Edge of Dawn (35 page)

“And you can also lose big by being reckless.”

Richard bowed his head and considered. He turned to General S
ö
zer, who was on-site. “You'll have people guarding them?”

“Absolutely, and despite recent events, the military is still very powerful in this country.”

Ultimately Richard had agreed.

He and Mosi had negotiated a bedtime at eight thirty with a thirty-minute reading slot, but lights went out at nine. The first night she had read alone. The second night she asked him to read to her. Richard found that he liked it

Now it was the early hours of their fourth day in Ankara, and Richard was once again in the gift shop at two in the morning, talking with Joseph and Jeannette. This time, though, he had been able to call the office. There was an echoing feedback indicating that Jeannette had them on speakerphone.

“Scotland Yard can't find any trace of Grenier. They think he got out of the country somehow,” Joseph said.

“Damn it!”

“What can he do now? He's on the run,” Jeannette said, and satisfaction filled her voice.

“The fact he could escape a dragnet means he's got help,” Richard said.

“Any theories on who?” Joseph asked.

“My bet is on Titchen after all the shenanigans with the buyout of Gaia. Mark was up to his neck in that.”

“So what are their capabilities?” Joseph asked.

“We know this much about their capabilities,” Richard replied. “They can arrange to release sarin in the Tokyo subway.”

Jeannette sounded subdued when she said, “I hadn't thought of that.” She switched topics. “Oh, I had Dagmar's assistant go by the house. The family's gone, and all the cell phones were left.”

“That's good,” Richard said.

“For them. But Richard, there's nobody running Lumina right now,” Jeannette said. “With Grenier gone and Kenzo and Gold dead, can't you come home now?”

A wave of homesickness washed over him. Richard blinked, trying to clear the grit from his burning eyes. He was exhausted from stress and making these phone calls in the dark hours before dawn.

Joseph made the point before Richard could and put their predicament in blunt perspective. “Those sarin gas guys … they're still out there.”

“Oh, yes, that's true,” Jeannette said in a small voice. “I'm sorry, I'm really not being nearly paranoid enough.”

That made Richard laugh. “That's okay. Maybe someday we can all stop being paranoid.”

“That's not gonna happen until the last of these buggers and their human traitors are killed,” Joseph said.

“And I don't have the sword, so I can't kill the buggers. Probably another argument against us coming home. And there's another little wrinkle: I need to get these lawsuits against me handled before I can come back. Put an ad in the
Times
for Pamela so she can get on this for me. And tell her she's now chief counsel for Lumina. I'll call again tomorrow.”

“Take care,” Joseph and Jeannette said in chorus.

He went back downstairs but didn't bother returning to his bunk. He knew he wouldn't sleep. Weber came into the mess hall at five
A.M
., planted his fists on his hips, glared at Richard, and said, “Am I going to have to knock you over the head and put you in bed?”

“The second part of that statement sounds good.”

Weber gave a shout of laughter, and Richard felt the blood rising in his face. “Oh, God, Damon, I'm sorry. My internal editor must be out to lunch. I get this way when I'm tired.”

Weber took the chair across from him. “Actually saying what you're thinking and stating what you want? I like it.” He continued in a more serious tone. “So, what's keeping you awake?”

“What's not? But mostly Mosi. I'm not doing right by her. She's getting very restless, and who can blame her? We can't go on living like Morlocks. She's a kid. She needs to go outside, play, and I've got to get her started with some kind of study regimen.”

“So let's go out.”

Richard shook his head. “It's too dangero—”

“And so are we … dangerous, I mean. We can protect her from most human threats, and if an Old One shows up—well, we've always got feet.”

Richard stood up and stretched. “What's that line from
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
?
‘When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.
'”

“Hey, there's nothing wrong with a strategic retreat.”

Richard sighed. “We just seem to be doing a lot of it right now. As for Mosi … I'll think about it.”

General
Ç
elik came into the mess. The smile of greeting that curved Richard's lips curdled into a grimace when he saw the expression on the old man's face. He came quickly to his feet.

