Tomy and the Planet of Lies (15 page)

“OK. Let's make our way to the surface. I'll take the rear, seeing as I've got the gun,” I commanded.

As long as the passages were narrow and angled upwards, Marc didn't bother using the lighter. The passage walls were so near that they were brushing against our bodies anyway. And besides, the metal of the lighter quickly became so hot, that it was impossible to hold. Using our sense of touch was enough to bring us quickly to the surface. We panted our way through the labyrinth, which now seemed to us like an oversized termite mound through which we were being chased by unseen monsters.

Every time that Marc discovered a crossing or noticed that the tunnel was starting to go back down again, he pulled the lighter out and used it to find the next green arrow. It was probably only a few minutes—although it seemed much longer—before the lights came back on. Now, despite the constant temperature, we were dripping with sweat and our hearts were racing. In front of us was a small cavern. Was it the same room that Ercan had described as a wine cellar?

“He must be behind us somewhere,” I said uncertainly. “And Chantal and the six others must be in front of us; or they took a different route.”

We deposited the camera bags on the floor and sat down to catch our breath, waiting for Ercan. After a while, we called out his name. Our cries rang out, echoing upwards and downwards. But there was no answer. Tomy suggested that—with all the various corridors and cross passages—it was highly likely that Ercan had somehow got past us and was already sitting on the surface, sipping coffee. So we decided to set off again towards the surface, constantly stopping here and there for a breather. Finally, we saw a green arrow with a small plaque below it: Exit 100 meters. I stowed the pistol back in one of the camera bags and we trudged upwards, every step that took us towards the lighter seeming lighter than its predecessor.

Directly in front of the exit from the underworld, we saw a garden restaurant and several souvenir stands. Chantal was sitting with the six Turks at two tables that they had pulled together.

“Where's Ercan?” she asked, as soon as she saw us.

“He must be somewhere behind us,” I said. “As soon as the lights went off, we lost track of him.”

“He knows this place pretty well. He'll turn up soon enough,” Chantal said.

We ordered tea and cola and sat down to wait. While watching the Japanese tourists excitedly chattering amongst themselves or buying kitschy souvenirs, I caught sight, in the background, of a small gray truck with a green tarp pulling in between the trees and carefully parking at a particular spot. I stood up, so I could see better. In front of where the truck now stood was a small circular wall. On top of it was a wooden construction with a simple pulley. Three men started working on the well-like structure. They pulled a large circular grill off the top—it was obviously one of the ventilation shafts from the underground city. I watched them lower a rope down into the shaft and then, a few minutes later, pull it back out again, this time with a large metal barrel like an oil drum attached to it. Then a man climbed down out of the truck.

Was I imagining it, or was this the same wrinkled man with the plastic helmet and incongruous sunglasses that I had seen back at the hotel? The helmeted man, again with a cigarette hanging from one corner of his mouth, looked around and gave orders to the men to load the oil drum onto the truck. It was fastened in place; the tarpaulin was pulled over it; and the truck clattered off.

What could they be pulling out of the depths? Was the barrel full of garbage from tourists?

A quarter of an hour had gone by since we had emerged. Ercan still hadn't turned up. He was a bit of chatterbox, and it wasn't unthinkable that he had stopped somewhere to talk the ears off some tourists, but it also wasn't like him to leave us hanging like this. I said this to Chantal and she turned and spoke to the six Turks at her table.

“We'll go and look for him,” she said and the group got up and wandered off, only to return a few minutes later. “The entrance has been locked—they lock it every night at around this time. One of the watchmen has already done his rounds. There's no one else down there.”

“So where the hell is Ercan?” I snapped. “He can't have vanished into thin air!”

We looked around helplessly. The minutes ticked by: the Japanese were now getting back on board their tour bus. Next to my chair I noticed a low, straight wall, which served to fence off the restaurant. I looked over to Tomy and asked him to lay himself down on the wall. He understood immediately what I wanted. So he laid himself down along the wall and Marc and I slid our chairs discreetly over to where he was lying. I told Chantal simply that Tomy needed to lie down as he was not feeling well. She, too, caught on straight way and turned back to occupy the Turks.

