The Istanbul Puzzle (28 page)

When I was a boy I imagined I could see in the dark.

I used to walk around my grandmother’s house in upstate New York after everyone had gone to bed and the lights had been switched off. I was looking for my father. He went to war when I was seven.

There are similar types of darkness. There’s the darkness of a clapboard house at midnight, when starlight burnishes doors and windows with silver. And then there’s the darkness underwater, if you’re deep enough.

When the officers came to tell me about Irene, a numbness stole over me. I’d seen my eyes in a mirror after they left. They were wide, looking at something that didn’t exist anymore.

I’d felt as if I was suffocating. Just like now.

But this time nails were being driven through my chest.

Surviving even two minutes without taking a breath would be a feat most people would be incapable of, but for someone who free-dived, who practised breathing control regularly, three minutes was a good, but not top class, achievement. Four minutes was. What makes holding your breath a real test though, is when you don’t know if you’ll be able to breathe again, once you’ve reached the limit of your endurance.

You have to fight both fear and pain, while knowing your fear is most likely going to be your fate.

And I kept fighting, distracting my mind with effort, turning, moving, trying to get on my knees, on my feet, hoping to stand. But the water constantly pitched me forwards then back.

Finally, I got on to my knees. My lungs were bursting. The nails were going deeper. But I knew I was near the air. All I had to do was push, push up. And I did, and for a second or two my head was out of the water and air rushed into my lungs. Then the water churned around me, rolled me down again.

But I knew now how to survive, how to get out. And confidence flooded through me. All I had to do was move to the side of the pool, stand, but for longer this time. And I knew, suddenly, the mistake they’d made. I was bound at the thigh, but I could use my feet, at an angle, to stand. That was a mistake Peter would pay for.

The policeman who jumped in, a few minutes later, and dragged me out of the water, as I was leaning on an edge of the pool, a trussed-up half-drowned water creature, was Sergeant Smith. His nametag was the first thing I saw after he pulled me out.

I’ll never ever forget it.

It took me all of three minutes, coughing and spluttering, with Sergeant Smith cutting my bindings, to tell him what the hell was going on. All I wanted to do was find Isabel. I didn’t have time for explanations. And frustratingly, he wanted more details. More and more. I rattled through answers as fast as speech would allow.

The only reason his senior officer let me accompany them into the bowels of the building, down the brick stairs, was because I swore I knew where Peter had taken Isabel. I swore it three times, louder each time.

And it was a lie. All I’d heard was that they were heading down somewhere.

As I stood there waiting to be told to leave, Sergeant Smith handed me a thick black bulletproof vest. I put it on quickly. It weighed less than I’d imagined.

Then I followed the team down to the basement. And unbelievably we couldn’t get the lift to work, apparently because we didn’t have the right password. But eventually someone overrode it, a young officer with blonde hair and an East End accent.

And then, the lights went out in the staircase we found.

And as we went on, torchlights flashing, another officer asked loudly why I was there. Sergeant Smith told him that I was showing them where Isabel Sharp had been taken.

I didn’t say a word.

‘You alright, sir?’ asked Sergeant Smith, as we continued down the seemingly never-ending staircase, while torches illuminated brick walls in swiftly moving arcs, as if there were giant bats flying around us.

‘No problem.’

I think he understood me, my need to be there.

As we went down it felt as if we were descending into some sick version of hell. There wasn’t much air down there. I broke out into a sweat and was shivering slightly. The fact that I was still wet didn’t help.

Then I saw scars on the bricks. Gouges made by some beast.

When we reached the bottom of the stairs, all we found was an old electricity substation with a black Bakelite handle. Sergeant Smith pulled the handle upwards, then forwards. The unit opened to reveal banks of old fashioned fuse boards. Great.

The expressions on the policemen’s faces around me, as they peered at the yellow porcelain fuses, were as bleak as stones on a mountaintop in winter.

An order was shouted up the stairs to stop more people coming down into the confined space.

‘We’ll have to look somewhere else, sir. And I think there’s a medic above who wants a word with you.’ The look on Sergeant Smith’s face was one of pity now. He pointed at the stairs. ‘Shall we go?’

The other policemen went up, until only Sergeant Smith and I remained.

As he was waiting for me to go up the stairs I had a thought. Why had they built this staircase? They didn’t have to go this far underground to connect to an electricity cable, did they?

‘Can we check behind this?’ I went over to the ancient-looking cabinet.

