chance that I’ll get it.”
“And a three in four chance that you won’t.” She smiled supportively. He didn’t seem convinced. “Was he getting treated for it?”
“No. This was before Prozac (widely-used antidepressant drug (Medicine) became the new aspirin.”
She paused, mulling it over. “Have you had yourself checked?”
“We have routine psych evaluations at work.”
“And… ?”
“They haven’t found anything wrong.”
She nodded. “Good. I don’t see it either.”
“See it?”
Her voice softened. “In your eyes. I could see something, a bit of distance, like you’re walled off, always holding something back. At first I thought it might be your M.O., you know, the badge talking, the strong, silent type.” She was beaming with conviction and reassurance. “It doesn’t have to happen to you.”
“What if it does? I’ve been through it, I saw what it did to my mom. I wouldn’t want to put you, or anyone I care about, through it.”
“So you’re going to shut yourself off from the rest of the world? Come on, Sean. It’s like telling me we shouldn’t be together just because, I don’t know, your dad died of cancer. Who really knows what’s going to happen to any of us? You just live your life and hope for the best.”
“Not everybody wakes up one morning and decides to ride a bullet out of this world. The thing is, I recognize a part of him in me. He wasn’t that much older than I am now when he did it. I look in the mirror sometimes and I see him, I see his look and his stance, and it scares me.”
She shook her head with obvious frustration. “You said your priest helped you through it?”
He nodded absently. “My dad wasn’t into religion. He questioned faith out of existence, and my mom, well, she kind of toed the line, she wasn’t particularly spiritual anyway. After he died, I just shut down completely. I couldn’t understand why he did it, why we didn’t see it coming, why we didn’t stop it from happening. My mom was a total wreck. She ended up spending more and more time with our priest who, in turn, started talking to me about it. He helped me understand why neither of us was to blame and showed me another side of life. The Church became my sanctuary, and I never forgot it.”
Tess visibly rallied herself, speaking now with renewed determination. “Well, you know what? I appreciate the concern and the warning, it’s very gentlemanly of you, but it doesn’t scare me in the least. You needed me to know, and now I do, okay? But I don’t think you can go on like that, you can’t let something that’ll probably never happen ruin your life. You’re only helping to turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’re not him, okay? You’ve got to let go, live your own life, and if that’s not working, well then maybe something’s fundamentally wrong in the way you live your life. You’re alone, which isn’t a great start, and God knows you haven’t exactly chosen a bright and merry line of work.”
“It’s what I do.”
“Well maybe you need to do something else.” The grin made a timely, and welcome, reappearance. “Like shutting up and kissing me.”
Reilly’s eyes moved over her face. She was trying to make sense of his life, drumming heartfelt optimism into him, and yet he hardly knew her. He felt something familiar, something that he was starting to recognize only happened when he was around her: in a word, alive.
He leaned into her and pulled her onto him, tightly
.
As THE TWO FIGURES on the screen drew closer, their gray-blue heat signatures merged into one misshaped lump. The muted voices were now gone too, replaced by the muffled sounds of clothes being discarded and of bodies moving against each other.
De Angelis cradled a warm cup of coffee as he watched the screen with disinterest. They were parked on a ridge that overlooked the depression where Tess and Reilly had set up camp. The tailgate of the beige Land Cruiser was open, revealing two screens that glowed in the darkness. One was a laptop, from which a lead snaked out to a Raytheon Thermal-Eye infrared surveillance camera that sat on a tripod, dominating the landscape before it. A parabolic directional microphone nested on a second tripod. The other screen belonged to a small, handheld PDA. It blinked with the position of the GPS tracker that clung clandestinely onto the underside of Tess’s travel bag.
The monsignor turned and looked down on the dark valley below. He was quietly pleased. Things were under control, and that was how he liked it. They were close and, with a bit of luck, they would beat Vance to it. He still didn’t know exactly where they were heading; he would have preferred to have audio capability inside their car, but the opportunity to plant a bug there hadn’t presented itself. Not that it mattered. Whatever they found, he would be right behind them, waiting to scoop it up.
That was the easy part.
More difficult was the question of what to do with them once that was achieved.
De Angelis took one last lingering look at the screen before flicking the last of his coffee into the bushes.
He wouldn’t be losing sleep over it.
