The Double Eagle (32 page)

ÇEMBERLITA
9:37
P.M.

N
ight had settled with a thick, dusty cloak. The air was dry and the choking smell of rotting food and stale exhaust fumes drifted through the narrow streets, pooling in doorways and under the streetlights’ sodium glow like a thick fog. In some places, old newspapers had been placed over the drain covers and wetted down to try and contain the warm flush of decay oozing up from the sewers.

From the rooftop vantage point that Tom had led them to, they could count at least five men, all of them heavily armed, guarding the cistern entrance. It was an ugly concrete shed entered through a single metal door about a hundred yards in front of them. Cars arrived and accelerated away. Faces were checked against computer printouts with flashlights. People spoke in low, urgent voices.

“How are we going to get past them?” whispered Jennifer as she squinted through the rubberized binoculars that Tom had handed her.

“We’re not.” Tom smiled. “We’re going to go under them.” He crawled over to the other side of the roof, dodging the washing lines that had been strung across its satellite-dish-encrusted surface like bunting. “Through there.”

He pointed to the square on the other side of the street. Lit by a tawdry neon sign, a narrow passage nestled between a spice shop on one side and a carpet shop on the other. The spices were fluorescent reds and yellows and oranges laid out in a small mountain range of conical piles, like sand at the bottom of an hourglass. The carpets, by contrast, were dark, muddy reds and browns occasionally lifted by a dirty white or yellow. The shop was so full, the carpets piled so high, that the windows seemed to be bowing out, the glass stretching and straining.

“If you say so.” She didn’t sound convinced.

“Are you ready?” Tom was worried that Jennifer was not feeling a hundred percent, that the cathartic effort of her earlier unburdening had taken its unavoidable emotional and physical toll. But he knew it was pointless to suggest she stay behind. She would never agree.

“Yeah.” She nodded, her face set into a determined half smile, as if she sensed Tom’s concern and wanted to reassure him.

They made their way off the roof and down the staircase that led out to the street. From there it was a two-minute walk to the narrow passage, the intermittent blinking of the neon illuminating their way.

Tom led them under the sign and into the passage. About halfway down, on the right-hand side, a circular window had been roughly hacked into the wall and behind it sat a bearded Turk, his face caving in on itself with age. Tom handed over a few dirty notes. A wet, minty heat blew up the passage toward them.

“What is this place?” asked Jennifer as they continued down the passage, the ragged concrete floor and walls giving way abruptly to a rich and dense white marble.

“A hammam. You know, a Turkish bath. It’s one of the oldest in the city, built over four hundred years ago by Sinan. Men that way. Women that way.” He nodded at the corridor to his right that led to another wooden door, identical to the one they were facing now.

“Are we splitting up?” asked Jennifer with surprise.

“No, we’re heading this way. To the basement.” Tom indicated a narrow wooden door recessed into the far left-hand wall. It opened onto a spiral staircase, the steep stone steps winding down into a tenebrous nothingness.

At the bottom, the staircase gave onto a low, stone flagged room, lit by a prancing light that seeped under a door at the far end.

“This is where all the water for the baths upstairs is heated,” Tom explained.

The demonic roar of the gas-fired water heaters grew as they neared the door. The heat became more and more intense with each step, until—almost without them realizing it—their clothes were soaked, the sweat seeming to bubble up and out of their skin.

“These baths used to be supplied with water from the main aqueduct.”

Tom’s voice sounded weak through the scalding thunder as they stepped into the sulphurous depths of the main boiler room. It was a mass of metal and fire, a hissing nest of pipes snaking out from two huge cauldrons, their roasting bellies glowing through thick glass inspection panels like a pair of malevolent eyes.

“The water came here via the Cistern of Theodosius.” He had to shout to be heard. “Now the water is piped in from a modern ring main, but the old water tunnels are still here. Look.” He pointed at a large square opening about six feet up the wall that had been crudely boarded over. “Here, give me a hand.”

He grabbed a thick metal pipe off the floor and rammed it into a narrow gap between two of the boards. Pulling down on the pipe they levered off first one board, then another two, the dry, brittle wood splintering, the rusty nails snapping. Soon there was enough space for them to crawl through.

Tom slipped a black Maglite out of his trousers and flicked it on before clamping it firmly between his teeth. Pulling himself up to the hole, he dragged himself in. Jennifer followed right behind him.

After about three minutes of slow progress, their elbows and knees raw and tender where they had drawn them raspingly over the tunnel’s rough stone surface, the narrow space widened out enough to allow them to almost stand. The flashlight flickered over the dry walls around them. In the darkness ahead, dim lights appeared and then vanished as they approached. Rats, Tom guessed with a grimace.

A hundred and fifty yards further on, their clothes filthy, the dark passage grew lighter and the faint murmur of voices echoed toward them. Tom snapped the flashlight off and tiptoed toward the noise. The tunnel mouth was sealed by a large rusty metal grille. They approached it carefully, crouching down when they reached it. Peering through, they could see that the tunnel emerged about ten feet off the cistern floor and four feet below the ceiling.

Thick stone columns, their sides pale and worn smooth, stretched the length and breadth of the cistern, supporting the roof at regular intervals. Originally, the entire room would have been flooded and the columns totally submerged. But now, with only a few inches of water covering the floor, they disappeared into the distance, reflecting off the surface like the bleached ribs of an enormous whale.

Below and to the left of them, about twenty feet away, a large wooden platform had been erected next to a brick staircase that Tom assumed ran up to street level and the concrete shed they had observed before. Chairs had been arranged in neat rows in front of a low podium.

Arc lights had been lashed to the corners of the platform, revealing a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors as people moved across its wooden surface, a shifting human mosaic. Tom counted perhaps thirty people in all and their voices filtered up to him—French, Russian, Italian, English—a babble of sound accompanying nervous handshakes and half smiles.

Abruptly, the lights dimmed and an expectant silence fell over the assembled guests as they took their seats.