City of the Lost (22 page)

There were other problems too. They weren’t doing this snatch for fun. The point of it was to pump Black for everything he knew about the Grey Wolves and their plans, and what he’d told others. They needed, above all, to find out how much Visser knew, and whether she’d have to be taken care of too. Black was certain to resist their questioning, so they’d need to make him talk despite himself. That was likely to get loud, and so necessitated privacy. Finally, she had to make him vanish afterwards in such a way that no one would connect it back to Turkey.

A flurry of sand blasted her window. A youth leaned into the wind as he hurried by, a red-and-silver silk scarf over his mouth to help him breathe. They all did that here. She remembered reading of a man lost in a desert storm who’d collapsed from heat exhaustion then had suffocated from inhaled sand. The germ of an idea came to her. Maybe she wouldn’t need to make Black vanish after all. She checked the forecast on her smartphone. The
khamsin
was so named because it blew over a period of fifty days; and tomorrow was expected to be another. ‘Keep watching,’ she told Bulent. ‘Let me know if anyone comes out.’ She tilted her seat back, closed her eyes. Darkness helped her think. Her mind played with the variables like a child with a wooden puzzle. She tested ideas, refined them, tried to fit them together into workable combinations. It was fifteen minutes before she sat up again and turned around to U
ğ
ur, sprawled snoring across the back seats. ‘Wake up,’ she said, shaking him by his shoulder.

‘What is it?’ he yawned.

‘You’re coming with me,’ she told him. ‘We need to get a taxi.’

‘Sure. Where are we going?’

‘Nowhere,’ said Asena. ‘We just need to get a taxi.’

The third of the scandals was in some ways the least surprising. Yet, coming on top of the others as it did, it perhaps proved the most consequential.

For years, there’d been rumours that the Defence Minister had been taking massive kickbacks in return for the award of major arms contracts. He’d always denied these rumours furiously, stating flatly that, with all the audits and other checks, there was no technical possibility of profiteering from his office. But now an Istanbul newspaper published the confidential testimony of a US defence industry whistle-blower detailing several real-world examples of how such transactions worked, including a diagram showing how they’d funnelled money to the Swiss bank account of the Turkish Defence Minister himself.

Along with the news coverage, there was speculation too. Canny political journalists wondered aloud why three such juicy scandals should emerge on the same day. They pointed out that the Tourism, Justice and Defence Ministers were each members of different factions within the government. What seemed to be going on, therefore, was that either a tit-for-tat cabinet civil war had broken out or another faction altogether – perhaps the Interior Minister’s, for example – was sabotaging potential rivals before making a play for the top job.

On the street, however, the reaction was both simpler and blunter. Get rid of the whole rotten lot of them, was the verdict. Get rid of the whole lot of them and start again.

There was bad news for Iain when he handed Mike the samples case. ‘How long before you’ll have results for me?’ he asked.

‘It depends on the tests,’ Mike told him. ‘But I’d say allow at least a week.’

‘A
week
?’ frowned Iain. He’d assumed, from Nathan Coates’s compressed itinerary, that it could be turned around in a day or two at the most.

‘For the kind of analysis you want, yes,’ said Mike. ‘It’s one thing to tell whether a particular piece is authentically old or not, which is all Nathan wanted to know fast. It’s another to tell where clay came from, or where metals were originally mined, as you want. You’ve no idea how complex that level of analysis is.’

Iain grimaced. He was in no great hurry to return to London, but he could hardly hang around here for a week. ‘Can’t you give me anything?’ he asked.

Mike pursed his lips. ‘We’ll prepare the samples now and run our first tests overnight. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky. But don’t pin your hopes on it. Other than that, I can have my archaeobiologist check for pollen. But again I wouldn’t put too much weight on that. It’s far too easy for samples to get contaminated.’

‘Right now I’ll take anything.’

Mike briefed his team then set them to work. Iain watched them embed tiny fragments from the samples in plastic discs and feed them into their spectroscopes for analysis. But it was largely a waiting game now. He made himself more coffee, borrowed a phone to book himself into his usual hotel in Central Cairo, then spent the afternoon reading dense articles about dating and archaeology in academic journals.

