The Istanbul Puzzle. Laurence O’Bryan
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in its forest like rows of pillars. The entrance he’d found must have been sealed up over five hundred years ago, before the ancient city of Constantinople above him fell to a Muslim army and its name was changed to Istanbul. There were treasures down here any museum director in the world would beg for. But he wished he’d never found the place.
He stared at the aluminium tables nearby. What he’d seen on those tables had terrified him.
A black mist rushed towards him. Would Sean find out what had happened?
Agios o Theos, agios …
A minute later the two fountains of blood, two foot high at their peak, from the left and right arteries emerging from Alek’s chest, bubbled like cooling coffee percolators. The flesh around them shone with a silky gleam. But Alek’s eyes were closed and his face was peaceful.
Glass fell into the street. The four-storey frontage of the new American electronics store was collapsing. An animal rumble passed under me. Alarms sprang to life in a chorus.
I’d been on my way home. It was a Friday night in August. London was hot, sticky. I’d been crossing Oxford Street when I stopped, mid step.
Coming towards me, that glass behind them, was a mass of fists, hooded faces, rage. Every muscle tightened inside me. Was the city going up in flames again?
I saw an entrance to a brick-lined alley, broke into a jog. A girl with a pink afro, white stilettos and a lime green tube top was standing in the middle of the street, her mouth open, her arms at her side. I veered towards her.
‘Come on,’ I shouted.
She looked at me as if I was a ghost, but came with me. I didn’t have to turn my head to know the mob was almost on us. We barely made it. We turned together and watched them pass. For one frozen moment I thought they might turn on us, that I’d have to defend my new friend. But they moved on, chanting a drum-beat rhythm of slogans I could barely understand. That’s a sound I’ll never forget. Because this lot weren’t just looting. These bastards had found a cause.
Some of them glared at us as they passed, but luckily we weren’t their target. They were after symbols of their oppression. And they were out of their heads on it. After they were all gone, my pink-haired friend shuddered, then ran off.
Screaming alarm bells and broken windows were the most obvious signs of the mob’s passing, along with a whiff of danger. Was a police raid on a mosque worth all this?
I caught sight of a woman in a tiny leather jacket on the other side of the street. Her face was turned away from me. She was running. My vision tunnelled.
‘Irene!’ I said, softly. My legs started towards her. I stopped them.
Irene was gone.
But even though I knew that was true, my heart still wanted for the woman to turn, to smile, for my heart to pound like a rocket ship going into orbit again. No one had ever affected me like Irene. Before I met her I’d never believed that a woman could make your heart thump, just by walking into a room.
And a big part of me still didn’t want to get over what had happened to her, didn’t want to move on, not now, not ever, no matter what anyone said or did.
The woman was almost gone now, her black hair flying behind her as she disappeared into a glow of flickering lights. If I went after her, all it would mean was that I was crazier than I thought.
I let out my breath, slowly. I’d had what my grief counsellor had called a legal hallucination. People don’t come back from the dead. No matter how much you want them to. No matter how unfair their death was.
When my mom and dad had died back in the States, within eighteen months of each other, I hadn’t felt this way. They’d both had a good innings, but Irene had barely got to bat.
A helicopter flew low, its searchlight wandering. It was time to get away from this madness, to get back to normality, to my own frustrations. Alek hadn’t responded to my last text message. He was due back on Monday when the image enhancement program I’d spent the last week fixing would finally get properly tested.
If we messed up this project, I wouldn’t be able to hide from the rumour mill.
I could imagine what they’d say. How can you expect a project director not to make mistakes after what happened to him? Wasn’t it obvious he wasn’t over his wife’s death, wasn’t up to the job any more? Wasn’t this why he’d been demoted?
I started walking, checked my phone again. Nothing. Why was someone with every communication option the world had devised been uncontactable for six freaking hours?
Photographing mosaics of angels, emperors and saints shouldn’t have been this difficult. Even if he was doing it in what had once been the Islamic world’s St Peter’s. We’d worked in the Vatican for God’s sake. And in the British Museum.
Then it was raining and I was running. It was lashing in Piccadilly Circus by the time I got to the entrance of the Underground. I was totally soaked. My shoes were squelching. I knew I’d be looking like a half-drowned marsh creature, tails of brown hair straggling across my way-too-pale forehead, my four AM shadow even more pronounced than usual.
The train was packed. It was not a good time to be wet. But we all stood shoulder to shoulder, trapped, swaying, dampness and tension filling the air.
I read the headlines on a girl’s iPad. ‘New London Riots’ was the big story. Her finger hovered over it, pushed it away. ‘England Awakens’ read the next headline. Our train lurched, then stopped. The lights flickered. Someone groaned. It was ten minutes before the train started again.
In the basement of a villa belonging to the British Consulate, in the affluent Levent suburb of Istanbul, two men were staring at a laptop screen.
Loud moaning noises filled the room. On the screen, a big-breasted blonde was bouncing up and down on top of a scrawny dark-skinned older man. The bed they were on, in a hotel near Taksim Square, where the Iranian biological scientist had been staying, squeaked like a busted door on a moving train.
Surely a man that age should have stopped to consider why a woman so young and beautiful might be interested in him.
As the man let out a gasp the blonde pulled back. The view of his face was quite a sight. The man sitting in front of the laptop clicked his mouse. A still image appeared for a moment, then flew to the bottom corner of the screen. Peter Fitzgerald tapped his colleague’s shoulder.
‘That should be enough for you to open him up,’ he said. ‘His superiors in Iran won’t be inclined to forgive him for this.’
Peter frowned as he went over to the printer. It hummed to life. This was going to be easier than he’d thought. But had they moved quickly enough? The Iranian had been in Istanbul for two weeks already.
The following night, Saturday night, I went to a barbecue near my house in West London. The Institute had an apartment in Oxford, but I rarely used it any more. My attic office was more than good enough for the days I didn’t feel like battling up the M40.
It had been over thirty hours since I’d heard from Alek. If he didn’t make contact until he came back on Monday I’d give him a chance to explain himself, then I’d tell him what I thought of his bullshit.
The barbecue was one of those gatherings where everyone dressed in similar, expensively-distressed clothes to demonstrate their individuality. I left before midnight. The host had been trying to hook me up with one of her friends, and while she was certainly attractive, my heart wasn’t it. All everyone wanted to do was talk about the riots starting up again.
And