The entrance, a large, studded wooden door, was at the top of some stone steps lit by a pool of yellow light from a lamp suspended from an iron arm above. Lock could also see various other lights shining from behind the latticed windows on either side of the building. The German hauptmann and the Turkish mülazimi evvel had just crossed the square in front of Lock and were now mounting the stone steps. The nefer on sentry duty snapped to attention as the officers passed into the building, then relaxed again.
Lock glanced behind him, then set off at a brisk pace across the square. Four automobiles were parked in a line to his right, their drivers standing together, smoking and chatting, voices rising and falling in whispered conversation. Three cars were Gräf und Stifts and each had a different marking on the rear sedan seat doors; a red circle and white star and crescent badge for the Ottomans, a German eagle, and the double-headed eagle of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Lock slowed and squinted his one eye. The fourth vehicle parked was a British Crossley 20/25 touring car. Unlike the others, its roof was up, and on its passenger door the words Anglo Persian Oil Company were written in a semicircle above a palm tree emblem in white on a black square. Lock also noticed that the motor car had twin rear wheels and that there were a couple of extra jerrycans attached to the running-board. Ready for a long journey?
Lock hurried on, passing the rustling ancient fig tree to the left of the entrance, and throwing a quick salute to the nefer, as he bounded up the steps two at a time.
Lock opened the door to reveal a long, dimly lit and cool inner corridor. There was a large portrait of Enver Pasha on the wall to the left, with two hard-backed chairs and a potted palm underneath. Opposite, was a rather glum painting of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Various doors led off the corridor, but Lock ignored these and continued on down towards a desk he could see at the far end. There was a soldier sat there, half in shadow, half in the stark light thrown out from the table lamp at his elbow. Lock’s shoes echoed loudly as he approached, and soon he could make out the distinct sound of muffled chatter, laughter and the clink of glasses and crockery. A party?
The man sat at the desk was a military clerk, with the rank of mülazimi sani, distinguishable by his purplish-brown collar and plain gold shoulder boards. On hearing Lock’s footsteps, he looked up from the papers he was reading.
‘Good evening, Korvet Kaptani,’ he said. ‘Are you here for the briefing?’
‘Yes, with Binbaşi Feyzi. I’m a little late. Automobile trouble,’ Lock bluffed, hoping it was Feyzi holding the meeting.
The mülazimi sani smiled the way all jaded junior clerks do when listening to lame excuses from superior officers. ‘Do not worry. As you can hear they are still toasting the binbaşi’s promotion.’
‘Promotion?’
‘To miralay. Please, go in.’
Lock nodded and walked on past the clerk. He quickly wiped the sweat from his top lip and made his way to the slightly ajar door from beyond which the sound of voices wafted out. So Wassmuss’s Feyzi had made colonel. To what ends? Was he in command of the garrison at Nasiriyeh now? Lock paused at the threshold of the office, his own reflection staring back accusingly from the brass nameplate screwed to the outer door. He mouthed the name, Miralay Erkan Feyzi, while his mind screamed at him to turn and leave, that this was a terribly foolish thing to do. He couldn’t step into that room! What was he thinking? He had no idea who was in there with Feyzi, and he didn’t believe for a minute that if Feyzi was indeed Wassmuss that he wouldn’t recognise him instantly, and call the guard and have him arrested. Or shot on the spot.
‘This could be a very short kidnapping attempt indeed,’ Lock muttered to himself. ‘Bugger.’ He pulled his hand back from the handle and glanced over his shoulder. The clerk was still sat at the desk, but facing the opposite way.
Lock swiftly moved from the office door and made his way further down the gloomy corridor. He tried the door to the room next to Feyzi’s. It was unlocked. He glanced back at the clerk, then slipped inside.
Thankfully the room on the other side was empty and in darkness. Lock stood with his back to the door, letting his one uncovered eye adjust to the gloom. He appeared to be in a small office and could make out a desk and a couple of chairs over to the left. There was a large window at the far end. It was shuttered, but he could see thin strips of faint light shining through the slats. He moved towards it and his shin struck something heavy. There was a scrape and a crash as something fell to the floor. Lock froze, ears peeled, ignoring the sharp pain in his leg. Nothing. He moved on to the window. He felt around, found a latch, and slowly lifted the lower panel. It made a high-pitched squeal as wood scraped against wood. Lock cursed and froze again, feeling the sweat trickle down from under his arms as he listened intently to the muffled conversation from the room next door. They didn’t stop or hesitate. Somebody laughed.
