The Istanbul Puzzle. Laurence O’Bryan
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DO NOT PROCEED WITH PTRE/67765/67LE.
‘What’s that about?’ said Finch.
The matter of the checkpoints would have to wait. This was something Sergeant Finch could help him with.
‘I am not to place surveillance on Lord Bidoner, despite the fact that he’s met two other men we’ve been monitoring in the past week!’
Finch looked surprised. A troubled look crossed her face.
‘That request was playing with fire, Henry. You do know who Bidoner is, don’t you?’
Mowlam nodded, shrugged. He closed the message and went back to the video images he’d been assessing.
‘That was easy,’ I said.
The Turkish immigration authorities had only taken our passports for ten seconds. The security check was quick as well. We just walked through a metal detector in a quiet corridor. The diplomatic briefcase embossed with the lion and unicorn crest of the British Foreign Office, which Isabel had carried with her from the helicopter, had probably helped. Now walking across the baking concrete apron towards a white, tube-like executive jet, I felt as if I’d been dropped into another world.
I was looking forward to going back to London. That was where Isabel had said we were going when the passport official had asked her.
The Greek Orthodox community in England was one of the largest outside Greece. I could well believe there was an expert there who could help us track down where the two pictures had been taken.
The shrill sound of an aircraft readying for flight assaulted us as we made our way across the concrete. The smell of aviation fuel, heat and dust filled my nostrils as I climbed the rickety aluminium stairs and entered the small passenger cabin.
What surprised me most was that once I was inside I couldn’t stand up fully. The cabin must have been only five foot something high. I had to bend in order to reach one of the royal-blue leather seats.
They weren’t your usual commercial airline seats either. These were lower, wider, and far more comfortable. And there were only seven of them.
Isabel sat opposite me. We were the only occupants of the cabin. A large blue cooler bag sat on the floor at the back. Isabel pulled it forwards, reached inside and passed me a bottle of orange juice.
‘You’re lucky. The last time I did this they forgot to put the refreshments onboard.’
‘That must have been a bad flight,’ I said. I took the bottle and drank from it. It tasted wonderful.
‘You two OK?’ a voice called out. The door to the pilot’s cabin was open. I could see an expanse of blinking lights and dials. The man who’d spoken was in the pilot’s seat, leaning towards us, his hand holding the door open.
‘A OK,’ replied Isabel.
The pilot gave us a thumbs-up.
A second, younger man, who would be sitting in the other cockpit seat, came into the cabin. He pulled the door to the outside closed. A light above it flashed red.
The engines roared. My seat reverberated as we prepared to taxi.
Then the roar diminished. I looked out of one of the tiny porthole windows. An all black Porsche jeep was speeding towards us. It had darkened windows. For a brief moment I thought it might be the Turkish authorities looking for me, that my inspector friend was wondering why I was leaving Istanbul so soon. Isabel leaned forward. Her knee touched mine. She reached over, grabbed her jacket, threw it on to the seat behind us.
‘We’ve got company,’ she said.
The Porsche had pulled up by the plane. A man got out of the back, strode towards us. He was tall, dressed in a mustard coloured suit. He had that lightly tanned, angular sort of face that reminded me of pictures of celebrities trying hard to look good.
The door opened with a whoosh. Wind and the smell of jet fuel filled the cabin.
‘Good to see you, Isabel,’ boomed a voice. ‘Looks like I got here just in time.’ The man in the mustard suit sat in the seat beside her. Both of them were facing me.
‘It’s a bit tight in here,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Isabel.’ He patted her knee. Then he turned to me.
‘This is the man, eh, Isabel?’
‘Sean,’ she said. ‘Meet Peter Fitzgerald. He works in the Consulate.’ As if that explained everything. Then I remembered. This was the guy who’d told me about Alek’s death.
‘Peter, this is Sean Ryan, from the Institute of Applied Research in Oxford. He co-founded it. He’s their Director of Projects.’
Not for long, I thought, after the way this project in Istanbul had gone, but I wasn’t going to tell them that. In any case, the expression on Peter’s face was that of a wine waiter who’d just been asked for plum juice.
‘We spoke on the phone,’ he said. ‘So sorry about your colleague. What a dreadful death. It’s certainly stirred things up here.’ He put his hand out. I shook it.
‘Alek didn’t deserve that,’ I said.
Isabel was staring at me.
‘I’m sure. What a terrible nightmare,’ said Peter. ‘And what about you, how are you? I heard you had a difficult night.’
‘I’m alright,’ I said. I didn’t need his sympathy.
I heard scuffling, looked around.
Two leather bags were being loaded into the passageway between the seats and the door to the pilot’s cabin. My own small bag, with everything from my hotel room packed into it, had been waiting at the private jet terminal when we’d arrived.
I’d seen, straight away, that my stuff had been rifled through, that some items were missing, but compared to what had happened to Alek, and what could have happened to me last night I felt fortunate.
‘Tell me all about yourself,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry if I was a bit abrupt on the phone the other day. A lot on my plate right now.’ He tapped his nose.
Peter seemed to be fascinated by everything I had to say. It was an hour, at least, and we were many miles from Istanbul before the flow of his questions slowed. By then he knew all about my origins, my father’s Purple Star background, our life in Norfolk, and in upstate New York, where I started college after my father left the military, and all about my very English mother, my one-year research extension in London, how I met Irene, my first job, how we founded the Institute. Surprisingly, there were things he didn’t ask about though. Like what had happened to my wife. Maybe he knew the answers to those questions already.
‘Tell him about the mosaic Alek took a picture of,’ said Isabel, when Peter seemed to have finished his questioning.
I told him the little I knew. Isabel took the photo of the mosaic out of her bag and passed it to him as I was talking.
‘Very interesting,’ he said. When I finished, he looked around, as if he was afraid someone might be listening to us.
‘And you have no idea where this picture was taken?’ He waved the photo at me.
I sat back. ‘I told Isabel already, and the answer is still no. Our project is about assessing how the mosaics in Hagia Sophia have changed over the years. It was never about identifying unknown mosaics.’
‘Your colleague was working only in Hagia Sophia, correct?’ He was staring at me.
I nodded.
‘There’s a lot of interesting stuff besides mosaics in Hagia Sophia, isn’t there?’
‘Yes. It goes back a long way. The building we see there now