The Istanbul Puzzle. Laurence O’Bryan
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‘So why did this happen to Alek?’
He shrugged, looked me up and down. ‘Are you planning to speak to the press?’ he said.
‘No.’
His face was a hard mask. ‘Good. We’ll be finished with your colleague’s body in a week or so. There’ll be an autopsy, of course.’ I closed my eyes. ‘You can make arrangements for his body after the results are in. We will hand over all his personal belongings then. ’ His tone softened. He was playing the understanding official again.
Where will you be staying, Mr Ryan?’
‘The Conrad-Ritz. Where Alek is… I mean was staying.’ Alek had told me about the place. I’d called it from Heathrow.
‘My driver will take you there.’
I nodded.
‘Make no mistake,’ he said. ‘We value human life in Turkey, Mr Ryan, unlike in some places. We take a crime like this seriously. As you will see.’
He took a shiny black leather notebook out of his pocket and began writing in it. I wanted to leave, to be on my own, to think.
‘Are we finished?’ I said.
‘Just a few more questions.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Can you tell me exactly what Mr Zegliwski was monitoring in Hagia Sophia, Mr Ryan?’
I wanted to snap at him. I was too tired for this.
‘The tesserae, inspector. The tiny cubes that make up the mosaics. In Hagia Sophia a lot of them were preserved by the plaster Ottoman workmen covered them with, to conform to Islamic prescriptions against figurative art.’ I spoke slowly. ‘Gradually those mosaics have been exposed. Now we have a chance to record them digitally using the latest techniques, in case they’re damaged in the future. It will help us understand how they’ve changed over time by comparing the images with drawings made over the centuries, which we are also digitizing.’
He made a note in his book.
‘Do you think any of this could be a reason for someone to kill your colleague?’ He stared at me, his hand poised to write.
‘Inspector, the layers of gold that form the sandwich that make up many of the tesserae in Hagia Sophia are thicker and more valuable than those anywhere else in the world. Perhaps he disturbed someone robbing some gold tesserae.’ It was a theory I’d come up with on the plane. Alek had joked about how valuable the larger mosaics were, even broken up.
He took another note. Then he said, ‘Did Mr Zegliwski send anything to you or to your Institute after coming here?’
What was he implying? That we’d been stealing, illegally exporting artefacts, not just photographing them?
‘No, he sent us nothing but digital images. There’s no law against that.’
He closed his notebook. Then, as an afterthought, he said, ‘Do you know about the Orthodox Christian archives, the ones that are missing, Mr Ryan?’
I wiped my forehead. A slick of cold sweat covered it. Alek lay dead a few feet away, beheaded for God’s sake, and this man wanted to know about archives!
‘I don’t,’ I replied. ‘Are we finished?’
‘You didn’t know they were lost when Hagia Sophia was taken over?’
I shook my head. ‘We’re here to record mosaics inspector, nothing else.’
‘Indeed, but any item discovered in the archives would have immense value. They included a letter from Mohammad, peace be upon him, so it is claimed. You can imagine the interest there would be in that. They say it was addressed to Emperor Heraclius, the Byzantine Emperor at the time. He visited Jerusalem when the Prophet was in Arabia awaiting his return to Mecca. Such a letter would have a major impact if it was found. It might even be considered important in England, no?’
‘Our project has nothing to do with lost archives or lost letters.’
Why was he quizzing me about this stuff? Did the Turkish authorities really think our project was more than it seemed?
On the way up in the lift, the inspector smiled at me. It was the smile of a reptile as it sunned itself, while waiting for its prey to come within reach. He patted my shoulder as I climbed into the police car.
‘Take care. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you in our beautiful city.’
I doubted very much that he gave a damn about what happened to me.
In Whitehall, in central London, not far from Downing Street, Sergeant Henry P Mowlam was looking out the window. The office he was in had a spectacular view over the London Eye. It was rotating, imperceptibly, against a backdrop of blue sky and the puffiest clouds he’d seen all year. His own office didn’t have a view like this.
‘Sergeant Mowlam,’ said a voice.
He turned. The meeting had been organised by the Ministry of Defence. The conference room, with its dark panelled walls, held over twenty people. Just his luck to get called the second he’d got a proper look out the window.
‘Yes, sir.’
The brigadier general who was leading the meeting from the top of the shiny oak conference table looked around the room, as if wondering who had replied.
Sergeant Mowlam coughed. ‘How can I help?’ he said.
‘I was saying, Sergeant Mowlam, that we have some new chatter that’s just come in. Can you give us the latest on it?’
‘We’ve been picking up email and Twitter feeds this morning, sir. We discount most of this sort of stuff, but these messages are between the organisers of the demonstration planned for Friday. They are about supplies. Shall I read them out?’
The general nodded.
The driver sped through the still-busy streets. I was in the back again. Inspector Erdinc had stayed in the hospital. His other colleague had disappeared. My forehead was pounding as if I had a migraine.
A lot of things had been stirred up in me in the last few hours. There were so many links to the past in this city. So much was different here.
My fists were clenched as we sped onto a wide, low bridge. It had black chest-high iron railings on each side. Below, eel-black water slid past. On the far side of the bridge the shadow of a hill loomed, crowned with the spot-lit outlines of Topkapi Palace, the palace of the Ottoman Sultans, and the dome of Hagia Sophia. The dome was glowing with yellow light, and with its four minarets it looked like an oil painting come to life. Above, stars shone weakly through a haze. We were crossing the Golden Horn.
I asked the driver how soon we would get to the hotel. He didn’t answer. I had only one word of Turkish – Merhaba, hello – so I decided to shut up.
He stared at me in his rear-view mirror. Then he touched one of those blue and white circular evil-eye charms they hang everywhere in Turkey. When we stopped at the traffic lights on the far side of the bridge he spoke.
‘Your friend, he played a dangerous game, no?’
His eyes were fixed on the rear-view mirror.
I looked over my shoulder. There was a car with blacked-out windows behind us.
‘It shouldn’t have been dangerous,’ I said.
He tutted, as if he didn’t believe me. The lights changed. We sped on, cutting across two lanes in a way that would have spelled disaster in London.
He turned the radio