would give up.”

“And then what? They’d roll the rock back?”

Mounir shook his head. “Impossible. They’d have to dig a new passage.”

They’d been walking for fifteen minutes or more. The pace was slow, given the physical state of some of the Elders and Zebek’s clubfoot. Maybe it was way more than fifteen minutes. Danny couldn’t be sure. There was nothing in the underground city to mark the passage of time. No sense of depth or direction. “Where are we?” he asked.

“About twenty meters underground,” Mounir told him. “It isn’t far now.”