The Istanbul Puzzle (23 page)

Henry Mowlam read the article on his screen again. This was not good. Not good at all.

The Iranian scientist who’d been found dead was a bigger fish than he’d thought. He looked closely at the paragraph. The Iranian was one of the world’s leading scientists in the field of chromosome mutation. The fear among Henry’s colleagues was that this specialisation could be easily applied to virus mutation. If a scientist had access to a source of smallpox or ebola or some variant of the plague, God forbid, and could mutate it at the chromosome level, he could develop a virus that was not only resistant to antibiotics, but might even feed off the most powerful of them.

Such a possibility was enough to get the Ministry of Defence Biological Warfare Unit to open a file on the case. And that meant that every Whitehall department would be briefed within twenty-four hours on the steps they would have to begin taking to protect UK citizens.

The big question was, had a new virus already been produced, or were they all just in danger of overreacting?

Because if they were facing a new, mutated virus, contingency plans would have to be implemented, not just talked about.

‘You should be well soon, sir, but we strongly recommend you stay here for a few days, get some rest. If you leave, we can’t be held responsible,’ said the doctor in the New International Hospital, as he watched me signing my release forms.

I passed the signed forms back to him. He looked through them, shaking his head.

I’d been lucky, really lucky. I knew that, but the last thing I wanted to do was to stick around in an Istanbul hospital, resting.

Someone wanted me dead.

Did I want to entrust my life to a smiling security guard, or even two of them?

My right cheek had been nicked by a bullet. If I hadn’t turned my head when I had, I’d probably be with Alek in the morgue right now, getting colder by the minute.

The reality of being shot at was like being at a fairground in a nightmare: everything seemed brighter, people were smiling, but way too much.

My paranoia had risen another notch. I could hear sounds I wouldn’t even have noticed before, doors closing far away. And it felt as if my senses had become sharper. Suddenly I was noticing things I normally took for granted. Like breathing.

The muscles in my chest felt tight too. And my head felt weirdly hollow. I had no idea if this was due to the two injections they’d given me or simply a result of the shock I’d got, but I still wanted to get out of that hospital. And I still needed to figure out why someone was trying to kill me, and more importantly, how I could stop them.

‘The Turkish police have offered us an escort to the airport,’ Isabel said, when she arrived back at my room, after checking in with her superiors. ‘They don’t want you shot dead in Istanbul.’

‘That’s good news. I agree with them on that. But what’s happening about Peter?’ I said. What we knew about him was the best reason I could think of for someone wanting me dead right now.

‘We have to go back to London, Sean. That’s where he went. We can’t do anything from here.’

‘What about Villa Napoleon, shouldn’t it be raided? What about that amazing place under Hagia Sophia?’

‘The Turkish authorities have already been tipped off to search both locations for whoever killed Alek.’

‘What happens if both places are empty, if Peter’s tipped them all off?’

‘We have to let the authorities here do their job, Sean. This is their country. And from my experience they don’t like anyone interfering.’

So that was it. We had to go back to London. Peter had been with the people under Hagia Sophia. He had to be confronted.

We headed for the exit.

‘How do you know he’s in London?’ I said.

‘I asked at the office. He’s gone back there for a few days.’

‘Surprise, surprise.’

She ignored the sarcasm in my voice.

‘Doesn’t it make you crazy that someone you work with might be a traitor?’

She turned on me angrily, pointed a finger at me. ‘We don’t ever use that word, Sean, not until we’re 100 percent sure,’ she snapped. ‘This isn’t some stupid game. Lives are at stake.’

‘Yeah, mine and yours,’ I said. We stepped out into the hospital car park. Waves of heat hit us. Going to London was looking like a better idea every minute. There were people there who could help me blow the whistle on Peter too, if Isabel wasn’t prepared to.

A black-windowed Mercedes 950 Jeep sitting yards away jerked to life, then moved towards us.

‘Our ride,’ she said.

I peered around. A twinge of anxiety passed through me as I remembered the last time I was out in the open. Was there someone waiting to take another shot at me? I followed Isabel into the car quickly. It was going to be a long journey to the airport through the Istanbul traffic.

The Mercedes purred off. The driver was a young smiling Turkish police officer. He pointed at the sky as we left the hospital driveway. Then a few minutes later, he gesticulated at the sky again. I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw it. A police helicopter was hovering above us. Were the police giving us air cover too?

