Evolution of Fear (11 page)

Clay said nothing, let her speak. The infernal husband.

‘And then LeClerc contacted me and asked me to cover a story about stolen religious artefacts in Northern Cyprus. I have always been fascinated by the clash of cultures in the Levant. I grew up with it. So I took the assignment, started researching and flew out there. It was good to have something else to do.’ She shifted up onto her elbow, ran her hand across his chest.

‘Madame Debret told me that LeClerc insisted you take the job.’

‘He was very
résolu
, very keen.’

Clay said nothing, remembering the last time he spoke with LeClerc, his voice clear of the hesitation and fear Clay had heard through the phone in Santander. He wondered what had changed and why.

‘On my first trip to Nicosia, I met Nikos Chrisostomedes,’ Rania
continued, ‘a powerful, ridiculously wealthy Cypriot businessman. He is rumoured to be the money behind Neo-Enosis. Greek Cypriots see him as something of a hero, tilting at the nasty Turks and the UN. He is very popular at the moment.’ She traced her hand towards his shoulder blade, touched the pendant that hung from a leather string around his neck, turned it over in her fingers, just as she had months ago in that little village in the Yemen hinterland. ‘You never told me what this was,’ she whispered.

Clay looked out into the darkness, the city glow coming like a blurred memory through the shutters. ‘Chrisostomedes is a property developer, isn’t he?’

‘Correct. According to him, the thefts of religious artefacts in the north are a coordinated effort led by one man, Mohamed Erkan, a Turk who has built up huge business interests in Northern Cyprus since 1974.’

‘I’ve seen pictures of him in the paper. Lots of them.’

‘Not recently. His money has brought misfortune. Three years ago his wife was blinded in an acid attack. His son was killed shortly after in a helicopter crash. Since then, he has rarely been seen in public.’ Rania snuggled closer, still fondling the pendant, tracing the flat curvature of it with her thumb. ‘It is so, how do you say,
déchiré
, as if it were torn from something. What is it from, Claymore?’

He moved her hand away, propped himself up against the headboard. ‘What’s driving the market for the religious stuff?’

‘Most of the demand is coming from Russia. Communism is dead, faith has returned, and there is a new class of super-rich seeking to express themselves. The old illuminations are particularly prized, apparently.’

‘I’ve been following your stories,’ he said, too loud for the darkness. ‘Whenever I could.’

She kissed his chest. ‘I interviewed government ministers on both sides of the Green Line, spoke to museum curators and Greek Orthodox priests. Everyone knows it is happening, but no one seems to know how to stop it. Most just do not seem to care. It was quite
depressing, actually.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It also became apparent that artefacts are not the real issue.’

‘Land?’

‘
Exactement
. Ever since 1974, every reunification plan has included the stipulation that land in the north owned by Greeks should be returned, or appropriate compensation offered.’

‘And every plan has failed,’ he said.

‘
Oui
. It has always been the main sticking point in the negotiations.’

‘That’s because before ’74, Greek Cypriots owned ninety percent of the land in the north.’

Rania glanced at him sidelong.

‘I lived there for three years.’ He wasn’t sure he’d ever told her. ‘It’s all you ever hear about.’

She pushed herself up against the headboard, pulled the sheet up over her breasts. ‘Hope says Chrisostomedes is using the plight of the turtles to focus international attention on the theft of Greek land in the north. After all, it is the beachfront property they all want, the turtle-nesting beaches currently protected by the UN.’

She reached up for the pendant again, traced her fingers along the kudu leather strap around his neck. ‘Why won’t you tell me? What is it?’

He looked her in the eyes, square. ‘Bone.’

‘It is so jagged. So
heurté
.’

‘That’s what happens,’ he said, taking her hand gently in his and holding it tight. Something lurched inside him and he recognised it as fear, surfacing again, a recurrent malaria from whose delirium respite was only ever temporary. Fear, and something else.

‘Why are you here, Rania?’

