Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train (17 page)

Chapter Seventeen

At dusk the next day, Lacy pulled off the road and bounced down the rutted tracks to the dig site, her neck muscles strained from constantly turning to see if she was being followed. Though she had no clue what sort of vehicle to watch for, she reasoned that any vehicle, seen more than once, would be suspicious. She maneuvered the little white Ford around the worst gullies, by this time expertly plying the clutch and shifting gears without that horrible grinding noise. With more than a hint of pride she brought her hiatus to an end, hoping she could tell Paul about it without gloating, but the fact was she had escaped an abduction as few could have done. She had capitalized on her unique bone structure, kept her head—now sore but no longer throbbing—traded gold for a bit of cash, hooked up with a would-be spy, broken into a hotel room, foiled her pursuers, and driven across Turkey with no license, no passport, and no hope of avoiding arrest if stopped. And no hope of being believed if she told the truth.

Something was wrong. As soon as Lacy pulled up to a space at the edge of the camp, she felt it in her skin and on the back of her neck. Something indefinable but not good. The canvas tents glowed golden in the sun’s last rays. Some of the tents were gone, she thought. Surely there used to be more.

Her watch said seven-fifty. Dinnertime. Pocketing her keys, she climbed out and walked through the little olive grove toward the big tent and the mixed aromas of roast lamb and coffee. She should be hearing raucous laughter by now. She stopped. Voices were indeed coming from the tent but they were subdued. Yellow lights from lanterns dotted the encampment, but there were definitely fewer tents. Two silhouettes, men wearing hats, stood on a rise just behind the big tent, beyond the muddy area where the shower enclosure stood. Instead of going into the tent, Lacy slipped around its north side, sticking close to it.

“You’re screwing the whole thing up!” Paul was facing her way and his voice carried clearly over the distance. “I’ve worked five years for this and I will not let you fuck it up!”

“You’re forgetting who invited who,” Bob Mueller said, his voice less distinct but no less angry.

“It’s a wild goose chase. You take off and go walkabout with a damn metal detector and you’re going to lose this spot to whoever the fuck wants to take it over! That gold earring has nothing to do with Croesus. And it’s not Hittite, either.”

“If we knew what layer it came from, we could narrow that down, but against
every rule in the book
you decide to pick it up and hide it in your tent!”

“It wasn’t in
any
layer. It was lying on the dirt at the bottom of the trench. It could have fallen from anywhere.” Paul began walking in Lacy’s direction and Mueller followed. “Could have fallen out of a damned airplane for all we know!”

Lacy sneaked around to the front of the tent and waited until Paul and Mueller appeared. Inside, it looked as if the meal was over. People sat around with coffee mugs, their feet propped up on extra chairs.

“Lizzy. You’re back.” Mueller called to her from the corner of the tent.

Paul ran to her and grabbed her up in a painful hug.  He smelled of earth and sweat. “Where the hell have you been?” Lacy loved the feel of his arms in spite of the pain. She longed to bury her face in the crook of his neck, close her eyes, and drift away.

“Long story. Hi, Bob.”

Bob Mueller nodded. “We expected you back this morning. Henry drove all the way to the airport in Adana to pick you up.” His voice flat, he obviously felt she owed them an explanation, and it had better be a good one.

“Where is Henry? I owe him an apology.” She looked around. Both men stood silent, waiting for an explanation. “I missed my flight and drove here in a rental car.”

“Since this morning? No way,” Paul said. “It’s a two-day drive, Twigs!”

“I mean, I rented a car and drove here in two days, missing my flight in the process.”

“You should have called,” Mueller said, popping an orange breath mint in his mouth.

“Like I said it’s a long story, but I need to talk to Paul first.”

Mueller turned on his heel and headed for the big tent, passing Henry Jones who was coming out.

Henry hailed her and tramped up, his dark eyes locked on Lacy’s. “Where the hell were you? I waited at the gate until the plane emptied. I asked at the desk. They told me you were a no-show.” Lacy’s apologies had little effect. Henry was angry with her and had every right to be. “You could have called.”

“I lost my phone.”

“They have pay phones.”

“I know, Henry, and I am sorry. I’ll explain things better tomorrow, I promise, but right now I need to talk to Paul.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t need any more problems! My boss is dead. Technically I’m unemployed, but everyone still thinks I’m in charge. How stupid is that? And I just wasted a whole day trying to meet someone who doesn’t even bother to pick up a phone and tell me she’s not coming!”

* * *

Paul took Lacy to his tent. She let him tell her about the developments on site since she’d left, knowing that her own story would take a long time to tell and would overshadow whatever he had to say. She had decided to tell him everything because nothing less would make sense. She would let him ask her whatever he wanted and she’d answer as honestly as she could. She needed an ally and a confidant now, but she didn’t really expect anything more from him than a tongue-lashing for the risks she’d taken in Istanbul.

Paul cracked open an Efes beer for each of them and dumped a pile of books off a chair so Lacy could sit. A book titled
Treasures of the Iraq Museum
landed on top of the pile and slid down at an angle. His cluttered space was even more cluttered than when she’d last seen it. Shed clothes lay everywhere, and papers, several of which looked like printouts of emails buried what she knew was his computer. Empty drink cans, bent like fortune cookies, spilled from an over-full wastebasket.

Since the attack on Sierra Blue, he told her, a cloud of apprehension had overtaken the site. No longer like summer camp for big kids, nightfall now brought an eerie feeling of unnamed danger. Sierra and several others had started sleeping at the dorm.

“I thought the place was missing a few tents. I noticed it when I drove up.”

“Right. We still don’t know who bashed her. The police are working on it, but …” Paul reached over from his seat on the edge of his cot and placed a hand on her knee. “They think you did it.”

