Augusta sat bundled up in the Cosmopolis’s military-grade helicopter, flying low over the Greek countryside, headed for the airfield at Larissa. She was still in shock after the evening’s events. Looking back she wondered how she had ever had the presence of mind to play the Pythia so well. Reviewing the events in her mind, she felt as if she were watching an actress, as if it was someone else in the flowing white robe and purple veil—not her.
Seated beside her, Nicolas was rapidly tapping on a small flat screen carefully balanced on his lap. She could see a readout from one of the agency’s environmental scans, which he enlarged and held up for her.
“Thanks to you, we now know this is Rumelov’s next target,” he said into the headsets they were wearing. “Remember what he said about the house of worship built by Justinian? Rumelov must be referring to Justinian’s most famous building project, one of the holiest religious sites in the world. The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.”
The mention of Istanbul snapped Augusta out of her exhausted stupor. She turned to her father in alarm. “How can you be sure?”
“It fits perfectly. Rumelov revealed to us that he wants to restore paganism across the former Greek empire. The Hagia Sophia was built by Justinian as the Church of Holy Wisdom in the great Byzantine capital of Constantinople. Later, during the Crusades, the city was captured and administered by the Latins, and Hagia Sophia became a Catholic cathedral. After the Ottomans took over the city, it became a mosque. Hagia Sophia represents the ultimate dethronement of paganism from the Mediterranean lands. Rumelov must want to destroy it.”
Visions of Erol, Eda, Mark, and their other friends swam into Augusta’s mind. “What do you think he’ll do to Hagia Sophia?” she asked anxiously. “And how can we stop him?”
Nicolas sighed, looking grave. “That I don’t know. We need intelligence on the ground. As I told you before, it’s extremely difficult to get reliable sensor readings in highly populated areas. The Hagia Sophia is a very busy tourist area, and our computer programs just can’t handle the crowds. We need to get there as fast as possible to see what’s going on.”
“You don’t have any agents in Istanbul?”
“No, we’re under-resourced at the moment. We don’t have anyone on the ground full-time in Turkey. I was actually hoping you might take on that role when your training is complete. But that doesn’t help us right now.”
Augusta pursed her lips in thought. “Why don’t we contact Erol, Eda, and Mark? They can be at Hagia Sophia in 30 minutes and tell us what’s going on.”
Smiling indulgently, Nicolas said, “I like your thinking, but we can’t rely on untrained operatives. Remember what I explained to you before, about making a choice to join the organization? I can’t ask people to put their lives on the line if they haven’t had time to make this commitment.”
“Dad.”
For the first time in all her months of training, Augusta sounded exasperated. An edge crept into her voice that hadn’t shown itself since her initial encounter with him in the polished boardroom of the Ottoman History Museum.
“Remember who we’re talking about here. Erol, Eda, and Mark have already gotten me and themselves out of several tight scrapes. They’ve already shown their quick thinking and commitment to justice. Erol and Mark know more about Ottoman history than almost anyone else. And you once said they were trustworthy. Well, now is the time to trust them.” She crossed her arms in front of her and leaned back against the padded leather of the helicopter seat.
“Besides, when I took this job, you said I wouldn’t have to do it alone. You promised me.” She looked half reprovingly, half imploringly at her father. “This is the time for me to call on my friends.”
Nicolas closed his eyes and rubbed his fingers over his forehead, as if brushing away a headache. He gazed out the helicopter window for a moment, looking at the dark fields below, illuminated by an occasional ribbon of lighted highway. Above them the blades whirred incessantly, adding a mechanical sensation of urgency to the conversation. Augusta felt precarious, suspended in midair by only a few pieces of cleverly constructed steel. Up here, danger seemed palpable and real. One wrong decision and they were all dead.
“I believe I may have underestimated Rumelov’s ultimate intentions,” Nicolas said finally. “And his capacity for harming others. The man I saw tonight was desperate, and I believe he’s lost touch with reality. He may be capable of murder or mass violence. I can’t knowingly expose your friends to this level of danger.”
“What do you mean? He and his men didn’t harm me. Well, except when they knocked me out. But I heard them talking to each other—they were trying not to hurt me.”
“Yes, that’s because you were useful to them. They needed someone for this elaborate Delphic ritual. They planned everything carefully. Do you know how they got you down off the Acropolis hill?”
Augusta stared for a moment at her father. In the aftermath of the ritual, she had completely forgotten what led up to it. She actually had no idea how she had come to be in the back of the van. How did her father know?
He took her silence as an invitation. “Our cameras show them carrying you out of the Erectheion and into the Acropolis elevator, which is right beside the temple. I was still investigating the Parthenon at the time, so I didn’t see it. But the cameras picked it up. And soon the tracking chip told us they were taking you away from the Acropolis and toward Delphi. I had a sneaking suspicion what they might be up to. Kostas and I followed as quickly as we could. I could tell from your vital signs that you were unconscious—and therefore probably safe for a while. I knew we would find you.”
