City of the Lost

by Will Adams

  ‘Hell. What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Hope, I guess. The police have already recovered a bunch of the hotel safes, apparently, and their contents have been fine. If they find mine, and my passport and green card are okay, then I can at least defer it for a while.’

  ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed.’

  ‘You’d better. All my bank cards are in there too. If things don’t sort out soon, it may be a while before I can repay you.’

  ‘Yeah. My two hundred lira. It’s all I’ve been able to think of.’

  ‘I hate owing people things.’

  ‘So I guess you won’t want dinner tonight, then?’

  ‘I don’t hate it quite that much.’

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘Then let’s get out of here.’

  II

  The storm was brutal, lashing the Grey Wolf camp with the kind of fury that made one believe in ancient gods, pinning Asena inside the main cabin. To make matters worse, Hakan just wouldn’t shut up. His family lived less than an hour away. He wanted to go see them. She told him no but he wouldn’t let it go. He droned on so long that he drove the others off, even through the deluge. He insisted she owed him for delivering the bomb. He swore blind that he wouldn’t give anything away. But there’d been something perilously close to remorse about Hakan ever since he’d learned the death toll, and she simply didn’t trust him. ‘Enough!’ she cried. ‘Enough!’ She made sure she had all the vehicle keys and retreated to her room.

  It wasn’t yet time for the Lion to call, and he was rarely punctual anyway, but she set up all the same. To her surprise and pleasure, he came on early. But then she saw his expression and sensed trouble. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘You went to Daphne yourself, didn’t you?’ he said angrily. ‘I told you not to.’

  ‘I have to make the men respect me. They won’t respect me unless I prove myself.’ Then she frowned. ‘But how did you know?’

  ‘We received footage this evening. Of you and your friend outside the hotel.’

  ‘What? How?’

  ‘We don’t know that yet. We’re working on it.’

  She thought back. ‘It can’t be too serious, can it? We used false plates. We never showed our faces.’

  ‘Your idiot friend did. Before he put on his helmet.’

  ‘Shit.’ She bit a knuckle. ‘Is he identifiable?’

  ‘You’ll be able to judge that better than me. I’ve just sent you the clearest shot.’

  Asena checked her inbox, opened the attachment. Not perfect of Hakan, but close enough. If it got wide coverage, someone was bound to finger him. Then they’d tear his life apart. He was the one who’d known of this remote forest camp, because he’d hiked here as a child. He’d even put her in touch with the former owners. They’d therefore have to leave tonight. They couldn’t take Hakan with them, however, not if this picture got out. Yet nor could they leave him here. ‘How long have we got?’ she asked.

  The Lion shrugged. ‘It will come out eventually. If not from us, then from whoever sent it in. For all we know, the media already has it.’

  Her heart squeezed. She felt hatred. ‘Who did this to us?’

  ‘We’re working on that. And we’ll find out, I promise. But right now we have a larger question.’

  Asena nodded. When you were plotting to overthrow a government, a certain flexibility of planning was essential. There were simply too many uncontrollable externalities, from the economy and popular opinion to unforeseen political and world events. All you could do was work to make conditions as favourable as possible, then strike hard with everything you had when the moment was right. And while they weren’t there yet, they were close. ‘We’re not calling it off,’ she said flatly. ‘Not after everything we’ve already done. And postponing will just give them more time to find us. I say we move it up.’

  The Lion looked pleased. It was evidently his view too. ‘Put those stories out,’ he told her. ‘We’ll aim for Labour Day next month. And please make sure that your idiot friend can’t cause us any grief.’

  ‘Leave him to me.’ She touched his cheek upon her screen. ‘The Lion and the Wolf,’ she said.

  ‘The Lion and the Wolf.’

