Half an hour later, in the middle of Mark’s map-strewn office, Augusta watched as he and Eda drew lines, made circles, and compared folios of Istanbul from centuries past. They had zeroed in on a small area just west of the Grand Bazaar, sandwiched between the bazaar, the beautiful mosque of Beyazit, and the main building of Istanbul University.
As Mark explained to Augusta, his eye roving over the old black-and-white maps, this was one of the original building sites of the Ottoman conquerors when they captured Constantinople in 1453. Sultan Mehmet II built a luxurious palace for himself here, in the middle of the old Greek city, complete with a harem, hunting grounds, and a nearby bathhouse for his retainers. Later, however, the sultan’s palatial ambitions scaled the next hill, and he relocated his palace and grounds to present-day Topkapi Palace. Later sultans made extensive renovations to the Old Palace, and it eventually burned down in 1687. Only a small part of the original complex survived, incorporated into neighboring buildings.
That small, surviving part—here Mark tapped his finger on a tiny triangle of the map, labeled Beyazit—was the sultan’s old bathhouse. The bath of Bedestan was named for its close proximity to the bazaar, which at the time was known as a bedestan in Ottoman Turkish. Their foundations must have been built into something near the Old Palace, perhaps the mosque complex or the university buildings. Mark didn’t know for sure. They’d have to walk around the complex in person, investigating potential entry points. They could look for signs of recent activity, someplace where the Rumelov group might be meeting up.
Augusta tried to take it all in, but her concern for Erol squeezed almost everything else out of her mind. Mark’ plan sounded very vague, with plenty of room for error and little chance of success. How would they find something that didn’t exist on any map? A place that had been overlooked by everyone else for hundreds of years? It sounded almost hopeless.
Eda, who for the first time all day had been sitting very quietly, thinking, suddenly leaned forward and said, “I know how to find it.” She pulled a small tablet from her purse and began rapidly typing and swiping. A moment later she turned the tablet around to show Augusta and Mark. “Look. Here.”
They were looking at what appeared to be a grid of interlocking blue lines, some as long and straight as arrows, some short and squiggly. Interposed over the squiggles, in grayscale, were roads, buildings, tramlines. Augusta recognized the outline of the Golden Horn jutting out into the Bosporus. It appeared to be a map of Istanbul, but a very special one.
“This is a sewer map of the city,” Eda informed them with a look of triumph. “It shows every pipe that flows into the main sewer lines. Most people don’t know it, but our modern sewer system was simply built out of the existing Byzantine system of latrines. Even in the time of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, when the hammam was built, it would have tied into the existing Byzantine sanitation grid. If there ever was a system running into or out of the Bedestan baths, it would still be there.”
Mark looked impressed. “Nice work, Eda,” he said, flushing when she flashed him a dazzling smile. “Maybe being a city engineer has its uses after all. So where is the exact location?”
Tablet in hand, Eda’s nimble fingers zoomed them further into the sanitation grid. Augusta could see they were hovering over the same area Mark had pointed out on the old maps—the small triangle between the Grand Bazaar, the mosque, and the university. Eda pinched and zoomed her way inch by inch across the small area, looking for some sign that only she could see.
“Aha!” she said at last. “It must be here, under the mosque. You see this mark?” Eda pointed to a small smudge. “This indicates a brick latrine that was later linked into the cast iron pipe network. There’s a good chance the bath of Bedestan was here.”
Mark was still bent over the digital image, his nose inches from the screen. “So,” he said at last, “how do we access it? Obviously there is some kind of entrance if the Rumelov group is still using it.”
Watching the two of them argue over the details of their approach, Augusta stretched back in the small office chair, yawning. After her earlier escape from the man with the sunglasses, and the accompanying adrenaline rush it brought on, she was feeling totally depleted. She looked at the wall clock above Mark’s desk. Eight thirty p.m. That made it, what, one thirty in the afternoon back in North Carolina. The jet lag still had her in its grip. She closed her eyes, wondering if she might be able to curl up here in the corner of Mark’ office and drift off to sleep.
