by Will Adams
III
The shameful truth was that fine music bored Deniz Baştürk. Two years in the steelworks had done damage to his ears and left him with coarse tastes: music to dance to, to drink to, lyrics made for bellowing. When his son Orhan had told him that he wanted to transfer to the Ankara State Conservatory to study it, therefore, he’d thought – or perhaps more accurately hoped – it was a joke.
But such were the perils of falling in love with an artistic woman.
On the concert platform, his son packed his oboe away into its case, took a zurna from his music-bag instead. He’d been granted the rare honour of choosing a piece to perform, to showcase his own talent. But what it was, Baştürk didn’t know. He frowned inquisitively at his wife Sophia; she gave him in return only an enigmatic smile. The lights dimmed a little. The players took up their instruments. His son put the zurna’s reed to his lips, readied his fingers for the first note. Baştürk found himself tensing, hope fighting fear. If this was what his son wanted, it was what he wanted too. But he’d learned the hard way, these past six months, that aspiration wasn’t the same thing as ability.
The first notes, so soft he could barely hear them. Baştürk made sure to keep his hands and expression relaxed, but his feet were clenched like fists beneath his seat until with a shock he not only recognized the piece but then quickly realized that Orhan had mastered it completely, that he was good; and now the other instruments joined in and the music began to soar raucously and joyously and he knew it was going to be okay, his son would have the life he coveted, and he sagged a little with the relief of it, and he took and squeezed his wife’s hand, and he felt quite ridiculously proud.
Now that he could relax, the music went to work on him. It was a personal favourite of his, conjuring childhood memories of his own father, of being carried on his shoulders at protest marches, of watching him holding union crowds enthralled with his fierce rhetoric. Then the music hit its first melancholic passage, and it took him with it. For it had been a mixed blessing to have such a man for a father, dooming him to a life of falling short. And he had fallen short, he knew. He’d let his father down. He’d let his wife and son down. He’d let his country down. He felt, again, the almost crippling sense of inadequacy that had blighted him so often since he’d started his new job.
A door banged behind him. He looked irritably around at this disruption of his son’s performance. Shadows conferred in those urgent low voices that were somehow doubly intrusive for being hushed. On stage, the players hesitated, uncertain whether to treat this as a rehearsal or a full performance, before staggering to an ugly, ragged stop. Baştürk slapped his knee in anger then got to his feet. ‘I thought I said no interruptions.’
‘Forgive me, Prime Minister,’ said Gonka, his senior aide, hurrying down the aisle to him. ‘But there’s been an incident. A bomb.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Not another.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ she nodded. ‘In Daphne. And I wouldn’t have disturbed you even so, but the press have found out you’re here. And they’re already gathering outside.’
TWO
I
There was nothing more Iain could do for Mustafa, and others might need his help. He made his way down the slope to the cars that had rolled to its foot. The first two were empty, but a middle-aged woman was strapped unconscious behind the wheel of the third, a green Peugeot settled on its roof. He couldn’t see any flames but its interior was clouding with smoke. The doors were all jammed shut, but its passenger-side window had partially buckled so he smashed it with a stone until it caved. He took a deep breath then wriggled inside. He released her seatbelt, took her under her arms, hauled her out and laid her on her back. Her pulse was weak but she was alive and breathing unaided.
He clambered back up the hillside. It was steep enough to make his calves and hams ache. Shrieks of pain and wails of grief greeted him. The smoke had cleared to reveal the blast’s full devastation. A great bite had been taken out of the road in front of the Daphne International Hotel and its black-glass frontage had shattered and fallen away, exposing a honeycomb interior of ruined rooms, of broken baths and toilets dangling grotesquely from twisted pipes. The scale of damage, and the lack of any residual smell of cheap explosive, suggested to him military-grade ordnance. And not some stray shell from the Syrian war: it would take a large missile or a truckload of Semtex to wreak this much—
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 th
eir 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.’