by Churton, Alex; Churton, Toby; Locke, John; Lustbader, Eric van; van Lustbader, Eric
‘Hardly a challenge, Dr Ashe. A NATO contact told me about the attack on your meeting. I had a hunch. The two events could be linked.’
‘Two events?’
‘The Lodge bombing in Istanbul.’
‘Long way from Hertfordshire, Colonel.’
‘Our enemies have long arms. And I confess, my assistant, Ali, in addition to being a semi-competent secretary is also a computer specialist. Generously he sacrificed his free weekend to penetrate your security wall. Ali isolated your personal interest in the Kartal Masonic attack. It gave him an opportunity to show off his English.’
While miffed, Ashe could see the funny side of the impertinence. He instinctively liked Aslan. ‘I shall look forward to returning the favour.’
As the rich red Cabardès flowed and the French onion soup gave way to rack of lamb followed by coffee ice cream, Ashe discussed with Aslan the mythology of Jewish–Masonic conspiracy and its place in Islamic extremism. Aslan’s views were enlightening.
By the time brandy was served, the colonel was ready to show his cards.
‘Frankly, Dr Ashe, I don’t enjoy your freedom of investigation. I’ve been told investigations into the Lodge bombing must cease. I’ve been informed that the case is closed.’
‘And is it?’
Aslan sighed deeply. ‘It is always possible my superiors did not like the direction I was taking.’
‘Which was?’
‘An independent direction.’
‘I see.’ Ashe felt kinship with the colonel’s predicament, but could say nothing.
‘You see, Dr Ashe, in Istanbul, one cannot always see eye to eye with the revered chief of police.’
‘May his name be blessed.’
Aslan smiled. ‘And there are other voices… from on high.’
Ashe summoned Klimt to refill the colonel’s glass. ‘Thank you, Klimt.’ He turned to Aslan. ‘Other voices, you say?’
The colonel nodded.
‘And your hands are tied.’
Aslan grunted. ‘But not my feet! Perhaps you can be my hands for a while.’
‘I, Colonel?’
‘How could I not think of you, Tobbi Ashe, after all you did when your consulate was hit in my city. You made quite an impression.’
‘Thank you, Colonel. It was an interesting experience. But I don’t see how we can help this time. The Kartal Lodge bombing is not a priority.’
‘Officially?’ Aslan gulped his brandy. Ashe said nothing.
Aslan thought deeply, burying his teeth into his fist. ‘Would you consider pursuing a line without official encouragement, Dr Ashe?’
Ashe savoured the idea as Aslan narrowed his eyes and pointed a finger at him. ‘I could offer … guidance.’
‘I’d need something more concrete. Evidence of a link between the Lodge bombing and the attack on our department, for example.’
‘I see.’
‘By the way, who is your “friend” in NATO?’
Aslan laughed. ‘I prefer to keep my friends…’ He looked at Ashe directly. ‘And to protect them.’
The table was silent. Aslan realised the Englishman needed more.
‘Dr Ashe, as you know, Turkey today is a most complex phenomenon. What if I said to you that the Lodge bombing was not necessarily the work of extreme Islamists? Or shall we say, not the work of extremists alone.’
Aslan felt a tug on his line; Ashe had taken the hook. ‘You see, Tobbi, Freemasonry is viewed with great suspicion by a faction of ultra-nationalists in my country. There are those who find The Protocols of the Elders of Zion stimulating. They see Jewish conspiracies everywhere. Freemasons, Jews – it’s all the same to them. They see…’ Aslan sighed, ‘… problems.’
Ashe thought hard. ‘OK. What I need is the guest list. It should be on the summons to the meeting the night the Lodge was bombed. And there may have been guests not mentioned on the summons.’
‘I’ll see what can be done, Tobbi. No guarantees.’
‘I don’t need them. Your word is—’
‘Best left unsaid, Dr Ashe.’
19
Giessen, Germany
It was a filthy day. Black clouds had swept down from northern Germany and plastered the Hessen region. Giessen under a cloud is a very flat place.
