I Am Pilgrim (85 page)

She laughed, more relaxed now that she had got me to the designated place and her part in the plan

was almost over.

‘We’re not picnicking here. There’s a tunnel that leads into a Roman amphitheatre – the experts say

it’s the best example in the world after the Colosseum.’

I did my best impression of being pleased. ‘Sounds great. Where are the kids?’

She had obviously thought of it – or her brother had. ‘Already here,’ she said easily. ‘They came by bus; there’s a path that comes down into it from the road.’

I knew it wasn’t true – the area had been reconnoitred when the hit on Finlay Finlay was being planned, and Control had warned us that, if things went wrong, not to shoot open the gate on the tunnel and try to find refuge in the ruin. It was a dead end; there was absolutely no way out.

‘I’m looking forward to seeing the little guy,’ I said as we picked our way across kelp-strewn rocks.

‘He’s so excited,’ she said. ‘I could barely get him to eat his breakfast.’

We found a rough path that led towards a dark opening located in the side of the cliff just above the beach.

‘It’s the start of the tunnel,’ she said. ‘The dignitaries and generals used to arrive by barge.

Accompanied by fanfares, they walked down it and into the amphitheatre.’

‘I would have thought the place would be better known, there’d be more tourists,’ I suggested.

‘Years ago, it was packed, but they did so much damage it’s just for archaeologists and school groups now.’ The lies were coming more easily to her.

‘What’s the amphitheatre called?’ I asked.

She said something in Turkish, which, of course, I didn’t understand.

‘In English?’

‘I don’t think there’s a direct translation for it, I’m not sure what it means.’

I guessed she didn’t think it was a good idea to tell me I was about to enter a place called the Theatre of Death.

We stopped at the mouth of the tunnel and I saw, half hidden in the gloom, a gate made of heavy,

rusted bars. If it had ever been chained and padlocked, it wasn’t now. ‘They don’t keep it locked?’ I said.

‘The only access is by boat, and hardly anyone knows about it. It hasn’t been locked for years,’ she said.

That was their first mistake. I could just make out marks in the rust where a chain had been pulled

free, probably cut through a few hours ago. It didn’t help me, but I found it reassuring – it meant they were hurrying and overlooking details. Experience told me that would be an advantage.

Cumali pushed the gate open and was about to step inside when I stopped her. ‘Here, let me go first,’ I said, acting like a perfect gentleman.

I think good manners are very important when you are being led to your death. It also meant that, if everything went to hell, I would have a clear field of fire in front of me.

I walked through the gate, headed into the darkness and felt the sweat start to pool around the Beretta nestled in the small of my back. I knew that at the other end of the tunnel the Saracen was waiting.

Chapter Thirty

BRADLEY HADN’T ENCOUNTERED any difficulty in finding the right house. As planned, he had left the hotel five minutes after I was picked up by Cumali and, using a detailed map I had drawn for him, walked straight to Bodrum’s best-stocked store for boating supplies.

Three minutes later he left the store carrying a plastic shopping bag holding the one item he had

purchased and, once again following my map, headed south-west. After eleven minutes he turned into

the street he was looking for and saw, halfway along it, the Coca-Cola distribution warehouse. He approached it, crossed the street and stopped in front of a small dwelling.

After checking its appearance and recalling six items about it, he was certain he had located the correct property. He opened the gate, passed the garden gnomes and knocked at the door. The time was 11.25: he was right on schedule. A few seconds later he heard a woman’s voice from inside calling in Turkish and, though he didn’t understand the language, he was sure that she was asking:

‘Who is it?’

He said nothing in reply, just letting the silence boil and, as most people do in such a situation, the woman, the little guy’s nanny, opened the door. Bradley’s plan had been to push hard once the door

was off the lock, step inside, slam it behind him and confront the woman in the privacy of the house.

