The Istanbul Puzzle (18 page)

The ambulance driver shivered. This was a bad omen. He waved at the police car blocking his path. Its flashing blue light was spinning fast, filling the driving cabin with its electric glow.

He had worked for the Istanbul municipal emergency ambulance service for two years and he had never had to carry such a load before. If he told his wife, she would curse their fate.

No, he would not tell her anything, he decided, as he inched between the police cars, then out of the lane and up the concrete ramp into Taksim Square. No, he would deny he’d found the second beheaded man discovered in the city in less than five days. And he’d claim no knowledge of what he’d overheard that inspector say – that the man was an Iranian biologist who specialised in virus mutation. He didn’t want to know any more. He wanted to go home, to see his children, to eat meatballs and watch game shows on TV.

He didn’t want to know that the dead man had worked with strange viruses.

Everyone knew the Iranians were likely to be developing biological warfare agents. But why had this one been murdered in Istanbul?

Was it an omen? He shook his head. No, it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

The steel door was open. The brick passageway beyond was lit by a low-intensity yellow bulb. The passageway looked vaguely familiar.

Isabel had stepped inside. I followed her. Cool air passed over me. My skin prickled. Would we be able to get the door closed in time? Would it hold them? It seemed impossible. The clattering was close now, and loud. They were about to turn the last corner on the stairs.

I closed the door behind me. It clicked softly. There was a handle and a round knob above the lock. I turned the knob, heard another soft click. Then I turned it again. It clicked again. At the same time, Isabel was putting the piece of wire into the keyhole, bending it, pushing it up and in. Then she flattened herself against the door.

‘Do you always leave things right to the last second?’ I whispered.

‘Shssssh,’ she replied softly.

There was a reverberating bang. Someone or something had hit the other side of the door. It almost bounced on its hinges. We both moved away from it. Then a shout rang out. It sounded as if the person was right beside us. I leaned against the passageway wall and tried to calm my breathing. The door shook again. Would the lock, Isabel’s little piece of wire, really hold them?

Muffled voices echoed. Someone banged on the door again. Harder this time. Knocking.

I totally expected it to jump open at any moment. Once the lock was open, that would be it. We’d be prisoners. What would we say? Stick to our story. I could hear my breathing, Isabel’s too.

Something sharp struck the door. It rattled. There was a scratching noise like a key being inserted into a lock. Isabel was kneeling in front of the door with her hand up at the keyhole holding the piece of wire into it. Could that hold them? Surely not.

Any moment now.

My desire to pursue this was about to be punished. Even if these guys were only Topkapi Palace security guards, breaking into this kind of place was a serious offence. It had to be.

Isabel held her hand at the key hole. Her hand turned a little. I could see the wire moving in her fingers.

Suddenly there was a shout, as if someone had yelled in frustration. Something banged against the door. It could have been a hand. The wire in Isabel’s hand moved again, twisted. I held my hand on hers, pressing lightly. I felt her hand move once more as someone tried to turn the key again. This wasn’t going to hold them.

But it did. The door didn’t open.

There were more shouts, more rustling, more shuffling. Then more scraping. I had no idea what was going on on the other side, but I could guess. Different people were trying the door. Then there were shouts that sounded like threats, then more scratching. Isabel’s wire was bent, but it had stopped moving, as if it had jammed in somewhere. There was banging again. The door rattled.

It remained closed.

Then there was a rushed clattering, as if everyone on the other side was heading back up the stairs.

We’d done it. I leaned against the wall, relaxing a little for the first time since we’d come down the stairs. I could breathe again. Isabel bent down and looked through the keyhole.

Then she stood and whispered. ‘This gives us maybe twenty minutes. There aren’t too many locksmiths open in Istanbul this late, but I expect they’ll find someone. If they catch us in here, we’ll be in serious trouble. We’ve got to find another way out.’

She looked at me with an expression that was almost pleading.

‘We’d better have a look around,’ I said. I moved down the passage, walking fast.

‘This was your idea,’ she whispered, as she came up behind me.

