The Istanbul Puzzle (21 page)

The sound of the pane of glass being removed from one of the back windows of Sean’s house in London was as loud as the noise of a suction cap being removed from a jam jar. The window had an alarm attached to it, but only went off if the window was opened.

A man dressed in a dark-navy tracksuit and trainers slipped a thin piece of metal – an electric current generator – between the two parts of the alarm and opened the window. A minute later he was working his way through the rooms. He was mostly interested in Sean’s office. Once he found it, he closed the curtains, turned on the lights and began photographing. He took pictures of everything that might be of interest. He photographed the cover pages of the academic journals beside Sean’s desk, the covers of the novels he was reading, his mobile phone bills, his bank account statements, his birth certificate, pictures of him with the swimming and boxing medals he’d won in his first year at university. He also photographed the two newspaper articles on Sean’s escapade in Afghanistan, which were tucked under a picture of his dead wife.

It took two hours in all. There was a lot of stuff about Sean available on the Internet and from computer records, but getting the juicy stuff, what he held close to his heart, was best done by searching someone’s home. Before the thin-faced man fixed the glass pane back in place, he ran a tube of quick drying plaster along the edge of the window. Only the most minutely observant would know what had happened.

‘You guys really should come up with a better story than that,’ said Kaiser.

We were sitting in the curved seating area in the main cabin of Bobby Kaiser’s Sunseeker motor yacht, bobbing at anchor in the heavy rain. My relief at having been hauled out of the Bosphorus and back into the 21st century was draining away fast under the glare of his cynicism.

He’d let down the anchor soon after he’d picked us up. The cabin was wonderfully warm, smelled of coffee, and was panelled in teak like the inside of an oil billionaire’s Bentley. But we still had problems.

We’d been trying to convince Kaiser – that was what he insisted we call him – that we’d been forced down the rock wall after being robbed. Now I wasn’t sure if coming on board had been such a good idea after all.

‘You don’t expect us to believe that lame story, do ya?’ He turned to a slim, unsmiling Arab with a round well-fed face, his assistant I presumed, who was perched halfway up the steep aluminium stairs that led up to the deck.

Kaiser had one of those pumped-up bodies I associated with lots of time spent in the gym. Both he and his Arab friend wore black T-shirts and jeans. Kaiser’s clothes fitted loosely. His assistant was either wearing clothes meant for someone much thinner, or he liked the skin-tight look.

‘The bull’s piling up tonight, Tunjai,’ said Kaiser.

The Arab stared at us with blank eyes.

A tic in my cheek started beating.

‘Come on, guys, spill it. What were you doing in the Bosphorus in the middle of the night? And where did you find this?’ He pointed at the wet square parcel that sat on the shiny, curved teak table in front of us, surrounded by slimy pieces of decaying leather.

‘I told you. We found it among the rocks,’ I said confidently. I stared at him. Isabel continued to dry her hair with the fluffy white towel Kaiser had given her. The plain black T-shirts and baggy pants Kaiser had given us were exactly what we’d needed. My trousers had a thick coating of mud.

‘Bull, bull, bull,’ was Kaiser’s reply. He ran a finger over the clasp at the centre of the belt keeping the parcel together.

I’d been as keen as him to see what the parcel contained, but when he’d employed a tooth brush to clean the clasp, and revealed a ruby-coloured stone at its centre, I think we were all surprised. Within moments the atmosphere in the cabin had changed, cooled to icy. What we’d found was clearly valuable. All eyes were on it now.

‘Make another one up, guys. That one smells. I don’t know what you’re up to, maybe you’re as innocent as Mother T, but I don’t think so. You never found this in any rocks.’ He pointed his thin knife at the parcel.

The wet and oily looking leather skin was slowly drying in the cabin air. A squall of rain smashed onto the deck above us. The cabin lights flickered. The tic in my cheek started up again.

I felt as if I’d run a marathon. Maybe two.

Isabel was her usual classy self, despite the fact that she was wearing items meant for someone a few sizes bigger than her. Kaiser had been friendly up to this. If the parcel hadn’t been sitting there between us, we’d probably have been reminiscing about Broadway shows by now.

Kaiser’s Arab friend had gawped at Isabel when she’d reappeared after changing in the low-roofed cabin under the steep stairs that led up to the deck. I’d decided then that I didn’t like him. The air of watchfulness he’d adopted since didn’t help either.

‘So what about you? What are you doing out here in the middle of the night? Fishing?’ I said.

‘No way, man. I wouldn’t eat the giant eels they pull outta this place.’

‘Eeuuu,’ said Isabel. She shivered, then looked at me. Something was different now that we’d made it through that tunnel together. I knew I could rely on her.

