Rogue Angel - The Golden Elephant Part 7

She started and looked up. A painfully earnest young man with a mop of heavy coal-black hair stood respectfully back from her chair. "Yes?" she said.

"Curator Bahceli would like to speak with you in his office immediately, if it is convenient to you."

Bahceli had been more than kind in granting Annja access to the museum's special collection, as well as giving her a personal tour. If he wanted to see her, the polite and politic thing to do would be to respond promptly.

"Certainly," she said, rising. She felt a brief tug of concern over leaving her computer unattended. But the reading room was closed to the public. And Bahceli, for all his jovial manner, did not strike Annja as the sort who'd put up with pilferage in his department. It was a cardinal sin in such an inst.i.tution, for obvious reasons. She walked briskly back to his office.

But when she rapped on the open door, then peeked around the frame, the office was empty.

A dreadful certainty she'd been tricked stuck in the base of her throat. She turned and walked back to the reading room as quickly as she could without making a scene that would raise questions she didn't want to answer-or leave hanging.

Her computer and von Hoiningen's open journal still sat on the table. Disappearing out the far door of the long, narrow room she saw a familiar, expensively clad figure whose well-schooled grace did not conceal a certain walk-through-a-wall thrustfulness to its gait.

"Easy," Annja said, as if cursing.

The figure vanished from sight. Annja sprinted after. She got all the way out into the warm daylight with nothing to show but a wisp of expensive scent and a suspicion of mocking laughter hanging in the air.

She made herself march back to the reading room, neither das.h.i.+ng nor slouching in defeat. Rudolf von Hoiningen's aggravating notebook was intact. A surprisingly quick diagnostic rea.s.sured her that no nasty software had been quickly and covertly installed on her computer.

"But it's not like there's no such thing as a digital camera," Annja muttered.

She was sure the little witch of a pot hunter had photographed the relevant pages to translate or digest at her leisure. Annja knew it with bitter certainty. Not that Easy didn't speak German, along, apparently, with every other known language and an alien tongue or two. She probably had a photographic memory to boot.

Cautious, here, Annja told herself. Let's not wallow too deeply in paranoia.

But even paranoids have enemies, she thought.

And once more hers had gotten the better of her.

12.

"Annja! Annja Creed! What a delightful surprise."

On the steps of the museum Annja stopped and turned at the greeting.

"Giancarlo!" she exclaimed, with a rush of genuine pleasure. Then, frowning slightly, she said, "This is quite a coincidence."

His dark, lean, handsome face lit with a smile. "Some might call it kismet. As they do here, come to think of it. I might call it synchronicity."

He came forward holding out his hands to her. He was dressed in that expensively casual way that only the wealthy can pull off. His hair was slicked back seal-like.

"But really, it's not such a great coincidence after all, is it? We share a profession, and many particular interests. My researches have brought me to Istanbul. Naturally, as a Mediterranean archaeologist, I gravitate here. I can only presume you have done the same," he said.

"Yes," she replied guardedly.

"Of course, you are a Renaissance scholar," he said, taking her hands in his firm, strong grip. Despite the humid heat off the Bosporus his palms were dry. She envied him; she herself had been outdoors less than a minute and felt as if she'd just emerged from the shower with her clothes on. Autumn or not, cold nights or not, it still got plenty warm during the day. "The Turks were the great enemy of Renaissance Europe. So naturally at some point in your studies you likewise find yourself here."

He said it with such conviction that she didn't have the heart to disabuse him. She accepted a warm hug and a peck on her cheek.

She smiled at him. "It's good to see you again," she said, "no matter the reason."

"Will you join me for a cup of coffee?" he said. "The coffee here is excellent. But what am I saying? Of course it is. It's Turkey!"

He laughed delightedly. She laughed with him. She always appreciated a man who could laugh at himself.

"SO THAT'S WHERE THINGS stand," Annja said. She sat slumped in a chair in the air-conditioned comfort of a cafe two blocks from the Museum. "Every clue I find seems just to add another link to the chain. I never seem to get closer."

She shook her head. "And the most substantial clue I've managed to locate I just handed to the world's most notorious pot hunter on a silver platter."

Giancarlo nodded sympathetically. He had listened raptly as she poured out her story to him-minus the details of exactly what it was she sought.

"Surely it's not so bad, Annja, my dear," he told her.

