Текст книги "The Navigator"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Chapter 32

ZAVALA FINISHED HIS DETAILED inspection of the Subvette and stepped back from the trailer, his mouth widening in a broad smile. Austin took his friend’s expression as a good sign. On the return trip to the abandoned boatyard, Zavala had tried to be upbeat, but he couldn’t hide the sadness in his eyes at the damage to his creation.

He said, “I built her like a tank, so the frame is intact, and the propulsion system is in good shape, but the lights are cockeyed and some of the sensors were damaged. She’s going to be out of commission until I get back to the States.”

Austin put his hand on Zavala’s shoulder. “She was wounded in a good cause. We’d be dead meat otherwise. You can always build another and donate this one to the Cussler car museum. Looks like your ride is here.”

A tow truck had turned into the boatyard. Austin had asked Mustapha to line up something more suited than Ahmed’s chicken truck to the task of towing the submersible trailer back to the airport. The captain had made a few phone calls and found someone willing to do the job. While the truck hooked up to the trailer, Austin thanked Mustapha again for all his help. Zavala rode in the tow truck, Austin and Carina got into their rental car and followed the trailer along the coastal road to DalyranAirport.

Austin and Carina hitched a ride to Istanbul on the transport plane with Zavala. They parted company at the airport. Zavala would be working late to prepare the submersible for its trip home and planned to stay near the airport. Austin and Carina went back to the hotel, where they had spent their first night in Istanbul. This time, they shared the same room.

THE NEXT MORNING, Austin caught a cab to the Bosphorus archaeological dig and walked down a makeshift wooden ramp that had been set up for wheelbarrow traffic. He wove his way past the hundreds of workers who were hacking away at the exposed sea bottom with picks and shovels.

Hanley knelt in the hardened mud, examining pieces of broken pottery. The archaeologist got to his feet and extended a mud-caked hand.

“Good to see you, Kurt. Ready to get back into some good old Marmara muck?”

“I’ll have to take a rain check,” Austin said. He surveyed the activity on the site. “Looks like the project is going well.”

Hanley’s face flushed with excitement. “This is the most fantastic dig I’ve ever participated in.”

“I hope you won’t be too busy to do me a small favor,” Kurt said.

“I still owe you and the young lady for your volunteer work. Where is Carina, by the way?”

“Freshening up. I’m meeting her for lunch.”

“Please give her my best regards. Now, what can I do for you?”

Austin reached into a canvas bag he had borrowed from Captain Mustapha and pulled out the latex molds of the second Navigator.“Could you make plaster of paris casts from these?”

Hanley held a mold at an angle to view the relief. “No problem. It will take a couple of hours for the stuff to dry.”

“We’ll come by after lunch.”

Hanley took the bag and its contents. “Where’s Joe?”

“Nursing his submersible. It got a bit banged up on a dive and probably won’t be of use to you.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Hanley said. “It would have helped us explore the site’s perimeter, but, as you can see, most of the excavation is dry.”

Austin said he would be back after lunch. He hailed a taxi and told the driver to take him to the TopkapiPalace. The sprawling complex of buildings, courtyards, pavilions, and parks dominated Seraglio Point, a hilly promontory at the junction of the Golden Horn, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosphorus. The Ottoman sultans and their retinues had lived at Topkapi for four hundred years during the heyday of the Ottoman Empire.

The palace grounds had been transformed into a museum. Austin strolled between the twin turrets into a park shaded by leafy trees and teeming with tourists from every part of the world. He passed the treasury, which guarded a fortune in precious jewels, and made his way to the building housing the Konyali Restaurant.

Carina sat at a table in the courtyard, gazing out at the sun-sparkled water. She had changed from the casual outfit she wore on the TurquoiseCoast and wore a long-skirted dress of dark russet that complemented her cinnamon-and-cream complexion. Austin wore tan slacks, foregoing his standard Hawaiian color riot for a more-conservative dark green polo shirt.

He pulled up a chair. “The sultans really knew their real estate. Location, location, and location.”

She greeted him with a dazzling smile. “It’s spectacular!”

“The prices are exorbitant and the food is less than five-star. The service is cafeteria-style. But the dining view is the best in Istanbul. You can’t go wrong with the salad or the kebabs.”

Austin offered to do the honors. He carried two fresh green salads and lemonades back to the table.

Carina took a dainty bite of lettuce. “An excellent recommendation. Is there any place you haven’tbeen?”

“I get to travel a lot in my job.”

“What exactly isyour job?”