“We have a situation,”
Ç
elik said.

 

Chapter

TWENTY

O
NCE
again Richard found himself aboard the Mi-17 chopper as it beat its way east toward the village of Bo
ğ
azkale. The beams of the rising sun came through the front window like fragments of golden glass to pierce his eyes and set a hammer beating against the inside of his skull. The noise, the movement, and the light combined to have gorge rising up the back of his throat. Richard pulled a bottle of water from his pocket, took a sip, closed his eyes, and swallowed hard.
Ç
elik was aboard with eight soldiers. Lumina was represented by Richard, Weber, and Cross. Richard had left a note for Mosi and woke Brook and Jerry to ask if they would entertain the child until he got back.

“
Is this going to be dangerous?
” Brook had asked.

“
No,
” Richard had replied. He hoped that proved to be true.

Weber, head thrown back against the side of the helicopter, was snoring. His feet were resting on his big bag o' guns. Cross was on the other side of the chopper, matching the security chief snore for snore. Richard looked out the window as they passed over a narrow two-lane highway, a ribbon of black against the green of the grasslands stretching out in all directions. He wondered if it had changed much since long-forgotten conquerors had swept across these lands. Power poles marched along the side of the road. A number of them looked like they were wearing wide sombreros. Richard squinted. A soldier grinned at him and offered binoculars. Richard nodded in thanks and took a closer look.

The telephone pole was topped by an elaborate birds' nest that looked to be at least four feet in diameter. “What the hell?” He nudged Weber with his elbow. “Damon. Wake up. You've got to see this.”

“Huh.” Richard offered the binoculars and pointed. Weber took a look. “Damn, didn't know there were pterodactyls in Turkey.” As they watched, an enormous stork flapped its way beneath the helicopter. Because of its size, the immense wings seemed to beat in slow motion. It came to rest in one of the massive nests, settling down with almost prissy care.

“Well, that was pretty amazing,” Richard yelled over the rotors. He leaned across toward
Ç
elik. “What can you tell me about Bo
ğ
azkale?”

“Kurdish village. They farm, but mostly they are herdsmen. Following the goats and the sheep into the mountains in summer, returning to the village in winter. They make money guiding tourists through the ruins, working as laborers on the archaeological digs.”
Ç
elik gave a grim little smile. “And of course they sell rugs. We
all
sell rugs … or have relatives who sell rugs.”

The helicopter banked hard to the right, throwing Richard against Weber, who placed a steadying arm around his shoulders and left it there as they began their descent. Gray stones formed lines, squares, and rectangles against the grass. Sheep and goats dotted the hillsides, and scrambled through the ruined foundations of what had once been a great city.

Four thousand years ago,
Richard thought. They roared past a large building with crenellated walls that seemed to be constructed from adobe. Clearly a reconstruction in the Hittite style. Which looked a lot like Assyrian architecture to Richard. He wondered who had been here first.

Ahead of them, a cluster of buildings with red-tiled roofs and whitewashed walls lay cupped in the folds of the valley. It was probably just his imagination, but Richard felt like the modern village was huddling, trying to pull away from the lowering ruins on the hillsides.

They drew closer. No people rushed out to investigate their arrival, and what had seemed dark spots on the cobbled streets and in the meadows resolved into huddled bodies. Richard looked at Weber and grimaced. There was a coldness in the small of his back where the hilt should have rested. The soldiers were murmuring to each other, and
Ç
elik looked as old as death and just as grim.

The chopper set down with a lean and a sway. Cross woke up when
Ç
elik barked orders, and the soldiers deployed immediately, forming a perimeter around the general and the foreigners. Richard jumped down and drew his gun. There was something about the silence that had the back of his neck prickling. The soldiers maintained discipline, but Richard saw their eyes flicking rapidly in all directions. Cross stretched and sniffed.

“Yep. Old One stink.”

“Is it still here?” Richard asked. Cross shook his head.