Kaiser made a sucking noise. ‘You seen ’em?’

‘We saw something in the water. It could have been eels.’

‘Fortune slips through the fingers, like the eels of the Bosphorus,’ said the assistant. His voice was rough, like gravel after a rake had been hauled over it.

I remembered the tunnel, the dark, the slithering. I rubbed my calf. I’d found a long puckered break in the skin when I’d taken off my wet clothes, a triangular red weal, with blood near the surface, where an eel had been sucking on my flesh. We’d come far too close to becoming their dinner.

‘So what are you doing out here?’ asked Isabel.

The atmosphere in the room chilled a few more degrees. Kaiser wore a rock hard expression now. His assistant had stopped fidgeting.

Then Kaiser placed the knife he was holding on the table and spun it around. It stopped, pointing at me. His gaze remained fixed on it.

‘OK, honey, seeing how y’all are so curious, I’ll tell you what we’re doing.’ He paused, then pointed at Isabel. ‘Then maybe you’ll do me the favour of doing the same.’

I shifted on the curved high-backed cream leather bench. What the hell should we tell him?

‘We will,’ said Isabel. She sounded positive, but her eyes whispered something different.

Kaiser began talking. It sounded as if he was giving a well-practised description of his activities.

‘We got a permit to map the floor of the channel here. We’re using the best sediment-penetrating radar you can get your hands on,’ he said. ‘We scan by night, to avoid interference from the daytime traffic. This is the busiest sea lane in the world, you know. 60,000 ships pass through these straits each year, honey. We either work at night or we don’t work at all. Any more questions?’

‘And if you spot something on the sea floor, you report it?’ said Isabel.

He nodded.

I leaned forward. ‘Are you looking for the lost Ottoman Treasury? The Hazine mother lode?’

Isabel smiled at me and pushed her damp hair back from her face. She looked very calm for someone who’d just escaped death.

‘No, mister smarty pants, we aren’t.’ Kaiser spun the knife again.

‘When I was in the army,’ he continued, ‘they taught me a few things. Knowing when someone is hiding something was one.’

The next few seconds of silence were as tense as the two main cables on the Golden Gate Bridge.

‘I thought most of you guys were sick of this region after all the extended tours,’ I said.

‘Must be the chicks,’ he replied. He glanced at Isabel. ‘They’re real different out here.’

‘Feminism doesn’t travel well,’ said Isabel.

He shrugged. ‘At least they show a bit of respect.’

‘Where did you serve?’ she asked.

‘I’ll give you name, rank and serial number, but you’re gonna have to torture me for more.’ His hand lay cupped over the knife.

‘Now, you gonna tell me about this little bundle?’ He lifted the knife, pointed it at the parcel.

‘We found it a few minutes ago,’ I said. ‘That’s the truth. And right now we know as much about it as you do.’

‘OK, so let’s open it together then.’ It was a statement, not a request.

Kaiser picked up the leather parcel. He had an irritating proprietorial grin on his face.

I leaned forward, was about to reach out and snap it from him, when Isabel gripped my arm tight.

‘Sean,’ she whispered. I glanced at her.

Her gaze was fixed on Kaiser’s Arab friend. He’d moved from his perch, had come down the stairs and was only a few feet from us. He looked as if he was expecting a fight.

I pointed a finger at Kaiser. ‘That doesn’t belong to you,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna steal your precious parcel,’ said Kaiser. He put the parcel down, took pink rubber gloves from below the table and pulled them on. ‘I just want to look at it. I can help you identify what you’ve found, OK? I’m just naturally curious, I swear.’

I had to admit I was curious too. And my suspicion of Kaiser was blunted by tiredness.

The parcel was about eight inches wide, eight long and four thick. There was a faint rotten fish smell coming from it.

Kaiser placed a white plastic board on the table. He put the parcel on the board and with all of us around him, began poking at the crumbling leather inner layer with what looked like a dentist’s steel probe. As he picked away at it he examined what was being revealed with a large magnifying glass with a built-in light. He pulled some of the leather away. The process of pulling away the layers was like peeling the skin off an onion.

As he went deeper, I could see that whatever was inside was wrapped in a yellowy waxy material.

‘That looks waterproof,’ I said.

‘Full marks, buddy,’ said Kaiser. ‘And it looks old too. Fifth Avenue was an Indian trail when this parcel was wrapped up. Pre-Ottoman, I’d say, just by the smell of it.’ He put his nose to the parcel and breathed in deeply as if he was smelling an old wine.