“As I said before, I’m an engineer.”

She cocked a finely arched eyebrow. “NUMA is world renowned for its study of the oceans. But you and Joe spend most of your time fighting bad men and rescuing maidens in distress, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Austin said. “I’m also head of the NUMA Special Assignments Team. It consists of Joe and two others who investigate mysteries on, under, and above the sea, that don’t fit easily into any mainstream category.”

“And how does this mystery stack up with your past experience?”

Austin gazed off at the queue of cargo ships that stretched off into the distance.

“Looking at events objectively, I’d say that this is a case of someone wanting something, ready to destroy anything or anyone in the way. Subjectively,I’m afraid it goes deeper than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You get a sixth sense when you spend a lot of time under water. It’s telling me that there is more to this than what we see. There’s evil lurking behind the violence.”

“As if things weren’t strange enough,” she said with a nervous smile. “What do we do next?”

“Enjoy our lunch, savor the view and the sunshine, and then check out the plaster of paris casts Hanley is making for us.”

“Do you think the casts will tell us anything?”

“That’s my hope. Someone didn’t want us to find the second statue. I think we’ve got all we can out of Turkey. The NUMA plane is heading back to the States tomorrow. We can regroup at home. I’d like to look deeper into the Baltazar question.”

“And I’ve got to salvage the pieces of the national tour. Kurt,” she said, lowering her voice. “Don’t turn around. I think one of those men who attacked us on the boat is sitting at a table.”

“Maybe you’ve got the jitters.”

He rose from his seat and came around behind Carina. He put his hands on the back of her chair and quickly scanned the other tables. A man sitting alone saw Austin glance his way and raised a newspaper as if he were reading it.

“You’re right. I’ll see what he’s up to.”

Carina looked on in horror as Austin strolled over to the table. He peered over the top of the newspaper directly into the man’s face. “Peekaboo!”

The man lowered the newspaper and his lips curled into a snarl.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Austin said. “I don’t even know your name.”

“The name is Buck. You won’t have to remember it for long. You’re dead meat, Austin.”

“How’d you get out of the woods?”

“We called in backup.”

Austin sized up the husky physique and the military brush cut.

“American accent. Green Beret or Delta Force?”

“Neither one, smart-ass. Navy SEALs,” he said with a proud smile.

“That explains why you swam so well. The SEALs are a good outfit. Why’d they throw you out?”

Austin must have struck a nerve with his wild guess because the smile vanished.

“Unnecessary roughness.”

“Who are you working for now?” Austin said.

“Someone who wants you dead.”

“Sorry I can’t oblige your employer.”

The man gave him a nasty chuckle. “They want you to suffer, but I’m going to make it quick. I owe you. When you killed Ridley, I became squad leader. Look around.”

Austin surveyed the courtyard restaurant. He picked out the other men he had last seen swimming for shore. One lounged against a wall. A third man sat at a table. They stared at Austin as if they wanted him on a dinner platter.

“I see you’ve brought along the rest of the Turkish swimming team.”

“Go along with us. You can make it easy on the lady.”

“You’ll kill her quick and easy too?”

Buck shook his head. “My employer has other plans for her.”

“Nice chatting with you, Buck. I’ll explain the hopelessness of our situation to Ms. Mechadi.”

Austin sauntered back to the table where Carina sat, her face frozen in fear.

“Good spotting,” he said. “There are three of them. They want my hide, but they want you alive.”

“Dear God! What do we do?”

“They won’t try anything now. It’s too public. Let’s go for a stroll.”

Austin guided Carina in the direction of the palace gate. His pursuers kept pace a hundred or so feet behind. He scoured his memory and tried to recall the layout of Topkapi and the palace grounds, searching for a hidey-hole where they would be temporarily safe.

An idea came to him. Not a total escape, but it might gain them valuable time.

Carina saw the faint smile on Austin’s face and wondered if her friend had gone mad.

“What are you thinking?” she said in an anxious voice.

“No time for questions. Just do exactly what I tell you.”

Carina was an independent woman who bridled at anyone telling her what to do, but Austin seemed to have the knack of getting them out of tight places. She felt him tug gently on her arm and walked faster to keep up.

Austin guided her through the camera-toting crowds milling in the courtyard outside the treasury. They ducked around the corner of an elegant stand-alone marble building that once housed the sultan’s library and broke into a run. They ran through the ornate Gate of Felicity into another expansive courtyard. Austin guided her to the right, dashing through an open chamber where the sultan’s viziers used to meet, his eye fixed on a long row of colonnades and a ticket gate for the Topkapi harem.

