The Last Cato (46 page)

The women’s galleries were located on the first floor. I was afraid the doorman would force us to stay there while Farag and the captain looked around. Fortunately, he didn’t. Doria and I moved around the mosque as we pleased. Apparently, foreign female tourists enjoy privileges Muslim women don’t.

For more than an hour we wandered high and low, inspecting absolutely everything. We started with the
qibla,
the temple wall that faced Mecca. At its center, carved into the stone, was the
mihrab,
the most sacred spot in the building, a recess that pointed in the exact direction of Mecca. It was much more difficult to examine the
maxura,
which was near the
qiba,
the imam’s pulpit. After that, we split up and Farag studied the numerous hanging lamps with immense patience. I examined each and every one of the columns on the three floors, including the women’s gallery. The captain, clutching his utility backpack as if it were made of gold, analyzed the motifs woven into the huge rugs and benches and every piece of wood, as well as the plain sarcophagus that held the remains of Mehemet II. Doria looked over the stained-glass windows and doors. The only thing we didn’t do was pry the flagstones from the floor.

By the time we finished our inspection, the conqueror’s mosque was practically empty of worshippers except for a few old men dozing next to the pillars. But that silence was none other than the calm before the storm. The muezzin’s call to prayer over the loudspeakers startled us, and we looked at each other, disconcerted. The captain motioned for us to join him at the door and leave at once. We barely had time to regroup. Surging in waves, out of nowhere, hundreds of the faithful entered the temple, arranging themselves in orderly, parallel rows for the midday prayer.

“It’s the
adhan,
the call to prayer,” Doria said. Of course, the human tide had somehow pushed her against Farag.

“La ilah illa Allah wa Muhammad rasul Allah,”
the muezzin’s amplified voice shouted over and over. “There is no other God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.”

“Let’s get out of here,” the Rock said, using his body as a battering ram to make way through the current.

With great difficulty, we managed to get to the open-air patio, the
sahn,
just in time—for right before we could retrieve our shoes, the mosque was completely full.

“Tomorrow’s another day,” Farag said cheerfully, looking around with a smile.

“Let’s go,” Doria said. “I’ll take you to the hotel so you can rest. I’ll call Monsignor Lewis and have them bring your luggage from the airport.”

“Is it still on the plane?” I asked, surprised. I immediately regretted having directed a comment to her, even a simple question.

“I had them leave our bags on the plane,” Glauser-Röist explained, “in case we solved the test today.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Kaspar.”

“If you like,” Doria continued, flashing her brightest smile as she took the veil off her hair, “tonight I’ll take you to dinner at one of the best places in Istanbul. It’s a very fun place where you can see a real belly dance.”

“Before we leave, we should examine this patio,” I cut her off, illhumored.

What a strange lot we were that day… The only link between us was the Rock, who had no idea what was really going on.

“But right now they’re praying!” Doria protested. “We may upset the worshippers. Better wait until tomorrow.”

Glauser-Röist looked at her. “No, the doctor is right. Let’s examine this place. If we do so discreetly, we won’t bother anyone.”

“Someone should keep an eye on the doorman,” proposed Farag. “He hasn’t taken his eyes off us.”

“He could be the Staurofilax watching over the test,” I said ironically.

Stupid Doria whipped around to look at him. “Really?” she nearly shouted. “A Staurofilax!”

“Doria, please!” I scolded her. “This isn’t a game! Stop looking at him!”

The elderly doorman, with a thin beard, his head covered by a white cap that looked like an eggshell, frowned and glared at us.

“Doria, go over there,” the Rock ordered. “Talk to him, put your veil back on, and distract him as much as you can.”

With a wicked smile on my lips, I handed Doria my turban and stayed with Farag and the captain.

“Let’s split up,” Glauser-Röist said as soon as Doria was far enough away. “Let’s each examine a third of the patio. Doctor, don’t go near the fountain of ablutions. You could set off a revolution. We’ll take that part.”