‘Did you know when Mehmed the Conqueror was supervising the building of his palace up on that hill, he spent a whole year searching for things like this?’ he said.

He held the parcel up, turned it. The rain was beating down on the roof above us. The noise was getting louder, reverberating through the cabin.

‘Mehmed met with the fishermen who worked these parts,’ he went on. ‘He got ’em to drag the seabed here with their nets for anything the Byzantines lost in the Bosphorus as they escaped the city.’ He stuck the knife in a corner of the yellow waxy material, and with a slow movement, cut along one side, slicing through multiple layers.

‘You know what bugs me?’ he said. He looked at Isabel. ‘I didn’t get a single parcel sent to me during my three tours.’

He sliced along another side of the parcel. A second, more buttery yellow animal skin wrapping was revealed underneath the first. This skin was totally undamaged and sealed on one side with a blood-red wax seal.

‘Did you know this city is where the Shroud of Turin came from?’ he said, as he laid the parcel down with the seal visible on top.

‘And that’s one heck of a seal,’ he said. Impressed into the wax was a stylized eagle with two heads. The wax was dull and faded, but the eagle was still impressive looking.

‘That’s the old Byzantine Imperial seal. There could be anything in this,’ he said.

He shook the parcel gently. Tiny yellow fragments fell off.

‘You know there’s layers to this city that you wouldn’t even believe.’ He raised his knife, cut the seal, pulled the yellow skin off. All eyes were on the parcel.

I heard an intake of breath from Kaiser’s assistant. Inside the parcel, in perfect condition, was the oldest book I’d ever seen. Its cover was a mottled coffee-brown colour. It had a stylized eagle in faded black on its front. The cover looked to be made from thin wood covered with leather. It was unlike any book I’d ever seen.

Kaiser, without much delicacy, cracked the book open. Its pages were stiff parchment, animal skins, dried and stretched. They had faded writing on them. The pages looked frail, but they still turned.

He let them fall on top of each other. Each page was different, frayed a little at the edges. He closed the book, turned it around, examined it from every angle. The pages were jagged, the back bare. Its binding was a visible, thin leathery cord, which passed through each page and was tied at the back. It looked more like a collection of bound documents than a book. What had we found?

I put my hand out. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to give me the book. I straightened, pushed my hand out further.

The atmosphere changed again. It felt as if we were heading for a confrontation. I moved my hand another inch towards him.

He grinned and passed me the book.

I gave him an equally insincere smile. Then I turned my attention to the book. A dark stain covered one corner. It looked as if the stain had been old long before the book had been lost.

‘You guys made a real find,’ said Kaiser. His assistant was standing beside me now. I could smell tobacco on his breath.

‘Looks like it,’ I said.

‘You could wait a lifetime for something like this.’ He was still smiling.

I put the book down on the plastic board and cracked it open using the thin dentist’s probe that lay nearby.

I let the yellowing parchment pages fall on top of each other until the last page was revealed. Each page had writing on it. On the inside back cover was a large square in faded but still clear red ink. I thought of Father Gregory. This was exactly the kind of find he’d have loved.

The square was hand drawn and it had small double-headed eagles at each compass point, north, south, east and west. A line connected each double-headed eagle to make the square shape. Other lines, one each from the east and west eagles, and one from the south, connected straight to the north compass point in an arrow shape. It was an arrow facing upwards in a square.

Each small double-headed eagle was a faded colour. The top one was black, the bottom white, the east one green, the west red.

At the bottom of the inside back cover was a pale red inscription in what appeared to be Latin. I could just make out the words
fame ad mortem
, then further on
semel quisque
and later, very faded the words,
novus semita.

Justinian the Great had moved the Byzantine Empire from Latin to Greek. This could well have been from his time, or from before.

‘That looks like a Kabbalistic symbol,’ said Kaiser. He was pointing at the square. His finger moved to point at the Latin inscription underneath.

‘This could be anything, a prayer, an invocation, a magic spell. The Byzantines were into the occult big time. Cryptic signs, charms, evil eyes, and all that. I saw a symbol like this on a coin once, from Knossos. 5th century, I think it was. It means something, that’s for sure.’

‘It looks like a prayer to me,’ I said. ‘I wonder what library this manuscript came from.’

Above our heads, the rain was hissing loudly on the deck. Kaiser was staring wide-eyed at the book, as if it was an invitation to meet the Queen.

‘If it’s a library book, you can pay the fine, Sean,’ said Isabel. ‘You found it.’

‘That red ink is worm scarlet. It’s from a Middle Eastern tree insect – the coccus ilicis,’ said Kaiser. He peered closer at the square.

‘Where exactly did you find this?’ he said.