The Thieves of Darkness (24 page)

But throughout their harrowing day and its pressures there was an issue that gnawed at him, which they had yet to discuss: KC’s safety. She spoke as if she knew what she was doing, and he had no doubt she did; Simon never would have used her otherwise. But Michael, more than anyone, knew there were always dangers. There were those unexpected turns that could rob you of your life before you even realized what was happening. He had had too many close calls, and what scared him now, what gave him pause, was wondering what would happen if KC faced one of those turns: Would she survive or would she be ripped from Michael’s life?

Michael refocused. If they were to get the chart, if they were to save Cindy and Simon, Michael had to be completely vigilant. He had to put his thoughts for KC, his fears and emotions, aside and concentrate on the job at hand. That was how they would succeed, that was how they would survive.

Michael stepped off the balcony and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. He undressed, climbed into his bed, and pulled out a folder containing several documents. They were Simon’s, from his satchel, but Michael had yet to read them. On first glance earlier in the day, he had opted to put them aside, and to save them for later. Certain words had caught his eye, and he thought it best that certain things not be so quickly shared. Simon had been evasive at best when Michael queried him about the chart and where it led, and Michael knew he was holding
back for a reason. So, as Simon was his friend, and as Simon had been somewhat elusive about the facts, Michael thought it best to read the contents of this particular file on his own before he shared it with KC and Busch.

Michael flipped open the folder and looked at a drawing of a Turkish corsair, standing with one foot upon the bow rail of his ship, the wind blowing back his long dark brown hair, which was tangled with an overgrown beard. He was dressed in billowing dark maroon pants held up by a deep blue sash. A long dark robe wrapped his shoulders, riding the heavy sea breeze, while in his hand he clutched a long, curved scimitar.

Kemal Reis was a Turkish corsair who became an admiral of renown in the Ottoman Empire. His real name was Ahmed Kemaleddin from Gallipoli, and he sailed the seas for forty years, capturing and plundering ships in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and as far as the Indian Ocean and China Seas, accumulating tremendous wealth and power through his ventures.

Michael removed a paper clip from the picture to find a copy of a letter written in a foreign hand, attached to which was an English translation.

The attached entry was written in the ship’s log by Bora Celil, the captain of the lead ship in Kemal Reis’s fleet
.

April 16, 1511, by the Julian calendar

While sailing the oceans of India we have come upon a Chinese junk, a massive ship, over seventy-five meters long, its sails loose and torn, flapping in the wind. The Chinese are not known for worldly voyages, so much excitement has roiled the ranks. Kemal Reis, myself, and a crew of thirty boarded the vessel to find the entire ship’s crew dead, as if a horror had boarded the ship. The Chinese crew had torn out their own eyes, severed their own limbs, plunged daggers into their own hearts, their bloodied fists still gripping the hilts. As corsairs, we had witnessed death and brought it upon the innocent more times than there are stars in the sky, and it was as
normal to us as breathing, but the sights before us stilled our hearts. This was not the doing of men
.

Kemal and I ordered the crew to stand guard as we took three of our men and headed into the depths of the ship. We found the lanterns all lit, all of the food stores intact, but like the crew, the livestock was dead, having turned on each other. The usual stench of quarters was overpowered by the decaying Chinamen we found below, all dead under similar circumstances, all by their own hand. Kemal found the captain’s quarters at the rear of the ship. The Chinese captain was a tall man, over four cubits; he lay upon the floor, his sword still in his death grip while his head lay on the far side of the room. His long black hair was matted in dried blood; his half-open eyes were glazed white, while his mouth hung open
.

We didn’t linger over the body but instead turned to the chart table. There were hundreds of charts, all stored neatly in shelves below the working surface. Kemal ordered us to tie up the charts as quickly as we could, as he became lost in a map that lay open upon the draft table. It was enormous, with exquisite detail; we had never seen a chart of such refinement and scope. But as we stood there, our men having left the room with the collection of charts, we thought we heard voices. We looked about but saw no one and wrote it off to the ramblings of our minds, brought on by the ghastly sights we had seen
.

