by Will Adams
They had access to the Internet via a tablet computer and a mobile communications mast. They found a quiet courtyard in which to watch the Prime Minister spouting his usual platitudes. ‘I told you it was all he had,’ smiled Yilmaz.
‘Yes,’ agreed Asena. She slipped her hand into his. Their breathing fell into rhythm as they watched. All these long years of planning. All these long years of sacrifice, hardship and loneliness.
Any moment now.
Any moment.
FORTY-EIGHT
I
Yasemin Omari, star political reporter for Channel 5, ever on the lookout for the killer question. It was how you made your name in this business, making the great and good stumble and look foolish. On days as chaotic as this, the best tripwire was news too fresh for them even to know about, which was why she ignored the Prime Minister’s bromides and kept checking her twitter-feed instead, even while jostling for position to be called on for the first question.
A new topic was trending crazy fast: #stopthecoup. She scrolled quickly through the backlog of tweets and the links to all the photographs and other evidence. Her eyes widened as she read; her mouth fell further and further open.
Link to article about the police team killed in Daphne while investigating Yasin Baykam for selling antiquities #stopthecoup
Photograph of Kemal Yilmaz with Yasin Baykam by their tank, Cyprus 1974 #stopthecoup
Photographs of exhumed victims of the Varosha massacre, along with IDs and other documents #stopthecoup
She glanced either side to see if anyone else had got it, but the fools were all fixated on the Prime Minister. One part of her mind automatically started trying to frame her knowledge into the most devastating possible question. But another part was shouting at her that, if there was anything to these tweets, some seriously bad shit was about to go down right here, right now, for all that they were deep in the heart of the government quarter’s cordon sanitaire. She looked around, was reassured to see the six bodyguards flanking the Prime Minister and the four additional state security policemen who’d just passed through the security gates and were now walking briskly towards …
Something about them chilled her, their bulked-up silhouettes or perhaps their slightly stiff-legged gait, as though they’d each rolled their right ankle. But they couldn’t all have rolled them. Then she realized that they were walking that way to conceal the assault weapons held down against their legs. And she began, almost despite herself, to scream.
II
With a politician’s instinct, Deniz Baştürk sought instantly to make a joke of the woman’s shrieking. But he faltered when he saw Omari’s expression and he followed her gaze to the four policemen advancing so purposefully towards them. They realized they’d been spotted. They bellowed chilling war-cries and began to charge, raising their assault weapons as they came, firing indiscriminately into the small throng of ministers, bodyguards and aides clustered around his podium. Everyone screamed. Everyone tried to scatter in different directions, knocking into each other and falling over, the crash and clatter of dropped microphones and cameras.
Amid this pandemonium, only Baştürk remained immobile, frozen by a mix of fear and incredulity. As well, then, that his bodyguards were trained for this. Two of them grabbed him by his arms and swept him up the steps and inside, closing the door behind him. But there were people stranded defenceless out there, aides and journalists yelling in terror as they scrambled to get in after him, so he himself opened the door for them, helped them inside. A flurry of bullets rattled the wall. He could hear the single cracks of handguns as the rest of his bodyguards began the fight back. He risked a glance out. Perhaps two dozen men and women were lying dead or injured in the street and on the steps leading up to—
A blinding flash; a deafening blast. Too big for a grenade; surely a suicide vest. The shock created a momentary lull. The injured recognized their opportunity and began to limp and hobble and crawl brokenly for cover, leaving just seven others behind. Six of them looked beyond help; but Yasemin Omari, she of the man-trap questions, was wailing in pain and fear, clutching her shattered left hip with one hand and futilely trying to claw herself to safety with the other. Baştürk didn’t even think, he simply sprinted down the front steps and into the road, scooped Omari up then ran back to safety. A long burst of automatic gunfire along the street sounded terrifyingly close. The wall ahead of him puffed with multiple impacts. He closed his eyes, as though that could somehow protect him, and tried to duck down low. Something punched his arm and span him around and he dropped Omari even as he stumbled back inside. The door slammed behind him and he was instantly surrounded by bodyguards and others, all shouting at each other to step back and give him space. Two of them picked him up and carried him upstairs to the nursing suite where he had his weekly check-ups, yelling for a doctor; but no doctor appeared and he was too impatient for news just to wait there so he tore himself free of them and made his way to the communications office, hoping to find out what the hell was going on.
