Surprise was completely his, as the gunman didn’t even have his pistol on Loren but was holding it down at his side. He gave Pitt a startled look through his ski mask before Pitt’s balled fist struck him on the chin. With surging adrenaline and controlled rage, Pitt could have probably put his fist through the van’s side panel had he aimed differently. The blow instantly knocked the man cold, sending him teetering to the floorboard without ever raising his weapon.
The other man reacted quickly, perhaps relishing the opportunity to retaliate against the earlier assault. He dove onto the back of Pitt’s outstretched body, pinning Pitt’s torso against the floor. The man had a gun in his pocket, which he struggled to retrieve while wrapping his other arm around Pitt. Pushed flat, Pitt immediately raised himself with his arms but couldn’t quite shake the man’s half bear hug. Seeking any measure of leverage he could, Pitt wedged a foot against the rear bumper, then tried shifting his weight to the rear. With his attacker glued to his back, Pitt heaved with both his arms and legs, flinging himself backward and out of the van.
The taxicab was idling just a foot or two behind the van. Hurtling through the air, the two intertwined bodies slammed backward onto the cab’s hood, the van driver sandwiched beneath Pitt and bearing the brunt of the impact. The man gasped as the breath was knocked from his lungs, and Pitt felt the grip around his torso soften. Spinning to his feet, Pitt pulled the man’s arm away, then shoved an elbow into the driver’s head with repeated blows. It was enough to stun the man into submission and he sank to the pavement before he could find the grip on his gun.
Catching his breath, Pitt looked up to see Loren scampering out of the van. In her hand, she was clutching one of the black bags.
“Quick, let’s go,” he urged, grabbing her arm and pulling her down the street. They staggered a few steps to the sidewalk, Loren resisting any attempts at speed.
“I can’t run in these shoes,” she pleaded.
Pitt heard a yell from the direction of the van but wasted no time looking. Instead, he roughly grabbed his wife and shoved her toward the alcove of a small square building a few steps away. He dove after her as two quick cracks from a pistol rang out. A pair of concrete chips flew in the air as the bullets peppered the ground near their feet.
The doorway provided cover, but just temporarily. It would only be seconds before the woman with the pistol stepped down the street far enough to have a clear shot at the two of them.
“Where to now?” Loren gasped, her heart pounding in fear.
Pitt quickly surveyed an ancient weathered door that stood at the top of the steps.
“A simple choice, I’d say,” he replied, nodding toward the door. “We go in.”
5
Two firm kicks on the wooden door were sufficient to dislodge the well-worn dead bolt from its housing and force an opening. Loren and Pitt quickly slithered into a plain, empty room, sided by a counter and cash register. At the back of the room was a wide, dimly lit stairwell that led to a lower level.
From outside the door, they could hear the sound of running footsteps approach. Pitt turned and swung the door closed as he caught a glimpse of the woman in black sprinting around the back of the taxi. He missed seeing the muzzle flash from her pistol as she fired again, but he saw the slug bury itself into the door a few inches from his face.
“I guess we go down,” he said, grabbing Loren’s hand and rushing to the stairs. They had hopped down a few of the carved stone steps when Loren yanked on his arm.
“I can’t make it that far in heels,” she said, noticing that the stairwell descended a considerable distance below them. She quickly yanked off her pumps, then proceeded to scurry down the stairs.
“Why does practicality never enter into the design of women’s shoes?” Pitt asked, catching up with her.
“Only a man would have to ask,” she grumbled, breathing hard from their exertion.
They continued plunging down the stairs, which descended over fifty steps. Their argument over footwear was lost to a sense of awe as their surroundings unfolded before them under sparse lighting.
They had descended into a huge man-made subterranean cavern. It was a totally unexpected and somewhat bizarre structure to find in the middle of bustling Istanbul. The steps ended at a wooden platform, which overlooked the deep cavern. Pitt admired a forest of thirty-foot-high marble columns that stretched into the darkness by the dozen, their capitals supporting a towering multi-arched ceiling. A bank of red overhead lights lightly illuminated the space, lending it a mysterious, almost hellish appearance.
“What is this place?” Loren asked, her voice echoing off the stone walls. “It’s breathtaking, in more ways than one.”
“It’s an underground cistern. A huge one, by the looks of it. The Romans built hundreds of them under the streets of Istanbul in order to store water, which was transported in from the countryside via aqueducts.”
They stood in what was actually the largest cistern in Istanbul, the Yerebatan Sarnici. Originally constructed by Emperor Constantine and later enlarged by Justinian, the structure stretched nearly five hundred feet in length. In its day, the cistern’s mortar-lined floor and walls were capable of holding 2.8 million cubic feet of water. Abandoned during the Ottoman reign, it became a forgotten, mud-filled bog until restored by the Turkish government in the twentieth century. As testament to Roman construction prowess, the floor of the cavern still stored a few feet of water for effect.
The vast chamber was nearly silent but for the splattering of water that occasionally dripped from the ceiling. The silence was suddenly disrupted by the sound of footsteps overhead as the armed woman in black rushed through the office and started down the stone steps. Pitt and Loren immediately took off running, following a raised wooden ramp that led toward the far end of the chamber.
The ramp ultimately split into a circular walkway that allowed tourists to view the myriad of carved columns that supported the cistern’s ceiling. Beneath it, the flat, shallow waters made a tranquil home to hundreds of colorful carp that never saw the light of day. Pitt and Loren had little time to admire the fish as they sprinted to the far end of the chamber.
The wooden ramps were wet from the dripping ceiling, and Loren slipped repeatedly in her stocking feet. Falling as they rounded a sharply angled corner, she lay for a second, catching her breath, until Pitt helped her to her feet. The sound of shoes rushing down the stone steps behind them echoed through the chamber.
“Why is she still bothering with us?” Pitt asked aloud as he dragged Loren around the corner.
“Might have something to do with this,” she replied, holding up the black bag still clutched in one hand. “I took it from the van. I thought it might be important.”
Pitt smiled at his wife’s instincts. “Yes, it probably is,” he said. “But it’s not important enough to get killed over.”
The pursuing footfalls had reached the bottom of the stairs, their tone changing to a muted thump on the wooden ramp. Pitt and Loren ran a few more yards, turning down a section of ramp that suddenly terminated in a dead end.
“Give me the bag, and you may walk away.”
The woman’s voice echoed through the cavern in angry repetition. After a silent pause, her steps resumed at a quickened pace. Though still out of view under the dim lights, she was audibly closing the gap.
“Into the water,” Pitt whispered, grabbing the black bag from Loren while guiding her to the rail. In her long dress, she clumsily climbed over the rail, then let Pitt help lower her quietly into the waist-deep water. Her body gave off an involuntary shiver, from both the cool water and the threat at hand.