City of the Lost
Will Adams
A high-stakes thriller which weaves Turkey’s war-torn past with action, adventure and conspiracy.A TERRIFYING ATTACKSouthern Turkey. Business intelligence operative Iain Black, having survived the hotel bombing that killed his friend and partner, vows to find out who was responsible – then make them pay.A PAST THAT WON’T STAY BURIEDHistorian Karin Visser, who also lost friends in the blast, teams up with Iain to uncover secrets hidden deep within the region’s past, from the bloody division of Cyprus all the way back to the Trojan War.AN EXPLOSIVE SECRETPiecing the puzzle together, Iain and Karin discover the shocking conspiracy behind the blast. But now they’re running out of time to reveal it – before they’re silenced for good.
CITY OF THE LOST
WILL ADAMS
To Hattie and Mark
Table of Contents
Cover (#u9d142bfd-dc82-5ae8-b34a-fe876eea0f2f)
Title Page (#u16d13468-b528-5510-946a-d9d2c4b884ad)
Dedication (#u8159607d-1600-5d4c-9bb0-a9b82822c16c)
Prologue (#u8405a42b-3461-5849-892b-f3bfe7a690a7)
Chapter One (#u5f3f3abc-3fd2-5f31-9773-486d76582372)
Chapter Two (#u768195cc-7442-5310-a625-534391b448d0)
Chapter Three (#u8da4c2a9-c4b9-5f64-ae8f-d44ece3551b5)
Chapter Four (#u0eb2cb4b-4ddc-5f5b-bafb-973a5f839923)
Chapter Five (#ud0d4c458-fb87-5778-a9f7-8697a595af6d)
Chapter Six (#u8c506f29-c52e-5dc3-b0ef-fc6b4db39a14)
Chapter Seven (#u180fd8cc-640e-5345-9750-cd56510b21ad)
Chapter Eight (#u957eded3-de23-5418-8a22-8d14353efbf8)
Chapter Nine (#u53aa7eca-2e52-5c6f-814e-cf28ae936012)
Chapter Ten (#u9f2770a4-0369-5834-9aae-badf4ab39ea8)
Chapter Eleven (#uea7f596b-e38d-5b0a-a312-9ef3811cec33)
Chapter Twelve (#uc998a827-7282-5891-af41-f539e6c948c6)
Chapter Thirteen (#u8ffc6d84-d2d1-5848-a1a0-fc3f65698396)
Chapter Fourteen (#ube1282f7-7cd9-5bb3-bc88-c61f28e1781e)
Chapter Fifteen (#u00ebd909-be80-56f9-9ecf-c03cc22fcc5d)
Chapter Sixteen (#u5bf92053-3945-5419-8a22-132866763e0f)
Chapter Seventeen (#u301a73e2-2041-507c-ba12-c4a7bd771265)
Chapter Eighteen (#u1c27d75c-2e45-5579-a60a-4376a86b54d0)
Chapter Nineteen (#uc7e2dc0b-1e23-5918-aac6-f11ed65b46d0)
Chapter Twenty (#u9532e8c2-16c0-5744-9f02-fec5a4defdeb)
Chapter Twenty-One (#u2e00622b-1c4e-5a3e-ac58-3151c8a99ec3)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#ub69c7299-6aa1-5b89-a4cb-7df70a164106)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#uedbd62c0-5d33-5e55-9d7c-6cfe38bb7d16)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#u4d30212e-acf0-5f92-997c-eade62f28359)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#uf327df27-efb5-52c1-9157-156ee75a9165)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#u05b7daba-6f04-54e5-9d26-22d97578fc22)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#u592125dd-e51e-5b76-bf27-6d08487bf475)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#u7ead0cf2-106e-501d-ac49-ab1d9415bed9)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#u7a996947-8869-5fde-9dc8-d4f9cd07267a)
Chapter Thirty (#ud700daab-95e2-5a78-845f-99adbc51ecb5)
Chapter Thirty-One (#u97617882-679f-588b-8378-b27a4f585298)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#u5fab7df2-cce6-5f79-befd-f96462d30d45)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#u636dcf9c-3ce5-59bf-9136-dd51facf65f2)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#u5187e55d-7d6d-5b36-9da7-80c1b757e3da)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#ub749d836-b4cf-5966-8b97-13abf2fb00cd)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#ua867059a-6909-50a3-a7ed-7978cc20d3ba)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#u830ae61d-2e5b-52ce-bdcc-bdfa01a6c8e3)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#ubab105ba-a1b1-5e7f-9d28-567ce04d2119)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#u6e2cdff1-d88f-52c6-860d-e2645b471f2a)
Chapter Forty (#u8b398b7a-03c5-5aa9-bca1-c639d9e0eb74)
Chapter Forty-One (#u8d391f6f-5a64-5b86-beea-322db5e646ac)
Chapter Forty-Two (#u97991ecc-7df0-5316-b4b6-c33264af0076)
Chapter Forty-Three (#u77b65860-3e12-5f50-be40-435f3d15de24)
Chapter Forty-Four (#u776bd887-ddbe-5c14-8e51-0a0e7e2ebecf)
Chapter Forty-Five (#uff1231b4-ab33-527e-ae85-00dbfe171988)
Chapter Forty-Six (#uefbbef34-fa94-53c0-b05f-607de0abe1dd)
Chapter Forty-Seven (#u957e0967-6930-5803-93b5-94f0a5a38d91)
Chapter Forty-Eight (#u24e62a3d-def9-5f43-a3ab-4de2e4f7ba2d)
Chapter Forty-Nine (#u025984ad-a8c4-5009-93d9-a4ef7cc9ffef)
Chapter Fifty (#u7972785c-8ae5-5be6-b801-5a1bb7497606)
Epilogue (#u86bb6fd1-bdcb-5ce5-9a76-b4d3cb7c34c1)
Author’s Note (#u4af9f72e-57eb-5284-a813-0a8d78fd8093)
About the Author (#u21eefb1d-f5de-5666-9975-87f9f4ec815f)
Also by Will Adams (#ucf9b72fb-56a7-56f8-9775-efd6039a3192)
Copyright (#u5191e5a5-ae23-5d5c-aff0-94f7b7bd7acb)
About the Publisher (#uc842e742-5f76-55a3-8281-d854bbc00675)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_1e31ab10-ce65-5acd-b7f6-52833c04b2c6)
Alashiya, Eastern Cyprus, 805 BC
She’d thought she’d have till dawn, but it wasn’t to be. They came at dusk instead. From the ramparts of her palace, she watched them landing on the beach. Between the breaking of the waves, she could hear the muffled roars of their triumph and the jubilant clashing of spears on shields as they saw they were unopposed and realized that her people had abandoned her.
