The Thieves of Darkness (20 page)

“I know it’s Simon,” Busch shot back. “He’s my friend, too. But he plays with fire. And what are you supposed to do, bail his ass out every time? You just saved his life twenty-four hours ago. Now he’s in trouble again. And I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen: You’re going to end up dead.”

“You know me better than that. But you know what? Simon will be dead if we don’t help him. And are you forgetting about KC’s sister? They have her, too. She’s got nothing to do with this and her life’s on the line. How do you justify that? Huh?”

“Michael, I have a map. It’s a big map. It’s on the wall in my basement. It’s filled with pushpins of all the places I’ve gone with you, all the places I never thought I would visit, all the places we almost died in. I don’t want to be adding any more pushpins. And you know what? When I die I want to die at home, on at least in my own country.”

“Take the plane,” Michael said in all sincerity. “I’m not asking you to help. Please go home to your family. You’ve done enough already.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. You expect me to fly home and what, fly back when I have to save your ass? I can’t tell you how sick I am of this. I face more danger with you than I did in my entire career on the police force.”

“Paul, I can’t let KC do this alone.”

“Tell me something, who is first and foremost in your mind right now? Simon, KC’s sister … or KC?”

Michael said nothing.

“Are you doing this for her? To impress her, protect her, what?”

“It’s Simon,” Michael said through clenched teeth.

“I know it’s Simon,” Busch said calmly. “I know you wouldn’t let him come to harm, or KC’s sister, so please don’t take this the wrong way.” Busch paused as if he were about to announce a tragedy. “How well do you know KC?”

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?” Michael was instantly pissed.

“I said, don’t take it the wrong way, dammit. You met her, what, a month ago? Now you’re ready to put your life on the line for her. I’m just saying, she’s a thief. Present company excluded, I’m not much for trusting thieves, even if they’re women…” Busch paused, thinking. “Especially if they’re women.”

Michael stared at Busch, trying not to hear his words, but they were seeping in.

“We don’t know jack shit about her past, we just met her cute little sister, and now we’re rushing off to save her. I’m not saying something stinks, but…”

“So, what? You think she’s setting me up? You think this is some
plan of hers to get my help?” Michael tried to contain himself. “Even if I didn’t trust KC, I’d still be doing this for Simon. How many times has he saved our asses?”

“Need I remind you it’s usually Simon who lures us into the mess that gets our asses in trouble in the first place?”

“I’m not bailing on him.”

“I didn’t say anything about bailing,” Busch relented, backing off. “I’m just saying, can you check your heart at the door on this one?”

“It’s not…” Michael paused. He knew full well what Busch meant. Busch was his best friend. He knew him even better than he knew himself. “I can’t let someone else’s life slip through my fingers. I can’t go through that again, Paul.”

“Do you love her?”

Michael took a deep breath. Thinking, considering. “I don’t know. But she made me feel again. And I’m not ready to give that up.”

“I understand. But you’re playing in a world that’s foreign, that’s very different from anywhere you’ve been before. This is Istanbul. You did your thing in the U.S., Europe, Russia, but not here. They think different, they act different, they speak different … but…”

“But what?” Michael prompted his friend to finish.

“But I’ll bet they kill just the same.”

Michael and KC walked out the lobby door of the Four Seasons Hotel and headed up the street. They never turned back to see the yellow Fiat that sat near the far curb, its dark-haired driver watching their every move. And he in turn never saw the large, blond American watching him. Busch hung back in the shadows of the hotel lobby; it provided a perfect vantage point as he peered through the telephoto lens of his digital camera.

The driver sat high in the seat, his head almost touching the ceiling. Busch smiled to himself, realizing the man had jacked his car seat up as high as possible to give the world an artificial impression of his stature.

The man’s brown hair hung long in his face; he occasionally flipped it back with his right hand. Busch could see his innocent façade, an appearance quite contrary to his soul. His emotionless eyes remained fixed on Michael and KC while he spoke to two passengers who sat in the car with him. They were larger, a counter to Iblis’s small size, their eyes fixed on the same target.

