Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train (5 page)

Paul’s gaze followed Lacy’s. “
Max had a thing for Pepsi. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get real Pepsi here, so he had a couple of cases shipped over. They got here a week before he did.”

Max had kept his clothes in plastic milk crates neatly lined up along the wall opposite the
door
. Lacy noticed that one crate held pants and shirts, a second held his underwear and socks, and a third was full of dirty clothes. She assumed they were dirty from the way they were crammed in, unfolded. She knelt beside the crate of shirt and pants and examined a few labels.  TravelSmith, Magellan’s. All his clothes looked new and all were purchased from safari-type clothiers. This made sense if, as Paul said, this was Max’s first adventure into real down-and-dirty archaeology. A pair of loafers and
a pair of steel-toed boots, both size twelve, and a pair of flip-flops lined up next to the dirty clothes crate.

Max had wisely arranged his clothing along the only wall in the tent that had no window. It looked as if the mesh screens on the windows and door would keep out bugs, but not rain. Beside the row of crates lay a rolled-up rug.

Lacy crawled across the plastic floor and reached out to touch it, already suspecting what she would find. “Wait a minute. Is this what I think it is? I don’t believe it.”

“What?” Paul had come in behind her.

“Can I unroll this?”

“Go for it. Max won’t mind,” Brief pause. “Sorry. That was disrespectful.”

Lacy laid the rug out flat. It was about three feet by four feet and predominately rust red, green, yellow, blue, and white. Silk on silk and brand new. Its geometric pattern centered on a diamond in red inside a rectangle of yellow-green surrounded by borders upon borders, each with its own unique pattern. Lacy knew that every design, every pattern on the rug meant something to the weaver, to her family history, or to her community.

“It’s a Boracık rug,” Lacy whispered. “I can’t believe it.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s wonderful. This was handmade by a woman in a village near Troy. The silk thread is hand-spun, and the dyes are all natural and from local plants.” She rose up on her knees an
d lowered her face close to the rug’s surface. “This yellow here. It’s from the berries of a type of buckthorn that grows only in the hills of western Turkey.”

“What species, exactly?”

“
Rhamnus petiolaris
,” Lacy said, then realized he was teasing her. “Sub-species, Paulus Smartassus.” She winked and ran her hand across the soft pile, enjoying the sensual feel of it. “Wait. Where’s the tag?” She flipped over two of the corners before she found it on the third. “Here. See? It says, in Turkish, that it’s a Bor
acık rug, made by—I can’t pronounce it, but it gives the name of the weaver and her village.” The Turks’ move from Arabic letters to Roman in the 1930’s had made their language easier for westerners to read, but not easier to pronounce. Sounds that didn’t
exist in English masqueraded as innocent
kale’s
or
ası’s
or
c’s
with tails or dotless
i’s.

“There’s a registration number.” Lacy’s mind raced. If she could trace this number, she could find out who bought it and when. But the registration was eight digits
long, more than she could commit to memory, and if she asked for something to write on, Paul would wonder why she wanted that number. Did she really need to keep him so completely in the dark? She foresaw herself making a discreet probe into the problem of the two Maxwell Sebrings until she figured it out to her own satisfaction, but, given Paul’s reaction, she’d rather do it alone. She didn’t want everyone in camp putting in their two cents’ worth and muddling things. Besides, how was she to know if everyone in camp could be trusted? On the other hand, she already
had
told Paul. Perhaps she was over-thinking this.

“I want to write down this number. Do you have a piece of paper or something?”

Paul picked up one of Max’s envelopes and, seeing that it still contained a letter, tore off the envelope’s flap. He handed it to Lacy with a pencil from his own pocket. “Why do you want that number?”

“Because the man who handles the marketing of
Boracık rugs is a friend of mine. He’ll know who it was sold to and when.”

“Aha. Will the real Max Sebring please stand up?”

“Something like that.”

“You’ll be wasting your time.”

When Lacy rose from the floor, she found Paul examining the books stacked ne
ar the head of Max’s cot. He handed each volume to Lacy as he read out its title. “
Hittite Pottery: A Guide, Mending and Conserving Pottery, Basic Conservation Methods.
Huh.”

