Meryam held him close again, touched noses. “Let’s just get there. Feyiz knows who to pay off. When they lift the ban, I want to be the first ones up the mountain.”
“Aftershocks…”
“Oh, please, Mr. Holzer. I’ve seen you do the stupidest, most dangerous things—most of which could have killed you—and you’re worried about aftershocks? This is the stuff we live for, and let’s not forget how badly you want that television show you’re always going on about. I want to see what’s inside that cave, and I want to get there first. You try to tell me that you don’t want the same and I will know that you are lying through your bloody teeth.”
Adam laughed and shook his head at the insanity of it all.
Then he took her hand and together they hurried along the sidewalk, red umbrella bobbing overhead. But Adam didn’t care about the rain anymore. By the time they reached Turkey it would be the first of December, and a little bit of chilly drizzle would be nothing compared to what awaited them on Mount Ararat.
THREE
In the summer, a newborn teacup monkey could climb Ararat. Or at least that was what Meryam had told Adam when they’d planned their first ascent three years earlier. In the warm weather the mountain presented no more challenge than a long, arduous hike until about forty-eight hundred meters, when the glacier began. Even then, a reasonably fit person needed only crampons strapped to her boots and an ice ax to make the climb, depending on the route.
In winter, however, the climb became complicated. The snow and wind whipped across the face of the mountain, the cold cutting through heavy clothing, sinking into your bones. In the dark or in the midst of a storm, temperatures could plummet to thirty below zero. Even so, neither of them had any interest in climbing Ararat in the summertime. The whole point of the climb had been to have a few thrilling chapters for their second book, Adam and Eve at the Top of the World. The series chronicled their exploits as a couple, the things they dared together that most people wouldn’t dare alone, never mind have a mate to attempt with them. Which meant that climbing Mount Ararat in the summer would be boring as hell to their readers.
They weren’t idiots, though. They’d made the climb in late October, not in February. Avalanches were not uncommon on Ararat in the winter months, and they only needed to make the climb seem slightly more challenging than the teacup-monkey version.
Of course they’d picked the mountain in the first place because of the ark.
Not that Meryam believed in the ark. She thought Adam might, but he had never outright admitted it to her. The story of the great flood had too much historical prevalence in disparate ancient cultures to be pure invention, but the biblical story could not possibly be true. To jump-start the human race—never mind all life on Earth—with only whatever animals you could fit on a single boat… the idea that anyone could accept that concept made her want to bang her head against a wall.
So she thought the idea of the ark was hilarious.
But an ark? A guy who might have been named something like Noah, who’d built a huge, crude ship and loaded up his family and whatever animals he’d owned—donkeys and sheep, that sort of thing—she could wrap her brain around that. She had studied enough folklore, history, and theology to know most of the ancient stories were either crafted to teach a lesson or passed down through generations because they had a kernel of truth in them that scared the shit out of people. The lesson of the biblical tale of Noah’s ark was a simple one, a refrain that echoed throughout the Old Testament: behave, or God will fuck you up.
Adam, for instance. She could see in his eyes that a part of him still believed the things he’d been taught growing up, the things he’d memorized before his bar mitzvah. His mother had died when he was young and his father had worked too many hours, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother Evie, whose grim mysticism had left him scarred by faith. The old woman had insisted that her father had been possessed by a dybbuk toward the end of his life. Adam claimed not to have believed her, but she still remembered the first time he had told her the story and the shadow that had fallen across his eyes. Adam didn’t want to believe, but she knew he did.
For her part, Meryam didn’t believe in dybbuks or spirits or angels, but then she didn’t believe in much. She had been raised a Muslim and long ago decided that the main difference between their religions was the name of the god they were all afraid would punish them if they broke the rules the faith set out for them. Meryam still obeyed some of those fundamental rules out of reflex and caution, but it wasn’t God whom she feared would punish her for breaking them. Allah wouldn’t spit on her in the street, imprison her, gang rape, or murder her.
Only men would do that.
Men like Hakan Ceven.
“How long before the government gives us authorization to climb?” she asked him.
Hakan sat directly across the table from her, spine rigid against the back of his wooden chair. He turned to his left, addressing his response to Adam.
“It could be hours or it could be weeks.” His voice rasped like stone on stone, thick with the accent of the region, but he spoke better English than she’d expected.
Meryam glanced at Feyiz, the fourth person at their table. Like his uncle, who had become the new head of the family in the wake of deaths the clan had incurred in the avalanche, Feyiz would not meet her gaze. But Meryam knew Feyiz avoided her eyes out of embarrassment rather than disdain. Kurds were not typically as antagonistic toward women as many other followers of Islam in the Middle East, but judging by Hakan’s behavior, he was an exception.
“Is there anything we can do to speed this process?” Meryam asked.
Hakan stiffened further, chin raised and nostrils flared. His thick, graying beard could not hide the scowl on his lips. He let his gaze linger on Adam’s, trying harder to get the message across.
“My cousin is there now, speaking to a friend in the minister’s office. If bribes will help, we will offer them and simply add the cost to your bill. Until then—”
“Hakan,” Adam interrupted, not hiding his irritation.
Feyiz gave a brisk shake of his head.
“—all we can do is wait with the rest of them,” Hakan finished.
Meryam gritted her teeth and glanced around the massive, rustic dining room. Three other climbing teams were already assembled there but more would be on the way. Feyiz had spoken to the other guides and learned that all of them were larger parties, most awaiting reinforcements, and all three were financed or led by Arkologists—the people who believed the biblical version of the story of Noah’s ark and had dedicated their lives to finding its resting place. Two of the groups had small documentary crews with them and the third had a crew on the way. Meryam had her fiancé.
“I’m sorry,” Adam said, lowering his voice to be sure only the four of them—the little circle of distrust at their table—could hear. “But this is not going to work if you insist upon—”
Meryam tapped her fingers lightly on the table, drawing the attention of the three men. Anxiety spilled out of Feyiz’s every pore. Adam clamped his mouth shut in frustration. Hakan kept his gaze averted.
“Firstly,” she said quietly, “don’t speak for me, Adam. Don’t be the knight who takes up sword and shield to defend his love. That’s not who we are and you know that.”
Later, he might argue that the circumstances demanded he intervene, but that was for when they were alone together, not a conversation he would venture to have in front of others.