The Istanbul Puzzle (20 page)

‘You know if those crusaders hadn’t sacked this city, Constantinople might never have fallen to the Ottomans. And then Christopher Columbus would never have raised enough money for his expeditions.’

The torch became fainter.

‘Time to go,’ I said. The water looked darker now, ripples twisting on its surface as if it were alive.

‘All that water’s gotta go somewhere,’ I repeated, hopefully. It was true though. The tunnel we were in might just stop somewhere, but a tunnel with moving water in it had to have been built to exit into the Bosphorus or the Golden Horn. This had to be our way out.

There was a gap of maybe four feet between the water and the roof of the tunnel holding it. I looked at Isabel. She had a gaunt look on her face, as if she were looking at a ghost.

My chest tightened as I thought about the water. I had to fight off thoughts of what might be down there – worms, eels, snakes, leeches – all the slimy things in the world. I clenched my fists. Maybe they weren’t here.

‘I’m sure we’ll find a way out.’

She nodded.

I dropped into the water.

A loud splash echoed. A fierce iciness engulfed me. The current tugged at me. I was in a pipe-like tunnel similar to the one I’d just dropped out of. But this one was bigger, and half full of water. And for a few seconds, I couldn’t get to my feet, the bottom of the tunnel, under the water, was so slimy. I looked up. Isabel was leaning down precariously, shining the torch along the tunnel roof in the direction the water was flowing.

Then I steadied myself, found my footing, stood. I was wet all over. My hair was dripping down my back.

‘Can you see a way out?’ she said.

I’d banged my ankle and my elbow. But the water was only up to my thighs.

‘No,’ I said. The tunnel just went on and on like the one up above.

A violent shiver came over me. My earlier optimism seemed totally unrealistic.

The water was a lot colder than I’d imagined. And my trousers felt heavy, as if they were dragging me down. This didn’t seem like such a good idea any more.

I stood up straighter, shook myself like a dog, took a long breath, held it. I wasn’t going back. This water had to have a way out. And we had to follow it, no matter how bad it seemed. I wasn’t giving up.

‘I can stand. And it’s big enough to wade down,’ I said. My words echoed in the darkness. ‘The water isn’t that deep.’

‘Hold this,’ said Isabel. I looked up. She leaned down and passed me the torch.

Then she dropped into the water beside me with a huge splash. I closed my eyes, and wiped the water off my face. Then I held my hand out to help her steady herself.

‘Great fun, isn’t it?’

She held my hand tight. I passed her the torch.

‘Turn it off for 30 seconds, Isabel, the batteries need a rest. When you turn it on, do it only for a few seconds at a time. We’ve got to conserve power. I don’t know how long this tunnel is. When we need light, we’ll need some power, OK?’

She turned the torch off.

‘I bet you’re glad you came along tonight,’ I said into the darkness.

‘You are a barrel of fun,’ she replied. I heard her teeth chattering.

She blinked the torch on, briefly, then off again.

The water was freezing, but the rate at which it was flowing gave me hope. We’d done the right thing.

Suddenly rock-hard goose bumps broke out all over my legs, arms, and on my back. It was a weird feeling, but I had to concentrate on the positives. The torch was still working. Neither of us was injured. We’d be out of here soon.

We began wading. I led the way. Above our heads bricks seemed to spring forward every time the light illuminated them. Their solid construction was reassuring though. If they’d lasted this long, they were definitely going to last until we got out of here.

And then something thick and slithery touched my calf, moving with the current.

I went rigid. What the hell was that – fish, eels?

An instinctive terror gripped me. The sinews in my neck tightened. They felt like wires. I wanted to scream, but my mouth was clamped tight. Isabel didn’t need to know about this.

I raised my hands towards the roof, controlled my breathing again. Whatever had touched me had passed. It was gone. Hopefully for good.

Isabel flicked on the torch. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Sure,’ I lied.

She flicked the torch off. We moved forward with the flow. I was shivering almost uncontrollably now. I thought about everything we’d seen, everything we’d heard, the fact that we’d found the place Alek had been butchered in, that we’d heard Peter. We had to get out of here. We had to tell someone what we’d found.

We waded on.