‘Chrisostomedes is behind two of the biggest proposed seafront resort developments in the south, including one near Lara Beach, a major turtle-nesting site. Hope says he does not give a–’ Rania stumbled, stopped. ‘She says
shit
, about the turtles; that all he cares about is the land.’ The word seemed incongruous in her mouth, bitter of taste. She winced. ‘I have been up there, to Karpasia in
the north. The TRNC Government people I spoke with were tentative and unhelpful. Everywhere I went, I was “escorted” by Turkish police. In Karpasia I tried to interview some of the locals. It was bizarre.’ She said it the French way,
bizarre
. ‘No one would speak to me. As soon as I mentioned the beaches, the turtles or the planned development, they would go quiet. And Erkan has already started work. New roads are going in, land is being cleared. It should not be happening – those beaches are UN World Heritage Sites – but it is. Chrisostomedes blames Erkan. Both governments seem to be blind to it, or worse. And people are dying – eight unsolved murders in the last month, all in Karpasia, usually the quietest, most out-of-the way place you could imagine.’

‘I’ve been,’ he said, recalling the sweep of deserted, white-sand beaches, the towering dunes, green wooded hills, his lonely campsite in the trees, everything, until now, untouched.

‘Erkan blames Neo-Enosis for the murders. That is why I came to Istanbul.’

Clay turned to face her.

‘I came to interview Erkan,’ she said. ‘I am meeting him for lunch tomorrow.’

They lay together in the darkness for a long time, her hand in his, their bodies touching. Outside, the city fell deeper into its ancient REM. The sea air, purged of diesel, flowed through the shutters, iodine clean.

She reached up, ran her finger along the scar on his cheek, traced it down again to the pendant. ‘Before, you said: “that’s what happens”,’ she whispered. ‘When what happens? Tell me, Claymore.’

And then he was there again, for the hundred thousandth time, shafts of sun blasting through burned grass, a cosmos of dust swirling in a blue universe, covering him over, filling his mouth and his eyes, the sound of it moving inside his head, pushing from the inside against his ears so that there was no other sound, only the soft roar of the dust in his head. And then a face, haloed in smoke, the mouth moving, a hand reaching down to his face. Crowbar looking down at him and then turning away, calling out something, his chest rising and falling and the veins in his neck turgid, the heavy, blond-stubbled jaw working, though Clay could hear only the dust. And then Crowbar pulling him to his feet, looking him in the eyes, pushing his weapon into his hands. Straker, you’re good, he heard through the smoke and dust. You’re okay. And then his cheek afire, his tongue exploring the new, jagged topography inside his mouth, and then Crowbar reaching up to his face and pulling hard so that he almost knocked Clay over. And then the intrusion was gone and for a moment a hole opened up in his face and Clay could feel the air flowing over the side of his tongue. Then Crowbar pushing a compress against his face and tying it around the back of his head and holding up the thing for Clay to see.

‘Claymore,’ she whispered, the sound of his name unfamiliar to him in her accented lilt. She kissed his cheek, the scar there. ‘
Chéri
, are you alright?’

He looked at the wall. ‘That’s what happens, Rania, when a twenty-three-millimetre anti-aircraft shell travelling at 980 metres per second hits a human body,’ he said. Clay closed his eyes, drank in the sound of her breathing, the touch of her skin. ‘It’s a piece of Kingfisher’s skull,’ he said, staring straight ahead. ‘A friend.’ He reached up and touched the scar on his cheek. ‘It caused this.’

And then Crowbar had grabbed Clay’s jaw, looked into his eyes, turned his head left then right. Ambush, he said. Assholes got Cooper, too. The slap on the back. You’re okay, Straker. Come on. Firing’s coming from that village. And then Crowbar was gone through the smoke towards the white church on the edge of the
chana
.

‘After it happened,’ Clay said, listening to his own voice in the darkness of the room, echoing from the glass, not him somehow, ‘I just stood there looking down at him.’ Standing on shaking legs, swaying in the hot sun, staring at Kingfisher’s headless corpse in the grass. The body was strangely unscathed, the arms splayed wide, palms to the sky as if he were taking an afternoon nap in the sun, the webbing bulky around the waist, the nutria brown uniform covered in dust and dark patches of sweat. It could have been any of them.

‘Why keep it here,
chéri
,’ she said, ‘reminding you of something so horrible?’

‘Why do you keep your father’s Koran, Ra?’

‘It was the last thing he gave me.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘It is all I have left of him.’