Chapter 55
When Tess woke up, daylight was filtering in from outside. She drowsily reached over, but her hand only found empty padding. She was alone in the sleeping bags, which had been zipped together. Sitting up, she remembered that she was naked and found the clothes that had been hurriedly discarded the night before.
Outside, the sun was higher than she expected, and on checking her watch she saw why. It was almost nine, and the sun was already halfway up a strikingly blue sky that was clear and unblemished. She squinted as she looked around, finding Reilly standing by the Pajero with his shirt off. He was shaving, using hot water from an immersion coil water heater plugged into the lighter socket.
As she walked up to him, he turned and said, “Coffee’s ready.”
“I love this Ertugrul guy of yours,” she marveled as she checked
out a smoking thermos. The rich smell of the velvety black coffee roused her senses. “You guys really do travel in style.”
“And you thought your tax dollars were being wasted.” He wiped his shaving foam off and kissed her, and, as he did, she again saw the small, discreet silver crucifix on the thin chain around his neck that she had noticed the night before. It wasn’t something people wore much these days, she thought, not in her neck of the woods anyway, and it had an old-world charm to it that threw her. She didn’t think it would be something she’d find remotely attractive, and yet, on him, it was somehow different. It seemed to fit; it was part of who he was.
A short while later, they were back on the road, the Pajero eating up the bumps and potholes of the pitted tarmac as they ventured further inland. They passed a few deserted houses and a small farmhouse before leaving the narrow road they were following to take an even narrower forest track that climbed steeply.
As they drove past a copse小灌木材, 杂树林 of balsam trees from which a young villager was tapping the fragrant resinous storax安息香脂, Tess now saw the mountains looming ahead and felt a surge of excitement.
“Over there. See that?” Her pulse quickened as she pointed at a hill in the distance. Its peak had a distinctive, symmetrical profile. “That’s it,” she exclaimed. “The double humpback of the Kenjik ridge.” Her eyes ate up the notes and the map in her hand as she reconciled them with the landscape before them. “We’re there. The village should be in the valley just on the other side of those mountains.”
The track cut through a thick cluster of pine trees, and as they emerged out of it and back into the light, they rounded a hillock and, with the Pajero now making use of the full might of its four-wheel drive, kept climbing up until they crested the ridge.
It wasn’t what she expected. The sight hit her like a sledgehammer.
There, before them, nested in the valley between two ranges of lush, pine-covered mountains, stretched a huge lake.
Chapter 56
Tess’s entire body froze as she stared out in bewilderment, then her hand clawed at the door latch and she was out of the car before it had come to a complete stop. She stormed over to the edge of the ridge and looked around in utter incomprehension. The dark, shimmering lake just lay there peacefully, stretching from one end of the valley to the other.
“I don’t get it,” she blurted. “It should be right there.” Reilly was now standing next to her. “We must have made a wrong turn somewhere.”
“No way.” Tess was all flustered, her mind racing, poring over the details of the journey they had taken, revisiting every marker along the way. “Everything fitted perfectly. We followed his journey to the letter. It should be here. It should be right here.” Refusing to accept the glaring mistake, she scrambled down through the trees and walked a little further forward to get a better view. Reilly followed her.
The lake extended to the farthest reaches of the valley to their right. Its opposite end was obscured by the forest.
Tess stared at the placid water in disbelief. “I don’t get it.”
Reilly took in their surroundings. “Look, we can’t be that far off. It’s got to be around here someplace. We just screwed up somewhere on the way up.”
“Yes, but where?” she said irritably. “We followed what he wrote, right down to the double ridge. It should be right here.” She studied the map intently. “The map doesn’t even show a lake.”
She looked at him and heaved a sigh of sheer frustration.
He put his arm around her. “Look, we’re close, I’m sure of it. We’ve been on the road for a couple of hours. Let’s find a town,
somewhere to eat. We can go over your notes there.”
THE VILLAGE WAS SMALL, the only lokanta tiny, a strictly local affair. An old man with a seamed face and dark, pebble eyes took their order, which basically involved their acquiescing to whatever he said was available. Two bottles of Efes beer and a plate of stuffed vine leaves (food made from grape leave filled with rice) quickly followed.
Tess was immersed in her notes. She had calmed down but was still disconsolate, visibly and justifiably mired in a deep funk (fear, terror).
“Eat,” he told her. “You’ll sulk better.”
“I’m not sulking,” she murmured as she glanced up at him, annoyed.
“Let me have a look.”
“What?” The glare intensified.