The next time the light turned on, I noticed that the gap between the roof and the water was closing slowly, but inexorably. The walls seemed to be tightening around us too. I looked back quickly.

The level of the water hadn’t changed dramatically, but it had changed. It was almost up to my waist now. And I could sense more than ever the millions of tons of rock above us, pressing down.

Then suddenly, there was a sloshing noise. I had no idea what it meant. And then a groan echoed down the tunnel. Isabel flicked the torch on.

‘Something touched me,’ she said. Her voice was defiant, but shaky.

‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Don’t think about it. We’ll be out of here soon.’

The surface of the water looked alive every time Isabel turned the torch on now, a black skin shifting languidly as if something was moving fast beneath it. We waded on. I was shivering and every second I expected something slithery to touch me again – or worse, to take a bite.

And then I saw vertical bars looming, blocking our way. Maybe I should have expected them, but I hadn’t, and seeing them there, blocking us, felt like a disaster.

This tunnel could be a trap. They’d have had to have been pretty stupid not to put bars in. And the Byzantines were anything but stupid. Thieves and enemies could have easily gained access to the palace, or Hagia Sophia, if they waded up this way.

‘I don’t believe this,’ said Isabel.

The water was rushing faster now, pulling at my trousers, at my feet. We stood there staring at the bars. There was no way we were getting through them. They looked completely solid.

‘Just once in a while,’ I said, ‘It’d be cool if ancient engineers hadn’t been so damn efficient.’ I waded forward, touched the bars, held them with both hands. They were ice cold, and hard as steel. I kicked at them. Yes, they went down all the way. There wasn’t even a gap of an inch at the bottom.

‘Well, this proves one thing,’ I said. ‘We’re nearly outside.’

‘I’m getting very cold,’ said Isabel. Her teeth were chattering audibly now.

I pressed at one of the bars near where it went into the roof. Maybe, just maybe, the mortar and brick might have worn away with time.

But the bar was as unyielding as granite. Isabel turned the torch off. I shivered in the dark. I felt angry with myself. I should have guessed these bars would be here. We were trapped.

Something slithered over my ankle. My worst fears came alive.

Because this time, the slithering didn’t stop. A shoal of eels or giant worms was passing through my legs. Every sinew in my body said move, get out of here, but I couldn’t.

I was paralysed. I stood still, my eyes wider than I thought they could go, just letting it happen, letting the slithering go on and on.

Isabel turned the torch on. By the look on her face, I knew she felt them too, whatever they were.

Revulsion gripped me. Hot bile came up into my mouth. My stomach was a ball of hard muscle.

Then something gripped my calf, and another wave of fear passed through me.

Isabel reached out to me. She kept the torch beam on, even though it was really faint now. We gripped each other’s fingers tightly.

Then the beam dimmed again and she turned the torch off.

And something bit me in the thigh, right through my trousers. Its teeth were needles.

Sergeant Mowlam was working an extra shift. It didn’t happen often, only in emergencies. The situation in Spain was deteriorating.

Local bloggers, Twitter addicts and radio journalists were providing a fuller picture of what was going on than TVE, the Spanish state television station. But what his superiors needed to know was, were agitators fermenting the violence, as some were claiming?

Sergeant Mowlam was watching images from security cameras at the edge of the Plaza de los Cortes. The live images were usually available for car drivers to assess the level of traffic in central Madrid, but the public feed had been turned off. A separate security services feed had replaced it. The feed showed a neo-classical pillared and pedimented building with bronze lions guarding the wide steps leading up to its entrance.

The image also showed a mob of about five thousand men and women milling around in front of the Congreso de los Diputados, the Spanish parliament. The mob was pushing up against a line of Spanish police from the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía. The riot police were equipped with padded body suits, transparent shields and futuristic helmets. What they clearly weren’t prepared for though was the anger of the crowd.

And there weren’t enough of them either. A raid had taken place on a small new mosque in the city. But why this reaction to such a minor provocation? He looked at the screen to his right. Twitter, Facebook and other messages were moving fast up the screen mentioning Madrid, Plaza de los Cortes or other key words. There were a lot of them.