They were in luck! The ticket taker who normally manned the gate had wandered off to have a smoke.

Hardly breaking stride, Austin pulled Carina past the untended gate to a door. It was unlocked. Austin opened the door, pushed Carina ahead, and stepped through the portal into the sultan’s harem. He closed the door behind them.

“What do we do now?” Carina said. She was breathless from their last-minute dash. Austin’s wound was kicking up again. He put his hand to his ribs.

“I’ll let you know just as soon as I figure that out,” he said.

Chapter 33

IN OTTOMAN DAYS, when the Topkapi harem was filled with hundreds of veiled beauties, an uninvited entry into its forbidden precincts would have been met by razor-sharp scimitars in the hands of the African eunuchs who guarded the place.

As Austin and Carina stepped into a long courtyard, the handsome young tour guide stopped his spiel and gave them a steely stare that was almost as cutting.

“Yes?”he said.

Austin put on his best Gomer Pyle grin. “Sorry we’re late.”

The guide frowned. The harem tours were conducted on a strict timetable. No one from the ticket booth had called to say there were two add-ons.

He clicked his hand radio to call the security guard.

Carina stepped over and gave the guard her most beguiling smile. She fumbled in her pocketbook and extracted a hundred-lira bill. “Do we tip you now or later?”

The guard smiled and clipped the hand radio onto his belt. “It is customary to tip at the end of the tour, but only if you are satisfied.”

“I’m sureI’ll be satisfied,” Carina said with a flutter of her long eyelashes.

The guide cleared his throat and turned back to the mixture of about two dozen Turks and assorted foreigners clustered around him.

“At one time, the harem housed more than a thousand concubines, slaves, sultan’s wives, and the sultan’s mother. The harem was like a small city, with more than four hundred rooms. On your left are the quarters of the Black Eunuchs and the chief eunuch, who guarded the harem. Other doors lead to the quarters of the imperial treasurer and the chamberlain. You can go through that door and inspect the apartments of the eunuchs,” he said.

The guide gave the same speech in Turkish, and then led the way into the guards’ dormitory like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Austin held Carina back until they were alone in the courtyard. His blue-green eyes scanned the doors, searching for a possible escape route. He tried one door handle. The door was unlocked. He was hoping they could lose their pursuers in the vast labyrinth of apartments and courtyards.

“Kurt,”Carina said.

The Carriage Gate door had opened. Buck stepped into the courtyard with his hard-faced friends and signaled to his men to spread out. They moved three abreast toward their prey.

The guide and the tour group poured out of the eunuchs’ living quarters into the courtyard, creating a human barrier of camera-toting tourists. Austin and Carina merged with the group as it went through a door that stood in a vestibule at the far end of the courtyard.

Austin glanced over his shoulder. Buck and his men were shouldering their way through the crowd.

“What should we do?” Carina whispered.

“Enjoy the tour for now, and when I say run, run.”

“Run where?”

“Still working on that,” Austin said.

Carina muttered in Italian. Austin didn’t need a translator to tell him she was cursing. He saw her anger as a good sign that she hadn’t given in to despair.

The guide led the way through a square-domed chamber. Stopping every few minutes to deliver a speech in Turkish and in English, the guide pointed out where the concubines lived, where the children of the harem went to school, and where the food for the vast complex was prepared.

Austin glanced longingly at the doors and corridors that offered possible escape routes. There was no way he and Carina could break away from the crowd. With each stop, Buck and his friends drew closer.

Austin put himself in the shoes of the pursuers. The three men would move in and separate him from the crowd. Two men would finish him off with their knives. The third would grab Carina.

Buck and his thugs were all former special ops men. Their training would have included knife fighting and assassination. A hand clamped over his mouth to prevent him from calling out. A quick thrust of a blade between his ribs. By the time bystanders realized murder had been done, Austin would be breathing his last. Buck and company would slip away in the confusion that would follow.

If he was going to make a move, he’d better do it soon.

The tour group stepped into a large carpeted room. The walls were decorated in seventeenth-century blue-and-white tile. A wide sofa covered in gold brocade sat on a platform under a gilded canopy supported on four columns. The walls were decorated in a combination of baroque and rococo style. Light filtered through the stained-glass windows in the upper section of the domed room.

The guide said they were in the throne room, or royal saloon. At one end of the chamber was another platform where the concubines, wives, and the sultan’s mother sat during affairs of state or to enjoy music and dancing.

