Jihad

CHAPTER 38

When Rubens entered the Art Room, he went directly to Rockman’s console at the front of the room.

“Where is Mr. Dean now?” Rubens asked the runner.

“He’s in a passage under the Topkapi Palace, headed toward the ruins of Constantinople’s old sea wall. We’re not exactly sure what these passages were. They look like the complex of Byzantine cisterns up near the Hippodrome, or maybe it was a residential district buried by one of the earthquakes. We can’t find any documentation.”

“Has Dean found Asad?”

“He’s close, but we still don’t have the signal.”

“How can that be?”

“We have a theory,” said Telach, coming over. “The room may be shielded. It’s probably one of these on the right.”

Rubens looked at the schematic sketched from the ground-penetrating radar. While it wasn’t technically difficult to shield a room from radio waves, it did require considerable preparation and expense. It was conceivable that Asad or someone in his circles had arranged this, but it seemed out of character.

So perhaps the shielding was already there.

“They’re in a mausoleum,” said Rubens. “A large bronze tomb. Or a treasury room. Get an opinion from the technical team on whether the radio waves can penetrate them. There’s no sense having Mr. Dean prowling old sewers if there’s no hope of picking up the signal.”