They left me alone and headed for the
sabial.
The section I was assigned to, at the extreme left of the enclosure, had nothing of interest. The ground was stone and the trees had slender trunks. There was nothing unusual about the walls separating the enclosure from the street. Poking around lazily under the portico, I amused myself by watching Doria throw herself into conversation with the doorman. The old man looked at her as if she were an idiot—which she was—or the devil incarnate, and looked ready to throw her out with loud, reverberating shouts. I’d love to know what foolishness she was saying to the poor man to make him contort his face in such an annoyed manner.

I didn’t have time to figure it out. Farag grabbed me by the arm and forced me to turn toward him. With an enchanting smile, he cut his eyes in the captain’s direction.

“We found it,” he whispered, still smiling. “Let’s hurry.”

Walking calmly, we headed for the side of the
sabial
where Glauser- Röist was standing.

“What did you find?” I asked, smiling, as we approached.

“A Constantine chrismon.”

“In a Moslem fountain for ablutions? That’s impossible.”

Before the five daily prayers proscribed by the Koran, Muslims must go through a complex ritual of ablutions, washing their face, ears, hair, hands, arms up to their elbows, ankles, and feet. All mosques have a fountain at the entrance where the faithful must pass through before entering the
haram,
or prayer room.

“It’s perfectly hidden,” Farag explained to me. “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces have been scattered on the bottom of the fountain.”

“On the bottom of the fountain?”

“There’re twelve water spigots, and the water falls into a stone drain whose bottom contains the pieces of our chrismon. That means the clue is in the
sabial.
The captain is still investigating. We have to hurry. Doria can’t keep the doorman busy forever. Look quickly and move away as soon as you can.”

I followed Farag’s instructions to the letter, exchanging a knowing look with the captain as soon as I got close enough. Their assessment was right. At the center of the fountain was a stone cylinder from which twelve copper spigots jutted up. Under them was a drain a little less than a meter wide, surrounded by a small parapet. At the bottom, nearly obfuscated by the dirty water, one could see the stone ashlars with worn down reliefs on which one could perfectly make out the disconnected parts of a Constantine chrismon.

Even though I’d been warned about being near the
sabial,
I turned one of the spigots without thinking. Although I didn’t cause any cosmic cataclysm, it gave me an idea. I took off my shoes before Farag’s and the captain’s horrified eyes, and climbed into the drain to see if what we had to do was step on the stones. Obviously, nothing happened. But since the stones were very slippery, as I was getting out, I slipped and bumped against the spigot’s head. The curious thing was that the spigot turned upside down but didn’t break. There I found a spring that proved we were onto something. When Farag and the captain saw the spring, they followed my lead and got into the drain, shoes and all, turning all the spigots like crazy. No more than a minute could have passed from the time I got in the water until we had twisted all twelve faucets and the ground opened up under our feet.

The twelve stones at the bottom of the fountain gave way under our weight, dropping us into a void. As we were sinking, we saw the light grow faint and then disappear. At any other moment of my life (like when we fell from the crypt of Saint Mary in Cosmedin into the Cloaca Maxima) I would have screamed like a crazy woman, my arms flailing, trying to grab on to anything I could. But here, in the fifth circle of Purgatory, I knew anything was possible, and I wasn’t the least bit afraid. I plunged with a great splash into a deep pool of water that received me gently. The only thing that startled me was how freezing cold the water was. I held the air in my lungs, and when I stopped sinking, I kicked my feet to push myself to the surface. Besides smelling awful, that place was as dark and ominous as the inside of a wolf ‘s mouth. Next to me, I heard splashes.

“Farag? Captain?” My voice echoed back to me many times over.

“Ottavia!” shouted Farag, from my right. “Ottavia! Where are you?”

I heard another splash next to me. “Captain?”

“Damn it! Damn all those Staurofilakes!” Glauser-Röist roared. “My clothes are soaking wet!”

