by Will Adams
Torches lay at haphazard angles on the floor, rolling back and forth in search of their angles of repose. By their confused light, Asena saw Emre lying motionless a few metres away, his gun by his hand. She crept over the rubble for it but Black was too sharp for her, he picked it up and aimed it at her, but calmly, to subdue rather than kill. She knelt and raised her arms above her head, sensing that he wasn’t the kind to execute a surrendered woman, willing to bide her time in case the tables should turn once again.
And they did, quicker than she’d dared hope. For Bulent, God bless him, must have witnessed it all from up top, and he began to haul the rope ladder upwards at that moment, stranding the lot of them down here inside.
II
Michel Bejjani was on his tenth game of solitaire when he glanced out the port window at the distant shoreline. Despite her sophisticated systems, the Dido had obviously shifted orientation in the last minute or two, for he could see headlights on a stretch of seafront that previously had been—
He felt sick suddenly. He got to his feet, traded his iPad for a pair of field-glasses, took them out on deck, brought them into focus. A long line of vehicles was heading south along the old Varosha promenade. It surely had to be the convoy that had been gathering in the army base. It was one thing to overlook some ambiguous traffic police chatter. There could be no excuse for ignoring this. He hurried back inside, tried the radio. His brother didn’t answer. He tried again and kept on trying, so frantic now that he only noticed the roar of helicopter blades when they turned to thunder above him. He ran back out on deck. Instantly the boat was flooded in brilliant white light, the beams so dazzling that they virtually blinded him, leaving him with only the haziest impression of soldiers abseiling down onto deck as he fumbled his way back into the bridge and pawed at the radio, shouting useless warnings into the ether. Someone yelled at him to stop. He cried out one last time. But then something clumped him unbelievably hard on the back of his head and he collapsed in blackness face first upon the floor.
III
The convoy slowed down and spread further apart as it headed along the road towards the square. Great care was needed here. And no one knew that better than Yilmaz himself. They’d driven in close order and at pace on his last visit. The road had been good, the area deserted, they’d had forward positions to establish. He’d noticed a slight spongy feeling beneath his tracks as he’d driven across the square, though he’d made it safely enough. But the combined weight of all the tanks and buses behind him had proved too much for it. A splintering thunderclap that he’d heard even above his engine. He’d looked around to see a great black void where part of the car park had simply collapsed, obscured a moment later by an almost volcanic eruption of dust and debris. Instantly, it had been every driver for himself. Some had tried to reverse away. Others had spurted forwards or to the side. In such unbelievable chaos, a blessing that there’d only been the one collision. Unfortunately, that one collision had involved a tank driving into a bus, crushing its rear end beneath one of its tracks. The prisoners on the bus had understandably panicked; they’d poured out of its ruptured doors. Several of his men, perhaps unnerved by the collapsed car park, had mistaken this self-preservation for an opportunistic mass escape, and so had opened fire. The prisoners had tried to scatter, but all the roads out of the square had been blocked by tanks and troops. And the tensions of the day, the lifelong loathing of Greek Cypriots sharpened by weeks of propaganda, had led to a bloodbath in which all his men had participated. Even he had become infected by the madness. He’d gone back intending to stop it, but had found himself drawing his pistol and taking part in it instead. The red mist, he’d heard it called; and it described it sweetly. There was something both compulsive and cathartic about it, exacerbated by the knowledge that this would be your one chance to unleash the animal within, to do the stuff of nightmares, to rub raw against nature herself. It had felt righteous. It had felt beautiful. But eventually there had been no one left in the square to kill, and the fervour had drained away, leaving only corpses.
Not all the prisoners had tried to run. A few, mostly women and children, had stayed terror-stricken on the buses. His men had hauled them out. No one had ordered them to kneel, but they’d knelt all the same, ululating with grief and the faint hope of mercy. The most difficult decision of his life by far, but they’d been witnesses, he’d had no choice. And he could comfort himself that at least he’d had the courage to do it himself.
