Constantinople (Istanbul)
Present day
The private jet, a converted Boeing 767, landed in Istanbul’s airport in heavy rain and strong gusts of wind. Elli was not scared in the least. Not for her the flimsy light-as-feather smaller private jets. She saw the sense in a properly-sized plane, a necessary luxury.
In a weird way the discretion of the treatment she always expected and received guaranteed her the desired anonymity. In no time, she was in a limousine on its way to the Ayia Sophia Square.
She was dropped off at one of the minor entry points to the great church. She went in, down some stairs, then up through another flight of stairs, to the spot where only a few days earlier, Katerina and Aristo narrowly escaped certain death.
There was nobody around. What was about to happen was no sight for untrained eyes. She looked at the image of St. George and closed her eyes. St. George extended his arm and grabbing it, she was pulled into another picture that was inside the depiction on the wall and which was the Emperor Justinian in 537 A.D. standing next to his great church.
Justinian took her by the hand and let her inside the church where she saw the two keys hanging from the huge chandelier above the central space of the church. Justinian lowered the chandelier and gave her the keys.
Within minutes she was outside Ayia Sophia and standing before the entrance to the Topkapi, which gleamed in the sunlight that broke through the clouds, all guns blazing.
Her destination was a section of the former Ottoman palace that housed important manuscripts, an extension of the Topkapi’s famous and very valuable library.
She saw the glass case as she stood by the entrance and walked to it briskly. She stood there staring at an Ottoman manuscript, which provided the detail on the Sultan’s ownership and wealth. There was nobody around. She inserted one of the keys. She heard a click and at that moment the room disappeared to the outside world.
A Ruinand pair following her didn’t know what hit them. They were locked out, if you could call it that. But how could the room have disappeared? Ahead of them the corridor continued and disappeared in the distance with no end in sight, no obstacle in its way. They walked the distance to make sure and they went right through where the room was supposed to be.
They looked at each other furious with themselves. They should have followed her inside even if they, no doubt, would have given away their presence. Their mistress, the Marcquesa, would have them suffer a slow and painful death for this fiasco.
Once the room was off public radar, the glass case flew open. Elli carefully and gently pushed the manuscript to one side to get to a hidden compartment underneath. She inserted the second key and opened it. Inside was an even older parchment than the manuscript resting above it, signed by not one but many Sultans, Kings, bishops and archbishops throughout history.
In there it was safe and invisible, in full public view, but in reality hidden from anyone but her who only knew of its existence. Public display guaranteed the object’s safety from intrusion by prying eyes well trained in the art of sightseeing.
On the parchment was a list of sites that she personally owned. The sites were mining deposits of an element called kalbendium that fuelled the time travel devices she used. Only she knew of the element’s existence which was mined, extracted by specially designed machines and processed in top secret facilities using top secret unique technology in a protected sterile environment.
Kalbendium was calm and glowing when in a static condition, but volatile when handled and the process converted it into a usable stable form. Its volatility precluded the use of humans in its extraction. Maintaining secrecy was another reason. All the names of her predecessors who had owned and controlled those deposits were written by hand at the bottom of the parchment during the initiation process once each new head of the company and the family was appointed after the death of the previous occupant of the post whose duty was to groom his successor.
One day Aristo’s name will be added to this list. Satisfied, she returned the parchment to its place and locked the compartment. She then put the Ottoman manuscript on top and locked the glass case. She put the keys in her handbag and calmly but purposefully walked out of the room, pretending to be looking at various exhibits like a visitor on her way out of the Topkapi.
Elli was now free to look forward to her meeting in a coffee shop, a short twenty-minute walk away, in the shadow of the Egyptian or Misir Bazaar near the Southern end of the Galata Bridge spanning the mouth of what used to be called the Golden Horn.
The view from there of the Bosphorus and the city’s Asian side was breathtaking and never ceased to excite and move her every time. She loved to walk in her favourite city in her favourite time of the year.
It was a dazzling day. She made her way to the agreed spot, found a table and sat down to wait for her date. He had been on an errand deep in the Fanari district near the Ecumenical Patriarchate, not very far from where she was sitting.