The five flat-screen televisions around the walls were each tuned to different news channels, muted and running subtitles. The various anchors and reporters were clearly as bewildered by events as he was. The initial numbness of his gunshot wound quickly wore off; his arm now began to ache unbelievably. A staff nurse cut away his jacket and shirt sleeves while he stood there, exposing the ugly mess of flesh and blood beneath. He thought her name was Selda but he wasn’t certain and he didn’t want to offend her by getting it wrong. But he had to say something. ‘Will I live?’ he asked, softening the question with the ghost of a wink.
She coloured as she looked up at him. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought her starstruck. ‘Straight in and out, sir,’ she said. ‘You’ll need to see the doctor, of course, but you’ll be fine.’
‘You’re Selda, yes?’
‘Yes, sir.’
More gunfire outside. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but it sounded further off. And more answering cracks now; reinforcements were arriving. Another lull. In the corridor outside, he could hear a journalist breathlessly reporting that he himself had witnessed the Prime Minister being shot; that he was believed critically wounded and perhaps already dead. He stormed out to tell him in no uncertain terms to stop making shit up. Another loud explosion made the building tremble; they all ducked instinctively.
‘That’s two down,’ muttered someone.
‘Two to go,’ said another.
He led his strange entourage into the cabinet room, Selda still dressing his arm. State, Interior and the Deputy Prime Ministers were already there, making phone calls, trying to find out what they could. He felt strangely exuberant and had to caution himself that it was only shock playing tricks on him, that he mustn’t let it go to his head. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded. ‘Who are these people?’
‘We’re not sure,’ said State. ‘But they’re saying Yilmaz is behind it.’
‘Yilmaz?’ It was like he’d walked into a glass wall. ‘No. It’s not possible.’
‘That’s what they’re saying. They’re saying it’s a coup.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Cyprus.’
‘Cyprus?’
‘Apparently he flew in earlier with fifty men and met a convoy of trucks and led them into Varosha.’ He gave a grimace. ‘They’re saying on Twitter he’s trying to cover up some old massacre.’
Baştürk sat heavily. The one policy on which they’d clashed; the handback of the lost city. Suddenly he saw it all. ‘Get him for me,’ he said icily. ‘On the radio. On the phone. I don’t care.’
‘We’re trying. He’s not answering.’
‘Then send people in to arrest him. I don’t care what it takes. Just do it.’
Interior nodded soberly. ‘Yes, Prime Minister. I’ll do it now.’
FORTY-NINE
I
Yilmaz and Asena watched the whole débâcle live on the tablet. The journalist and her shrieks leading to the botche
d initial assault, the ensuing confusion and gun battle, their hopes reviving briefly on talk of the Prime Minister’s death, only for the man himself to dash them with his angry refutation. Then the whispers started. Reporters relaying rumours of an attempted coup involving one of Turkey’s most admired men. His own name hinted at then finally spoken aloud. Suggestions of an old atrocity. And, apparently, the whole business exposed by a journalist tweeting live from somewhere beneath Varosha itself.
Rage coursed through him, a rage so intense and sweet that it was almost a pleasure in itself. He turned on his heel and marched back towards the square. Perhaps Asena guessed his purpose for she grabbed his arm and tried to hold him back, but he shook her off so violently that she stumbled and fell. He strode across the broken, pitted concrete and glared down the shaft mouth at the fast-rising lake of slurry below. Everything he’d worked and planned for. All the sacrifices he’d made. To have it end like this, brought down by Black and those others, those little people, these insects … Drowning was too good for them. He suddenly wanted them pulped beneath his feet. He wanted them crushed.