The lab assistants – like Mike himself – were all attached to the nearby American University New Cairo campus, and so lived nearby. They drifted off, one by one, until only Mike and his pollen expert were left. At six-thirty, Mike came to fetch him, looking decidedly pleased with himself. ‘I have to lock up now,’ he told him. ‘More than my life’s worth, being late for the in-laws. But we’ve found something for you. Or Soraya has, at least. Come take a look.’ They went together to her lab, where a shy-looking woman in a hijab was standing by a high-powered microscope next to a computer monitor displaying an image of multiple spiked yellow balls. ‘Pollen grains,’ said Mike. ‘Soraya got them from one of your shards.’

‘And?’

Mike touched the screen with the tip of his index finger. ‘This one here is henna. Nothing surprising about that. It’s been grown all over the Eastern Mediterranean for millennia. But Cyprus was particularly well known for it. Homer even mentions it in the
Iliad.
Some people claim that’s how the island got its name, because henna was
kuprus
in Greek. But that’s not all.’ He nodded at Soraya. She changed the slide and a cluster of small purple pods appeared on the screen. ‘This is a variety of grass pollen,’ he said. ‘The thing is, Soraya recognized it. We found it on some samples last year from Salamis. These appear to be identical.’

‘Salamis?’

‘An old city on the east coast of Cyprus,’ said Mike.

Iain nodded. ‘That’s where I should look?’

Mike shook his head emphatically. ‘Just because we found it there doesn’t mean it’s only there. Anyway, like I said earlier, you should never put too much weight on one pollen finding. But it’s interesting, certainly. A good start.’ He checked his watch meaningfully. ‘What say we reconvene in the morning, see what the night has brought us? You’ve got yourself a room, yes?’

Iain nodded. ‘Near the Corniche.’

‘I’d offer to drive you …’

‘Forget it. I’ll take a cab.’

‘I’ll run you up to the university. There are always a few cabs there.’

They locked up, headed out, hunched against the continuing
khamsin
. As luck would have it, a taxi pulled up just ahead and a woman got out to pay her fare, clutching her headscarf about her face. Iain waved to the driver. The driver nodded. Iain thanked Mike then hurried across to it. He tossed his holdall in the back then climbed in after. He checked his pockets for cash but pulled out instead Nathan’s cryptic note to Mike. For some reason, he got the joke instantly this time. What more fitting answer could there be to the Homeric Question, after all, than a Virgil Solution? And not only that, he also realized what that solution must be, and that Karin and Nathan and presumably even Mike himself were all in on it.

He reached for the door to call after Mike and ask him about it only to find the woman blocking his way. There was something odd about her posture, the way she had her hand beneath the flap of her bag, almost as if holding a weapon of some kind. He glanced up at her in surprise. Her scarf had slipped slightly. It was the woman from Sabiha Gökçen. He didn’t know precisely what was going on but he knew it was trouble. He threw himself at her but too late. Taser nodes thumped his chest and flung him twitching to the floor. He tried to cry out but his tongue was stuck in his throat. The driver reached around and plunged a syringe into his neck and he felt the blackness pulling up like a sleeping bag around him as the woman climbed in and the handbrake released and the taxi pulled serenely away.

Deniz Ba
ş
türk rubbed a hand wearily across his face. That Twitter and the other social media were ablaze with outrage at the day’s three scandals was hardly a surprise. Under other circumstances, it frankly wouldn’t have been much of a worry, either. Firestorms like this were common enough in Turkey, and they usually burned themselves out quickly enough. Unfortunately, tomorrow’s Day of Action offered the people the perfect opportunity to take their anger out onto the streets. And current intelligence suggested that they meant to seize it. No one was talking about tens of thousands any more. Nor even hundreds of thousands. No. According to this latest estimate, the best part of a million people were expected tomorrow.

And that was in Istanbul alone.

Deniz Ba
ş
türk tossed the report down onto his desk and looked up at Interior Minister Iskender Aslan. ‘And?’ he asked. ‘What exactly do you expect me to do?’

‘I don’t expect you to do anything, Prime Minister,’ said Aslan. ‘I’m merely keeping you informed.’

‘Of course. But you can handle it, yes?’

