The Coptic Secret (24 page)

A tug at his sleeve. "Come see!"

Lang followed Gurt to the bow section just as the ship's whistle announced its arrival. Lang saw white two- and three-story buildings ringing a small harbor sheltering hundreds of small boats, a number of them scooting across the sapphire surface like so many bugs. Towering over the activity were green hills with houses stacked along the edges like merchandise on store shelves.

"I don't see any cars," Lang said.

"Motor vehicles are forbidden," Gurt replied. "Other than police or garbage trucks."

Gurt had read the guidebook. Or she had been here before in her past life during the bad old days of the Cold War on some mission neither of them was eager to discuss. This was Lang's first visit to the former capital of the eastern Roman, Byzantine, then Ottoman empires. These islands took their name, Princes', from the fact that the sixth-century emperor, Justin II, had built a palace here. Later, the scattered monasteries served as a place of banishment for overly ambitious members of the royal family or public officials, frequently in addition to blinding, slicing off a nose, having the tongue cut out or castration.

The Byzantines knew how to ensure neither a person nor his potential heirs would ever become troublesome again.

With the advent of steamboat service from the mainland in the late nineteenth century, the islands' beaches and wooded hills became popular resorts as well as home to a number of expatriates such as Leon Trotsky.

Lang noted a number of horse-drawn phaetons obviously waiting for the ship to dock. Bicycles zipped in and out of both equestrian and pedestrian traffic.

"Hope there's one of those carriages left for us," he said, turning to follow the stream of disembarking passengers.

"A bicycle would do you more good," Gurt teased.

Lang took her hand, leading her between a group of giggling high-school-age girls, none of whom wore scarfs. "Some other time when I have a few less broken bones."

"Perhaps a horse?"

"I try to avoid anything that is both bigger and dumber than I am."

As they stepped off the gangplank, Lang inhaled a potpourri of odors: coffee and baking bread, frying olive oil mixed with the pungent smell of horse dung, all blended with a trace of freshly cooked sweets. He and Gurt were standing in a village of shops, restaurants, small inns and businesses the purpose of which was unclear to anyone who did not read Turkish. Outdoor
lokanta
, cafés, were filled with customers sipping sweet apple tea from small, hourglass-shaped glasses. The mood, both of those just disembarked and those already there, was one of a holiday. Everyone seemed to be speaking at once.

He could have been standing in the center of a number of beach resorts worldwide.

Suitcase in one hand, Gurt's hand in the other, he shouldered his way through good-natured vacationers to where a pair of well-fed horses were harnessed to one of the carriages. The driver, dressed in jeans and golf shirt, held a sign with Lang's name on it.

Francis, who had arranged the visit to their destination, had thought of everything.

"Monastery of St. George?" Lang asked.

The driver nodded and said something in Turkish, gesturing they should climb in. Lang knew better than to attempt to assist Gurt aboard. She resented any effort, no matter how courtly, that suggested she, as a female, was due any treatment not owed to a man.

Without any perceptible signal from the driver, the horses trotted through the town's streets, hooves playing a syncopated rhythm against the pavement. With no change of pace, the coach began a climb up the hills. Absent vehicular traffic, the road could have been a highway from another century. Large villas shared ocean views with smaller cottages and a few hovels that had not seen paint nor repair for ages. Even these were draped with purple and blue bougainvillea.

At each dip or hollow, the driver applied a protesting brake handle to keep the speed at a manageable level.

They reached the crest, a narrow ridge dropping almost straight down on either side. The view was as spectacular as it was unobstructed. In the distance, the Turkish mainland was only a suggestion in purple. Other islands were set like emeralds in a placid ocean. Lang was so enchanted with the scenery, he hardly noticed an increase of breeze on his face. A squeeze of his hand brought him back to his surroundings. The phaeton was headed downhill fast enough to make him uncomfortable and the body of the thing was swaying dangerously, leaning first one way toward the deep valley on the right and jagged rocks lining the coast hundreds of feet below to the left.

Local custom or were they riding with a madman?

He leaned forward to speak to the driver.

Before he could say a word, the man bent over. With a grunt, he snatched loose a pin and the wagon's tongue and horses were gone, a blur as the carriage careened past. Then the driver hurled himself onto the only grassy shoulder Lang could see and rolled to a stop. Lang saw or imagined a smile on his face.

There was no other place to jump without a fall of hundreds of feet.

It was clear the rig was not going to make the next turn where the road disappeared around a stand of trees.

As happens when events move too fast to comprehend, Lang's mind went into slow motion.

The brake handle loomed before him.

Hand on the back of the driver's seat, Lang leaned forward. He couldn't reach the handle.

The bend in the road was rushing toward him, a giant mouth open to devour the carriage and its passengers. The speed increased, slow motion notwithstanding.

Seeing what he was trying to do, Gurt grabbed him by the belt, allowing him to fully extend.

His fingers brushed the wooden handle. Leaning as far as he could, he still could not close his hand around it.

Just ahead, the pavement ended in open space.

V.

Buyukada

A Few Minutes Earlier

Emniyet Polis
Inspector Mustafa Aziz stood behind his desk and tried to calm the man down long enough to understand what he was saying. Something about being bound, gagged and hidden in the woods just off the road after he had been forced from the phaeton he drove for a living. He had picked up the fare, supposedly to take him to one of the island's beaches, and then been forced at knifepoint to surrender his rig.