The trucks, tankers and mixers were parked prudently on the approach roads and around the perimeter of the square. But he had no more use for prudence. He waved the drivers into their trucks, tankers and mixers, had them start their engines and trundle forwards. Not realizing what he planned, they drove trustingly out onto the square, increasing massively the strain on the ancient pillars below. He felt the ground begin to give under his feet, he turned and hurried away. A terrible splintering noise and half the square simply sheared off and plunged several metres down before juddering to such a violent stop that the shock wave threw him tumbling, while a great geyser of cement spurted up through the shaft high into the sky, the grey lava spattering all around him like something from the End of Days.
II
Iain was working with Georges to strengthen their dam when it happened, an earthquake, everything he’d ever imagined an earthquake to be, the world itself a thunderclap. The roof above the banqueting hall must have been brought down, either by accumulated stress or by sabotage. Countless tons of earth crashed onto the Olympic swimming pool of slurry, slamming it into every available nook and cavity. Their puny barrier swelled out towards them. Cracks turned to crevices, liquid cement squirting through. Then it was simply swept away altogether.
No need to tell Georges to run. They were already fleeing together down the passage, bumping into walls, tripping over steps. The concrete, fortunately, had thickened enough to slow it, while the numerous side-chambers acted as release valves. Yet still it came after them, like some remorseless monster from the movies, the collapsed ceiling pressing down upon it like a massive plunger. They reached the top of the ramp, yelled warning to Karin, Butros and Andreas. Their headroom shrank, they got down onto elbows and knees, spilling into the antechamber in a confusion of torchlight.
The bronze doors were still closed. The look on Karin’s face tore at his heart; no time to explain or even say goodbye, he took her in his arms and held her tight and then the slurry was upon them, swallowing them up, the pressure building and building, unbelievable, unbearable. He thought he was gone when he felt something snap and the bronze doors burst and they spilled out into the open space beyond, tumbling down steps as the glutinous grey liquid splashed and bubbled around them like some giant geothermal pool.
It took Iain several moments to recover his senses. The only light was a soft glow from a torch three-quarters submerged in the cool lava. He grabbed it and wiped its bulb, gave them light to crawl exhausted up a step in the floor then turn panting onto their backs, coated head to foot in the sludge like so many casts of Pompeii victims come back to life. He turned the torch on the broken bronze doors, through which the slurry was still oozing. Then he shone the torch on the walls and ceiling of this new chamber.
There was silence, except for their strained breathing. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Andreas at last. ‘What is this place?’
But no one had an answer.
III
The storm of slurry quickly rained itself out. Yilmaz walked cautiously forwards to the edge of the collapsed section of square, looked down. Remarkably, its surface was still largely intact, albeit riven with massive cracks and fissures, and tilted at an angle so that all the tankers and trucks were now sliding towards its low point, like balls on a wonky pool table. Grey slurry bubbling up from beneath was already forming a shallow pool that the dazed surviving drivers had to wade through to reach the pit’s ragged walls, which they now began scrambling up.
Something creaked and then groaned behind Yilmaz. He whirled around to see the rear wall of an old hotel simply collapse like a dropped sheet before smashing into shrapnel upon the ground then tumbling in a waterfall over the edge of the new sink-hole, battering his men even as they struggled to safety.
The rage passed, as it always did. He felt small and cold. While some of his men ran forwards to help their comrades, others stared at him with open loathing. The unwritten army contract: your men would die for you, but they wouldn’t be killed by you. He was trying to think of some way to win them back when he heard noise above, the clatter of rotor-blades. Spotlights sprang on, dancing over the square like the build-up to some much-hyped sporting event. Colonel Ünal’s helicopters had a new assignment. His men instinctively scrambled to take up defensive positions, but all he could manage himself was a forearm up to shield his eyes, his feet pinned to the spot by age and an oddly obstinate sense of dignity.
