“What are you doing?”
“Digging,” I said.
I tried to pry the plaster out, but got no purchase. I dug back in until I felt the knife connect with a more solid surface below. But the surface wasn’t hard. It was strangely flexible.
“What does this mean ‘you are digging’?”
“What do you see?” I asked.
Meryem looked at the wall.
“I see a wall.”
“What else?”
“I see a wire. Two wires. Electricity and cable.”
“Good,” I said, digging at the plaster with the knife. “Now, what don’t you see?”
Meryem stared at the water-damaged wall. I visualized the cogs in her head turning.
“The speaker wire. I do not see this.”
“Exactly,” I said. “The speaker wire runs into the wall, but the cord for the light and satellite don’t. I think there’s a second wall here.” I levered the knife. “This plaster wall was built later, after the speaker wire had already been installed.”
“Why?”
“Let’s find out.”
I levered the handle of the knife down again and managed to loosen a whole section of plaster. I dug my fingers into the soft hole I’d made and lifted it in a jagged triangular section. It took a second, but the whole thing came out. Then when I shone my flashlight, it revealed what was behind the plaster. Not the brick exterior of the minaret, but a smooth black surface with tiny beads of moisture on it. I poked it with my finger. It was rubber. Solid, inch-thick, black rubber. I guessed that the rainwater had found its way in through the minaret’s roof, eventually forcing a gap between the materials, until it had begged for a way out. The way out had been the sodden plaster before me. But why a rubber wall?
“Tesla’s Energy Device would have carried a great deal of current, correct?” I asked.
“Yes,” Meryem said.
“And that current would have had to have been insulated from its surroundings to protect whoever operated the Device.”
“This is true,” Meryem said.
“Rubber,” I said. “Rubber is an excellent insulator.”
I clicked my tongue. The puzzle had fallen into place.
“This is a Tesla Tower,” I said. “For the Device. Just like Wardenclyffe Tower back on Long Island. Whoever stole the Device back in the 1950s needed a mount to use it — to get it into the air, above obstructions. This minaret was retrofitted for that purpose. The rubber shielding is for safety, the metal brackets are to mount the focusing array. That’s why the statue pointed here. Whoever reassembled Augustus made sure he pointed directly at this tower.”
Meryem didn’t look as if she believed a word I was saying.
“You think this because the inside of the minaret is rubber?”
“I think it because it makes sense. There aren’t two parts to the Tesla Device, there are three. This tower, the triggers, and the focusing array. Think about it. The focusing array, that sphere on top of the metal tower in the photo, is big. It would need to be raised over the surrounding area.”
The bulb didn’t throw much light, but it was enough to see that she was still skeptical. I flipped open the blade on my knife and scored a deep cut in the rubber, arcing the knife up and around until I had cut out an oval piece. It fell into my hands revealing the original brick of the minaret behind it. The rubber was old and friable, but it still had some bounce to it. It wasn’t going to tell me where it had come from, but in the right hands it might give a technical-analysis team some idea of when it had been put there and why. I shoved the sample deep into my pocket. Then I heard a low drone.
It was an aircraft. A big one by the sound of it, and it was getting nearer. I glanced at Meryem. There was no need to say anything. We both hurried down the spiral stairs, the drone of the aircraft growing louder by the moment. When we finally reached the bottom of the stairs, I thrust the door open and slipped outside the mosque. An enormous military aircraft had touched down to the east, its four giant propellers beating the air as it headed toward us.
That the disused gravel road was actually a runway was now starkly obvious. The plane was of Russian design. I recognized it as a turboprop-powered Antonov An-70 in military gray. I was pretty sure that the plane’s arrival was not a positive development. The runway alone could have accounted for the reason that the area had been redacted on the satellite map, but I suspected more. I suspected that our friends back at Aphrodisias had passed on word of our arrival. It looked like forces inside the Turkish government were protecting their retrofitted minaret.
“Are you expecting anyone?” I asked.
Meryem shook her head. “I was not informed that we would be contacted.”
“Well, somebody knows how to make an entrance.”
It was then that I heard a click. I turned to see a bearded man standing in the courtyard. It was the mullah from the mosque. And he held an AK-47 in hand, his fingers still grasping the newly inserted clip.
Chapter 27
The mullah held us at bay with the machine gun as the giant plane taxied to a stop directly in front of us. A folding staircase was lowered from the cabin door and four soldiers descended from the aircraft. Our options were clear enough. Stay exactly where we were or get sprayed with bullets. After all, an AK47 is an old, but effective weapon. Though it was introduced into service by the Soviet Army way back in 1947, it could still fire ten rounds per second, and at 7.62 mm they were relatively large rounds. So though the mullah may have been a peaceful enough guy, we’d already been up his minaret uninvited. I didn’t want to test his patience again.
I reconsidered my decision, however, when the soldiers arrived. because they didn’t bother to greet us. Instead, they merely shoved their weapons into our chests. They carried Heckler & Koch HK33s, which were compact, efficient assault rifles, and it was four against none. If Meryem still had her weapon, she certainly didn’t reveal it. Two of the soldiers forced our hands onto our heads, while the other two took up the rear. Meryem and I simply shuffled forward as they shouted at us in Turkish. I didn’t understand their words, but the soldiers’ meaning was clear. March or die.
The propeller wash almost blew us backward as we approached the high-winged cargo plane, its huge counter-rotating prop-fans flattening the surrounding vegetation. The ladder-like stairs leading to the fuselage door weren’t wide enough to drag us up two abreast, so they isolated us, one of the soldiers going up in front and one behind. I glanced behind me and saw that the mullah had pushed the motorcycle around to the front of the mosque. I didn’t know what he was planning on doing with it and I didn’t get a chance to find out. Instead, they prodded me into the plane.
It was huge inside the fuselage. Room for at least three hundred soldiers and a whole lot of cargo. If I was a betting man, I’d have bet that whoever had tasked that particular plane was looking for something big. A final soldier entered carrying my backpack and Meryem's go-bag and the steps were raised and the fuselage door was closed. Then the cockpit door opened and a squat, wide man stalked toward us.
I recognized him immediately. The waxy, crescent-shaped scar under his left eye made him hard to forget. It was the sailor from the ship that had blown up in the harbor. He said two words in Turkish, followed by another two in thickly accented English, apparently for my benefit.
“Hood them.”
A thick black hood was dropped over my head from behind. The hood blocked out not only the light, but most of the breathable air as well. They cuffed us, hands behind our backs, and then patted us down, confiscating the journal and my Swiss Army knife and whatever else I had in my pockets. They left my watch and didn’t bother to check my shoes, so they didn’t get the few emergency bills that I had tucked aside. I don’t know what they got from Meryem.