“What do you think, Augusta?” Eda’s voice roused her from this pleasant thought.
“Huh? Sorry, I didn’t hear.”
“Oh, you poor thing!” Eda jumped up from her perch on the desk and gave Augusta’s shoulder a squeeze. “You must be so tired. Why don’t you go back to my apartment and sleep? I’ll give you the key and you can take a taxi. You need rest.”
“No way!” Augusta stifled a yawn and leaned forward, willing herself awake. “If there’s anything I can do to help Erol, I want to do it.” Eda gave her a grateful smile, and Mark also looked heartened. “What’s the plan?”
“That’s the problem.” Mark was fidgeting with the pens on his desk. “We don’t have a plan. We know where the entrance might be, but we need a way to get Erol out of there. We can’t just walk in and expect them to hand him over.”
Augusta considered this information for a moment. “How do you know he’s being held against his will? Maybe we can just walk in and take him away with us. Maybe they’re not as bad as everyone thinks.”
Mark raised his eyebrows. “I’m afraid they are as bad as everyone thinks. Possibly much worse. When you’re dealing with people who have lost their grip on reality, you never know how far they may go to get what they want. If they’re not above bludgeoning an elderly priest, why would they hesitate to harm Erol?”
Just then the now-familiar sound of the call to prayer drifted in through the open window. Augusta felt the chills running up her spine before she remembered why. “Okay, now we really need to get moving,” she told her companions. “Erol said if we didn’t hear from him by the evening prayer to come look for him.”
They all sat in silence, with the unspoken question lingering in the air between them: how? How were they going to rescue him? The stockpiled fears from the past 48 hours tumbled through Augusta’s mind. The man in the aviator sunglasses reappeared in her imagination, far more menacing than in the street. She saw Erol by turns bound and gagged, beaten up, or left alone on a lonely road somewhere. Her stomach churned as she tried to get the images out of her mind. Just the facts, she told herself sternly. Follow the facts.
As the call to prayer echoed from loudspeakers all around the museum, Augusta forced her mind to think through the events of the day. Step by step. She started with her borrowed bedroom in the morning, then the book theft, then the unfortunate events on Big Island. The ferry ride back, the walk up to the museum with Erol, her first entrance to the museum, met by Hasan in his funny clothes. Suddenly she sat up straight. She knew what they had to do.
Twenty minutes later, Augusta, Eda, and Mark slipped out the back door of the museum. They crept quietly through the narrow passageway, carefully avoiding trash bins and stray dogs, and turned onto the broad avenue leading up to the main plaza. Squaring her shoulders and stepping out under the brightness of the street lamps, Augusta tried to look as if she knew exactly what she was doing.
She was wearing a gorgeously embroidered 17th-century Ottoman kaftan, its brilliant silk threads glimmering red, orange, and green beneath the soft white lights. It was both the heaviest and the most exquisite item of clothing she had ever touched. Trimmed with fur and falling all the way down to her ankles, the kaftan fastened, like a jacket, with a row of a dozen buttons at her chest. It was almost suffocatingly hot on this balmy summer night, but the kaftan served its purpose, concealing a long, curved blade beneath its colorful folds.
Beside her Eda walked even less comfortably, completely covered by a magnificent brocaded burqa and veil. Eda’s green eyes shone through a gap in her head covering, darting up and down the street to make sure they weren’t being followed. Unseen, under her flowing robes, Eda was carrying a broad, finely decorated sword, once used by the Janissary force of the Ottoman sultan.
The two girls walked slowly side by side, trying to look as aristocratic as possible in their antique regalia, temporarily borrowed from the museum’s archives. Mark was having a harder time looking dignified in his courtly trousers and turban. He looked distinctly ill at ease, although it may have been the two-hundred year old rifle hanging from his belt that caused his discomfort. “Someone is going to stop me with this gun,” he said out of the corner of his mouth to Eda as they walked along.