She didn’t blame them for that abandonment. She’d brought it upon herself through neglect of her queenly duties. What cut her, what truly cut her, was that the man she’d neglected them for had abandoned her too. She could see his fugitive sails still, the splash of frantic oars. She thought scornfully: Aeneas of the Teukrians indeed! No doubt he’d be telling himself comforting lies about how Sicherbas was her brother and could therefore be trusted to treat her honourably. She wanted, suddenly, for him to be confronted with the brutal truth of it. And, with him already so far distant, there was only one way to achieve that.
It was time.
Her palace was on three levels. The subterranean treasuries and storerooms, hewn out of raw bedrock. A ground floor of grand chambers with walls of ashlar masonry and roofs of cedar timbers shipped in from her childhood homeland. And, finally, the upper quarters of wood and thatch. The bottom level would never burn; the top would burn easily. It was the middle floor, therefore, that needed work.
Her sister Anna was waiting below with two lit torches. She, at least, had no illusions about what their brother would do if they fell into his power. Nor did she have any stomach for letting him regain his claimed treasure. That was why, when word had first reached this new city of theirs that he was on his way with his full fleet, pledging terrible revenges upon them both, they’d sent every man they had to chop down the surrounding forests and fill these rooms with timber.
She and Anna touched their torches to the largest stack now, then stood back to watch the contagion spread, flaming embers spitting and drifting to neighbouring chambers, where new fires quickly started. The smoke made her eyes water so that tears spilled down her cheeks. She wiped them angrily away lest Anna mistake them for self-pity. When the heat grew too much for them to bear, they retreated to the treasury steps, then hugged and wished each other well on their respective journeys. Once Anna was gone, she went alone down the steps into the vaults, fetched her sword from her armoury. His sword, more properly, for it was what they’d exchanged instead of vows. She used its blade and hilt to pry and hammer away the stone chocks, releasing cascades of sand from the walls, allowing the vast marble slab to sink slowly beneath its own unimaginable weight until it slotted neatly into place above her, sealing these steps off forever.
One entrance closed. One more to go.
Through dark and twisting corridors, she hurried to and down the long staircase. Usually, when she stepped out into the great cavern at the foot, it was already aglow with the myriad constellations of oil lamps in the walls. But her handmaidens had left with Anna and the others, to found their next new city on the Libyan coast, beyond even her brother’s vengeful reach. And so, for once, this place looked gloomy rather than magical. She closed and barred the heavy bronze doors behind her. Now for the second entrance: the twisting cave passage down which she and Aeneas had first discovered this place while seeking refuge from a storm. The mouth was high above the chamber floor, reached only by a staircase pegged to the left-hand wall, where the camber was easiest. She climbed it to the top, then crossed the short bridge to the narrow slit in the limestone. She ducked her head as she passed through it into the shaft beyond, then climbed the crude steps hacked in the rock up to and beyond the trap-doors.
High above her, the night sky flickered orange. Her palace was ablaze. Her heart twisted with a kind of bitter triumph, knowing her lover couldn’t help but see this pyre as he fled his cowardly way. But she had no time to waste. She hacked at the two ropes until they both cleaved and slithered off upwards like startled snakes, then stood there for a moment, panting from the exertion. Rumblings began, as though Mother Earth herself were hungry. Her engineers had warned her to be swift. She climbed back below the trap-doors then closed them flat across the shaft and fixed them in place with their locking-bars. She was barely done when it began, a soft pattering that abruptly turned into a thunderous deluge before being so muffled by the sand already fallen that it grew silent again.
Her tomb was sealed. As was her fate.
Back across the bridge and down to the cavern floor. She held her torch to the staircase until it caught and began to burn with gratifying vigour, a spiral of fire spreading gloriously up and around the gallery. Wood and rope fizzed and crackled; steps and struts clattered blazing to the ground. With no more need for her torch, she tossed it into the general conflagration then went to their bed and set the pommel of his sword into a corner so that it couldn’t slip. Then she tore open her robes and pressed the tip of the blade sharp and cold against her stomach, pointing upwards beneath her breastbone towards her heart.
A last hesitation as she looked down. How many times had they lain here together? How many times had he talked of sailing towards the setting sun, of founding a new city of his own somewhere across the great sea? He’d called it destiny. She’d called it avoiding marriage. Now he’d got his chance at last. And no doubt, if it went well for him, his entourage would tell stories to make heroes of themselves, as survivors always did. But he, at least, would know the truth of it.
And, one day, maybe the world would too.
ONE (#ulink_44f6707f-512a-5a8b-9a28-f629524876c6)
I
Daphne, Southern Turkey
They said this was where the Trojan War had started. They said that it was here, among Daphne’s wooded hillsides, glades and waterfalls, that Paris had awarded his golden apple to Aphrodite, rather than to Athena or to Hera, thus winning himself Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, and precipitating the Greek armada and ten years of brutal, bloody war into the bargain.
Iain Black smiled as he took another sip of his sweet strong tea. Men going crazy over a beautiful woman. How far the world had come. ‘Now her,’ he said, nodding along and across the road to the steps outside the black-glass fronted Daphne International Hotel. ‘She’s more like it.’
Mustafa glanced over his shoulder, snorted in amusement. ‘What is it with you and scrawny women?’ he asked. Then he flushed as he realized what he’d said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—’
‘It’s okay,’ Iain assured him. ‘Anyway, she’s not scrawny. She’s elegant. There’s a difference.’
‘Elegant!’ retorted Mustafa. ‘Can’t you see what she’s wearing?’
Iain laughed. He liked her clothes, the student chic of them, the way they showed off her figure without seeming to. A plain blue sweatshirt, baggy cream cheesecloth trousers, well-worn tan sneakers. Silver rings on her fingers and her left thumb, a back-to-front baseball cap through which poked unruly tufts of her straw-coloured hair, and a pair of John Lennon shades with shiny dark blue lenses. ‘Give her a break,’ he said. ‘She’s on holiday.’
‘A woman should always make the most of herself,’ said Mustafa. ‘Especially a woman who can afford to stay in a place like that.’
‘You’re a chauvinist and a snob, my friend,’ smiled Iain.
‘Yes,’ agreed Mustafa.
The woman was carrying a tattered blue-vinyl day bag. She now half drew a bulky manila envelope from it so that she could check its address. She put it back, looked both ways, turned left and headed away from them, towards the main road. Iain watched her out of sight with a mild pang of regret, not for her in particular so much as for the companionship of an attractive woman. It had been too long; that was the fact of it. And he was ready again, he suddenly sensed it inside himself. Yet this was hardly the time or place. With Butros Bejjani and his entourage on their way, he needed his game-head on.