Lock gently pulled and lifted the lower window towards him. This time its action was smooth. He pressed his palm against one shutter and gave a gentle push. It gave. That was good. It meant that they weren’t fastened from the outside. He pushed the left side open a crack, just enough for him to be able to see out to the right.
An intense aroma of jasmine suddenly tickled Lock’s nose, and he sniffed away a sneeze. He could smell the earthy rot of the Euphrates under the scent of the flowers. He pressed his face to the gap and peered out. It was dark outside, but light was spilling from the office next door where Feyzi and his guests were gathered. Lock could make out that there was a tranquil park-like garden beyond the window, resplendent with flowering bushes and lush palm trees. There was nobody outside from what he could see, so, cautiously, he pushed open the shutters on both sides. He paused and listened again.
Beneath the continual murmur of conversation from Feyzi’s office, Lock could hear the constant buzz of tiny unseen insects and the soft flutter of moths dancing in the artificial light. There was the gentle trickling of a nearby water feature and in the distance the cough and splutter of an outboard motor. Then a harsh human laugh broke the spell of calm once more.
Lock poked his head outside. There were beds of managed bushes and plants running along the walls underneath the window, then a gravel path and then, to his surprise, a lush lawn with palm trees and fig trees beyond. It was like something he would expect to see in a European stately home, not a Middle-Eastern town. Satisfied that the coast was clear and that the garden was empty, he eased himself out of the window.
Lock had to stretch his legs far to avoid the low bush directly below the sill. He stepped out onto the gravel path. It scrunched softly underfoot. He leant back and pushed the shutters closed, then turned and stepped off the path and onto the lawn. The grass was surprisingly spongy and Lock was filled with a sudden irrational desire to pull off his shoes and feel the cool, soft grass on his bare feet. The sound of gently trickling water was indeed coming from an ornate stone-carved water fountain. It was placed directly in front of the open French windows to Feyzi’s office.
The light spilling out from the room only went so far, and Lock was able to keep in the dark shadows, thankful that the uniform Betty had supplied him with was the dark blue of the navy and not the summer whites of the artillery. He moved around the outside of the fountain until he had a clear view of the office interior.
Lock counted ten men. Some held champagne glasses in their hands, others china cups and saucers. There were three German staff officers, taller than everyone else, all senior men wearing tailed uniforms of field grey and breeches with crimson piping. One was an oberleutnant, the other a major, the same monocle-wearing major whom Lock had collided with outside of the cafe. The third was the bewhiskered Austro-Hungarian generaloberst that had sped by Lock not fifteen minutes earlier. Without his shako on, Lock could see that the generaloberst had a head of thick snow-white hair. He was wearing a distinctive sky-blue uniform with gorget patches of three silver stars on a gold balloon.
On the other side of the room, speaking amongst themselves, were two
Turkish staff officers dressed in green with red collars and piping on their breeches, and a man whom Lock presumed was a pro-Ottoman Arab. He was wearing a Turkish birinci ferik’s, a general’s, uniform with gold epaulettes and a ludicrous amount of medals on his chest, as well as a pair of white gloves. Flitting between the two groups, clutching a bottle of champagne, was a Turkish naval officer, a yüzbaşi. Feyzi’s adjutant perhaps?
The other three men in the room were standing near to the open French windows. Two were civilians, dressed in dark business suits. Lock couldn’t see their faces clearly as they were masked by the final man in the room, the man standing with his back to the French windows. But Lock knew who he was. It was Wassmuss, or Feyzi, and he was very distinctive, indeed, dressed in a blue tunic with red collar and cuffs, a full dress uniform usually only worn by birinci feriks at Headquarters.
‘Only a colonel, but dressed like a general?’ Lock snorted to himself. ‘Tisk-tisk, Wilhelm, you really are a snob, aren’t you?’
