The Lost Ark Read online

  “Camilla Constantine suggested that I see you,” she said.

  Camilla Constantine owned the hotel next to my bar. She was Dogubayazit’s wealthiest resident and biggest drunk—and I should know.

  “Apparently, Camilla suggested you see me just in time,” I said.

  Faye Roberts glanced down at her bandaged hand. “You think he will be okay?”

  “The yuruk? Oh, sure. He’ll be back to his goats in no time.”

  She nodded, clearly relieved.

  “How can I help you, Miss Roberts?”

  “Please call me Faye.”

  “Sure,” I said. “How can I help you, Miss Faye.”

  She wasn’t amused. She paused and seemed uncertain how to begin. She tapped her finger on her slender thigh. Her nails were short and unpainted. She sucked in some air and finally said, “I need to get to Mount Ararat.”

  I sat back. Behind me the rain pinged against the glass. Cool air escaped through the shoddy cocking around the window. Laughter suddenly erupted from the bar below. Somewhere nearby a goat bleated. I hated goats.

  “Did Camilla mention that the mountain is closed to all visitors?”

  “Yes, but I’m willing to pay triple your asking price, including a bonus if we find what I’m looking for.”

  “I assume you’re talking about Noah’s Ark,” I said.

  She shook her head emphatically. “No, Mr. Ward. A month ago my father set out to climb Mount Ararat and he’s never returned.” She leveled her stare at me. “And I want you to help me find him.”

  I removed a crumpled packet of cigarettes from my flannel shirt, opened the lid and glanced inside. There were three cigarettes left, and one of them was broken. I put an unbroken one in my mouth, and held the box out to Faye Roberts. She leaned forward and looked inside.

  “Do you always offer your clients broken cigarettes?” she asked.

  I pulled the last good cigarette out, which had been hiding behind the broken one.

  “Not this one,” I said. “And you’re not my client.”

  I kept holding the cigarette and she kept looking at it, with the look of a hungry bear eyeing something warm and meaty.

  “So, do you want it or not?”

  She shook her head after a moment of indecision, eyes lingering on the cigarette.

  “I’d better not. I’ve been clean for two months.”

  I shrugged and lit a match and touched a yellow flame to the tip of the cigarette.

  “I quit fourteen years ago. Luckily, I have a very loose definition of quit.” I exhaled a steady stream of blue-gray smoke. “So, who’s your father?”

  She was watching me exhale with obvious interest, green eyes round and envious. “Professor Caesar Roberts.”

  I knew the name. “Biblical archaeologist from California Christian College. Noted author, and ark researcher. Somewhere in my apartment I have one of his books.”

  “The one and only,” she said, face reddening suddenly. “Don’t tell me you actually read that dreadful thing.”

  I grinned. “Your father’s book was quite informative, although I found it a bit too presumptuous. After all, there is no actual proof that the ark exists, and to assume otherwise is just conjecture.”

  Outside, rain slapped hard against the window. Music pulsed from the jukebox in the bar. I put my feet up on the desk. “What do you know of your father’s disappearance?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. A month ago, his research team returned home without him, after their climbing permits had been revoked by the Turkish Department of Interior. Intent on climbing the mountain anyway, my father and one of his graduate students stayed behind and sought the help of a local guide who illegally led them onto the mountain.”

  I shook my head. “A month is a long time, Faye. A man gets lost on Ararat, he stays lost. Forever.”

  “If your intent was to cheer me up, you have failed miserably, Mr. Ward.”

  Her long fingers drummed on the wooden armrest. I could smell her perfume, or at least I thought it was her perfume. It could have been any number of lotions or fragrances that women use to perfume their bodies with. Anyway, it smelled like grapefruit, and I liked it. Through her slightly open mouth, I could see the neat skyline of her tiny bottom teeth. Her tongue slashed back and forth behind her teeth. She was breathing softly. Rain ticked against the window, as it had been all day. Good for the dry land, bad for business.

  “You are asking me to break the law,” I said shortly.

