City of the Lost

A cracking, splintering noise ripped the air, sending the fire-crews and search-and-rescue teams scurrying for safety. Then, a second or two later, the hotel’s left-hand wall simply sheared away and toppled forwards into the general rubble, bringing the rear wall down too, throwing up more clouds of noxious dust and reducing still further any hope of finding survivors.

Ambulances were now arriving in large numbers. He led a pair of paramedics down the hill. While one of them treated the Peugeot driver, he and the other strapped Mustafa onto a stretcher and carried him back up to the top, loaded him onto an ambulance. He asked to go along with him, but the paramedic gave an expressive little shrug. It wasn’t an ambulance right now, but a body-cart; and they needed all of it. ‘Did he live around here?’ the man asked.

‘Istanbul,’ answered Iain. He nodded at the wrecked hotel. ‘He was staying there.’

‘Wife? Family?’

‘I’ll call them myself,’ said Iain.

‘We still need to know who they are.’

He summoned up Layla’s number on his smartphone, wrote it along with Mustafa’s name on the back of one of his own business cards, then added the name of his Antioch hotel should they need to contact him. The paramedic thanked him and moved off in search of further grim duties. Remarkably, it was only now that he remembered what he and Mustafa had been here to do. Or, more precisely, remembered the footage that would have been streaming into his laptop right up to the moment of detonation. If his hard-drive had somehow survived, and the footage could be recovered, it could prove vital to the investigation. On the other hand, if the police discovered it for themselves it would be a nightmare to explain away.

He went back down the slope to where he’d found Mustafa then searched in an ever-widening spiral until he spotted an edge of the toughened black casing protruding from loose earth. He pulled it free. Its screen was shattered, its hinges broken and its casing pocked by shrapnel, but it could have been far worse. He carried it obliquely back up the slope to his hire-car, locked it away in his boot. His next job promised to be harder. He took out his phone again. No signal. The masts had to be overwhelmed. He walked away in search of coverage. Still nothing. A wicked little voice whispered that the paramedics or the hospital would take care of it for him, maybe even handle it better than he could. They’d be calm, clinical, practised.

In Istanbul, last year, Layla had cooked a feast in his honour, to thank him for bringing good employment to her husband. Their two daughters had sat either side of him upon their divan while he’d read them stories from the lusciously illustrated copy of the Thousand and One Nights he’d brought as a gift.

A signal at last. Tenuous but undeniable. He felt light-headed as he dialled Mustafa’s home number, like the first hint of flu. The phone had barely rung before Layla snatched it up. She began talking Turkish so fast that it was a struggle for Iain to follow. He tried to slow her. When she recognized his voice, she burst into sobs of relief. ‘You’re safe,’ she said, switching to English. ‘Thank God you’re safe. I’ve been watching on the news. I’ve been so worried. Where’s Mustafa? Is he with you? I’ve been trying his phone.’

‘Layla,’ said Iain.

There was silence. It stretched painful as the rack. ‘He’s hurt,’ she said. ‘He’s hurt badly, isn’t he?’

‘Layla,’ he said again.

She began to wail. It was a desperate, inhuman sound, like an animal being tortured. He didn’t know what she needed from him, whether to respect her grief with silence or to tell her what he knew. He decided to talk. It would be easy enough for her to shut him up if she wanted. He described their morning in the café, how he’d gone for more tea immediately before the blast. He told her how he’d knelt beside her husband in his last moments. She wept so loudly that it was hard to believe she could hear him, but he kept talking anyway, about how Mustafa had seized his hand and asked him to look out for her and their daughters. He told her of his promise, reiterated it now. Her sobs abruptly stopped. ‘Layla?’ he said. He’d lost signal. He felt sick and bruised and drained and guilty all at once as he walked around trying to reacquire it. When finally he succeeded, to his shame he couldn’t bring himself to call Layla again. He called the London office instead, asked for Maria. Maria had known Mustafa a little, had a wonderful gift of empathy. He braced her for bad news, told her what had happened. He asked her to get in touch with Layla, arrange for her and her daughters to fly down to Antioch if she so wished, plus whatever else she needed; and also to start the paperwork on Mustafa’s life insurance.