He checked his laptop again, the feed coming in from the various cameras they’d set up to monitor the approach roads and the hotel lobby. No sign of them yet. ‘How are we for time?’ he asked.
‘Another half hour at least,’ said Mustafa.
Iain nodded at their empty glasses. ‘More tea?’
‘Need you ask?’
He picked up their glasses and took them inside, the door banging closed behind him. An elderly thin German woman with hennaed hair, silver jewellery and an embroidered crimson scarf was agonizing between juices. When finally she’d plumped for lemon, Iain gave his own order and asked for the drinks to be taken out. Then he headed for the rest-room. He was on his way in when it happened, a thunderous boom and the rest-room door slamming sideways into him like a small truck, throwing him down onto the white tiled floor. He rose with difficulty onto hands and knees. His ears were muffled yet he could still hear alarms outside, people screaming. The years of training and service kicked in, so that instead of panic he felt the familiar calm coldness spread through him, almost as though he was watching it happen to someone else. He tried to stand but his balance was off and he fell back down. He didn’t let this bother him but kept trying until he succeeded and made his way unsteadily out. There was glass, debris and dust everywhere. The waiter was down behind the counter, groaning softly. The German woman was on her side, her scarf splayed like blood around her throat and head. Her eyes were open but dazed and he couldn’t see any injuries, for she’d been protected from the worst of the blast by the solid side wall which—
Mustafa.
He hurried outside. A glimpse of hell, daytime turned to night by a canopy of noxious black smoke. A blue van with shattered windows was blazing furiously. Dust and fragments of stone whispered down around him like dry rain; and even as he watched, a misshapen and charred sheet of once-white metal crashed from a nearby roof onto the cobbles. His eyes watered with dust and toxic smoke. He had to squint to see. The café’s forecourt had been cleared as if by a giant arm. He went to the edge, looked down. The air was clearer here. Three cars had tumbled all the way down the steep slope to the tree-line of the valley beneath. Tables, chairs, sunshades and other debris were scattered everywhere. Great chunks of rubble, the tossed cabers of telephone poles, the black serpents of their wires. And there was Mustafa, two-thirds of the way down. The gradient was so steep and the ground so loose that he set off little avalanches with every step, earth cascading around his ankles. Mustafa was on his back, wheezing from the effort to breathe. His cheek was lacerated and bleeding and his left arm looked badly broken below the elbow. Iain knelt beside him. He’d dealt with trauma often enough in the army, but that didn’t make it easy. He unzipped Mustafa’s leather jacket. His white cotton shirt beneath was sodden with blood. A piece of shrapnel had torn into his friend’s gut and gone to grievous work inside, releasing that hateful sick sweet smell. He looked up the slope in hope of help, but there was no one, he was on his own. A shredded cotton tablecloth fluttered like defeat a little way off. He made a wad of it, pressed it over Mustafa’s wounds, bleakly and increasingly aware that it was futile, a gesture, that his friend was losing blood too fast for anything short of a miracle to save him. And he didn’t believe in miracles.
Mustafa groaned and opened his eyes. He lay there for a moment, taking it in, assimilating what had happened to him, what was about to happen. He felt for and took Iain’s hand, looked him in the eyes. ‘My wife,’ he said softly. ‘My daughters.’
‘You’re going to be fine,’ Iain told him. ‘Help’s on its way.’
He shook his head. ‘My wife,’ he said again, more urgently. ‘My daughters.’
Iain blinked back tears. ‘I’ll see they’re all right. I give you my word on it.’
Mustafa nodded faintly, satisfied by this pledge. ‘Who did this?’ he asked. ‘Was this us?’
Iain grimaced. For eighteen months now, Turkey had been caught up in a spiral of violence that approached a state of war. Not just the overspill from Syria, a few miles south of here, but also from Kurdish separatists, Islamicists, Armenians and even Cypriots who’d taken advantage of the growing chaos to press their own particular causes. Yet that this should happen outside this hotel today of all days was too big a coincidence to ignore. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Find out,’ said Mustafa.
‘I promise.’
‘Find out and make them …’ He grimaced in pain or shock. He gave a little cry and clenched Iain’s hand tight. His left leg twitched briefly, as though trying to kick off a slipper. Then he stiffened and his body arched for a moment or two before something seemed to puncture inside him and he relaxed again and was still.
II
Georges Bejjani was tapping a cigarette from its soft pack when the bomb exploded a short distance ahead. He didn’t see the blast itself, for it took place on a side road and thus was obscured by the black glass exterior of the Daphne International Hotel. And, because it was a fraction of a second before the first sound reached them, he thought momentarily that he was suffering some kind of weird hallucination, perhaps an optical illusion caused by sunlight and the midday haze. But then a silver 4×4 came back-flipping out onto the road and he heard the sudden thunder of it, and alarms began tripping all around them as a canopy of thick black smoke spread low across the sky.
Faisal slammed on the brakes, began instantly to turn. He was trained, after all, for such emergencies. But the traffic had been squeezed into a single lane by an unloading lorry and an oncoming van screeched to a halt right beside them, pinning them in. A fist of stone punched the passenger-side window, buckling the frame and turning the glass seawater green for a fraction of a second before it shattered and fell away. Debris pattered and then pounded upon their roof like a sudden squall of hail. Even while it was still coming down, Georges whipped out his mobile to call his elder brother. ‘Bomb,’ he said, the moment Michel answered. ‘Get Father back to the boat.’
‘Are you okay?’ asked Michel.
‘We’re fine. Just get him safe.’
‘On our way now,’ Michel assured him. ‘Was it for us?’
‘I don’t know. It went off ten seconds ago. But it was right outside the hotel.’
‘Then it was for us,’ said Michel.
‘I’ll check into it.’
‘Be careful.’
Georges snorted. ‘Count on it,’ he said. He turned to Faisal and his bodyguard Sami. ‘Let’s take a look,’ he said. ‘But we’re out of here before the police show. Okay?’
They ran forward in a crouch, wary of a second device or of gunmen waiting to ambush the first responders. Childhood in Lebanon was a harsh teacher. Dazed people appeared like a zombie army from the smoke, clothes torn and ashen, faces bloody and smeared. The smoke grew black as night, choking and eye-burning. They passed cars on their roofs and sides, reached the front of the stricken hotel. Only the right-hand side of the road here had been developed, affording hotel guests uninterrupted views of Daphne’s gorgeous valley from the balconies. But the bomb had chomped a vast bite from this road, tarmac and hardcore tumbling in a great rubble avalanche down the hillside. The resultant crater had also been partially filled with shattered black glass, broken masonry and other debris from the hotel itself. A forearm protruded from beneath a chunk of grey concrete at such a grotesque angle that Georges couldn’t be sure it was even still attached. The block was too heavy for him alone, but Faisal and Sami helped him lift it high enough to reveal the man beneath. They looked away, sickened, let the masonry fall back down.