“Huh, what?”

Paul didn’t answer, but looked around the tent again, as if he was looking for something he didn’t see. “Let’s go. I want you to meet Süleyman.”

Chapter Six

  As they neared the camp kitchen, a young girl with a head full of curls came flying toward them, banging into Lacy. “Holy crap! Let me out of here.”

“Whoa.” Paul caught her.

“Sorry!” The girl, wearing shorts and an oversized army T-shirt, stepped back and nodded to Lacy. To Paul, the girl said, “He’s zapping flies with his blowtorch! He nearly caught my hair on fire.”

“Süleyman, what the hell?” Paul yelled in the direction of the kitchen and strode toward it.

A corrugated tin roof was all that shielded the appliances and cookware from the elements. A large gas canister sat under a cabinet beside the stove along with large pots, stainless steel bowls, and cardboard boxes filled with fruits and vegetables. Over a makeshift counter, an array of utensils hung from hooks on a plywood backboard. Under the tin roof, Lacy noticed, the temperature was a good fifteen degrees hotter than outside in the sun.

A short, wiry man with a fringe of black hair and a thick black mustache stood in front of the stove, brandishing a small blowtorch of the sort chefs use to melt glazes. It hissed, and its blue flame darted menacingly toward Paul’s face as the little man stepped forward, greeting them with a big smile.

“Turn that thing off!” Paul dodged backward, avoiding the flame. He introduced Lacy to Süleyman Güler and added high accolades to Süleyman’s cooking. Süleyman added his own admiration for Lacy’s long blond hair, with broken English and a sweep of his free hand down his own head and shoulders. 

“What the hell were you doing?” Paul said.

“Stupid flies. Everywhere.” He pointed to a couple of incinerated fly carcasses on the ground. Slapping a hand on the counter as if squashing one, he said, “No good. Dirty.” He held up his blowtorch. “Very good. Kill and cook at the same time. No germs.”

Paul shook his head. Lacy laughed.

Süleyman looked up, relit the blowtorch with a flint striker, and darted toward the end of the counter. Holding one arm aloft, he thrust the torch forward like a fencer’s sword.  He turned the flame off, blew on the torch’s tip with a cowboy swagger, and pointed proudly toward the ground. Sure enough, a third fly carcass lay there, feet up. Lacy suspected it was already there and this was pure theatre on Süleyman’s part.

“Lunch ready yet?” Paul seemed unimpressed.

“All ready. Go fix plate.” Nodding toward Lacy, he said. “Nice to meet you, Lacy. Paul talk about you all the time. Glad you finally here.”

Next to the kitchen a long table was spread with the makings of lunch. A few workers inched along, spooning multicolored pastes onto paper plates and piling meats, condiments, and garnishes on slabs of flat Turkish
pide
bread. As each filled his plate, he retreated to one of several picnic tables under nearby trees.

Paul pulled Lacy toward him. “Why did you tell me not to tell Bob about the man on the train?” His voice at an intimate pitch, he glanced toward one of the picnic tables. Lacy followed his gaze and saw Bob Mueller at one table with empty chairs beside and across from his own. It looked as if he was saving seats for them.

“I don’t want to deal with a hundred and one theories about why a man wearing a coat with a label that said Maxwell Sebring was killed on a train the same morning another man with the same name died here. I’ve heard your theory. I have to think about it and I don’t need a bunch of others to confuse me even more.”

“Look, Twigs. Max was important to everyone here. He’s dead. We’re in limbo, and what happens next is critical.  We all care, and we’re all on edge.”

“Of course. And that’s another good reason for me to keep my little mystery to myself. You don’t need me dumping another layer of confusion on top of everything. You and Bob have enough to worry about already.” She grabbed a paper plate and started around the table, filling it with tahini, yogurt, diced vegetables, and some kind of shaved meat, probably lamb. Paul, following her, pointed to the canned drinks bobbing in a tub of mostly melted ice and led her to the table where Bob Mueller sat. Mueller stood, introduced her to the two workers now sitting at the far end of the table and pulled out the chair beside him for Lacy.

