Crescent Dawn (14 page)

“Even after our near-death experience, that’s okay with me,” Loren mused. “By the way, what exactly did they end up stealing?”

“They made off with a battle standard that belonged to Muhammad. Apparently, the outrage would have been even more magnified if you hadn’t liberated the second black bag.”

“What did it contain?”

“A cloak of Muhammad’s, called the Holy Mantle, along with a letter written in his hand. Part of what is known as the Sacred Trusts.”

“It’s terrible that somebody would try to steal such relics,” Loren said, shaking her head.

“Come on, we better go see the rest of this town before anything else disappears.”

They exited the lobby of the hotel and entered the bustling streets of old Istanbul. Pitt noticed a man in mirrored sunglasses staring at Loren as he passed on his way into the hotel. Tall and sporting a near-ballerina figure, Loren seldom failed to attract the male eye. Dressed in light slacks and an amethyst blouse that nearly matched the color of her eyes, she looked vivacious despite the turmoil of the night before.

Walking down a block or two, they stopped and peered in the window of an upscale rug shop called Punto of Istanbul, admiring an elegant Serapi carpet that hung on the wall. Strolling to the end of the street, they crossed the Hippodrome, a long, narrow park around which the chariots raced in the Byzantine era. Just beyond was the mosque of Sultan Ahmet I.

Completed in 1617, it was the last of Istanbul’s great imperial mosques. The exterior featured a rising cascade of domes and semi-domes that climbed in height and grandeur until culminating in a massive central dome. By the time Pitt and Loren had entered the mosque’s arched courtyard, most of the morning worshippers had been replaced by camera-toting tourists.

They made their way into the prayer hall, its expansive interior dimly lit by high banks of stained-glass windows. Overhead, the curving domes were covered in a maze of intricately patterned tiles, many in shades of blue, which gave the building its nickname, the Blue Mosque. Pitt studied an archway filled with familiar-looking floral tiles, which were manufactured in the nearby city of Iznik.

“Look at that design,” he said to Loren. “It’s nearly identical to the pattern on the ceramic box we pulled from the wreck.”

“You’re right,” Loren agreed, “though the coloring is a little different. Congratulations, it’s more evidence that your wreck sank around sixteen hundred.”

Pitt’s satisfaction was short-lived. Eyeing a green-tiled wall on the opposite side of the prayer hall, he spotted a man in sunglasses looking in his direction. It was the same man who had gawked at Loren outside the hotel.

Without saying a word, Pitt slowly herded Loren toward the exit, consciously staying close to a group of German tourists on a guided tour. He casually surveyed the crowd scattered about the mosque, trying to discern whether Sunglasses had any partners. Pitt noticed a thin Persian man with a bushy mustache shuffling along nearby, a serious scowl on his face. He appeared incongruous among the other tourists standing with their necks craned toward the ceiling. It seemed unlikely that the Topkapi thieves would have tracked them down so quickly, though Pitt recalled the threatening words of the woman in the cistern. He decided to find out for sure.

Following the Germans out of the prayer hall, Pitt and Loren pulled on the shoes they had removed earlier and followed the tour group into the courtyard. Pitt watched from the corner of his eye as the Persian followed suit.

“Stay here,” Pitt told Loren, then turned and quickly strode across the marble tile toward the man.

The Persian immediately turned, pretending to study a nearby column behind him. Pitt strode right up and gazed down at the man, who stood a head shorter.

“Excuse me,” Pitt said. “Can you tell me who’s buried in Atatürk’s tomb?”

The man at first avoided Pitt’s gaze, peering instead toward the prayer hall exit where Sunglasses now stood. Spotting a shake of the head, he turned and faced Pitt with a look of contempt.

“I wouldn’t know where that dog lies,” he spat, his eyes glistening with an arrogant intimidation born of a hardened life in the streets. An undercover police agent he was clearly not. When Pitt noticed the telltale bulge of a holstered handgun under the man’s loose shirt, he decided not to press the issue. He gave the man a cold, knowing look, then turned and stepped away. Walking back to Loren, he half expected a bullet in the back and silently hoped the crowds and mosque security were sufficient deterrents to spare an immediate attack.

“What was that about?” Loren asked as he returned.

“Just checking the time. Come on, let’s see if we can catch a cab.”

The German tour group was slowly moving toward the courtyard exit, but Pitt grabbed Loren’s hand and dragged her past them, slipping out before they converged on the doorway. Pitt didn’t bother looking back, knowing full well that Sunglasses and the Persian would be in pursuit. Prodding Loren to the street, he got lucky and commandeered a cab that was off-loading an elderly pair of tourists out front.

“To the Eminönü ferry docks, as fast as you can,” he directed the cabdriver.

“Why all the rush?” Loren asked, slightly agitated at being hustled into the car.

“I think we are being tailed.”

“That man you spoke to inside the mosque?”

Pitt nodded. “And another fellow wearing sunglasses who I saw earlier outside our hotel.”

As the cab pulled into traffic, Pitt looked out the back window. A small orange sedan screeched up to the curb with a lone driver inside. Pitt looked across the mosque grounds to see the German tourist group still congregated around the mosque exit. He smiled as he spotted the Persian clumsily fighting his way through the thick crowd.

“Why don’t we go to the police?” Loren asked, a rising note of alarm in her voice.

Pitt flashed a reassuring grin. “What, and ruin our one and only relaxing day in Istanbul?”

THE YELLOW TAXI QUICKLY MELTED INTO TRAFFIC, LEAVing the domed mosque and its minarets in the rearview mirror. Had the driver turned north and wound through the crowded maze of the historic old city, he would have easily lost the orange sedan to thick traffic. But the judicious cabdriver, thoughtful to make good time, instead turned south and headed toward a divided motorway called the Kennedy Caddesi.