  “I’m asking you to help find my father. If not you, then someone else.”

  I stood and moved over to the window, my back to Faye. Rainwater slid down the pane, obscuring my reflection into a sort of live-action Dali painting. I knew there were many guides in Dogubayazit. Many good guides, but also many bad guides.

  “Why was your father so eager to climb the mountain?” I asked.

  “He...he has a map,” she said. I could hear the blush in her voice.

  “A map? Everyone has a map.” I shook my head. “Local shepherds will gladly sell maps to unsuspecting ark researchers. Of course these maps are worthless, and usually lead you in circles.”

  “Apparently not this one. My father drew it himself, based on his research, if that’s what you want to call it.” Her mouth twisted in distaste.

  In the street below, muddy water, intestinal brown, flowed along broken gutters and over-flowed broken sidewalks. I sighed and rubbed my jaw. I knew I should turn her away and save myself a lot of trouble. Instead, I found myself saying: “I’ll make some inquiries, but I can make no promises.”

  She stood quickly, chair scraping. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time. When can I expect to hear from you again?”

  “At dinner tonight, say eight p.m.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll come get you.”

  I walked her to the door and watched her descend the wooden stairs and go through the quiet barroom below. Most of the male heads turned and watched her leave. I didn’t blame them.

  Chapter Three

  I sat at my desk for another twenty minutes, thinking about the sudden appearance of this feisty American, realizing that she was the first unaccompanied American woman I had seen in three years.

  Basically, the first single American woman in three years.

  I lit a cigarette and thought some more of her and then I thought of Liz and felt guilty, realizing for the first time in a long time that someone had, miraculously, pushed my brooding thoughts of my killed fiancé from my mind for longer than an hour.

  With this realization in mind, I stepped out of my bar and into the rain. I turned my collar up and walked north down a tourist street called Mersin. Dogubayazit was a town that existed on the tourist dollar, or in this case, the Turkish Lira. With Mount Ararat just a short drive away, Noah’s Ark themes were predominant. A shopper could choose from Noah’s Ark creamers to ark windchimes and bathrobes. I liked the Noah’s Ark water fountain. Cute.

  I stopped in front of the Hotel Kiraz, a brooding, massive eight-story fortress comprised of gray bricks and gray paint. It lacked only a moat and a fair maiden.

  I went through the double glass doors into a short entrance hall lined with hanging ferns and multi-colored Persian mohair rugs. I crossed the empty reception room and entered the adjoining restaurant. The restaurant was dark and moody. A fire crackled to my right in a huge stone hearth. The up-turned lights mounted on the walls cast their glow only a few feet, seemingly creating more shadow than light. The bartender was eating a sandwich and reading a newspaper spread out before him.

  His name was Crisnik. I think. I could never get it straight. Turkish names are hell on American tongues. He was a weightlifter and liked to show it, rolling up his sleeves to show-off his knotted muscles. He looked up at me and shoved the last of his sandwich in his mouth.

  “Did your mother teach you to eat like that?” I asked in Turkish.

  “Don’t have a mother. You know that,” said Crisnik.r />
  “That’s right, because you grew up on the streets,” I said, reciting Crisnik’s life history in a nutshell, “and stole a car before you were nine, and stuck a knife in a guy you caught cheating with your lady. I almost forgot. I mean, I hadn’t heard the stabbing story in, what, two weeks? Tell it to me again.”

  He poured a draft beer and placed it before me.

  “Fuck you,” he said in English.

  Then he moved over to the kitchen slide and called out my usual order and then went back to reading the paper. He ignored me.

  I drank the bitter Turkish beer. The room was empty, mostly. A handful of hotel guests drank and ate and spoke quietly in the back. They looked European. They could have been speaking any number of Germanic languages.

  Crisnik turned the page, flattened out the paper.

  “Takes you a long time,” I said, “to look at the pictures.”

  Crisnik didn’t bother to look up. “I’d better go check on your food,” he said. “Because when you’re eating, you keep quiet.”