Sergeant Smith lifted his bulletproof jacket off his shoulders with his thumbs. His face was strained. Sweat had matted his black hair to his forehead.

‘Is that a crowbar?’ I said, pointing to the long tool hanging from his belt.

He handed me his torch.

‘All right, we’ll have a look.’ He placed the end of his crowbar against the back edge of the fuse cabinet. At first it wouldn’t move. Then it moved an inch free of the wall. I saw only brick. We pulled at the crowbar together.

The opening behind the cabinet was the size of a small doorway. This was where Isabel was. It had to be. But why had they brought her down here?

‘Well done, mate,’ said Sergeant Smith. He slapped my shoulder.

It took a few minutes to call some of the other members of his team back down, and to pull the fuse cabinet far enough from the wall to get through the opening, but no more than three minutes later, Sergeant Smith and I were standing in an ancient looking brick-lined corridor. It was way too narrow to be modern, but it was different from the tunnels in Istanbul too. Here the bricks were bigger, darker.

Then a hollow thud sounded from somewhere further along the tunnel. What the hell was that? A silver-haired officer poked his head through the gap we’d just come through. He looked worried.

I started walking down the corridor. Then I broke into a jog. I tried to ignore the fact that my head was pounding and that my damp clothes were sticking to me like drying glue. I was going to find Isabel. God only knew what those bastards were doing to her.

‘Not so fast, sir,’ someone hissed.

I glanced back. Sergeant Smith and some other officers were right behind me, their armoured vests making them look like giant termites in the narrow tunnel. I kept going, but more slowly now. I think one of them would have tasered me if I’d made any noise.

As I approached a branch in the tunnel, I stopped.

A hand grabbed my shoulder. Sergeant Smith was breathing hard, almost in my ear.

‘Stop,’ he whispered. ‘Be careful.’

I shrugged, looked around the corner. I didn’t care what happened to me. I saw a closed door, I ran towards it.

In seconds, if I wasn’t careful, Sergeant Smith’s friends would throw me to the back so they could go in first. I couldn’t have that. Even if I ended up becoming a hostage myself, I didn’t care. I had to find Isabel.

The door in front of me looked like it belonged in an old monastery. It had been designed to keep people with axes out. Its surface was stiff with rough markings cut into the wood in rows of symbols, crosses, moons and stars.

‘Stand back, sir.’

One of the officers was carrying a long black box. It looked like something you might keep your lunch in. The man took out a silver microphone from the box and held it to the door. Its six-inch wide circular base was flat and intricately webbed. The officer put earphones in his ear and listened for a few seconds. Then he gave Sergeant Smith a thumbs-up signal.

‘I recommend we break through now,’ he said, softly, motioning at the door.

Sergeant Smith leaned towards me, and said, ‘There’s people in there. There’s something going down. You shouldn’t be here, as it is. I’ll get a bleeding reprimand for allowing you to come this far. You better go. We’ll get her out.’

‘No, I can help. You’d still be chasing your tails upstairs, if you hadn’t brought me along.’ I could smell the damp on him, from him pulling me from the water, and a minty smell from his breath. He’d been chewing gum.

He shook his head, then shrugged exasperatedly.

‘We didn’t have this conversation, alright?’

He motioned for me to stand back, muttered something to his colleague. The man went to the door, took out a device the size of a cigarette-box from the black metal case he was carrying, removed some thick silver tape from its side and stuck the box near to the door’s handle.

Sergeant Smith pulled me back around the corner, where the tunnel branched. He put his hands over his ears. I did the same.

We waited.

The officer who’d put the device on the door pressed a button on a tiny remote control.

Nothing happened.

Then a noise exploded out of the tunnel and a wave of smoke and dust blew around the corner. The noise pounded my chest with the intensity of a hammer, even through the vest Sergeant Smith had given me. And as it died I ran into the dust of the corridor though my eyes stung and I was blinking rapidly.

I raced for the door. There was a police officer already there. He had a black helmet on, which covered his face. He threw something into the gaping hole that had appeared where the door had been. I reached him, heard a double-barrelled blast, weaker than the last, but loud enough to rattle my brain in my skull. I actually felt something move inside it.

I should have stopped, I heard a shout behind me, but I kept running. I was only a few feet from the smoke filled doorway. I thought about Alek, of the stupidity of his life being over, of that beautiful receptionist, the terrible end she’d met, of Father Gregory torn apart. And of Irene too. And I ran on.