The crowd began to break up, removing the human buffer Austin and Carina had been using to fend off Buck and his gang. As the group dissipated, Austin faced the three men with only a few tourists in between them.

Now or never.

Austin whispered to Carina to play along. He took her by the hand and sidled up to the guide.

“Would it be possible for us to leave the tour?” Austin said. “My wife is not feeling well. She’s pregnant.”

The guide took in Carina’s slim profile. “Pregnant?”

“Yes,” Carina said with a demure smile. “Only a few months.”

Carina spread her fingers across her flat abdomen. The guide blushed and hurriedly pointed to a doorway. “You can go out that way.”

They thanked him and headed for the exit.

“Wait!” the guide said. He lifted his walkie-talkie to his lips. “I’ll call the guard to escort you.”

He spoke into the hand radio. The guard would arrive in a few minutes. He told them to stay with the group in the meantime.

Buck had seen Austin talking to the guide. When the guide spoke into his radio, he assumed that Austin had called for help.

“Let’s do it,” he said to his men.

Austin was guiding Carina from one part of the room to the other, trying to put space between them and their pursuers. He was learning that hide-and-seek wasn’t made to be played in the open.

The three men closed in. Buck was close enough so that Austin could see the murderous gleam in his eye. Buck reached under his jacket.

A burly security guard entered the royal saloon, and the tour guide pointed out Austin and Carina. Austin played his ace card.

Pointing an accusing finger at Buck and the two other men, he roared at the top of his lungs. “PKK! PKK!”

The PKK was short-hand for Partiya Kerkerên Kerdistan,or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organization that wants to set up an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey. The PKK had been staging a violent campaign against the Turkish government since 1978, attacking government property and tourist areas and, in the process, killing thousands.

The guard’s amiable expression vanished, and he fumbled for the revolver in its belt holster. In Turkey, shouting PKK was the equivalent of throwing gasoline onto an open fire. The guard had finally got his gun out.

The guard saw the knife in Buck’s hands. Holding the revolver with two hands, he shouted in Turkish. Buck turned and saw the muzzle pointed at his chest. The knife clattered to the floor, and he raised his hands in the air.

One of Buck’s men was aiming a pistol at the guard. Austin threw a battering ram shoulder block into the man’s midsection, and the gun went flying. They crashed to the floor, and Austin drew his arm back and nailed the man with a short punch to the jaw.

The throne room had emptied out. The tour guide had ducked into a doorway and was calling for reinforcements on his radio.

Buck slipped his hand under his jacket and came out with a gun. It was a fatal mistake. The middle-aged guard was a Turkish army veteran. Although he was thick around the middle, he remembered the discipline that had been drilled into him. Austin got to his feet, yelled “PKK” again, and pointed at Buck.

The guard turned, calmly aimed at Buck’s torso, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet caught Buck square in the chest and sent him crashing onto the sultan’s divan.

Austin scrambled to his feet, grabbed Carina, who had been frozen in place, and guided her toward the exit door. They flew along a corridor, made a blind turn, and retraced their steps to a small room that had a door in the corner. The door led out onto a terrace that was drenched with sunlight.

Standing on the terrace were the two men who had chased them through the abandoned village. Austin stepped in front of Carina to protect her. As the men started toward Austin and Carina, the harem door burst open and Buck’s men stepped out into the open with guns in hand. They blinked in the bright sunlight and didn’t see the Turks reach under their jackets for guns, which had silencers attached. The guns coughed simultaneously. Buck’s men crumpled to the deck.

While one Turk kept his gun trained on the door, the other took Austin’s arm.

“Come,” he said. “It’s okay. We’re friends.” He gave Austin a friendly pat on the back and winked at Carina.

The other man took up the rear. He was talking on a cell phone and frequently glanced over his shoulder to see if they were being followed.

The Turks hid their guns when they entered the public area and led the way through a maze of buildings and courtyards to the palace gate. A silver Mercedes waited at the curb with its engine running. The lead Turk opened the passenger door.

Austin and Carina got into the backseat and discovered it was already occupied.

Their old friend Cemil smiled and gave a soft-spoken order to the driver. The Mercedes pulled away from the palace complex and merged with the Istanbul traffic flow.

“Those were yourmen?” Carina said.

“Don’t worry. They are not angry about the tire your friend ruined. It was their own fault. I told them to keep watch on you, but they got too close.”

“I’ll pay for a new tire,” Austin said.

