Tomy and the Planet of Lies (12 page)

“What are you thinking about, little brother?”

“Your fantastic planet,” he said pensively. “I will have a lot to upload to the community when I return home. They will all be delighted.”

“How do you mean?”

He turned to face me, like a mirror image, only thirty years younger. “We have no language,” he stressed quietly and emotionally, “My experiences here will become part of the group consciousness. We are all part of it. The Earth is really a marvel of beauty—but you humans, sadly, are not.”

My gaze fell to the floor in shame. I took his hand and pressed it gently.

“There are wonderful people, too. Not everyone lies.” It was barely more than a whisper: the others couldn't even hear that we were talking. Marc finished his task and pointed at the gravel pyramid in front of us.

“So, what's inside there?”

Ercan explained that many attempts had been made to venture into the interior of the pyramid, but they had all failed. Every time anyone excavated a hole and tried to prop it up with wooden beams, the small stones just trickled down slowly burying the whole thing again. It would take some kind of heavy machinery to make any kind of serious progress, but the track up here would have to be seriously widened and strengthened to get that kind of equipment up here.

“What about a helicopter?” I enquired.

“There's no money for it. And even if anyone were prepared to pay for it, they wouldn't get a permit to dig.”

We still had our metal detectors. I started screwing the various parts together and inserted the batteries. Ercan stood up and said he and Chantal would go and find the officers and then drive back down the valley. The military would all be at the bottom of the mountain at this time of day, eating lunch. We couldn't go wrong: just drive down the mountain to the hotel. He shook our hands—which I found a little unnecessary, as we were only going to be parted for a few hours. Chantal hardly looked at us, turned wordlessly away, and walked a few paces across the terrace. Then she suddenly turned around and strode up to Marc, took his head in her hands and kissed the stunned youngster full on the lips. Tomy watched as first her upper body and then her head disappeared into the depths behind the terrace and then asked thoughtfully:

“What was that?”

“The kiss?” Marc laughed hoarsely, “I think she must like me!”

“That's not it,” insisted Tomy, a look of consternation on his face, “Erich, what do you think?”

I said nothing and fished for a cigarette. All kinds of possibilities were going through my head. Had some kind of devilment been planned against us? By whom? After all, we were no longer in Iran. Chantal and Ercan—did they know each other from before? I thought back to the overly long hand kiss he had given her. But what would the Turks have against us? Did Ercan know anything about Tomy? It was possible. They had certainly had enough time during the drive here to talk about all sorts of things. Was it something just to do with Tomy, or did it concern all of us? Was the kiss some kind of final farewell?

Marc laughed again, “What rubbish! She might be a spy, but if she had wanted to kill us, she had plenty of opportunity to do it in Iran. Why complicate matters to do it in Turkey? Chantal's just got a bit of a crush on me. It's not a problem—is it?”

Not totally convinced, we began taking measurements. The depth sensor spat out its shrill tones at four locations. There was something metallic buried about three meters into the pyramid. But we didn't have the slightest chance of finding out what.

At around 11 o'clock the glare of the sun was beginning to make life uncomfortable, so we started back to the car. We were completely alone on the mountain; there was not another soul to be seen. After we had stowed the gear we got into the car, a little hesitantly. I pressed the brake pedal three times—everything OK there. I released the parking brake and pulled it back on again several times. Again, everything seemed to be all right. I got out and checked under the car, looking for traces of oil. Nothing. Even the air pressure in the tires was all right. The Rover was perfect. Tomy sat next to me, on the mountainside of the car: behind him sat Marc, humming softly. I started the motor and took the first curve carefully in first gear. I had to brake constantly as even engine braking wasn't enough to keep our speed down—it was like sitting in a mountain cableway going down an extremely steep mountainside.