In the distance, sirens. Police, medics, maybe even the army. They were near to a war zone here, and this whole region was prone to earthquakes. They’d have experts and heavy lifting machinery. Staying here wouldn’t help anyone, would only invite the kinds of questions he wished to avoid. He needed to find answers before returning to the boat, but this wasn’t the place. Sami looked meaningfully at him. He gave the nod and they ran together back to the car, then pulled a sharp turn in the road and drove away even as the first emergency vehicles raced past them to the site.
III
The shameful truth was that fine music bored Deniz Baştürk. Two years in the steelworks had done damage to his ears and left him with coarse tastes: music to dance to, to drink to, lyrics made for bellowing. When his son Orhan had told him that he wanted to transfer to the Ankara State Conservatory to study it, therefore, he’d thought – or perhaps more accurately hoped – it was a joke.
But such were the perils of falling in love with an artistic woman.
On the concert platform, his son packed his oboe away into its case, took a zurna from his music-bag instead. He’d been granted the rare honour of choosing a piece to perform, to showcase his own talent. But what it was, Baştürk didn’t know. He frowned inquisitively at his wife Sophia; she gave him in return only an enigmatic smile. The lights dimmed a little. The players took up their instruments. His son put the zurna’s reed to his lips, readied his fingers for the first note. Baştürk found himself tensing, hope fighting fear. If this was what his son wanted, it was what he wanted too. But he’d learned the hard way, these past six months, that aspiration wasn’t the same thing as ability.
The first notes, so soft he could barely hear them. Baştürk made sure to keep his hands and expression relaxed, but his feet were clenched like fists beneath his seat until with a shock he not only recognized the piece but then quickly realized that Orhan had mastered it completely, that he was good; and now the other instruments joined in and the music began to soar raucously and joyously and he knew it was going to be okay, his son would have the life he coveted, and he sagged a little with the relief of it, and he took and squeezed his wife’s hand, and he felt quite ridiculously proud.
Now that he could relax, the music went to work on him. It was a personal favourite of his, conjuring childhood memories of his own father, of being carried on his shoulders at protest marches, of watching him holding union crowds enthralled with his fierce rhetoric. Then the music hit its first melancholic passage, and it took him with it. For it had been a mixed blessing to have such a man for a father, dooming him to a life of falling short. And he had fallen short, he knew. He’d let his father down. He’d let his wife and son down. He’d let his country down. He felt, again, the almost crippling sense of inadequacy that had blighted him so often since he’d started his new job.
A door banged behind him. He looked irritably around at this disruption of his son’s performance. Shadows conferred in those urgent low voices that were somehow doubly intrusive for being hushed. On stage, the players hesitated, uncertain whether to treat this as a rehearsal or a full performance, before staggering to an ugly, ragged stop. Baştürk slapped his knee in anger then got to his feet. ‘I thought I said no interruptions.’
‘Forgive me, Prime Minister,’ said Gonka, his senior aide, hurrying down the aisle to him. ‘But there’s been an incident. A bomb.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Not another.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ she nodded. ‘In Daphne. And I wouldn’t have disturbed you even so, but the press have found out you’re here. And they’re already gathering outside.’
TWO (#ulink_f3a0deee-424f-5a24-be5f-f853b2216efc)
I
There was nothing more Iain could do for Mustafa, and others might need his help. He made his way down the slope to the cars that had rolled to its foot. The first two were empty, but a middle-aged woman was strapped unconscious behind the wheel of the third, a green Peugeot settled on its roof. He couldn’t see any flames but its interior was clouding with smoke. The doors were all jammed shut, but its passenger-side window had partially buckled so he smashed it with a stone until it caved. He took a deep breath then wriggled inside. He released her seatbelt, took her under her arms, hauled her out and laid her on her back. Her pulse was weak but she was alive and breathing unaided.
He clambered back up the hillside. It was steep enough to make his calves and hams ache. Shrieks of pain and wails of grief greeted him. The smoke had cleared to reveal the blast’s full devastation. A great bite had been taken out of the road in front of the Daphne International Hotel and its black-glass frontage had shattered and fallen away, exposing a honeycomb interior of ruined rooms, of broken baths and toilets dangling grotesquely from twisted pipes. The scale of damage, and the lack of any residual smell of cheap explosive, suggested to him military-grade ordnance. And not some stray shell from the Syrian war: it would take a large missile or a truckload of Semtex to wreak this much—
A cracking, splintering noise ripped the air, sending the fire-crews and search-and-rescue teams scurrying for safety. Then, a second or two later, the hotel’s left-hand wall simply sheared away and toppled forwards into the general rubble, bringing the rear wall down too, throwing up more clouds of noxious dust and reducing still further any hope of finding survivors.
Ambulances were now arriving in large numbers. He led a pair of paramedics down the hill. While one of them treated the Peugeot driver, he and the other strapped Mustafa onto a stretcher and carried him back up to the top, loaded him onto an ambulance. He asked to go along with him, but the paramedic gave an expressive little shrug. It wasn’t an ambulance right now, but a body-cart; and they needed all of it. ‘Did he live around here?’ the man asked.
‘Istanbul,’ answered Iain. He nodded at the wrecked hotel. ‘He was staying there.’
‘Wife? Family?’
‘I’ll call them myself,’ said Iain.
‘We still need to know who they are.’
He summoned up Layla’s number on his smartphone, wrote it along with Mustafa’s name on the back of one of his own business cards, then added the name of his Antioch hotel should they need to contact him. The paramedic thanked him and moved off in search of further grim duties. Remarkably, it was only now that he remembered what he and Mustafa had been here to do. Or, more precisely, remembered the footage that would have been streaming into his laptop right up to the moment of detonation. If his hard-drive had somehow survived, and the footage could be recovered, it could prove vital to the investigation. On the other hand, if the police discovered it for themselves it would be a nightmare to explain away.
