Evolution of Fear (9 page)

Clay cut him off. ‘She’s in danger, LeClerc.’

Silence.

‘Regina Medved wants her dead.’

The line burned empty, just air. Clay let the silence hang between them. Finally LeClerc spoke. ‘I am sure she is fine.’

‘Fine? Did you hear what I said? They’re going to kill her.’

‘Surely it is not as bad as you suggest.’ LeClerc’s voice sounded thin, coming through walls and glass.

‘You know what her story did to them. The story
you
published.’

Silence.

‘LeClerc, are you there?’

‘Please. This is all I know.’ The guy was seizing up. Clay could hear the cold terror in his voice.

‘Jesus, LeClerc. What the hell is going on?’

‘Nothing is…’ Shaky. ‘Nothing is
going on
.’ An attempt to stabilise. ‘I am trying to run a news agency. Now if you will please allow me–’

‘I need your help, LeClerc.’

Another pause. And then: ‘Please, Monsieur Greene, if that is your name. I have told you what I know.’

‘You sent her to Cyprus. You insisted she go. Why? Why this story in particular?’

‘Do not insinuate.’

‘Answer me.’

‘It was her interest. Hers.’

‘When do you expect to hear from her?’

‘I don’t know. Tomorrow perhaps. I don’t know.’

‘Expect a call from me tomorrow, then.’

‘Please,
non
. I will be in meetings all day. I cannot.’

‘Convince yourself.’

‘
Pardon?
’

‘Tomorrow, LeClerc.’

Clay expected LeClerc to hang up but he did not, just stayed there on the line, the silence thick between them. ‘There is something…’ LeClerc stopped dead.

Clay waited. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Something, something difficult…’

Clay let the line hang, gave him time.

LeClerc stalled a moment, restarted. ‘I’m sorry, Mister Greene. I…’

Now he had Clay worried. This was not the decisive, confident LeClerc he knew, the one Rania held in such esteem.

Clay pulled in oxygen. ‘What’s wrong LeClerc?’

Nothing back.

‘Tell me. I can help. Is it Rania?’

More silence. Clay could hear him thinking it over. And then: ‘Something has just come across my desk.’

Relief in his voice; this not the something he had started to tell.

‘A suspect in the murder of Rex Medved has just been apprehended by police in England. He was caught on the south coast, trying to flee the country by boat. He is now in hospital under close guard, recovering from a gunshot wound. The police haven’t released his name, but apparently he’s South African.’

Well, leave me in the sun for the vultures. The police must have picked up the Boer he’d wounded near the cottage, the one he’d seen in the passenger seat of the Merc in Falmouth. It had to be him.

The line went dead.

Clay put down the phone, considered this a moment, the obliquity of things. After a while he picked up the phone again and punched in the number for his Cayman Islands bank. He was going to need more money.

A ring tone, far off, the line engaging. Clay gave his name and codeword.

He was put on hold, a thin, drifting melody.

Then: ‘There is a message for you, Mister Greene.’

‘Read it to me please.’

The sound of paper being shuffled, the bank clerk clearing his throat. ‘It says only: “
I know where she is
.”’

Clay took a breath, his heart arrhythmic. ‘That’s it?’

‘Nothing else. No sender identified.’

A few hours later Clay boarded the Iberia 737 non-stop to Geneva, managed a flat smile to the pretty stewardess, adjusted the tie that felt like a noose around his neck and settled into his business-class window seat. In his new suit and black brogues he looked like any of the other three dozen or more businessmen on the flight, off to make deals, sign contracts, pitch for sales. As the doors closed and the engines started, Clay thought of the little ketch that had delivered him through the storm, now lying in her cradle at Gonzales’ boat yard. Over the phone from the airport departure lounge, Clay had agreed to pay the old guy nine thousand euros to step a new mast, fit new rigging, fix the hatch, service the engine and make her seaworthy again. After some intense bargaining via Gonzales junior, Clay had agreed to wire three thousand euros direct to Gonzales’ account, plus four thousand more once the work was complete. Gonzales promised to have the ketch safely in Larnaca harbour in Cyprus in three and a half weeks, in a secure pre-paid, six-month berth. Punk’s queen would make it to the Med after all.

With all the tourists coming and going, access to Larnaca harbour was easy and anonymous. The Suez Canal was within a couple of day’s sailing. He would find Rania, wherever she was, and they’d sail south, to Africa like they’d planned. Through the canal, down the Red Sea, past Yemen, down the east coast, maybe stop for a while in Zanzibar. He’d always wanted to see the Spice Islands.

