Blown Circuit (12 page)

“Fine. Say we put the endgame aside. Convince me then,” I said. “You want to partner up? Show me what you’ve got.”

Meryem turned away.

 
“The information I have been given says that the Tesla Device consists of two parts. A pair of remote triggers used to fire the Device and a spherical focusing array from which the charge is expelled. Both components are necessary for the Device to function. Our job is to find these things.”

“That’s it?” I asked. “That’s your information? Do you really think I didn’t already know that?”

I thought back to a sketch in the journal that showed what looked like two brick-shaped mechanisms connected by a long cable to the sphere. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that the mechanisms represented the triggers wired into the focusing array. The thing was, Turkey was a large country and, in terms of actually finding the Device, I had very little more to go on. It would be a big task, some might say an impossible one, to locate the components before anyone else. Regardless of the challenges, I was dealing with a weapon of mass destruction. Failure could mean a massive loss of life.

I watched Meryem kick at the ground below the olive tree. There was a terra-cotta-colored rock there, but as she kicked it with her sneaker, a little more of the rock was revealed, followed by a little more. Soon I saw that it wasn’t a rock at all, but a baked clay tube, like a piece of drain tile.

“My country is a very old place,” Meryem said. “You see this rock? I don’t know what you call it.”

“It looks like a tile. A drain tile.”

“Yes, this drain tile. You know what it is for?”

“The sewer generally. They’re used to connect septic lines from a house to the city sewer system.”

“But you know what it is for?”

“I have a general idea.”

“It is for shit. Shit flows through this pipe. But this is the difference between your country and my country. In America, the sewer pipes, they are new. Here, this piece of pipe is from the Greeks or the Romans, I do not know. What I am saying is, the shit has been flowing through my country for many thousands of years. Do you know what this means?”

“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

“My people, we are enthusiasts, no, we are experts in bullshit. When we see it, we know it. Do you know what I am telling you?”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter?”

“Yes. You understand. That is the expression I was looking for. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. As long as we tell each other the truth, we will get along. Are you at peace with this, Mr. Raptor?”

I didn’t need to think about it. “I am.”

“Then come,” she said. “I will show you my hand.”

Chapter 21

W
E
TOOK
THE
motorcycle to the village. I drove, wind in my hair, finally pulling over to the side of the narrow street behind a beat-up fire-engine red Fiat 500. Meryem hopped off and I kicked the bike onto its stand.

“Where to?” I asked.

“The arm,” she said.
 

“Arm?”

“Did you read your own journal, Mr. Raptor?”

“I skimmed through.”

“Then come. We have information regarding the arm.”

I thought back to the journal, remembering a graphic sketch of a human arm opposite some sort of schematic. The disembodied arm was bent at the elbow, an index finger pointed outward. It was reasonably well muscled and sawn off at an oblique angle at the shoulder, arteries and veins drawn in graphic detail. In effect, it looked like something that would be more at home in a Renaissance medical text than a technical journal.

What was strange, though, given the realism of the sketch, were the ovoid shapes in a ring around the arm. They looked like drops of blood or fruit. I hadn’t had time to consider what the shapes might mean. But Meryem had. That was obvious. So I followed her lead, down the narrow street to a storefront marked by a three-foot-high amphora on the sidewalk.
 

“We go here,” she said.

I followed her inside the shop, a tinkling bell announcing our arrival. Rough, hand-scraped timbers formed the floor, row after row of amphorae lining the plaster walls. These amphorae were filled with olives as well, some of them brined, some of them not. Oil-filled glass bottles stood on the shelves behind the amphorae. A persistent squeaking hum caused me to look through a wooden door into the back room. There I caught a glimpse of a large iron machine, its big steel counterweight spinning round and round.

“That is the press,” Meryem said. “The olive oil is very famous from this region.”