Busch clicked off pictures of them all, captured the license plate and a wide shot of the car. He knew from his days of stakeouts and police work how often the people doing the watching never realized they, in turn, were being watched.

As Michael and KC vanished around a corner, Iblis started his car and pulled from the curb. Busch hung back as the car drove right past the lobby, the tiny man never aware of his presence.

Busch committed Iblis’s face to memory, thinking all the while of Simon bleeding and unconscious on the white marble floor of the hotel suite, of the pools of blood that he had sopped up with the bath towels.

Busch couldn’t wait to drive his fist through Iblis’s skull for hurting his friend.

H
UNDREDS OF STAINED-GLASS
windows filtered the late sun’s rays into a host of rainbows that scattered onto the floor of an enormous nave that was almost two hundred feet long—a wide-open space that swallowed up the three hundred tourists, making them seem like a gathering of ants on a football field.

Michael and KC walked briskly across the marble floor, their eyes wandering up 180 feet to the crown of the dome of Hagia Sophia.

One of the most incredible buildings in history, Hagia Sophia was the fourth-largest cathedral in the world after St. Paul’s in London, the Duomo in Milan, and St. Peter’s in Rome. Incredibly, it had been constructed more than one thousand years earlier than its closest rival.

The 102-foot-diameter crown of Hagia Sophia seemed weightless as it sat upon the unbroken arcade of forty arched windows, which helped flood the colorful interior with the late-afternoon light.

Hagia Sophia had been the religious center of the
Orthodox
Byzantine Empire
for nearly one thousand years. For centuries it contained a large collection of Christianity’s most holy relics, including a stone from the tomb of Jesus, articles belonging to the Virgin Mary, the burial shroud of Jesus, and bones of several saints, all of which had been sent to churches throughout the West when Constantinople was raided during the Fourth Crusade in 1204.

The walls were sheathed with green and white marble that was flecked with purple porphyry and richly decorated with golden mosaics depicting Jesus, the Virgin Mary, saints, emperors, and empresses.

After an eight-week siege, on May 29, 1453, Sultan Mehmed II led the one-hundred-thousand-strong force of Ottoman Turks into Constantinople and conquered the city, bringing an end to the millennium-spanning Byzantine Empire and ushering in the Ottoman Empire’s golden age of conquest and expansion.

While the sultan ordered his forces to stay their hand against the Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles so that he might install his own patriarch and better deal with his Christian subjects, he ordered the immediate conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque. The bells, altar, and sacrificial vessels were taken away, and many of the Christian mosaics were eventually plastered over. A mihrab, minbar, and four minarets were constructed over time. It remained as a mosque until 1935, when it was converted into a museum by the Republic of Turkey.

Michael and KC walked out the rear of the building, down a long path, and headed straight for the center of three buildings that sat on the southwest side of the museum. The mausoleum of Selim II was a square structure, wrapped around an octangular upper story that was capped by a mottled lead dome. The cut-stone building was paved in marble panels and sat between the mausoleums of Selim’s son, Murad III, and his grandson, Mehmed III.

A portico with a center dome and barrel vaults over the side bays sat before the entryway. Two guards stood lazily on either side of the entrance, speaking in hushed tones as the tourists shuffled through the wide-open doors.

The interior was well-lit by two tiers of latticed windows that circled the building, a third row of windows on the dome’s drum, and eight windows on the dome itself. The interior red dome was decorated with colored ornamental designs of blue and gold and sat on red and white arches supported by pale marble columns.

A blue band wrapped the eight-sided interior between the upper and lower windows, providing a break between the atmosphere of the deceased below and heaven in the dome above. The band was inscribed with white Arabic calligraphy that conveyed a sense of consecration of the deceased.

The late afternoon’s diminishing crowd cycled through the building like automatons past forty-four green-shrouded coffins of varying sizes. The coffins holding males were demarked with white turbans that sat on small extensions protruding from the heads of the caskets. In addition to the large sarcophagus of Selim II, there were less grand coffins for his wife, five sons, and three daughters, as well as twenty-one grandsons and thirteen granddaughters—their three-foot coffins creating a solemn hush among the passing tourists.