But then we heard a low humming, barely audible. We drew our scimitars from their scabbards, grabbed an oil lamp from the wall, and opened the door. We followed the low droning to the forward hold, where we found a locked room
.

With a few blows of Hadrid’s hammer, we removed the locks
.

As Kemal slowly opened the door, he held the lantern high and was nearly blinded. The room was filled with gold; no section of the floor was visible under the piles of precious metal, scattered among which were precious jewels: diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, exquisite and larger than we ever thought possible. In the far corner were stacks of books and scrolls, ancient parchment, notated hides and skins, even etched stone in languages unfamiliar to us
.

And in the middle of it all sat a man. He was bald, old beyond years,
though he possessed a smooth, unlined face, as if he had never smiled or frowned, never experienced emotion. But for a single scar that ran down the man’s right cheek, his skin was unmarred by time
.

He sat cross-legged upon a large velvet pillow, his hands wrapped around a dark rod that lay upon his lap as he hummed slowly to himself. His skin was the color of dull tea, his body devoid of hair. He wasn’t Chinese or Indian, he wasn’t Turkish, European, African, or Middle Eastern. He appeared to possess traits of all men and none at all. The man was calm, the essence of peace. He slowly opened his eyes and looked upon us, studying our faces, our mode of dress. He didn’t appear to be guarding the treasure; he possessed no weapon and showed no signs of aggression. We didn’t know if we were looking upon a crew member, pirate, prisoner, or guardian. He was dressed simply in wool peasant clothes and wooden shoes. And as the man stood, we could see the rod in his hands. It was one and a half cubits long, made of a dark, unnatural wood. It was wrapped, coiled with two snakes along its length, their mouths opened, ready to strike from the top of the rod. Their eyes were of blood-red rubies that twinkled in the firelight; their fangs of silver glimmered, poised, ready to sink their teeth into one another
.

Kemal asked the man who he was, but received a response in a dialect we had never heard before. The man started to speak slowly, deliberately, his language seeming to change with every phrase until we saw our first mate Hadrid’s head snap to the right in recognition. Hadrid Lovlais had been part of our crew for five years, a large, dark, fierce warrior who came out of the jungles of India. He began to speak slowly, conversing with the man. It was polite, soft, contrary to Hadrid’s character, and an approach we were seldom accustomed to at sea
.

Hadrid finally turned to Kemal. And said three words…

“We are dead.”

Hadrid explained that the man had traveled with the treasure for countless months, a treasure that had been stolen again and again since it was removed from a mountain tomb where it had lain hidden for centuries. The man called it the Devil’s treasure, a treasure that was said to be stolen from hell itself and whose possession would bring only insanity and death
.

The elderly man with tea-colored skin did not beg, he did not implore, he merely asked that Kemal and his crew return the treasure to its proper resting place
.

Kemal was sixty years old; he had won countless battles, plundered more treasure than could be spent in one hundred lifetimes. He had seen life and death, holding it in his hands daily, playing the role of a god since before he could remember. But through it all, he had been a spiritual man, a devout Muslim who had followed the five pillars, the five duties incumbent on all adherents of Islam. And as such, he believed in Allah, in Muhammad, he believed in angels, and, in particular, he believed in hell. He had encountered evil firsthand, he had seen the Devil’s work, and what he saw on the ship around him was its true manifestation
.

The spiritual man slowly extended his hand to Kemal, to the chart under his arm. Kemal passed it to him and watched as the man unfurled it, indicating a spot on the chart that the treasure must be returned to
.

We loaded our ship, transferring the gold and jewels to the largest holds of our three lead ships. We have selected a crew of two hundred and charted a course through the Indian Ocean, up into the Bay of Bengal. From there we will sail upriver into terra incognita and travel across land with the spiritual man as our guide, up into the highest reaches of the earth, with the intent to return the treasure to the Devil himself
.