Afterwards, they’d needed to get rid of the evidence. The new sink-hole in the square had offered the obvious solution. They’d piled the bodies into the part-crushed bus, had pushed it backwards down the hole. It had somehow wedged itself between the newly fallen rubble and an old wall. Driven by an odd mix of propriety and shame, he’d ordered sand fetched from the beach and poured down through a chute taken from the building site. Baykam had gone below to guide it, which was when he’d discovered the litter of artefacts. He’d begged an hour to pillage the place, but reinforcements had already been on their way, they’d had no time to spare. While some of his men had sluiced down the square of blood and bullets, others had looted a builders’ merchant for girders, scaffolding poles, doors, planks, fencing and the like that they’d lashed together into a giant raft to lay across the shaft mouth as a base on which to pour newly mixed cement. An improvised solution, sure, yet it had lasted forty years, and would surely have lasted longer had Baykam not got greedy. But now that it was open again, it was only a matter of time before someone else found it and he was ruined. For while it was considered a fine and necessary thing for a statesman to issue orders that would inevitably lead to the deaths of ordinary people, either directly or as collateral damage, it was another matter altogether to pull the trigger yourself.
That way lay disgrace. That way lay The Hague and a war-crimes trial.
He was here to make sure that could never, ever happen.
FORTY-FOUR
I
Karin and Butros had been joined by Georges in their efforts to clear the sand away from the bronze doors when the first shots cracked out. So absorbed was she by the task that it took her a moment to register the noise and then to realize what it was and what it might mean. She glanced at Butros for reassurance, but got none. Her heart seemed to freeze inside her. Iain was by the shaft mouth; she turned and scrambled for the ramp.
Georges grabbed her by her arm. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not till we know what’s going on.’ He picked up his cell radio and spoke urgently into it, calling on his men to report. But none of them did.
‘The Dido,’ said Butros.
Georges tried then shook his head. ‘No use,’ he said. ‘We’ve lost the satellite.’
More shots now. Clusters of them. Butros flinched with each one, knowing his men were exposed and unarmed. ‘We have to go,’ said Karin. Georges nodded. He put on his night-vision goggles and led the way back up the ramp. Karin followed closely after him. In the perfect darkness, she had only sound to go by. They reached the top of the ramp and hurried towards the banqueting hall. Sustained bursts of gunfire grew ever louder; she could hear shouting and shrieking. Now she could see stutters of light ahead; but then they suddenly stopped. Georges held up his hand for her to stay back. He crept forwards, peered out into the chamber. He muttered a soft curse then pushed himself up to his feet and walked out. Karin went after him. The relief of seeing Iain standing there, aiming a gun down at a kneeling woman, was dizzying to her. She hurried over to him and put her hand on his arm for the reassurance of touch. ‘Andreas?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘In the bus. I think he’s been hit. I haven’t had time to check yet.’ He turned to Georges, crouched by one of his fallen men, then nodded at the woman. ‘Keep an eye on her.’
‘I’ll do better than that,’ said Georges, his voice taut with rage. He picked up a dropped gun and aimed it at her chest, his arm trembling as he steeled himself.
Iain pushed down his hand. ‘I thought you weren’t thos
e sort of men.’
‘They killed Ali and Faisal. They killed Kahlil and Youssef.’
‘Even so.’
Georges scowled angrily. But then he exhaled and the tension left him. ‘So what do we do?’
‘I don’t know yet. We need to see to Andreas first.’ He bound Asena’s wrists behind her back with a strap from a dropped pack, then went with Karin to the bus, knelt on its bonnet. ‘Andreas,’ he called out.
The man himself poked his head out from his hiding place, like a wary tortoise. ‘Thank God,’ he muttered. ‘I thought you were them.’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘My leg,’ he said.