There were no displays of art on the walls other than the fixed tile designs, though the walls were priceless in and of themselves. The guards remained outside, lost in their conversation, only occasionally looking in at the revolving crowd.

“How sure are you that the rod is in the coffin?” Michael asked.

“Pretty sure,” KC responded.

“That’s a ridiculous answer,” Michael whispered in an angry tone. “Are you sure or not?”

KC tried to hold in her anger. “Simon said it was there, his notes say it was there. That is the best estimate I have.”

“So you’re not sure unless we open this thing up right here, right now?”

“Be my guest,” KC challenged.

As Michael walked by the sultan’s tomb, he quickly snagged the edge of the green shroud upon Selim’s sarcophagus, pulling it partially off to reveal the marble tomb beneath. The tourists reacted in shock with subtle gasps, while KC’s eyes grew wide in surprise. Michael quickly appeared embarrassed, giving the impression that it had been an accident. He reached back and adjusted the shroud, smoothing it in place before anyone was the wiser.

But Michael had seen what he needed to see. The top of the tomb was seamed, meaning the lid could be lifted, though he estimated it to weigh in excess of twelve hundred pounds.

“How the hell am I going to lift that off?” KC whispered.

Michael paused a moment and smiled. “All that time at the gym…”

“Very funny.”

“It’s going to be a little harder than we expected,” Michael said.

“Gee.” KC shook her head, mocking him. “You think?”

Michael smiled. “Only when I have to.”

KC turned and headed out the door, unable to mask her anger. “Well, you better start thinking, ’cause we’re pretty much screwed.”

Cindy stared at the enormous steel door, willing it to open, but after thirty seconds, she knew it was nothing but wishful thinking. She sipped from a cold bottle of Fiji water as she turned and took in her surroundings. The room was twenty by twenty. A blue Persian rug filled the space, its rich pile caressing her feet as she walked about without her shoes on. There was a plasma TV on the wall, a kitchenette in the corner, its fridge and cabinet stocked with food and drink. The dark wood walls and heavy mahogany and leather furniture combined to give the impression of a London gentlemen’s club.

And then there was the cot along the rear wall. Simon lay unconscious upon it, his head wrapped tightly in white gauze and bandage. He had yet to wake up.

Iblis had uttered only a simple statement as his men led her and carried Simon down. “Your life and your friend’s life are in the hands of your sister. Pray for her success.” And he left, closing the door, sealing them in this windowless room.

She didn’t know what to make of Iblis. It had been so many years since she had seen him, a man who had frequented their house when she was young, who took them out to dinner and acted like a long-lost uncle. He brought presents at Christmas and birthdays and seemed
very close to KC. And now, after all this time, he showed up only to kidnap her and Simon.

But even now, she was overwhelmed by emotions beyond fear. Her anger toward KC was something she had never felt toward anyone in her life. KC had lived a life of lies; she was a criminal in every sense of the word. She had deceived Cindy about everything, creating the deepest sense of betrayal she had ever felt, far worse than a lie; it was a deception on the grandest scale. The one person whom she loved, whom she trusted, had lied to her with her every waking breath.

And what if the world were to find out? What if her new boss were to learn that her perfect sister, her hero, the one she had bragged about to everyone she met, was a thief? That her Oxford education had been paid for with the proceeds—the
loot
—from some art heist? She would not only be out of a job but probably out of her career as the business world learned her sister, her
hero
, had abandoned the nine-to-five world in favor of grand larceny.

KC had resided on a pedestal. As far as Cindy had been concerned, she could do no wrong. She was her sister, her mother, her mentor, and yet, all the while, she was off robbing people, stealing who knew what to line her pockets. Her claim that it was all for their survival was crap. She could have done millions of jobs, yet she chose the easy way, the shortcut. And if it was all for their own good, why was she still doing it? KC’s lies knew no bounds. KC no longer supported her, she no longer needed to pay for tuition, and yet less than a week ago she had been in prison for God knew what, a prison she broke out of. Who was this woman she called her sister?