‘Lets stick to the story that we wanted a bit of privacy,’ I said.

‘Sure, but I don’t think they’re stupid.’

That was when I noticed the block of faded yellow marble set into the wall halfway along the corridor. There was an Arab inscription on the marble. The hair on my neck stood to attention.

‘That’s the Janissaries’ motto,’ I said, stopping at it. ‘
I place my faith in God
.’

I looked back. There was no one coming through the door.

‘That was in one of Alek’s photos. He was here,’ I said.

The bulb above us flickered and a long forgotten memory came rushing back. As a boy, when I’d behaved very badly, I’d been locked in a basement storeroom. The room had been lit by a faded yellow bulb, just like this. It had flickered. The smell was weirdly similar too, damp and earthy. I’d hated that place.

We continued, moving fast down the gently sloping, brick-lined corridor. A hundred feet further on the corridor turned back on itself. The next section ended in what looked like a storage corridor.

In the far wall there was a rough door-sized opening in a solid brick wall. The opening looked recent. There were dust and brick fragments all around.

Who had broken through this wall?

I looked back over my shoulder, then stepped through the opening, moving fast. The wall that had blocked the passage had been over two foot thick, enough to deter casual investigations. Chunks of loose rubble lay to one side in the next section of the passage.

The walls here were made of pale brick too, but they were cleaner, as if this lower part of the passage had been used a lot less over the centuries. It ran straight, and away from Hagia Eirene.

I had a feeling we were heading in the direction of Hagia Sophia.

Then, without warning, the yellow bulbs hanging from the walls went out. I stopped. A curtain of blackness engulfed us. The darkness felt primitive. Prickling sweat broke out all over me.

‘Wait a second,’ I said, as calmly as I could. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the torch I’d bought in the shop earlier. A shaft of brilliant white light popped out from it, illuminating everything in its beam.

‘Always be prepared, that’s what my dad said.’ I waved the beam around.

‘Not in my eyes, please,’ Isabel hissed. She pushed the torch to one side.

I swung the beam over the faded brick walls around us, the arched brick ceiling above and the shiny stone passageway sloping down in front of us. A red electric cable ran along the bottom of one wall. Someone was working down here.

‘No wonder geo-phys surveys of Hagia Sophia never find anything,’ I said. ‘Reliable readings in this type of ground go to a depth of twenty feet, maybe a little more. We must be thirty feet down already, and we’re not even near the bottom of this.’ The beam of light from the torch illuminated the corridor up to about a hundred feet away. After that everything faded into gloom. Behind us, black shadows pressed in.

‘Thank God for the wonderful Mr Maglite,’ I said, as I set off down the passage. I was walking fast. ‘I wonder where the hell this goes.’

‘I just hope there’s a way out,’ said Isabel.

There were no sounds now, just the noises we were making – the sound of our footsteps on the stone, the rustling of our clothes. The air was cool down here.

I shone the torch beam over the walls as we walked on, looking for anything interesting.

‘This place gives me the creeps,’ said Isabel.

‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’

She put a hand on my arm. ‘Let me have a go.’

I passed her the torch. We walked on, moving fast. The next section of the passageway sloped even steeper.

Then, up ahead, there was no wall on the right. I held my breath as we came up to it. I knew what was happening. The passage was turning into a ramp going down one side of a large underground hall. My notion of space was suddenly inverted. We were above something now, not below it. It was weirdly disconcerting.

Isabel played the beam into the hall below us as we came down into it. The hall was massive, maybe twenty feet high and a hundred square feet, at least. It reminded me of the underground cisterns in other parts of Istanbul. But this space was not built to hold water.

Its most prominent feature was a large door, maybe fifteen feet high and the same wide, in the centre of the far wall. Isabel directed the torch beam onto the door, then moved it around the walls as we came down.

There was an unnatural quiet here, as if the walls were listening, watching.

‘This is something else,’ said Isabel. ‘And I usually hate being underground.’

‘I hope this isn’t the entrance to a plague pit,’ I said.

‘A plague pit, you’re joking, right?’ She shuddered.

