It was yellowing, and the edges crumbled when Abigail touched it. She carefully removed the yellowed piece of paper inside and read it before groaning aloud. She had thought the last clue difficult, but this one seemed impossible.

  12

  SELCUK

  ‘And he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. And I will give him the morning star.’

  Riley took photos of the note with his phone. Abigail handed it back to the man, but he held up both hands, palms outward.

  “No! You take it.” With that, he hurried through a door behind the counter and shut it firmly.

  “Back to the car,” Riley said.

  When they were in the car, Riley instructed Ellis to drive around while they discussed the clue before turning to Abigail. “Any ideas?”

  She shook her head. “It’s another quote from Revelation, but that’s all I can tell you. Oh, apart from the fact it’s a message to the church of Thyatira.”

  “Thyatira!” Ellis spat. “Where on earth is that?”

  “It’s modern day Akhisar, which is probably a Lydian word meaning ‘white castle,’” Abigail told him. “I don’t think it’s far from here.”

  “Do you want me to drive there now?” Ellis addressed the question to Riley.

  Riley raised one eyebrow at Abigail. “Surely not? We don’t have enough to go on.”

  Abigail agreed. “I’m guessing it’s the same type of clue that led us to the man in the knife shop. Here we have iron, clay pots, and a morning star.”

  “So, if we put them together, that should be the clue,” Thatcher said.

  Abigail nodded. “Hopefully. Maybe it’s referring to another store in Selcuk, one that’s been there a long time.”

  For the next few minutes, Thatcher, Riley, and Abigail googled furiously.

  “What about this?” Riley said. “Morning Star Ceramics and Silver Gifts.”

  “Is that the store name?” Ellis said. “It’s quite a mouthful.”

  “No iron is mentioned, but I suppose silver is a metal.”

  “It’s a bit of a stretch, if you ask me,” Thatcher said, twisting around to look back at Riley, “but it’s certainly worth checking out. And it’s in Selcuk?”

  Riley gave a nod of affirmation and directed Ellis to the store. It was away from the main shopping district. They parked the car and had to continue on foot. The area was paved and seemed in worse condition than several ancient archeological sites Abigail had visited. There was a high brick wall topped with gray stone to her left and a low brick wall with a row of houses made of red brick to the right. It was beautifully picturesque, but she wasn’t there for the scenery.

  They walked past several faded blue doors until Riley nodded. “That must be it there.”

  The door was shut and the curtains were drawn. “It doesn’t look like it’s open,” Abigail said.

  Ellis craned his neck. “There’s an apartment over the shop. Maybe whoever is there is afraid after what happened to Bulut.”

  They walked over the shop and knocked. “You call out,” Riley said to Abigail. “You would sound less threatening.”

  “What will I say?”

  “Tell him you’re a friend of Professor Hobbs who was a friend of Eymen Bulut’s. Say Nehir Bulut sent you here via the knife shop.”

  “You want me to say all that?” Abigail said.

  Riley nodded. Abigail did as he asked. “Hello? I know you’re closed, but I need to speak with you urgently. I’m Abigail Spencer, a professor of ancient languages, and I was a friend of Professor Jason Hobbs, who was corresponding with Eymen Bulut.”

  She was about to say more when the door opened a crack. A man regarded them suspiciously. His face was tanned and filled with deep wrinkles. He wore a look of distrust on his face.

  He looked Abigail up and down. “You translate ancient languages?”

  “Yes. Did you know Eymen Bulut? He and I had a mutual friend.”

  The man did not respond to that, but looked at the other three men. “Who are these people?”

  Riley stepped forward and showed him his identification. “We’re from an organization that protects ancient artifacts from falling into the wrong hands,” he said.

  The man regarded Riley shrewdly. “I’ve heard of this organization. Come in, quickly.” He waved his hand furiously at them. “Were you followed?”

  “No,” Thatcher said. “We were careful.”

