It all happened so quickly.
Within five minutes, the phone call was made, the assignment enthusiastically accepted, and the groundwork laid for a reconnoiter around the grand mosque. Erol, Eda, and Mark were happy to drop their New Year’s Eve plans and investigate any peculiarities around Hagia Sophia. They arranged to meet outside on the main square or call Nicolas’s secure line if they found anything unusual.
And within two hours, Augusta and her father had landed at a private airport outside Istanbul, made their way through the city packed with revelers, and were hurrying toward the sublime domes of the Hagia Sophia, which rose up luminously from the city center. Lit from below, with the moon shining overhead, it was breathtakingly beautiful. A monument worthy of many empires, Augusta thought. Worth protecting at any cost. But was it worth dying for?
The square in front of the mosque was thronging with people. Augusta had never seen the area so packed. “What’s going on?” she asked her father, as they wove in and out of the crowd.
“New Year’s Eve countdown,” her father shouted, as someone blew a noisemaker nearby. All around people were laughing, singing, taking pictures. Looking forward to the stroke of midnight, when bells and songs would ring out from the normally sober towers around them. They had no inkling of the threat that lurked nearby.
Approaching their designated meeting place by the fountain, Augusta’s breath suddenly caught in her throat. There they were, standing together—Eda, Mark, and Erol. Augusta forced herself to keep walking, to act as if she hadn’t thought of Erol every day for the past five months. She had conquered so many fears today, had performed the truly difficult feat of playing the Delphic oracle, but it was nothing to the acting she would have to do now. Look normal, she told herself, breathing deeply and trying to unclench the knot in her stomach. She stole a quick look at her father. Did he suspect anything? But Nicolas wasn’t paying attention to her at all. He was on high alert, eyes rapidly scanning the crowded square. Rumelov could be here right now. Focus. Augusta tried to steel herself to the task at hand.
As they approached her friends, Eda turned around and saw them, giving a wide smile and a big wave.
“Augusta!”
Eda gave her friend a boisterous hug and a kiss on both cheeks, saying, “It’s wonderful to see you! How have you been? We were so surprised when your father called tonight. This sounds very serious.”
Mark came over to shake hands with Nicolas. “Nice to see you again, sir.” He gave Augusta a kiss on both cheeks, saying, “We’ve been patrolling the perimeter of the mosque, but it’s closed now. No one except for the imam has gone in or out for the past hour.”
“The imam?” Nicolas sounded suspicious.
“Yes. Over there.” Mark jerked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing toward the southern side of the complex.
Just then Erol, who had been standing several feet away, studying something on the other side of the square, came over to greet them. He gave Nicolas an enthusiastic handshake, then turned to Augusta with an oversized hug. He was exactly the same as always—warm-hearted, exuberant, and speaking a little too loudly about how honored he was to take on this mission. Staring diffidently at the ground, she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye as he relayed his observations to her father. Erol didn’t seem the least bit pleased to see her. No, that wasn’t true—what she meant was that he was equally pleased to see her and her father. Augusta sighed. He was happy to see everyone. But he didn’t hold her in any special regard.
“There’s a possibility that Rumelov may attempt to destroy Hagia Sophia tonight,” Nicolas was telling her friends. “We don’t know exactly how he might do that, but my guess is a bomb. That would be the easiest to construct and sneak into the building. We also need to be on the lookout for anything resembling a package bomb on the square or in the surrounding neighborhood. However, given how obsessed Rumelov is with the symbolism of ancient monuments, he will likely aim for the mosque itself. The building is so steeped in history, he will want to eliminate it from its very foundation.”
Erol frowned. “How could someone so devoted to history want to destroy it? This doesn’t make sense.”
“I know. It doesn’t make sense. But Rumelov has passed the point of making sense. Now he just wants to make history. He seems to be a megalomaniac—he believes he is an extraordinary, superior person, that he alone is allowed to interpret the past. Somehow he thinks he has the right to do this.
“Now,” continued Nicolas, “Augusta has been the closest to him. At this point she knows him the best of any of us. Augusta, do you think Rumelov might have entered the mosque disguised as an imam in order to plant a bomb?”
“Hmmm.” Augusta considered for a moment, thinking back to the man she had met earlier that evening. “He might be willing to don a disguise for the purpose of getting into the building. But he will have been planning this for a long time, months or even years. I doubt he would rely on something as crude as a makeshift bomb. It’s more likely he has oriented himself toward a historic or symbolic weakness of the building. Are there any cracks or flaws in the walls? Any vulnerabilities he could exploit?”