Lacy swallowed her mouthful of beer hastily. “What?”

“Sierra told them she couldn’t think of anyone who’d want to do her harm—except you.”

Lacy started to jump up and say something she’d regret, but Paul shushed her.

“She considers you a rival. I told her that’s crazy, but Sierra isn’t dumb.” Paul held up both hands as if begging a chance to explain further. “I’m sorry, but apparently I mention you more often than I would if I considered you nothing more than a colleague.” Paul looked at the top of the tent as he said this. “You know? Sierra notices. She’s not stupid.”

Lacy said nothing but savored the warm glow she knew would soon be doused.

“The police say you had blood on your legs when they questioned you that night.”

“It was my own blood! Someone knocked me down when I crawled out of my tent.”

“And next day, you split! Bad move.”

“How was I to know?”

Paul ignored the question. “As soon as Sierra came to, in the hospital, the police talked to her. Then they wanted to talk to you. I had to tell them you were AWOL.”

Lacy sat back and folded her arms. “I should have saved a swab of the blood on my leg. We could DNA test it. It was
my
blood.”

Paul looked at her legs, now criss-crossed with ligature marks, bruises, and scrapes. For the first time that evening he looked her up and down in the lantern light, and Lacy watched his face as he surveyed the black eye now yellow around the edges, the angry red lines cut by the duct tape on her wrists, the multiple contusions and bruises on almost every exposed inch of her skin. “What the hell?”

“Long story. Tell you later. Go on with yours.”

“Ready for another?” Paul bent his empty Efes can and threw it at the pile of its predecessors, bringing several down with a clatter. Lacy’s was still half full. “Did you hear Bob and me arguing?”

“I’m afraid I did.”

He pulled another beer from his cooler and cracked it open. “We can’t figure out what’s going on with the Sebring Foundation. Bob calls, Henry calls, I call. We each get different answers. They’re going to stop all funding until they decide what direction the Foundation will go in. Or, they have to wait until the first of the month. Or, they’re waiting for someone in the family to tell them what to do. It’s a different story every time we call.” He took a swig from his new can and sat down again, looking at her over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses.

“Before we go any further, Paul, do
you
think I did it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you didn’t.”

“Just making sure.”

“Max’s will leaves everything to the Foundation, but Max didn’t really
have
anything. He got a monthly allowance. A
big
allowance, I’ll grant you, but still
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
The money belongs to his father who, unfortunately, is in a coma. When his father dies, the money will go to .
 
.
 
.
 
who?” Paul shrugged and gestured with both hands, sending a splash of beer onto a stack of books. “Max is his beneficiary, but Max has predeceased his old man. So now what? Nobody knows!”

“Hasn’t anyone talked to an attorney about what’s in the old man’s will? It must have a clause to cover Max dying first.”

“Probably, but we can’t get a straight answer out of anybody. Plus, the old guy is still alive. He may stay in that coma for years. Who knows?”

“If Max didn’t really have any money of his own, who was funding the Sebring Foundation’s projects?”

“The Sebring family, under the direction of Max. It’s a royal mess.”

“You and Bob weren’t arguing about that, though. You were saying something about Bob going walkabout and this site being closed.”

Paul sighed, put his beer can on the ground, and, hunched over with elbows on knees, clapped his palms together. When he did speak, his voice had a different tone. Softer. “Before you came out here last week, I found a gold earring at the bottom of the east trench. I’ve been researching it and I’m sure it’s Assyrian. It doesn’t belong here at all. How did it get here? I have no idea. As soon as I saw it, I realized Bob would go apeshit. He’d claim it was from the lost hoard of King Croesus or Midas’s gold or whatever, and it would validate his idea that we’re standing in the route taken by the Persians after they conquered Lydia. He’d forget all about this dig and take off combing the hills for more gold. The Sebring Foundation would either back him or it wouldn’t. Either way, this site would be history. So I picked the earring up and hid it.”

Paul knelt in front of the safe that sat on the floor near the head of his cot and gave the combination lock a spin. “What I did is a no-no, Lacy. Artifacts must always be photographed and studied
in situ.
Bob spotted a small piece of pottery on the finds table and realized it was out of place. He asked me about it. I had no clue where it came from but I guess my face gave me away. That I was hiding something. I need to work on my poker face. At that point, I knew I’d better show him the earring.”

Paul removed something from the safe. He stood and placed a delicate gold earring in her hand. By the color, Lacy recognized it as pure gold or nearly so, 18 karat or better. A filigree design, so intricate it would challenge the skill of a modern goldsmith, curved around a crescent that ended in a tiny, hinged wire for a pierced ear.

“Wow! It’s perfect. Assyrian, you say? How old?”

“Don’t know yet.” Paul returned the earring to the safe. “Now Bob has gone apeshit like I knew he would, and I’m telling him to cool it.” He paused a moment, his gaze cast down. “I think it’s from the Iraq Museum, Twigs.”

“Part of the loot that’s still missing?” Lacy had tried to stay abreast of the fate of the thousands of items that went missing from the Iraq Museum during the 2003 War. Some had been spirited across the borders into Lebanon and Jordan, and from there to the U.S., Europe, or Japan. Some turned up on eBay. Thankfully, many items had been removed before the attack and placed in banks elsewhere for safekeeping. But an estimated three thousand items were still missing. “So why is it here?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.”

Lacy held up her empty beer can and raised an eyebrow. “Back to the attack on Sierra. I’ll talk to the police first thing tomorrow, but before I go in, all ignorant, what else did they find out since I left?”

“They found the weapon she got hit with. It’s a torque wrench. They found it in the parking lot, and it still had blood on it. They figure her attacker heard or saw someone coming and ran. Threw the wrench away on the run.”