Gabriel Hunt 02 Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear by Gabriel Hunt (Charles Ardai)

Author:Gabriel Hunt (Charles Ardai) [Hunt, Gabriel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
Published: 2011-06-30T17:19:44+00:00

Chapter 19

The Basilica Cistern had stood in more or less its present form, Gabriel knew, since the sixth century, when the Byzantine Emperor Justinian the Great had had it constructed. It was hard to imagine that it had once served a municipal function, supplying water to the Topkapi Palace. A grand underground space filled with ranks of colossal columns, hundreds of them, each thirty feet high, stretched as far as the eye could see beneath an arched and vaulted ceiling. The Turks called it Yerebatan Sarayi, the sunken palace. Each column was lit from below with flame red lights, giving the space an ominous appearance. You expected a man in a cape and domino mask to step into view at any moment from behind one of the columns, carrying a wax-sealed missive—or a dagger to slip between your ribs. Which no doubt was why this man Cipher had chosen it for their meeting. His name itself suggested his taste for the dramatic.

In one corner of the space, a quartet was playing for an appreciative audience of tourists seated in metal folding chairs, the sounds of lute and zither, flute and fiddle filling the air with mournful Ottoman melodies. Gabriel steered clear of the area. Cipher wouldn’t be caught out in the open like that, he felt sure; men who spent their lives behind the screens of laptop computers infiltrating global telecommunications networks generally didn’t congregate with tour groups at midnight concerts.

Although you never knew. Gabriel didn’t generally congregate with tour groups himself, yet he’d spent most of the past five hours on a bus with a church group out of West Virginia who’d taken a day trip to Çeş;me to see the castle and the museum and the seaside and now had the long trip back to Istanbul to look at each other’s digital photographs and share loud anecdotes about the marvels they had seen. Sheba had been the one to spot the coach parked outside the castle, its side painted with the VARAN TURIZM logo, its door open, the driver standing outside having a smoke. She’d also been the one to talk him into letting the four of them occupy the uncomfortable pair of benches in the rear by the lavatory in return for what little cash they had left and an extorted kiss on the cheek. Christos and Tigranes had piled on board gratefully and slept through most of the ride, the younger man leaning up against the window and snoring softly, the older sitting stock-still and silent in his seat.

“Your father?” one of the women from West Virginia had asked, and Gabriel had said, “My rabbi,” and she’d left him alone after that.

It was just as well that they’d made the trip, Gabriel thought as he circled around the interior of the cistern, pausing to look at every man who was there by himself and giving each a chance to look at him. In order to get a flight out to Sri Lanka they’d have had to

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