The boy let the
Evening Standard
slip from under his arm. It was wet already. He’d used it to shield himself from the rain, but he didn’t need it anymore. His father was lifting him high in the air. The crowd around them was silent. The only noise was the faint sound of rain falling, and a low hiss from the speakers that had been set up around the venue, as if the rain was affecting them.

A whoosh sounded over their heads. The Air Force jet passed over them again. The crowd’s heads moved as one, tracking its progress.

There were men around him, Arabs and Europeans, Muslims from all over the world. There were some women too, but mostly at the back.

Rain dripped down into his neck, but he didn’t mind. He’d never seen so many Muslims in one place in England. It was exhilarating.

He felt proud, at home at last.

The voice that crackled through the speakers was one he had never heard before. The next few words electrified him. Was this why they were all here?

When I jumped through the jagged hole in the door, the scene was surreal. Curtains of smoke and dust hung in the air. A throat-clogging smell hit me. My ears were pounding. I heard a shout from behind me, though I couldn’t understand what was being said. It was probably Sergeant Smith telling me to back off. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Near a mound in the centre of the room were some people lying on the floor.

Two of them were getting up.

One I recognised instantly. It was the big guy who’d taken Isabel. The other person was Isabel. She was pushing herself up with one hand. I ran fast towards her. The bastard had something in his hand. A silver gun. Peter was lying on the ground a few feet from him.

He pointed the gun at Peter. I thought he was threatening him or that he was trying to get him to stand up. Then a shot rang out. Peter’s body jumped an inch in the air. I saw a thin trail of smoke slide from the gun.

Then he was turning it towards me. I swerved, watched in slow motion, wondered if he’d fire it, wondered if I should dive for the floor. But I kept going. I didn’t care what happened to me. And I knew what was going to happen next. And the reddish-yellow flash wasn’t a surprise, nor was the thump, like a horse’s kick, in my side.

And I kept going. I had my fists up. Even if he pumped holes into me, I was going to smash his stupid face.

I had ten seconds at most, before a ton of adrenalin poured through my body and the shivering started, if the bulletproof vest hadn’t done its job.

A series of loud snaps filled the air. Reverberations echoed.

More flashes bloomed from his gun. But these weren’t aimed at me. He was firing at someone behind me. Then his arm came up to ward me off.

My heart was hammering out of control. A sickly smell of cordite filled my nostrils. I could taste it.

I reached the bastard. I knew what I had to do. I grabbed his gun with both hands, jerked the barrel upwards, even as a flash emerged from it pinging away somewhere, burning my fingers as if I’d grabbed a flame.

Then it felt as if someone had punched the side of my face. He’d head butted me! I swung my knee fast with every bit of force I could muster towards his groin. I connected.

He grunted. His face was inches from mine. His lip trembled. That was the only indication that I’d hit him. He was six foot six, at least and his skin was pale and flaky in places, except for the back of his hand, which was holding the gun. There it was black, as if the skin had been burnt repeatedly.

I could smell steaming sweat now and in his eyes I could see an arrogance that held no possibility of compassion and a promise of instant death if I failed to hold him.

My arm muscles were shaking. Had the adrenaline kicked in? Were my guts falling out? He jerked his hand back. His gun was still in it but I was still holding it, and he was pulling the barrel down. I pushed it hard to the side, jerked it fast away from me

Then a loud pop came, then another and another. A red and black hole opened in the centre of his chest. As his body jerked my hand fell from the gun. I didn’t want to get shot too, by holding him too close. He had to be dead.

My knees wanted to buckle. I wouldn’t let them.

He fell back onto the mound, spread eagled on top of it. Blood oozed fast from his chest, over his black T-shirt and onto the black stone below. There was blood pumping out of his face too. He had a wound in his cheek and a pulsing flow of blood that slicked his lips and barred teeth.

My breath was coming in giant gasps.

And then, as if he was a force beyond nature, his head came up and his hand, which still had the gun in it, rose slowly. It was pointing in Isabel’s direction. Unintelligible shouts echoed from multiple voices.

Without thinking I stepped forward, kicked out and connected. The gun spun in the air. Then there were more snaps, like nails being banged into a wall. Malach’s head – I discovered his name later – spurted blood in four or five places. Reddish pink craters opened in the side of his forehead. They pulsed slickly. Blood poured like gushing oil onto the stone. He was gone. He had to be.