We ran a red light with our siren on, our blue lights flashing, then we turned into a car park and sped up the ramp towards the roof with squeals echoing as we rounded each bend. I could smell hot rubber. Walls rushed past in a blur. It didn’t take a genius to work out what was going on. If the Turkish police were taking such precautions, they must have concluded that whoever was after me would most likely try again.

The juddering of the helicopter went through to my bones as we came up the last ramp. When we emerged into the blinding sunlight it was waiting for us, its blades twirling fast, in a corner of the roof car park.

‘Who organised this?’ I shouted.

‘We’ve still got friends here,’ she replied.

The helicopter was a Sikorsky 340X, so it said on its side. Seconds later we were strapped into its black bucket seats. It rose up fast with a stupendous roar, then banked and sped, nose low, towards the airport.

I rubbed at the bandage on my cheek. My skin felt itchy, as if I’d been stung. The doctor had said I’d be left with a small scar, but that was the least of my worries right now. I was lucky not to have a hole in my head.

I held on to a rubberized handhold on the wall of the helicopter. It vibrated hyperactively, as if it was directly connected to one of the engines.

‘Bloody desk jockeys,’ Isabel shouted over the noise.

‘Who?’ I roared. The smell of jet fuel was getting stronger.

She shook her head.

I kept staring at her. She looked cute in the helmet the pilot had given her, if a little pale. I wanted to reach over, whisper something to her, hold her.

I looked away and shook my head, like a dog shaking off water. I was going soft, like an addled teenager. It had to be the shock. I stared out of the window.

After what must have been a minute she said, ‘I spoke to the office a little while ago. They told me off for not filling in some stupid request form.’

I caught the look of fury on her face. It was replaced a second later by her standard issue poker expression. She had to be feeling the pressure too, though she was probably better at handling it than I was.

Straight ahead was the concrete expanse of Atatürk airport. Planes were ascending and descending like mechanical insects. Below us, a metallic snake of cars queued from the motorway. All around, a blue-tinged haze hung over Istanbul. On the horizon, to our right, the skyscrapers of Levent, Istanbul’s Manhattan-like northern suburb, poked steel and glass shards of modernity upwards.

We landed by a hangar. Within minutes of disembarking we’d been given the once over by a neatly uniformed Turkish immigration official who came out to greet us. He seemed to know Isabel. He whispered something in her ear. I almost envied him for a second. I looked away.

Then he came over to me and asked me for my passport. It had dried out, but looked more battered then I’d ever seen it. He didn’t say a word. When he was finished with it he waved us through.

Then we were back on the same private plane we’d been on only forty-eight hours ago.

There was a mobile phone on the seat beside Isabel. She picked it up and made a call on it. She opened the call with, ‘We’re on our way, sir.’ Then she went quiet as she listened to the person on the other end.

‘I’ll write it all up as soon as I’m back in London, sir,’ she said. ‘We’ll be in the air in five.’

‘Say goodbye to Istanbul,’ she said to me, as the city disappeared behind us, and our plane accelerated into dark rolling clouds.

‘I could get used to this,’ I said.

‘Don’t, I had to push my luck to get this approved. If I hadn’t claimed I had a strong lead to the threats against London, we’d still be in the queue for passport control at Atatürk airport.’

‘Peter is a strong lead?’

She looked me in the eyes. ‘Yes, Sean.’

Sergeant Mowlam was looking at a laboratory report from the Florence Nightingale hospital in Istanbul. The report was the result of a blood test on Dr Safad Mohadajin.

The report confirmed the existence of a Yersina Pestis bacterium in the doctor’s blood. That fact alone would not be enough to ring warning bells. Every year many thousands of cases of plague ended up being reported to the World Health Organisation. But the next piece of information was certainly cause for concern.

The variant of Yersina Pestis in Dr Mohadajin’s blood was not only compatible with strain KIM, but also with strain CO92. That fact alone, that this form of plague had multiple genetic characteristics, was so noteworthy that the laboratory technician had run the test twice.

No identified strain of the plague, variants of the Black Death, had ever shown this characteristic before. Dr Mohadajin had been beheaded, but the logical conclusion of him being infected was that he had acquired the infection while working on a mutated plague virus. He may have even infected himself. But did that mean there was an imminent threat to the United Kingdom? It was a possibility. He would pass the information on straight away to the Ministry of Defence Biological Warfare Unit, and hope to God they would know what to do.