He went back down the slope to where he’d found Mustafa then searched in an ever-widening spiral until he spotted an edge of the toughened black casing protruding from loose earth. He pulled it free. Its screen was shattered, its hinges broken and its casing pocked by shrapnel, but it could have been far worse. He carried it obliquely back up the slope to his hire-car, locked it away in his boot. His next job promised to be harder. He took out his phone again. No signal. The masts had to be overwhelmed. He walked away in search of coverage. Still nothing. A wicked little voice whispered that the paramedics or the hospital would take care of it for him, maybe even handle it better than he could. They’d be calm, clinical, practised.
In Istanbul, last year, Layla had cooked a feast in his honour, to thank him for bringing good employment to her husband. Their two daughters had sat either side of him upon their divan while he’d read them stories from the lusciously illustrated copy of the Thousand and One Nights he’d brought as a gift.
A signal at last. Tenuous but undeniable. He felt light-headed as he dialled Mustafa’s home number, like the first hint of flu. The phone had barely rung before Layla snatched it up. She began talking Turkish so fast that it was a struggle for Iain to follow. He tried to slow her. When she recognized his voice, she burst into sobs of relief. ‘You’re safe,’ she said, switching to English. ‘Thank God you’re safe. I’ve been watching on the news. I’ve been so worried. Where’s Mustafa? Is he with you? I’ve been trying his phone.’
‘Layla,’ said Iain.
There was silence. It stretched painful as the rack. ‘He’s hurt,’ she said. ‘He’s hurt badly, isn’t he?’
‘Layla,’ he said again.
She began to wail. It was a desperate, inhuman sound, like an animal being tortured. He didn’t know what she needed from him, whether to respect her grief with silence or to tell her what he knew. He decided to talk. It would be easy enough for her to shut him up if she wanted. He described their morning in the café, how he’d gone for more tea immediately before the blast. He told her how he’d knelt beside her husband in his last moments. She wept so loudly that it was hard to believe she could hear him, but he kept talking anyway, about how Mustafa had seized his hand and asked him to look out for her and their daughters. He told her of his promise, reiterated it now. Her sobs abruptly stopped. ‘Layla?’ he said. He’d lost signal. He felt sick and bruised and drained and guilty all at once as he walked around trying to reacquire it. When finally he succeeded, to his shame he couldn’t bring himself to call Layla again. He called the London office instead, asked for Maria. Maria had known Mustafa a little, had a wonderful gift of empathy. He braced her for bad news, told her what had happened. He asked her to get in touch with Layla, arrange for her and her daughters to fly down to Antioch if she so wished, plus whatever else she needed; and also to start the paperwork on Mustafa’s life insurance.
‘Are you okay?’ Maria asked. ‘You yourself, I mean?’
‘I’m fine,’ he assured her.
‘You don’t sound fine.’
‘I just watched Mustafa die,’ he told her. ‘I thought I was past all this shit.’
‘I’ll talk to Layla,’ she promised.
‘Thank you,’ said Iain. ‘And put me through to Quentin.’
‘Now?’
‘Now.’ He went on hold. His boss picked up a few moments later. ‘Maria told me,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe it. Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘What are you going to do? Are you coming home?’
‘No. I need to be here for Layla.’
‘Layla?’
Iain clenched a fist. ‘Mustafa’s widow.’
‘Ah. Yes. Of course. Layla.’
‘Listen, Quentin,’ said Iain. ‘Before Mustafa died, he asked me if we had anything to do with the blast. I promised him I’d find out.’
‘How could you even think such a thing?’
‘Because I don’t know who our client is,’ said Iain. ‘Or what they wanted from this job.’
‘You do know our client. Hunter & Blackwells.’
‘They’re lawyers, Quentin,’ said Iain. ‘Who do they represent?’
‘They had nothing to do with this. Take my word for it.’
‘No,’ said Iain.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said no, I won’t take your word for it. Not on this. I need to know who they are and why they’re so interested in the Bejjanis.’
Silence. ‘Very well,’ said Quentin, finally. ‘I gave them a pledge of confidentiality, but under these circumstances, I think I can ask permission to share. Though I make no promises.’
‘I do,’ said Iain angrily. ‘Either you tell me or I’ll make it my business to find out. And they really don’t want me going after them, not in the mood I’m in.’ He ended the call, rubbed the back of his neck. His first few months at Global Analysis had been such a relief after the army: stimulating, demanding and rewarding, yet no one getting killed or even hurt. This past year or so, however, it had turned increasingly sour. The secrecy. The offshore accounts. The relentless push for profits. The downright nastiness of some of their clients. That was why, for several months now, he’d been making vague plans to set up on his own, maybe invite Mustafa and a few of the others to go with him. Yet he’d done nothing concrete about it.
And now this.
II
Turkish Nicosia, Cyprus
Taner Inzanoğlu made a point of walking his daughter Katerina to and from school every day he possibly could. He did it partly because his car was old and unreliable, and partly because petrol was so expensive. But mostly he did it because it was such a relief to get away from his writing and other work for a while; a relief to spend time with Katerina and not feel guilty.
The afternoon was sunny and warm, yet pleasantly fresh. The perfect spring day. He bought them each a raspberry-flavoured ice-lolly. They licked them as they walked through the park, tongues sticking to the frosting and turning ever redder. She told him about her day, her friends, the lessons she had taken, the inexplicable splinters of knowledge that had somehow lodged in her mind. They finished their lollies. He took her wrapper and stick from her, put them in a bin. Then he broke into a run. ‘Race you,’ he shouted over his shoulder.
The course was well known to them both. Through the trees, around the swings and the exercise machines, back to the path. ‘I can’t believe you beat me,’ he protested, as he collapsed panting onto the grass. ‘What kind of daughter would beat her own father!’
The way her eyes crinkled when she laughed reminded him so vividly of her mother that his heart ached almost as though it had just happened. With the pain came the usual premonition: that something calamitous would overtake her too, that he’d be equally powerless to stop it. He reached up and hugged her and pulled her down onto the grass beside him. ‘What is it, Father?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said. His anxiety wouldn’t go away, however. If anything, it grew worse. They’d barely left the park before his mobile rang. He checked the number, was relieved to see that it was only Martino. ‘Hey, my friend,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re cancelling tonight?’
‘Aren’t you watching?’ asked Martino.
His heart stopped. ‘Watching what?’
‘The bomb. In Daphne.’
Taner turned his back on Katerina so that she couldn’t see his face. ‘How bad?’ he asked.
‘Bad. Really bad.’ He paused a moment, then added what Taner had most feared. ‘And they’re saying that a warning was called in. They’re saying it was us.’