His nerves tingled at the thought of her, a deep biological faint that seemed to bloom from within the fibre of him, the sinew grafted to his bones, the cartilage of his joints. She knew he was coming. A
matter of hours, now. He reached for his soda water, took a long drink, wished it was whisky, let the ice cubes rattle his teeth.

After a while he fell into a stuttering sleep, edging in and out of consciousness, still urging himself to stay lucid, clawing at the fuzzy threshold of what was real, the need to keep
Flame
on course, guide her safely over the surging waves. The plane hit the runway and jerked Clay awake. He opened his eyes, looked out at the rain, the low grey cloud. Geneva.

After clearing customs he found a phone box, called the chalet again and listened to the same mechanical female voice. An hour and a half later he was in a new rented Renault Laguna, hurtling along the E62, Lake Geneva spreading grey and unsettled on his right. He checked the rear-view mirror. The same black Mercedes had been with him since before Lausanne, almost forty minutes now, two cars back, steady like a star turning in the sky. At Vevey, where the autoroute bifurcated, the black Merc stayed with him towards Montreux. He hadn’t seen anyone following him in the airport, but if Medved or Crowbar had access to flight passenger records or even customs clearance data, they would know that he had surfaced. The message sent to the bank had been designed to rattle him, push him towards Rania, flush him out. They needn’t have bothered.

Just outside Villeneuve, the Merc steady two back, Clay braked hard and swerved from the outer passing lane across three lanes of traffic, rumbling across the hatched warning median onto the exit sliproad for the Shell Villeneuve services. The black Merc flashed past, unable to follow. Clay watched it pass, two kids in the backseat, mum checking her makeup in the vanity mirror. Jesus Christ.

After a plastic sandwich and a cup of coffee, Clay was back on the road. He rejoined the autoroute at Lavey-Les-Bains, took the Colombey exit and started the climb towards Champéry, the countryside familiar now but changed from when he was here with Rania in the last bloom of summer, the frosted anticline of Pointe-de-Bellevue looming now through the clouds, the forests thick-covered in fresh white, the roads high-banked with graded snow.

Traffic slowed to a walk behind heavy trucks panting up switchbacks thick with slush. He willed them forward, his impatience for her burning a ragged hole in his chest. By the time he reached the outskirts of Champéry, the air was thick with big, spinning flakes and the cloud hung low in the valley. At the
téléphérique
, Clay left the main road and started up, past the old hotel, its window-boxes piled with snow, icicles hanging like rows of silver teeth from the eaves, then over the one-lane bridge, the road climbing through dark forest, snow thickening under the Renault’s tyres.

In his mind he could see the chalet, the pitch of the roof, snow corniced along the eaves, smoke wisping from the chimney, light glowing through frosted windows. And she would be inside, expecting him perhaps, sitting by the fire, her hair down, and if not there, then somewhere just like it, solitary and safe.

Emerging from dense woodland, Clay peered out through cloud and driving snow into the swirling beams of the headlights. He had walked this road so many times during that short time that he and Rania had spent together here, after Yemen – she still weak and recovering from the gunshot wound, he struggling with the loss of his hand – that despite the snow he could feel himself anticipating every curve and rise as he contoured the mountainside. Rania’s chalet stood alone looking out over the valley, set into the slope just below the road. He stopped the car and stared out through the windscreen and the flapping wipers at this place that he did not now recognize. At first he wasn’t sure. The snowburst and the cloud and the throw of the headlights in the deepening gloom distorted everything: the layer of fresh snow frosting the confusion of bare black beams; the wisps of smoke that rose from the dark open middle of the place; the smell of charred timber reaching him now.

He pulled the car to the side of the road, shut down the engine, opened the door and stood looking out through the flying snow. A chill shuddered through him. He took a few steps forward, stopped, kept walking, the soles of his shoes sinking into the powder as he trudged down the drive, the full extent of the damage now clear to
him, the old oak beams and trusses blackened and burnt away, the roof caved into the wet, charred guts of the place, the gleaming pine floors gone, the hand-laid stone chimney rising from the ash, and everywhere the fiery taste of purgatory.

Transiting Europe at ten thousand metres, Clay considered again the circumstances of his position. Before he was killed, evading capture near the Omani border no more than three months ago, Claymore Straker had been wanted for at least eight murders in Yemen, had been officially labelled an Ansar Al Sharia terrorist by the Yemen Government and the CIA. Despite LeClerc’s surprising news that someone had been arrested for the murder of Rex Medved, Clay was far from safe. He would have to be doubly careful back in the Middle East. He had spent more than six years working in the region as an independent consultant on oil and gas projects, mostly in Yemen, Egypt and Libya. He’d also done work in Turkey, spent time in Istanbul. For three of those years he’d lived in Cyprus, and his Cyprus-registered company, Capricorn Consulting, was still in existence, its affairs still, he supposed, nominally handled by his Cypriot accountant. His flat in Nicosia would surely have been rented out by now, his possessions boxed up and disposed of – however the system dealt with a dead man’s stuff when he had no next of kin.

