The Thieves of Darkness (19 page)

Venue walked to his desk and picked up a manila envelope; he opened it and held the documents before Iblis. “Look familiar?”

Iblis stared at the thick file; it was his intel on the priests, their movements, their likes and dislikes, provided to him through his own research and with the assistance of Venue. There were several photographs of Venue and a thoroughly compiled stack of notes inexorably tying Venue to his priestly past and the seven dead men who had excommunicated him.

Iblis’s pupils enlarged to the point that his eyes were almost pure black with only an aura of ghostly blue; his heart thundered in the veins of his ears, throbbing as the fear made its way from his heart to his soul.

“There is not a thing in this world I cannot get my hands on, be it power, money, or flesh. If I can reach into a Zurich-Pronish safe-deposit box in Switzerland and pull these papers, imagine what I could do if I was upset.”

Iblis could no longer mask his fear. It was the first time he had felt it since he’d been a child. This man Venue could literally reach through walls to get what he wanted.

“As I said, I would expect nothing less,” Venue commented as he held up the papers. “And I don’t hold it against you; it was prudent, and the smart thing to do when protecting oneself. In fact, if you hadn’t done something along these lines I probably would have had you killed for being too naive and ill-equipped to function in my employ.

“We’ve established our lack of trust in each other, we each understand the other’s ability to kill. I just want you to understand that now that you work for me, it is for life. I will pay you most handsomely, I will respect your judgment and seek your advice. But I hope that it is perfectly clear that I have the power and the reach to end your life if and when I so choose.”

Michael, Busch, and KC were back in Michael’s hotel suite, trays of food scattered on the floor as they looked through Simon’s voluminous stack of documents on Topkapi, the mysterious rod of Selim II, and Hagia Sophia.

Busch was already through his third hamburger, choosing to avoid the preferred local flavors of goat cheese and seasoned lamb.

“KC,” Michael said, “I know we’ve been warned off the chart, but you still need to tell me what you know. If we’re going to get Cindy back, if we’re going to get to Simon in time, you need to tell me everything.”

KC nodded. Michael could see the pain in her eyes, the difficulty focusing, but then he watched as she pulled her thoughts together. She took a sip from her water bottle, tied her long blonde hair up into a ponytail, and turned to Michael and Busch.

“The first maps were not of cities or countries, they were of the heavens,” KC said, “maps of the stars found on the walls of the Lascaux caves in southern France. Man has always looked for guidance, whether through words or charts. Some consider the Bible to be like a map that will lead one to heaven, so, too, the Koran and the Torah. Spiritual maps for the soul.

“To this day, maps are some of the most plagiarized documents on earth, it being common practice to lift information from earlier charts.
When pirates captured a ship, the first things they went for, the things of greatest value, far greater than a treasure or gold, were the charts. They could lead them to parts of the world unknown and make them rulers of the sea.

“Maps were the first thing traded when ships came to port. The highest of prices was paid for maps and charts, as they would unlock the mysteries of the sea, and not just destinations but the location of deadly coral reefs, bottom-wrecking rocks, and deadly shallows and shorelines. The Piri Reis map is an amalgam drawn from who knows how many maps.

“Kemal Reis, Piri’s uncle, was a corsair. It is believed that much of the information contained in his nephew’s map came from the maps and charts he plundered while sailing the seas.”

“Plundered?” Busch laughed. “Who was he? Errol Flynn?”

“Corsairs were pirates, they plundered,” KC said as if that were obvious.

Busch’s laughter fell away. “I thought
Reis
meant
admiral
.”

“Who better to make the admiral of your fleet than a man who knows the seas like the lips of his wife? The Ottoman Empire, like many other countries—Spain, England, France—allowed corsairs like Kemal to act as privateers in the name of the crown, permitting them to keep a large portion of the bounty they captured while disrupting the supply lines of their enemies.

“So, being a very good corsair, Kemal plundered many a chart, and from these and certain charts within Piri’s possession, some from the Alexandria library, some from the Byzantine library, he created his own map. But the thing is, Piri Reis’s chart in Topkapi, the one that was rediscovered in the palace in 1929, is only a portion of Piri’s original chart. The interesting thing about the Piri Reis chart is that it is not the complete sea chart, it is actually only half of the whole.”