  He moved off down the bar. Like magic, a hot plate of food appeared in the slide. He scooped it up and set it before me. “Should keep you quiet for a while,” he said.

  The dish was called lahmacun pide. It was a sort of pizza, with ground meat and tomatoes and onions. I ate the first slice and washed it down with the rest of my beer. And as Crisnik poured me another draft, I asked him, “A month ago two Americans were here, one older, one younger.”

  “You’re suppose to be eating, not talking.”

  “I’m a maverick.”

  “You’re also talking with your mouth full.”

  “A maverick with bad habits.”

  Crisnik shook his head. A waitress came by with a drink order. She smiled at me. I swallowed, smiled back. She had big round eyes and rounded everything else. She ordered two whiskeys and sodas. A moment later, Crisnik set two whiskeys and sodas on her tray. She sauntered off, dark pants tight over her posterior.

  “Healthy kid,” I said, watching her.

  Crisnik nodded. “Uh huh.”

  “So, do you remember the Americans?”

  “What makes you think they stayed here?”

  “Best hotel in town.”

  “What about Camilla’s place?” he asked.

  “That’s good too, but I happen to know they didn’t stay there.”

  He was quiet, his tan face calm and smooth. He wore his hair long, sometimes in a ponytail, but it wasn’t in a ponytail today. Probably because he was tired of me making fun of his ponytail. “Tall kid, if I recall,” he said. “But the old man was something else. Frizzy hair and a frizzy beard. He talked fast, even for an American.”

  “They meet anyone?” I asked.

  “Uh huh,” said Crisnik.

  “Daveed Hammid?” I prodded.

  Crisnik looked at me. “If you’ve got this all figured out, why do you need me?”

  I ignored him. “Did you ever see the Americans again?”

  His dark eyes were expressionless.

  “Never again,” he said.

  I thought about that while finishing my meal.

  Chapter Four

  Daveed Hammid lived on the fourth floor of the Hotel Kiraz, in one of those extended stay rooms. He answered the door wearing only a thin white T-shirt and dark blue boxer shorts. He was a big man with a very small head, completely out of proportion, as if he had fallen victim to a tribe of headhunters in New Guinea. He was also cursed with lots of body hair. Everywhere. Thick eyebrows, thick arm hair and thick mustache. Black lochs even coated the tops of his wide bare feet. In his left hand was a full bottle of beer. His areolas showed darkly through the thin T-shirt. He was a part-time Mount Ararat guide and a full-time smuggler of small arms. A man of little scruples and even less integrity. Although he did love babies and puppies, as rumor had it.

  “What the hell do you want?” he said.

  “Good to see you, too, Daveed,” I said.

  “Always a wise guy,” he said. “I don’t have time for you, merkep.” Merkep means asshole, of course.

  He made a move to close the door. I moved too and held the door open with my hand. “You were going to invite me in....”

  Turkish hospitality is legendary. Hosts starve to insure guests have an abundance of food. In fact, the amount of one’s guests directly relates to one’s status within the community: the more guests, the more your status rises.

  Perhaps Daveed was unaware of this social custom.

  “Go to hell, erkeklik yala.” Cocksucker.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  The movement was fast, and suddenly a small handgun appeared in my face. It was a .22 caliber Beretta, with a silencer, the official weapon of the Mossad katsas. Daveed was not Mossad. The gun was steady, Daveed’s index finger wrapped tightly around the trigger. The knuckles of his index finger were white.

  To hesitate would have been a mistake. I pushed the door forward with the palm of my hand. The door smacked Daveed in the forehead. He was thrown backwards, off-balance, recoiling on the balls of his feet. The gun flew up from his swinging arm and clattered across on the floor. I stepped in and punched Daveed in the jaw and he landed hard on his backside.

  I picked up the gun and stuck it my waistband behind my back, the metal cold against my flesh. Daveed’s beer bottle had tumbled end over end, coming to a stop against a potted fern, foaming profusely. I stood over the bottle and shook my head. Such reckless waste.