And then Lock caught his breath and stared, slacked mouth into the room. Wassmuss had leant forward momentarily to pick something up from the desk beside him, and Lock had a sudden clear sight of the two businessmen. One was Grössburger, the fat Swiss whom Lock had last seen tied to a chair in a prison cell in Basra. But he wasn’t really surprised that he was here, after all Betty had said that they’d had to release him following pressure from the Swiss consulate. But it was the second businessman, the thin, grey, sallow-faced man wearing round spectacles perched on a straight nose, that was a shock to see. He was a man whom Lock was convinced was dead, a man whom Lock had seen lying on the floor of Ross’s cabin on the Espiegle two months ago, with a stab wound to the heart, face fixed in a grimace of surprise.
‘Lord Shears?’ Lock gasped.
The tink-tink-tink of a knife tapping against glass called the room to order and the conversation quickly died down.
Lock was fingering his holstered Beholla. He had a full clip. Seven rounds. Tempting … He had to get closer, he had to hear what was being said in that room.
Circling round the fountain, and keeping to the shadows, Lock made his way back to the window he had climbed out of earlier. He crept past the bushes until he was able to press himself up against the wall just to the left of the open French windows.
‘Zum Wohl!’ came a toast from inside. That was Wassmuss’s voice, no mistaking.
‘Herzlichen Glückwunsch!’ one of the German officers said throatily.
There was a murmur of approval and then a moment of silence while the men took a drink. A glass clinked as it was placed down on a surface.
Much to Lock’s irritation, the overheard conversation that followed was in German. But he made a mental note of a few words and names that he recognised, especially one name: ‘Djavid’. He was the Turkish Minister of Finance. A small argument broke out when the name ‘Metternich’ was mentioned two or three times, followed by the German word ‘trottel’, and then by two words Lock knew, ‘Zaptielis’, the Turkish Military Police, and ‘khafiyeh’, the Turkish word for spy. These seemed to calm things.
Lock’s ears then pricked up when ‘Godwinson’ was mentioned, followed by laughter and a spit once again of the word ‘trottel’. Another name was mentioned that Lock didn’t quite catch. There was a pause.
‘Verstehst Du?’
‘Ja, ja. Townshend. Amy Townshend.’
Lock’s heart skipped a beat. Why were they talking about Amy? He cursed his lack of understanding. Why can’t you bastards stick to Turkish? he thought.
There was another burst of laughter and then shifting movement and a buzz of murmured Auf Wiedersehen and Hoşça kahn. It would appear the briefing was over.
Lock risked taking a peek through the crack in the door where the hinges met the frame. The men were collecting their various caps and hats from a table in the far corner and nodding farewell to Wassmuss. He was standing, arm outstretched, subtly herding them out, while the Turkish naval adjutant stood holding the door open.
‘Kommen Sie gut nach Hause.’
‘Danke.’
‘Gute Nacht.’
‘Îyi geceler.’
Lock could hear the soft click of the door closing, then footsteps returning across the carpet. There was a pause, followed by a rustle of fabric, the sudden jangle and turn of a key in a lock and then a tiny creak like a cupboard opening. Silence again, and then what sounded like the jangling of beads, followed by some shuffling of papers and the dull thud of a number of items being placed down on a wooden surface. A sigh of satisfaction was followed by the hack of a throat being cleared, then the clink of a glass and the glug-glug-glug and fizz of champagne being poured. A pause, then a slurp, followed immediately by a sharp hiss and a curse.
‘Sheiße. Dieses Glas hat einen sprung.’
Lock drew his Beholla and stepped out from his hiding place and into the threshold of the French windows.
‘Guten Abend, Herr Wassmuss,’ Lock said.
Wassmuss was standing, glass in hand, while his other was a few inches from his mouth. There were spots of blood on his fingertips and a bleeding cut on his bottom lip. He was frozen to the spot, eyes wide, a look of bafflement on his face.
Lock stepped into the room and smiled wryly. ‘Or should I say Binbaşi … Sorry, Miralay Feyzi?’ He spoke in English.