Eleven years ago he’d put the piece of bloodied skull into his pocket, checked his R4 and, crouching low, started out across the grass towards the white church, the crack of rifle fire coming from the treeline, the mechanical hum of de Koch’s MAG loosing off burst after burst, AK47s banging in response, the air above him alive with metal. And afterwards, standing there in the smouldering ash of the village, the bodies of the Himba women and the children and the old
bushmen scattered about like discarded toys, they had agreed, all of them, never to speak of it again. They knew the fire had come from here, had found five FAPLA fighters dead among the bushmen, as many weapons, the anti-aircraft gun. It had been a mistake, they’d agreed, although they all knew it hadn’t, had realised almost immediately that the village was inhabited. But they hadn’t stopped. There was never any chance of it. Swept up by rage, only blood would slake them. Clay had charged in with the rest, screaming and yelling ‘cease fire’ till his larynx burst, but they hadn’t stopped. And when Bluey detonated a FAPLA mine, blowing his legs off, everyone just went berserk, Clay firing too now, emptying magazine after magazine into everything that moved until the barrel of his weapon smoked red hot. And at the tribunal he’d stood up in his dress uniform in turn and sworn that there had been no civilians killed that day and that the Bosbok crew who’d overflown later and reported the massacre must have seen the result of a FAPLA retaliation on their own people. That’s how it had stayed for twelve years now, hidden away in the SADF Provost General’s archives, just another episode in a shitty war that few had heard of and no one cared about.

He told her all of it, every detail, painstakingly, knowing that with every word of truth he was pushing her away. And when he was finished she lay there for a long time and all he could hear was her breathing and the sound of her tears, the dim outline of her so close.

‘It’s there,’ he said finally, ‘because I never want to forget.’

He woke early and lay watching her sleep, an Orient of regret marshalling in the colourless dawn. It had not been a dream. He’d told her everything, all of it. And if she decided now to exile him from her life forever, he would understand, embrace it even, as just but wholly insufficient penance. And he realised, as he watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest under the blanket, that no other dreams had come that night, and that in the telling of it something had been released. For the first time in a decade, he’d slept, really slept.

And she was still here.

When she woke, much later, she turned and looked at him. Morning prismed through the windows, lit her eyes. She smiled at him, took his hand. Two such simple things: a contraction of facial muscles, the fingertip touch of her hand; and in them a million chemical pulses to overload his senses, like reversing polarity on one of his PTSD freaks, as good as the worst were bad.

‘Wow,’ he managed.

‘What,
chéri?
’

He took a breath. ‘You’re beautiful.’ No words were adequate.

She smiled big. ‘I have something for you.’ She reached for her Koran from the bedside table. As she did, the bedsheet fell away, exposing her naked breasts.

The effect on his body was immediate and violent, a morning surge of testosterone that mixed with whatever else she had already triggered in him and made his head spin. She sat up and leafed through the pages as if unaware of the impact she was having on him.

Making no attempt to cover herself, she read the passage aloud
in Arabic, tracing right to left with her index finger. Then she closed the book, put the same finger under his chin and lifted his head up so that he was looking into her eyes. ‘Concentrate,
chéri
.’

‘I am.’

She smiled, pulled the bedsheet up over her chest. ‘Do you know Sura forty-seven?’

Clay fought to clear space in his mind. ‘Surat Muhammad?’

She nodded.

‘Those that disbelieve and avert people from the ways of Allah – He will waste their deeds,’ he said. ‘Something like that.’

‘Near enough,’ she said with a flick of a smile. ‘Do you know the second verse?’

Clay shook his head.

‘Those who believe and do good works, He will rid them of their ill-deeds and improve their condition.’

Clay said nothing, stared back into her eyes, fighting against the riptide of desire pulling him in.

‘Do you not see? You can be forgiven.’

The effect of her words was immediate and complete. The euphoria was gone, replaced by the cold clarity of the graveside. ‘No,’ he said, looking away. ‘I can’t.’

‘
I
forgive you, Claymore.’

Clay lay on the bed beside her for a long time without speaking, watching the sun angle higher across the hotel room walls, trying to process all of this. After a while she slipped from under the sheets and padded to the bathroom. He heard the toilet flush, the taps open, the sound of water streaming over naked flesh, falling to the tile. This was not something he had ever considered. How was forgiveness by another possible, when he had long ago decided that he would never bestow it upon himself? And even then, did it matter? Would it change anything? If he hadn’t checked into Hell quite yet – if such a place even existed (and he was pretty sure it didn’t, despite Rania’s fervent belief in both it and its logical opposite) – he damn sure had a reservation.