“Your notes. Let’s go over them together, step by step.”
She pushed them away and leaned back, tightening her fists, squeezing the air out of them. “We’re so close, I can feel it.”
The old man came back with two plates of cabbage dolmas and skewers of grilled lamb. Reilly watched him as he placed them on the table, then nodded his gratitude before looking at Tess. “Maybe we should ask him?”
“Beer el Sifsaaf hasn’t been on any map for hundreds of years,” she grumbled. “I mean come on, Sean. He’s old, but he’s not that old.”
Reilly wasn’t listening to her. His eyes were on the old man, who broke into a gap-toothed smile and nodded sheepishly at him. Reilly felt a sudden tingle of anticipation. “Beer el Sifsaaf, ” he asked the old man hesitantly, then, slowly: “Do you know where it is?”
The old man smiled as he nodded his head vigorously. “Beer el Sifsaaf” he said. “Evet.”
Tess’s eyes lit up and she rose from her seat. “What?” The man nodded again. “Where?” she snapped excitedly. “Where is it?” The man was still clearly agreeing, but now looked slightly confused. She frowned, then tried again. “Nerede?”
The old man pointed up the hill they had just descended. Tess lifted her gaze and followed his outstretched finger. He was waving his pointing hand to the north, and Tess was already heading for the car.
MINUTES LATER, the Pajero was roaring back up the hill. The old man, riding shotgun, was hanging onto the handle above his window in a state of perspiring terror as he watched the mountain tear past him, the wind whipping in through the open windows, his cries of, “Yavas, yavas!‘’ merely spicing Reilly’s grinning abandon as they plowed ahead. Tess was leaning forward from the backseat, her eyes scanning the rushing landscape for clues.
Just before the ridge where they had seen the lake, the old man pointed, “Gol, jjol,” and Reilly swung the wheel to take them along an even narrower track they hadn’t spotted before. With tree branches whipping its sides, the SUV charged ahead. Another kilometer or so and the trees cleared, and they mounted another ridge.
The old man was grinning excitedly, pointing at the valley. “Orada, Orada! Sbte!”
As the valley opened up before them, Tess couldn’t believe her eyes.
It was the lake.
Again.
She shot him a glance of utter dejection as Reilly ground the SUV to a halt, and they all disembarked. They walked over to the edge of the small clearing, the old man still nodding with self-satisfaction. Tess watched him and shook her head, turning to Reilly. “Of course, we had to find the senile one.” She looked at the old man again, imploring him. “Beer el Sifsaaf? Nerede?‘’
The old man’s brow furrowed in apparent confusion. “Orada,‘” he insisted, pointing down at the lake.
Reilly took a few more steps forward and took another look. From the vantage point, he could see the whole lake, including its western edge, which had been obscured by the forest at their earlier viewing point.
He turned to Tess, a small smirk breaking across his face. “Oh ye of little faith,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she blurted. His fingers were calmly inviting her to join him. She looked at the old man, who nodded in eager agreement, then, confused, clambered over to Reilly and saw it too.
From this new angle, Tess could see, a mile or more away and cutting across the edge of the lake, a concrete causeway that stretched from one hilltop to another. The top of a dam.
“Oh my God,” she said.
Reilly had taken a notebook from his pocket and was now sketching a cross-section view of the hills with a line stretching between them for the surface of the lake. He then drew the rough outline of some houses at the bottom of the lake and showed the sketch to the old man, who took the ballpoint pen and made a large X at the bottom of the lake and said, “Coy suyun altinda. Beer el Sifsaaf.”
Tess looked at Reilly and he showed her his rickety drawing. “It’s down there,” he confirmed. “Underwater. This dam flooded the whole valley, the remains of the village with it. It’s at the bottom of the lake.”
Chapter 57
With the old man sitting more comfortably now, Reilly guided the Pajero carefully down the bumpy and rock-strewn track until they reached the edge of the lake.
It was massive, the surface of its water as smooth and silky as glass. On the opposite shore was a line of posts, incoming power and telephone lines, he guessed, and probably a road in. From the dam itself, he could see a line of pylons (tower used to support electrical or other wires) striding northward over a range of hills and heading toward civilization. The dam and its artificial lake apart, civilization had not impacted this place. The surrounding woodlands and, higher up, bleaker mountain tops, none of it especially hospitable terrain, looked to him much as it must have looked to the Knights Templar who had passed this way seven hundred years ago.