“I'm not a bloodhound,” grinned Tomy, “but this is about helping someone.” Then he closed his eyes.

This time he only went pale for a few seconds before returning to us. He sat back up and spoke the six words that I had been dreading. “Ercan Güsteri is no longer alive.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Ercan is dead.”

Marc interjected: “Did you see his body?”

“No. I can only take over living people. Dead men have no consciousness.”

The barrel! The man with the helmet and the mustache. A thought flashed through my mind, but then I realized that it would be pointless to try and find the truck. Even if we had found it, what would we have done with a corpse in an oil drum? But there other thoughts, too. Why Ercan and not us? What had he done wrong?

As Chantal silently began to weep, occasionally brushing away the tears that ran down her cheeks, she finally seemed human. The six Turks chatted excitedly amongst themselves without knowing for sure what for us was already a certainty. Then they went off to find one of the watchmen from the underground city and even persuaded him to open one of the gates and put the lights back on. They all disappeared back into the depths to look for Ercan. But I knew that they would be returning without him.

Chantal sat down next to Marc, who seemed to forget his fury and took her in his arms to comfort her.

“We need to get out of this country,” she said quietly. “No one is safe, not even me. Whoever killed Ercan can just as easily kill you or me.”

The situation was infuriating. Just keep your nerve and your wits about you, Erich! Our Rover was sitting in the Central Garage in Adiyaman, so I, at least, had to go back there to pick it up. All of our luggage was lying in our suite in the hotel in Nevşehir, around 30 kilometers from our current location. Ercan's rented Lada was sitting in the parking lot, and our Turkish escort had to drive their cars back to Adiyaman anyway. But these men knew that Ercan had crawled down into that rat hole with Tomy, Marc, and me. Would they hold us responsible for Ercan's disappearance? How on earth did we know—they would be asking themselves—that Ercan was dead? Especially in the absence of a body. How were we going to get out of this mess? Notwithstanding the fact that there was someone out there trying to bump us off, too! This person or unknown organization must be well organized and have excellent connections: only professionals could carry out an operation like the removal of Ercan's body from the underground complex so smoothly. And clearly—even if the Iranians were behind it—this unknown organization was able to exert its influence here in Turkey. Ercan's father had been an influential Turkish politician—or maybe still was, as I said, I wasn't sure—which meant that Ercan came from a good family. How would they react to the news of his death? Were we going to have to add Ercan's family to our list of newfound enemies?

I asked Chantal what she thought; plus I wanted to know what sort of connections she had and whether they couldn't organize some kind of protection for us.

She said nothing for a while.

“I don't have a clue how I should go about it,” she said. “We don't know for sure who organized the sabotage on Nemrut Daği or who is behind Ercan's murder. The Iranians? Could be. I picked up on a few comments in the office in Teheran. They said Tomy was a monster and didn't belong here.”

She scratched her chin, deep in thought, and said, “The Turkish secret police? Can't be ruled out, but why should they get involved? That would mean the Turks were operating on behalf of the Iranians, and in the short time that we've been here that seems unlikely. Or had Ercan's murder nothing at all to do with us? Maybe it was some kind of revenge or feud that only involves Ercan and his family.”

“Maybe you should start telling us a bit more about what you're doing here,” Marc noted dryly. “Who are you working for? Who are you getting orders from? And what kind of orders?”

Chantal seemed to struggle with her conscience for a while and then explained to us that the secret services of many different countries kept in close contact. The services worked together when a matter arose that could affect several different states, and Tomy was such a case.

“Why?” I wanted to know. “Tomy hasn't hurt anybody. And even if someone has decided that Tomy is a ‘monster,' why aren't they concentrating on him instead of all of us, and now Ercan who wasn't even in Teheran? It's all absurd!”