  His box went black then vanished altogether. She stared at the picture of Hakan still on her screen. How to handle him? With so much blood already on her hands, she wanted, if possible, to let him live; yet it would be crazy to risk everything they’d worked so hard to—

  A floorboard creaked behind her. She whirled around. Hakan himself was standing there, wearing his wheedling expression, evidently come for one last plea. But then he saw the photograph of himself upon her screen, and he must have realized the implications at once, for the blood drained from his face and his expression changed before her eyes to one of mortal terror.

  FIFTEEN

  I

  The restaurant that night proved very different: low-ceilinged, intimately lit, with small tables set obliquely to each other and no scruples about alcohol. Their waitress stood with one foot hooked behind the other as she took their order, like a ballerina about to curtsey. ‘Listen,’ said Iain, once they’d agreed on red wine and mezes. ‘Remember what I said last night about your boss’ kids? Forget it.’

  ‘I already had. They’re whiners, not doers. But why the change of heart?’

  ‘I met a man today. I can’t tell you about him, I’m afraid. But he was here for the same reason as your boss. If that meeting had been a ruse, they’d hardly have invited rival bidders, would they?’

  ‘Huh. Another Homer buff?’

  ‘Not exactly. Dido and the Phoenicians. But that’s all part of the same thing, right?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Sort of?’ frowned Iain. ‘But Dido had a fling with Aeneas, didn’t she? And Aeneas was at Troy.’

  Karin pulled a face, as though she saw quicksand in their path. ‘It’s not quite as simple as that,’ she said. ‘Yes, Aeneas fought at Troy. Yes, he also had a famous love affair with Dido. But the dates simply don’t work. The Trojan War was around 1200 BC, like I said last night; yet Dido wasn’t even born until around 850 BC. And that’s assuming she existed at all, which is far from certain. Her name actually means “wanderer”, which is a classic sign of folklore.’

  ‘But I thought she founded Carthage.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe. Except the earliest graves they’ve found there date to about thirty years after her time. More to the point, they’re poor.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So that doesn’t tally with the legend,’ said Karin. ‘Dido’s husband was famously rich. Her brother Sicherbas, the king of Tyre, grew so jealous that he had him killed, then he tried to force Dido to marry him instead to get his hands on all that gold. But Dido was too smart for him. She pretended to dump it all into the sea as an offering to the gods, but actually she stashed it on her fleet of ships then looted her brother’s treasury and sailed off with the lot.’

  ‘Good on her,’ laughed Iain.

  ‘Yes, but like I said, the first settlers in Carthage were poor. So what happened to all that gold? It was actually one of the great mysteries of the ancient world. Nero tore up half the Tunisian coast looking for it.’

  ‘Any luck?’

  ‘Still out there,’ smiled Karin. ‘A spare afternoon and a metal detector. We could be rich.’

  Iain laughed and refilled their glasses. The wine was raw and left a pleasurable warmth in the throat and chest. ‘Seriously, though, where did the story of Dido and Aeneas come from, if the dates were that far off?’

  ‘The Greeks weren’t very good at chronology. They had nothing to measure dates against. So they pretty much glossed over the Dark Ages altogether. Besides, the Trojan War was a huge part of their mythos. They all wanted a piece of it. You wouldn’t believe how many ninth- and eighth-century cities claimed they’d been founded by some returning Homeric hero or another. Besides, Carthage and Rome went on to become the great rivals of the ancient
world, so a doomed love story between their founders made perfect material for a story. The beautiful, exotic princess falling so hard for the hero’s war stories that she threw herself onto his sword when he sailed off – what’s not for a man to like?’

  ‘I’ve got war stories,’ said Iain.

  ‘I’ll bet you do,’ laughed Karin. They held each other’s gaze a fraction longer than was polite, but then she shook her head and looked away.

  Iain reached for the wine, refilled their glasses once again. A single drop spilled onto the white tablecloth, staining purple as it spread. When you’d lost the love of your life, it felt like betrayal even to look fondly at someone else. It felt like betrayal of his dead son, to cheat upon his mother. But four years had passed, and it was time.

