The Genesis Secret: (17 page)

Rob stirred. Christine was besides him, still sleeping. In the night she had kicked half the sheets off. He looked at her glowing suntan. He caressed her neck, kissed her bare shoulder. She murmured his name, rolled over; and decorously snored.

It was nearly noon. The sunlight was streaming through the window. Rob got out of the bed and headed for the bathroom. As he sluiced the sleep from his face and hair, he thought about Christine: how it had happened. Them; the two of them; him and her.

He had never experienced a romance like this before: they seemed to have gone from being friends to holding hands, to kissing, to sleeping together as if it was the most obvious and natural thing in the world. A simple and expected evolution. He remembered when he had been nervous about her, reluctant to show his feelings. That felt ludicrous now.

But even if their relationship seemed obvious
it was, paradoxically, still richly strange and marvellous. Maybe the best comparison, Rob decided, was with a brilliant new song you heard on the radio for the first time. Because the melody of a great song seems so right it makes you say: Ah, of course, yes, why didn’t anyone think of that brilliant tune before? It just needed someone to write down the notes.

Rob rinsed his face and reached blindly for the towel. He dried himself, and stepped from the shower. He looked left. The bathroom window was wide open so that he was gazing across the Sea of Marmara to the other Princes Islands. Yassiadi. Sedef Adasi, with the villages and forests of Anatolia in the distance. White-sailed yachts drifted languidly across the blue. The scent of pine needles, warmed by the sun, filled the little bathroom.

Being here in this house had no doubt helped their love affair: had nurtured and developed it. The island was such a heavenly oasis, a vivid contrast to roiled and violent Sanliurfa. And Isobel’s Ottoman home was so quiet: so winsome and untroubled. Sunlit and snoozing by the waves of Marmara; there weren’t even cars to disturb the peace.

For ten days Rob and Christine had recuperated here. They’d also explored the other islands. They’d seen the grave of the first English Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, sent by Elizabeth the First. They’d nodded as a local guide
showed them the wooden house where Trotsky lived. They’d laughed over Turkish coffee in the waterfront cafes of Buyukada, and drunk heady glasses of raki with Isobel in her rose-scented garden, as the sun set over distant Troy.

And it was on one of those soft warm evenings, under the scattered jewellery of the Marmara stars, that Christine had leaned over and kissed him. And he had kissed her back. Three days later Isobel politely and subtly asked her maid to put the guest towels in just one room.

Rob padded through. The bedroom shutters were squeaking in the summer breeze. Christine was still asleep, her dark hair sprayed across the Egyptian cotton pillowslip. He crossed the parquet floor, barefoot, threw on his clothes and boots, and went quietly downstairs.

Isobel was on the phone. She smiled and waved at Rob and gestured him to the kitchen, where Andrea the maid was making coffee. Rob pulled a chair from under the kitchen table, and thanked the maid for his coffee. And then he sat there, absentmindedly, but happily, staring out of the wide-open kitchen door at the roses and the azaleas and the bougainvillea of the garden.

Ezekiel the cat-‘Ezzy’, as Isobel called her-was chasing a butterfly around the kitchen floor. Rob teased the cat for a few idle minutes. Then he sat back and picked up a newspaper, a day old
Financial Times,
and read about some Kurdish suicide bombers in Ankara.

He set the paper down again. He didn’t want to know about any of this. He didn’t want to hear about violence or danger or politics. He wanted this idyll to persist; he wanted to stay here with Christine for ever, and bring Lizzie here, too.

But the idyll could not last: Steve his editor was making impatient noises. He either wanted the story done or Rob on another assignment. Rob had filed a couple of Turkish news items to keep things cool back at the office, but everyone knew that this state of grace was temporary.

Rob stepped into the garden and gazed out to sea. There was another alternative. He
could
just give up his job. Stay here with Christine. Charter a boat, hire it out to tourists. Become a squid fisherman like the Greeks on Burgazada. Join the Armenian café owners in Yassiada. Potter about Isobel’s garden. Just give everything up, and live out his days in the sun. And somehow he could bring Lizzie here too. With his daughter here, laughing on the beach, he would be surrounded by the women he loved, and life would be perfect…

And now he sighed and smiled at his own fond delusions. Love was addling his brain. He had a job, he needed money, he had to be practical.

Rob watched a catamaran in the distance. The line of its white sail looked like a swan as it crossed the stretch of water.

A noise disturbed his reverie. Rob turned, and there was Isobel coming out of the kitchen.

‘I’ve just had the most intriguing phone call from an old friend at Cambridge. Professor Hugo De Savary. Have you heard of him?’

