Chapter 22

When they reached the car with their bags, they discovered it was not the same driver who met them at the airport. Keith looked at the car to be sure it was the same one, with his name on a hand-lettered sign in the window that said “Drucker.”

“I am sorry, sir,” the man at the car answered Keith’s inquiry. “Hasad had a family emergency and asked me to take over for him. You need equipment and we must hurry. It gets dark early and I do not wish to be on the road after sundown. This is not safe country.”

“What do you mean?” Maddie asked.

“The PKK, Kurdish resistance, has been pushing west from its normal territory,” the driver answered. “It is safer not to be on the roads after dark.” Relieved that the driver seemed to be taking their safety seriously, Keith held out his hand.

“I’m Keith Drucker,” he said. “This is Dr. Zayne.”

“I am honored, Mr. Drucker,” the driver said without looking at Maddie. “I am Najat. Now, we must hurry.”

At a mountaineering store in a local shopping plaza, Keith and Maddie bought boots, heavy parkas, gloves, and winter clothes. Keith added an ice axe and binoculars to his kit along with maps and basic camping gear. Maddie was responsible for figuring out how to pack and preserve the documents they might find with a minimum of equipment. To Keith’s surprise, she asked the driver stop at a grocery store. Keith had to repeat the request before the driver responded. Maddie bought black plastic garbage bags, cellophane wrap, drinking straws, and packing tape.

“I don’t have time to get archival supplies,” Maddie said. “I have a knife to cut the bags into sheets if I need something bigger than the plastic wrap. Otherwise, we wrap the document in cellophane, put it in a plastic bag, and tape it shut. Just before it’s fully sealed, we insert a straw to suck out all the air from the package we can and then seal it shut. It’s as close to vacuum packing as I can get with no real equipment.”

“Brilliant,” Keith agreed. “It just gives me the willies to put an ancient document in a garbage bag. We’d better get back in the car before the driver decides to leave without us.”

The ride in the back of the Land Rover was a quiet one and the driver drove with an intensity and speed that kept the two clinging to each other for security. Even at his breakneck speed, it took more than five hours to navigate the narrow roads. Soon after dusk, they arrived in Adiyaman, a small town more used to tourists in the summer than in the early spring.

They went directly to a hotel in the center of town and unpacked the car.

“We leave at first light in the morning,” the driver said. “You may have a long walk because the roads are not cleared that high up. Too much snow to safely drive. I will give you a map to the village of Kiran. There is only a footpath, but I will meet you there when you return.” Then the driver left them and went to his room.