The elderly man patted his brown mac dry as the taxi from Marburg disappeared round a corner in a yellow streak of drizzle. The younger, taller man shook his suit trousers and wiped the mud from his conservative black shoes. He smiled at the older man. The glint in his eye suggested things could be worse. The old man’s blue eyes shone back. The young man gathered up a small suitcase. It clanked as he raised it; the old man frowned.
‘I know. I shall wrap it up again as soon as I can.’
‘It’s never good to rush.’
‘It’s never good to have to rush.’
The old man looked sad for a moment.
They turned into a wide, wet boulevard. On the left was a grey sports centre with an outdoor basketball park, pocked with puddles. To the right, lines of flat, uniform barracks: a NATO army base. The men hurried across the boulevard. Rain splashed over their green canvas fishing hats.
At the corner, opposite the base entrance to the base, a policeman sat in his green-and-white BMW, reporting in to his station. Through a side mirror, he observed two foreigners approaching.
The old man’s long, unkempt beard reminded him of a picture he’d seen of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the late sharp-eyed guru with the limousine collection. The Bhagwan had been banned from entering Germany lest he influence youthful minds with his orange robes and cultish philosophy, so the policeman never knew whether the guru was a good thing or a bad thing. But he knew he was foreign.
He rubbed his forefinger and thumb, eyeing the men as they approached. No, the man was not Indian. Perhaps Italian… Spanish? Maybe an Arab.
The younger man discreetly tapped his elder’s arm, alerting him to the police car. Seizing the moment, he hurried to the car and rapped on the window. People did not normally approach German policemen for directions.
He cleared the raindrops from his little moustache and in flawless German asked the policeman the way to the hospital, explaining he was a specialist and that his brother worked at Giessen’s Krankenhaus.
‘Looking for a job?’
‘There is a great need for specialists.’
‘Who’s your friend?’
‘My father. Visiting from Turkey.’
Ah! That was it! The man at the window was a Gastarbeiter, an immigrant worker, from Turkey. The policeman was not used to seeing Turks in suits, but now Turkey was negotiating to join the EU, he knew he’d have to get used to it. In the back of his mind was a recent pep talk on how policemen should deal with Turks experiencing racist abuse.
‘I would take you to the hospital, Herr Doktor, but my orders are to stay here. Security.’
‘I understand, Officer.’
‘You’re very close to the hospital. Turn left down Lessingstrasse at the end of the boulevard, then left again into Am Dünkelsloh. Hospital’s behind the sports hall.’
‘Thank you, Officer. Good day.’
‘Good day, Herr Doctor.’
The policeman watched the two men walk stoically on through the downpour. He squinted, wriggled his nose, and thought for a few seconds. ‘Hey, you! Hold it!’
Seizing his companion’s thin arm, the young man turned. ‘Sir?’
‘Come back here!’
The man splashed his way back through the puddles as the policeman got out of the car and opened the rear door. The young man caught sight of the pistol by the policeman’s side, then stared into the hollow of the back seat as if it were the mouth of hell. The policeman bent inside, his back vulnerable. The young man looked to his friend. The old man shook his head.
The policeman lifted an umbrella off the floor and handed it over with a smile. ‘My wife’s spare. She won’t miss it.’
Grappling with the tartan umbrella, the
men hurried on, soon lost in the greyness.
20
Mosul, northern Iraq
‘What do you think, Saddiq – buttercups around the door?’
‘In Bashiqa: all right. But not here in Mosul, Qoteh. Time’s not right.’
Disappointed but accepting, Qoteh gathered the flowers off the kitchen table and patted them into a wicker basket. She looked around their little shop, at the piles of Turkish and British beer cans, bottles of Greek wine and cases of American cigarettes. Her husband was right. Mosul was a war zone, a powder keg, a city of hope and a den of despair.
‘If we cannot have the flowers, Saddiq, it can’t be safe for Rozeh to stay here any longer.’
‘She likes the school, Qoteh. She’s doing well. The Americans have been kind – with books and tapes. It’s a blessing.’