At least he now had some idea of Rania’s whereabouts. He’d stayed at the chalet for a long time watching the snow fall into the black pit – a mourner at a grave. Then he’d trudged the couple of kilometres up the road to the Auberge des Arcs, the place where he and Rania had spent a couple of summer afternoons drinking beer and looking out over the valley at the glaciers of les Dents du Midi shimmering in
the sun. Clay spoke with the
patron
, who remembered him, remembered Clay’s very beautiful wife. That’s what he’d called her:
femme
. Clay didn’t bother correcting him. The fire had been two days ago, he said. It had started at night, and by the time
les pompiers
arrived it was too far gone, a total loss; such a shame, a beautiful place, very old. Clay nodded in agreement and enquired about the occupants. The
aubergiste
answered that no one was home at the time, and no one had seen or heard of Madame Debret, the elderly owner, since before the fire. Clay thanked him, ordered something to eat, which he only picked at, then called LeClerc from the
patron
’s phone. The conversation had gone something like:

LeClerc: I am very sorry. I have made a terrible misjudgement. I should never have sent her. Forgive me.

Straker: Jesus.

LeClerc: I know where she is.

Straker, heart seized – those words, the anonymous message: Tell me.

LeClerc: Istanbul.

Straker:

LeClerc: Monsieur Greene?

Straker: What the hell is she doing in Istanbul?

LeClerc: Following a story. Several stories, actually.

Straker: Where is she staying?

LeClerc: We don’t know. She hasn’t checked in yet.

Straker: They torched her house.

LeClerc:
Pardon?

Straker: Burned her house down. (But maybe you already know that.)

LeClerc:
Mon dieu
. (A long pause, LeClerc thinking something over, coming to a conclusion.) What will you do?

Straker: I’m going to find her. (I’m going to find her and get the hell out. Go back to Africa, sail off the map, just the two of us, untraceable. You and the rest of the world can go and fuck yourselves.)

LeClerc: Our Istanbul station chief will meet you at the airport. Let me know when you have flight details. I will do everything I can to help. Be careful, Monsieur Greene.

Clay had driven through nightfall, following strobe-lit snow ploughs and sanding trucks, the roads otherwise deserted, the snow gradually turning to sleet then freezing rain as he lost altitude. He joined the autoroute for Geneva and the airport, not caring who might be following. His mind was clear as the dark surface of the lake. LeClerc was hiding something. Of this, Clay was sure. What had he meant by ‘terrible misjudgement’? Unwittingly or not, LeClerc had used the lure of a story he knew Rania couldn’t resist to draw her from safety. And now he was driving them both to Istanbul.

Five hours later Clay stood in the cavernous arrivals hall of Atatürk Airport, queuing for passport control. The place looked and smelled like the jumbled chaos of the city it served, a faded, yellowing museum suffused with cigarette smoke and the blanketing thrall of burnt kerosene. Clay cleared customs, pushed his way through the arrivals hall and joined the human river moving towards the exit, just one more soul carried along in the flux. At the far end of the chute, he saw a white A4 placard held above a sea of bobbing heads. Scrawled on the paper were the initials DG.

He’d decided on the plane. He’d walk whatever pathway LeClerc set him. He had no other choice. Clay scanned the crowd and pushed toward the placard. The man holding the sign had sallow skin and bulging thyroid eyes. He introduced himself as Hamour, AFP Istanbul station chief. LeClerc’s man. In an ancient Egyptian-made El Nasr Fiat 128 copy, he launched them into the city.

Everything was as Clay remembered: the royal blue of the Bosphorus, the watercolour minaret skyline, the clash of culture and belief echoing along every confused alleyway, seeping from each palace museum and place of worship. The grey hulk of Sultan Ahmet
mosque rose on their left as they sped along Kennedy Avenue, the Bosphorus calm and flat beyond Clay’s open window, brilliantly blue after the washed-out grey monochrome of the northern winter. He could smell the place, the sea, the exhaust of a million vehicles, and strong from the east, all of Anatolia, that vast Turkic heartland of wheatfields and winter rains.

Clay turned in his seat and faced Hamour. ‘Has she checked in?’

Hamour frowned, glanced into his rear-view mirror. ‘Not yet. But we know she is here.’ He reached over the seatback, pulled a sheet of paper from a battered leather briefcase and handed it to Clay. ‘She filed with Paris this morning. You see? The byline is Istanbul. She is to contact me. That is protocol. I expect to hear from her today.’