  II

  Hakan was first to react. He snatched up the keys to Asena’s motorbike then ran from her room and slammed the door behind him. She grabbed her M-16 from her bottom drawer, slapped in a new magazine as she went after him. But the door had jammed shut and she couldn’t open it so she went to her window instead, lifted the sash, dropped herself down onto the waterlogged earth outside.

  An engine sputtered and then caught. She ran around the side of the cabin, shoes squelching, just as Hakan opened the throttle and pulled a sharp turn, spraying her with muddy water. She fired three times but he didn’t slow down. Doors banged open behind her. Men ran out shouting. She wiped her eyes, struggling to see in the darkness. Hakan was evidently blind too because he flicked on his headlight, revealing himself near the top of the rise. But it was steep there, and the storm had turned the earth to mud so that his back wheel span uselessly. He climbed off to push it up the last few metres. She ran after him, stopped, aimed, fired. He cried out and clutched his shoulder. She fired again. He went down and the bike fell upon him. She walked up to him, her gun at the ready in case he had a final trick; but all he had were upheld hands and the pleading terror of his eyes.

  The others caught up with her. Ali looked bewildered when he saw it was Hakan. ‘I assumed we had an intruder,’ he said.

  ‘They have a picture of him at the hotel,’ she told him. ‘They have his face.’

  ‘They have his face?’

  ‘This place is blown,’ she said. ‘We have to leave.’

  Ali nodded at Hakan. ‘And him?’ he asked.

  She looked down. His mouth was a tight grimace as he braced himself for the coup de grâce, yet there was a glimmer of hope in his eyes that she was a woman and therefore maybe not quite hard enough for this kind of work, that she’d persuade herself she could afford to let him live. She shook her head with genuine regret as she aimed down at his forehead and pulled the trigger twice more. ‘He’ll be staying here,’ she said.

  III

  Iain settled the bill, held the door open for Karin. It had turned colder outside, a storm brewing. The wind was in their faces, gusts stiff enough to throw them slightly off balance and mean that they had to turn towards each other and raise their voices to be heard. A young woman sending a text on her phone overtook them, her head bowed, her long black hair streaming behind her like something from a cartoon. They reached a T-junction. Iain put his hand upon Karin’s elbow to steer her left. Then he kept it there afterwards. She hesitated for a moment or two but pulled away from him and shook her head. ‘I really don’t think this is a good idea,’ she said.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘You know what.’

  ‘I like you,’ said Iain. ‘Is that so bad?’

  ‘I like you too. Honestly I do. But we live on other sides of the world. There’s no future to it.’

  ‘All the better.’

  Karin laughed, but not for long. ‘I don’t do flings. Not any more. They make me unhappy. Besides …’ She spread her hands to indicate the bombing, the friends they’d both lost. ‘Does it feel right?’

  Iain nodded soberly. ‘No.’

  They were silent the rest of the way back to the hotel. He felt deflated. As they waited for the lift, the receptionist called them over. ‘Good news,’ she said. ‘We’ve had a cancellation.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Karin.

  ‘We have a free room for you, if you still want it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Karin. She looked uncertainly at Iain. ‘That is good.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ said Iain. ‘It’s too late tonight. How about tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Karin. ‘Tomorrow.’

  They took the lift up, stared diligently at the doors. Iain took the bathroom first again to leave it clear for Karin. She turned off the lights herself before slipping into bed. The storm started outside, announcing itself with a sweep of rain against their skylight. It quickly grew closer and fiercer, then suddenly erupted all around them. Lightning shuddered above; rain slammed like machine-gun fire into the glass. The thunder was so loud that Karin sat up at one particularly violent clap, hugged her arms around her knees. ‘Christ that was close,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Yesterday must have got to me worse than I thought.’

  There was something in her voice, a hand reached out. On instinct rather than calculation, Iain threw back his duvet and crossed the narrow divide between their beds, climbed in beside her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  ‘Just while the storm lasts,’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I won’t try anything,’ he said, sliding his hand down her arm to her elbow, feeling the warmth of her, the goosebumps on her skin. ‘We can play football rules, if you like. You can be ref.’