‘No…’

‘Writes a lot. Does TV shows. But he’s a very fine scholar nonetheless. Christine knows him. I think she did a term of his lectures at King’s. In fact I think they were friends…’ Isobel tilted a smile. ‘Where is Christine anyway?’

‘Still fast asleep.’

‘Ah, young love!’ She took Rob’s arm. ‘Let’s go down to the beach. I’ll tell you what Hugo said.’

The beach was rocky and small, but pretty; and almost completely isolated. They sat on a bench of rock and she told him about De Savary’s phone call. The Cambridge historian had explained to Isobel everything he had learned from the police, and added everything he surmised himself about the gruesome murders across Britain. The gang of killers. The connection with the Hellfire Club and the link of human sacrifice in the murders.

‘Why did De Savary ring you?’

‘We’re old friends. I was at Cambridge too, remember.’

‘Yes, but what I mean is, how does this connect with everything we’ve discovered?’

‘Hugo knows I am something of an expert on Turkish and Sumerian antiquity, on ancient religions of the Near East. Such as the Yezidi. He was asking my opinion on a theory. Connected with them. A strange little coincidence. Or maybe not.’
She paused. ‘Hugo believes this gang, the killers, are looking for something closely associated with the Hellfire Club.’

‘Right. I understand that-they are digging up places associated with the club. But what are they looking for? And where do the Yez fit in?’

‘It’s very speculative. Hugo hasn’t even told the police. But he thinks it might be connected with the Black Book. That’s what the gang are pursuing, possibly…’

‘The Black Book? Explain?’

Isobel ran through the story of Jerusalem Whaley: as a friend of Hugo De Savary she’d heard lots of juicy stories about the Hellfire Club. Endless stories of depravity. ‘When he came back from the Holy Land, Thomas Whaley, or Jerusalem Whaley as he was thereafter known, brought with him a cache. A box. A hoard of some kind…’

‘What was it?’

‘Your guess is nearly as good as mine. But we do know he prized his find hugely, believed he’d proved a theory. He called it his “great evidence” in his many letters to friends. Supposedly he was given these materials by an old Yezidi priest. The Yezidi have a caste of priests, singing priests who hand down the oral tradition of the Yezidi. Because there isn’t much of a literary tradition.’

‘And he met with one of these priests, in Jerusalem? Who gave him something?’

‘Presumably. We can’t be sure because Whaley’s memoirs are irritatingly vague. But some scholars
think it might be the Black Book of the Yezidi. The sacred book of the Angelicans.’

‘They have a Bible?’

‘Not any more. But their oral traditions say there was, once, a great body of sacred and mystical writing that embodied Yezidi myths and beliefs. Contemporary legends also say that the only copy was taken by an Englishman hundreds of years ago. Might some exiled priest have given the Black Book to Whaley? For safe keeping? The Yezidi have always felt embattled. They might have wanted to preserve their most precious object somewhere safe. Like faraway England. Buck Whaley certainly brought something remarkable with him on his return from the Levant. Moreover, this item, whatever it was, eventually left him a broken man.’

‘OK. So where is it now? The Black Book? If that’s what it is?’

‘Disappeared. Possibly destroyed. Possibly hidden.’

Rob’s thoughts started to race. He looked into the older woman’s serene grey eyes. Then he said: ’How can we find out what the gang are really looking for? How can we investigate this link to the Yezidi?’

‘Lalesh,’ said Isobel. ‘That’s the only place you could get real answers. The sacred capital of the Yezidi.
Lalesh.
’

Rob felt a shiver of disquiet. He knew he had to go to this place, Lalesh: to get answers, to finish
the story. Steve was pressuring him to do the second and concluding article, and to write it properly Rob needed to tie up the straying ends: to find out about this ‘Black Book’.

But Rob also knew where Lalesh was. He’d heard of it before, from other journalists. It had featured in the news, in recent years, more than once. For all the wrong reasons.

‘I know Lalesh, he said. ‘That’s in Kurdistan isn’t it? South of the border?’

Isobel nodded gravely.

‘Yes. It’s in Iraq.’

That evening Rob told Christine that he had to go to Lalesh, and explained to her why.

She looked at him without saying anything. He told her, again, that Lalesh was the obvious place to finish the story. The answers to most of their puzzles lay with the Yezidi. The sacred capital was the only place he could find truly learned Yezidi. Scholars who could unwrap the enigma. And obviously it made sense for Rob to go alone. He knew Iraq. He knew the risks. He had contacts in that country. His paper would cover his enormous insurance bill, but they wouldn’t pay for Christine. So he had to go to Lalesh-and he had to go alone.

Christine seemed to accede and accept. And then she turned and walked, wordless, into the garden.