Then Isabel was hugging me. It was the hug of someone who’d been reborn. I hugged her back.

‘Were you hit?’ she said, softly.

I touched my side carefully. The armour felt rough at one point, but unbroken. I slipped the vest off, felt all around under my shirt. Such relief. I was bruised, but there was no blood.

I shook my head.

She went over to Peter. He was lying perfectly still, as if he was resting. But there was a small red hole in his pale blue shirt, in the centre of his chest.

‘You bastard,’ she said, as she bent down over him.

‘I hope the world finds out what he did,’ I said.

An officer with a red armband, who I hadn’t seen before, was kneeling beside Peter, taking his pulse. He turned to Isabel and shook his head. Then he stood.

My heart rate was retuning to normal but my breath was still coming in gasps.

And I was glad Peter was dead.

‘He got what he deserved,’ I said, as I knelt down beside her. She was as pale as chalk.

She stood. She was surprisingly steady. She walked over to a table on the other side of the mound. I followed her. On the table was the manuscript we’d found. Sergeant Smith was beside us as she peered down at it.

‘This item is supposed to be in the custody of the Foreign Office,’ she said. She looked at Sergeant Smith. ‘The Turkish Government owns it.’

‘Forensics will tag and bag everything, Miss Sharp. You can put in a request for it.’

‘We will, don’t worry. And don’t lose it. It could be the most valuable thing you’ll ever put in a bag.’

Sergeant Smith looked at it. ‘I’ll make sure I don’t drop it then,’ he said. He had black rubber gloves on. He placed the manuscript into a plastic bag another officer was holding open beside him.

He looked at me. His face looked carved out of marble.

‘We have medics waiting for you both,’ he said.

‘I’m glad you were behind me, Sergeant.’ I said.

‘You’re lucky to be alive, mate,’ he replied. He shook his head.

Amazingly though, I felt calm.

It wasn’t until an hour later that I realised how close I’d come to dying, but I was still elated. I suppose part of the reason was that I was just so happy to see Isabel, and that I also knew we’d probably caught one of the bastards who’d been after me in Istanbul. One of the bastards who’d killed Alek.

I’d looked down at Malach as I was being hustled out of that chamber, and I knew why he’d seemed familiar when I first saw him. His build, his bald head. I’d only seen the guy for a few seconds, but it looked like the bastard who’d chased us when we’d fled my hotel room. And he was now dead.

‘Who was Malach working with?’ was the question I asked Sergeant Smith, when my debriefing was finally over, three hours later. I’d met four other officers in the meantime.

We were standing near a nondescript government building not far from the Chancery Lane debriefing centre we’d been taken to.

‘I can’t say anything about that.’ He glanced away.

‘You can’t tell me anything?’

He shook his head.

‘I just signed the Official Secrets Act, Sergeant. And I didn’t even argue. Give me a clue, at least. I’d like to know if any of the bastards got away.’

Isabel leaned forward. ‘What’s the official line, Sergeant?’

He glanced at her. ‘We’re looking into it. Be happy about that. And if there are others involved, I’m sure they’ll be dealt with appropriately, sir.’

‘Is there anything happening in Istanbul?’ I said. ‘About what we found there?’

‘The Turkish authorities have arrested two people, sir. They don’t take kindly to this sort of thing. That’s all I can say. Goodbye to you both.’

He turned away.

We stared as the door closed behind him. The puffy clouds above our heads were tinged with purple and gold from the most spectacular late evening cloudscape I’d seen in London in years.

Isabel looked downcast.

‘Are you OK?’ I said.

She nodded, but she didn’t look OK. ‘There’s a car coming to pick us up.’

She sat down on the kerb. Her clothes and hair were a mess. I’d been given blue sweat pants and a blue top. My own wet clothes were in a black plastic bag by my side. We must have looked like a couple of tramps.

She looked at me, as if she was weighing something up. Then she said, ‘Why don’t you come back to my place?’

I smiled. It was exactly what I wanted her to say.

She looked at me, shivered a little.

‘Good idea,’ I said.

She looked in my eyes. ‘I don’t want to be alone right now. I just found out something that’s upset me.’

‘What is it?’

‘Not now.’ She nodded toward a black Vauxhall Astra that was pulling up beside us.

She didn’t tell me what was bothering her in the car either. She just gave the driver directions and sat in the back, beside me, staring out the window, looking all the while as if she was going to cry.