Cemil chuckled. As a Turk, he explained, he could not refuse the offer.

“I apologize if my men frightened you,” he said.

He explained that after he had seen them in the cisterns, he had heard disturbing rumors. Hard-eyed mercenaries had arrived in town. They had come into the country unarmed so as not to attract attention and had acquired weapons from a local dealer, who was a friend of Cemil’s. More worrisome, they had arrived the same day as Carina and Austin and were staying in the same hotel.

He had sent his men to keep an eye on his friends. After his men had been ditched in the abandoned village, they had returned to Istanbul and kept an eye on the hotel, figuring Austin and Carina would come back for their luggage. They had followed Austin from the archaeological site to Topkapi only to lose him when he and Carina had ducked into the harem. They had seen Buck and his men go in after them and had run around to the exit.

Carina planted a big kiss on Cemil’s cheek. “How can we ever thank you?”

“There is one way. I made a bad business decision that has come to the attention of the international authorities. It would be helpful if you vouched for my character should the situation become awkward.”

“It’s a deal,” Carina said.

Cemil’s cheerful manner changed. “Your hotel is no longer safe. My men will pick up your luggage and move you to an inn where you will be okay for the night. I have a lot of friends in Turkey, but people are easily bought and sold, and I could not guarantee your safety indefinitely”

“I think Cemil is saying the climate here is no longer healthy,” Austin said.

“Your friend puts it very well,” Cemil said. “My advice is to get out of Istanbul as quickly as possible.”

AUSTIN WASN’T one to disregard good advice. But he had unfinished business to attend to. The Mercedes dropped them off at the Bosphorus dig, and arrangements were made to pick them up in two hours.

Hanley was in a shed that had been set up as a conservation laboratory. The plaster casts were laid out on a table. They were dark gray in color.

“I painted the ridges and raised areas to make them stand out,” Hanley explained. “Fascinating stuff. Where did you say you got it?”

“These designs were etched into a Phoenician statue. We’ll run them by an expert when we get home,” Austin said.

Hanley bent over the plaster of paris replica of the cat that had been entwined around the Navigator’s legs. “I’ve got three cats back home, so I got a big kick out of this,” he said.

Austin was looking at the swirling lines that were the cat’s stripes when his eye began to see patterns that didn’t seem random. He held a magnifying glass over the cat’s rib section. Almost lost in the feline’s stripes was an opposing Zsymbol. Unlike the others, which were horizontal, this one was upside down.

He handed the glass to Carina, who studied the mark and said, “What does it mean?”

“If this isa symbol for a ship, it’s either sunk or sinking.” Austin stared at the pattern of lines and whorls. “I think this is more than artistic whimsy. We’re looking at a map. Those lines depict a coastline. The indentations are bays and coves.”

He borrowed a digital camera and a tripod. Carina held the casts at a vertical angle. Austin shot dozens of photos and downloaded the pictures on a borrowed laptop computer and sent them to a NUMA e-mail address.

While Hanley and Carina wrapped the casts in plastic foam, Austin put a call in to Zavala at the airport. Zavala said he would meet them the next morning for the flight back to the United States. The damaged Subvette had been loaded onto its cargo plane.

The Mercedes arrived with their baggage and took Austin and Carina to a small hotel that overlooked the Bosphorus. They turned in early, too tired to enjoy the view, and fell asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow. When they arose early the next morning, the Mercedes was waiting to take them to the airport.

Zavala welcomed them on board with a fresh pot of coffee.

Less than an hour later, the Citation was airborne and heading west at five hundred miles an hour.

“How was Istanbul?” Zavala said as the plane sped over the Aegean.

Austin told him about the encounter with Buck and his gang at Topkapi, the mad dash into the harem, and the rescue by Cemil and his men.

“The harem! Wish I could have been there,” Zavala said.

“Me too. We could have used you when the shooting started,” Austin said.

“That’s not what I had in mind. I wish I could have been there when the harem was full of beautiful women.”

Austin should have known better than to expect any sympathy from his womanizing friend.

“I understand there’s an opening for a eunuch,” Austin said.

Zavala clamped his knees together. “Ouch,” he said. “Thanks but no thanks. I think I’ll go up and chat with the pilot.”

Austin grinned at his partner’s discomfort. His light mood only lasted a moment. Buck and Ridley were dead and their cohorts neutralized, but if Austin’s suspicions about Viktor Baltazar were correct there would be more hard-eyed men in his future.

Even worse, the baby-faced killer was still on the loose.