Kemal has passed the array of Chinese charts on to his nephew Piri and appointed him to sail the fleet down around the African Cape of Storms, up to the Mediterranean and home to Istanbul
.

Michael sat there, digesting the words of the Ottoman captain, understanding where Piri had received much of his information for the eastern section of his map, and while the tale of treasure and haunting would still the heart of many, Michael did not understand why Piri had chosen to tear up his chart because of a single corsair’s fears.

But then Michael read the final translated note in the packet. It was brief, addressed to Piri with a notation saying it was delivered after a fourteen-month journey by the corsair Hadrid Lovlais, who died two days after conveying the package.

September 24, 1513
Piri
,

I am sending you this serpent staff, which we have come to know as the Key of Forever Night, on behalf of your Uncle Kemal, who implores you to hide it away along with the charts that were taken from the Chinese ship and any reference to our destination. We offer no explanation of what we have found but know that the entire crew but myself, Hadrid, and three others, including Kemal, have all perished. And know this: Man is not ready to learn the truths we have found; it is not the place of men such as us to determine when and what knowledge the empire and the world is entitled to. Understand there are some things that are never meant to be learned, some things that are never meant to be found
.

Salaam,
Bora Celil

Michael pondered Bora Celil’s fatalist words; he suddenly understood why Piri had torn his chart in half after painstakingly creating it. The pieces of the mystery of what Iblis sought were beginning to fall into place.

Michael took the photo, along with the two letters, affixed the paper clip, tucked them back into the folder, and decided he would not be sharing them with KC. What he had read, what he had learned, would have no bearing on what lay before them; it would not affect how they carried out their thefts; in fact, it would prove nothing but a distraction. He thought it best to keep Bora Celil’s words to himself and heed his warning:

There are some things that are never meant to be learned…

The Boeing Business Jet rolled out of the hangar, its white skin glittering in the golden dawn. It taxied down the empty runway and was wheels-up, sailing west into the sky, by 6:15
A.M
.

Busch stood inside the cavernous private hangar, watching as the jet became but a pinpoint in the sky. He rubbed his tired eyes and turned his gaze to the yellow Fiat that had followed them from the hotel. Iblis wasn’t driving; Busch had not expected him to personally maintain surveillance twenty-four/seven. The driver was a dark-haired Turk, tall, with a pinched face. Leaning against the car, he, too, had his eye on the disappearing plane. Busch watched as the man finished his coffee, threw the empty cup on the ground, got back into his car, and left.

For the time being, KC would be Iblis’s sole focus, allowing Michael and Busch to operate and prepare unencumbered for what lay ahead.

“Awful waste of jet fuel,” Busch said, his voice echoing in the high-ceilinged, vacant space.

“They’re only going to Greece; they’ll be back tonight,” Michael said.

“Still a waste of money.”

“Not if it keeps Iblis away from me. As long as he thinks I’ve left the country he won’t suspect what we are up to.”

Michael stood before a long workbench in the back of the hangar. Ataturk Private Co. leased the buildings and crew out to the business and private jet set, offering everything from full jet maintenance by certified mechanics to stocking the fridges and bars of the luxury aircraft. Michael had paid off the crew for the day and had the vast space, with its plethora of tools and supplies, at his disposal.

He hoisted the three large black duffel bags onto the workbench that ran along the long rear wall. Unzipping each in succession, he began to methodically withdraw their contents: from the first bag, six coils of kernmantle climbing rope, two harnesses, and four carabiners; a small toolkit with a screwdriver, a Leatherman multitool, and a small crowbar; and finally, the four leather art tubes. He reached into the next bag and extracted four Sig Sauer pistols, a box of clips, four boxes of bullets, a Galil sniper rifle with laser scope, and two holsters. He laid them out next to two rubber-handled dive knives, four two-way radios, and the climbing gear.

“Are we stealing a chart or going to war?” Busch said as he walked up and pulled a bag over.

“Give me a break; I’m not sure what I need yet.”

Busch pulled from the duffel a large plastic bag filled with small black boxes.