Evolution of Fear (17 page)

Clay walked on in silence for some time, debating how much to share with Hope. After a while he told her about their meeting with Erkan in Istanbul, about Rania’s note.

‘Rania was getting close,’ said Hope. ‘You’ve seen what she’s written on this, I assume.’

Clay nodded.

‘If Rania’s been kidnapped – if that’s what you’re telling me – then one of the people she’s close to exposing must be responsible. That means, in order: Mohamed Erkan, who you’ve met, a real bastard; Chrisostomedes, my favourite – we’ve had a number of run-ins, he and I; Dimitriou, a government minister here, well known for venality and his favourable leanings towards big business; and finally, Regina Medved – Rania told me about your running feud with that particular family. You two know how to pick your enemies, Clay, I must say.’

They were climbing a sparsely treed limestone ridge now. At the top they looked back over the park, the city beyond, a town really, barely a hundred thousand souls, split along the middle by a snaking line of barbed wire, bunkers and crumbling, sandbagged houses.

‘The common theme in all of this, Clay, is land. Coastal tourism development in particular. That’s how Rania and I met. She heard me speaking at a hearing on development in the Paphos area, including Lara Beach, the last and most important turtle-nesting beach east of Akamas. Any one of the unprincipled bastards I just mentioned would have a big reason to want to keep her quiet; and me for that matter.’

Clay nodded.

‘Maria, too,’ said Hope. ‘It’s even harder for her. She’s Cypriot. It’s a hell of a lot easier to stand up to something you think is wrong when you’re an outsider. But when you’re from here, when it’s your
country, a place where everyone knows everyone, it’s a very different proposition. She’s a very brave girl.’

Clay didn’t doubt it. ‘Rania told me you’d been threatened,’ he said.

‘On several occasions. Maria, too. One gets used to it, in our line of work. The turtles are a great inconvenience to these people. A hundred years ago, the turtles nested on beaches all around the island, from Polis to Ayia Napa, up the east coast to Karpasia. Now, only the most remote beaches still support viable populations, at the two opposite ends of the island. Not surprisingly, they’re also the most beautiful places in Cyprus.’

‘But those beaches are protected,’ said Clay.

Hope laughed. ‘Not for long, if these assholes have their way. They won’t stop until they’ve taken everything there is to take. And probably not even then.’

They began walking again, down through a stand of pine. Hope stopped, turned to face him. Her eyes were the colour of the trees. He noticed for the first time that her nose was slightly displaced, pushed to the left. It made one eye look slightly smaller than the other.

‘It’s all about money,’ she said. ‘These beaches are worth a fortune, quite literally. The marketing morons can use their favourite words – “pristine” and “unspoiled” – in their advertising campaigns, and not have to lie about it too much. And then they can bring well-intentioned but shockingly ignorant tourists to see what they are destroying.’

‘Great if you’re tourist number one.’

Hope smiled. ‘Or even one thousand. But not so good if you come later on, because by then the things you wanted to see have been destroyed by the people who got there before you.’ She reached for his left arm.

Clay pulled back.

‘Please,’ she said.

‘What do you want?’

‘Rania told me a lot about you.’

Clay allowed her to pull his arm to her. She pushed back his sleeve, examined his stump, ran her fingers over the mangled tissue, the ferocious scarring. She glanced up at him a moment, then pulled his sleeve back down.

‘You probably know more about her than I do,’ he said, looking down at the ground.

‘Well,’ she said, as they turned back towards the car, ‘you’re going to have a wonderful opportunity to get to know her much better.’ She smiled, squeezed his hand.

Clay said nothing, hoped she was right.

‘Have you thought about where you’ll live, names, things like that?’

Clay stopped. ‘Names?’

‘Come on, silly. You were just with her. She looks great, doesn’t she?’

Clay said nothing, stared at her.

‘You really didn’t notice?’

‘Notice what?’

Hope shook her head. ‘Men,’ she said.

Clay blinked once. ‘What?’

‘She’s pregnant, that’s what. You’re going to be a father, Clay.’

Clay walked back to the car, Hope trailing a few steps behind. He opened the passenger-side door for her, closed it, walked around to the driver’s side and sat behind the wheel. The gravel parking area was still empty, the eucalypts weeping onto the car’s windscreen even though the clouds had broken.

‘What’s our best go?’ said Clay. ‘We’re running out of time.’ Rania could be dead already. Both of them, now. Jesus Christ Almighty.

Hope turned to face him, pulled one long, well-shaped leg up onto the seat, the skin of her inner thigh pale, flawless. ‘I don’t know, Clay. I’m sorry. It could be any of them. All of them, for all I know.’

Clay grabbed the steering wheel, clamped down. ‘Best guess.’ It was all they had.