  ‘Football rules?’

  ‘Sure. You’re Dutch. You must have come across the beautiful game.’

  He could hear the smile in her voice. ‘Not in this context.’

  ‘Okay. Then how it works is, first offence, you can give me a yellow. If I talk back or do it again, it’s a second yellow and I’m off.’

  ‘And I can give you a straight red, yes?’

  ‘If I do something completely outrageous, sure. Which I won’t.’

  ‘And you’ll go at once? Without protest?’

  ‘You’re the ref.’ She had her back to him. He put his arms around her, fitted himself to her contours. ‘Take my hands,’ he said. ‘That way you can be extra safe.’

  She put her hands tentatively in his. He spread his fingers to let her interlace. ‘While the storm lasts,’ she said. Another lightning bolt struck even more loudly. This time Karin didn’t even flinch. He smiled to himself, and wondered whether he was the one who’d been played. If so, he was glad enough of it. Her neck was by his mouth, the curve of it as it flowed into her shoulder. He couldn’t help himself, he kissed her gently.

  ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘I felt that!’

  ‘I didn’t do—’

  ‘That’s your first yellow, mister.’

  ‘A yellow!’ he protested. ‘But I barely touched you!’

  ‘It’s a yellow,’ she insisted.

  ‘But—’

  ‘One more peep and you’re off.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘One more peep!’ Her body trembled with suppressed laughter. For a moment he hankered to hug her tight, to feel again the reciprocated affection of a desirable woman. But he held himself back, and when the storm finally abated, and the room began to grow a little grey with dawn, Karin was sleeping peacefully in his arms, and the warmth where their bare legs touched was like sunshine on his skin.

  SIXTEEN

  I

  Inspector Ozgur Karacan turned his pillow to its cooler side then slapped it three times like a mouthy suspect until it had the shape he wanted. He rolled onto his front and rested his face sideways upon it with his hands up either side, trying to surrender himself back to sleep. But his father was snoring upstairs and the bakers next door had opened their doors so that he could smell their bread and hear their banter with their first customers, and his mind began inexorably to hum and whirr again with yesterday’s unanswered questions, and he knew in h
is heart it wasn’t going to happen.

  It was that damned email and its attachment. He couldn’t get it out of his head. The consensus view of a jihadi video struck him as self-evident nonsense. For one thing, Cypriot reunificationists were not jihadis. And even if they had decided to film their handiwork, then surely they’d have known better than to film from inside the blast zone.

  His pillow was already too warm. It promised to be a muggy day. He flipped it over again, but it was no good. The trouble was, he knew, making progress on the email and the footage required people who understood computers and the new digital age. He was of the wrong generation, that was the fact of it. A dinosaur in an age of …

  With a slight start, he realized he’d been thinking about it wrong. He shouldn’t be trying to work out who had sent the footage. He could leave that to the IT guys. He should be trying to work out who had taken the footage. That traumatic first afternoon, the witness interviews he and his fellow first responders had conducted. Everyone shocked and bewildered, except for the burly Englishman with the excellent Turkish, the only one close to the blast who’d been sharpened rather than dazed by it. He never had explained satisfactorily what business it was that had brought him to Daphne.

  Tiredness left Karacan in a blink. He threw back his bedclothes and reached for the uniform folded neatly on his bedside chair.

  II

  Karin woke to find Iain still lying beside her in her bed. She wasn’t quite sure whether to be pleased or dismayed by this development. Certainly, she’d felt a powerful hankering for his companionship last night, which was why she’d first refused a room of her own then had offered him the opportunity to join her in her bed. She liked him a great deal, was attracted to him, and was immensely grateful for everything he’d done for her. Yet her life was such a mess right now that she needed no further complications. When you had important decisions to make about your future, you wanted your head clear.