The ones rated as inflammatory by the automated word checking system, the ones that encouraged violence, paused for a few seconds in the centre of the screen, before disappearing to the right to be stored for further processing. But there weren’t that many of them, that was what was surprising. He’d only seen two in the last five minutes.

So who the hell was stirring these riots up? And why?

Whatever had bit me moved on, leaving a stinging sensation on my thigh.

But what if more of them started biting, all together? My breathing was quick, shallow. And I couldn’t feel my feet anymore. All around was the deepest dark I’d ever known.

And still the eels or water snakes or whatever they were wriggled through my legs, around my thighs. Some were biting like rats at a feast now. Only the pressure of the current kept them from latching on for too long, or maybe the taste of my cotton chinos wasn’t to their liking. Among them there were rough-skinned giants, whose skin felt like sand-paper even through cotton, and whose bodies were as thick as my arm.

Isabel let out an echoing yelp. ‘It’s biting me!’ She sloshed up and down, splashing frantically, sending waves into me.

‘Stop moving,’ I said softly. ‘It’ll go away.’

She blinked the torch on, stopped splashing. I could hear her breathing.

‘I don’t think that Alexius guy came this way. Royalty wouldn’t put up with this,’ she said, quickly.

She looked pale, like the next victim in a horror movie. The one who knows what’s about to happen to her.

‘Is it gone?’

She shook her head. The torch light was fading. She turned it off. That took a lot of courage.

‘I’m coming.’

I waded towards her, pushing my feet against a writhing mass as I tried not to think about them. I put my hands into the water and ran them down her legs quickly. My chin was barely above the water at the end. I kept breathing slowly. There was indeed something thick and unpleasantly slimy attached to her bare ankle.

I straightened up, pushed my foot down on it slowly and pressed my weight hard on it. Whatever it was, it held for another moment, then slithered away.

‘They’ll all be gone in a minute,’ I said confidently. It seemed like the right thing to say. Something my dad would have said.

‘Can this get any bloody worse?’ she roared. Her voice echoed.

‘It could,’ I said.

‘How?’ she screamed.

I didn’t answer. My head was throbbing. I leaned a hand against the roof. It was slimy. I’d been OK while we’d been moving forward. I’d been concentrating on what I was doing, focusing on moving ahead. But now that we were stuck there was time to think. A memory of Irene came to me. She’d looked pale sometimes, like Isabel right now.

One thing was sure. Irene wouldn’t have wanted me to die down here. She’d have wanted me to fight. To live.

There was one option left.

I gripped Isabel’s shoulder. She flicked the light on again. ‘We’re going to get out of here,’ I said. ‘Just be still. They’ll move on.’

She nodded, and as soon as the beam faded, she turned it off. The darkness flooded back.

A few seconds later, whatever had been slithering and biting us passed. This was our chance.

‘I’m going to dive down to see if I can pull out some of the bars at the bottom. They’ve gotta be worn away down there.’

‘Do it quick, Sean, please. The next lot might be hungrier.’

There was still an occasional slithering past my legs, but I tried to put it out of my mind.

Suddenly, I could feel Isabel’s breath on my cheek, warm and invigorating.

‘You can do it, Sean,’ she whispered near my ear. My teeth were chattering. I clamped my mouth shut. She was trying to encourage me, I knew; I also knew she’d been incredibly brave already, coming down here, risking herself to be with me.

Now it was my turn.

I took a breath, held my nose and dropped down fast. The icy water hit my face like a vicious slap. The bars were rough in my hands.

Isabel turned the torch on. Its light filtered down milkily, as if I was in some ghostly Hall of Mirrors. I pulled myself down further into the icy gloom, my fingers numbly pulling at the pitted bars.

A tendril brushed my face, tingling at my cheek. An angry thumping had started inside my left rib cage. I kept my eyes open, trying to pick out anything in the watery gloom, hoping Isabel would be able to keep the torch on for as long as possible.

Then my foot hit the side of the tunnel. I let go of a bar with one hand. For a moment I didn’t know which way was up. I touched Isabel’s legs, kicked for the surface. My head broke out of the water.

‘Yeuch,’ I said, spluttering, gulping air. I rubbed the water from my eyes.

