Robert Browne - The Paradise Prophecy

Fortunately, he’d found one-although getting her to buy into it might be difficult.

As he watched the last of the patrol cars disappear around a corner, an icy wind blew through him. Glancing toward the teahouse, he saw a silhouette in the doorway.

The waitress. Ajda.

There was no doubt in his mind about her now.

She was a drudge.

Possibly even a sycophant.

And he knew that before he left Istanbul, he’d have to have a very serious talk with her.

We’ve got a bit of a problem,” Callahan said.

She was sitting in an armchair playing with her cell phone when Batty returned to their hotel room, and he was starting to wonder if the thing was superglued to her hand. She’d told him about the condition of Ozan’s body, which hadn’t surprised him in the least.

“What kind of problem?”

“According to the police reports, our new victim’s been dead for a while. He went missing four days ago and nobody thought to take a peek into that archive room until a janitor happened by and smelled something sour.”

“Four days,” Batty said. “That means he was killed before Gabriela.”

This revelation stirred something at the periphery of Batty’s mind. A thought that slipped away as quickly as it came, leaving him grasping but unable to retrieve it. Something about Ozan, and . . .

. . . and what?

“It also means we’re headed in exactly the wrong direction,” Callahan said. “And God knows who our perp will go after next.”

“I think that’s pretty obvious. Another guardian.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not so sure this whole Custodes Sacri thing holds up.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t get a look at Ozan’s personal effects,” Callahan said. “They’d been bagged and sent to storage and the clerk there wouldn’t allow access without one of the investigators signing off on it. So all I have is an itemized list from the file, which isn’t much. But it’s enough.”

“For what?”

She tossed the cell phone to him. No superglue in evidence. He looked at the screen and saw a bunch of Turkish writing. It was a list all right, but not one he could decipher. “You’re assuming I can read this?”

She was surprised. “You mean to tell me I’ve just discovered something you don’t know?”

He tossed the phone back to her. “Translation, please.”

“Five items,” she said, and ticked them off on her fingers. “A watch, a pen, a wallet and two rings, one gold, one silver-little more than lumps of melted metal.”

“And your point is?”

“Where’s Ozan’s supersecret decoder badge?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“His Saint Christopher medal. If he was one of these so-called guardians, wouldn’t he have one, too?”

“Missing doesn’t mean nonexistent,” Batty said. “He could have kept it somewhere else, like Gabriela did.”

“Or your whole theory could be hogwash.”

“Then how the hell did I know about Ozan in the first place?”

“That’s a good question. How did you know?”

The thought Batty had had a moment ago flickered through his mind again, but continued to elude him.

“How do I know any of it?” he said. “I’m a fanatic. I’ve had a massive interest in this stuff ever since I was a kid. But after Rebecca was taken, I became obsessed with it-just like she was. Spent every spare moment of my time in libraries and private vaults.”

“And you believe everything you read?”

“Of course not. But I found a reference to Custodes Sacri and the Saint Christopher medal in a footnote of a book about secret societies, and that led me to explore further.”

“That still doesn’t explain how you knew about him.”

“I tried to locate one of the medallions. I put out some feelers and was contacted by a collector in Jerusalem who claimed he’d seen one. That an antiquities dealer had shown it to him but refused to sell it.”

“Ozan.”

Batty nodded. “The collector knew about the guardians and told me he was convinced that Ozan was one of them.”

“And you never contacted him?”

“He wouldn’t return my calls. After a while I gave up. It was only a peripheral interest anyway. It didn’t really have anything to do with what happened to Rebecca.”

“Yet here we are.”

“Yet here we are,” Batty said. “And if you want proof I know what I’m talking about, what about the crime-scene photos? I can guarantee you’ll find that same mark beneath Ozan’s body.”

Callahan nodded. “I’m not a strong believer in coincidence, so I don’t doubt it. But the photos aren’t in the file yet. And if the symbol is there, all it tells us is that we’re dealing with the same killer. All the rest is speculation.”

“You’re wrong,” Batty told her. “And I’ll prove it to you once we get into that crime scene.”

“We?”

“We’re a team now, remember?”

Callahan seemed amused by this. “In the loosest sense of the word, maybe.”

“Trust me, without my help you’ll have a hard time getting down to where the body was found. You try going in there in the dead of night and even if you get past the alarms, there’s still the security staff to contend with. And they don’t look friendly.”

“I’m not exactly a novice, you know.”

“I don’t doubt that. But why do this the hard way when there’s an easier alternative?”

Callahan leveled her gaze at him. “All right,” she said. “For the sake of argument, let’s pretend I’m listening.”

Batty took two tickets from his pocket and held them up. “Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Broussard are scheduled to attend an auction at eight o’clock sharp tonight, compliments of the Children’s Relief Foundation.”

He could see that she was intrigued by the idea.

“Not bad,” she said. “That gets us through the door without a fuss, but then what?”

“A simple distraction,” Batty told her. “The simplest kind of all. But if we’re gonna do this thing right, we’ll have to go shopping first.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Why?”

“The auction’s black tie. And I need a tux.”

Despite pouring over the antiquities catalogues whenever he could, Batty was more of an admirer of art than a collector, so he’d never been to a real live auction before. And the closest he’d ever come to wearing a tuxedo was back at Terrebonne High, when Angela McGee turned down his invitation to the senior prom, thus sparing him the humiliation of dressing like a blue velvet penguin.

Whoever had invented the tuxedo, he decided, had definitely been a sadist. Probably the same guy who invented the bra and the corset. The tux he’d rented this afternoon felt half a size too small, and the tie Mrs. Broussard had so kindly agreed to strangle her husband with was cutting into his neck like a dog taking to a particularly juicy bone.

Batty was convinced that Callahan was a bit of a sadist, too.

She was also quite a looker tonight. The black strapless gown she’d chosen hugged all the right places in just the right ways, and he wouldn’t be a man if he didn’t take notice. She sat next to him in the middle of the Garanti auction room, and he was fairly certain that she was not suffering the indignity of wearing either a corset or a bra.

Considering the size of the building, the auction room was small and intimate, no more than three hundred people of various persuasions crammed into it, sitting on stiff-backed chairs, dressed in their finest, including enough jewelry to cover half the U.S. deficit.

This was one healthy crowd.

Callahan had expressed doubts about Mr. Broussard blending in-but Batty thought he’d cleaned up pretty well. He’d even allowed her to apply a little CoverGirl to his bruises-the same stuff she was using to doctor the circles under her eyes-and if you didn’t look too hard, you might consider him handsome.