I heard the olive press shut down, and a wiry man with narrow-set eyes and wispy, flyaway hair entered from the back room. He had a huge gap between his front teeth and wore industrial blue pants and a ribbed undershirt. The knotty muscles in his arms glistened with sweat, an iron bar hanging low from his left hand. Given that he had shut the operation down to come out front, I surmised that he was alone or had, at most, a couple of helpers back there. The squeaky turn of the big counterweight slowly spun down until we were left with only the street noise. The guy said something in Turkish. Meryem answered him.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” I said.

“Nothing. I ask him about his oil.”

“What about it?”

“Family business,” Meryem said. “He has been making oil for twenty-five years. His father made oil before him. His father before that. He says it is the best oil in all of the village.”

I picked up one of the glass bottles. It was about the same size as a wine bottle, but squarer where it tapered into a shorter neck, with a real cork in the top. The oil inside glowed a golden-yellow, the sunlight filtering through. There was no label, but as I looked into the bottle, I saw the emblem of a sun molded into its glass base. I recognized the emblem immediately. It was the same sun I had seen on the Kurdish flag.

“Show him the book,” Meryem said.

“I’d prefer not to parade it around,” I replied.

“OK. I will show him.”

The journal was in the pocket of my cargo shorts, so I wasn’t sure what Meryem was going to be showing him, but she pulled out her smartphone and displayed a photograph of the sketch of the severed arm. As she did, I immediately recognized what the ovoid shapes surrounding the arm were. Not blood. Olives. Olives like everywhere else in the shop. Meryem pointed directly at the missing arm and spoke in Turkish. The wiry guy listened. Then he dead-bolted the front door of his shop closed and beckoned us into the back room. I watched the iron bar sway in his hand as he walked.

“What are we doing here again?” I asked.

“We will find out,” Meryem said.

I kept my eyes on the guy as we entered the darkened space at the back of the shop. There weren’t any windows back there, but there was a loading dock with large open doors that faced an alley. Two women in kerchiefs sat on the edge of the loading dock, their feet dangling down. There were some old saw blades on the walls, some knives, some rusted tools and, of course, the old iron olive press. I had to say, if you wanted to dismember somebody in private, this was the place. Sitting in the corner was a rough-hewn stone wheel that looked like it had come off an even older press.
 

The guy headed directly for the stone wheel. It was probably three feet in diameter and a foot and a half thick with a hole in the center. It was a very old wheel. Might have been the very first wheel ever. That’s how ancient it looked.

“It is here,” the wiry guy said.

Apparently, he spoke English. I silently cursed myself for speaking to Meryem as if he couldn’t understand. I had to be more careful. The guy bent low and put both hands behind the stone wheel where it laid against the wall. Then he pulled, and I heard a gentle grinding sound as he removed something from behind it. Whatever he had removed from behind the wheel was covered in burlap, the kind they used to make potato sacks from back when natural fibers weren’t something you paid a premium for.

The burlap was darkly stained. Maybe with grease and oil, maybe with blood, it was hard to tell. There was a musty odor. Clearly, the package had been on the floor for a very long time. So long, that when my fingers finally parted the dark, sticky fabric, I was unprepared for what I saw.
 

Chapter 22

I
EXPECTED
TO
see shards of bone and desiccated flesh inside the burlap. But instead of skin and bone, I got rock. Because the arm in the burlap had been chiseled from marble. It belonged to a statue. A larger-than-life statue that resembled the sketch almost perfectly. The wiry guy picked up the end of the arm with the hand on it and I picked up the other. He made sure I had a grip on it and stepped away. Then he nodded politely, and thirty seconds later I was trying to look casual as I strapped a marble arm to the rack on the rear of the bike.

“How did you know?” I asked Meryem.

“A tip,” she said. “As I said, MIT has been looking for the Device for a very long time.”

I fired up the bike, Meryem hopping on behind me.

“Where to?”

“Now I think we see whether the arm fits.”

“Like I said, where?”

“I will show you. Go!”