Qoteh took off her green silk scarf and wiped her hands and brow. She looked at herself in the little mirror below the battery-powered clock: a Marlboro promotion. The lines were pronounced about her bright blue eyes: trenches of experience. Her hardened lips were not as full as they had once been, but her daughter made her proud. She was twice as beautiful.
It had been a blessed marriage, even though they hadn’t been able to have children of their own. Saddiq was a hard worker, a good learner and a pious man – despite his gambling. At least he won more than he lost, and would never bet more than he could afford. Rozeh never wanted for anything. Except, of course, what they all wanted: peace.
‘I couldn’t sleep last night, Saddiq.’
Saddiq had gone upstairs and was trying to shave. ‘What was that?’
‘I need some sleep.’
‘We all do.’ He cut himself.
Saddiq thought of the previous night’s bloodshed. American planes attacked the south of the city after a suicide bomber exploded a petrol truck near a new US base, close to the airport. Saddiq hoped the bombs had hit their targets. He hoped that Khuda, the Almighty, had saved the good and brought the bad men to their end.
Over the past week, the city seemed to have been falling apart. Insurgents from the south had joined up with the radical Sunni militia Ansar al-Sunna, looting police stations of weapons and equipment. Both the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan seemed powerless to halt the mayhem. Without the Americans, things would probably be worse – but they never seemed to be there when the danger came.
It was a bad time, but Saddiq knew in his heart that the wicked would not prosper forever. Things had to improve some day; they just had to, so long as the Alliance did not turn their backs on the northern zone. But there was no denying it: the safe area had been safer before the invasion.
Saddiq put on his spotless white shirt and pulled up his brown cotton trousers. The question was whether to open the shop. The family needed the money; they hoped to get out – perhaps to relatives in Germany, or even to Britain, where life was good.
He looked out of the upstairs bedroom window across the bridge to the suburb of Faisaliya on the other side of the River Tigris. The state school there had both Christian and Muslim teachers, so Rozeh might get to see different sides of the truth – or she might just end up being confused. He would have preferred that she’d stayed in the country with her own people, but there was no future there. She wanted to be a doctor – something his mother could have hardly even dreamt of. Imagine, his only daughter a doctor! The world was changing. Rozeh knew English and could make a living in the world.
He looked at his watch. Four o’clock. She should be crossing the bridge soon, with her friend Fatima, whose father ran the old officers’ club next door. And the boys whose parents worked at the law courts a couple of blocks away would protect them.
Qoteh entered the bedroom. ‘Can you see her?’
‘She will be home soon.’
‘I know. But can you see her?’
‘Please, Qoteh, we must trust in God.’
‘Are there troops on the bridge?’
‘Yes. They are there.’
‘I never went to school, Saddiq. It was forbidden. Why did we let Rozeh go to school with the outsiders?’
‘We listened to the Kochek.’
‘Tell me again what he said.’
Saddiq put his warm arms around his wife. ‘He said he had a vision of Rozeh. She was helping the sick. Many were dying. The world was black, but Rozeh was light. People did as she told them, men and women. She was smiling; happy in her work.’
‘Are you sure your brother wasn’t just trying to be nice to her?’
‘Ask him.’
‘He’s not here. I’m asking you.’
‘My old brother has never told a lie. If he says he saw Rozeh; then that is what he saw. He says she came from a special place.’
‘But maybe that was in a different life; maybe her next life.’
‘Maybe. Who knows these things? We must trust in God.’
‘Your brother, he is a Kochek; he’s supposed to know.’
Saddiq laughed. ‘If he knew all that, we could take him to the airbase in the south and get the Americans to pay him 100 dollars for every piece of information. God reveals to him what we need to know; not what we want to know.’
‘He’s a good man. I believe him, Saddiq. He is good.’
Saddiq kissed his wife. ‘God is good. Let’s go downstairs. Let’s open the shop for a few hours. Somebody out there needs drink and cigarettes.’
No sooner had Saddiq unbolted the front door and pulled up the shutters than a small crowd of Kurds and Assyrians gathered at the door, clutching orders from the battered clubs and bars that lined the street between the bridge and the pumping station in the west. Those who did not drink craved cigarettes – Turkish, American, British, anything.