‘Are you okay?’ Maria asked. ‘You yourself, I mean?’

‘I’m fine,’ he assured her.

‘You don’t sound fine.’

‘I just watched Mustafa die,’ he told her. ‘I thought I was past all this shit.’

‘I’ll talk to Layla,’ she promised.

‘Thank you,’ said Iain. ‘And put me through to Quentin.’

‘Now?’

‘Now.’ He went on hold. His boss picked up a few moments later. ‘Maria told me,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe it. Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘What are you going to do? Are you coming home?’

‘No. I need to be here for Layla.’

‘Layla?’

Iain clenched a fist. ‘Mustafa’s widow.’

‘Ah. Yes. Of course. Layla.’

‘Listen, Quentin,’ said Iain. ‘Before Mustafa died, he asked me if we had anything to do with the blast. I promised him I’d find out.’

‘How could you even think such a thing?’

‘Because I don’t know who our client is,’ said Iain. ‘Or what they wanted from this job.’

‘You do know our client. Hunter & Blackwells.’

‘They’re lawyers, Quentin,’ said Iain. ‘Who do they represent?’

‘They had nothing to do with this. Take my word for it.’

‘No,’ said Iain.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said no, I won’t take your word for it. Not on this. I need to know who they are and why they’re so interested in the Bejjanis.’

Silence. ‘Very well,’ said Quentin, finally. ‘I gave them a pledge of confidentiality, but under these circumstances, I think I can ask permission to share. Though I make no promises.’

‘I do,’ said Iain angrily. ‘Either you tell me or I’ll make it my business to find out. And they really don’t want me going after them, not in the mood I’m in.’ He ended the call, rubbed the back of his neck. His first few months at Global Analysis had been such a relief after the army: stimulating, demanding and rewarding, yet no one getting killed or even hurt. This past year or so, however, it had turned increasingly sour. The secrecy. The offshore accounts. The relentless push for profits. The downright nastiness of some of their clients. That was why, for several months now, he’d been making vague plans to set up on his own, maybe invite Mustafa and a few of the others to go with him. Yet he’d done nothing concrete about it.

And now this.

II

Turkish Nicosia, Cyprus

Taner Inzanoğlu made a point of walking his daughter Katerina to and from school every day he possibly could. He did it partly because his car was old and unreliable, and partly because petrol was so expensive. But mostly he did it because it was such a relief to get away from his writing and other work for a while; a relief to spend time with Katerina and not feel guilty.

The afternoon was sunny and warm, yet pleasantly fresh. The perfect spring day. He bought them each a raspberry-flavoured ice-lolly. They licked them as they walked through the park, tongues sticking to the frosting and turning ever redder. She told him about her day, her friends, the lessons she had taken, the inexplicable splinters of knowledge that had somehow lodged in her mind. They finished their lollies. He took her wrapper and stick from her, put them in a bin. Then he broke into a run. ‘Race you,’ he shouted over his shoulder.

The course was well known to them both. Through the trees, around the swings and the exercise machines, back to the path. ‘I can’t believe you beat me,’ he protested, as he collapsed panting onto the grass. ‘What kind of daughter would beat her own father!’

The way her eyes crinkled when she laughed reminded him so vividly of her mother that his heart ached almost as though it had just happened. With the pain came the usual premonition: that something calamitous would overtake her too, that he’d be equally powerless to stop it. He reached up and hugged her and pulled her down onto the grass beside him. ‘What is it, Father?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said. His anxiety wouldn’t go away, however. If anything, it grew worse. They’d barely left the park before his mobile rang. He checked the number, was relieved to see that it was only Martino. ‘Hey, my friend,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re cancelling tonight?’

‘Aren’t you watching?’ asked Martino.

His heart stopped. ‘Watching what?’

‘The bomb. In Daphne.’

Taner turned his back on Katerina so that she couldn’t see his face. ‘How bad?’ he asked.

‘Bad. Really bad.’ He paused a moment, then added what Taner had most feared. ‘And they’re saying that a warning was called in. They’re saying it was us.’