Then everything happened at once. Suddenly, the brake pedal gave way. Quickly, I pressed it several times, trying to pump more brake fluid into the cylinders. Nothing happened. I yanked on the handle of the parking brake. No effect. Normally, in that kind of situation, my reaction would have been to change down the gears and bring the car safely to a standstill—but we were already in first! The great weight of the car and the steep inclination of the slope were making the engine howl in protest. Thoughts flashed through my head: So they
were
trying to kill us! How the hell were we going to get out of this situation?

I yelled at Tomy and Marc that as soon as there was enough room between the car and mountain they should try and jump out of the car. This time the mountain was on the right-hand side of the car, left the abyss. Like in the desert, I again thought about Marc and his parents. The young son dead, and all of it my fault! Our speed increased to frightening levels, the weight of the car pressing it down the slope like a mighty fist. At irregular intervals we skidded hither and thither on the gravel track. I steered the car into the cliff wall. There was a terrible screech and multicolored sparks flew from the paintwork. How long would the steering be able to hold out? When would the tires burst? I grasped the steering wheel in a bear-like grip; Marc and Tomy did the same with the door handles and the assist grips. The Rover began jumping around perilously. Just don't jump left, I thought. The wheels weren't slowing us much, but the thought of them hanging over a chasm was just too much. For heaven's sake, there had to be a way out of this! A couple of seconds later we flew around a left-hand bend where the rock wall dropped back a couple of meters. Before my companions could open the doors and jump, I cried: “Not yet, wait!”

Just to my left I had glimpsed a tiny meadow with a stream right behind it. In desperation, I tore the steering wheel left, sending the car and us into the greenery. The car skidded across the small patch of grass into the soft streambed and then out the other side, finally coming to a standstill wedged between two extended tree roots. And didn't even tip over.

At first, we just sat there, breathing heavily. Then we all leaned our heads back and sat in relieved silence. Slowly our hammering pulses returned to near normal and we got our breath back.

Marc was the first to speak: “We're still alive,” he said, as if he didn't believe it was possible.

Tomy looked at me with an expression that I will never forget. If Mona Lisa had been a man, hers might have been the expression on Tomy's face. Not bitter, not cheerful, not calm, not furious, not angry; simply indescribable.

“The planet
is
wonderful,” he said, echoing his earlier comment, “but you humans are appalling.”

What could I say to that? Carefully, I opened my door and got out of the car to check out the damage. It was a wreck. Marc and Tomy couldn't even open their doors; the collisions on the way down must have jammed them shut.

“Is anyone injured?” I asked. The others checked out their limbs. Nothing broken, but scrapes, scratches and bruises aplenty and—as we realized later—strained muscles everywhere where the human body had muscles.

We must have had a guardian angel looking out for us. After this rollercoaster ride of terror the car was still standing on all four wheels. The rear door was also jammed, so Marc and Tomy started to pass out the luggage through my door as there was no way we would be driving any farther. I crawled under the car. From my days in the tank recruit school I could still remember a considerable amount about the way brakes function.

Remnants of brake fluid dropped from all four brake hoses next to the suspension mountings. I knew that the brake pedal pushed a rod into a main brake cylinder, from which four lines ran to the wheels. Resolutely I tore one of the hoses from out of the muck it was embedded in. A quick inspection showed a small incision, probably made with snips. The handbrake worked in a different way, namely without brake fluid. Two steel cables ran to the wheels on the rear axle—these also showed signs of being tampered with.

“Who the hell was it?” Marc asked tonelessly, running greasy fingers over the cut in the brake hose.

“Make sure you wash your hands thoroughly in the stream,” was my only answer. “Brake fluid isn't oil. It's a poisonous mix of chemicals that can easily be absorbed through the skin.”

“Ouch!” Marc dropped the hose and dunked his hands into the cool waters of the stream. “But who was it? That's what I want to know!”

Tomy sat pensively on a rock: “It could only have been those two officers. The others were with us the whole time, from sunup till the time they set off home.”