“Just act normal,” she whispered back to him. “You’re in costume. Everyone will assume it’s just a prop. No one expects you to actually use a musket older than the Turkish Republic.”
They strolled along, attracting interested looks and many requests for photos from the tourists still milling around the historical district. But no one gave a second glance at Mark’s rifle, and they proceeded slowly along their route toward Beyazit. Within a quarter of an hour they had arrived at the outer edge of the Grand Bazaar.
“This way,” Mark said quietly, leading them down the outermost corridor of the bazaar.
It was certainly unlike anything else Augusta had ever seen: stall after stall of everything you could possibly imagine—cheap shoes, glittering jewelry, mounds of nuts and spices, televisions, watches, books, sports memorabilia. They passed one booth after another, filled to the brim with tourists and locals chattering, examining, haggling, scolding, smiling, laughing. In the cacophony of noises and colors, Augusta and her companions barely stood out in their luscious silk clothing. They attracted a few curious stares as they passed, but on the whole they were able to move quickly toward their destination.
Mark and Eda had decided to attempt entering the bath of Bedestan through the back door of one of the stalls. The shop owner, an antiquarian, was a friend of theirs. It was just possible that Erol had come to him and found a passage into the hidden hammam. Mark had visited in his back storerooms before, on the far end of the bazaar, and had heard rumors of further tunnels that went underground to the old mosque. It was worth a try.
They reached the antiquarian’s shop, bristling with old objects that looked like they belonged in the Ottoman History Museum. Augusta could understand why Mark and Erol would frequent this shop. Mostly small objects were on display—buttons, combs, small porcelain dishes—but in the back of the shop were larger items, including beautiful brass lanterns like the one she had seen at Eda’s apartment. Yellowed maps lined the back wall like wallpaper, and colorful glass lamps hung down from the ceiling, reflecting red and purple light around the shop in kaleidoscopic patterns.
Upon seeing them enter, the shopkeeper jumped up in surprise, then broke into a wide smile when he recognized Mark. He was a wiry but distinguished-looking man, with a weather-beaten face and a courtly bearing. He and Mark broke into a rapid Turkish conversation, which Eda joined in occasionally, leaving Augusta to be impressed by Mark’ command of the language. After a moment they both looked in her direction, and she smiled as the antiquarian gave her an appraising look. He nodded to Mark, who motioned her toward them.
“Erol did come here earlier today, and Mehmet showed him the passage behind the shop.” Mark looked at her grimly. “We were right. He must have accessed the baths that way. Mehmet says he hasn’t come back.”
Augusta swallowed hard. “Well, maybe he found a different way out.” But even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t very likely. The Rumelovs had Erol. They were holding him against his will, they could have even…she didn’t want to think about it.
“Let’s go,” she told Mark. “I’m ready.”
Mark nodded solemnly.
The three young people followed Mehmet through a small opening at the back of the shop, out of the kaleidoscopic lights, and into a small storage area. It was stacked with even more antiques, crates full of odds and ends, carpets, teapots. In one corner, behind a faded chair, which Mehmet shifted out of the way, Augusta could see the outline of a door carved in the brick. It was no more than five feet high, but it was in good condition. The door swung easily and without a sound when the shopkeeper pulled it open.
Mehmet ducked through the opening, followed by Mark, Eda, and Augusta. It was quite dark, illuminated only by a few rays angling in from the back storeroom. Mehmet switched on a flashlight and handed it to Mark, who swept the beam around them from left to right.
They were in a very narrow tunnel of rough-hewn stone, no more than three feet wide, and lined with more overflow from the antique shop. Augusta could see, though, that the objects were lined up no more than about ten feet in each direction. This must have been the limit of Mehmet’s inventory. Past that, there was nothing but more rough stone and empty blackness.