  It only then occurred to Abigail that she had no clue whether they had been followed, yet she knew Riley, Thatcher, and Ellis would have been watching out the whole time.

  The shop was attractively decorated, and filled with pretty jewelry and all sorts of ceramics. It was the type of store Abigail could normally spend hours in. The man ushered them through the store quickly and into a small room to the side. He peeked behind heavy blue curtains over a small window. As the curtains fell aside a little, Abigail saw that the window was covered with iron bars.

  He closed the door behind them and locked it. “I know you said you weren’t followed, but I can’t risk it. We can’t be too careful. I can’t be too careful,” he added. “I have security but only for thieves, not for the type of people who are after the scroll. Anyway, please sit.”

  The walls were whitewashed over rudimentary brick, and the dark brown couches looked hard, but when Abigail sat in one she sank down further than she expected. She wondered if it was so old that the springs had broken. Riley sat next to her, while Thatcher and Ellis sat on the other couch.

  The man himself sat on a wooden chair which was upholstered with a bright pattern, reminding Abigail of a Persian rug.

  There was another rug on the floor, an intricate pattern in shades of red. Abigail noted that there was one other door out of the room. She wondered why she was becoming observant all of a sudden, and figured it was the company she was keeping.

  The man came straight to the point. “How did you find me?”

  He addressed the question to Abigail. She raised one eyebrow at Riley and he gave a little nod, so she proceeded. “I’m giving a paper soon at a conference on Lydia and Greece in the Iron Age, and a friend of mine, Professor Jason Hobbs, had already published a paper on an ostracon that mentioned part of the Croesus treasure. It was fragmentary…”

  The man interrupted her. “I know about that. Forgive me. You can call me Berat.”

  Abigail introduced the other men. They all nodded to each other.

  “Go on,” Berat said with a wave of his hand.

  “Then we heard that Jason Hobbs was murdered in England and after that, someone impersonated him to draw out Eymen Bulut and take the scroll from him.”

  “And it was a fake scroll,” he said.

  Abigail nodded. “And so we followed the trail here.”

  “Through Murat at the knife shop.”

  Abigail nodded again, but she was uneasy. The man from the knife shop had said he didn’t know anyone involved with the scroll, apart from Eymen.

  “And so what are you going to do when you find the copper scroll?” Berat addressed the question to Riley.

  “We’re going to make certain that the treasure doesn’t fall into the wrong hands,” Riley said.

  Berat narrowed his eyes. “You mean you’re going to take it for your government?”

  Riley shook his head. “I can assure you it will be kept safe.”

  The man made a sound of derision. “You can’t tell me you will donate it to the Turkish museum.” He emitted a harsh laugh.

  Riley made to speak, but the man pushed on. “Our group has made sure this treasure hasn’t fallen into the wrong hands. We’ve been protecting it for generations. It’s been where it is for almost three thousand years and it should continue to stay where it is.”

  “Look, I’m in full agreement with you,” Riley said, “but we are under time pressure. Some rather dangerous men are after it. They’ve already murdered Professor Hobbs and your friend, Eymen Bulut. They will stop at nothing to get the copper scroll and then they’ll take every last bit of treasure for themselves.”

  Ellis spoke up. “In fact, if we found you, then they could find you too.”

  Berat nodded calmly. “Yes, I was about to leave town and hide out.”

  “Do you have the copper scroll?” Riley asked him.

  “No, but I do hold a clue to its whereabouts.” He looked at Abigail. “Can you translate the scroll? Is that what you’re doing here?”

  “Yes,” Abigail said. “I’m going to translate it when we find it.”

  “You’re going to translate it, and then you’ll all go and find the treasure. Is that right?”

  “That’s right,” Riley said. “But we’re not going to take the treasure. We just want to make sure those men don’t find it.”