Hope took a breath, held it, exhaled. ‘Okay. Erkan, then. With his new development in Karpasia, he’s having the most immediate impact. Rania was about to publish a piece exposing his dealings with Turkish Cypriot politicians. She’d seen documents proving that the land he is intending to build on was stolen from Greek Cypriots and that TRNC officials know about it. It will cause a firestorm, I can tell you. That’s why she went to Istanbul. Now she’s gone, and the story has been quashed. I’d say that’s a pretty good indication.’

It made sense, to a point. Erkan had been anxious to point Rania in another direction, towards Chrisostomedes and Neo-Enosis. Perhaps put off by Clay’s presence at the interview, Erkan had decided to act, snatched Rania from the hotel. But then, when Clay had showed up in his office later that evening, he’d pleaded innocence – and done it
well. Maybe Hope was right, but he wasn’t sure. There was only one way to find out.

‘Then I have to go back to Istanbul,’ he said.

Hope reached out, touched his arm. ‘No. Erkan arrived in Cyprus yesterday, by private yacht.’

Clay turned in his seat.

‘One of my colleagues in the north lives in Karpasia. He’s a fisherman. We started working together years ago, doing turtle surveys in the north. He called me this morning. Erkan’s yacht docked in Kyrenia yesterday. Erkan is now at his place in Karpasia, an old monastery that he’s converted. It’s absolutely beautiful.’

‘You’ve been there?’

‘A couple of years ago.’ Hope straightened out in her seat.

‘If he does have Rania, why would he have brought her?’

‘Do you really think he would leave her behind?’

‘It depends on why he took her in the first place.’ Clay’s mind spun then blanked, fury burning inside him. He started the car, jammed it into gear. ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ he managed.

‘I have a seminar. All day.’

‘Cancel it.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To see this friend of yours.’

Within five minutes they were on the new motorway, speeding south. Soon the city was well behind them. An ancient landscape flashed past the open side window, low crumbling conglomerate bluffs and the blunted pines of reforested terraces, each burned field and dry limestone hill a measure of time flowing in the wrong direction. Every hour that passed cut Rania’s chances. It had been two days already since she’d disappeared.

Hope was on the phone to Maria, discussing the seminar. Clay checked the rear-view mirror. Traffic was sparse, a few small trucks overloaded with farm produce, a couple of cars. He took the Limassol turnoff and started the long descent towards the coast. The air warmed as they neared the sea. Soon he left the motorway and turned
along a narrow, winding valley flanked by steep cliffs on one side and a cascade of terraced hillslopes on the other. Immediately after the old stone bridge he turned left onto a dirt track, past orchards and stone-walled fields, olive groves, banks of stringy eucalypts. Flocks of tiny birds, honeyeaters and finches, darted between the trees. He followed the track as it wound through the valley, eventually emerging into the narrow streets of Maroni, a tiny village in the hills overlooking olive and pomegranate groves, the Med overcast grey in the distance. In a few minutes they were on the coast road, speeding east towards Larnaca, certain they were not being followed.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Maria will teach the seminar.’

‘Smart girl.’

‘I’m lucky to have her.’

‘You trust her.’

‘Absolutely I do.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘That you were my lover.’

Clay looked over at her. She was smiling, playing with her hair.

‘Just kidding, Clay. Don’t worry.’

He kept driving.

An hour later he pulled the car to a stop outside the rundown marina office in Larnaca and switched off the engine. Rain lashed the windscreen, blurring the outlines of the three dozen or so boats rocking in their pens.

‘I am banned from the TRNC,’ said Hope.

‘Then we won’t tell them we’re visiting.’ Clay stepped outside and walked to the office. Hope followed him.

The man behind the desk smiled as they entered, raised his considerable eyebrows, obviously impressed by what Hope’s wet cotton dress now revealed.

Clay put a copy of
Flame
’s British registration on the desk.

‘I’ve come to take possession of a vessel,’ he said in bad Greek. ‘She was delivered here two days ago.’

The man glanced at the registration papers, pulled out a log book, ran his finger along a column of names and dates then produced a form. Clay signed.

‘Six months’ mooring fees with water and power, paid in advance,’ said the man. Clay hoped he wouldn’t need nearly that long.

As Clay led Hope along the dock the rain relented. Clouds scuttled in low across the arc of the harbour, freighters swinging at anchor.
Flame
looked as she had that first day Punk had revealed her, brass shining, the new mast stepped, Clay’s makeshift hatch replaced with gleaming new teak. Gonzales had done a good job. Clay jumped aboard and offered Hope his hand. She took it and stepped from the dock into the cockpit.

‘She’s beautiful,’ said Hope.

‘I’m looking after her for someone,’ he said.

By late afternoon they had cleared the Ayia Napa peninsula and were broad reaching towards Karpasia. Clay had given Hope his jacket and one of Punk’s pullovers, and now she sat curled up in the cockpit, drinking a mug of steaming coffee, staring out at the coast, her long, ash-blonde hair tied in a loose knot that hung across her chest.

After a while she looked up at him. ‘Did you know that turtles are one of the best examples of reverse evolution?’ she said.