Because if a mutated strain of the plague had been created along the lines that had been feared, and it did get loose, its impact could be devastating. It might even be considered an act of war.

‘We’ve been attacked before, my dear. The 29th December, 1940, for instance. That was the day the bloody Luftwaffe dropped 100,000 fire bombs on us. The buggers caused the second Great Fire of London.’

Sir David Simon, Member of Parliament, advisor to the Privy Council, sat back in his overstuffed leather armchair and stared glumly at us. He had the appearance of someone who was confused about the way the world was going, though in reality he had a better grasp of what was really going on than most.

A waiter in a white coat placed our coffees on the long polished coffee table we were sitting around. The room, which had been converted into a bar for MPs in 1845, was the size of two tennis courts. The waiters, in their short black jackets with brass buttons, looked like extras from a Victorian-era light opera, as they darted between the nests of armchairs and low mahogany tables.

I’d never been invited for drinks to the MPs’ bar at the Palace of Westminster before. The nearest I’d ever been to the British Parliament was gawking at Big Ben from Parliament Square. Dark wood panelling rose halfway up the walls and red wallpaper, in a busy fleur-de-lis pattern, covered every inch of what remained.

I was feeling far from relaxed though. It wasn’t just the surroundings. It was the reason we were here.

‘Do you know that the Second World War was the first time anyone used bigger artillery shells than were used to breach the walls of Constantinople in 1453?’

I shook my head. He turned to Isabel.

‘I have to tell you, young lady, the Palace is definitely interested in this. There’s a certain Prince with a military background you might have heard of.’ He paused. His face was stern, his cheeks red, as if he was about to bark orders. ‘Well, I’m the one tasked with keeping the Prince up to date about important intelligence matters.’

He stared at us for a few seconds to let what he’d said sink in. His gaze shifted from me back to Isabel.

‘And after all that’s gone on these last few years, I think he’s absolutely right to do so. We need to be vigilant.’ He finished his visual examination of Isabel.

She was dressed in a tight-fitting black trouser suit. Under her jacket she wore a lacy black bra, which revealed itself when she leaned forward, which she was doing right now.

‘The next few days are critical, as I’m sure you know,’ he said. ‘We have some big events coming up. The last thing we want is someone stirring things up.’ His hands came together, his pudgy fingers interlocking. Light reflected from his almost bald head. The patches of black hair he had left, above each ear, were slicked down. His face was jowly.

He leaned towards Isabel. ‘No disrespect, my dear, but you’re not even MI6. Don’t get me wrong. The Foreign Office is wonderful. King Charles Street spits out reports like an overexcited photocopier, but I must tell you, we expect this sort of news to come through the official channels. Appearing in person is not how things are done any more.’ He waved a hand in the air, as if swatting a fly.

Isabel opened her mouth. Then she shut it again.

He pointed his finger at her. ‘But I do give people a hearing. Too often, some say. Now do keep in mind, young lady that I know quite a bit about Turkey. The place is at a crossroads. Has been for a while, in my view. Atatürk pointed them in the right direction, but that was a long time ago.’

He paused. When he continued, he sounded calmer. ‘Now, Miss Sharp, tell me all about this manuscript you’ve found.’ He looked at her expectantly.

Isabel told him everything.

I let her handle it. He was her contact. I looked down at my hands. Both had deep scratches on them. I had a nasty purple bruise above my right wrist too. And another one on my knee.

All Isabel had told me before we got here was that we were going to visit a sympathetic MP, a man who sat on top-level committees, someone who’d be able to pull strings, someone at the heart-valve of the old boys’ network. More especially, someone who could have Peter investigated and arrested, if indeed he was a traitor. It was the way she had to do it, Isabel had said, if we wanted to get results and be discreet. Knowing how things worked in England, where who you knew was still a valuable currency, I believed her.

I would have liked to have rolled up the sleeves on the crisp white shirt I’d purchased at Harrods on the way in, but I didn’t. This wasn’t the time for good old American informality. Instead, I sat back and tried to enjoy the luxury of the deepest leather armchair I’d ever sat on. In the heavy air and hushed atmosphere I could feel the power that resided in the rooms and corridors around us.