‘Don’t move. I’ll come down.’ But right then a rumbling noise, much like an underground train passing in a neighbouring tunnel, made him look up. Dust, grit and earth shaken loose from the ceiling danced in their torchlight. The noise faded for a moment then returned more loudly. The shakes grew worse, dislodging stones, earth and clumps of rock that landed in puffs of sand and dust all around them. Vehicles were arriving above. Heavy vehicles. In a militarily restricted zone like Varosha, that could only mean one thing.
Alone among them, Asena seemed to glow. ‘It’s the Lion,’ she exulted. ‘Now you’re for it.’
II
It was well past Katerina’s bedtime, but Zehra couldn’t bring herself to send her to bed. She was too mesmerized by the news pouring out of Turkey to miss even a minute of it; mesmerized by the sense of its connection to Andreas and Professor Volkan, by the sense that it would have consequences for her son, and thus for Katerina herself. But, for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what that connection was, or what those consequences would be.
The studio switched again to outside the Prime Minister’s residence. A doorstep press conference was expected at any moment. But then it had been expected at any moment for at least the past half hour, and nothing had yet happened. The camera panned around to show a vast bank of journalists waiting there, like a pack of hounds champing for their prey. And one of the reporters at the front was busy checking her smartphone in the exact same way that Andreas always did.
Forty years Zehra had spent out of the world. Forty years in which technology had kept marching on without her. That was a lot of catching up to do. But they always said there was no time quite like the present. She turned to Katerina, munching salted sunflower seeds on the sofa beside her. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of something called Twitter, have you?’ she asked.
III
The call from Colonel Ünal reached General Yilmaz as he approached the square. He had to clamp his headphones against his ears to hear. The Dido was seized, Michel Bejjani arrested. And he was already talking his mouth off about how his father, brother and others had infiltrated Varosha in search of some mysterious Phoenician treasure.
Not such a shock, therefore, to see the heap of artefacts, the corrugated iron sheets, the rope ladder, the figure cowering in the shadows, trying to hide from the sudden dazzle. Ragip saw him too. He jumped down and raced across the square, his gun drawn. He scragged the man by his collar and brought him back to the Jeep. The man was ashen with terror, wondering what to say to save his life. He chose shrewdly. ‘General,’ he said. ‘Such an honour. Asena told us you—’
‘Asena?’ Yilmaz waved Ragip out of earshot. ‘What’s Asena got to do with this?’
The man nodded vigorously at the shaft mouth. ‘There were people down there. She said we had to stop them. For your sake. For the cause.’
Yilmaz felt hollow. He could see it all. ‘She’s down there now?’
‘I offered to go with her. She made me stay up here, to trap them if things went wrong. There was a gunfight. It didn’t go well.’ He spread his hands helplessly. ‘I only did what she’d ordered me to do.’
‘And Asena, you idiot? What happened to Asena?’
‘She’s down there still. I think they took her captive.’
‘They?’
‘The man from Cairo. Iain Black. His girlfriend Visser too. And others we didn’t know.’
Yilmaz nodded. Black must have pooled forces with Bejjani somewhere along the way. ‘And they’re armed, you say?’
The man looked around the square, visibly awed by the number of troops and their hardware. ‘A few handguns only. Nothing like you.’
Yilmaz nodded. He’d planned to bury the site forever without having anyone go down. He could still do so and be back in Ankara before morning. But that would mean sacrificing Asena. A man sometimes learned ugly truths about his own true nature when faced with decisions as stark as these. But Yilmaz was gratified to discover that this time it went the other way. He beckoned Ragip back over. ‘Your twenty best men,’ he said, gesturing at the shaft mouth. ‘You’re going in.’
FORTY-FIVE
I
There was no time to treat Andreas with the care appropriate to his wound. Iain tore his shirt into strips to bandage his leg then hoisted him up the ladder of seats to the top, where Karin helped haul him out. His trousers were sodden with blood; he bit back a yelp each time he put any weight on his foot. They took the long way round, staying clear of possible lines of fire from the shaft mouth. Butros had arrived to join them, was surveying his dead men with horror and dismay, while Georges covered Asena with a gun in one hand even as he tried in vain to get a signal on their various cell radios with the other.