It didn’t work. In discussing it with Bradley, I had failed to take into account the fact that the woman was severely obese. When Bradley pushed hard on the door it hit the stationary bulk of her and stopped. It gave the surprised young woman just enough time to push back hard and start yelling. It

looked for a moment as if Bradley was going to be locked out and the whole plan would founder.

Reacting fast – thank God – the cop pulled out his pistol, rammed it through the gap straight at the terrified nanny’s teeth and yelled at her to step back.

She didn’t recognize all the words, but she got the message. She retreated a step, Bradley scrambled inside and, still pointing the gun at her, slammed the door behind him. The woman was too scared to

scream and that gave Bradley the chance to pull a curtain aside and look out of a narrow window. To

his relief, nothing was moving outside, and he realized that three Coke trucks manoeuvring into the

warehouse, engines roaring, had swallowed her cries.

He turned back, saw that fear had really taken hold and she was shaking hard. Before he could say

anything, a face appeared out of the doorway at the back of the house and looked down the hallway at them. It was the little guy.

Bradley’s gun was obscured by the bulk of the woman, and he lowered it so that it was out of sight

and smiled at the child. That was all the boy needed. He walked forward, grinning back, talking away in Turkish.

The nanny moved to take hold of him, protective, and that – combined with Bradley’s grin –

seemed to calm her, and the shaking turned into a tremor rather than a full-on quake.

‘What is he saying?’ Bradley asked, indicating the little guy, making his voice sound as friendly as possible.

The nanny swallowed, trying to moisten her throat, and forced her mind to summon up the limited

English she had acquired working for different families over the years.

‘He say – you American?’ she managed to get out.

Bradley smiled at the little guy. ‘Yeah – New York.’

The nanny translated for the boy, still holding him tight. ‘He ask – you friend of bowing man?’ she said.

Bradley looked confused – bowing man? What the hell was that? But the nanny came to the rescue.

‘He mean FBI man.’

‘Ah,’ Bradley responded. ‘Brodie Wilson. Yeah, he’s my friend.’

The little guy said something, and the nanny translated for him: ‘Where is the bowing man?’

‘He’s with your mom,’ Bradley replied.

‘Where they go?’ the nanny translated for the little guy.

Bradley didn’t want to alarm the child and had what he thought was a good idea. ‘They went on a

picnic,’ he said.

As soon as it was translated, the boy dissolved into tears, seemingly inconsolable. Bradley had no

way of knowing that it was the boy’s dearest dream – to go on a picnic with his American friend – and now they had left him behind.

Bradley stared, confused. Through the child’s tears and grief, the nanny managed to understand what the problem was and explained it for Bradley’s benefit.

The cop bent down, kept the gun out of sight and told the boy that everything was okay, his mom

would be coming to get him soon, but first they had to play a little game.

As soon as the nanny had translated it, the boy smiled at Bradley, reassured, and gave the cop one

of his best bows.

Ben and Marcie had never had any kids, so Ben considered children pretty much an alien race, but

he couldn’t help being deeply affected by the child’s desperate longing for something as simple as a picnic. He felt the revulsion well up, sickened by the prospect of what he had to do, but he also knew he had no choice. One kid’s suffering was nothing compared with the carnage of smallpox, and he motioned for the nanny to lead the way down the hall.

In the kitchen he immediately drew the blinds and locked the back door. Only then did he turn his

attention to its architecture. It was a traditional Bodrum house, and the kitchen, like most of its kind, had a very high, steeply raked roof to help dissipate the heat. In the middle, high above, a light hung from a beam. It was supported by a heavy brass bolt and Bradley knew it would be perfect.

He turned to the nanny, demanded her cellphone and attached it to the charger lying on the kitchen

counter. It was good thinking – if the phone ran out of juice at a critical moment, everything would fail.

Speaking slowly and clearly, he told the nanny it was his absolute intention that both she and the boy would get out alive. ‘It won’t happen, though,’ he said, ‘if you try to escape, answer the door or touch the phone. You will do everything I say, understand?’