"But it is," she said, tossing back her hair. A ceiling fan swooshed overhead. Annja wasn't sure whether it was needed to circulate the refrigerated air or just there because it was an expected element of Turkish atmosphere. "I think-I think people have been killed over this already," she concluded.

"But you have the information you needed, do you not?"

"Well-I have leads to follow. And I seem to have confirmation that what I've come chasing clear across Europe is actually real. That's encouraging, anyway. But I just feel so frustrated. I keep running and running after this...thing, and I never seem to get any closer."

"But you have gotten all there is to be gained in Istanbul, yes?" he asked.

Reluctantly she nodded. "I'm afraid so."

He stood with an abruptness that belied the languid ease with which he'd sat and listened to her outpourings of woe. "Well, then! You are off duty. Is it not time to relax and put your troubles aside? This is a beautiful city, full of history that you are rarely qualified to appreciate. At least let me show some of it to you and take your mind off your troubles."

"Sure," she said, and stood to join him. "That sounds wonderful."

WITH GIANCARLO AS HER laughing, knowledgeable and attentive guide they took in the sights of the great ancient city. Annja thoroughly enjoyed being a tourist for the day.

"In 1534," Giancarlo said that evening, with candlelight dancing in his eyes, "the sultan, Suleiman, heard that the young widow of the count of Fundi was the most beautiful woman in all Europe. She was also renowned for her wit and erudition, although it is possible these mattered less to the sultan. So he sent his great corsair captain Barbarossa to kidnap her. They attacked in the middle of the night. As her family retainers battled to hold them off she leaped on a horse, rode down several would-be abductors and galloped off to safety in her nightgown."

The conversation of the other diners was soft susurration in the background. Through the great window beside the couple the fabled ancient city tumbled down to the water from seven hills almost as famous as Rome's. Its lights made jeweled streaks across the slowly rippling waters of the Golden Horn.

"A woman after my own heart," Annja said.

They'd taken in a few sights such as the Blue Mosque, and a few nondescript stubs of wall, here incorporated into later structures, there holding up green slopes, that Annja's escort told her dated from Lygos, the first port settlement, which predated even Byzantium's founding by the Greeks of Megara. At evening they found themselves sitting in a pleasantly upscale Turkish restaurant.

Annja felt a strange vibration. She frowned, wondering if she were somehow getting dizzy. Then she noticed ice tinkling in gla.s.ses and silverware rattling. A French tourist couple across the dimly lit restaurant looked around in wild-eyed dismay; a middle-aged j.a.panese couple sitting near Giancarlo and Annja continued eating without paying visible attention.

Annja smiled and tried to relax back into her chair, although her hand was not altogether steady setting her lamb kabob down into its bed of rice. "I'm not used to earthquakes," she said. "I guess that comes from growing up in New Orleans and now living in New York. They're what you'd call pretty seismically stable. And I've never really experienced them much on digs."

Giancarlo grinned back over a forkful of dolma, eggplant stuffed with lamb and rice, doused with hot red pepper in olive oil and the sour yogurt Turks served with every meal and practically every course. "A tremor," he said, with a gleam in his dark eyes. The lashes were long, almost feminine. Yet they had no effect of reducing his masculine appeal. Rather the opposite-something Annja was becoming more and more uncomfortably aware of as she pa.s.sed time in his company. "Hardly an earthquake by Turkish standards," he said.

He took a sip of wine. "Turkey is terribly afflicted with earthquakes, you may be aware," he said. "The great tsunami of 1509 overrode the seawall and killed ten thousand people."

She smiled wanly. "Let's hope these shocks stay more modest," she said. "At least while we're here. Oh, dear. I guess that sounds selfish."

"It sounds eminently sensible," he said. "More wine?"

"No, thanks. I'm not really much of a drinker. I am surprised to find alcohol so readily available in a Muslim country."

"The Turks have long had a reputation for their...relaxed interpretation of Islam. And of course the country's been officially secular since the 1920s, although that could change in an eye blink, the way things go these days."

"You're very knowledgeable about Turkey," Annja said.

He shrugged. "I feel great affinity for Istanbul. Much history has pa.s.sed through here-pa.s.sed through that great harbor out there."

"Much cruelty, too, it would seem," she said. "As much before the Ottomans conquered the city as after." She thought of her recent adventures in the city with Roux and Garin, then pushed them aside.