Mehmet spoke again to Mark and Eda, handed Mark a small metal key, and then stepped back into the light of the storeroom. The door swung silently shut, and they were alone in the dark tunnel.
Mark swept the flashlight beam up above their heads, checking out the height and breadth of the passageway. Just high enough for them to stand upright, with rough, dark stone surrounding them on four sides. He pointed the beam to their left and started walking.
“Mehmet said he’s never been all the way to the baths, but he thinks they’re this way.”
As they shuffled along carefully, Augusta felt herself sweating profusely beneath the heavy caftan and headdress. Erol had passed this way not long before, and now he was being held hostage somewhere. She tried to put the thought of what might await them out of her mind. She had to focus on one step at a time. One: find the entrance to the baths. Two: rescue Erol. Three: get the book back. It was really so simple.
After a few moments of uneventful silence, the beam of Mark’ flashlight landed on another door, leading off to their right. They stopped and Mark pressed a palm onto the cool metal door, testing its solidity.
At that moment, they all three heard the same sound, coming from the other side of the door. A voice, faint but clear, yelling something in Turkish. Mark froze, catching Eda’s eye, and then leaned his ear toward the door. Augusta strained her ears, but she couldn’t understand what the voice was saying. All she could tell was that it was a man, and he sounded angry.
The voice stopped, and Eda whispered in Augusta’s ear, “That must be Efendi, or one of the other Rumelov members. He was yelling at someone to do something, but I don’t know what. This means we’ve found the right place!”
Augusta nodded and said as quietly as possible, “Now what do we do?”
Eda’s normally cheerful face set as hard as stone, and Augusta recognized the clenched jaw she had seen in Erol that morning. “Now we take them by surprise.” She looked from Augusta to Mark. “Everyone remember what we planned? Let’s get our weapons ready.”
Silently Eda slid the finely-crafted Janissary sword out from beneath her long robes. Its brilliant blade glowed in the dim beam of the flashlight, still beautiful after more than 200 years. She gripped the hilt tightly, carefully testing its heft in her slender hands. “I’m ready.”
Augusta nervously removed the curved saber from under her caftan. It was an odd-looking instrument: half the blade was straight, and half curved, a bit like a fishhook. In a way it reminded her of her carving tools, sitting quietly back at her studio in North Carolina. Yes, that was it—this was just like the chisels and carving knives she used every day. She knew exactly how to hold them, to finesse them, to coax out the character of her sculptures just like her grandfather had done with his carvings. This would be much the same. She closed her eyes and fervently hoped she wouldn’t need to carve anything with this ferocious blade.
“Ready,” she whispered to her companions.
Mark cocked the musket and placed its pearlescent ivory handle on his shoulder. It wasn’t loaded, and probably wouldn’t have worked even if it was, but they were counting on the Rumelovs believing it was functional. And in determined hands, it would still be a formidable battering ram or club. If all else failed, Augusta knew, the musket had one final ace to play. Hidden in a compartment on its right side was a slim dagger.
“Ready,” Mark said.
Augusta felt her stomach somersaulting violently, and she wondered if she was going to be sick. All the nerves she’d ever felt before were nothing compared to the gut-wrenching heaves she experienced now. Why did people call them butterflies, she thought bitterly, wiping the sweat off her palms and hoping the sword didn’t slip from her hands. This was more like a herd of elephants thundering through her insides. She gulped down deep breaths, trying to focus her mind on the task in front of her now. Task One was complete—they had found the baths. This was Task Two—rescue Erol. She repeated it to herself now and felt her resolve returning as she pictured Erol crumpled in a heap on the floor. Rescue Erol. Rescue Erol.
She heard Eda’s voice say, “Three.”
Rescue Erol. Rescue Erol.
“Two.”
Rescue Erol. Rescue Erol.
“One…”
Rescue Erol.
What a cliffhanger! I’m so invested in this story and look forward to the next chapter