III
The police had already started taking statements from possible eye-witnesses. Iain gave his name, details and a bowdlerized version of his day to a slab-faced officer with an implausible belly. A few paces away, the woman he’d earlier joked about with Mustafa was struggling to make herself understood by an officer with limited English. When he was finished, therefore, he went across and offered to translate. Her name was Karin Visser. She was twenty-seven years old. She was Dutch but had been studying and working in America for the past four years, which explained both her accent and her impeccable English. She’d been travelling around Turkey with her boss Nathan Coates, a retired oil executive, and his head of security Rick Leland. The two of them had been in Nathan’s room all morning, in some kind of meeting. No, she didn’t know who with. No, they hadn’t been in Daphne long. They’d only arrived from Ephesus late the night before, had been due to fly on to Cyprus the day after tomorrow, then back to the States at the end of the week. No, she hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. She’d gone for a long walk that morning, had returned to the hotel thinking the meeting would have finished. But it had still been going on. She opened up her day-pack to show the manila package inside, and explained how her boss had given it to her to have couriered, insisting that she see to it herself rather than merely trusting it to reception. She’d been on her way when she’d heard the blast and run back. That was when … She waved an expressive hand to indicate the destruction. The policeman thanked her wearily and asked her to let him or his colleagues know before she left the area, then went off to conduct his next interview.
‘Are you okay?’ Iain asked her.
‘I’m fine,’ said Karin. But her hand was trembling slightly and her eyes glittered. ‘It’s just, they were my friends, you know. And I’ve never been through anything like this before.’ She shook her head. ‘I feel so useless. I feel like there are things I should be doing.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. To do with Nathan and Rick, I guess. I mean did you see the hotel? Nathan’s room was right above that crater. I mean right above it.’ Her tears finally started flowing. She brushed them away with the heel of her left hand. ‘They have to be buried under God only knows how much rubble. There’s no way can they still be alive. So what do I do? Do I call their families? Or do I wait until it’s confirmed? And is it up to me to arrange for them to be …’ She closed her eyes, unable to complete the thought. ‘And then there’s stupid stuff. I left my passport in my room safe, for example. My cards, my driver’s licence, nearly all my cash. I assumed they’d be okay there.’
‘Someone from your consulate will be here soon,’ Iain assured her. ‘By tomorrow at the latest. They’ll deal with the police and the authorities for you. They’ll arrange to have your boss and your colleague flown back home. They’ll issue you with a new passport. They’ll make sure you have money and a flight.’
‘But what about until then? God, I know this is trivial, but where do I go? What do I eat? Where do I sleep? How do I get around? I don’t know a soul in this place and I don’t speak a word of the language and my friends are dead and I don’t have anywhere to stay or enough money to pay for a room and I don’t know what I’m going to do.’
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll get you a room at my hotel.’
‘I told you. I don’t have any money.’
He touched her arm gently. ‘I’ll put you on my tab,’ he said. ‘You can pay me back when you sort things out.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
She wiped her eyes. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘It’s fine.’
There was nothing more to keep them here, so he led her to his car. It was barely five miles to Antioch, but the roads were so chaotic that it took them an hour. He parked up the cobbled street from his hotel, led her inside. The receptionist stared at them in astonishment. ‘You were there?’ she asked.
Iain touched Karin on the elbow. ‘My friend here was staying at the Daphne International. She needs a room. Oh, and she’s lost her passport and her cards, so can you please put her on my account for the moment.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said the receptionist, ‘but we don’t have any rooms left. The phone’s been going crazy. Journalists and TV people and police. Everyone’s on their way. And the other hotels are the same. We’ve all been referring inquiries to each other. I honestly don’t know of any rooms left in the city.’
Iain glanced at Karin. Sharing a room with a stranger breached all kinds of company protocols, but she was visibly at the end of her tether. ‘We can go hunting, if you like,’ he said. ‘Or there’s a spare bed in my room.’
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’
‘Just for tonight. We’ll sort something better out tomorrow.’ The receptionist smiled at this happy solution, tapped Karin’s details into her terminal, gave her a spare card-key. They took the lift up. He fixed them a drink each, spilled a pack of chocolate-covered nuts into a saucer. Karin sat heavily on a bed and checked her mobile, but the masts were evidently overwhelmed here too. He nodded at the bedside phone. ‘Use that,’ he said.
‘It’s to Holland. To let my parents know I’m safe. Then to America.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he said. ‘Owe me.’ He half held up his hand to apologize for his irritability, but Karin didn’t even seem to notice. He went into the bathroom, put his hands upon the sink, rested weight upon them. It was a risk of being single too long that you lost your soft edges. He checked himself in the mirror: a mess of sweat and dust and blood. He fetched clean clothes from his wardrobe, stripped and took a shower, vigorously soaping off the dirt and blood and sweat, watching the grey-brown mess of it circle the plug and then vanish. He dialled the heat up as high as he could take it then turned his face to the spray almost as if to purge himself of something, or perhaps in penance for the fact that, yet once more in his life, an operation he was running had turned so utterly to shit.
THREE (#ulink_f589ac45-0f21-5351-ade2-e340a0cb400c)
I
They found a storage room crammed with pianos and other instruments in which to brief Deniz Baştürk on the bomb before he went out to face the press. Discordant notes thrummed and pinged each time someone changed position or rested a hand on a keyboard, making it even harder for him to absorb what he was being told, fretting at the ordeal ahead as he already was.
Hard to believe that he’d actually once enjoyed dealing with the media. As an economics professor of reasonable repute, brought into the Ministry of Finance in the wake of the global financial crisis, his first interviews had almost exclusively been policy-dense one-on-ones with sober-minded financial journalists. He’d enjoyed the intellectual challenge of making his case persuasively, and he hadn’t needed to worry much about ambush, partly because he was essentially an honest man, but mostly because access was too valuable a commodity to the press to be wasted on a hit against someone as obscure and technocratic as himself. But then had come his unexpected elevation to the top job, and everything had changed.
Enough. His aides knew nothing more and if he didn’t go out soon the murmuring would start, that he was hiding. He led the way himself, marching through the lobby and striding boldly out the automated glass front doors, because you had to look in command even if you didn’t feel it. It had turned darkly overcast outside, exaggerating the eruption of flashbulbs from the several dozen reporters and photographers crowded in the small courtyard and on the steps up to the street, almost like he was in an auditorium of his own. He felt exposed without a podium to stand behind; his usual one not only had a concealed step to make him appear taller, but its considerable girth also helped disguise his own. There was nothing for it, however. He took a moment to compose himself and to adopt a suitably sombre expression then spoke the usual platitudes about the nation’s thoughts being with the victims and their families, giving them his word the perpetrators would be caught.
‘You’ve been giving your word for six months,’ said Birol Khan of Channel 5. ‘Yet still they bomb. Each worse than the last. The Syrians, the Kurds and now it seems the Cypriots. It’s like they’re competing with each other.’
