As they stepped outside the Hagia Sophia, Augusta shivered and drew her parka closely around her. Ahead an armed unit was meeting her father and his captive, escorting Rumelov as unobtrusively as possible into a waiting armored vehicle. Around them the crowds surged with the excitement of the new year as the countdown to midnight began.
“Ten! Nine!”
Erol, who had been silent as they walked out of the mosque, stopped abruptly and turned to Augusta. His dark eyes, which had ignored her all evening, found their way toward hers. Taking both her hands in his own, he clasped them tightly against the cold night air.
“I missed you while you were away,” he said, gazing fervently into her face.
“Eight! Seven!”
Augusta felt herself melting. The air around her was suddenly sweltering, and beneath her heavy parka she began to sweat. All the cool certainties of her performance this evening were gone. No more priestess of Delphi, no more calm and collected international agent. Just her. Just Augusta, standing alone—in a crowd of thousands—with the man she had missed so much.
“I thought about you every day,” she told him softly, returning his gaze with upturned face. Her legs were in danger of giving way. She grabbed his arm to steady herself, feeling the warmth of his body next to hers.
“Six! Five!”
“Please don’t leave,” Erol said, pulling her closer to him. “Stay here with me.”
“Four! Three!”
She was in danger of fainting. Could this be true? Augusta closed her eyes and nodded.
“Two! One!”
As the new year dawned, fireworks exploded over the harbor, lighting up the faces thronging the square. But Augusta and Erol didn’t see them—not the fireworks, not the crowds, not Nicolas as he returned from packing Rumelov off to prison, not Eda and Mark, who at last came bursting out of a small opening at the foot of the building shouting, “We did it! We neutralized the bomb!” They stood ardently entwined together, kissing, as the world around them shimmered and celebrated.
Their faces and clothes streaked with dirt, Eda and Mark looked momentarily stunned, then broke into loud whistles at the sight of Erol and Augusta. “Happy new year!” Eda clapped, running over to her brother. “We’re alive! We did it! We stopped the bomb!”
“Congratulations, Eda!” Tearing herself away from Erol, Augusta greeted her friend with a warm hug and squeals of delight. “And while you were down there we got Rumelov! He’s going to prison. It’s all over. And we didn’t have to fire a single shot.”
“Really?” Eda shrieked. “How did you do it?”
Smiling, Augusta shrugged modestly. “In the end, it was his own beliefs, his own warped version of the truth, that got him. His megalomania. He did it to himself.” Seeing her friend’s look of confusion, she laughed and said, “I’ll tell you more later! Right now, let’s celebrate!”
“Augusta.” It was her father. In all the noise and excitement she hadn’t even noticed him standing beside her, patiently waiting to speak. He pulled her aside.
“You were extraordinary tonight. You completed our mission with the best possible outcome, while remaining professional at all times. I’m very proud of you.” He gave her a hug and kissed the top of her head. “You’ve proven yourself a worthy Cosmopolis agent.”
“Thanks, Dad. It’s all such a blur now. I hardly know how it all happened.”
“So modest!” Nicolas smiled. “But there’s something else I want to speak to you about.”
Uh oh. Augusta felt herself tense up. It must be about Erol. Her father had seen them kiss, and he was going to tell her she couldn’t let personal relationships get in the way of her work.
“Dad, if it’s about Erol—”
“Yes, it’s about Erol. And Eda and Mark. I’d like to bring them onto our team as Cosmopolis agents.”
Augusta stared at him for a moment, then smiled. “Yes, of course! They would be wonderful. There’s no one better.”
Nicolas looked thoughtfully at his daughter. “We need a good operative or two in Istanbul, and tonight your friends have shown courage, intelligence, and quick thinking. Everything that makes for a good Cosmopolis agent.”
“See?” Augusta couldn’t help looking a bit smug. “I told you we should trust them. We couldn’t have wrapped up the Rumelov case this well without them.”
“True, true,” Nicolas chuckled. “I’m glad we did trust them. And I’m glad I trusted your judgment. That’s why I wanted to talk to you before I offered the Istanbul post to Eda and Mark. I value your opinion.”
She frowned at him. “Wait, just Eda and Mark? What about Erol?”
“Well,” Nicolas began, a bit awkwardly. “I can see that you like Erol…” He glanced over at Erol, animatedly discussing the evening’s events with Mark and Eda as fireworks overhead illuminated their exuberant faces.
Augusta didn’t know what to say. She felt her old confusion returning—that unsettled feeling of not knowing what to do, not knowing which way to proceed. Should she tell her father she wanted to leave the Cosmopolis and stay with Erol? He might be furious with her, after all her training and her initial success. But that would be turning her back on her mission for justice. These things were more important than her own feelings. If she weren’t a Cosmopolis agent, the Hagia Sophia and all the people around it might have been destroyed tonight. Surely that was more important than a kiss.
But when she thought about Erol—his eyes, his smile, even his crazy passion for Ottoman books—she felt that she couldn’t live without him. She just couldn’t walk away now.
“Erol is quite an impulsive young man,” Nicolas continued. “But he’s also brave, determined, intelligent, and resourceful. He wasn’t afraid to go head to head with Rumelov. And given how well you two work together, I’d like to bring him to headquarters as an international agent. As your partner.” He paused and watched Augusta’s reaction. “What do you think?”