He enjoyed visiting old haunts lovingly explored and tirelessly trodden during their frequent visits to the city as children. He saw her before she saw him. He stood behind her and covered her eyes with his hands. She did not even flinch as if expecting it.
‘My darling boy. It’s been some time. It’s good to see you.’
They hugged tightly and looked at each other. Elli’s face brightened by a wide smile. Vasilis studied her. She was still a beautiful “young” woman. She was ageless. To them it was a mother and son reunion. But they were both in disguise. To the rest of the world it was a meeting between a happy couple, a couple very much in love.
They both knew it wouldn’t be long before the pages of newspapers and magazines from Baku to Los Angeles and Sydney were splashed all over with the gossip of the Ducesa de Mori Astir taking a new lover, a new “beau”. That was a delicious thought that amused them both. The temptation to laugh was irresistible.
They laughed till their facial muscles met the limit of tolerance of excruciating pain. They stopped, breathless, as if they were drowning in a deep ocean and in a sudden rush came up with an unquenchable thirst for air. With an unsatisfied hunger they both started talking almost at once.
‘Mother. Thanks for the holiday.’
‘I thought you would enjoy it. Do they suspect you?’
‘I don’t think so. They think that we had a fall out and that, full of anger, in my disillusionment with you and feeling betrayed by you, I wished to hurt you by switching sides. And what would be the ideal vehicle of revenge than allying myself with your worst enemy? I’ve planted enough bugs in there to write a book about their lives. The bugs are working perfectly. They should be transmitting everything to your control centre on Mount Ellothon.’
Vasilis paused and his demeanour took on the excitement of a child’s emerging from a cave of wonders. ‘Mother, you should see their underwater city. Its beauty is beyond what words could describe. I hope we don’t have to destroy it to neutralise their threat once and for all.’
‘I think we should be able to avoid that. But we have much work to do. Keep me informed on what they have acquired. We will make sure they only end up with the fake goods. Have you seen the icon?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Do you know where it’s held?’
‘No, but I’ll try and find out. Mother, you know we cannot underestimate the Madame Marcquesa de Parmalanski. She’s very smart. I’m the one closest to their centre of control and the one most at risk of blowing my cover and endangering our plans. I’ll be careful.’
‘Try and find out the whereabouts of the icon. We’ll have a fake one for you ready to make the switch when you do.’
At that moment a beggar was passing by and he offered Elli a flower out of a bouquet he held in his hand. Another flower he deliberately dropped on the ground. Elli recognised the face even under all those ravishing wrinkles mixed with dirt. His disguise would make a girl in the Sultan’s harem or, more likely, the make-up artist who makes dead bodies look their lovely freshest best, very proud. The beauty counter had sold out, Elli thought. Under all that pile upon pile of make-up with the compliments of the gutter was her brother, Iraklios.
She smiled, what looked to the world a polite and indifferent smile. But to Iraklios it was the glint in her eye that spoke to him and they understood each other. She gave him some change and he was on his way. She smelled the flower and placed it next to her on the table.
A few seconds later she deliberately pushed it, so that it fell to the ground and landed next to the other flower and her handbag that was relaxing by her feet. She bent down and pulled a quick switch. She discreetly put the flower that was offered to her in her bag and the other back onto the table. While the flower sat on the table the second ingredient required for its secret to be activated had already been added.
The heat emitted by the coffee cup combined with the heat of Elli’s breath had a strange invigorating effect on the flower, that otherwise seemed to have been on its last legs, or, to put it correctly, last petals. Now inside Elli’s bag, it was emitting an intoxicating fragrance that apparently only she and her companion could smell. Inside the confines of the bag it transformed into a parchment, a transformation visible only to Elli and Vasilis. To anyone else opening the bag it would still look like a flower.
The Ruinands who had caught up with Elli and had seen the transformation into the Ducesa were on their way to abduct her and her son. Iraklios was watching the Ruinands himself. He intervened with the flower when he saw the noose tightening around Elli and Vasilis’ neck. He gave them a way out.
While nothing seemed to have changed at that table, Elli, the Ducesa disguise having melted away, and Vasilis had already been transported to the airfield and Elli’s waiting plane that took them back to Cyprus.