Rob hesitated. Should he join her? Leave her alone?

His reverie of indecision was broken by Isobel,
humming a song as she walked through the kitchen. The older woman glanced at Rob, and then at the silhouetted figure, sitting in the garden.

‘You told her?’

‘She seemed OK about it, but then…’

Isobel sighed. ‘She was like this at Cambridge. When she’s upset, she doesn’t chuck things at walls, just bottles it up.’

Rob was torn. He hated to upset Christine, but the journey was a necessity: he was a foreign correspondent. He couldn’t pick or choose where his stories led him.

‘You know, I’m slightly surprised,’ Isobel said.

‘By what?

‘That she fell for you anyway. She doesn’t normally go for men like you. With cheekbones and blue eyes. Dashing adventurers. It’s usually older men. You do know she lost her dad when she was young, don’t you? She’s like any girl with that in her background. Always been attracted to the missing father figure. Advisors. Tutors.’ Isobel looked Rob in the eye. ‘Protectors.’

Across the waters came the hooting of a ferry. Rob listened to the echo rebounding. Then he stepped through the kitchen doorway, into the garden.

Christine was alone on the garden seat, staring through the moonlit pines. Without turning, she said, ‘Isobel is very lucky. This house is so beautiful.’

He sat down beside her and took her hand. The
moonlight made her fingers seem very pale. ‘Christine, I need a favour.’

She turned to look at him.

He explained. ‘While I am in Lalesh…’ He paused. ‘Lizzie. Watch over her a little. Can you?’

Christine’s face was shadowed. A passing cloud had obscured the moon. ‘But I don’t understand. Lizzie’s with her mother.’

Rob sighed. ‘Sally works very hard at her job. Her studies. She’s got legal exams. I just want someone I really trust to…keep another eye on her. You’ll be staying with your sister, right? In Camden?’

Christine nodded.

‘So that’s barely three miles from Sally’s house. Knowing you were there, or just nearby, would make it a lot easier for me. Then maybe you could email me. Or call. I’ll ring Sally to make sure she knows who you are. She might even welcome the help. Maybe…’

The pine trees murmured; Christine nodded. ’I’ll go and see her. OK. And I’ll email you, every day…while you are in Iraq.’

When Christine said the word ‘Iraq’ Rob felt a shudder of fear. This was the
real
reason he wanted Christine to see and know his daughter: because he was worried for himself. Would he come back from this? Would he return and be a proper father? The Baghdad suicide bomber plagued his memories. He’d been lucky that time; maybe he wouldn’t be so lucky again. And if he
didn’t come back-well then he wanted his daughter to meet and to know the woman he’d loved.

Iraq. Rob shuddered again. The word seemed to sum up all the danger he was about to face. The cities of death. The place of beheadings. The province of chanting men, and ancient stones, and terrible discoveries. And suicide bombers in bright red lipstick.

Christine squeezed his hand.

The next morning Rob got up without waking Christine. He left a note on the bedside table. Then he dressed, said goodbye to Andrea, hugged Isobel, stroked the cat, and took the sun-slanted path to the pier.

Twenty-four hours later, after one ferry ride, one cab ride, two plane trips and a gruelling service-taxi ride from Mardin airport, he arrived at the noisy tumult of the Iraqi-Turkey frontier post at Habur. It was a smoggy chaos of parked trucks and army tanks and impatient businessmen and bewildered pedestrians carrying shopping bags.

It took him five sweaty hours to cross the border. He was questioned for two of those hours by Turkish troops. Who was he? Why did he want to go to Iraq? Did he have links with the Kurdish rebels? Was he going to interview the PKK? Was he just stupid? A daredevil tourist? But they couldn’t stop him for ever. He had the visa, the
documents, the fax from his editor-and at last he made it through. A barrier went up and he stepped over the invisible line. The first thing he noticed was a striking red and green flag with a sunburst symbol, fluttering above: the flag of free Kurdistan. The flag was banned in Iran, and you could actually go to prison for flying it in Turkey. But here, in the autonomous province of Kurdish Iraq, it was fluttering proudly and freely, flying stark against the burning blue sky.

Rob gazed south. A man with no teeth was staring at him from a wooden bench. A dog was urinating on an old tyre. The road ahead slid through the yellow and sunburnt hills, snaking towards the Mesopotamian plains. Shouldering his bag, Rob walked over to a dinged and rusty blue taxi.

The unshaven driver looked up at him with a wall eye. The only available transport was a oneeyed cabdriver. Rob felt like laughing. Instead he leaned towards the driver’s window and said, ‘
Salaam aleikum.
I want to go to Lalesh.’