She nodded and, with that, Bradley sat down with his gun within instant reach, opened up the plastic shopping bag and took out a large coil of thick rope.

The little guy – intrigued – came and sat beside him. Together, they started to make the noose.

Chapter Thirty-one

I LED CUMALI deeper into the tunnel, the walls decorated with fragments of ancient mosaics, huge cracks bisecting the vaulted roof from centuries of quakes, the silence pressing down on us.

On either side were the ruins of what were called the
hypogeum
, the underground vaults and cells which housed slaves and animals used in wild-beast hunts, and I felt the deep melancholy of the place surrounding me. It was as if misery had taken root in the stone.

Cumali pointed at the barred pens, talking a little too fast, a little too nervously. ‘The cells would only hold a few hundred people,’ she explained. ‘The huge spectacles and naval battles, which would

often kill thousands of prisoners or slaves, were almost exclusive to the Colosseum.

‘Here in the provinces, without the wealth of a Caesar, it was mostly gladiators and the re-creation of famous myths. Of course, those stories were wildly popular too – lots of violence and killing, but not much plot.’

‘Sounds like a Hollywood movie,’ I said, through my parched lips, trying to act normal. Cumali didn’t seem to hear.

We turned a dog-leg, came out of the tunnel, and I saw the amphitheatre for the first time. Cumali

had been telling the truth about it – the symmetry, the stacked decks of almost intact marble colonnades and the sheer size of it were remarkable. So was the stillness. In the harsh midday sun, the Theatre of Death felt like it was hushed and waiting, ready for a new performance to begin.

‘Where is everybody?’ I asked.

‘Above us,’ she said. ‘There’s a platform with a great view of the arena. If we follow the colonnade, we’ll find a set of steps and they’ll take us up to it.’

She turned to lead the way, and I glimpsed the first of them. He was standing deep in a ruined passage, unaware that, to a trained eye, darkness is often a relative thing – he was dressed in black, a pool of greater gloom in the shadow. I guessed that his job was to move behind me and cut off any

chance of escape down the tunnel.

I swept my eyes around the arena, acting like any interested tourist: the Saracen and his hired help would have me triangulated and, from the single data point of the hidden man, I had a good idea where the others would be.

Cumali, walking a little faster, pointed to the middle of the site. ‘Two thousand years ago, the sand on the arena floor would have been dyed a deep red,’ she said.

‘To disguise the blood?’ I asked.

‘That’s right.’

I located another member of the team, a thickset bull of a man, standing in a honeycomb of crumbling arches just above us. I was surprised – he was in his sixties, far too old for this rodeo, I would have thought – and there was something about him that pinged my memory, but I had no time

to dwell on it. Cumali had led me into a towering, crumbling passage – a dead end, I was sure –

talking all the time to allay her nerves.

‘Of course, the bodies had to be removed before the next event could start. Two men dressed as mythological figures would enter the arena to supervise it.

‘The first was supposedly Pluto, the god of the dead. He would hit the corpses with a hammer, showing that the man, woman or child now belonged to him.

‘The second was Mercury, who, according to myth, carried a wand and escorted souls to the underworld. In this case, the wand was a hot iron and he would touch the bodies to see if the person was really dead.’

‘So even faking it was no escape.’

‘None at all,’ she said.

We walked deeper into the gloom. Up ahead, sunlight was spilling through the shattered roof, and I

guessed that was where I would meet Zakaria al-Nassouri face to face. My journey was almost over.

I had to time everything perfectly now. I couldn’t make a mistake – my life and everything else depended on it.

I slipped my hands deeper into my pockets, nice and relaxed, and I was certain that the men watching me from the darkness had already registered the small bump in the waistband at the back of

my trousers. They would be smiling, I thought, knowing that I wouldn’t have time to get my right hand out, reach behind, draw the pistol and start shooting.