Alex Archer - Paradox

“Speaking of climbing to the top,” Jason said, “what do you make of the chances of old Charlie making it up alive? He looks like he’d be all out of breath walking across the room.”

“Well, he did say he’d been climbing around Solomon’s Throne in Persia—I mean Iran,” Annja said. “Also illegally, by the way. He’s tougher than he looks. I think he actually goes through his own academy physical-training courses in the summer.”

“He must do a lot of training to keep that shape, then,” Tommy said. “Like, at the buffet tables.”

“And happy hour,” Trish said.

“And what’s with this Wilfork guy?” Jason said. “He looks worse if anything.”

“Tommy says he smokes like a chimney,” Trish said. “He always sees him when he sneaks out for a smoke.”

“Dude,” Tommy said aggrievedly.

“He’s probably tougher than he looks, too,” Annja said. “When he was filling me in on the whole Turkish political situation, he said he’d spent his whole career chasing from one trouble spot to the next.”

“Yeah,” Trish said. “He’s a pretty famous crisis journalist.”

“As long as he doesn’t have a crisis with his heart halfway up the damned mountain and we have to beg the Turkish army for a medevac chopper,” Tommy said.

Jason grunted. “Be lucky if we didn’t get a helicopter gunship,” he said.

“Also, what’s up with that whole mountain-peak thing, anyway?” Tommy said. “Fifteen thousand feet? God’s supposed to have flooded the Earth three miles deep?”

“That’s what our associates believe,” Annja said.

Tommy shook his head in wonder. “Whoa,” he said.

THE NEXT FEW DAYS PASSED slowly for Annja. It was a relief not to have the hassles of organizing and outfitting an expedition into hostile territory as her responsibility. Ankara’s unseasonable warmth gave way to the equally unseasonable chill that had already descended on the rest of the country. Yet not running the show had one big drawback—it left her without much to do.

Although a vast and highly modern mall, the Karum, stood right across the street from the hotel, Annja had never bothered to venture inside. She didn’t feel enough attraction to brave the crowds. She was not a shopping goddess, nor even particularly interested in shopping beyond what was necessary to keep her clothes from wearing out to the point of falling off her body. She’d rather be sitting on her couch in her apartment poring through her stacks of printouts of papers submitted to obscure journals of archaeological arcana. Like Rabbi Leibowitz, basically, but with a few more social skills.

But she could always wander the archaeological sites and museums. Fortunately, as she’d mentioned to the CHM crew, the city abounded in those.

Even they palled eventually. Two days after the CHM team’s arrival from New York she decided to head south on foot through the section called Kavaklidere, which was a former vineyard. Its most prominent features now were her own enormous hotel, the high-rise Karum and, several hundred yards south, the equally ostentatious tower of the Hilton.

She spent a pleasant, if cool and windy, day in the botanical gardens. The park occupied a hill south of the big hill, Kale, on which the Ankara Citadel stood a few blocks north of the Sheraton. Hill and park alike were dominated by the Atakule Tower, named like so many things for Kemal Atatürk, founder of the modern Turkish republic. The tower was a spindly white four-hundred-plus-foot spire with a sort of space-needle flying saucer at the top—a similarity acknowledged by the presence of the UFO Café and Bar within, along with two more upscale-looking restaurants.

After the brief warm spell autumn had returned with vindictive force that hinted at a truly brutal winter to follow.

In her puffy down jacket Annja found the breezes blowing down from the Köro lu Mountains to the north, already well-socked-in with snow according to the Internet, bracing rather than uncomfortable. Although no blossoms survived in the park’s beautifully designed and tended gardens, and the merciless winds had stripped the leaves from the deciduous trees, the park was planted thickly with evergreens, tall pines and fir trees. And even the bare limbs beneath which the numerous hill paths twined created interesting, intricate shapes against a lead-clouded sky.

Having spent so much time indoors of late Annja was content to walk briskly with no fixed goal in mind, stretching out her long legs. When she grew tired and chilled she bought a steaming cup of cocoa from a kiosk and then sat in the lee of the small building to read e-mail and check the latest news on her BlackBerry.

Nothing seemed likely to impact her situation directly—although as always the pot of occupied Iraq seethed on the verge of bubbling over, as did the U.S.’s perpetual grudge match with an Iran now backed openly by China and a resurgent Russia. If either of those situations did explode the best and possibly only shot at survival for the expedition would be to run like hell for the Bosporus. But Annja saw no reason to expect they would do so now.

Still, she felt a tickle of unsourced unease in the pit of her stomach. That’s probably what I get for reading the headlines, she thought, and put her phone away.

The park closed at sunset, which came early this time of year. Ankara lay at about the latitude of Philadelphia, though considerably farther from the weather-tempering influence of a big ocean and considerably nearer to the monster-storm hatchery of the Himalayas. She had just reached the exit when a voice called, “Annja Creed? A word with you, please.”

She stopped. Does every sketchy character in the world know my name? she wondered. Although she tried to keep her face and posture as relaxed as possible her body badly wanted to tense like a gazelle that thinks a wind shift at the watering hole has just brought a whiff of lion. The range of people who might conceivably wish her harm, or even just to talk to her in a none-too-friendly way, ranged from Turkish civic or military authorities less well-disposed to their endeavor than General Orga to any number of unsavory characters from her past. Among whom, of course, was the ever-prominent if publicity-averse billionaire financier Garin Braden, who might have felt a cold wind of mortality blow down his spine as he lay in his huge canopied bed that morning. When Braden wasn’t trying to get the sword from her he was battling with his long-time nemesis Roux and dragging Annja into the battle.

Her interlocutor appeared to be no more than a solidly built man of intermediate height and apparently advanced age who stood by the white-enameled wrought-iron gates dressed in a camel-hair coat and a fedora that clung, despite the wind’s best efforts, to a head of hair that, though as gleaming white as his trim beard, still managed to suggest it had once been blazing red. He smiled a bit grimly as she looked at him, and nodded.

“I have information that might prove vital to you. It concerns the expedition you are involved with.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Please believe me,” he said, holding up gloved hands. “I assure you I have no official capacity in this country. Nor in any other, for that matter. Nor have I any financial propositions to make to you. Nor any other kind, should you be worried about that.”

His manner was disarming. Annja wasn’t so easily disarmed. Then again, that was literally true; and her ever-active curiosity was excited. As for his disavowal of official standing she was far from willing to take that at face value. He spoke with an accent she couldn’t identify—which itself was strange, given her expertise in languages, and wide travels.

Then again if he were some kind of Turkish secret cop all he’d have to do was snap his fingers and burly goons would magically appear on all sides of her, she thought. She knew it from past experience.