She held out her hand and squeezed my shoulder. It felt warm, encouraging.

‘Are you OK?’ she said.

I was shivering, almost uncontrollably so, but I nodded.

The torch faded. Its light was a thin yellow mist. Now, I could only see the sheen of black water. It seemed higher than it had a few moments ago. Isabel turned the beam off.

I breathed in, held it. A reliable sign of early stage hypothermia is fast breathing. It was time to get out of the water. Instead, I had to go down again. This time in the dark.

‘Maybe we should go back, Sean?’ There was a shiver in her voice.

I didn’t answer. I took another deep breath, permeating my blood with air, and went down, a needle-sharp determination pushing me on.

My hands went straight into the slime at the bottom of the bars this time. I dug frantically, found something round, hard. It felt like a leather bag that had solidified into a ball around its contents

I yanked it from the mud, headed for the surface and held it up in front of me like a prize. For a moment I imagined it might be a bag of gold coins that that guy Alexius had left behind. Isabel turned the torch on as water dripped from me.

‘My God,’ she shouted. ‘What did you bring that up for?’

I blinked. My prize was the top part of a skull covered in oozing mud.

It made a soft plop as it hit the water. I was grateful the flesh was long gone, eaten by only God knew what.

‘Don’t bring that up again.’ Isabel looked really frightened now.

‘You weren’t the one holding it.’

I reached forward in the darkness, found Isabel, held her arm tight. She gripped me back. I wanted to hug her. I hadn’t felt such a protective instinct towards someone in a long time.

That skull could have belonged to someone who’d died where we stood. How long had that taken? Probably not
that
long in this cold.

Isabel pulled me to her. ‘When we get out of here, I want to lie in the sun for a long time,’ she said.

I imagined lying beside her.

I squeezed her shoulder, took a huge breath and dived in for the third time.

I could feel where the bars met the bottom now that the skull was out of the way, though I couldn’t see anything at all in the blackness. But I’d been right. They were worn away a little. One was not even connected to the floor of the tunnel any more. There was a chance. I pulled at the bar. It didn’t bend.

I broke the surface, shivering. Isabel turned the torch on for a moment. Her expression was hopeful.

I nodded. I couldn’t smile. The bar had been too solid to give much hope. She turned the torch off.

The last thing I saw as I filled my lungs with air was Isabel’s half smile. It reminded me of Irene’s, the memory of which had been fading, until her face had become a dreamlike vision; her sitting by the window in our bedroom, getting ready to go out, smiling as if she had a surprise for me. That part of my life, all that happiness, was so distant now.

I dived in again and made my way quickly down to the bottom of the bars.

This time I would check the bottom of the other two bars.

Isabel turned the torch on briefly, as I went down. Its light held steady for a few seconds, then went out. I used my hands to feel my way down.

My fingers were almost totally numb, but I pushed them down into the silt.

And a surge of hope poured through me. One of the other bars was also worn away at the bottom, deep in the mud. I felt for the last one. There was something hard and square wedged against it, buried in the mud. I pulled at the obstruction. It held fast. I pulled harder. Whatever it was, it was definitely manmade. It had corners. It seemed to be a box.

And then it was free in my hands. I kicked for the surface. The torch went on as I splashed into the air.

‘What about this?’ I said. I passed the object to Isabel. She turned it over in her hands.

‘But the best news is, two of the bars are worn away down there. If I can bend them enough, you might be able to slip through.’

All I could hear was the silky rush of the water as it went past, the drips falling from me. Isabel turned the torch off.

‘I’m not leaving you,’ she said. ‘If you can’t get through, we’ll have to find another way out.’

‘I want you to go first,’ I said.

‘No, I won’t. If someone as big as you can get through, don’t worry – I’ll be right behind.’

She turned the torch on for only a second and winked at me. It warmed me. And then, despite the freezing cold, my chattering teeth, the salty, rancid smell, I laughed as if we weren’t buried under tons of rock, as if we were free, in the middle of an open field.

Then I took a deep breath, slipped under the water and made my way to the bottom. I wedged my feet against the other bars and pulled at one of the ones which wasn’t connected at the bottom. It moved, shifted a little. Slowly at first, but then more quickly. I went up for air, then back down again.

