"Monastery of St. George?" Lang asked.

The driver nodded and said something in Turkish, gesturing they should climb in. Lang knew better than to attempt to assist Gurt aboard. She resented any effort, no matter how courtly, that suggested she, as a female, was due any treatment not owed to a man.

Without any perceptible signal from the driver, the horses trotted through the town's streets, hooves playing a syncopated rhythm against the pavement. With no change of pace, the coach began a climb up the hills. Absent vehicular traffic, the road could have been a highway from another century. Large villas shared ocean views with smaller cottages and a few hovels that had not seen paint nor repair for ages. Even these were draped with purple and blue bougainvillea.

At each dip or hollow, the driver applied a protesting brake handle to keep the speed at a manageable level.

They reached the crest, a narrow ridge dropping almost straight down on either side. The view was as spectacular as it was unobstructed. In the distance, the Turkish mainland was only a suggestion in purple. Other islands were set like emeralds in a placid ocean. Lang was so enchanted with the scenery, he hardly noticed an increase of breeze on his face. A squeeze of his hand brought him back to his surroundings. The phaeton was headed downhill fast enough to make him uncomfortable and the body of the thing was swaying dangerously, leaning first one way toward the deep valley on the right and jagged rocks lining the coast hundreds of feet below to the left.

Local custom or were they riding with a madman?

He leaned forward to speak to the driver.

Before he could say a word, the man bent over. With a grunt, he snatched loose a pin and the wagon's tongue and horses were gone, a blur as the carriage careened past. Then the driver hurled himself onto the only grassy shoulder Lang could see and rolled to a stop. Lang saw or imagined a smile on his face.

There was no other place to jump without a fall of hundreds of feet.

It was clear the rig was not going to make the next turn where the road disappeared around a stand of trees.

As happens when events move too fast to comprehend, Lang's mind went into slow motion.

The brake handle loomed before him.

Hand on the back of the driver's seat, Lang leaned forward. He couldn't reach the handle.

The bend in the road was rushing toward him, a giant mouth open to devour the carriage and its passengers. The speed increased, slow motion notwithstanding.

Seeing what he was trying to do, Gurt grabbed him by the belt, allowing him to fully extend.

His fingers brushed the wooden handle. Leaning as far as he could, he still could not close his hand around it.

Just ahead, the pavement ended in open space.

V.

Buyukada

A Few Minutes Earlier

Emniyet Polis Inspector Mustafa Aziz stood behind his desk and tried to calm the man down long enough to understand what he was saying. Something about being bound, gagged and hidden in the woods just off the road after he had been forced from the phaeton he drove for a living. He had picked up the fare, supposedly to take him to one of the island's beaches, and then been forced at knifepoint to surrender his rig.

Obviously, something was missing. In the first place, why would someone be stupid enough to steal horses and carriage on a small island where search and detection would be all but certain? Second, the man had not been robbed of his money, little enough to make robbery an unlikely motive. Third, crime on the island consisted almost entirely of pickpockets, small-time theft and an occasional burglary.

He winced at the last part. The dearth of crime was why he would serve his last few years before retirement in this political backwater, guarding tourists and vacationers against purse snatchers. A beautiful place to work but hardly a place he could regain the reputation he had once enjoyed.

There had been a time when the young Aziz had a career as full of promise as a fruit tree in bloom. Then there had been what he mentally referred to as the Mohammad Sadberk Affair.

Sadberk had been prominent in Turkish politics, distinguished enough that not only Aziz's emnit polist, security police, were alerted when his wife reported him missing but the Yunis, Dolphin, rapid-reaction force as well. The politician had reputedly been on a fact-finding excursion to southeastern Turkey and there was reason to fear Kurdish rebels had taken him hostage. Stellar police work, a tip deemed fortunate at the time and plain luck led young inspector Aziz to a shabby resort on Turkey's southern coast.

Certain of fame and promotion, Aziz had not paused to consider the improbability of Kurds, or any other terrorists, choosing a hideout in an area favored by European tourists on all-inclusive, hundred-euro-a-day beach vacations, particularly since retreat by the suspected abductors across the Iraq border at the other end of the country would all but have guaranteed the end of pursuit.

Instead, Aziz had assembled a sizable force of police to surround the small inn a few streets back from the beach. He had not forgotten to include members of the press to record what would certainly be the turning point of his profession as a policeman.

And indeed it was.

Kevlar-clad Yunis smashed through a door as the cameras rolled. Their focus was on Sadberk, lipsticked and clad only in the finest French lace panties, and his companion, a young boy.

Although the Turks wink at a number of the Koran's prohibitions, homosexuality is not greeted with the same secular blind eye as, say, alcohol. Sadberk was politically ruined and his powerful friends outraged at what they viewed as an overzealous investigation to ruin a man who, like Aziz, had had a bright future.

The inspector had been transferred to turizm polist, tourist police, where his main duties had been to sit in the Sultanahmet district office in view of both the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, writing endless reports of lost or stolen cameras, wallets and passports. Even this had apparently not been enough for Sadberk's cronies. A year later, Aziz was exiled to Buyukada as though he had offended some Byzantine emperor.

Exiled or not, he intended to do his duty even if all that was involved was a pair of horses and a carriage, more likely borrowed than stolen. But first he had to calm the driver into coherence.

One again, the distraught man went through his story: a passenger had taken his rig at knifepoint. No, he had never seen the man before. In fact, the robber appeared foreign.

Aziz ran the tip of his index finger across his mustache. "Foreign? How?"

"He didn't speak at all, just gestured. He just didn't look like a Turk to me."

"Well, what did he look like?"

The driver shrugged as though saying it was the duty of the police to know such things. "Just under two meters, dark hair, brown eyes. Heavy, perhaps a hundred or more kilograms."

In other words, almost any adult male on the island.

"Did you get any idea where he was going?"

The man shook his head, bewildered. "On a small island?"

This time Aziz's hand went to his bald head. "No, no. Where on the island?"

A blank stare. "How would I know?"

Aziz leaned back in his chair and glanced at the stucco ceiling as though seeking the patience to endure this dolt a little longer. He was about to refer the man to someone for a description of his lost horses, one Aziz could easily imagine: long neck at one end, tail at the other, four legs each… when the phone on his desk rang.

Ordinarily, Aziz would have let someone else pick it up, it being unbecoming to his rank of inspector (albeit the only one on the island) to answer his own phone. Today, he would rather lose face than continue what was clearly a pointless conversation.