Aslan was too experienced a politician to answer a direct question with equal directness. ‘The organizers have been helpful,’ he said. ‘They seem sincere in their wish to keep things peaceful. But the usual trouble-makers are certain to try to cause mischief; and, as you know, these things can sometimes take on a life of their own. What we’d normally do, we’d bus thousands of reinforcements in from around the country, then flood the streets and squares with uniforms. But we can’t do that this time because these rallies are happening everywhere. I’ve done all I can. I’ve cancelled leave. I’ve authorized unlimited overtime. I’ve told our regional offices to defer the usual paperwork and put everyone on the streets. General Yilmaz has been helpful too. His troops will take over protection of transport hubs and national monuments, allowing us to put those extra officers on riot duty.’

‘So that’s a yes, then,’ said Ba
ş
türk. ‘You can handle it.’

Aslan grimaced. ‘You have to understand. Civil unrest is like a forest fire. You beat it in one place only to find it breaking out in a dozen others. Then suddenly it’s everywhere.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that tomorrow may be difficult. I’m saying that I may need to take strong action. I’m saying that that action may include the arrest of hundreds of people, perhaps even important people, if they start inciting trouble. But I can’t do that in the current climate unless I have your full and explicit backing.’

‘You have it, Iskender. I assure you.’

Aslan smiled graciously as he picked up the intelligence report. ‘Thank you, Prime Minister. Then I’ll leave you to your work.’

Asena and U
ğ
ur led in the taxi with Bulent following in the Subaru. They headed out of New Cairo on the Ain Sukhna road. The sandstorm was finally subsiding a little, revealing the terrain as flatter and bleaker than she’d expected. But it would do fine. They took a spur road then bumped down a desert track until they found a patch of suitably soft sand. Black was still out cold, and would be for another hour yet. She took out and searched his wallet, pocketed a slip of paper with various phone numbers on it, then dropped his hotel receipt from Antioch on the floor. Holding his hand by the wrist, she dabbed his fingerprints on the door-handle, the window and the seat. Then she had Bulent and U
ğ
ur carry him to the Subaru and toss him in the rear.

Black’s mouth was already covered with duct tape. U
ğ
ur used up the rest of a roll binding together his forearms and then his ankles. Bulent, meanwhile, drove the taxi out onto the soft sand and spun its wheels until it was stuck. He popped the bonnet, loosened a starter motor lead, closed it again. He locked the taxi then rejoined them, adding the taxi’s keyring to the Subaru’s as he came back across. They drove the Subaru deeper into the desert, bumping over the moonscape of pits and loose rocks for the best part of an hour. The wind died away. The ground grew soft. They reached a steep-sided dune valley turned almost to snowdrifts by luminous moonlight. ‘This will do,’ she said.

Bulent stopped, ratcheted the handbrake. He dragged Black out by his ankles while U
ğ
ur covered him with his silenced handgun. Asena crouched down beside him. His eyes were groggy slits as he lay on his back, just beginning to come round. She ripped the tape from his mouth and the sting of it brought him abruptly awake. She expected confusion and panic and pleading, but there was none of that. Instead, he looked around for a few moments then stared up at her with gathering focus and what might have been unnerving calm had she not held all the aces, and all the kings too. ‘Hello, again,’ she said. ‘Remember me?’

‘Refresh my memory,’ he said, his voice a little slurred from the anaesthetic. ‘I have a lot of stalkers.’

‘Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen. You were supposed to fly to London.’

‘I had a premonition. Seems like it was right.’

She waited for him to ask the obvious questions. He didn’t. She sighed and said: ‘I imagine you’ve guessed who we are and what we want with you. But in case there’s any doubt, we’re here for information. Specifically, I want you to tell me what you know about the Grey Wolves, and why you think they were involved in the Daphne bombing. I want you to tell me who you’ve talked to about it, and how much your girlfriend Karin Visser knows.’

His single blink at Visser’s name was the first hint of weakness he’d shown. ‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ he said. ‘She knows nothing.’

‘Convince me,’ said Asena, ‘and maybe I’ll let her live.’

‘Fuck you,’ he said, with such disdain that she had a sudden fierce urge to hurt him. She took her hunting knife from its sheath and pressed it so hard against his larynx that it drew blood. He didn’t so much as flinch. Her cheeks grew hot, as though she’d lost in some small way. A tough one, this. He’d need softening before he talked. She stood and beckoned Bulent and U
ğ
ur out of his earshot. Then she told them what she wanted.