Paul took the seat across from Mueller. “Any more news?”

“Henry’s not back from the hospital yet. I wish he’d at least call. And I’m waiting for a call back from Alan.” He tapped the cell phone next to his plate. “What time is it in New York now?”

Lacy and Paul both looked at their watches. Paul, she noticed, still wore his watch with its wide leather band turned so that the face was inside, over his pulse. The sight of this little detail, the leather band nestled in the sun-bleached hairs of his forearm, took her back to Egypt again. Paul grinned across the table at her, as if he knew her thoughts. “Almost seven,” he said. “Still a couple of hours before the office opens.”

“Had you known Max Sebring for a long time?” Lacy asked Mueller.

“Oh, sure. I suppose I first met him about ten years ago.” He paused, as if consulting his mental timeline. “Right. I worked with him at his museum for a while and when we discussed how important we thought this area of the Middle East was, and how little work was being done, he agreed to finance me. I wanted him to bankroll an expedition to Mount Ararat, where I’d already been working for a few years, but he wasn’t too keen on that. He wanted me to find a nice tell in central or southern Turkey where there was a good chance of finding Hittite material. So I did.”

“A tell is a man-made hill,” Paul said.

“I know,” Lacy said in a
faux
-offended voice. Lacy noticed Bob Mueller had a tattoo. On the inside of his forearm, a line of black wedge-shaped, marks about five inches long spanned most of the space between his wrist and the bend of his elbow. Cuneiform writing obviously, but Lacy couldn’t read it. She wondered what it said. Its position told her it was meant more for his own eyes than for anyone else. “Was it Max’s idea to look for Croesus’s treasure here?”

Mueller coughed into his stuffed
pide
sandwich. He glanced quickly toward Paul, then down again. Lacy read the reaction as embarrassment. He probably knew that Paul thought the Croesus thing a silly waste of time. “No. Max and I agreed on this spot because of its proximity to other finds. They’re all around here and this was an obvious tumulus, not a natural formation. This is my fifth season here.”

“But Paul’s first.” Lacy glanced at Paul. “Is—was—this Max’s first season also?” Lacy already knew it was Max’s first season, and her question was mostly to keep the conversation going.

“It was.” Mueller lowered his sandwich and stared toward the open field beyond Paul’s shoulder. “I was really surprised this spring when Max said he wanted to come out and join me.”

“Was that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“They say there’s nothing more useless on a dig than a financial backer.” His voice was guttural, and included a suppressed belch. “Like tits on a bull. They do nothing but get in the way.” He looked at Lacy and grinned. “But I have to admit, he was trying—very trying.”

Lacy laughed and the two young workers at the other end of the table laughed, too. They’d obviously been listening. Paul didn’t laugh, and when Lacy looked at him she saw discomfort in the tightness of his mouth.

“Here’s Henry.” Mueller stretched his neck to peer over Paul’s head.

A plumpish man with straight black hair and a swarthy complexion pulled out the chair beside Paul and sat down, emitting a huge sigh. Lacy’s first impression of him was Indian or Pakistani, but when he spoke his voice was pure Eastern seaboard, U.S.A. She also decided he might be older than his baby-smooth face indicated. Perhaps forty.

“Heart attack. Probably.” Henry Jones announced this as simply as if he were telling them tomorrow’s weather would be the same as today’s. “The doctor said he’d been dead for three to six hours by the time we got him to the hospital, so that would put the time of death at about three to six a.m.”

“Probably?” Mueller said.

“Probably. The doc told me he found petechiae, little broken vessels, in the whites of his eyes. That could indicate choking or intense coughing or something that caused him to struggle for breath.”

“Choking?”

“Not necessarily by someone else. He could have been choking on something he swallowed. Or maybe he wasn’t choking at all. The doc didn’t find anything stuck in his throat.”

“They’re going to do an autopsy, I assume,” Paul said.

“That’s another problem. This is a Muslim country. They don’t believe in mutilation of the human body and they bury their dead as soon as possible. The same day if they can. So no autopsy. Not here, anyway.”

