The Istanbul Puzzle. Laurence O’Bryan
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he preferred to do was talk about his own achievements.
‘Bad publicity is the last thing we need right now,’ he said, after I got through to him and told him I was planning to fly out to Istanbul that afternoon. He was good, as always, at finding the down side.
‘If there’s anything in the press about the Institute being involved in something it shouldn’t have been, it’ll be a disaster for our fundraising this year, Ryan. I know this is a bad time to say it, but there are some board members who think we’ve given you too much rope already.’ He waited for a moment for his words to detonate.
What a bastard! Not a single word about Alek’s death. He’d be happy with our scalps on his wall next to those photos.
‘I won’t dodge my responsibilities,’ I said. ‘But I think you should reserve judgement until we know the facts.’ I cut the line.
A few hours later I headed for Heathrow feeling sick, totally unprepared, and unplugged from reality.
It knew it could easily have been me who’d been murdered out there. I could have gone to Istanbul instead of Alek, if I’d insisted on it. And there was more too. If what had happened to Alek had been because of our work in Hagia Sophia, how careful would I need to be?
What was going to happen in Istanbul?
Malach walked slowly. He turned his head often. The yellow bulbs were barely bright enough to light the sloping brick tunnel in front of him. The polished sheen of his bare head, almost touching the roof, was elongated as if he had been bound at birth.
From his huge hands dangled two canvas bags, the type you see in army surplus stores. Both were empty. When he reached his destination, he put them down beside the tables. He had work to do. The project had delivered what was needed. It was time to tidy up. What had happened in the last few days had pushed the cleanup operation forward, but not by much. Soon, if anyone found this place, they wouldn’t have any idea what had been going on.
As he filled the canvas bags he thought about their unexpected visitor. The man had soiled himself in his last few minutes. Westerners were so weak. Their soft comforts made them that way. They knew nothing about how to face their end.
He took the hunting knife from its scabbard under his armpit, felt the tip. It was still sharp. Good. He would need it again, soon if he was lucky. He loved the feeling of power that ran through him when he used it. It was exhilarating. He held the knife in the air, admiring it. Then he put it away. He had a lot to do.
Heathrow Airport, Terminal 5, the largest free-standing building in the UK, looked as busy the following morning as it had during the nightmare snow storm the previous winter.
There were queues at the check-in machines, lines at the information desks, people sleeping, huddled together on its gleaming floor. The continued closure of French air space, due to an extended nationwide strike, was taking its toll. Flights that weren’t cancelled were being rerouted. The knock-on effect delayed my departure by an hour. And I was among the lucky ones.
To distract myself I read anything I could find.
The English Sunday newspapers were feasting on the riots in London. They hadn’t spread, but some journalists were saying that police leave had already been cancelled. It was astonishing, one article suggested, that a raid on a mosque had produced such a reaction. Another paper, which devoted two pages to what had happened, linked the rioting to other incidents around Europe in the past few weeks. The article claimed that there was a fear in intelligence circles that such riots were being coordinated.
Another paper had a map of St Paul’s and the City of London showing how far a crowd of half a million would reach, if that many did turn up the following Friday for the mass demonstration planned by a different Islamic group. The police presence at such events was likely to be much heavier now, even if the event had already been approved, said the article.
My eye fell on a side piece about a video being posted on the Internet showing a Westerner being beheaded. It made me uncomfortable. Could that Westerner be Alek? No. There was no need for total paranoia.
But what had happened to him? Was his death the result of a random incident? A robbery? A car accident? That was certainly the most likely explanation. Our Institute was a world leader in applying technology to intractable problems, but I couldn’t imagine anything we’d been working on out there being a reason to murder him.
We did uncontroversial things, like identifying lost settlements under forests with L-band digital imaging, or devising high-speed spectrometry techniques to date carbon-based compounds without destroying the sample. I was proud of our work.
And everyone I knew thought we were doing something good. Even my dad, who had seen us open the Institute, had been proud. And that was something, coming from a US Air Force pilot who had flown 212 combat missions, had bailed out over Bosnia in 1995 and had then evaded Serb paramilitary units for three days.
It was time to board.
I was glad I’d picked a window seat. The thought of identifying Alek’s body had put me off idle chitchat. And the idea that it might have been me lying cold in some morgue, and Alek flying out to identify my body, didn’t help.
I’d had more than enough of the sympathetic noises people make when they find out something bad has happened to you.
It’s not that I don’t like to talk about Irene or to think about her. I probably think about her too much still. But I hate to talk about it to strangers. The words have got stuck in my throat once too often.
It had taken ten days, after they’d come to our house to tell me she was dead, before the tears came. Something inside me didn’t want to face how much I was hurting, how much I needed her, loved her. That’s what the grief counsellor had said. I stopped going to see her. I wasn’t ready for all the stuff she wanted me to do. I don’t know if I ever will be.
Irene had been the best part of my life for twelve years. My friends at MIT had thought me crazy for staying in England: I’d earn a lot more in the States, they’d said, but I couldn’t have been happier. I’d grown to love London.
Slate-grey clouds were rolling below the plane now and the guy in the seat beside me was reading a book called Turkey – The New Power.
I picked up my iPad. I’d downloaded a guide to Istanbul on it. I read a few pages, then the meal came. I only ate half of it.
My unease about the prospect of viewing Alek’s body only grew as we descended over the inky Sea of Marmara, towards a long curving shore marked by the glow of early evening street lights. Istanbul, a grey tapestry of roads and buildings, was coming into view.
An hour later, the marble floor of the arrivals hall echoed as I walked through it.
I’d felt the familiar breath-catching August Mediterranean heat as soon as the plane doors had opened, but in that metallic cavern of a hall everything was cool, slick, antiseptic.
I caught my reflection in a mirrored wall as I walked by. I looked like a typical tourist in my short-sleeved navy linen shirt and loose cream chinos. The leather haversack on my trolley looked about as travel-scarred and worn-out as I felt.
Already, I’d been detained at passport control for minutes while the immigration officer had checked his computer. I’d bought a tourist visa at the nearby counter, and others were going through quickly, so there was no reason for him to hold me.
Unless the authorities here were expecting me.
‘Enjoy your visit to Turkey,’ he finally mumbled, as he handed me back my passport.
I was relieved.
The frosted glass doors that led out of the arrivals hall opened with a sigh as I approached them. The shiny public area beyond