‘It’s got to be a possibility. Istanbul was the first city the Black Death hit in Europe. One summer in the sixth century, five thousand men, women and children were dying of the plague each day in this city. When it returned in the fourteenth century it was even worse.

‘This was a Christian city back then. The clergy looked after the sick. They buried the bodies in crypts under the churches first, then in pits. Later there were so many bodies they just threw them into the sea. Large crypts, catacombs in some places, were dug out under churches all over Europe. They were sealed up afterwards. I’m sure they would have done the same here, except on a bigger scale. Remember, Constantinople was the biggest city in Europe then.’

‘The Black Death, that’s just what I want to hear about right now.’ Isabel groaned.

‘You have to be careful in places like this, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘Where’s the way out then?’ She shone the torch around the room again. There was no obvious way out except through the big door in front of us. She shone the light on the floor.

‘Where’s this plague pit?’

‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged. ‘And we haven’t got time to look. Come on.’

Isabel was turning the torch on different parts of the underground hall. The walls were alive with frescoes. They reminded me of Pompeii. The faded mosaic floor was like an exhibit at a museum.

She let the beam of the torch linger on a wall fresco.

‘Look!’ She held the beam steady on a painting of an old man, seated, with a halo around his head. A younger man in a toga was kneeling in front of him, writing something on a roll of parchment with a long pen.

‘St John,’ I said. ‘The guy who dictated the Book of Revelation.’

‘What the hell is St John doing down here?’

‘I don’t know, but he isn’t going to help us find a way out.’

‘Did you hear something?’ she said.

We both stopped moving. There was nothing but silence.

Isabel moved the beam around the room. On the floor, in one corner, was a mosaic. A Madonna with Child. Debris littered the area around it.

‘That’s Alek’s mosaic,’ I said. ‘It’s gotta be.’ It was good to have found it, but unsettling.

I ran over to the mosaic. It looked, if anything, more vivid than in Alek’s picture. There was a low scaffolding platform near it, as if someone was planning to remove it completely.

I heard a far-off sound, a distant thud. My ears strained for something more, but nothing came.

We had to go. Isabel was pointing the torch beam at the great door. There was no other way forward.

The door was an impressive piece of work. Isabel walked slowly up to it, shining the light on the floor in front of it. The electric cable from the corridor ran straight under the door.

‘Look at that,’ she said, pointing at scrape marks near the door. ‘They’re recent.’ She turned the beam on to the door again.

It was made from thick planks running vertically, all so grey with age, they appeared to have turned to stone. Foot-wide veined black marble pillars stood on each side of the door. They were surmounted by globes the size of a human head. The pillars had bands of Greek letters carved into them.

‘Whoever built this was preparing for the end of the world,’ I said.’ Sacred inscriptions used to be carved in marble to ensure they’d survive the fires of the apocalypse.’ I stepped towards it.

‘Let’s see if it opens.’ I pulled one of the two handles. Nothing happened. I stopped and listened for more noises.

‘Wait a second,’ said Isabel. She passed me the torch, took out her phone and took a picture.

‘We haven’t got time for that,’ I said.

I pointed the beam at the door handles. They were metal rings that had blackened with age and were just about big enough to put my hand through. There was one near the centre of each door. I passed her the torch, gripped them properly this time with both hands and gave them a proper tug. They had to open.

Nothing happened. I looked for a lock. There was none.

‘Let’s pull them together,’ I said.

‘I knew I was going to come in useful,’ she said.

‘Just pull.’

We pulled together. Nothing happened.

‘Turn your handle,’ I said. ‘Make it straight.’ It was at a 90-degree angle to the one I was pulling.

‘It doesn’t move,’ she said. She yanked at it, pulling hard, jerking it each way in frustration.

I tried turning mine. At first it didn’t turn. I tapped it with my fist. It creaked loudly, then turned. Both handles were at the same angle now. We pulled again.

There was a low grinding noise. A welcome crack of light appeared. We pulled together. The doors moved slowly, but they moved. Bright light flooded into the room.

I stopped and squinted, unable to believe my eyes.