III

The police had already started taking statements from possible eye-witnesses. Iain gave his name, details and a bowdlerized version of his day to a slab-faced officer with an implausible belly. A few paces away, the woman he’d earlier joked about with Mustafa was struggling to make herself understood by an officer with limited English. When he was finished, therefore, he went across and offered to translate. Her name was Karin Visser. She was twenty-seven years old. She was Dutch but had been studying and working in America for the past four years, which explained both her accent and her impeccable English. She’d been travelling around Turkey with her boss Nathan Coates, a retired oil executive, and his head of security Rick Leland. The two of them had been in Nathan’s room all morning, in some kind of meeting. No, she didn’t know who with. No, they hadn’t been in Daphne long. They’d only arrived from Ephesus late the night before, had been due to fly on to Cyprus the day after tomorrow, then back to the States at the end of the week. No, she hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. She’d gone for a long walk that morning, had returned to the hotel thinking the meeting would have finished. But it had still been going on. She opened up her day-pack to show the manila package inside, and explained how her boss had given it to her to have couriered, insisting that she see to it herself rather than merely trusting it to reception. She’d been on her way when she’d heard the blast and run back. That was when … She waved an expressive hand to indicate the destruction. The policeman thanked her wearily and asked her to let him or his colleagues know before she left the area, then went off to conduct his next interview.

‘Are you okay?’ Iain asked her.

‘I’m fine,’ said Karin. But her hand was trembling slightly and her eyes glittered. ‘It’s just, they were my friends, you know. And I’ve never been through anything like this before.’ She shook her head. ‘I feel so useless. I feel like there are things I should be doing.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. To do with Nathan and Rick, I guess. I mean did you see the hotel? Nathan’s room was right above that crater. I mean right above it.’ Her tears finally started flowing. She brushed them away with the heel of her left hand. ‘They have to be buried under God only knows how much rubble. There’s no way can they still be alive. So what do I do? Do I call their families? Or do I wait until it’s confirmed? And is it up to me to arrange for them to be …’ She closed her eyes, unable to complete the thought. ‘And then there’s stupid stuff. I left my passport in my room safe, for example. My cards, my driver’s licence, nearly all my cash. I assumed they’d be okay there.’

‘Someone from your consulate will be here soon,’ Iain assured her. ‘By tomorrow at the latest. They’ll deal with the police and the authorities for you. They’ll arrange to have your boss and your colleague flown back home. They’ll issue you with a new passport. They’ll make sure you have money and a flight.’

‘But what about until then? God, I know this is trivial, but where do I go? What do I eat? Where do I sleep? How do I get around? I don’t know a soul in this place and I don’t speak a word of the language and my friends are dead and I don’t have anywhere to stay or enough money to pay for a room and I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll get you a room at my hotel.’

‘I told you. I don’t have any money.’

He touched her arm gently. ‘I’ll put you on my tab,’ he said. ‘You can pay me back when you sort things out.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure.’

She wiped her eyes. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘It’s fine.’

There was nothing more to keep them here, so he led her to his car. It was barely five miles to Antioch, but the roads were so chaotic that it took them an hour. He parked up the cobbled street from his hotel, led her inside. The receptionist stared at them in astonishment. ‘You were there?’ she asked.

Iain touched Karin on the elbow. ‘My friend here was staying at the Daphne International. She needs a room. Oh, and she’s lost her passport and her cards, so can you please put her on my account for the moment.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said the receptionist, ‘but we don’t have any rooms left. The phone’s been going crazy. Journalists and TV people and police. Everyone’s on their way. And the other hotels are the same. We’ve all been referring inquiries to each other. I honestly don’t know of any rooms left in the city.’

Iain glanced at Karin. Sharing a room with a stranger breached all kinds of company protocols, but she was visibly at the end of her tether. ‘We can go hunting, if you like,’ he said. ‘Or there’s a spare bed in my room.’

She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’

‘Just for tonight. We’ll sort something better out tomorrow.’ The receptionist smiled at this happy solution, tapped Karin’s details into her terminal, gave her a spare card-key. They took the lift up. He fixed them a drink each, spilled a pack of chocolate-covered nuts into a saucer. Karin sat heavily on a bed and checked her mobile, but the masts were evidently overwhelmed here too. He nodded at the bedside phone. ‘Use that,’ he said.