“And…?” Busch urged KC on.

“His chart was a labor of love, not drawn for money, commission, or by sultan’s decree but out of sheer passion for mapmaking. He drew from charts new, old, ancient, and, some say, even mythical. Rendered on an
enormous African gazelle hide, it was the most complete chart of its time; in fact, it had no equal for over a century. It mapped the oceans from the Atlantic to the Indian out to the Pacific. He detailed the mountain ranges of the Andes, the Himalayas, the major rivers of the world, and footnoted the entire document with historical and legendary details. There were representations of holy sites and places of darkness, animals of history and myth, people of culture and of the wild. It was a masterpiece of historic significance that had started out as a self-indulgent challenge.

“But upon seeing what he had wrought, upon realizing that such a codex would unlock the uncharted seas and rivers and reveal things that isolated cultures had hidden away as sacred to those whose only desire was to conquer, Piri tore his map in two.

“He gave the western section to Sultan Suleiman I in 1517 as a gift. Though torn down the center of Africa, its eastern half said to be destroyed, it was considered a gift of no equal and was held up as an example of the Ottoman Empire’s dominance of both the lands and seas of the world.

“Piri held on to the other half, but in his later years, fearing he would die and it would fall into the wrong hands, he entrusted the eastern section, the Asian section, to his friend the grand vizier, Mehmet.

“As I mentioned to Michael earlier, the vast majority of those within the harem and many of the sultan’s viziers arrived in Constantinople as prisoners or slaves captured from Christian lands. Upon arrival in the palace, they were forced to convert to Islam, and while they all learned the Koran and participated in the holy practice, that does not mean they abandoned the religious beliefs within their hearts. Imagine if you were imprisoned and told to convert to a foreign religion: Would you do it willingly, would you embrace the new faith and abandon everything that you had been taught? This created a secret Christian solidarity between several eunuchs, concubines, and viziers.

“In order to help ease and acclimate certain concubines and eunuchs, the chief black eunuch, a Kizlar Agha by the name of Attawa, with the help of Mehmet, had a chapel constructed in the bowels of the harem, one that could be accessed by the eunuchs’ secret tunnels and
passages in and out of the palace. It was an act of extreme subterfuge, one that, if found out, would be punished by death, but one that the true believers in their faith felt worth the risk. It was a small chapel with an altar and catered to the Christians and Jews who had been torn not only from their families and homes but from their faith. It was tucked away along the edge of a cistern that lay beneath the second and third inner circles of Topkapi, a remnant from Byzantine times.

“With the death of Sultan Selim II, Mehmet’s advancing age, and the inevitable changing of the chief eunuch, Mehmet and Attawa decided it was time to seal up their small chapel, erasing it from existence, and what better place to hide something than a room that would no longer exist.”

“Why would Piri tear up his greatest masterpiece?” Busch asked. “What didn’t he want found?”

“I have no idea. Whatever it was, though, it scared Simon, and Simon’s a man whom I’ve yet to see fearful of anything.”

“Honestly,” Michael said, “I really don’t care why the map was torn in two or what it leads to. It is the best bargaining chip to get your sister and Simon back.”

“Michael,” KC said, “as much as I agree with you, Iblis is beyond dangerous.”

“And we’re not?” Busch asked, his voice growing rough, his brow furrowed.

KC paused. “Not like him.”

Michael looked at KC, his heart skipping as he saw her eyes. She was truly afraid of this man, this teacher of the illicit, clandestine arts who had betrayed her in the worst sense. He saw her pain for her kidnapped sister, fearing for her life.

“KC,” Michael said softly, “he thinks it’s only you. He has no idea who I am, who Busch is, and even less idea that I could steal this chart right out from under his nose.”

“He may have stolen the chart already.”

“He was here a few hours ago, he’s dealing with tucking away Simon and your sister. If he could just go in and grab it, he wouldn’t have warned you off so forcefully.”

“Michael, if we steal it, he’ll kill her; I don’t know if I can take that chance,” KC said.

“KC, think about it. Is it the only copy, the only means of finding what they’re looking for?”