Obviously, something was missing. In the first place, why would someone be stupid enough to steal horses and carriage on a small island where search and detection would be all but certain? Second, the man had not been robbed of his money, little enough to make robbery an unlikely motive. Third, crime on the island consisted almost entirely of pickpockets, small-time theft and an occasional burglary.

He winced at the last part. The dearth of crime was why he would serve his last few years before retirement in this political backwater, guarding tourists and vacationers against purse snatchers. A beautiful place to work but hardly a place he could regain the reputation he had once enjoyed.

There had been a time when the young Aziz had a career as full of promise as a fruit tree in bloom. Then there had been what he mentally referred to as the Mohammad Sadberk Affair.

Sadberk had been prominent in Turkish politics, distinguished enough that not only Aziz's
emnit polist
, security police, were alerted when his wife reported him missing but the
Yunis
, Dolphin, rapid-reaction force as well. The politician had reputedly been on a fact-finding excursion to southeastern Turkey and there was reason to fear Kurdish rebels had taken him hostage. Stellar police work, a tip deemed fortunate at the time and plain luck led young inspector Aziz to a shabby resort on Turkey's southern coast.

Certain of fame and promotion, Aziz had not paused to consider the improbability of Kurds, or any other terrorists, choosing a hideout in an area favored by European tourists on all-inclusive, hundred-euro-a-day beach vacations, particularly since retreat by the suspected abductors across the Iraq border at the other end of the country would all but have guaranteed the end of pursuit.

Instead, Aziz had assembled a sizable force of police to surround the small inn a few streets back from the beach. He had not forgotten to include members of the press to record what would certainly be the turning point of his profession as a policeman.

And indeed it was.

Kevlar-clad
Yunis
smashed through a door as the cameras rolled. Their focus was on Sadberk, lipsticked and clad only in the finest French lace panties, and his companion, a young boy.

Although the Turks wink at a number of the Koran's prohibitions, homosexuality is not greeted with the same secular blind eye as, say, alcohol. Sadberk was politically ruined and his powerful friends outraged at what they viewed as an overzealous investigation to ruin a man who, like Aziz, had had a bright future.

The inspector had been transferred to
turizm polist,
tourist police, where his main duties had been to sit in the Sultanahmet district office in view of both the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, writing endless reports of lost or stolen cameras, wallets and passports. Even this had apparently not been enough for Sadberk's cronies. A year later, Aziz was exiled to Buyukada as though he had offended some Byzantine emperor.

Exiled or not, he intended to do his duty even if all that was involved was a pair of horses and a carriage, more likely borrowed than stolen. But first he had to calm the driver into coherence.

One again, the distraught man went through his story: a passenger had taken his rig at knifepoint. No, he had never seen the man before. In fact, the robber appeared foreign.

Aziz ran the tip of his index finger across his mustache. "Foreign? How?"

"He didn't speak at all, just gestured. He just didn't look like a Turk to me."

"Well, what did he look like?"

The driver shrugged as though saying it was the duty of the police to know such things. "Just under two meters, dark hair, brown eyes. Heavy, perhaps a hundred or more kilograms."

In other words, almost any adult male on the island.

"Did you get any idea where he was going?"

The man shook his head, bewildered. "On a small island?"

This time Aziz's hand went to his bald head. "No, no. Where
on the island?"

A blank stare. "How would I know?"

Aziz leaned back in his chair and glanced at the stucco ceiling as though seeking the patience to endure this dolt a little longer. He was about to refer the man to someone for a description of his lost horses, one Aziz could easily imagine: long neck at one end, tail at the other, four legs each ... when the phone on his desk rang.

Ordinarily, Aziz would have let someone else pick it up, it being unbecoming to his rank of inspector (albeit the only one on the island) to answer his own phone. Today, he would rather lose face than continue what was clearly a pointless conversation.

"Inspector Aziz," he announced.

He listened for a few minutes before thanking the caller and hanging up. "I think we have your horses and carriage," he said grimly.

VI.

Buyukada

Either he would find a way to grab the brake handle or Manfred would be an orphan in the next few seconds. Lang considered simply jumping until a good look at the stony ground told him the price of such a move at this speed would be much the same as following the carriage over the edge. The driver had known where the last spots soft with grass and loose sand were when he jumped.

Better to try something else.

If he could.

Lang unbuckled his belt, holding both ends in one hand. The first and second tries missed. On the third, he got the loop around his target. He threw his weight back as hard as he could, praying the belt would hold. Alligator was decorative but not as strong as the more plebeian cowhide. Muscles still healing sent a jolt of pain up his arms and across his back, anguish that brought tears to his eyes.

Still, he held on and pulled as Gurt, both arms around his waist, pulled him.

He heard the scrape of the wooden shoe against the metal rim of the wheel and felt the vibrations but the speed seemed undiminished. Then the curve was not rushing at them quite so fast.

One wheel bumped slowly over the edge and they were stopped, literally hanging over the edge of a very long drop. Three hundred or so feet straight down, the Sea of Marmara gnashed its rocky teeth in a swirl of creamy foam.

Gurt let go of Lang and started to step down to the ground.

Gravel crunched and the phaeton shuddered, edging an inch downhill.

Gurt froze in midstep. "I think the balance is not so good."

"Too good," Lang said, arms frozen to the belt still looped around the brake. "We move an ounce of it and well be in the water."

"And so? We stay here until someone come by and can help?"