Clay looked up at the mainsail, reached past her and eased the main sheet a touch. He glanced at her, made eye contact.

‘You don’t say much, do you?’

Clay frowned. ‘Depends.’

‘You’re worried.’

‘That doesn’t deserve a reply.’

Hope smiled, just a flash. ‘Don’t worry, Clay. I’m sure she’s fine.’

‘We have a long way to go,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘Tell me about the turtles.’

As night fell over the Mediterranean, Hope taught. Clay could imagine her delivering a lecture, full of energy, pacing the podium, willing her students to share her passion for these strange, ancient creatures who’d been plying the world’s oceans for the last three hundred million years. Sea turtles breathe air. They evolved from land reptiles, reversing evolution and returning back to the sea from where all reptiles had originally come. Laying their eggs on land was a remnant of that terrestrial past, a reproductive strategy that has served them well for countless millennia. Hope paused, looked at him full in the eyes. ‘Do you have any idea how long that is, Clay? Can you imagine?’

He said nothing, looked up at the first stars shining through gaps in the cloud, the distant past there now, the calculations taking shape in his head. ‘Two thousand, eight hundred billion billion kilometres, give or take. Ninety-one megaparsecs.’

Hope looked up at him over the rim of her mug. ‘Pardon me?’

He pointed to the sky, swathes of stars behind a shifting screen of cloud. ‘Three-hundred-million-year-old light we’re seeing now. That’s how far it’s come. Those stars may not even exist anymore.’

Hope sat a moment, nodded. ‘Rania told me about…’ she hesitated a moment, smiled. ‘She told me you were good with numbers.’

Clay watched the main telltale fluttering in the breeze. ‘Now I’m starting to worry. Just how much did she tell you anyway?’

Hope smiled, played with her hair. ‘Enough.’

‘Enough for what?’

Hope looked right at him, dared him to look away. ‘Sufficient for me to be mortally jealous.’

Clay looked back at her, lost.

Then Hope laughed. It was a playground laugh, full of mirth. ‘Don’t worry, Clay. Your secrets are safe.’

The wind rose slightly, veered. Clay trimmed the sails, got
Flame
up to six knots, the sun now just the slightest pale blush over the dark horizon.

‘The turtles are dying,’ said Hope after a time. There was finality in her voice, resignation. The gaiety that had surprised him before was gone.

‘What’s causing it?’

Hope sipped her coffee. ‘Over-harvesting, pollution, entanglement in discarded plastic causing drowning, loss of critical habitat. You name it. In 1971, Cyprus passed a law protecting them, and for a while there was stabilisation in numbers. But then, about five years ago, we started to see the first cases of
fibropapillomatosis
.’

Clay trimmed the main, looked back down at her. ‘Fibro what?’

‘Green turtle disease. A viral infection which makes the turtles more susceptible to parasites. And now, with average sea and land temperatures rising, there’s another threat. The sex of turtle hatchlings is determined by incubation temperature. Above twenty-nine Celsius, you get females. Below, males. Over a normal cycle of years it evens out. But now the population has started to skew heavily towards females.’ Hope glanced up at Clay. ‘It takes one of each, you know.’

‘So it seems.’

Hope continued. ‘We’re down to the last few hundred nesting females. That’s from hundreds of thousands a century ago. In the last two years, the population has gone into free-fall. And I don’t know why. It’s way off trend. There’s some new factor at work, but we can’t figure out what it is. If something isn’t done soon, it’s the end for the green turtle in the Med.’ Her eyes glinted in starlight reflected from the sea, her face shrouded in darkness now. ‘And the really sad thing is, no one seems to give a damn.’

‘Not no one, Hope.’

Hope frowned. ‘No. You’re right. Not no one. Did you see the paper yesterday?’

‘I haven’t had much time for reading.’

‘The UN and the EU have announced that they are setting up
a commission to investigate coastal development in Cyprus. The official enquiry starts next week. Cyprus is desperate for EU membership, and compliance with European environmental directives is a big deal. Given the country’s dependence on European tourists, being seen as negligent in protecting such an iconic species and its habitat would be a huge blow. Overall, it’s a major step in the right direction. And we have Rania to thank.’

‘A big reason to want her silence,’ said Clay.

‘Or her cooperation,’ said Hope. ‘Erkan and Chrisostomedes will be among the first to be interviewed by the commission. I’ve made sure of that.’

‘You’ll be involved?’

‘I’m chairing the enquiry.’ Hope drew her knees up to her body, crossed her arms over her shins. ‘What Rania has done is fantastic, Clay. Truly. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for her.’ Hope fell silent.

Clay held the wheel, felt the water flowing over
Flame
’s rudder, the lights of Ayia Napa now small in the distance.

After a while he said: ‘She told me, Hope. About you.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘How do you feel about it?’

Clay eased off the jib, let
Flame
fall off a couple of degrees, tightened down the wheel. ‘Wrong question,’ he said.