14
Beyazit Tower
Istanbul University
Beyazit Square
Istanbul, Turkey
19 March 2010
A cool breeze blew in from the Golden Horn, the inlet of the Bosphorus River. Lourds stood with the breeze in his face and smelt the salt of the sea.
From his vantage point at the top of Beyazit Tower, he could see all the Old City, both banks of the Golden Horn and the mouth of the Sea of Marmara. If he squinted, he could even see Princes’ Islands where he had once taken Olympia Adnan to picnic. Travel there was by horse and cart, and the pace was a lot slower than on the mainland. Many of the cottages and dwellings dated back to Victorian times when the island became a vacation resort for the wealthy. Throughout the history of the islands, royalty had been banished there again and again. European kings and princes had been followed by sultans as Constantinople fell to be reborn as Istanbul. As a seaport and as a tie between the East and the West, the city had never had a peer.
The tower had been constructed of wood in 1749, then burned during the Great Fire of Cibali seven years later. Due to its importance as a fire-watch station, the tower had been rebuilt almost immediately, but it had been once more made of wood. It wasn’t until after the tower’s destruction in 1826 that the existing stone tower had been built in 1828. The baroque architecture made it look like something out of a fantasy story.
Three more floors were added an 1849 so the watchman could signal the approach of unfriendly ships as well as where fire was located in the city. During the day, baskets of different numbers were lowered to indicate where the fire was. At night, coloured lamps were lit to replace the basket system.
Lourds easily imagined what it had been like during those early years. The watchman stationed there would have found work and hobbies to fritter away the long boring hours between fires and excitement. No matter how the years passed, there were things in human experience that never changed.
‘You’re smiling.’
Lourds turned to face Olympia. ‘Of course I’m smiling. I’m standing at the top of the Beyazit Tower. All the times I’ve visited Istanbul, I’ve never climbed the tower.’
‘You have to have special permission.’
‘I know. I was told. On every occasion I asked.’
Olympia smiled. ‘And if you wanted to climb the tower so badly, why didn’t you ask me?’
‘I didn’t want to embarrass you in case you couldn’t make it happen.’
Olympia arched her brows. ‘Did you doubt I could make it happen?’
‘Never. Your connections have surprised me.’
‘So were you just smiling? Or is there somebody else?’
Lourds reached for her and pulled her into his embrace. ‘Actually, I was thinking about the picnic on Princes’ Islands.’
Olympia snuggled into him and held his hands. She felt warm against him and smelt of lavender.
‘When we missed the ferry and ended up stranded for the night?’
‘In the rain, as I recall.’
‘Obviously I remember it more romantically than you do.’
‘No, you remember it because it was the one and only time I submitted to sex outdoors.’
‘See?’ Lourds nipped her neck with his teeth. ‘Romantic.’
‘I remember being cold and wet.’
‘We couldn’t be romantic all night. Besides, the rain was refreshing.’
‘Maybe to you, but I stay at the university and do research. I’m fond of my creature comforts. You like a little hardship. That’s why I don’t go chasing after artefacts while being shot at, and you do.’
‘You really don’t know what you’re missing.’
Olympia broke free of his arms and turned to face him. Her smile held the hint of sadness. ‘I beg to differ.’ She stroked his face softly. ‘I have a very good idea of what I’m missing.’
Lourds stood frozen for a moment, not knowing what to say.
Olympia laughed at him.
‘You were quite brilliant in class today. The students loved you, but I knew they would.’
‘You’ve got a good group,’ Lourds told her.
‘I know. So how are you doing on your secret project? With all this attention aimed at me, you can’t be doing very well. You use sex as a distraction when you’re stymied.’
Lourds feigned displeasure. ‘I am also quite capable of being distracted by a beautiful woman, I’ll have you know.’
‘I’ll take that in the spirit in which it was intended, as the sincerest form of flattery, but I do know the truth. You’ve hit a wall.’
‘Not true.’
Olympia’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘You’ve translated the piece?’
‘I did.’
‘That’s incredible. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because we were both agreeing that you’re very distracting.’
‘You could have come to me earlier and told me the good news.’
Lourds shook his head, feeling the excitement inside him build anew. The last two days had been a marathon of nearly exhausting sleeplessness. Despite the fact that Olympia had come back to the hotel with him every night, sex had only drugged him into unconscious for a few hours at a stretch.
‘There was no good news until I visited this tower,’ he said. ‘The final pieces of the encryption finally tumbled into my head while I was climbing the stairs. Two hundred and eighty-six steps, I believe.’
‘Is it an artificial language?’
‘Actually, that was partly where I was wrong. There’s not one artificial language involved in that writing, there are three. And there’s a complicated substitution system for the three languages that must have depended on some kind of random generator.’
‘A random generator?’
‘Imagine the game Twister. You have played Twister, haven’t you?’
‘Of course. When I was a girl.’
‘Remember the spinner?’
Olympia nodded. ‘It gave the directions on where to put your hands and feet.’
‘Exactly. Left foot, green. Right hand, red. That kind of thing. That’s actually two languages in a sense.’
‘I’m not following. I’m only seeing one language: the directions.’
‘That’s because you’re processing both languages at the same time,’ Lourds said. ‘The spinner actually translates into a physical movement language and a visual acuity language, if you follow me. The spinner is divided into quadrants-’
‘For the hands and feet,’ Olympia interrupted, ‘and the colours for the vision. Two languages.’
Lourds smiled. ‘Now you’ve got it.’
‘So what is your mysterious book about?’
‘It deals with the location of something called the Joy Scroll.’
All the animation drained from Olympia’s face.
Concerned, Lourds put his hand on her shoulder to steady her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I am. But this is just so unexpected.’ Olympia seemed flustered. ‘I mean not really unexpected. Of course I hoped for something like this, but I didn’t know if you’d be able to manage a translation. Hundreds of people for the last two thousand years have tried to do what you have just done. And not one of them has been successful.’
‘You knew about this book?’
Olympia struggled to collect her thoughts. ‘I knew about the book, but I’d never seen it before. No one I know has ever seen it before. Several of us had begun to think it was just a legend. Or if it had existed that it had been destroyed.’
Lourds seized her by the shoulders. ‘Olympia. Olympia, look at me.’
She did, but he could tell she still wasn’t completely with him. Suddenly, the uneasiness he’d experienced down in the catacombs swept through him again.
‘What are you talking about? How did you know about this book? What is the Joy Scroll?’
She took his hand and looked up at him. ‘Do you trust me?’
Lourds didn’t know how to answer.
‘Please, Thomas, we’ve been friends – more than friends – for years. In all that time, I’ve never asked you for anything big. I’m asking you now to please trust me.’