‘It’s to Holland. To let my parents know I’m safe. Then to America.’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ he said. ‘Owe me.’ He half held up his hand to apologize for his irritability, but Karin didn’t even seem to notice. He went into the bathroom, put his hands upon the sink, rested weight upon them. It was a risk of being single too long that you lost your soft edges. He checked himself in the mirror: a mess of sweat and dust and blood. He fetched clean clothes from his wardrobe, stripped and took a shower, vigorously soaping off the dirt and blood and sweat, watching the grey-brown mess of it circle the plug and then vanish. He dialled the heat up as high as he could take it then turned his face to the spray almost as if to purge himself of something, or perhaps in penance for the fact that, yet once more in his life, an operation he was running had turned so utterly to shit.

THREE

I

They found a storage room crammed with pianos and other instruments in which to brief Deniz Baştürk on the bomb before he went out to face the press. Discordant notes thrummed and pinged each time someone changed position or rested a hand on a keyboard, making it even harder for him to absorb what he was being told, fretting at the ordeal ahead as he already was.

Hard to believe that he’d actually once enjoyed dealing with the media. As an economics professor of reasonable repute, brought into the Ministry of Finance in the wake of the global financial crisis, his first interviews had almost exclusively been policy-dense one-on-ones with sober-minded financial journalists. He’d enjoyed the intellectual challenge of making his case persuasively, and he hadn’t needed to worry much about ambush, partly because he was essentially an honest man, but mostly because access was too valuable a commodity to the press to be wasted on a hit against someone as obscure and technocratic as himself. But then had come his unexpected elevation to the top job, and everything had changed.

Enough. His aides knew nothing more and if he didn’t go out soon the murmuring would start, that he was hiding. He led the way himself, marching through the lobby and striding boldly out the automated glass front doors, because you had to look in command even if you didn’t feel it. It had turned darkly overcast outside, exaggerating the eruption of flashbulbs from the several dozen reporters and photographers crowded in the small courtyard and on the steps up to the street, almost like he was in an auditorium of his own. He felt exposed without a podium to stand behind; his usual one not only had a concealed step to make him appear taller, but its considerable girth also helped disguise his own. There was nothing for it, however. He took a moment to compose himself and to adopt a suitably sombre expression then spoke the usual platitudes about the nation’s thoughts being with the victims and their families, giving them his word the perpetrators would be caught.

‘You’ve been giving your word for six months,’ said Birol Khan of Channel 5. ‘Yet still they bomb. Each worse than the last. The Syrians, the Kurds and now it seems the Cypriots. It’s like they’re competing with each other.’

‘That’s an unnecessarily alarmist way of—’

‘Alarmist? These monsters murdered thirty people. And you call me alarmist?’

He held up a hand. ‘That’s not what I meant. These … perpetrators are criminals. This is a security problem, not a war.’

‘It feels like a war. It feels like we’re under attack all the time.’

There were murmurs of approval at this. These weren’t merely journalists. They were civilians too, people with their own fears, with loved ones of their own. Until recently, the troubles had been sporadic and largely confined to the Kurdish south-east, but now attacks were taking place with increasing frequency and violence all across the country. No town or village felt safe any more. No public space or office. And it was impossible to protect everywhere. He cast a guilty glance over his shoulder. Since his son had started here, the Academy had added layers of security, courtesy of the state. He himself was escorted by at least six secret service bodyguards wherever he went. His cars were armoured, his office and both homes protected by rings of steel. How would he feel if it was his own family in jeopardy and no progress was being made? He suffered another flutter of inadequacy. The country needed a proper leader, not some floundering economist. ‘The police are doing the best they can,’ he said weakly.

‘That’s the precise problem,’ shouted out Yasemin Omari, a gadfly TV reporter who mistook rudeness for speaking truth to power.

‘They’ve made a great many arrests.’

‘Yes. Of people the Interior Minister doesn’t like.’

‘That’s a ridiculous allegation.’

‘Some say he can’t catch the bombers because he’s fired his best officers and replaced them with incompetent loyalists. Others say he’s deliberately slow-pedalling the investigations to make you look bad. Which do you think it is?’