Ç
elik gave more orders, and the troops began leap-frogging into the village, which seemed to possess only one actual street. They found bodies almost immediately. Men in rusty black pants and embroidered white shirts. Women in calf-length dresses wearing head scarves. Children, some clutching toys. A dog howled mournfully and thrust his muzzle into the limp hand of a girl near the city square. The thin wrist was encircled by a bracelet of almost abstract blue glass eyes. There was no human sound. Just wind, and howls, and the distant chime of bells. Richard whirled at the sound.

“Bells. On the goats,”
Ç
elik said.

Richard and Weber knelt next to a man's body and searched for some indication of the cause of death but found nothing. One pocket held another of the glass eyes hanging beneath an embroidered image of St. George slaying the dragon.
Ç
elik waved to his troops to break order and begin searching the buildings. Many of the buildings had the blue eye hung at the door. Richard touched one that was attached to an elaborately crocheted peacock tail. More of the glass eyes formed the eyes in the bird's tail.

“What are these?” he asked
Ç
elik.

“
Nazar boncu
ğ
u.
The blue eye. They're believed to ward off evil.”

“Sure didn't work here,” Weber said unhappily.

Richard entered building after building and found only death. It was the infant in a crib in an upstairs room that sent him reeling back to lean against a wall, choking on tears, overcome with horror. He gasped for a few moments, mopped at his face, which ran with equal parts tears and sweat. He knew it was stupid, but he wrapped the tiny baby girl in her embroidered blanket and carried her downstairs. He placed her gently on the breast of the young woman whom he guessed was her mother. The woman had been struck down as she stood at her stove. The burner was still on, the contents of the pan burned to an unidentifiable sludge that resembled charcoal. Richard turned off the burner and backed out of the charnel house.

They all rendezvoused back in the main square. The soldiers were muttering, looking in all directions. “What killed them?”
Ç
elik demanded.

“An Old One,” Cross said. “We need to find the opening. See if it's still open.”

“You can locate it?” Richard asked.

“Oh, yeah, but with its stink all over everything, we're gonna have to get close.” Cross glanced at the hills across the valley, the gray stones like broken teeth in the grass. There was something chilling about those enigmatic lines.

“Damn, those ruins have gotta cover five or six square miles,” Weber said.

Richard looked around the square. There was a sign in several languages indicating a museum. “Let's see if there's anything about the site that might narrow the search.”

They went inside. Past the ticket taker dead in his kiosk. The museum itself was small. Some pottery, tools, clay tablets with cuneiform pressed into their surfaces. There were pictures of sunburned men and women working in test trenches assisted by local citizens, and photos of points of interest in the site. Richard skimmed down the long description. He learned that the site had been discovered in 1834, but no real excavation begun until 1906. The most notable discovery was of a peace treaty between King Hattushili III and Pharaoh Ramses II. The original was in a museum in Istanbul, and a copy was on display at the United Nations. Proof, Richard thought, that diplomacy had a long history. It was recommended that they view the Lion's Gate and the King's Gate, also a temple in the lower city. There were pictures of stairs ascending the city walls and tunnels that ran beneath the royal enclosure.

Ç
elik, reading the Turkish version over Richard's shoulder, reacted to something. “It was known as the City of a Thousand Gods,” the general said softly, as if worried that some of them were still listening.

“Well, that's never a good thing,” Cross grunted.

Richard read about the last days of the city when a mysterious illness had swept through, killing almost everyone. He and
Ç
elik exchanged glances. “Rather like what happened last night, yes?” the old man said.

“Yeah.” Richard resumed reading, and had just about resigned himself to a long search across the entire ruin when his eye was caught by a small section about the mystery surrounding a strange green rock, almost perfectly square and about two feet high that stood in the temple complex in the lower city. Geologically, the rock matched nothing in the area. The closest analogue was to a quarry in Egypt, but even that was in some doubt. There were also handprints that had been worn into the surface of the stone by thousands of worshipers over decades. The rock was just one of the many enigmas of Hattusas. Richard mutely pointed at the section. Everyone leaned in to read.