I’d slept for ten hours the night before in an emergency room at a less-than-busy holding centre in the Northolt Government Airbase west of London. Isabel had suggested I stay there for security reasons. Whoever had tried to kill me could well be watching my house in Fulham, she’d said.

The next morning I woke up wondering if I’d missed the action; if they’d arrested Peter already

‘Don’t be absurd,’ she’d said, when she returned for me at nine in the morning. ‘I can’t have people arrested because of a conversation I overheard. Accusing someone of being a traitor is a very serious thing. I have to approach this carefully. I have to report what we’ve heard to the right person. There’s a right way to do these things.’

‘Did they find anything in that cavern under Hagia Sophia? There’s evidence down there, I’m sure of it.’

‘It was raided by Turkish special forces yesterday. The place was empty. Even the tables we saw were gone. Whoever was working down there must have cleared it out right after we escaped. The safe house on Buyuk Ada they were using was empty too. Our leads are drying up.’

‘We still have one,’ I’d said.

‘Yes, we do.’

Which was why we were here. Why I was here. I was a witness to what had happened with Peter.

‘You’re really up to your neck in it, old boy,’ said David Simon, turning to me.

I nodded. ‘Runs in the family, sir.’

‘I’m sorry about your colleague. Frightfully bad form about him being beheaded. Do you know why it happened?’

‘It seems his curiosity took him to the wrong place.’

‘And you have doubts about our man, Fitzgerald, isn’t that right?’

He looked at me searchingly. I wondered for a second about what I’d heard with my own ears. Perhaps there
was
an explanation. Then I felt sure again. Peter was working against us. I’d overheard him scheming. He couldn’t have known we could hear him talking. I wasn’t going to deny hearing him.

‘I remember every word that came out of his mouth,’ I said. ‘And I think Isabel should be listened to.’

‘That is exactly what I am doing.’ He sounded irritated.

‘If you’d been there, you wouldn’t have any doubts,’ I said. ‘This guy is involved with the people who murdered my colleague. At the very least he’s covering up what he knows. These people threatened to bring Armageddon to London, Sir David.’

‘Please, just David. And there’s a lot of people who threaten us, old boy. Most of them are delusional.’

He sniffed loudly. ‘What about this manuscript you found? What do you think about that? Is it a fake?’

Isabel’s face was blank.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It would be a very odd place to put a fake.’

He looked at me intensely, as if he was trying to figure something out about me.

‘Well, it’s quite a find, that’s for sure. I did a bit of digging after your call this morning, Ms Sharp. An old friend of mine from Cambridge filled me in on a few things.’ He looked up, stopped talking as a group of people passed us on their way out.

‘He said the Eastern Roman emperor at the time of the Prophet Mohammed was rumoured to have converted to Islam.’ He put his hands together.

‘You do know a manuscript, perhaps this one, sparked an attempt on that emperors’s life?’

I nodded.

‘That manuscript was believed to include letters from the Pope in Rome, and from Mecca. The Emperor was, supposedly, trying to mediate between the two sides. If what you’ve found is authentic, and the letters inside it are what we think they are, they could cause a sensation. So we have to be truly careful. This is not a good time to go upsetting apple carts.’ He looked around the room, nodded at a group of aged, rumple-suited men in the far corner.

‘This was the genius who lost Jerusalem to the Muslims?’ I said.

‘Indeed, Jerusalem was a Christian and a Jewish city back then. That was the golden age for Christians in Jerusalem. All that ended when the city fell to the Muslims. Heraclius, our mediating emperor, was blamed. What you’ve discovered could answer a lot of questions. But we have to wait and see what the academics say, and not just our lot either.’ He paused.

‘Do you have pictures of what you found?’ I had the feeling he wanted to know if we had access to what was in the manuscript.

‘There’s some photos on the Internet,’ I said. ‘Do you want to see them?’

Isabel looked surprised.

I leaned towards her. ‘Kaiser’s camera uploads every image it takes to a website,’ I said. ‘All you need is the camera’s serial number to be able to access the images. We used the same website at the Institute last year.’

‘You have the serial number?’ said Isabel.

I smiled, enjoying the moment.

‘You should have…’ She stopped herself.

‘Pass me your iPhone,’ I said.

