“The name of this whole area, Cappadocia,” Sully said, “it’s originally Persian, you know. ‘Katpatuka.’”
“‘The land of beautiful horses,’” Zahed told him.
Sully nodded. “Long ago, they used to be all over the place. Not anymore, though. But it must have been something, to come across wild horses roaming free in a landscape like this.” He let his eyes wander over the outlandish terrain below, sucking in slow, deep breaths, then said, “Have you had a chance to explore the valleys?”
“This trip wasn’t really planned in advance, and we have to get back to the university very soon.”
“Oh, you’ve got to find some time to do it while you’re here,” Sully enthused. “It’s not like anything you’ve seen before. It’s another planet down there. And it’s all because of this monster here,” he said, pointing up at the peak of the extinct volcano that loomed over them.
Zahed shrugged with fake chagrin. “We’ll try.”
Sully nodded, then a cocky grin spread across his face. “You haven’t noticed where we’re standing, have you?”
Zahed glanced around, unsure of what Sully was talking about. He caught Simmons’s eye—the archaeologist was looking up at the trees.
“Poplars,” Simmons said. “They’re poplar trees.”
“Yep.” Sully was enjoying this. “And if you’d care to follow me, there’s this rock I’d like to show you.”
HALF AN HOUR LATER, they reached it.
It was a large, upright, rectangular rock, roughly cut to shape like a massive grave marker, about eight feet tall, tucked away in a narrow hanging valley that separated two ridges. Its front had several crosses carved into it, along with a diamond shape in its bottom right corner. Close to its top, a hole of about seven inches in diameter had somehow been drilled through it.
Zahed studied it curiously. “What is it?”
Simmons was also examining it closely. The sight had injected some life back into him. “There are quite a few of these farther east, near the border with Armenia. Some people think they’re drogue stones—anchor stones that ancient mariners used to suspend from the backs of their hulls to slow their boats down and make them more stable in stormy seas. But given that we’re far inland … they think they’re from Noah’s Ark. Jettisoned before it settled on Mount Ararat.” His tone had a tinge of mockery and pity.
“You don’t agree?” Zahed questioned.
Simmons gave him a look of quiet surprise. “You really think I would?” He scoffed. “It’s almost as if you don’t know me, ‘Ali.’ ” That last word had a bite to it.
Before Zahed could play it down, Sully waded in, oblivious to Simmons’s little game. “You don’t believe in the Ark?”
The archaeologist sighed. “Of course not. The story of the Ark was never meant to be taken literally. It’s in the book of Genesis, for God’s sake, and …” He shrugged, as if he didn’t even know where to begin on that one. “This rock, for example. It’s basalt. Volcanic. Local. And the Ark—according to the Old Testament—was meant to have set off from Mesopotamia. No volcanoes there. And you’d expect drogue stones to be made out of material from the place the ships set out from, not from where they landed, no?”
Sully asked, “So what do you think they are?”
“Pagan stones, from long before Christianity. There are many of them scattered across Armenia and eastern Turkey. The crosses were carved into them much later, when Christianity took over from paganism. This is where the Christian concept of tombstones with crosses carved into them first started. First with the pagans. Then with Christians.”
“And the holes?”
“Just niches for lamps.”
Zahed scanned the area, then said, “Okay. What about the waterfall?”
“I think I know which one we need,” Sully said. “It’s the only one that makes sense, given that he passed this way.”
IT DIDN’T TAKE TOO LONG for them to reach the waterfall. And an hour after that, they were exploring the ruins of the monastery.
Not that there was much of it left to explore.
After seven hundred years of abandonment, there was little to show that it was anything more than a series of primitive caves, albeit ones with cuboid shapes and with more-or-less rectangular openings in their walls. An infestation of wild grass and thick, tall bushes shielded the ruins from view, and when Sully, Zahed, and Simmons did manage to cut their way through the overgrowth and enter the rooms of the monastery, there was nothing there beyond bare, cold walls and the ghosts of long-faded murals depicting, they assumed, Biblical scenes.
Still, it was in no way a disappointment. They weren’t there to find anything beyond the monastery itself.
They took a breather and huddled on some boulders on a ridge outside, at the head of the steep rocky incline that led up to the ruins. In the late-afternoon sky overhead, a lone buzzard circled around lazily, hitching a ride on a thermal, while down below, the valleys had shifted to a brooding panorama of purples and grays. Sully was using the fold-out blade of his multitool to cut pieces of pistachio helva that he was handing out to his clients. His map was back, spread out beside him. He’d already marked the position of the monastery on it.
“So now you need to follow another set of directions from here?” he asked Zahed in between mouthfuls.
“Yes. The directions of a traveler who passed through here in the fourteenth century.” He pulled out a folded piece of notepaper and handed it to Sully. On it were the details of the inquisitor’s journey that Simmons had harvested from the Templar Registry. “We need to find the canyon he was talking about.”
Sully glanced at the sheet, then looked up at Zahed. “What is this all about anyway?” A cheeky grin broadened across his face, like he was on to them. “Are you guys on some kind of treasure hunt?”
Zahed chortled. “A treasure hunt? Do we look like treasure hunters to you?” He turned to Simmons, pointing mirthfully at Sully, shaking his head and laughing off the suggestion. “You watch too many movies, my friend.”
Simmons dredged up a weak laugh that didn’t reach his eyes.
“What then?” Sully prodded. “I mean, why the rush?”
“We didn’t expect to be here. We’re putting the finishing touches to a book about the Crusades, and these graves could prove some knights survived out here longer than we assume, which would contradict things we’ve said in the book. But as we’re on a budget, we can’t stay here forever. We’re due back at the university in two days.”
Sully looked crestfallen. “So there’s no treasure?”
Zahed shrugged. “Sorry. But we’ll be happy to send you an autographed copy of our book.”
“That would be great.” Sully smiled, clearly trying not to sound too crestfallen. He then dropped his eyes to the note Zahed had given him and studied it, his gaze flicking across to the map and back, his mind consumed by the challenge.
After a long moment, he seemed to reach a verdict. “The description is a bit vague to be sure of anything, but given what’s in here … if I had to guess, I’d say they were trying to get to the Gulek Pass, the mountain pass that the bishop also took on his journey north. It was the only way to get across the Taurus Mountains. Which means the canyon he’s talking about is south of here, in this area.” He circled the area he was referring to on the map. “But there are lots of canyons there. I can’t say which one of them it might be, assuming I’ve got the first part right, without making that journey and following in his footsteps.”
Zahed nodded thoughtfully. “Then that’s what we need to do. First thing tomorrow.” He paused, then grinned and added, “We’ve got to beat the other treasure hunters to it.”