After a while Rania reappeared and sat on the side of the bed, a single white towel wrapped around her body. Her hair hung in wet tresses across her shoulders. She looked into his eyes. ‘
Chéri
,’ she said. ‘I–’

But he didn’t let her finish. He pulled her to him. Her lips met his, parted. Time slowed. Existence compressed into this – only this. Her. He pulled the towel from her body. He did it roughly, pushed her down to the bed, still kissing her hard. She moaned into him. He took her. She yielded. He was rough with her, not like the night before, when he’d been gentle and tender, but with abandon. He turned her over and pushed her head down hard into the bed and the more she opened herself, the more she took, the harder he was, the meaner, until at the end he was cursing under his breath as he emptied himself into her and hating himself for it.

After, Rania kissed him. She was gentle, as if the storm he’d unleashed were of no consequence, as if she
understood
. She rose silently, sat at the mirror, applied her makeup, dressed before him. He watched her from the bed, still grappling with everything she had offered, part of him still not understanding, not wanting to understand. She chose a dark pencil skirt and matching jacket, the blouse cut low enough to notice. Then she sat at the desk and picked up the phone. After a brief conversation in French she hung up and tried another number. After a few more calls she turned in the chair and looked at him.

‘There is no trace of Heloïse,’ she said. ‘I tried everyone who knows her. It is very unlike her to disappear like this, absolutely unheard of.’ She walked over to the bed, sat next to him and put her face in her hands. ‘
Mon dieu
, Claymore, what has happened to her?’

Clay put his arm around her.

She looked up at him. Tears welled in her eyes, beaded on her mascara-thickened lashes. ‘After I have finished this interview, we will go home.’

‘After
we’ve
finished the interview,’ he said.

She ran her fingers along his cheek, along the scar there.

‘I’m coming with you,’ he said.

As the taxi creaked along the Çirağan road, the Bosphorus flashing between the turrets and domes of teetering Ottoman houses, Rania there beside him, silent under the black burqa, Clay assessed risk. It was something he did routinely in his work as an engineer, back before he’d met Rania, just eight months ago when he still had a job and the prospect of rebuilding some kind of semi-normal life. Risk as a simple mathematical analysis; hazard described as the product of likelihood and consequence. The fact that Rania had come to Istanbul intending to interview Erkan, had set it all up beforehand, meant that anyone with access to Erkan knew she was here. Spearpoint’s appearance in the lobby of the Seglik Merkezi Hotel the night before was proof enough. Likelihood: high. Despite Rania’s remonstrations, he was more convinced than ever that LeClerc had sold them out, almost certainly to Medved and Crowbar. Erkan already knew Rania was coming to him so had no need to have her followed. Or did he? Clay intended to find out. Whichever way he considered it, the consequences were potentially catastrophic – possible loss of life. Multiply the two, and it was clear that they were in a situation that a risk-assessment specialist would technically describe as
in the shit
.

They arrived at Erkan’s place twenty-five minutes later. Rania was sure they hadn’t been tracked, but that did little to settle the churning rapids of worry eroding Clay’s insides. The taxi dropped them on the street before a steel gate set in a ten-foot stone wall topped with razor wire. Clay pushed the call button and scanned the street. A moment later the gate opened and a uniformed guard ushered them into the compound.

The house had an elegance that no longer seemed possible. Ottoman, wood, beautifully restored, its three balanced stories gleaming white, the blue Bosphorus sparkling behind, lush, treed gardens in front, it was a place built for a prince, a princess perhaps, another relic in a city of relics.

Rania pulled off her burqa. ‘
Superbe
,’ she whispered.

Erkan met them at the front door, flanked by two bodyguards. He was not much taller than Rania, with greying, too-long hair and a truck-driver’s moustache. His expensive silk suit was too wide in the shoulders, pinched and drawn around the middle. He reached for Rania’s hand, kissed it.

‘
Mademoiselle
,’ he said, ‘
vous êtes bienvenue.
’

‘
Merçi
.’ Rania smiled, glanced at Clay, replied in French. ‘This is my colleague, Monsieur Greene.’

‘I was expecting–’ Erkan stopped mid-sentence, shot a disappointed glance at Clay. ‘I thought we had agreed that you would come alone, Lise. May I call you Lise?’

‘I made no such promise, Monsieur Erkan.’ Rania smoothed her jacket. ‘A pious Muslim woman does not meet strange men alone. You should know that. And please, Mademoiselle is fine for now.’ Rania glanced at Clay a moment.