“What? How are we supposed to find out what killed him?” Paul turned a scowl toward Henry.

“There will be an autopsy, but it’ll be done in the U.S., not here. They’re taking the body to the airport in Ankara where they’ll put it on the first non-stop flight home. I’m going to go with it, so I have to sort of pack up here and hit the road, asap.”

“How will you get to Ankara?” Lacy asked.

“I have a car.”

Paul explained. “Max and Henry leased a car.”

Of course,
Lacy thought.
How else could Henry have returned here, miles off the beaten track, from the hospital?

“Eat something, Henry.”

“The thought of food right now makes me sick.”

“Back to this morning,” Mueller said. “The ambulance got here before we had a chance to talk. Todd found him, right? Not you.”

“Right.”

Paul said to Lacy, “Todd’s our photographer.”

Henry stared in the direction of Max’s tent for several seconds before continuing. “I went out for my morning walk, like I always do, about six o’clock. I didn’t look in on Max before I went, but I sort of walked by and didn’t hear any noises coming from his tent so I figured he was still asleep. He has a dock with speakers for his iPod and first thing every morning he turns it on and plays Vivaldi. ‘Spring’ you know, from ‘The Four Seasons.’ Does a few exercises, you know, before breakfast. Anyway, I walked on by and went out to—“ he nodded toward a hill west of the camp, “—and on down to the plain.”

“Four Bars Hill,” Paul said.

Lacy raised her eyebrows at him.

“We call it ‘Four Bars Hill’ because it’s the only place around here where you can get a good phone signal.”

Henry nodded and went on. “It must have been close to seven when I got back and heard Todd yelling. He was yelling, like, ‘Oh my God! Oh no!’ So I ran down. I think I was the first person to get there. Todd was kneeling at Max’s cot, doing CPR like crazy. I told him you were supposed to put the person on the floor so we dragged him off and put him on the floor and kept on doing CPR for a minute or two, but by that time half the camp was inside with us and someone said, ‘He’s gone. There’s no way.’”

“I think I said that,” Bob Mueller muttered.

“And he was feeling fine the night before?” Lacy asked.

“Yeah. I turned in about eleven but when I went to my tent, Max was still in the big tent with about a half dozen others and they were talking about the battle of Kadesh.”

“Battle between the Hittites and the Egyptians,” Paul explained to Lacy.

“Were you there?”

“It was before my time.”

“No, smart ass, were you there last night for the discussion?”

“I’d already retired for the evening.”

With whom had you retired,
Lacy wondered. She looked around for Sierra Blue and, again, caught a glimpse of yellow at the corner of a tent. To H
enry she said, “I noticed Max had a new-looking Boracık rug. Where did he get it?”

Henry’s eyelids fluttered and his chin jerked back. Lacy wondered if it was because she recognized the rug or because she had obviously been inside Max’s tent.

“He got it r
ight before we came here, at a little burg south of Istanbul. He knew the guy who’d had it made for him. They’d been calling back and forth for a year and the guy met us with the rug and introduced Max to the woman who weaved it.” He tilted his head to one side. “How do you know about Boracık rugs?”

“It’s my specialty, color, dyes—especially dyes from plants.”

“Lacy has perfect vision,” Paul put in. “You know how some people have perfect pitch? They can hear one note on a piano and tell you it’s a C-sharp.
Lacy can see a piece of blue material and tell you it’s the same exact color as a shower curtain they had when she was six years old. And she’ll be right, every time.”

“Assuming you can find the shower curtain,” Lacy said. “How would you know if I was lying?”

The three men chuckled, but didn’t laugh. It wasn’t the right time for a laugh.

Mueller looked at his phone, still lying beside his paper plate. “Why didn’t you call me, Henry? I was going nuts, waiting for word from the hospital.”

“I did call you. Twice.”

“Oh. That’s right.” He picked up the phone and touched its screen. “No reception down here.”

“When did you get here?” Henry Jones turned his attention to Lacy. His warm brown eyes below straight black eyebrows looked like division signs without their top dots.