Part 6 (2/2)
Gendron looked pensive. ”You might do one favor for me,” she said. ”There is a certain cable-television personality-if at all possible, I'd be most grateful if you could arrange for me to meet him someday. Or at least put in a good word.”
”Well, I'll try. For what it's worth,” Annja said.
”A most fascinating gentleman,” Gendron said, ”of obvious French extraction.”
That didn't fit any Knowledge Channel hunk Annja could remember. ”Who?”
”Anthony Bourdain.”
Annja's smile was half grimace. ”Wrong network.” She took a sip of her drink. Seeing her companion's crestfallen expression she said, ”There's kind of a Montague-Capulet thing between our network and his. Except nastier. Tell you what, though. I only know him as you do, from seeing him on television, but I get the impression he has no more patience for that sort of rivalry nonsense than I have. Should I chance to meet him, I'll tell him he has a fan. One definitely worth his while to get to know.”
The professor's own smile was impish. ”You'd make such a sacrifice for an old lady, for so trifling a favor?”
Annja snorted. ”Old lady my foot,” she said. ”If I look half as good as you do at your age, I'll consider myself the luckiest woman on Earth.
”And as for sacrifice-well, while I admit he's a very attractive man, I also made a vow a couple years back not to date older men.”
Gendron's eyebrows rose. ”But at your age, dear child, doesn't that leave you with nothing but boys?”
Annja shrugged. ”There is that.”
Then she recalled recent events, and brightened. ”But perhaps not always.”
11.
”It is with very great pleasure that I am able to place the Istanbul Archaeology Museum at the disposal of so distinguished a peer as Ms. Annja Creed,” the curator said as he led her through the dimly lit exhibition hall. He was a huge, fat man with a bandit moustache, tapering shaven head and dark wiry stubble on his olive jowls. Ahmet Bahceli looked like the stereotypical evil Turk from central casting. He was in fact a cheerful, gentle-voiced scholar of enormous international repute. He was curator of special collections for the museum and overflowing with enthusiasm.
Annja looked into a case of Byzantine coins so he wouldn't see her slight grimace. Is it because I'm really such a notable archaeologist, she thought, or because I play one on TV?
Still, enough lay at stake that she needed to swallow her ego and go with what worked. Again. She wasn't deceiving the man. She just was taking a hit to her pride. Again.
”It's so good of you to allow me access to the von Hoiningen collection, Dr. Bahceli,” she said.
”Please understand,” he said, ”that it is meager and incomplete.”
”I gathered as much from my previous research. But believe me, Doctor, anything will help. Even if it's only something to peer at through gla.s.s.”
Istanbul was a modern city, so big and boisterous and full of history that a single continent wouldn't hold it. It sprawled like an unruly giant across the Bosporus Straits, which ran from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, upstream of the Aegean, and separated Europe from Asia. She loved visiting there.
They city was surprisingly green. Although the green was turning rapidly sere with the onset of a chilly autumn. Winter was a ways off yet, but the autumn was damp and cool enough for her.
She didn't have time for sightseeing. She felt driven. She sensed other forces moving around her-probably including the tomb-raiding renegade Easy Ngwenya. That made it urgent to find the truth about the von Hoiningen expedition, beyond the fact of its being well and truly doomed. And if there was anything to the rumors of a fabulous temple lost in the jungle, with its appropriately fabulous treasure, she had to find and secure them before the plunderers arrived like a Biblical locust plague.
The looming, vaguely conical ma.s.s of her guide halted by a case of small artifacts displayed against a cream-silk backdrop. ”Here you see such artifacts as we possess. Von Hoiningen's a.s.sistant lacked the means to carry them with him back to Germany. His misfortune proved a blessing for archaeology. No doubt you are aware the bulk of the artifacts he saved from the sunken Hentzau Hentzau were destroyed in the Allied bombing of Berlin in World War II.” were destroyed in the Allied bombing of Berlin in World War II.”
Annja nodded.
Bahceli shook his head ponderously. ”Even though expeditions are notoriously p.r.o.ne to catastrophe, I have seldom if ever heard of such a concatenation of calamities as befell the von Hoiningen expedition. It is almost enough to make one believe in a curse.”
She smiled. ”But you don't, do you?”
”Of course not! Especially a curse by infidels. That would be mere superst.i.tion.”
Bahceli rather grandly produced a set of keys and opened the case's gla.s.s cover. He gestured for Annja to examine what she would.
Not much to see, she thought glumly as she pulled on the pair of nonlatex medical-style gloves he had provided her. A few coins, a few small carvings and castings, a lacquer medallion.
One object caught her eye. She reached in and gingerly picked up an elephant figurine no bigger than the palm of her hand, in verdigrised bronze. Its workmans.h.i.+p was exquisite. It stood with trunk curled to forehead and mouth open. It almost seemed to be smiling.
”Ah,” the curator said. ”That catches your eye, as well? There is something to it, some...quality I cannot put my finger upon.”
He shrugged. ”It has been rumored since Dessauer's departure that it is the replica of a larger statue, of pure gold, to which von Hoiningen referred in his notes,” he said. ”Sadly, we do not have these notes. It is why we exhibit these items as relics of the tragic expedition itself, since we cannot authoritatively source them or connect them to specific sites or cultures, other than by inference.”
With a sigh Annja handed the figurine back to Bahceli. ”Thank you,” she said. ”If I could see the surviving notebooks, now, please?”
His villainous face split in a great benign grin. ”Of course,” he said.
ANNJA SAT IN THE dark and cool confines of a private reading room with the journal open before her. To her right lay her computer, connected to the Internet via the museum's wireless network. Despite the fact that the museum's exterior was pure faux cla.s.sical, the facility itself seemed most thoroughly up-to-date. She was typing in promising-looking pa.s.sages from the journal and then running them through a translation program.
The work was tedious but she plodded on. And then words jumped out at her-”the jungle a mighty temple gave up.”
She stopped, reared back, barely able to believe it. She carefully studied the words surrounding the phrase.
”The climb up the plateau was hazardous. We lost two bearers to a mudslide when a rope in a sudden downpour gave way....”
A few sentences on she read more.
”The guardians of the temple were cautious. Our guide, Ba, managed to convince them we meant no harm. We only meant honor to the ancients and the Buddha to give.”
There followed a matter-of-fact discussion of his dealings with the plateau's inhabitants, who were wary of them. They warmed after the expedition's physician, Dr. Kramer, set a child's broken arm. Annja got the notion the natives were capable of the feat-they just appreciated the gesture. At last the visitors got permission to climb a small peak in the center of the plateau.
”The special sanctuary, the holy of holies. The Temple of the Elephant was colossal! Our hearts were in our throats at the splendor of this marvel, this treasure, this golden elephant with emeralds for eyes. The Temple of the Elephant was colossal! Our hearts were in our throats at the splendor of this marvel, this treasure, this golden elephant with emeralds for eyes.
”I made complete sketches of the temples, and the idol, in my sketchbook-”
”Oh no,” Annja said softly. None of that had survived the Hentzau' Hentzau's torpedoing.
She sighed and read on. ”It can still be found where I found the map. Inscribed on the base of the statue of Avalokiteshvara in the Red Monastery outside Nakhon Sawan, in the Kingdom of Siam.”
Annja sat back, frowning speculatively. On the one hand, she thought, it makes me crazy that the solution to the mystery isn't here. On the other, at least there really is a Temple and a Golden Elephant.
”Ms. Creed?”
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