Saddiq smiled at Qoteh through his thick black moustache and opened the cash register. Below the register was a 9 mm Browning pistol. It had cost him a lot, but that was two years ago. Now he could pick one up in the suq for next to nothing.
By 5.45, there was still no sign of Rozeh. Qoteh was anxious, finding it hard to concentrate on the currency transactions presented to her by eager buyers: dollars, dinars, Turkish lira.
She kept looking over to Saddiq, who was busy piling up cans of beer, cases of wine and cartons of cigarettes. Saddiq smiled and nodded gracefully. Qoteh put the radio on. They liked to listen to the US Forces network, even though they understood little of the language. But they knew their daughter would understand it, and, somehow, they were listening for her too.
Qoteh kept thinking of the joy that would be Rozeh’s, so soon, at the Sarsaleh, on Wednesday in Bashiqa. Bashiqa: the best Spring Festival of them all! Qoteh would pull out her mother’s old trunk so that Rozeh could appear on Thursday in the debka, the dance that brought souls alive in the eyes of all who danced and all who watched. The musicians would beat the huge tambourines that shook the earth and ruffled the feathers of the highest birds, and the hills would ring to the melodious cries of the flute.
Just thinking about the debka and her beautiful, sweet daughter, Qoteh could feel in her fingers, not the dry dullness of hard currency, but the soft, purple cotton of Rozeh’s long chemise; she could picture the rainbow colours of her red baggy trousers, yellow waistcoat and orange jacket, with the woollen meyzar knotted over her right shoulder.
Qoteh would open her box of gold filigree earrings with their precious stones, the bracelets that her great-great-great-great-grandmother had worn when the English archaeologist Layard had come to excavate Nineveh across the river. Then, to set it off, the great wide belt with its huge silver buckle and silver pin – the belt she had worn on her wedding day.
A shot. An American M16. Qoteh looked to Saddiq. It came from the bridge. An explosion. Machine-gun fire.
21
‘The shop is closing! The shop is closing!’ Qoteh handed a journalist back his cash. ‘I’m sorry, we must close.’
The US Humvee outside the shop was revving impatiently as Saddiq loaded the last cra
te of wine onto its trailer. As it pulled sharply away towards the bridge, several crates tumbled off the back and smashed to the ground. Loitering children picked up the broken bottles and, laughing, poured what was left of the wine into tins and buckets.
Qoteh pulled down the shutters and a bullet ricocheted off the metal. Saddiq rushed inside. He reached for the padlock by the cash register. More bullets thudded into the plasterwork outside. A child screamed.
‘Don’t lock the front, Saddiq! Rozeh may need to—’
‘We must, Qoteh! If we see her, I will open it. I have a gun.’
Qoteh began reciting a prayer she’d heard from the midwife when her cousin’s child was born. The midwife had repeated it over and over again as the birth reached its crisis point.
O Khatun Fakhra, help her!
O Khidr Elias, help her!
O Sheykh Matti, help her!
Another explosion; more shots. Qoteh screamed. A hole had appeared at the side of the bridge; twisted steel bled from the concrete.
Qoteh looked to Saddiq. ‘Tell me, husband, tell me they won’t let the children cross the bridge. They will keep them at the school. Tell me, that is why she is late! They are keeping them safe at the school.’
‘Yes, Qoteh. I know she is safe.’
‘Tell me the angel is with her!’
‘He is with us, Qoteh. He is with us.’
The street between the shop and the once great River Tigris was empty now; the children had fled with their spoils.
A gun battle on the bridge. Shouts. Bullets. Cries.
‘That’s her! She’s come round the back.’
‘But… you have not seen her cross the bridge. Saddiq! Your gun, help her!’
More banging on the back door.
‘Rozeh, is that you? Is that you?’
The kicking on the door stopped. Saddiq stopped still in the shop, paralysed. More bullets outside. He was sweating; the air was angry. He reached for the gun beneath the cash register. It was there. Good. It was loaded.
‘Get out of here! Go! Go! I will call the police!’