‘I think he’s a dedicated public servant doing an excellent job under extremely difficult circumstances.’

‘Your current Chief of the General Staff helped take down the Kurdish separatists last time it got like this. Why not put him in charge?’

‘Because counterterrorism is a civilian task. Besides, the Minister and the General are already in close contact. We operate a joined-up government.’ Laughter made him flush. ‘I assure you,’ he said.

‘You assure us?’ taunted Omari. ‘Everyone knows those two hate each other. When was the last time they even spoke?’

‘We have just suffered the most terrible atrocity,’ he said sharply. ‘Do you seriously expect me to reveal details of our investigation on national television?’ He shook his head as if in dismay then pushed his way through the pack and up the steps to the waiting cars. A heartfelt sigh the moment they were safely inside. ‘Get the Interior Minister and the Chief of the General Staff for me,’ he told Gonka, as they pulled away. ‘I want them in my office.’

‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ she said. ‘When?’

He turned so that she could see his face. ‘When do you think?’ he asked.

II

Karin was on the phone when Iain finished his shower, being talked at by an American man with an abrasively loud and patrician voice. ‘… need to let me know the moment my father’s death is confirmed,’ he was saying.

‘Of course,’ said Karin. She glanced up at Iain. ‘But I have to go now,’ she said. ‘Again, I’m really sorry for your loss.’

‘I’ll bet you are,’ said the man, sounding remarkably chipper for someone who’d had such grievous news. ‘Waking up like this to find nothing on the night-stand.’ The phone clicked; there was dial-tone. Karin grimaced as she replaced it in its cradle. ‘Nathan’s eldest,’ she said.

‘He seemed to take it well.’

‘They aren’t the closest of families.’

Iain nodded. If she wanted to talk about it, she’d bring it up herself. ‘You look exhausted,’ he said. ‘Enough with the phone calls. Have a bath. A nice cup of tea.’ He fetched an olive T-shirt from the wardrobe, tossed it to her, then fished some Turkish lira banknotes from his wallet. ‘For clothes and food and shit. Whatever you need.’

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘My pleasure,’ he said. ‘And if there’s anything else …’

She took a deep breath. ‘Does that extend to advice?’

‘Sure. About what?’

Karin had brought her day-pack up to the room. Now she took the bulky manila envelope out from it. ‘You remember what I told that policeman? How I went out walking all morning. Then I went back to Nathan’s room only to find him still in his meeting, and how he gave me this to post.’

Iain frowned. ‘You want me to run it down to reception?’

‘No. It’s nothing like that. It’s just that I’ve been thinking about something. About why we were even here.’ She bit her lower lip briefly, as though torn between discretion and the urge to share. ‘If I tell you something in confidence, will you keep it to yourself?’

‘Of course,’ said Iain. ‘What?’

She showed him the package’s address label. It was made out in neat turquoise handwriting to a Professor Michael Walker at the Egyptian Institute of Archaeometry in New Cairo, Egypt. ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘I know Mike. My boss Nathan used to sponsor his institute, you see, so I’ve dealt with him a fair bit over the phone. He’s an archaeologist, essentially, but he specializes in scientific techniques like carbon-dating, thermoluminescence testing, spectrum analysis, that kind of thing. How old is this parchment? Where was this amphora fired? What’s the mix of metals in this ingot?’

‘Okay,’ said Iain.

‘Nathan was fascinated by the ancient Greeks,’ said Karin. ‘Particularly the Mycenaeans. The ones Homer wrote about. We were in Troy a couple of days ago, for example. Then we came here. You won’t know this, but some people believe the Trojan War started in Daphne.’

‘Sure,’ nodded Iain. ‘Paris awarding Aphrodite the golden apple.’

‘Yes. Exactly.’ She looked so impressed, he decided not to confess that Mustafa had told him this that same morning. ‘But you saw the place. It’s not exactly Ephesus, is it? Though, to be fair, Nathan also co-sponsors excavations at an old Hittite city called Tell Tayinat, which is only a few miles from here, by the Syrian border. But that’s off-season right now. There’s no one there.’