W
E
DIDN
’
T
BOTHER
returning to the safe house. Meryem had a go-bag and I had my pack so we just followed the twisting Aegean coastline before heading south and finally east. We rode all day like that, with only a couple breaks for food and fuel, and soon the sun was setting on our backs. Meryem felt good on the back of the bike. She didn’t cling to me as I’m sure I had clung to her on the way down from Istanbul, but I knew she was there because I could feel her light touch on the seat behind me. She didn’t try to hold a conversation with me either, which I liked, because it made it less likely that she would discover that I was an impostor and try to shoot me in the head. Instead of talking, we got to know each other the old-fashioned way. I got the feel of her and she got the feel of me.

It was long past dark by the time we finally made it to the village of Geyre that evening. I was stiff and sore, and it was Meryem's tap on my shoulder that alerted me that we should pull over. She had told me that the tiny village was just outside Aphrodisias, an ancient Greek city, now an archeological site, known for its sculpture.

I slowed the bike to a crawl on the cracked pavement, dimly lit buildings lined either side of the street. The facades were completely open to the road and there were chairs and tables everywhere, men sitting in groups of three and four, talking and drinking chai. There was a mosque farther up the street, its minarets rising high into the night, and beside it was what looked like a spartan hotel sitting atop one of the teahouses. Meryem pointed the building out and I pulled the motorcycle to a stop in front of it, shutting down the engine and kicking it onto its stand.

“Ask for two rooms,” Meryem said.

“Have you heard my Turkish?”

“We are in a village. You are a man. In my country, it is better you speak.”

Meryem waited by the bike as I walked into the teahouse on the bottom floor of the hotel. A few men looked up at me, but not many. Then the proprietor came out from behind a counter, a tray of tea in hand. My Turkish language skills weren’t up to the task, so I held up two fingers and pointed upstairs, miming going to sleep. As far as I could tell, it worked. The proprietor held up a finger of his own indicating that I should wait a second. Then he put the tray down at a nearby table and led me up a creaky staircase to a narrow landing.
 

I counted five doors. He opened the nearest one. Inside was a basic but clean room with a wooden floor, a bed, and an armoire. He pointed to a shared bathroom down the hall. The proprietor then showed me a second room, similar in every way, and I paid right there in the hall. He gave me two keys, and I went down to the bike to grab our stuff.

“Nice place?” Meryem asked.

“Better than the side of the road,” I replied.

I picked up the marble arm and my backpack and we trudged through the lower teahouse and up the stairs. I couldn’t manage the door, so I handed Meryem my key and she stepped inside the room, crossing to sit on the single bed, testing its springs. I dropped my pack and laid the marble arm beside it.

“Bouncing,” she said.

“Bouncy,” I replied.

“That’s what I said. Bouncing.”

“No, the word is bouncy.”

“Come,” she said. “Sit.”

What the hell. I was tired, so I sat.

“Why argue with me?” Meryem said. “I say bouncing, you say bouncy. What is the difference?”

I sat beside her on the woolen blanket. I had to admit, at that moment, in my mind at least, there was no difference at all. A bare bulb hung from the cracked ceiling, while arabesque music drifted up through the wooden floor. I watched a lizard scurry along the plaster wall.
 

“When I was a very young girl, when all my family was together, I dreamed one day I would live on a farm,” Meryem said. “There would be sheep and cows. There would be chickens and ducks and olives and horses. There would be land for the animals. There would be space in my house for my mother and father, for my three brothers, a space for us to be together,” she said. “I would be very happy.”

Meryem turned to me. She sat only a few inches away, the light from the bulb reflected in her dark eyes. She looked soulful at that moment. Soulful and true. She took my hands in hers.

“What happened?” I said.

“I became a spy,” Meryem said. “I joined MIT and no more did I think of the farm. But you know what?”

“What?”

“I am thinking of it now.”

Meryem squeezed my hands and smiled a sad smile.

“Do not make my mistakes, Mr. Raptor. I am perhaps two or three years older than you. But my fate is decided. I will never live on that farm.”

“I don’t believe that. If you want it, you can do it,” I said. “You just need to want it badly enough.”

“This is very American,” she said. “Always looking on the bright side.”