Clay took a step towards Erkan, already not liking this guy. ‘And is this the committee?’ he said, in Turkish, raising his chin towards the bodyguards.

Erkan looked at him, confused. ‘Pardon me, Mister Greene?’

‘The welcome committee.’

The bodyguards, a six-foot-five monster with bulging neck muscles and a prominent early homonid forehead, and a woman with dark, scrub-brush hair, wide hips and swimmer’s shoulders, glared at him in unison. They both wore black military-style trousers and black t-shirts. Neither appeared armed, but Clay suspected weapons would appear quickly if needed.

Erkan turned up the intensity of his smile a notch, held it for a couple of seconds then let it slide away. ‘Your colleague is a comic, Mademoiselle,’ he said in English.

Rania glanced at Clay, the edge of a frown showing. ‘Not a very good one, I am afraid.’

‘No,’ said Erkan, offering his arm to Rania, leading her through the main entrance into a grand foyer dominated by a swirling carved balustrade, a ton of crystal hanging high above like a partially
condensed cloud, then over hardwood parquet through a tapestried sitting room out to the seaside patio. Clay followed; the body guards, Ho (
♀
) and Hum (
♂
), a few paces back. A table for two set against the sea rail, a parasol flapping in the breeze, potted palms, boats plying the channel beyond, the iodine sodium-chloride tang of the sea twitching in the air. Erkan clapped his hands, called for another place setting, pulled out a chair for Rania, helped her sit then took his place across from her. Clay stood admiring the view. The bodyguards stood by the doorway admiring them.

A uniformed waiter came and set out
rakı
and water. Erkan offered some to Rania. She declined.

‘I want you to know, Mademoiselle Moulinbecq,’ said Erkan, pouring himself a glass of
rakı
, adding water, ‘that I have agreed to this interview as a courtesy to your respected organisation.’ The two clear liquids clouded like a winter sky.

‘Thank you,’ said Rania.

The waiter brought salad, grilled fish and a chair for Clay. They ate, watching the boats moving over the water, wakes like comets’ tails. After the plates were removed, Erkan lit a cigar, leaned back in his chair. ‘Before we begin, young lady, I want it understood that this conversation must be kept entirely off the record. That is why I wanted you to come alone.’ He glared at Clay.

Rania nodded. ‘I understand. You have my word.’

They both looked at Clay.

‘My word also,’ said Clay.

‘If any of this is published I will deny it as pure fabrication. Do you understand?’

Rania nodded again.

Erkan tipped ash from his cigar into the ashtray. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘What you have written about me over the past days, quite frankly, is slander.’

Rania blanched.

‘I suggest you check your facts, in future, before committing such rubbish to print.’

Rania made to speak but Erkan held up his cigar hand.

‘Neo-Enosis, young lady, these are the criminals. In the last two weeks, four of my employees have been murdered, and you write about a few religious icons, about some sea animals? Where is your sense of perspective? The real issue is this: Turkish Cypriots are once again being terrorised by a callous Greek majority.’ Erkan took a long drink and wiped his moustached lips with finger and thumb.

‘What do you know about the collection and sale of historic religious artefacts from Greek Orthodox churches and shrines in the north?’

Erkan waved his cigar, glanced down Rania’s top. ‘From time to time I buy pieces from local collectors and sell them on to foreign buyers.’

Rania straightened in her seat. ‘Local collectors?’

‘Individuals acting of their own accord.’

‘And your buyers?’

Erkan frowned, hesitated. ‘Confidential, of course.’

Rania flipped over a page in her notebook. ‘Can you comment on the illegal appropriation of Greek-owned land in the north, Monsieur Erkan?’ Rania’s voice was steady, all business.

‘Everything I do in Cyprus is legal. I have land titles, permits, environmental approvals from the government.’

‘A government that no country in the world except Turkey recognises,’ said Clay.

Rania shot him a shut-up look.

Erkan’s face creased. ‘I am not a politician, thank God. I follow the laws, I do not make them.’

‘There are those who suggest otherwise,’ said Rania.

Erkan examined the length of his cigar, took a puff. ‘If you want to understand Cyprus, young lady, you must first understand that it is the Turkish minority who are the victims, despite the loud noises made in the press by the Greeks about invasion, pillage, cultural genocide, and so on. It is exactly the opposite. If you want a real story, look into the dealings of Laiki Resorts and Properties in the south, for instance.’