KC nodded. “Simon said it’s the only one.”

“That’s why we have to get it before he does. That chart is everything; it’s your leverage. They won’t risk losing it. I promise you, Cindy’s not going to die if you have the chart, you know that and I know that. Which means we have no time to waste. If he’s as good a thief as you say, he’s already planned everything. And if he has, I’ve got to get to it before he does.”

“What are you saying, Michael?”

“I’ll steal the map,” Michael said as he sat up a little straighter.

“Why did I know you were going to say that?” Busch leaned back in his chair.

“I can’t let you do that,” KC said with pain in her voice.

“Yeah, KC, you can, but you’re going to have to get the rod on your own at the same time; can you do that?”

“You don’t understand what he will do to her. He’ll make her suffer—”

Michael slowly put his hands up.

“As hard as this sounds, I need you to put your sister out of your mind. Same goes for Simon. They’re both alive, we know that. If we dwell on them, we’ll all lose focus and end up dead.”

KC took a deep breath and nodded. “Fine, but I call the shots.”

“Not a chance,” Michael shot back.

“It’s my sister.”

“That’s right,” Michael said. “My head is clearer on this.”

“You’ve been out of the game too long,” KC argued.

“Actually, that’s not entirely true,” Busch interjected.

“I thought you—you said you bowed out of this stuff years ago.”

“He said that?” Busch cut in, stifling a laugh.

“Look, we’ll work as a team.” Michael said. “Leave it at that. You get the rod, I’ll get the chart.”

“I’ll get the chart,” KC argued.

“No way. If this Iblis is as dangerous as you say and you run into him underneath Topkapi…”

KC reluctantly nodded.

“Do you think you can handle stealing the rod yourself?” Michael said.

“Are you kidding me? Worry about yourself.” KC sounded genuinely pissed.

“Ouch,” Busch said, trying not to laugh.

“But we have to move quickly, within sixty hours at most, and do both thefts at the same time.”

“And if one of you gets caught?”

“We won’t,” Michael and KC said in unison.

“Great,” Busch said. “You guys even answer the same.”

“If Iblis expects you to steal that rod within three days, he’s going for the map before then,” Michael said.

“How do you know?”

“Once you steal the rod, security is going to go through the roof. What would you do?”

KC nodded in agreement.

“Tell me about Iblis. What kind of thief is he?”

“The kind who has no qualms about running a knife through your neck and watching you bleed out.”

“That’s just terrific,” Busch said.

“He’s also paranoid.”

“So he’s got his eye on you?”

“I guarantee he’s watching this hotel right now,” KC said.

“Then tomorrow morning, we need to make him think that I’m leaving the country.” Michael turned to Busch. “You’ve got to find us another hotel.”

“Are you kidding?” Busch said.

Michael didn’t need to answer; he knew Busch would understand that KC had to appear to be on her own.

KC stood up. “Simon’s the one who really knows Hagia Sophia.”

“Put him out of your mind and we’ll get this thing done.” Michael looked up into KC’s green eyes and spoke to her heart. “I promise.”

Busch thumbed through his stack of papers and pulled out a map of the former mosque.

KC shook her head at the proffered floor plan, looked at her watch, and headed for the door. “It’s already three-thirty, I’m sick of reading anyway.”

“You going to Hagia Sophia?”

“Where else would I be going?” KC snapped.

“I’ll meet you in the lobby in five minutes; we can walk.”

“I thought Iblis was watching the place,” Busch pointed out.

“I hope he is,” Michael answered. “If he sees us taking a walk over to Hagia Sofia, that’s just fine. He’ll think she’s getting the lay of the land.”

“But that’s what she will be doing,” Busch pointed out.

“And he’ll think she’s staying away from his precious chart, and following his directions.”

“Five minutes,” KC repeated. Without looking their way, she walked out the door.

And as soon as it clicked shut…

Busch stared at Michael.

Michael had seen the look before. It was Busch’s look of angry disappointment, one that Michael first saw when Busch was his parole officer, a look he gave Michael when he found out Michael had broken his parole, broken his promises.

“It’s Simon, for Christ’s sake.” Michael barely contained himself.