  Daveed was a small-time hood who considered himself dangerous. He had developed a reputation of being a tough guy. Apparently, he had killed a man in a land far, far away. Convenient. Maybe it had been Darth Vader. Daveed picked himself up and sat heavily in a leather recliner in the living room. The chair creaked and groaned under his considerable weight.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said, holding his jaw in a way that suggested it hurt to speak.

  I closed the door behind me, lit another cigarette. The bathroom was to my left. I glanced inside and flicked a lightswitch. End-of-the-world disarray. Towels, pants, shirts, socks and skivvies in every nook, cranny and corner. Some of the smaller clothing were women’s. A tiny kitchen was to my right, containing only a stove and refrigerator. The door to the fridge was slightly ajar. Cold frost issued out. A hard-looking roll sat in one corner of the linoleum floor.

  I moved down the short hall and entered the living room, which doubled as the bedroom, and saw what I had expected to see. A woman was sitting up in bed, the comforter pulled over her breasts, which appeared ample. Her kinky black hair hung down over the comforter. I didn’t know her, nor did I want to. Her face was broad and pale, lips pouty. She didn’t appear surprised to see me. Perhaps it was a common occurrence for Daveed to have guests punch him in the face. She busied herself by examining her fingernails, which were long and desert orange. In the process, some of the comforter slipped down, exposing more of her right breast. Ample, indeed. No one bothered to introduce me to the woman, which was just fine

  “I didn’t know your sister was in town, Daveed,” I said. He said nothing, perhaps waiting for the stars inside his head to go away. I knew the feeling well.

  “Go to hell,” said the woman, speaking Armenian. Folks in this part of the world speak either Turkish, Arabic or Armenian, and most knew at least a smattering of all three. Her voice was high-pitched. Irritatingly so. My ear drums felt assaulted.

  “It’s better when you keep quiet,” I said to her in the same language. One of her bare legs slid off the bed, her painted toes touching the floor. The calf was smooth and strong, and could have supported a horse. It was rare to see so much skin on an Armenian woman. Maybe this was my lucky day.

  “And judging by this room,” I said to her in the same language, “I may already be in hell.”

  “Godamn you, merkep,” said Daveed, but his voice was unsteady.

  I looked at him. “A month ago you illegally led Professor Caesar Roberts and his graduate student
, Wally Krispin, onto Mount Ararat. But you made it back and they didn’t. So, tell me, what happened to the Americans?”

  Daveed suddenly lunged forward, a long steel blade flashing in his hands, concealed within the recliner for just such an occasion. Had I not side-stepped him, he would have happily disemboweled me. I hit him behind his ear and he fell forward and lay on his side, moaning. He landed on his face and broke his nose.

  The woman screamed and threw a pillow at me. Luckily I dodged the fluffy projectile. I picked Daveed up by the shoulder and deposited him back in the recliner. Next, I rummaged through his kitchen and returned with a flower print hand towel. He took it from me and held it to his nose, wincing. Blood instantly soaked the dirty towel.

  I motioned toward his recliner. “Anything else in that bag of tricks?” I asked.

  The woman was still squawking. I told her to be quiet. She didn’t listen. I threw the pillow back at her and she looked at me, shocked, but at least she was quiet. I turned my attention back to Daveed. “Tell me about the Americans,” I said.

  “Screw the Americans.”

  “That’s where you’re supposed to turn and spit vehemently.”

  He blinked at me dumbly.

  “Never mind,” I said. “What became of the Americans?”

  “How am I suppose to know, merkep? The old man dismissed me once we arrived at the base of the mountain.” He pulled the towel away and looked at it, frowning. His face was pale, probably because most of his blood was in the towel. “I think you broke my nose.”

  “Yes.”

  He swallowed. “I never heard from them again. The old man was an accomplished climber. They had adequate mountaineering equipment—a detailed topography map of Ararat, compass, altimeter, etc. And they had enough clothing and food.”