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The Gutenberg Rubric

Twenty-Eight

KEITH COULD BARELY MOVE his legs by the time he reached the Western Terrace on the mountain. He’d gained 150 meters in altitude in just over two kilometers and his legs and lungs were near collapse. He looked down from the shelter of the colossal figures that faced out across the valley at the deserted village below. There was movement there. He could make out two figures starting up the hill the way he had come. He ducked his head and moved along the northern processional around the tumulus. He could see the pock-mark in the gravel on the north side where archaeologists had attempted to tunnel into the loose rock to find the burial tomb. In 1989 the Turkish Government made the mountain into a historical treasure and forbade digging in the tumulus, saving it from further damage. The tumulus was over 500 feet across, almost a quarter of a mile around to the North Terrace.

As soon as he was in the shelter of the terrace, he stripped off his pack and began to dig in it for the cell phone Fry had given him. He had to make contact and get help. Maddie was being driven by a madman toward a made-up location with another madman chasing them. He had to get help to her. He pulled a black plastic bag from the pack. My God! he thought. I’ve got Maddie’s pack. He had equipped the identical packs with food, water, and knives, but that meant Derek had taken his pack with the maps, his notes, and the GPS tracking phone Fry had given him. Keith was completely isolated.

He fought off panic. According to Joey, Kurdish revolutionaries were approaching the summit from the West. He led his pursuers by no more than fifteen minutes and he was already exhausted from the climb. There was no place up here to hide. He could see the beginning of the trail he and Maddie had taken the night before. He knew it should lead to the spring and a kilometer beyond the spring he’d seen another village. He hoped this village was not as seasonal as Kieran. Someone there would surely have a phone.

Keith didn’t look back as he followed the ridge away from Nemrud Dagi to the north. The hairs on his neck prickled when he thought of the rebels chasing him. He simply didn’t have time to be kidnapped. Maddie could be in danger—no, definitely was in danger—from her unbalanced ex-husband. As he half walked, half jogged down the trail he asked himself repeatedly how her brother fit into the picture. Was he simply trying to protect his sister, or was he, as Fry speculated, the one organizing the attacks? Derek claimed the bombings were all coordinated by Sophie. If so, then Yousef had been elaborately played to take the blame. Derek always planned to get rid of Yousef—and Keith, apparently. And the story of Maddie’s death in Mainz meant that she could disappear and no one would look further.

Where the hell is Fry, and what kind of support is he providing? The agent had been willing enough to let Keith and Maddie make the trip to Turkey, promising that he would be nearby to pull them out if needed. But he proved surprisingly ineffective in providing them a safe guide from the airport to the mountain. Now, without the satellite phone, Keith was unable to make contact.

The trail dipped into a split in the ridge and Keith could see where he and Maddie had strayed from it in the snowstorm. Was that only yesterday afternoon? Keith found that he no longer had a sense of passing time. Everything was urgently now. Time was measured in the steps he took as he dug the ice axe in and slid along icy portions of the path. Distance was measured in glimpses of a village in the valley at least two kilometers away.

As Keith slid down an embankment, he hit a level ribbon of packed gravel road. He looked back up the trail and could see his pursuers still coming. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry to catch him—just strolled down the trail smoking. He looked for a suitable hiding place where he could assess the situation. Keith hurried up the road, keeping an eye on the men uphill. As soon as he was in a hollow where they were not visible, he slipped down off the road and slid—almost out of control—until he stopped at the water’s edge. He had found the spring. But there was no place for him to go. Keith could see where the trail continued to his left, but a section about ten feet across had collapsed into the pond. If he followed the trail back the other direction, he would be right back on the path with his rebels.

Keith rummaged in the backpack and pulled out two black garbage bags and a roll of tape. He couldn’t trust himself to jump the gap on the uncertain footing. He pulled one bag over each leg, forced as much air as he could out of them, and taped them tightly around his thighs. Then he waded across.

The water was deeper and colder than Keith expected or imagined. He gasped as it hit his waist, but he struggled up to the path on the opposite side. He was wet from groin to waist, and it was freezing cold, but at least his feet and boots were dry. He pushed himself into the vegetation to hide from the men that he could hear on the road above him.

Groping along the edge of the pool, he felt an indentation where the rocks gave way slightly. He dragged himself through the bushes and into a small, relatively dry cave. He was mostly concealed. It took a few seconds before Keith could hear over his heartbeats, thrumming in his ears. The men were on the path. Keith had to move. He pushed himself farther back into the rocky niche and discovered that it continued to open up behind him. He could see the trail of water he was leaving on the rocks, but he was quickly losing light the farther back he went. He rolled over on his hands and knees and began scrambling back into the cave as fast as he could.

The canyons and mountains of Western Asia were honeycombed with caves. It was one of the things that made fighting a war in Afghanistan and Iraq so difficult. Keith knew that the caves provided hiding places for both man and beast, but he didn’t have time to worry about that. A rain of gravel hit the bushes outside his haven from above and Keith knew they would be searching the area for him shortly. He reached for the flashlight at his belt and flicked it on. The LED shed an eerie blue light ahead of him and Keith realized that he could now stand and move more quickly along the smooth sandstone walls of the cavern. With luck, he thought, they will decide it’s a bad bet to come this deep into the cave and give up. After looking ahead as far as the beam would show, Keith turned off the light and continued along the dark cave. He would simply keep his right hand against the wall and know that if he followed the same wall back he would eventually emerge at the spring. Before he turned his light on again, he checked behind him. He could see a faint beam projecting into the cave. At first Keith thought it was just the light at the entrance, but then the beam shifted and he knew his pursuers had found his tracks and were following. Without turning his flashlight back on, he kept his right hand against the cave wall and continued deeper into the mountain.

Keith had no idea how far he had come or how long it had been. Each time he stopped to catch his breath, he could hear the shuffling steps behind him or see a glint of the pursuer’s flashlight. He hurried on.

Keith had never been particularly claustrophobic or afraid of the dark. He had explored his grandfather’s cave in California that went back into the mountain, branching into caverns and tunnels that he couldn’t squeeze through. But he had always taken reasonable precautions. With every step he was aware that the pursuer was safer than he was. If there were an accident, Keith would be the first to arrive. Now that his initial panic was wearing off, the fear of falling in the cave was overcoming the fear of being caught by the terrorists. He pulled up short to assess his options and catch his breath. He listened carefully, but there was no immediate sound of pursuit. He no longer saw the bobbing light.

He was alone in complete darkness, except, he realized, for a persistent pinpoint of light that lay ahead of him. For a moment Keith thought he had become turned around in the dark and was seeing the pursuer’s flashlight, but this light was small and steady, not bobbing as a person walked. In a flash of understanding, Keith realized that he had to be looking at another entrance to the cave where he could see daylight.

He decided not to risk exposing himself with his flashlight, but proceeded more carefully now toward the light that grew progressively brighter and stronger ahead of him.

Keith gradually picked up his pace, now heedless of the danger of falling, and suddenly burst out into open, blinding light.

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