“I should have punched those guys in the face and made a run for it when I could,” Augusta said angrily.
“No, you did the right thing. You played it cool and obtained valuable information that we otherwise would never have gotten. You demonstrated the finesse of a top-class agent. I’m extremely proud of you.”
Despite her father’s reassurance, Augusta couldn’t shake the terrible feeling of being used, like she was complicit in this strange game Rumelov was playing. Why did she have to play by his rules? She didn’t care if the ruse had been successful. From now on, she promised herself, she would play by her own rules.
“What I don’t understand,” she told her father, “is why they chose me to play the Pythia. I mean, why me? Did they know I was a Cosmopolis agent? Were they trying to lure you out there?”
Nicolas shook his head. “I don’t think so. It was just a coincidence. My own guess is—and this is only a guess—that the men who kidnapped you were waiting at the Erectheion all day. They were looking for a suitable victim, probably targeting a beautiful young woman, to use for their ritual. That’s why our sensors picked up unusual activity. It’s not normal for a couple of burly men to hang out on the Porch of Maidens all day. But again, the location is symbolic. According to their twisted sense of mythology, they had to select their Pythia from this location in order for the rite to work.”
Gazing out the window, Augusta reflected on this latest information. So it was all just a coincidence—an unfortunate one for the Rumelov group. They hadn’t counted on the Cosmopolis showing up at their Delphic oracle. But she agreed with her father’s assessment of Rumelov as a desperate man. He was unhinged, and their disruption of his plans might push him even further to edge. Was he capable of murder and mass destruction? Remembering the madness in his eyes, she thought he could be.
“I just don’t understand,” Augusta said, sighing, “how they can think this is true. How could they believe in the Delphic oracle? How can Rumelov want to bring back the ancient gods?”
“People can believe anything if they repeat it often enough to themselves.” Nicolas had turned back to the tablet on his lap, swiping from image to image, zooming in and out. On the tablet Augusta saw the Hagia Sophia from above, from the north, from the southwest. The Blue Mosque, across the square, loomed into view and back out. The old hippodrome of Constantine—now the spacious, breezy square where she had sat on a bench with her father—came into focus and then flicked past.
“When you become attached to a powerful ideal, you want to believe it’s true. You keep looking for more and more reasons why it’s true, and you brush away any evidence that it might be false. Pretty soon you might hold ideas that are completely divorced from reality, just because it’s too painful to think your most cherished beliefs could be mistaken. Some people would rather be malicious than admit to themselves that they’re wrong.”
Nicolas was speaking casually, as if they were discussing the weather, but Augusta knew all her father’s opinions were the result of long thought and careful study. This must be another lesson from the lost discourses, from the family philosophy that he had imbibed as a young man and spent his life putting into practice. Some of it made sense to her, and some of it didn’t. But this seemed like a plausible description of Rumelov. He didn’t seem like a stupid man—quite the opposite, in fact. He was intelligent enough to create an elaborate worldview that fit his version of reality. And he had obviously convinced a few other people he was right. That took intelligence, determination, cunning. It was a shame he had such a warped sense of reality.
An uncomfortable thought suddenly occurred to Augusta. “Wait, then how do we know we’re right?” She looked at her father doubtfully. “Maybe we’re wrong too, about everything, and we just don’t know it.”
Looking up from the sultan’s palace now blinking on his screen, Nicolas grinned at his daughter. “We investigate. We ask questions, we look at the problem from every angle, we test out our assumptions. And we keep investigating until we’re confident of our answer. In some cases we may not have enough information to know for sure. But sometimes, with some things, we do know for sure. And those instances are the foundation of our knowledge.”
“Like what? What do you know for sure?”
The helicopter banked hard to the right, and below them the bright lights of the airfield shone up through the dark.
“I know for sure that I love you. And I know for sure we’d better make plans for Istanbul. We can finish this discussion another time.”
The ground loomed closer and closer as the helicopter sank down toward the earth.
“But we didn’t finish the discussion about my friends,” Augusta insisted. “You owe it to me. I could have had a peaceful, happy life as an artist. I could have gone back to North Carolina, like grandfather. But I chose to come with you. And I’ve already proven myself as an agent. I think I’ve earned the right to be listened to.”
Nicolas held up his hands in surrender. “Heaven help us when Augusta’s on a mission,” he said, laughing. “Fine. We’ll call Erol as soon as we land. But we’ll have to hurry. We need to leave quickly for Istanbul.”
Settling back into the soft leather seat, Augusta felt her stomach lurch as the helicopter completed the last stage of its descent. She didn’t care. A strange, warm happiness had spread through her body. She was going back to Istanbul—back to the city of hills and water, the city of mosques and mopeds and markets. Back to Erol. She closed her eyes and felt once more the comforting solidity of his body on the ride to Camlica, the intensity of his smile at their picnic overlooking the sea. As the helicopter touched down and they prepared to disembark, all thoughts of Rumelov and his weird quest, all sense of impending danger, had vanished from her mind.
Stepping out onto solid ground, all she could think about was Erol.