Clive Cussler - The Navigator

“What are you thinking?” she said in an anxious voice.

“No time for questions. Just do exactly what I tell you.”

Carina was an independent woman who bridled at anyone telling her what to do, but Austin seemed to have the knack of getting them out of tight places. She felt him tug gently on her arm and walked faster to keep up.

Austin guided her through the camera-toting crowds milling in the courtyard outside the treasury. They ducked around the corner of an elegant stand-alone marble building that once housed the sultan’s library and broke into a run. They ran through the ornate Gate of Felicity into another expansive courtyard. Austin guided her to the right, dashing through an open chamber where the sultan’s viziers used to meet, his eye fixed on a long row of colonnades and a ticket gate for the Topkapi harem.

They were in luck! The ticket taker who normally manned the gate had wandered off to have a smoke.

Hardly breaking stride, Austin pulled Carina past the untended gate to a door. It was unlocked. Austin opened the door, pushed Carina ahead, and stepped through the portal into the sultan’s harem. He closed the door behind them.

“What do we do now ?” Carina said. She was breathless from their last-minute dash. Austin’s wound was kicking up again. He put his hand to his ribs.

“I’ll let you know just as soon as I figure that out,” he said.

Chapter 33

IN OTTOMAN DAYS, when the Topkapi harem was filled with hundreds of veiled beauties, an uninvited entry into its forbidden precincts would have been met by razor-sharp scimitars in the hands of the African eunuchs who guarded the place.

As Austin and Carina stepped into a long courtyard, the handsome young tour guide stopped his spiel and gave them a steely stare that was almost as cutting.

“Yes?” he said.

Austin put on his best Gomer Pyle grin. “Sorry we’re late.”

The guide frowned. The harem tours were conducted on a strict timetable. No one from the ticket booth had called to say there were two add-ons.

He clicked his hand radio to call the security guard.

Carina stepped over and gave the guard her most beguiling smile. She fumbled in her pocketbook and extracted a hundred-lira bill. “Do we tip you now or later?”

The guard smiled and clipped the hand radio onto his belt. “It is customary to tip at the end of the tour, but only if you are satisfied.”

“I’m sure I’ll be satisfied,” Carina said with a flutter of her long eyelashes.

The guide cleared his throat and turned back to the mixture of about two dozen Turks and assorted foreigners clustered around him.

“At one time, the harem housed more than a thousand concubines, slaves, sultan’s wives, and the sultan’s mother. The harem was like a small city, with more than four hundred rooms. On your left are the quarters of the Black Eunuchs and the chief eunuch, who guarded the harem. Other doors lead to the quarters of the imperial treasurer and the chamberlain. You can go through that door and inspect the apartments of the eunuchs,” he said.

The guide gave the same speech in Turkish, and then led the way into the guards’ dormitory like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Austin held Carina back until they were alone in the courtyard. His blue-green eyes scanned the doors, searching for a possible escape route. He tried one door handle. The door was unlocked. He was hoping they could lose their pursuers in the vast labyrinth of apartments and courtyards.

“Kurt,” Carina said.

The Carriage Gate door had opened. Buck stepped into the courtyard with his hard-faced friends and signaled to his men to spread out. They moved three abreast toward their prey.

The guide and the tour group poured out of the eunuchs’ living quarters into the courtyard, creating a human barrier of camera-toting tourists. Austin and Carina merged with the group as it went through a door that stood in a vestibule at the far end of the courtyard.

Austin glanced over his shoulder. Buck and his men were shouldering their way through the crowd.

“What should we do?” Carina whispered.

“Enjoy the tour for now, and when I say run, run. ”

“Run where ?”

“Still working on that,” Austin said.

Carina muttered in Italian. Austin didn’t need a translator to tell him she was cursing. He saw her anger as a good sign that she hadn’t given in to despair.

The guide led the way through a square-domed chamber. Stopping every few minutes to deliver a speech in Turkish and in English, the guide pointed out where the concubines lived, where the children of the harem went to school, and where the food for the vast complex was prepared.

Austin glanced longingly at the doors and corridors that offered possible escape routes. There was no way he and Carina could break away from the crowd. With each stop, Buck and his friends drew closer.

Austin put himself in the shoes of the pursuers. The three men would move in and separate him from the crowd. Two men would finish him off with their knives. The third would grab Carina.

Buck and his thugs were all former special ops men. Their training would have included knife fighting and assassination. A hand clamped over his mouth to prevent him from calling out. A quick thrust of a blade between his ribs. By the time bystanders realized murder had been done, Austin would be breathing his last. Buck and company would slip away in the confusion that would follow.

If he was going to make a move, he’d better do it soon.

The tour group stepped into a large carpeted room. The walls were decorated in seventeenth-century blue-and-white tile. A wide sofa covered in gold brocade sat on a platform under a gilded canopy supported on four columns. The walls were decorated in a combination of baroque and rococo style. Light filtered through the stained-glass windows in the upper section of the domed room.

The guide said they were in the throne room, or royal saloon. At one end of the chamber was another platform where the concubines, wives, and the sultan’s mother sat during affairs of state or to enjoy music and dancing.

The crowd began to break up, removing the human buffer Austin and Carina had been using to fend off Buck and his gang. As the group dissipated, Austin faced the three men with only a few tourists in between them.

Now or never.

Austin whispered to Carina to play along. He took her by the hand and sidled up to the guide.

“Would it be possible for us to leave the tour?” Austin said. “My wife is not feeling well. She’s pregnant.”

The guide took in Carina’s slim profile. “Pregnant?”

“Yes,” Carina said with a demure smile. “Only a few months.”

Carina spread her fingers across her flat abdomen. The guide blushed and hurriedly pointed to a doorway. “You can go out that way.”

They thanked him and headed for the exit.

“Wait!” the guide said. He lifted his walkie-talkie to his lips. “I’ll call the guard to escort you.”

He spoke into the hand radio. The guard would arrive in a few minutes. He told them to stay with the group in the meantime.

Buck had seen Austin talking to the guide. When the guide spoke into his radio, he assumed that Austin had called for help.

“Let’s do it,” he said to his men.

Austin was guiding Carina from one part of the room to the other, trying to put space between them and their pursuers. He was learning that hide-and-seek wasn’t made to be played in the open.

The three men closed in. Buck was close enough so that Austin could see the murderous gleam in his eye. Buck reached under his jacket.

A burly security guard entered the royal saloon, and the tour guide pointed out Austin and Carina. Austin played his ace card.