This time she didn’t hesitate. “Yes! Yes, thank you, Dad!” Augusta threw her arms around her father’s neck. “Thank you! But I thought…I thought you couldn’t have personal relationships as a Cosmopolis agent. You told me that’s why you had to distance yourself from me, and Mom, and your parents. So we wouldn’t be in danger.”
“Yes, Gus, that’s right. But that was because you were a child. You hadn’t signed up for a life of danger and fighting crime. Erol, on the other hand,” he nodded toward her friends, “apparently doesn’t mind. He looks pretty happy to me.”
Augusta glanced over and saw Erol looking back at her, smiling. She bounded over to him and, linking her arm through his, dragged him back to where Nicolas was standing. Only one thing remained to be settled. Would Erol accept the offer? She knew he loved his work at the museum, his sister and friends. It would be difficult for him to give that all up.
“Ask him, Dad, ask him,” Augusta urged.
“Ask me what?” Erol said, looking from father to daughter.
“We have a proposal for you,” Nicolas said, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute!” Erol held up his hands, looking worried. “I’m not ready to get married!”
Augusta and her father burst into laughter.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Nicolas said, teasingly. “I don’t think my daughter will be getting married anytime soon either.”
His face suddenly became serious.
“We want you to come work with us. Would you like to become a Cosmopolis agent? You’d be based at our headquarters at an undisclosed location in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. You’ll work closely on assignment with Augusta, traveling wherever you are needed to further our mission of pursuing undercover justice throughout the world.”
He paused.
“Unfortunately it would mean some personal sacrifices. For the most part you would end contact with your friends and family. A conventional life of job, home, and family would no longer be open to you. And of course there’s personal risk involved. Your life would be constantly in danger. I want to make sure you know all the hazards before making your decision.”
While Nicolas spoke, Erol listened with a broad smile dawning across his face. He now held out his hand eagerly, giving Nicolas a hearty handshake.
“Yes, of course I’ll come work with you! Thank you, sir.” He turned to Augusta with a delighted look. “Who could say no to that? A life of fighting bad guys alongside a beautiful woman. I can’t think of anything I’d love more.”
He grabbed Augusta’s hand and nodded his head toward the back of the square. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
With fireworks still exploding overhead, Erol pulled her along behind him as he wove through the jubilant crowds. They skirted the side of the magnificent Hagia Sophia and reached a small side street, which they walked along for a few minutes. Soon Augusta saw the dark outline of the Ottoman History Museum jutting out in front of them. She hadn’t realized it was so close.
Silently unlocking the museum door, Erol led her up several flights of stairs, past the second floor where they’d had a boardroom meeting with Nicolas, past the third floor with its neat rows of offices. The stairs ended on an upper level with only a small wooden door. Erol pushed it open and they stepped out onto a rooftop terrace overlooking the historic city and the Bosporus harbor below.
“This is incredible,” Augusta breathed softly, gazing at the lights stretching in every direction around them. From here she could see everything. The sultan’s palace, with its thick ramparts, rose up to their left, while the distinctive silhouette of Istanbul’s famous mosques punctuated the view to the right. Ships glided through the dark water directly in front of them. She spun around, taking in the scene from every angle under a sky filled with dazzling color.
“No,” Erol said, standing beside her, “you are incredible. You took down a dangerous cult leader tonight and saved many lives. You weren’t afraid.” He shook his head in amazement, recalling their evening together. “How did you know what to do?”
Augusta laughed. “I just carved with the grain, as my grandfather used to say. When you’ve had your Cosmopolis training, you’ll know what to do too.”
A look of concern passed across Erol’s face. “Are you sure you want to work with me? Maybe we won’t get along. Maybe we’ll fight. Maybe we’ll start to hate each other.”
“It’s possible,” Augusta said, looking into his eyes. “But we’ll never know unless we try, right? And maybe we won’t start to hate each other. Maybe we’ll like each other more.” She smiled coyly. “Maybe we’ll even fall in love.”
“What do you mean, fall in love?” Erol said, pulling her close. “I am in love. I’ve always loved you.”
As the night sky shone red, purple, and gold around them, as the city pulsed with the excitement of a new year, Augusta found that being an international agent wasn’t so lonely after all. The quest for truth and justice didn’t always mean leaving behind the people you loved—sometimes it meant bringing them with you. Sometimes you were lucky enough to journey onward together.
Alone on their rooftop terrace, enfolded in each other’s arms, Augusta and Erol found that the past was the perfect prelude to their future. Centuries passed, empires rose and fell, religions came and went, fashions fell in and out of favor. But love always repeated itself, in infinite variation, across the millennia. Each time more beautiful than the last. Each time more alive, more present, more significant than anything else that had ever come before or would ever come again.
If Augusta Carter thought anything else at all that night, it might have been the strangeness of the story that led her from a small town in North Carolina to the brink of history in old Constantinople. Of jealousy and obsession, of family and friendship, of discourses lost and then found. Of what the next chapter might bring for her and Erol. But as the final fireworks scorched through the powdery sky, illuminating the historic shores of the Bosporus, she wasn’t thinking about anything at all. For one blissful night, her story was complete.