This time I pulled at the other bar. I had to bend two high up enough for me to be able to get through. It wasn’t easy, but I felt it give, just a little, then a bit more. Now there was a gap at the bottom. It might just be big enough. But I didn’t want to get stuck down there.

I gulped more air, dived back in, pulled at the bars again. They bent some more. Now I’d try it. I pulled myself forward and down.

It was a tight squeeze, and for a truly horrible moment I thought I was going to get stuck, that my belt had caught, but then I was through.

I came to the surface. ‘Come on,’ I shouted. A surge of exhilaration ran through me as if I’d won an Olympic medal. We were through!

Isabel flicked the torch on, let out a whoop, passed it through to me and dived down into the water. A few seconds later she was beside me.

We started wading, fast.

The roof of the tunnel was flat from that point, and the water was up to our chests, but thankfully the level didn’t change any more. As we waded forward I noticed there was a difference in the atmosphere too. It was warmer, as if we were closer to open air. We moved fast, shivering and mostly in darkness, but occasionally with the torch light on for a few seconds. My chin was still chattering, my feet and hands numb, but I knew we would find a way out now.

After another fifty yards I heard a hissing noise that sounded like heavy rain. Then I heard a car beeping distantly, like the toot of a far off train. It was a wonderful sound. The sound of humanity. I had to stop and savour it.

The walls had barnacles on them now. And there was a faint phosphorescent glow up ahead.

Then, in the distance, I saw the most amazing sight – sparkling diamonds. It was the distant Asian shore of the Bosphorus, with its thousands of building and street lights glittering against velvet blackness. We were emerging, wet and shivering, at sea level at the bottom of the hill that Hagia Eirene and Hagia Sophia crowned. And we were alive.

We’d done it. We’d got out.

I turned to Isabel. She was waving the object I’d pulled from the water. It looked like a bundle of disintegrating leather rags.

‘You’ve still got that?’ I said. She smiled widely, as if she’d won a rollover on the lottery.

Rain blew into my face as we came into the open leaving the brick pipe we’d been stumbling through behind. The feeling of space, lightness, airiness was wonderful. So much so that the rain on my face was a total pleasure.

‘We did it,’ she said. The rock we were standing on was flat, not very wide and the Bosphorus was lapping at its edge. It was right beside where the water from the pipe was pouring out. She hugged me. A surge of warm feelings for her ran through me. But I wasn’t going to tell her. I had no idea if it would last, even if it felt this real. I almost hoped they would go away. They made things too complicated.

‘God only knows the last time someone escaped this way,’ I said. Then I pulled away from her, looked around, up the steep rocky shore behind us. It wasn’t going to be easy climbing up. The rocks were large and the angle was almost like a cliff.

‘We’ve got to be careful. They’re probably still looking for us. Your boss, that is.’

‘Don’t jump to conclusions, Sean, please. There’s an explanation for what we heard, for him being there.’

At that moment I didn’t care enough to say any more or to wonder why she was still sticking to the party line. We’d escaped. Every moment after this would be a gift. I sampled a heavenly lungful of air. There was a wonderful freshness to it, as if it was a meadow I was standing in.

I closed my eyes and turned my head up towards the rain. I’d never ever wanted to do such a thing before. Raindrops hit my head like a waterfall of ping-pong balls.

I heard Isabel moving to my left, where the incline of the rocky wall looked a little less steep. I followed her. We must have looked like giant half-drowned water rats. My teeth were still chattering. And there wasn’t any easy way to go up.

And then I heard the music, and maybe twenty feet from the shore, a line of fairy lights appeared, gliding towards us like an apparition. As they grew brighter, a surge of anxiety ran through me. Who the hell was out on the Bosphorus in the middle of the night?

Then I recognised the music. It was one of those upbeat remixes of an old jazz song, which had been popular back in the States a few years ago.

A second later a searing light shone in our faces. I was completely blinded.

Then a voice rang out. The accent was American.

‘What the goddam hell are you up to?’

‘We had an accident,’ I called back. ‘Help us out here, buddy.’

‘For a fellow American, no problem. Hold on. I’ll throw you a line.’