"You speak of the Byzantines with their blindings and other baroque punishments? To be sure. But was there ever a ruler more justly named Magnificent than Suleiman? A cruel man, claro. claro. But a scholar, a warrior, a patron of the arts." But a scholar, a warrior, a patron of the arts."

He shook his sleek head. Annja thought she saw genuine sadness in his eyes. "There's so little of splendor in our present age, isn't there?" he said.

She sighed. "I suppose so," she said. "Maybe that's why I spend so much time burrowing into the past myself."

AS THEY WALKED A PROMENADE Annja's arm had threaded into the crook of Giancarlo's. She kept meaning to disengage it.

"That story you told me over dinner," she said. "About Suleiman sending raiders to kidnap that Italian countess. Was that real? That actually happened?"

"Ah, but yes," he said. "The woman in question was Julia Colonna, of a great and famous family. You forget I am Italian! Would I lie about such a thing-to a fellow archaeologist and historian, to boot? Not to mention a woman herself notable for both beauty and intellect!"

Annja laughed and shook her head. "Thank you. And no. I suppose not. Although it's a delightfully lurid episode I somehow managed never to hear about. It just seems too melodramatic to have taken place in reality. Like the stories I read when I was a girl. I'd get enthused about them, and then the sisters would tell me they never happened and never could happen. Since then I've kind of...collected stories like that from history. To prove to myself that adventures really are real."

Listen to yourself, her inner voice said. You carry the sword of a martyred French saint. You find yourself fighting evil. And you need proof there's such a thing as adventure?

But Giancarlo's handsome face had set. He lifted his chin, stopped, turned to face her in the light of the crescent moon rising over the plateau behind them. He gripped her arm. Is he going to kiss me? she wondered. She carefully refrained from wondering whether she would let him.

"I fear I have a more disturbing tale for you now, Annja," he said. "I hope you will forgive me for not telling you before. But you seemed so distraught by your misadventure in the museum that I hadn't the heart until you had time to recover."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Professor Gendron has been murdered," he said. "She was found shot to death in her office with a .40-caliber handgun."

Annja turned to the ancient weathered parapet. She was scarcely aware of breaking free of his double grasp, strong though it was.

A .40-caliber handgun. Trademark of Easy Ngwenya.

She walked a few blind steps, stopped when the wall's rough stone rapped her knees and its sharp edge bit into her thighs. She felt as if she were encapsulated in a gla.s.s bubble, around which seethed a storm, a veritable tempest of emotions-rage, grief, fear and self-reproach.

Despite their flash acquaintance she had connected with Isabelle Gendron. As she had with Sir Sidney Hazelton.

It was a paradox of Annja's life, or nature. She was a highly empathetic person, someone who tended to get along with others and make friends easily. Yet she led an essentially hermitic existence. She had trouble maintaining friends.h.i.+ps. It wasn't that she fell out with friends; she kept touch with a horde of people dotted all over the globe.

But it was a desultory sort of contact, conducted almost entirely through e-mail, the odd text message or cell-phone call. Spa.r.s.e and at distance.

It was Annja's gift, and curse, to make contact at a fairly deep level almost instantly. But not to keep it. Everyone she met, it seemed, touched her deeply-and went away.

Which, needless to say, contributed more than slightly to the lack of romance in her life.

Annja shook her head and forced herself back into the present moment-horrible as it had become. The news of Isabelle Gendron's murder was like an amputation in her soul.

Especially since she could not avoid the guilty certainty that she, Annja Creed, was the reason that joy-and life-filled woman had been murdered.

She found herself sobbing in Giancarlo's arms on a concrete bench. He held her and let her sorrow run its course.

Finally the tears ran dry. Such open displays of emotion were unlike her. But this atrocity had blindsided her. She sat up. Felt long, surprisingly strong fingers grip her chin and lift her face upward. His lips touched hers.

For a moment she yielded to his kiss. Then she turned away.

Giancarlo stiffened. From the corner of her eye, still tear-blurred, she could see a hurt expression on his handsome face in the amber glow of a distant street lamp.

"I'm sorry," she said.

She stood and took a few steps away. And Easy Ngwenya, she thought. There was no question-she was locked in a contest with a conscienceless murderer.

"At least let me help you!" he cried.

Annja shook her head. She avoided his dark and fervent eyes. "I wish I could, Giancarlo," she said. "But I don't want to put you in the crosshairs, too."

The main reason she couldn't look at him was her dread he would read in her face her real fear.

What if I already have?

13.