“Allo?”
“Hi. Is that Inspector Arkadian?”
“Yes.”
“This is Agent Shepherd — from the FBI.”
“Oh yes, thanks for calling back. Apologies for the lateness of the hour.”
Shepherd glanced out at the brightening day. “I’m not in the States. I just landed in Turkey.” There was a pause on the line. “You said you had some information,” Shepherd prompted.
“Yes.”
“About whom?”
“About Melisa Erroll mainly.”
Shepherd felt the blood drain from his face and he had to take a deep breath to steady himself. He glanced up and saw the guard frowning in his direction. There was a sign by his head with a picture of a cell phone that had a line through it and something in Turkish that undoubtedly said “No phones.”
“Listen,” Shepherd said, suddenly paranoid that his only lifeline to everything was about to be confiscated. “Can I call you back in a few minutes?”
“Where are you exactly?”
“I’m at Gaziantep airport, I’m just going through passport control.”
“Write this down.”
Arkadian was already reeling off directions and Shepherd scrawled them on his hand beneath the phone number. His eyes flicked between the message and the guard.
“Give these directions to a taxi driver and give my name when you reach the first roadblock,” Arkadian said. “I’ll see you in about forty minutes.”
94
The fire took two days to burn its way through the entire collected works of mankind, and another five before the smoke cleared and it cooled down sufficiently for anyone to venture safely into the part of the mountain where the library had been.
Thomas was the first to step through the remains of the air lock. Both doors were gone entirely and the metal frames that had held them were twisted beyond recognition. He stood in what had once been the entrance, awed by the blackened nothingness the library had become. The black cloaks followed him, one of them breaking down when he saw the devastation.
“See what you can salvage,” Thomas said, “and I will do the same.”
The control room was protected by a steel door that was still warm to the touch when Thomas tried to open it. It had buckled in its frame, jamming it tightly in place, giving him hope that something beyond it may have survived. He found a length of metal on the floor, part of a table, and jammed it into a gap in the side of the ruined door. He leaned back, heaving on the bar until the door shifted with a shriek of tortured metal. He shone his torch through the gap and hope fell away into the darkness beyond.
The fire had gotten in here too. Even though the door had kept the flames out, the air must have still become superheated and ignited everything flammable in the room. Without oxygen it hadn’t burned for long but it had been enough to destroy everything. The control systems and circuitry had all melted and fallen down through the racks, collecting on the floor in bizarre puddles of solidified plastic and wire. He grabbed the sides of the door, leaving finger marks in the soot and wrenched it open, wide enough to step through. Practically his whole life’s work had been contained in this room. It had been the most technologically advanced and sophisticated library preservation system ever devised, but in the end all of it had been undone by a madman with something as simple as a fallen candle.
He took a breath laced with smoke and headed to the far end of the room where another steel door the size of a briefcase was set into the stone. He wiped the soot from the dial protruding from the center so he could read the numbers then carefully dialed in the code to open the safe.
One of Thomas’s initiatives had been to create a digital copy of every single item in the Great Library. It had taken nearly five years to accomplish. The entire collection — millions of books and hundreds of millions of pages — had fit on to just eight removable storage discs and they were kept in this safe. The door he was unlocking was seven inches thick and the rest of the safe was set into solid rock, which should have helped keep the insides cool. Even so, the fire had been so fierce that the drives might still be damaged. But as long as they were still intact he could repair them and effectively rescue the contents of the library from the flames.
He dialed in the final number, twisted the handle and heaved open the door. He stared at the glowing interior, untouched by flame or smoke and looking totally incongruous among the devastation. But it was empty. In truth he had half-expected it. There was only one other person who knew the codes to this safe.
Malachi had been thorough if nothing else.
95
It took Shepherd five attempts and an offer to pay double the fare before he finally found a taxi driver willing to take him to Ruin.
“I go only as far as roadblock,” the driver said, “then you walk.” Shepherd took it, thinking it had to be better than walking from the airport, which seemed his only other option.
He sat in the back of the cab on worn fabric seats, breathing in the chemical scent of vanilla air freshener and watching the unfamiliar countryside and olive trees flit past his window. Ahead of him the Taurus Mountains rose up in a jagged horizon. He tried not to think of what might lie ahead or what he might be about to learn. There could be no turning back now.
The road curved up into foothills, cutting out the sun so it seemed as though they were entering a valley of shadows. They rounded a bend and saw a long line of red brake lights ahead, lighting up the gloom and stretching away to a distant barrier manned by armed soldiers wearing battle fatigues and surgical face masks. The taxi pulled to a stop at the end of the line. There were at least twenty other cars in front of them, a few other taxis but mainly family cars laden with luggage, exactly like the ones Shepherd had seen heading into Charleston.
“Crazy people,” the driver shook his head. “Who comes here?”
“They’re just heading home,” Shepherd said.
The driver shook his head and sucked his teeth.
There was some kind of discussion going on at the barrier with the soldiers who kept shaking their heads, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses, their fingers pointing along the lines of their guns, ready to drop to the trigger if things got out of hand.
“I’ll walk from here.” Shepherd handed the driver some notes and got out without waiting for change.
The air outside smelled of cypress sap and wet stone, a huge improvement on the chemical tang of the taxi. Shepherd walked along the edge of the road, his eyes fixed on the barrier ahead. One of the soldiers sensed him coming and turned the black disks of his shaded eyes toward him, twisting his body at the same time so the HK33 slung across his chest was pointing in his direction. Shepherd smiled and raised his hands over his head, one of them holding his badge.
“I’m an American police officer,” he said, arriving at the barrier and stopping short of it. The soldier said nothing. “I’m looking for an Inspector Arkadian. You speak English?”
“No, he doesn’t.” A bear of a man in his early fifties squeezed past the soldiers and peered at Shepherd’s badge through a pair of half-moon, tortoiseshell glasses perched above a surgical mask. He held a hand up in greeting and showed Shepherd his own ID badge identifying himself as Inspector Arkadian. “You’re a little far from home, Special Agent.” He looked up and fixed Shepherd with sharp eyes. “Normally we have a little more warning about international cooperation efforts.”