“Not necessarily,” I corrected him. “The others may have had no time to do it on the way down, but someone probably cut these lines last night while we were all at the hotel. They knew that we wouldn't be braking so much on the way up and the strain of the slope and the weight of the car would be the final straw for our brakes…”

“Yes, it can't be ruled out,” Tomy growled. “But why here in Turkey and not in Iran?”

“And why all of us and not just Tomy?” Marc wanted to know, the fury in his voice barely concealed.

“They are so damned stupid!” Tomy added, “When this body dies I can just spring into another one and there I am again. They can't kill me!”

“But they can damn well kill us!” said Marc with clenched fists. “Why do they want to kill us?”

“We're accessories,” I said with resignation. “Don't forget the episode in the Intercontinental in Teheran. We know who Tomy took over and he could have shared his knowledge about the terrorists and the Iranian secret police with us at any time!”

“Great. So we have to expect to be blown away at any moment.” Marc shouted furiously.

“For now, we don't even know who planned and carried out this attack. Either way, we have to get back to the hotel. There's our luggage, our documents and we need a new car.”

I realized that we would have to come back to the wreck later: there was equipment and other things in it that were far too valuable to be left here to rot. And anyway, I would need pictures for the insurance back home. So we unscrewed the license plate, pulled up the carpet to retrieve the cash, travelers' checks and the pistol from their hiding places underneath. Each of us slung a camera case over his shoulder and we set off down the mountain.

 

The pianist was one of the absolute best, as you would expect in a hotel of this class. A quick request and he would start playing whatever you had asked for. Without any sheet music, I had asked for “As Time Goes By,” the evergreen from the classic film
Casablanca
with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergmann that the poor bar pianist is forced to play every night. Marc's generation didn't know the film and I wanted to tell him what it was about, but he waved my explanations away.

“As Time Goes By, it means how time flies, doesn't it?”

He took a nip from his glass: “How the hell did we ever survive that day on Mount Nemrut?”

“The gods must have been smiling down on us,” I answered wryly.

“It's unbelievable,” he stuck with the subject. “We're sitting here in the bar of a luxury hotel, slurping down rosé champagne and really we should be dead a dozen times over. Here's to a long life, prost!”

Mario opened a new bottle for us and brought us a fresh bowl of nuts, asking if we were hungry. A young German couple sat down at a nearby table. The woman gushed on about how she had read all my books. It's always the same, and when I ask they can barely name three of them. This was the case with the young woman, too. We laughed and toasted each other and were simply grateful that we had other guests who we could chat with. We could dwell on our memories later.

“How come you never called in the police? It was pretty clear what had happened.”

“Police? Marc, what are you thinking? In Eski Kahta, there were no police. The nearest station is in Adiyaman. There was only one telephone in our hotel and it didn't work, although I've often wondered if that wasn't part of the plan, too.”

I was getting going now, the cool champagne—which I drank with ice, to the horror of the snobs—didn't slow me down.

“Anyway, Marc, what would the police have done? They would have asked us if we had enemies and who might have been responsible for the sabotage. They would have impounded the Rover and seeing as the author Erich von Däniken is pretty well know in Turkey the whole affair would have ended up in the papers. Just imagine the headlines! The media these days is a worldwide organism: the news about the murder attempt would travel from Turkey to Germany and then on to Switzerland in the blink of an eye. And heaven knows where else. After all, I'm well known in the U.S.A. and several other countries besides…”

“And not uncontroversial!” Marc threw in.

“And it would have led to interviews. Constant interrogation by clever and dogged journalists, international ones at that. And what do you think would have come out? What could I have told them? The story of Tomy? Don't make me laugh!”

“But you're planning on telling it now.”

“Yes, but now plenty of water has flowed under the bridge since it all happened, and besides, I don't know if I'll even publish it. I started writing this story for myself; so I could get the facts straight in my own head. And for you, too. I don't know if the manuscript will ever reach the general public. Maybe in twenty years, and then only as a novel. Twenty years later, there is little that can be verified or denied; many of the participants are no longer in the picture. So people can think what they want.”