Wassmuss glanced at his fingertips, put them in his mouth and sucked. He tut-tutted and placed the champagne glass down on the desk to his right.
Lock took a step forward, gun raised. ‘Hands flat on the desk. Bitte.’
There was a pinpoint flame of anger in the intent blue eyes, and then it was gone and Wassmuss, placing his hands flat on the desk in front of him, blinked calmly back.
‘Herr Lock,’ he said. ‘Good evening.’
Lock felt his finger twitch on the trigger of the Beholla. He vowed to shoot this man the next time he saw him and yet here he was unsure of the best thing to do. There were too many unanswered questions, there were too many lives at stake, his own included. He eased off the trigger, but didn’t lower the gun.
‘Surprised to see me?’
Wasmuss shrugged. ‘If I had known you were coming I would have asked for an additional glass. Though your get-up did, I admit, confuse me momentarily. However,’ he smiled thinly, ‘I do like the eyepatch. Most fetching.’
‘It’s the best I could do at such short notice.’
Wassmuss parted his fleshy lips and flashed his white teeth. ‘Well, I had planned for you to be halfway up the Tigris on a … How do you say it? Wild duck chase?’
‘Goose.’
‘Ja, “goose”,’ Wassmuss chuckled. ‘But I underestimated your determination to track me down, Herr Lock.’
‘Perhaps if you hadn’t tried to have me killed …’ Lock said.
Again Wassmuss shrugged. ‘Ja. Perhaps …’
The two men stared back at one another in silence for a moment. Wassmuss’s face was, Lock noticed, covered in tiny little scars.
His eyes dropped to the desk in front of the German. There was a pair of kitchen scales, iron weights and a number of drawstring cloth bags. Very similar bags, in fact, to the one he had found in the possession of the liva amiral back on the tiny sand island next to One Tower Hill.
‘So, not only Grössburger, but Lord Shears and, I imagine, the entire board of APOC are part of your network, too?’ Lock said.
Wassmuss didn’t say anything in return, but just stared back at Lock defiantly.
‘We’re closing in on your operations, Herr Wassmuss. Grössburger, Brugmann, Harrington-Brown, Godwinson …’
Wassmuss gave a snort of derision. ‘You really have no idea, do you, Herr Lock?’
‘You will talk. I’m taking you back with me to Basra.’
Wassmuss started to chuckle. ‘And just how do you propose to do that, Herr Lock?’
‘In your launch, down by the river.’
Wassmuss frowned. ‘How do you kn—’
He cu
t his question short, realising his mistake. He’d just gone and told Lock that he did have a launch.
Lock gave a wry smile. ‘And when we get back to Basra, I know a certain sergeant major who’d like to make your acquaintance. He’s also extremely good at extract—’
The door at the far end of the office opened and closed, and the Turkish naval adjutant entered, his nose buried in a sheet of paper.
‘Excuse me, Miralay Feyzi Bey, could y—’
The adjutant’s eyes lifted to meet Lock’s, and he froze on the spot, the paper fluttering from his hand.
Wassmuss took advantage of the split-second distraction and flung the chipped champagne glass at Lock with a swipe of his hand. Lock put his arm up to dodge the glass, and it bounced off his elbow and smashed on the edge of the desk.
‘Guard! Guard! Assassin! Spy!’ the adjutant shouted, as he turned and wrenched at the door handle to make his escape.
Lock felt the Beholla kick back in his hand as he pulled the trigger once, then again.
The adjutant collapsed against the door, slamming it shut, and crumpled to the floor. Wassmuss yelped, stumbled back, and crashed back against one of the chairs to the left of the fireplace. He gasped and slumped down onto his backside, hand pressed to his neck. Blood was pulsing through his fingers and down over his hand, staining the cuffs of the white shirt that protruded from the sleeve of his blue tunic.
There was a commotion of running footsteps from the corridor outside and then a frantic banging on the closed office door.
‘Miralay? Miralay? Are you all right?’ came a shout from the other side. The handle was jerked up and down. But the door was jammed shut by the body of the adjutant. He was lying at an impossible angle, his face twisted up towards Lock, brown eyes staring back at him, lifeless and dull.
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