  Abigail rubbed her eyes with one hand. This wasn’t going as well as she had hoped. This man obviously had no intention of handing over a clue easily. Besides, when he said he didn’t have the scroll, she noticed his eyes flickered. She had the sensation he was lying, but she couldn’t be sure.

  What if he did have the copper scroll? And what if she was in close proximity to it now? A small thrill of excitement ran through her.

  “So, you can read ancient Greek?” Berat asked Abigail.

  “Yes, I can. It’s one of my main areas of expertise. I can also read some Lydian. Is the scroll in ancient Greek or Lydian? Or is it bilingual?”

  The man laughed, a short guttural laugh. “You’re trying to trick me. Are you sure you weren’t followed?” He walked over to the window to look out before returning to his seat once more. “So, these dangerous men who are trying to steal the treasure—how many of them are there?”

  “We have no idea,” Riley admitted, “but I’m sure there are more than enough to get the job done. It’s essential the copper scroll doesn’t fall into their hands.”

  Berat narrowed his eyes. “If I give you the next clue, you’ll follow it to the copper scroll, and then follow the copper scroll to the treasure. You’ll make sure these other men don’t get it?” Before anyone could respond, he added, “And I suppose they want the treasure to fund terrorist activities?”

  “Correct,” Riley said.

  The man appeared to have made up his mind. “All right, you’ve convinced me. I’ll fetch the next clue. Are you certain you weren’t followed?”

  Riley assured him that they hadn’t been followed, but Berat was already halfway across the room.

  Abigail was pleased the man had finally relented. For a moment, she had feared he wasn’t going to give them the clue and she wondered what Riley and the others would do in a situation like that.

  Abigail saw the man as he opened the door, for a split second wondering why he had something strange on his face.

  She only barely registered it was a gas mask as something was thrown into the room. The door slammed shut.

  The last thing Abigail remembered was coughing.

  13

  SELCUK

  Riley came to his senses before Thatcher and Ellis. His eyes stung and his throat was burning, but that didn’t stop him from getting to his feet and hurrying over to Ellis. “Berat has taken Abigail.”

  Ellis looked around groggily while Riley shook Thatcher awake. Riley tried the back door and then the side door, but both were locked and the window had bars on it.

  Thatcher aimed a good kick at the side door, but Riley said, “Not that door. There could be alarms inside the shop. We should go out the back door.”

  It took a while before they managed to knock the back door down. It led straight into a storage room. The air was fresh and Riley gulped in deep breaths.

  “What do we do now?” Ellis asked him.

  “I’m tracking her cell phone. I’ll find her location.”

  Ellis put a restraining hand on Riley’s arm. “We should search the place. Maybe he’s got some evidence lying around.”

  “Evidence of what?” Riley said.

  “We won’t know until we find it.” Ellis’s tone was boarding on belligerent. “Besides, you shouldn’t go running after the woman just because of your, err, emotional involvement. We can always find another translator.”

  “Not one as highly qualified as her, surely,” Thatcher said.

  Riley shot Ellis an ice-cold glare. Ellis shifted from one foot to the other and looked away. His comments were subordinate, although if Riley were to be honest, there was more than a modicum of truth in his remarks.

  “When we find Abigail, we will find Berat. We won’t need any further information after we question him. We’re wasting time. Let’s go. Unless you have any other objections, Ellis?”

  Ellis shook his head. Riley strode to the car and wasted no time turning on his device to track Abigail’s phone. “She’s heading north,” he said. “And moving fast.”

  “Let’s hope Berat hasn’t taken her phone and thrown it into a passing bus,” Ellis said.

  Riley’s heart was racing. Never had he been so perturbed on a mission. “We will follow the tracking device. He’s obviously got the copper scroll and he wants Abigail to translate it.”

  “I wonder if he’s working for Vortex?” Ellis said as he swung to avoid a bird that nearly flew into the car.