‘That’s an unnecessarily alarmist way of—’
‘Alarmist? These monsters murdered thirty people. And you call me alarmist?’
He held up a hand. ‘That’s not what I meant. These … perpetrators are criminals. This is a security problem, not a war.’
‘It feels like a war. It feels like we’re under attack all the time.’
There were murmurs of approval at this. These weren’t merely journalists. They were civilians too, people with their own fears, with loved ones of their own. Until recently, the troubles had been sporadic and largely confined to the Kurdish south-east, but now attacks were taking place with increasing frequency and violence all across the country. No town or village felt safe any more. No public space or office. And it was impossible to protect everywhere. He cast a guilty glance over his shoulder. Since his son had started here, the Academy had added layers of security, courtesy of the state. He himself was escorted by at least six secret service bodyguards wherever he went. His cars were armoured, his office and both homes protected by rings of steel. How would he feel if it was his own family in jeopardy and no progress was being made? He suffered another flutter of inadequacy. The country needed a proper leader, not some floundering economist. ‘The police are doing the best they can,’ he said weakly.
‘That’s the precise problem,’ shouted out Yasemin Omari, a gadfly TV reporter who mistook rudeness for speaking truth to power.
‘They’ve made a great many arrests.’
‘Yes. Of people the Interior Minister doesn’t like.’
‘That’s a ridiculous allegation.’
‘Some say he can’t catch the bombers because he’s fired his best officers and replaced them with incompetent loyalists. Others say he’s deliberately slow-pedalling the investigations to make you look bad. Which do you think it is?’
‘I think he’s a dedicated public servant doing an excellent job under extremely difficult circumstances.’
‘Your current Chief of the General Staff helped take down the Kurdish separatists last time it got like this. Why not put him in charge?’
‘Because counterterrorism is a civilian task. Besides, the Minister and the General are already in close contact. We operate a joined-up government.’ Laughter made him flush. ‘I assure you,’ he said.
‘You assure us?’ taunted Omari. ‘Everyone knows those two hate each other. When was the last time they even spoke?’
‘We have just suffered the most terrible atrocity,’ he said sharply. ‘Do you seriously expect me to reveal details of our investigation on national television?’ He shook his head as if in dismay then pushed his way through the pack and up the steps to the waiting cars. A heartfelt sigh the moment they were safely inside. ‘Get the Interior Minister and the Chief of the General Staff for me,’ he told Gonka, as they pulled away. ‘I want them in my office.’
‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ she said. ‘When?’
He turned so that she could see his face. ‘When do you think?’ he asked.
II
Karin was on the phone when Iain finished his shower, being talked at by an American man with an abrasively loud and patrician voice. ‘… need to let me know the moment my father’s death is confirmed,’ he was saying.
‘Of course,’ said Karin. She glanced up at Iain. ‘But I have to go now,’ she said. ‘Again, I’m really sorry for your loss.’
‘I’ll bet you are,’ said the man, sounding remarkably chipper for someone who’d had such grievous news. ‘Waking up like this to find nothing on the night-stand.’ The phone clicked; there was dial-tone. Karin grimaced as she replaced it in its cradle. ‘Nathan’s eldest,’ she said.
‘He seemed to take it well.’
‘They aren’t the closest of families.’
Iain nodded. If she wanted to talk about it, she’d bring it up herself. ‘You look exhausted,’ he said. ‘Enough with the phone calls. Have a bath. A nice cup of tea.’ He fetched an olive T-shirt from the wardrobe, tossed it to her, then fished some Turkish lira banknotes from his wallet. ‘For clothes and food and shit. Whatever you need.’
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘My pleasure,’ he said. ‘And if there’s anything else …’
She took a deep breath. ‘Does that extend to advice?’
‘Sure. About what?’
Karin had brought her day-pack up to the room. Now she took the bulky manila envelope out from it. ‘You remember what I told that policeman? How I went out walking all morning. Then I went back to Nathan’s room only to find him still in his meeting, and how he gave me this to post.’
Iain frowned. ‘You want me to run it down to reception?’
‘No. It’s nothing like that. It’s just that I’ve been thinking about something. About why we were even here.’ She bit her lower lip briefly, as though torn between discretion and the urge to share. ‘If I tell you something in confidence, will you keep it to yourself?’
‘Of course,’ said Iain. ‘What?’
She showed him the package’s address label. It was made out in neat turquoise handwriting to a Professor Michael Walker at the Egyptian Institute of Archaeometry in New Cairo, Egypt. ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘I know Mike. My boss Nathan used to sponsor his institute, you see, so I’ve dealt with him a fair bit over the phone. He’s an archaeologist, essentially, but he specializes in scientific techniques like carbon-dating, thermoluminescence testing, spectrum analysis, that kind of thing. How old is this parchment? Where was this amphora fired? What’s the mix of metals in this ingot?’
‘Okay,’ said Iain.
‘Nathan was fascinated by the ancient Greeks,’ said Karin. ‘Particularly the Mycenaeans. The ones Homer wrote about. We were in Troy a couple of days ago, for example. Then we came here. You won’t know this, but some people believe the Trojan War started in Daphne.’
‘Sure,’ nodded Iain. ‘Paris awarding Aphrodite the golden apple.’
‘Yes. Exactly.’ She looked so impressed, he decided not to confess that Mustafa had told him this that same morning. ‘But you saw the place. It’s not exactly Ephesus, is it? Though, to be fair, Nathan also co-sponsors excavations at an old Hittite city called Tell Tayinat, which is only a few miles from here, by the Syrian border. But that’s off-season right now. There’s no one there.’
‘Am I supposed to be following this?’
‘Sorry. I’m thinking out loud. You see, when I was arranging our itinerary, this was the only leg of the trip that Nathan insisted on, even though there was nothing for us to do here. We had to arrive last night, we had to stay at the Daphne International Hotel, and we couldn’t leave for Cyprus until the day after tomorrow.’
‘Ah,’ said Iain.
‘And Nathan only decided to make this trip two weeks ago. You don’t know him, but that’s completely out of character. He likes to have everything just so.’ She gave a little grimace. ‘He liked to, I should say. Spontaneity was never his thing. Yet suddenly he decides to come here. And you should have seen how excited he’s been these past few days. And that hotel! It was nice enough, yes, but Nathan was rich. I mean really, really rich. I could easily have found us something far nicer, like the place we had in Istanbul, you should have seen it. But no, he insisted on that specific hotel. And then this morning he tells me that he and Rick have a meeting, and that I should go out and not come back for at least two hours.’