She passed me her phone. I opened the web browser and went to the site.

David moved forward in his chair. The screen on the new iPhone was ideal for showing photos.

I logged in, scrolled down and looked at the images for a few seconds. Then I held the phone up for David. He stared at it. Isabel nudged me gently with her foot. Her smile said don’t-leave-me-out-of-your-show.

I put the phone down on the table so we could all see the images. Then I flicked through them with my finger.

Not only were all the photos there, some of them had been split up and then blown up. Some even had other analysis done on them, revealing lines and shapes.

There were shots of the front cover, first page, last page, a few inside pages; then, a close up of one of the letter-type pages. It had a seal at its bottom that I hadn’t paid much attention to the first time I’d been looking at it.

I stopped on that image.

‘That looks like a papal seal,’ said David. He sounded angry. ‘This material shouldn’t be so easily accessible. It has to be studied, verified, before the public gets hold of it. These could be scurrilous forgeries.’

Isabel held her hand out. I passed her the phone. She looked around, as if she wanted to verify there wasn’t anybody watching us.

‘These images won’t be made public, sir.’

‘They better not be,’ he said. ‘But I’m not exactly brimming with confidence. You didn’t even know where these photos were stored until a minute ago, young lady.’

She gave me a withering look.

‘They’re on a private site,’ I said.

‘That’s not the point. Look, I’m going to have a word with someone about your Peter Fitzgerald chap. Wait here. You’re not in a hurry, are you?’

‘No,’ I said.

Isabel nodded in agreement.

‘Good,’ he said. He stood up, ambled over to a table nearby, directly under one of the giant gothic-style windows that dominated one entire wall. Beyond the windows, blue sky beckoned.

I sat back. With sunlight streaming through the windows, the room looked more like a chapel than a bar. I wasn’t going to get too many opportunities to take in the laid back atmosphere of a place like this.

I watched David Simon. He was speaking to some people at a table in the far corner. He turned and waved us over.

‘I’d arranged to meet these people for lunch. Why don’t you wait with them until I get back,’ he said as we joined them. Sitting at the table was a shiny-faced pensioner. With him was a smiling woman with huge, bushy blonde hair. She was wearing a black-and-white houndstooth suit. It made her look like a retired Hollywood star. A whiff of spicy perfume hit me.

‘This is Lord Enniskerry,’ said David, introducing the man sitting down. Enniskerry half stood as he held out his hand. ‘How he wangled his way into this place, I’ll never know. And this is Gülsüm, the famous fortune teller. She’ll cheer you up. Did you let Enniskerry in, Gülsüm?’ He gave the lady sitting beside Lord Enniskerry a grave look. She laughed, a high-pitched friendly laugh. We shook hands.

She smiled, as if seeing me meant she’d won the lottery.

‘Delighted,’ she said. She sounded French or Egyptian.

‘Why don’t you do an old friend a favour, Gülsüm, and read these people their fortunes while they wait for me?’

‘Only for you, David,’ she purred. She waved at him as he departed.

There was an awkward silence as we sat down. Having my fortune read didn’t interest me one bit. I was about to decline the offer, but Gülsüm had already turned towards me, and before I could speak, she said, ‘Are you in trouble, Sean?’ Her tone was low, conspiratorial. Her gaze flickered over me, as if taking in every part of me.

I looked at Isabel. Her lips were pursed. Say nothing, her expression said. She was sitting as far back as she could on the leather armchair to my right. Gülsüm and Lord Enniskerry were on the opposite side of the coffee table.

‘No,’ I replied. White porcelain coffee cups and saucers emblazoned with the crowned portcullis emblem of the House of Commons sat on the table.

‘Let me order you chaps some coffee,’ said Lord Enniskerry. He waved a waiter over.

A few minutes later, Gülsüm was quizzing Isabel about her job in Istanbul. Isabel spoke at length, without giving anything away. She’d make a good politician.

I was hoping David would come back soon.

I looked out of the window. I could just about see the top of the London eye. I imagined the queue of tourists waiting to view the city from 440 feet. Despite everything, London was still full of tourists.

My reverie was interrupted when Gülsüm suddenly sniffed loudly and said, ‘Do you smell fire?’

I crinkled my nose. She was right. There was a burning smell. ‘Yep,’ I said. I looked around.