“Erich, you don't understand the context and the implications,” Chantal said quietly and looked directly into my eyes. “Up until recently even I didn't believe that Tomy was an alien. I was thinking more along the lines of superhuman abilities, so-called psi powers. But now I'm starting to believe it. And in Teheran there are clearly many people, several scientists even, who do the same. In their eyes, Tomy is an unbelievable danger to human society. Just imagine! Say he took over a world leader or even the Pope, as far as I'm concerned. Just think about it, Erich!”

We said nothing. But what did Ercan have to do with all this? Chantal revealed a capacity for analytical thinking that I had not expected from her.

“Inasmuch as Ercan really did disappear because of Tomy—which we still don't know for sure—then that's my fault. I told Ercan everything about Tomy and the anti-terrorist action in the Intercontinental in Teheran. Admittedly, Ercan didn't swallow the story that Tomy was an extraterrestrial, but he, too, believed in psi abilities. We only talked in the hotel or in his Lada, but obviously we were bugged somehow. In one or the other, or even both locations. I need to get back to the hotel, have a shower, and then check through my underwear and other clothes. Maybe I'm carrying a bug even now!”

“Bloody great,” Marc scoffed. “Then everything we've just talked about has been heard and the ‘invisible powers' know exactly what we're planning. We should stop talking and all go and shower and check out our luggage together. How do you find a hidden transmitter?”

“Lay your clothes on the floor and just stamp on everything. You'll hear a crunch if there's anything there!”

One after the other our Turkish traveling companions reemerged from the underground labyrinth. Chantal was clever enough not to let them know what we knew. I didn't understand anything of what she talked to them about, but their questioning faces and gestures all said the same thing: Where is Ercan? Chantal translated for us: the Turks wanted us to wait and what's more, none of us had the key to the Lada anyway. While the sun bathed us in its last few rays the waiters put small wind lights out on the tables. Ercan still didn't turn up. My companions and I wanted to drive back to Nevşehir, to our hotel. One of the men suggested that maybe Ercan had met someone and was having some kind of amorous adventure, and had even driven back to the hotel in another car. The whole group laughed at that idea. Even if Ercan didn't turn up until much later, it wouldn't be a problem for him to get back to the hotel, 30 kilometers away. He knew his way around here. So we decided to drive back to Nevşehir. The fattest of the Turks in our group proved to have hidden talents—he had the Lada open in a trice and after fiddling around for a little while under the hood, he got the motor running. Chantal, Marc, Tomy, and I got into the car; I took the wheel. Our friends, as before, drove in front and behind.

But what would happen now? I suggested that I should drive back to Adiyaman the next morning alone, wait for the repairs on the Rover to be completed and then drive the car on to Istanbul. Once there, I could seek out a customs agent to help me ship the car back to Venice. My companions were against the idea. None of them wanted to leave me on my own. Then I had the idea of sending Marc and Tomy separately from Ankara or Istanbul to some Western European city by plane. To Vienna, Rome, London or anywhere. This plan, too, was not popular. But there was one thing we all agreed on: we should leave the country as soon as possible.

Back at the hotel, I invited our Turkish friends to join us for an evening meal and, as they had all insisted that they weren't leaving Nevşehir without Ercan, I made inquiries about renting another car. It wasn't a problem at this tourist hotspot. Less than one hour later I had the keys to an almost brand new Volkswagen in my hands. I called Elisabeth back in Switzerland, but again took care not to reveal too many details. I told her that we had been involved in a car crash, but neither Marc nor I had been injured—Tomy wasn't mentioned at all. I asked her if she'd paid all my credit card bills, because I would probably need more money. I could get this from the American Express office in Ankara as long as there was no outstanding balance on my account. Back in our hotel room we checked ourselves out for hidden micro transmitters and then laid all our clothes on the floor and trampled over everything. There were no crunching noises. Chantal had asked Marc to help her undress and search for bugs, but he wasn't ready for that just yet.

The next day, the hotel manager informed me that my Turkish friends had driven back to Derinkuyu to look for Ercan. They had come up with the idea that when the lights had gone out he had maybe taken one of the tunnels that led to the neighboring labyrinth at Kaymakli. Maybe he had fallen, broken his leg and was waiting for help. I knew better, but I said nothing.