Contents

The Gutenberg Rubric

Twenty-Two

WHEN THEY REACHED the car with their bags, they discovered it was not the same driver who met them at the airport. Keith looked at the car to be sure it was the same one, with his name on a hand-lettered sign in the window that said “Drucker.”

“I am sorry, sir,” the man at the car answered Keith’s inquiry. “Hasad had a family emergency and asked me to take over for him. You need equipment and we must hurry. It gets dark early and I do not wish to be on the road after sundown. This is not safe country.”

“What do you mean?” Maddie asked.

“The PKK, Kurdish resistance, has been pushing west from its normal territory,” the driver answered. “It is safer not to be on the roads after dark.” Relieved that the driver seemed to be taking their safety seriously, Keith held out his hand.

“I’m Keith Drucker,” he said. “This is Dr. Zayne.”

“I am honored, Mr. Drucker,” the driver said without looking at Maddie. “I am Najat. Now, we must hurry.”

At a mountaineering store in a local shopping plaza, Keith and Maddie bought boots, heavy parkas, gloves, and winter clothes. Keith added an ice axe and binoculars to his kit along with maps and basic camping gear. Maddie was responsible for figuring out how to pack and preserve the documents they might find with a minimum of equipment. To Keith’s surprise, she asked the driver stop at a grocery store. Keith had to repeat the request before the driver responded. Maddie bought black plastic garbage bags, cellophane wrap, drinking straws, and packing tape.

“I don’t have time to get archival supplies,” Maddie said. “I have a knife to cut the bags into sheets if I need something bigger than the plastic wrap. Otherwise, we wrap the document in cellophane, put it in a plastic bag, and tape it shut. Just before it’s fully sealed, we insert a straw to suck out all the air from the package we can and then seal it shut. It’s as close to vacuum packing as I can get with no real equipment.”

“Brilliant,” Keith agreed. “It just gives me the willies to put an ancient document in a garbage bag. We’d better get back in the car before the driver decides to leave without us.”

The ride in the back of the Land Rover was a quiet one and the driver drove with an intensity and speed that kept the two clinging to each other for security. Even at his breakneck speed, it took more than five hours to navigate the narrow roads. Soon after dusk, they arrived in Adiyaman, a small town more used to tourists in the summer than in the early spring.

They went directly to a hotel in the center of town and unpacked the car.

“We leave at first light in the morning,” the driver said. “You may have a long walk because the roads are not cleared that high up. Too much snow to safely drive. I will give you a map to the village of Kiran. There is only a footpath, but I will meet you there when you return.” Then the driver left them and went to his room.

Keith looked at the cell phone Fry had given him, thinking that he should check in with the Agent, but the phone was dead. “The satellite connection must use an incredible amount of battery. I charged this before we left the hotel and it’s dead already. I’ll have to plug it in again tonight,” Keith said. “I think I’ll keep it off until we need it so we save the battery.”

The room did not compare to the palatial suite in Adana. But the bed was comfortable and, after a quick dinner, they made good use of it.

“I don’t think I know how to make love to a pregnant woman,” Keith whispered.

“You seem to be doing all right,” Maddie whispered back.

“When did you find out?”

“While you were in the Guild vault the morning after the ritual. I’m pretty late, so I went out and got a test strip. That was a good trick for me with my limited German. I wanted to tell you right away, but there was so much going on. We had to pack and then fly and we were so exhausted in Adana. I just couldn’t find the right time to tell you until we were ready to leave.”

“I love you, Maddie, and I couldn’t be happier. Maybe you should stay here in Adiyaman tomorrow instead of climbing up to summit.”

“You’ve got to be kidding, dear man,” she said, laughing. “I am not letting my daughter’s father out of my sight!”

“Oh, you’re already sure it’s a girl?” Keith asked. “Well, she’d better have freckles.”

Morning’s first light came before they were ready for it and they met their driver waiting with the car warming at the entrance of the hotel.

“Nemrud Dagi is 100 kilometers north of here,” the driver said as he pulled out. Keith and Maddie had packed all their belongings in two backpacks and were dressed for the chill morning air. “It is over 2,100 meters tall. That’s about 7,000 feet. Here we are only at about 700 meters. It is always windy at the summit, so it will be much colder. I’ll drive as high as I can, but you will have to walk a kilometer at least.”

“We have cold-weather gear if we’re forced to stay out at night,” Keith said.

“Try to get down to Kiran on the west side. It is three kilometers below the summit and a straight walk. I’ll meet you there,” the driver responded. “Archaeologist’s tents have showed up thirty kilometers from their campsites. Most of them were empty when they landed.”

Keith and Maddie got the point. As popular as this site was as a tourist destination and archaeological dig in the summer, it was not often visited before May. When the Land Rover finally coasted to a stop after more than two hours, Keith and Maddie could see the crest ahead of them, but snow and mud blocked what passed for a road.

“We’ll be down by nightfall,” Keith said, and they set off.

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