The pursuers desperately attempted to catch up. The orange sedan sped away from the mosque after picking up its two passengers, nearly getting sideswiped by a tourist bus as it wove through traffic.

“I think they turned right,” the driver said in a hesitant voice.

“Go,” Sunglasses directed from the front passenger seat while nodding at the driver to follow his instincts.

The car turned south, bolting through a red light, before slowing behind a procession of crawling vehicles. Seated in the backseat, the Persian suddenly pointed down the road, spotting a yellow cab two blocks ahead turning onto the Caddesi.

“I think that is their cab,” he shouted.

The driver nodded, his knuckles tightening around the steering wheel. There was little he could do to prod his way through the clogged traffic, and he anxiously cursed the surrounding vehicles while the seconds ticked by. Finally spotting a break in oncoming traffic, he burst down the left lane for a block, then nosed back into the right lane. The traffic moved forward, and he quickly entered the Caddesi, flooring the accelerator and weaving down the highway like a Formula 1 racer.

The highway looped around the eastern boundary of Topkapi, hugging the Bosphorus shoreline. Traffic moved briskly as the road turned north then west along the Golden Horn, a natural water inlet that divided the European sector of Istanbul. Pitt looked down at the waterway, admiring a large green dredge ship that was churning the waters off the shoreline. As the cab approached the Galata Bridge, which stretched north over the Golden Horn into the district of Beyoğlu, a throng of cars and buses suddenly materialized, impeding movement to a crawl. The cab exited the Caddesi at the first opportunity, snaking down to a ferry dock near the base of the bridge.

“Boğaz Hatti dock at Eminönü,” the cabdriver announced. “The next ferry departure will be right over there,” he added with a wave of his arm. “If you hurry, you can just catch it.”

Pitt paid the driver, adding a healthy tip, then surveyed the road behind them as he exited the cab. Seeing no sign of the orange sedan, he casually escorted Loren to the ticket window.

“You just can’t stay away from the water, can you?” Loren said, eyeing several large ferryboats on the waterfront.

“I thought a relaxing cruise on the Bosphorus was just what the doctor ordered.”

“Actually, that does sound enticing,” she admitted, relishing some fresh-air sightseeing. “Just so long as we’re alone and there’s lunch involved.”

Pitt grinned. “Lunch is guaranteed. And I think we’ve lost our friends.”

Purchasing their tickets, they walked down one of the busy docks and boarded a modern passenger ferry, grabbing some seats by a window. A triple blast of the ship’s horn signaled its departure before the gangway was pulled aside.

On the road out front, the orange sedan screeched to a halt, its two passengers flying out of the side doors. Bypassing the ticket booth, they sprinted down to the dock, only to watch the ferryboat churn into the strait. Panting to catch his breath, Sunglasses stared at the ferry, then turned to the Persian.

“Find us a boat,” he hissed. “Now!”

AT TWENTY MILES IN LENGTH and seldom more than a mile wide, the Bosphorus Strait was at once one of the world’s busiest and most scenic waterways. Dividing the heart of Istanbul, it had been a historic trading route, utilized by the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines. In modern times, it had become a major conduit for Russia, Georgia, and other countries bordering the Black Sea. Tankers, freighters, and containerships constantly clogged the narrow waterway that split the European and Asian continents.

The ferryboat steamed north at a comfortable clip, easing past the hilly skyline of Istanbul under a clear blue sky. The vessel soon passed under the Bosphorus Bridge and later the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, both towering suspension bridges that rose high above the waterway. Pitt and Loren sipped hot tea while surveying the neighboring boat traffic and the hillside architecture. The crowded shoreline slowly receded into a line of stately waterfront mansions, diplomatic missions, and former palaces that resided against a green forested backdrop.

The ferry made several leisurely port stops before approaching almost within sight of the Black Sea.

“Care to go up to the top deck for a better view?” Pitt asked.

Loren shook her head. “Looks too breezy for me. How about another tea instead?”

Pitt duly agreed and walked over to a small café and ordered two more black teas. Had they climbed to the top deck, Pitt might have observed the small speedboat carrying three men that raced up the strait toward the ferryboat.

The ferry soon turned toward the European shore and docked beside a pair of smaller car ferries at the Port of Sariyer. An old fishing village, Sariyer still exuded the historic Turkish charm of many upper Bosphorus havens that were slowly being overrun with affluent retirees.

“There are supposed to be some good seafood restaurants here,” Loren said, reading from a tour book. “How about we get off for lunch?”

Pitt agreed, and they soon joined a throng of sightseers clogging the gangway to exit the ship. The dock was near the base of a large hill, with the town spread along shoreline flats to their right. The town’s main road fed into a small waterfront park to their left, which caught Pitt’s eye when an old Citroën Traction Avant motored onto the grassy field.

They walked through a small fish market, observing a fresh catch of sea bass being unloaded from a small fishing boat. Ambling past a row of competing seafood restaurants, they selected a small waterfront café at the end of the block. A spry waitress with long black hair seated them at a patio table along the water’s edge, then quickly covered their table with meze, small appetizer portions of various Turkish dishes.

“You have to try the calamari,” Loren said, shoving a rubbery blob into Pitt’s mouth.

Pitt playfully crunched one of her fingers with his teeth. “A nice match with the white cheese,” he replied after swallowing the fried squid.

They enjoyed a leisurely meal, watching the sea traffic maneuvering down the strait, along with the tourists bustling through the adjoining restaurants. Finishing their seafood dishes, Pitt was reaching for a glass of water when Loren suddenly clutched his arm.

“Swallow a bone?” he asked, noting a tight-lipped grimace on her face.

Loren slowly shook her head as she released her grip. “There’s a man standing outside the door. He was one of the men in the van last night.”