Clay scanned the single-spaced typeset page: A campaign of assassinations and intimidation in Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus, bribery and corruption in the South, an island in turmoil. At the centre of it, Neo-Enosis, advocates of union with Greece, by force if necessary, and led, the story claimed, by wealthy businessman Nikos Chrisostomedes, whose family was forced from its ancestral lands in the north during the 1974 invasion. The story went on to describe allegations that companies owned by Chrisostomedes had for years been engaging in bribery and blackmail to ensure a near monopoly of the south’s lucrative upscale tourist industry, controlling hotels, resorts, catering, commercial districts and beachfront property. In an exclusive interview with Lise Moulinbecq, Chrisostomedes defended his record, pointing instead to the north, where he claimed illegal and systematic large-scale theft was virtually wiping out all traces of Greek society – an act of cultural genocide. Most damagingly, he claimed that the genocide was being bankrolled and directed from Turkey. If the government, the UN and the EU would not act, others would, he was quoted as saying. The Turkish Government was incensed and had immediately issued a stern denial and a comprehensive rebuke against what it called ‘irresponsible and dangerous radicalism’ in Cyprus.

‘When will this go to print?’ asked Clay.

‘Tomorrow, God willing.’

Hamour glanced again at his rear-view mirror. ‘I do not wish to seem paranoid, Mister Declan, but I think we are being followed.’

Clay adjusted his wing mirror.

‘The black one, three cars behind. He has been there since the airport.’

There it was, a late-model German sedan, an Audi A6, two men. Perhaps LeClerc’s man was not the stooge Clay had presumed him to be. Then again, maybe he was smarter than he looked.

‘Next street, turn left, up into the city,’ Clay said. ‘Don’t indicate.’

‘In Turkey, no one is indicating, Mister Declan.’

Clay smiled. ‘Well don’t start.’

Hamour nodded. ‘Perhaps I am imagining.’

‘We’ll see.’

Two minutes later, Hamour moved into the outer lane, waited for a few oncoming cars to pass then turned hard left across traffic into a narrow street lined with old, grey apartment blocks strung with wires and studded with decrepit, inefficient, first-generation air-conditioning cubes. The Audi followed a few seconds later, surging to catch up.

‘You weren’t imagining,
arkadaşım
,’ said Clay. My friend.

He brought up the map of Istanbul in his head, the old paper tourist one he’d used on that first visit, years ago now, when he was working in the east out near Diyarbakir and Van, the one he’d used to walk the tangled streets for hours and days till the paper was soaked in his sweat and the folds and corners had pulped and worn through.

‘The
buyuk kapalı
is close, yes?’ he said in Turkish. The Grand Bazaar, a dozen miles of arched and pillared labyrinth, a confusion of shops and stalls selling every kind of trinket and antique and adornment ever conceived.

Hamour nodded and urged the El-Nasr up a steep hill.

Clay reached into the backseat and grabbed his bag. ‘Drop me outside. Any entrance. It doesn’t matter if they see me.’

‘Where will you go?’ said Hamour, the folds of his neck quivering as he darted through the traffic. ‘I have a reservation for you at the Hilton.’

‘I’ll be at the Seglik Merkezi Hotel in Tepebaşi. Do you know it?’

‘I can find.’

‘Good. As soon as you hear from Lise, tell her to go there and ask for Mister Edward.’

Hamour nodded, opened his mouth, paused, closed it.

‘Got that?’

‘Mister Edward, yes.’

‘
Sağol
.’ Thanks.

‘The bazaar is near,’ Hamour gulped. ‘Less than a kilometre.’ His voice was strained, fearful.

Clay checked the wing mirror. The Audi was still there, five or six cars back now, struggling in the thickening traffic.

‘There is one more thing: Monsieur LeClerc asked me to tell you that Zdravko Todorov has escaped.’

Clay spun in the seat, stared at Hamour.

‘A deal was made between the Yemeni terrorists who captured him and the French government. Apparently something went wrong during the handover.’

‘Jesus. When?’

‘About one month ago, according to our sources.’

A month. ‘Where is he now?’

‘We have no idea,’ said Hamour, slowing and pulling to the side of the street behind a small delivery van, its back doors open. Stacks of cut flowers filled the cargo space. Petals littered the gutter.

Clay had the door open before Hamour brought the car to a stop. ‘
Çok teşekur ederım
,’ he said, swinging his feet to the pavement. Thank you. He paused, hand on the edge of the door, glanced at the Audi drawing near, leant into the car. ‘I’ll be waiting for Lise at the hotel.’ And before Hamour had a chance to reply, he closed the door and strode through the crowd toward the big Ottoman archway and the entrance to the market.