  “Could be, or he could be working for himself. Did you notice he said he knew Murat, but Murat said he didn’t know the person who possessed the next clue? Eymen, Murat, and Berat were likely in some sort of group together. Berat wants to protect the treasure.”

  “But given that he’s taken Abigail, it means they don’t know the translation of the copper scroll yet,” Thatcher pointed out. “Doesn’t that strike you as strange? I mean, if the copper scroll’s been in their possession for generations, wouldn’t you think they’d have had it translated at some point?”

  “You’d think so,” Riley said. He scratched the stubble on his chin. “Maybe they didn’t want to know where the treasure was—they just wanted to prevent others from finding it.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Thatcher said.

  For once, Ellis agreed with Riley. “Berat is a fanatic. We’ve all dealt with fanatics before. Until now, he didn’t want to know where the treasure was in case somebody tortured him to reveal the location. That’s the typical attitude of this type of fanatic.”

  Thatcher nodded slowly. “You could be right.”

  “Can’t this vehicle go any faster?” Riley asked urgently.

  Nobody answered him. His stomach was churning. If this man was a fanatic, as they thought, then he wouldn’t let Abigail live after she had translated the scroll. Riley went cold all over.

  Just then, he lost the tracking signal.

  “What now?” Ellis said. “Maybe we should go back and search Berat’s place after all.”

  “All right then,” Riley said, “but first we’ll see if Murat is still there. I’ll get the information out of him.”

  Ellis turned the car sharply and sped back to Selcuk. They parked not far from the knife shop this time, and Riley marched straight to the door. It was shut. That didn’t surprise them given that Murat knew he was in danger.

  “Let’s go around the back,” Riley said to the others. They had to walk past several stores before turning left into a small alley behind the shops. Riley had counted the shops, which was just as well as it was hard to tell which back entrance belonged to which shop. “That’s Murat’s knife shop there,” he said. A broken padlock hung from the door.

  Ellis pushed the door open. “Looks like our friends have already paid him a visit.”

  The three men slipped inside. Ellis wasted no time shutting the door behind them.

  Once Riley was inside, he could see that someone had already searched the place. Papers were strewn all over the floor, and a desk was overturned.

  “Well then, there’s no point looking,” Thatcher said. “Vortex would have already found anything by now.”

  “We’re going to look anyway,” Riley said. He knew his voice held a note of desperation, but he didn’t care. With every second that passed, Berat was getting further away with Abigail.

  Time was running out.

  Riley pulled his phone from his pocket and studied it again. “Still no signal.”

  “Murat is long gone,” Ellis said. He peered inside an empty safe. The door was open.

  “All right, let’s go back to where we were when we lost the signal, as we were heading in the right direction,” Riley said.

  “Shouldn’t we search Berat’s shop?” Ellis asked.

  Riley’s response was a curt, “No.”

  They drove back. All the while, Riley kept staring at his cell phone, hoping and praying the signal would come back on. It did not.

  “This is where we were before. Do you want me to keep going?” Ellis asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “What if the signal comes back and we have to backtrack?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Riley said. He stared at the phone for a further five minutes, until suddenly the signal did come back on. “I’ve got it!” Riley exclaimed.

  Ellis shot him a quick sideways glance. “We’re out of gas.”

  Riley groaned aloud. “Could the timing be any worse?”

  “We can go a few more miles, but we’ll have to stop at the first gas station we see,” Ellis said.

  Riley leaned back in the seat. “Sure.”

  To his relief, there was a small gas station not far away. “I’ll go inside and get some sodas,” Thatcher said. “Do you want anything, Riley?”

  Riley shook his head. All he could think about was Abigail. He kept staring at the phone. “Hurry, won’t you?”

  Thatcher returned to the car just before Ellis did. Thatcher handed Riley a soda and simit, a local circular bread.

  “Still drive straight ahead?” Ellis said.

  “Yes, I’ll direct you,” Riley said urgently. “The tracking came to a stop just after you got out of the car. We have a location now.”