“Of course.” Erol was staring up at the girth of the mosque. “The building is 1500 years old. It has many weaknesses.”
“Okay.” Augusta followed his gaze up the side of the ancient building, but she couldn’t see any obvious flaws. “If you were a villain obsessed with the past, with proving the superiority of Greek paganism over the religions that came after it, how would you go about destroying Hagia Sophia?” In all the time she had spent on her lonely mountain in Crete, imagining being close to Erol again, she had certainly never envisioned it happening this way.
Erol looked horror-struck. For the first time all evening, he turned toward her and met her gaze directly. Their eyes locked. For a brief moment she felt as if she were falling forward, through time, space, she didn’t know what or where, being pulled deeper into his eyes. She was light-headed. Dizzy. She couldn’t breathe.
Lowering his eyes, Erol quickly glanced away. They continued discussing Hagia Sophia as if nothing had happened. But Augusta knew he had felt it too. Beneath her heavy parka, despite the dismal conversation and the danger they faced, her heart was singing.
“What about the chambers below the building?” Mark was saying. “You could easily hide an explosive underground and wait for the right moment to detonate it. No one would know it was there.”
Nicolas shot him a penetrating look. “What chambers?”
“You know, the Byzantine tunnels and vaults below the Hagia Sophia. They cover almost as much area as the mosque itself.”
“How do you access them?” Nicolas seemed very interested.
“No idea.” Mark shrugged. “There must be an entrance somewhere around the building.”
“Several entrances, actually,” Eda interjected. Everyone turned to look at her. “We studied it in school. The Byzantines created an extensive network of cisterns underground to store water for the ancient city. They were geniuses when it came to water supply. Many of these storage areas are below Hagia Sophia. There are both wet and dry areas. It would be simple to access and store anything, even explosives, down there.”
“Eda.” Nicolas’s voice was urgent. “Do you think you could lead a team down there to find Rumelov’s bomb? I’ll call in a bomb disposal unit to defuse the explosive if you can help them find it.”
Eda held his gaze steadily. “Yes. I can do that. But only if Mark comes with me.” She smiled at her boyfriend, who confidently returned her smile.
“Mark?”
“Yep. I’m in.”
Nicolas took a tiny device from his jacket pocket and tapped on it rapidly. “Okay. Eda and Mark, the team will meet you at the southeast corner of the mosque in five minutes. They are experts at defusing bombs of all types, but they don’t know anything about the underground chambers. You will lead them as quickly as possible to the location where you believe the bomb is stored. Here.” He handed them the tiny black device. “Take this. You can communicate with me or the bomb squad. You are free to leave at any time if the mission becomes dangerous or you believe you can’t fulfill the assignment.”
Eda took the tiny device and nodded gravely. Augusta, touched by her friend’s courage, gave her a warm hug and brushed tears from her own eyes. Lovely Eda, who had never had any training, who had voluntarily left the evening’s festivities to help stop a dangerous madman. When this was all over she would buy Eda all the baklava in the world. But tonight, all she could do was hope for the best.
Hand in hand, Eda and Mark walked toward the southeast corner of Hagia Sophia. Augusta watched until they were out of sight, then turned back to her father and Erol. An unspoken sadness hung in the air between them. Nicolas cleared his throat and said, “Brave kids. You must be very proud of your sister, Erol.”
Erol nodded but didn’t speak. Around them the crowds surged and jostled. Two young women ran past shrieking in delight, completely unaware of the deadly explosive under their feet. Augusta stared glumly around at the crowd, wondering how many of them would be injured if the Cosmopolis failed in their mission.
“What are we going to do now?” she asked. “Just wait for the bomb to be defused?”
“No way.” Nicolas began walking briskly toward the other side of the huge structure. Augusta and Erol ran after him. “You think we’re just going to hang around and let them do the dirty work? We’ve got our own work to do.” He turned to look back at them over his shoulder, and in the semi-darkness Augusta saw his face in regal profile—so much like her grandfather, she almost felt as if she was a girl again, back home in North Carolina. But it wasn’t her grandfather. She was here with father, and they were in the middle of this historic city with a very particular, very dangerous job confronting them. Augusta squared her shoulders and kept pace with her father. Whatever it was, she was ready for it.
“We’ve only got half an hour until midnight,” Nicolas said, glancing at his watch. “We need to work quickly.”
He was sidling up to a tall, ornately carved wooden door on the northwest side of the mosque. He pulled the handle and it opened easily.
“Come on,” he said, motioning Augusta and Erol into the building ahead of him.
“Let’s go find Rumelov.”