Asena appeared at his side, her hair blowing wildly from the copter’s downdraught. The expression on her face was charged with understanding and shared pain, a mother at the bedside of her terminally sick child. It felt like the sharpest imaginable knife being slid between his ribs. ‘This isn’t over,’ he insisted, having to shout to make himself heard. ‘We have the Fourth Army camped around Istanbul and Ankara. We have units outside all the key buildings. I’ll get onto Hüseyin. We’ll make arrests of our own. We’ll seize the television stations and Parliament. If we can hold out till morning, we can create a stand-off and then who knows.’
She reached up to stroke his cheek. ‘My darling,’ she said.
He felt his shoulders sag, his gut. Their plan had been to decapitate the regime then use the ensuing chaos to seize and consolidate power. But the regime hadn’t been decapitated and there was no ensuing chaos. To carry on now, therefore, would be to spill unnecessary blood, and yet still lose. They’d always vowed never to become those kind of people. It took him several seconds to accept this, to realize the implications of it, to see the only path that remained open. He took out his pistol, stared balefully down at it. Oddly, it wasn’t the prospect of pain or oblivion that bothered him at that moment quite as much as the inevitable disfigurement of it all. Vanity had ever been his great weakness. ‘I can’t do it,’ he told her. ‘You’ll have to do it for me.’
‘For both of us,’ she assured him.
He nodded and kissed her forehead. Tears prickled his eyes, regret for what might have been, for the terrible things they’d now write about him. How narrow the gap between patriot and monster. ‘The Lion and the Wolf,’ he said.
She pressed the muzzle against his temple. ‘The Lion and the Wolf,’ she agreed.
FIFTY
I
The new chamber was vast and bizarrely shaped, like something from a surrealist nightmare. The doorway through which they’d spilled stood at the top of a flight of steps that widened as they led down to an open atrium in which the slurry was pooling fast, thickened by all the sand it had picked up on its journey through the site. They’d already hauled themselves out of this onto a second flight of steps, facing the first, that led up to a large platform with sinuous walls and further staircases; while above them a ceiling swooped low in places but elsewhere soared so high that Iain’s torch beam barely reached it.
It took Karin a few moments to work out that this was because it wasn’t a normal chamber at
all, but rather a cavern in the limestone made to look like one, its natural contours left largely untouched, but its walls smoothed down then skimmed with plaster or cut with niches for the countless oil lamps and other ornaments that gleamed and twinkled in the torchlight.
That they were trapped here was immediately obvious, yet Karin felt unaccountably calm. She helped Iain carry Andreas up to the upper platform, where they laid him on the ground. Beneath the dust and sand, the floor was tiled with squares of pink and white marble. Against the far wall, two divans slouched either side of a low bronze table. There were frescoes in the plaster, though too dusty to make out. It was all astonishingly well preserved, as though shut up for a matter of decades rather than millennia.
Georges came to join them. He’d fished two packs from the sludge and now unpacked them to see what supplies they had: two large bottles of water, a selection of snack bars, a first-aid kit, a coil of red mountaineering rope, a spare torch and fresh batteries. Iain took the first-aid kit over to Andreas, set about cleaning and redressing his leg. For his part, Butros took the spare torch and went exploring. Karin went with him. At the top of a short flight of steps they found a bed on a raised dais set in an alcove in the rock. They both stopped dead for a moment, unable quite to believe what they could see. The bedstead’s gilt frame was inlaid with ivory and strung with woven ropes covered by desiccated and shrunken skins, while twin headrests of carved and painted wood lay at the far end. But that wasn’t what had frozen them. What had frozen them was the skeleton that lay upon the skins, and the pitted bronze sword that ran through its ribcage, as though they’d impaled themselves upon it, as Dido had supposedly done.