‘Any joy?’ asked Iain.
Georges shook his head. ‘When Faisal fell, it must have broken our relay.’
A long-shot, but worth a try. Iain clambered back down the bus to retrieve and then check Faisal’s dropped radio. It was still working, but it had no signal either. The bleak truth settled over him. They were trapped down here, cut off from the outside world, the Turkish army parked above their heads. ‘What now?’ asked Karin.
‘We make things hard for them,’ said Iain. ‘You lot have explored this place. Is there anywhere we can hold them off?’
‘Those doors,’ said Georges, glancing at his father. ‘If we could get behind them …’
Iain saw it from the corner of his eye, a metallic tear-drop falling down the shaft. He yelled for everyone to get down, grabbed Andreas and Karin and hauled them to the ground either side of him. The loudness of the explosion, the brightness of the flash even through closed eyelids, he diagnosed it instantly as a stun grenade, of no direct danger itself but a sure sign of danger imminent. A second detonation, a third, then a beat or two of silence. He risked a glance around even as a cluster of yellow ropes dropped down the shaft, bounced briefly before hanging there like creepers in the rain forest, then dark shadows abseiling fast down them, silhouettes bulked up with body-armour, assault rifles at the ready.
He picked Andreas up, threw him in a fireman’s lift over his shoulder, then grabbed Asena by the arm before she could sneak away. ‘Run,’ he yelled at the others. And they ran.
II
Under other circumstances, Deniz Baştürk would have been heartened by the new spirit of cooperation and even enthusiasm in the cabinet room. Just a shame that he’d had to write and then sign four copies of his resignation letter to bring it about. Nevertheless, for the first time, there was a genuine focus on dealing with the protests and riots. Not that agreement was straightforward, even now. Some argued for showing understanding of the demonstrators’ grievances. Others demanded a crackdown and ruthless retribution. The usual compromise emerged. Make examples of the worst hooligans and anarchists while quietly letting marginal cases slide. Then flood the streets with uniforms and stamp down ruthlessly on anything that sniffed of trouble while simultaneously announcing a package of measures to boost employment and relieve the worst poverty and hardship.
He had no part in this conversation. No one asked his opinion or even spared him a sympathetic glance. He had become a ghost. Six months in office, and it wasn’t just allies he lacked, it was friends. In truth, the only person to become anything of the sort during his tenure was General Yilmaz. An
d if there was any silver lining to this situation, he reflected, it was that the Chief of the General Staff wasn’t a member of the cabinet, and therefore not here in person to witness his humiliation.
III
General Yilmaz waited apprehensively for Ragip to report back on the success or otherwise of his assault. At last he came on the radio. ‘The main chamber is secure, sir,’ he said. ‘No resistance and no casualties. But there were bodies already down here.’
Yilmaz braced himself. ‘Any women?’
‘No, sir. But my first two men down saw people running, including at least one woman. And there’s a blood trail. We’ll find them soon enough. What do you want done when we do?’
Yilmaz hesitated. This situation was too tangled yet delicate for delegation. He needed to oversee it in person. ‘Wait there,’ he said. ‘I’m coming down.’ He turned to Nezih, his project manager for tonight’s works. ‘You know the plan,’ he told him. ‘Use the approach roads for parking. Keep as much weight off the square itself as you can. But be ready to start pumping the moment we’re back up.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Abseiling was beyond him, so he tossed the rope ladder back down the shaft then sat awkwardly on the broken ground and felt for a rung with his left foot. He took a firm hold then twisted himself around and began his descent. It was a shock to him both how awkward and how taxing he found it. Appearances mattered hugely in the army. You had to look capable. That was why he’d taken to dying his hair these past few years, to improving his diet and adopting a strenuous exercise regime, even to paying annual visits to a discreet Swiss clinic. But then one day you had to climb down a rope ladder and you realized you were old.