Was this a delayed reaction to her kidnapping? We’d been separated during the debriefing and the first person I’d seen was a medical officer who’d gone through a checklist before getting me to sign a waiver at the bottom. I knew Isabel had received the same check up, as the officer had said his colleague was talking to her, when I said he should look at her first.

All the way to her place in the car I worried about her. I tried to talk a few times, but she just kept shaking her head.

When we got to her apartment block in St John’s Wood, I was exhausted and concerned. I asked her again on the way up in the elevator what she’d found out, but she just shook her head. All sorts of theories were going around in my mind. As she turned the key in the lock, she said, ‘I need a shower. We’ll talk about it later.’

Her hand shook as she pushed the door open. Then she stepped inside.

‘You’re going to tell me now,’ I said. I pushed the door closed behind us. ‘Please, Isabel. I’m worried about you. You can’t bottle everything up. I tried that. It doesn’t work.’

She stared at me as seconds ticked by. ‘You’re not going to believe this.’

‘Try me.’

‘I don’t even know if I can tell you.’

‘Isabel, I’ve signed my life away. If I tell anybody anything that’s happened I’ll be arrested in five minutes. What the hell is it? Come on.’

She took a deep breath.

‘Peter was on our side. It was all a ruse to get the telephone numbers of Malach’s accomplices.’

‘But he tried to kill me. I don’t believe it.’

‘Neither did I, until the officer who told me asked me to explain why Malach shot Peter, if it wasn’t because he was sure he’d been betrayed. Then he told me that they’d arrested two of Malach’s accomplices as a direct result of a text message sent from Peter’s phone to their numbers.’

‘It was a ruse?’ I felt angry. He’d left me to die. He’d tasered Isabel.

She nodded.

We were standing in the hall staring at each other.

‘What was so important that I could be left to die?’

‘Remember that threat to bring Armageddon to London? They believe it was stopped when those arrests were made.’

She looked around, as if seeing the place for the first time. ‘I shouldn’t have doubted him.’

‘No one could blame you,’ I said.

Then it came to me. That was why Peter hadn’t tied my ankles. That was why I’d been able to stand in that pool. Peter had done that. He’d given me a chance. He could have made sure I’d drown. Isabel was right.

‘He gave up his life.’ She sounded weary. ‘No one knew what he was up to, until he sent a text message saying the people his next text was going to, were all to be arrested asap. He was the most secretive person ever. He never told anybody in the consulate anything about his undercover work. We used to joke that he’d gone deep. But he died because of it.’ She trembled.

It was weird thinking the man who’d pushed me into the water was a hero, but I couldn’t deny it.

‘I thought I was going to die back there,’ she said. She stopped herself talking.

‘Me too.’

I looked around. Her apartment was stark, modern, almost all white.

‘Thanks for coming back,’ she said.

I got the feeling she wasn’t sure if she’d been right to tell me everything she’d just told me.

She was looking up at me. Her green eyes were so beautiful.

‘Go on inside, you look like an idiot standing there. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’

She pointed me into her living room. Plants were thriving like a rain forest on her balcony. I sat on an enormous white sofa and looked out at a spectacular sunset as I waited while she had a shower. I listened to the sound of cars passing, the shower hissing distantly, and tried to work out what I thought about Peter now. I went through it all over in my mind again, and it felt right the more I thought about it. Doing this sort of thing, infiltrating groups, was probably what he was supposed to do.

Twenty minutes later, Isabel emerged rubbing her hair with a black towel, wearing a tight black gym suit.

‘The news is coming on,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what they’re saying about that demo.’

The ten o’clock news started a few minutes later. They showed a clip of one of the princes at St Paul’s earlier. He was standing on the steps leading to the cathedral wearing a navy uniform with gold braid and white buttons. I wasn’t entirely sure why he was there. The voiceover said something about him paying a visit that evening. It was almost as if he was reclaiming the building.

The doors of the cathedral were closed again behind him. Apparently, after holding a small demonstration inside, the Muslims who’d surged through the doors had left peacefully without damaging anything.

The TV announcer switched to another story, about the outbreak of plague in Istanbul. A hundred people had been quarantined, he said. Six people were dead, including an Iranian scientist and an Indian national who had been discovered in a basement the day before. The mortality rate was high among those who’d been quarantined, but the authorities had been fortunate that no other sites of infection had been found.