Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear

“Do you think you could make it up to Istanbul?” Michael asked suddenly.

“If we had to,” Gabriel said. “Why? Who’s in Istanbul?”

“There’s someone the Foundation has used before—he goes by the name ‘Cipher,’ moves around a lot, but last we heard he was in Istanbul. Never met the man myself, just e-mail back and forth, but he really knows his stuff. Computers, phones—what you’re talking about would be right up his alley.”

“How’d you find him?”

“He came to us,” Michael said. “Couple of years back, offered to help with a project we were working on at the time. Don’t know how he found out about it…but then he wouldn’t be very good at what he does if he hadn’t been able to, right?”

“I suppose,” Gabriel said, not much liking the sound of it. He preferred dealing with people who went by their names, not clever handles like “Cipher.” For that matter, he preferred dealing with almost anything to dealing with computers and cell phones. But sometimes you had to. “Can you send him a message, let him know I’m on my way?”

“Already done,” Michael said. “How can I contact you to let you know what he—” Michael stopped in midsentence. “Well, well, will you look at that.”

“What?”

“I just got a message back from him,” Michael said. “Literally, right now. From Cipher.”

“Well, that should make you feel important,” Gabriel said.

“You, too—listen to this: ‘The famous Gabriel Hunt, coming here? How could I say no?’ That’s what he wrote. ‘Tell him to meet me at the Basilica Cistern at midnight.’ The famous Gabriel Hunt. How do you like that?”

“Not much,” Gabriel said.

“Can you make it there by midnight?”

Gabriel looked at his watch. “Only if I hang up now,” he said. “Tell him I’ll be there. And Michael—”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.” He hung up.

He returned to the pier, threaded his way through a small crowd to where the ferry was tied up. Tigranes and Christos were already on board. Sheba was waiting at the foot of the ramp, two tickets in her hand. Her face lit up when she saw Gabriel coming toward her—but then her expression changed to one of alarm.

Gabriel looked back over his shoulder. Coming up the long road to the docks was a jeep and at its wheel was a man he recognized even at this distance—it was the knife artist from Anavatos, the one who’d thrown him off the cliff.

“Come on,” he said, “get on board.” He hustled Sheba up the ramp and, reaching over to the bitt the ferry’s hawser was coiled around, he yanked the great rope free.

“We are not ready to depart yet!” a crewman said, rushing up.

“Hundred dollars says you are,” Gabriel said and handed over his last bill. He patted the man on the shoulder. “Go.”

The man scurried up front and a moment later the engine sputtered to life.

By the time the jeep squealed to a stop by the dock, the ferry was twenty yards out to sea and plowing toward Turkey. He saw the driver leap out of the truck and run up to the water’s edge. He tore the cap he was wearing from his head and dashed it to the wooden planks at his feet. “We will find you!” he shouted at the departing ship. “Wherever you run, we will find you!”

“Or vice versa,” Gabriel whispered.

Chapter 19

The Basilica Cistern had stood in more or less its present form, Gabriel knew, since the sixth century, when the Byzantine Emperor Justinian the Great had had it constructed. It was hard to imagine that it had once served a municipal function, supplying water to the Topkapi Palace. A grand underground space filled with ranks of colossal columns, hundreds of them, each thirty feet high, stretched as far as the eye could see beneath an arched and vaulted ceiling. The Turks called it Yerebatan Sarayi, the sunken palace. Each column was lit from below with flame red lights, giving the space an ominous appearance. You expected a man in a cape and domino mask to step into view at any moment from behind one of the columns, carrying a wax-sealed missive—or a dagger to slip between your ribs. Which no doubt was why this man Cipher had chosen it for their meeting. His name itself suggested his taste for the dramatic.

In one corner of the space, a quartet was playing for an appreciative audience of tourists seated in metal folding chairs, the sounds of lute and zither, flute and fiddle filling the air with mournful Ottoman melodies. Gabriel steered clear of the area. Cipher wouldn’t be caught out in the open like that, he felt sure; men who spent their lives behind the screens of laptop computers infiltrating global telecommunications networks generally didn’t congregate with tour groups at midnight concerts.

Although you never knew. Gabriel didn’t generally congregate with tour groups himself, yet he’d spent most of the past five hours on a bus with a church group out of West Virginia who’d taken a day trip to Çeş;me to see the castle and the museum and the seaside and now had the long trip back to Istanbul to look at each other’s digital photographs and share loud anecdotes about the marvels they had seen. Sheba had been the one to spot the coach parked outside the castle, its side painted with the VARAN TURIZM logo, its door open, the driver standing outside having a smoke. She’d also been the one to talk him into letting the four of them occupy the uncomfortable pair of benches in the rear by the lavatory in return for what little cash they had left and an extorted kiss on the cheek. Christos and Tigranes had piled on board gratefully and slept through most of the ride, the younger man leaning up against the window and snoring softly, the older sitting stock-still and silent in his seat.

“Your father?” one of the women from West Virginia had asked, and Gabriel had said, “My rabbi,” and she’d left him alone after that.

It was just as well that they’d made the trip, Gabriel thought as he circled around the interior of the cistern, pausing to look at every man who was there by himself and giving each a chance to look at him. In order to get a flight out to Sri Lanka they’d have had to make their way to one of the larger cities eventually, either to Istanbul or Ankara, and the drive would have been just as arduous either way. Still, around the end of the third hour, when the hymns had started, he had found himself wishing that they’d turned up some other form of transportation.

As he completed one full circuit of the space, he spotted a man standing between the two Medusa-head pillars in the rear corner, his face lit by the glow from a palmtop computer, his stylus clicking away across its illuminated surface. Gabriel walked over, stood beside him, waited for him to look up. He wore thick glasses and had his hair cut short, with a cowlick standing up in back. The stubble dotting his lantern jaw said he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. Finally he put the stylus away and thumbed off the light. “Do I…know you?” he said.

“Cipher?”

He looked blank. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, this will be perfect, darling,” a woman’s voice interrupted. Turning, they both saw a petite brunette approaching. She was carrying a camera in one hand and had a notebook and pen in the other. “I can have them hide in here from the guards when they’re being chased—” Then she noticed Gabriel. “Hello,” she said. And to the man: “Want to introduce me?”

“I’d love to,” the man said, “but we hadn’t quite gotten to the point of introducing ourselves.”

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel said, “I thought you were someone else—”

“I’m Naomi,” the woman said, extending a hand. “We’re here doing research. I write historical fantasy novels and my husband here writes adventure stories.” Gabriel took her hand, shook it briefly, released it. “And you’re…?”