Iain nodded. ‘So you think your whole trip here was in fact cover for this meeting?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘Do you know who it was with?’
‘No.’
‘But you suspect someone was offering him artefacts for sale, right? And that this package for your friend Mike in New Cairo contains samples he wanted tested? To authenticate the pieces before he handed over any cash?’
Karin grimaced. ‘Nathan never cared too much about provenance,’ she said. ‘At least, that’s not fair, he did care, he cared a lot. But he thought it worth pushing the boundaries a little if it meant getting important pieces back into the public domain. He donated all those sorts of acquisitions to museums, you see. The black market’s still illegal, though, however honourable your intentions. And he told me once that he almost got caught here in Turkey several years ago. So what do I do? I can’t see how telling the police would help the investigation, but what if it could? Yet if I tell them about it, and they use it to trash his reputation, I’d hate myself. Or what if they accuse me of being his accomplice? I wasn’t, I swear I wasn’t. It never even occurred to me until a moment ago. But how could I possibly prove that?’
‘So post it to this Walker guy,’ suggested Iain. ‘You’d have done it anyway.’
‘But they’re bound to be keeping an eye on those sorts of places, aren’t they? What with the bomb, I mean. Or what if Mike notifies them himself after he receives it? It’ll look like I was trying to hide it. And I showed it to that policeman, remember? What if he asks for it?’
‘Why would he?’
‘I don’t know.’ She sounded a little close to the edge suddenly; shock often got to people in unexpected ways. ‘Maybe to find out who Nathan was meeting. To identify his body or something. What would I do then?’
He took the package from her, packed it away in his holdall at the foot of his wardrobe. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You were badly shaken by the explosion. I took it from you to carry. What with everything else, you never even gave it another thought.’
‘But I—’
‘You never even gave it another thought. If anyone asks for it, which they won’t, frown and say you think maybe I have it. If they ask me, I’ll give it to them and your boss’ reputation will have to take a hit. That’s all. But it won’t happen, I promise you. Nor will anyone come after you. They’ve got far more important things to worry about.’
She let out a deep breath. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘And not only for this. For everything. I honestly don’t know what I’d have done without you.’
‘Just glad I could help,’ he said.
III
A smallholding near Gornec
The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
Zehra Inzanoğlu was breaking up soil in her top field when she heard the engine. It sounded strained and urgent, with a different pitch to any of her neighbours’ vehicles. Nor did it sound much like the hire-car of one of the hapless tourists who sometimes got themselves lost up here while trying to find some imaginary shortcut across the mountains to the north coast.
She rested her mattock against her thigh, brushed dry earth from her hands. The car crested the low rise and came into view. It was old, pale blue and patched in places with grey filler and black tape, and her heart gave a little skip of recognition as it pulled to a stop on the hardened mud track near the steps to her cottage. Then the driver door opened and her son Taner stepped out.
He was taller than she remembered. He’d filled out in the chest and shoulders too. When she’d last seen him, it had been possible to think of him as a boy, her boy, though he’d been twenty-four, married and about to become a parent himself. But he was a man now, beyond question. She walked down the path towards him, but stopped several paces short and held her mattock out like a pikestaff. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
He tried a smile. ‘I need help, Mother,’ he said, spreading his hands. ‘I need your help.’
She shook her head slowly. He was flesh and blood so saying no to him could never come easily. But the choice had been his. She and her husband had made the consequences of his betrayal perfectly clear. ‘You should have thought of that before.’
‘I’m not asking for myself,’ he said. He turned and beckoned to the car. The passenger door opened and a girl of perhaps ten years old climbed out. She was wearing a school uniform of royal blue with yellow bands, and her hair was of a lustrous black that tumbled in glossy curls down to and beyond her shoulders. Her mouth was mutinous and her eyes were bloodshot from rubbing or weeping. Even so, she looked so strikingly like how Zehra’s younger sister had looked at that age that it was a punch in her chest. ‘This is your granddaughter Katerina, Mother,’ said Taner. ‘Katerina, this is your grandmother Zehra.’ They stared at each other for several moments, uncertain what to say or do, so that in the end it was Taner himself who had to break the silence. ‘I need you to look after her for a few days, Mother,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m about to be arrested.’
That caught her attention. She tore her eyes from her granddaughter. ‘Arrested?’
‘The bomb.’
‘What bomb?’
‘On the mainland. Haven’t you heard?’
‘I don’t listen to news.’
‘It killed many people. And they’re blaming me and my friends.’
‘With reason?’
He flinched as though she’d slapped him. ‘Of course not, Mother,’ he said. ‘I detest violence. But plenty of people don’t like what we stand for and this is their chance to shut us up.’
Zehra nodded at Katerina. ‘Why can’t her mother look after her?’
‘Athena’s dead, Mother. She died last year.’
‘Oh.’ Despite herself, despite her promises, she felt an unexpected pang of pity for her son, for there was no doubting that he’d loved his wife, and she knew what it was to lose someone you loved. ‘Don’t you have friends?’
‘They’re going to arrest them too. They’ll arrest all of us. They made that absolutely clear after the last time. So it’s either you or sending her to stay with her mother’s family in Paphos.’ He gave her a shrewd look. ‘And if I send her there, how can I be sure they’ll ever let her come back?’
Zehra sniffed. She knew he was trying to manipulate her, but it was the truth too. Greek Cypriots couldn’t be trusted, which was precisely why she’d warned him against marrying one in the first place. She was about to point this out when she heard other engines approaching. ‘I told them I was coming here,’ explained her son. ‘I didn’t want them to think I was trying to run.’ He went to Katerina, crouched down before her so that she could see the seriousness on his face. He murmured something. She shook her head. He murmured it again, more forcefully. She took a couple of half-hearted steps towards Zehra then stopped and looked around. ‘Please, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘For Daddy.’ She nodded and went unhappily over to Zehra. ‘Be kind to each other,’ he said. Then he turned and raised his arms above his head and walked up the short hill to meet the two black SUVs now cresting it. They pulled to a stop either side of him. Doors opened. Six uniformed and plain-clothes policemen got out. They cuffed him roughly and bundled him into one of the SUVs, climbed in either side. The drivers executed a neat ballet to turn in the constricted space, then headed off. Taner looked back through the rear window, his palms pressed against the glass, but then they were gone, leaving only the fading noise of their engines and thin clouds of settling dust.
Zehra turned and looked bleakly at her granddaughter. Her granddaughter looked bleakly back. What now? It was Katerina who made the first move. She clenched her eyes, opened her mouth, and began – at a quite appalling volume – to howl.
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