I couldn’t help laughing as I tread water. “That’s just great! What are we to do, Captain? Your clothes are wet! What a catastrophe!”

“What a terrible shame!” panted Farag.

“Laugh all you want! I’m fed up with these guys!”

“Ah, well, I’m not,” I said.

At that moment, the Rock turned on his flashlight.

“Where are we?” Farag asked. When the light went on, we saw that we were in a stone tank filled with murky water.

The good thing about living through adventures like this one and being submerged in water used to wash hundreds of sweaty feet is that the problems of daily life, the really painful ones, fade and disappear. Immediate concerns use up all of our physical and psychological resources. In this case our immediate concern was to keep from vomiting, trying not to think too much about the infections such filth could cause to the wounds on our feet and in our tattoos.

“It’s a kind of Sargasso Sea. Instead of algae, there are fungi,” I said.

Farag burst out laughing.

“Doctor, please! Stop saying such disgusting things!” the Rock thundered. “Let’s look for a way out, quickly!”

“Then shine the flashlight on the walls. Let’s see if we can make anything out.”

The cistern’s stone walls were covered with large blotches of black moss, separated by thick lines of filth that showed the different heights the water had risen to over the last five hundred or a thousand years. Apart from the humidity and the layer of vegetation, we didn’t see anything to help us scale the walls. On the other hand, the distance to the
sabial
‘s drain was so great it was impossible to reach it. If there were a way out, it had to be below us.

“We’ve purged more than greed,” Farag murmured. “We’ll purge our pride with this humility bath.”

“We’re not done yet, Professor,” pronounced the Rock.

“We have only one flashlight,” I said, starting to notice the fatigue in my legs. “So if we’re going to dive, we have to do it together.”

“No, Doctor, we have three flashlights. Hold on a moment, and I’ll give you yours.”

He searched in his wet backpack and took it out with great difficulty. Then he handed another one to Farag. In all that light, that place wasn’t so disgusting as it was sinister. I didn’t want to think about it too much, because the whole episode made me gag. I wasn’t about to add more filth to the water.

“Ready?” the Rock asked. Without hesitating, he took a breath, puffed out his cheeks, and sank into that soup.

“Let’s go, Ottavia,” Farag urged me, looking at me with smiling eyes, the same goofy way he’d been looking at Doria all day. If he was trying to bring us closer together, he was tangling with the most stubborn person in the world. Not saying a word or turning around to acknowledge what he said, I filled my lungs with the infected air in the cistern and submerged myself in pursuit of the captain. The water was so muddy that Glauser-Röist’s light was barely visible a few meters below. Farag followed me, lighting up the inner walls of the tank. There was nothing to see except for the large branches of white moss that seemed to wave as we passed by.

I was the first to run out of air, so I had to ascend. I breathed such large mouthfuls of air after I broke the surface that I didn’t even notice the smell. After a while, each of us flipped over and started the ascent; but throughout our successive immersions, we descended much faster because we had grown familiar with where we were swimming. Although the water got colder and colder, the sensation of gently gliding, head first, in complete silence was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. Then Farag accidentally bumped into me and his legs pressed against mine for a few seconds. He looked amused when he shined his flashlight on us, but I remained as serious as possible, though against my will I clung to the way that slight contact had made the water feel a little warmer.

Finally, approximately fifteen meters deep, just about spent, with a terrible pressure in our ears, we discovered the enormous round mouth of a conduit. We surfaced to rest for a few minutes and breath, and then we dove quickly toward the mouth and swam into it. For a second I was worried that that conduit might not end before I ran out of air. Plus, I was trapped with the captain in front and Farag behind me. I prayed for help and focused on the Lord’s Prayer to keep myself from nervously consuming what little oxygen I had left. Just when I thought my time had come, the conduit ended. Far above our heads, I made out a transparent surface through which light was visible. Feeling that my heart was about to explode, I threw myself upward, controlling the instinct to breathe. Finally, like a buoy leaping into the air, I flung more than half my body out of the water and gasped.