by Will Adams
‘I guess,’ smiled Karin. Maybe it had looked so from the outside. From the inside, cool was about the last word she’d have chosen. Watching Iain climb the wall and then make his leap across the cavern had been a kind of torture; and she found it almost impossible even now to think about that avalanche of sand he’d brought down upon himself; her mind would baulk and flinch away from it, she’d have to think of something else, something soothing.
Courage was odd like that, the way it came and went. It perplexed her, for example, that so soon after losing her nerve in this same bank vault a few days ago, she’d managed to fight her way free from those Grey Wolf thugs, then had insisted on going into Varosha with Iain and Andreas. Had she changed so dramatically in so short a time? She didn’t think so. But how else to explain it?
The cashier tapped in the pass-code, pulled open the vault door. She went directly to 7a. They crouched to fit in their keys and pull it slightly ajar. ‘I hope this is the right box,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry?’ he asked.
‘I have two of them. I thought I knew what was in each, but now I’m worried that I might have mixed them up.’
‘No problem. As long as you brought both keys.’
‘Let me check this one first. I think I got it right.’ She waited until he’d left and the door was closed behind him, then she checked her watch. Two minutes should be plenty.
She leaned against the wall as she waited. News had come in a torrent these past few days. Revelations about Yilmaz, Asena and the Grey Wolves had kept Turkey riveted. The Bejjanis had returned home to condemnation and acclaim. And Deniz Baştürk had seized the opportunity of his stratospheric approval ratings to fire his cabinet and replace them with people loyal to himself. Only Andreas had reservations, it seemed, tweeting from his hospital bed about the dangers of a weak man with a mandate.
The second minute passed. She called the cashier back in. ‘I feel such a fool,’ she told him. ‘It must be in my other box.’
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘What number?’
Five days before, in this same vault, she’d faltered at this juncture. She still stood to lose everything she’d stood to lose then, plus this time Iain too. Yet the thought of the possible cash inside the box bolstered her; or, more specifically, the good things she could do with it: she could provide for Mustafa’s widow and daughters; she could help Iain set up his new company; she could pay off her debts and start a new life in London, a life she craved, a life she deserved. Without a qualm, therefore, she took Rick’s key from her pocket and held it up. And in that moment she realized that she’d been thinking about it wrong. Courage wasn’t about one’s ability to handle fear.
No. All courage was, was having something that mattered more.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There is always a risk, with stories like these, of plots being overtaken by real events. Even as I was finishing my first draft, the Gezi Park protests started in Taksim Square in Istanbul then spread quickly across Turkey. And, shortly afterwards, the Egyptian army ousted its second president in less than thirty months. This book contains echoes of both episodes, but as it was substantively completed before either took place, any parallels are genuinely coincidental.
I grew up on the Greek myths and legends; I must have read my children’s editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey a dozen times each. I’ve long hankered, therefore, to write a book based on the Trojan War, and what happened to its heroes in its aftermath. But discovering the truth about Troy is surprisingly hard, not least because of the impenetrability of the ensuing Dark Ages, and the radically different theories about them. That, essentially, is where the chronological and archaeological ideas at the heart of this book came from. For anyone interested in learning more about them, I’d warmly recommend Peter James’ Centuries of Darkness or David Rohl’s The Lords of Avaris.
A note on place names. Much of this book is set in Cyprus, where towns and cities typically have different names in Greek and Turkish. To make life as easy as possible for readers, I have used anglicized versions of the more familiar Greek names throughout – most notably Nicosia instead of Lefkos¸a, and Famagusta rather than Gazimağusa – even in situations where the characters involved would likely have used the Turkish names.
My thanks – as ever – to my agent Luigi Bonomi, to my editor Sarah Hodgson at HarperCollins, and to my copy editor Anne O’Brien, who each helped make the book significantly better than it otherwise would have been. I’m also deeply indebted to all those who so generously shared their knowledge and time with me during my research and on my travels. Finally, I’d like to thank my friend Clive Pearson, who first drew my attention to the mysteries of Dark Ages chronology, and who was kind enough to read an early draft of this book to check for the usual mistakes. Any that remain are, as ever, mine and mine alone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Will Adams has tried his hand at a multitude of careers over the years. Most recently, he worked for a London-based firm of communications consultants before giving it up to pursue his life-long dream of writing fiction. His first novel, The Alexander Cipher, has been published in sixteen languages, and was followed by three more books in the Daniel Knox series, The Exodus Quest, The Lost Labyrinth and The Eden Legacy. He writes full-time and lives in Suffolk.
Also by Will Adams
The Alexander Cipher
The Exodus Quest
The Lost Labyrinth
The Eden Legacy
Newton’s Fire
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A breathtaking thriller which weaves history and religion with action, adventure and apocalypse …
Copyright
Harper
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Copyright © Will Adams 2014
Cover photographs © Image Source / Getty Images (man); Shutterstock.com (all other images)
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Will Adams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007424269
Ebook Edition © January 2014 ISBN: 9780007424467
Version: 2014-01-30
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