City of the Lost. Will Adams

       NINE

      I

      Antioch was slowly rousing itself from its slumbers as Iain headed back in from the hospital. Perhaps that was why the countless minarets looked, from this vantage point, so like the nails in a fakir’s bed. For all the city’s rich pre-Islamic history, few traces of it were left. An early Christian church on its northern fringe; and, a little further out, a single pillar of giant stones and crumbling mortar rose from the foot of a precipitous gorge to hint at the one-time vastness of its ancient walls. But now, like so many modern Turkish cities, it was all office blocks and apartment buildings painted in sickly sweet pastels, like some Soviet suburb with a Miami makeover.

      Last night’s computer shop wasn’t yet open. He parked and wandered for a while. It was between seasons right now. The chilly wind that swept down from the snowcapped mountains to the city’s north-west was countered by the warmth of the morning sun. Men in sweaters and thick jackets polished shoes beneath colourful sunshades. Hawkers flogging winter snacks set up next to others selling iced drinks. Men in mirror shades, stubble and fat-collared shirts stood in small clusters on street corners. He walked an accidental gauntlet of shopkeepers sluicing down their pavements, passed through an alley of shabby workshops where two mechanics fought like emergency-room doctors to bring an ancient jalopy back to life. Children waged hose-pipe wars beneath cat’s cradles of electric and telephone wires, while laundry flapped like indulgent parents on the overlooking balconies.

      The shutters were finally up when Iain returned to the computer shop. The owner was in boisterous spirits this morning, greeting him like a long-lost friend and insisting he share his pot of spiced tea. They chatted of football as they drank, then Iain passed him Robyn’s list and he put together a box for him. Karin was up and gone by the time he returned to the hotel. She’d left her things in his room, he saw, along with a note to tell him she was off to Daphne in search of her consul but hoped to see him later. He hung out his ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, bolted the door, cleared the dressing table and laid out his new gear. He downloaded Robyn’s software, cut it onto a CD, rebooted his laptop, then called her on her mobile. ‘I’m ready,’ he told her. ‘Now what?’

      She talked him through the set up, had him start recovery. ‘Let it do its thing,’ she told him. ‘Check it from time to time. If it freezes, give me a call.’

      He thanked her and rang off. He watched it for a while, but he soon tired of that. He felt restless and a little hungry. The hotel would have stopped serving breakfast by now, but he was in the mood to stretch his legs anyway. A café at the top of town, a selection of newspapers for the latest on the blast. He wrote admonitions in English and Turkish to leave the computer equipment alone, and placed them so they couldn’t be missed. Then he made up both beds, left the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the doorknob and headed on his way.

      II

      Michel Bejjani and his team had been in position for a couple of hours before Iain Black finally re-emerged from his hotel. Michel, sitting in the café across the street, looked away at once lest he be spotted himself, then gave a surreptitious nod to Faisal across the backgammon board, and to Sami and Ali who were sharing a water-pipe at a nearby table. He cupped a hand over his earpiece to cut down on the café’s ambient noise then murmured into his microphone hidden beneath his collar: ‘That’s him now.’

      ‘Got him,’ said Yacoub, who was with Josef in the first SUV, parked a short distance up the road.

      ‘Me too,’ confirmed Kahlil, with Sayed, in the second.

      Black paused on the front steps. He took out his phone, chose a number, made a call. He began chatting cheerfully away then crossed the road and walked obliviously straight past them. The moment he was out of sight, Michel checked to make sure his taser and GPS transmitter were both on, then got to his feet and gestured for the others to follow him.

      Acapulco had been an aberration, an uncharacteristic lapse of concentration. He was every bit as capable of running this kind of operation as Georges, should the need arise.

      It was time to prove that to his father.

      III

      ‘We had nothing to do with yesterday’s bomb,’ Professor Metin Volkan assured Zehra. ‘With any of the bombs. I swear this to you on everything I hold dear. I started One Cyprus because I believe passionately that reunification offers the best future for the people of this island. But it only works if there is peace and trust. And you can’t achieve peace and trust with bombs, no matter who you target.’

      ‘But …?’ asked Zehra.

      A grimace, a little flicker of the eyes. ‘When you asked your question a moment ago, it reminded me of something, that’s all. Of someone. A man. He came to one of our rallies. To two of them, actually, though we only spoke once.’

      ‘Where?’

      ‘In Famagusta. Both times in Famagusta. You know the Eastern Mediterranean University? In a lecture hall there. That was one reason he stood out. He was much older than the other students. Not that there were so many of them, mind you. What with the bombs starting to go off, and people thinking we had something to do with them.’

      ‘This man,’ prompted Zehra.

      ‘Yes. He stood to one side and watched. Very still, very quiet, very intense. He spooked me a little, if I’m honest.’ He nodded towards his front door to indicate the two policemen outside, the power structure they represented. ‘I assumed he was one of them, there to take names, scare people off, find things to use against us. But nothing came of it so I forgot about him. Until he showed up at our next Famagusta rally too. This was maybe three or four weeks ago. There’d been another bomb by then, the worst until yesterday’s, so that even fewer people were there, for all that we denounced the bombings furiously at every opportunity we got. Anyway, he came to talk to me afterwards.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘He asked me the same question you did. And he asked me to give him my word too. That’s what made me think of him. I told him what I told you: that we were men of peace who deplored the use of violence; and, moreover, that our involvement in a bombing campaign wouldn’t merely be vile, it would be stupid too, because he could see for himself how people were turning against our cause. He didn’t seem surprised. It was more like it was confirmation of bad news, like a second opinion of cancer. I asked him what was going on. I told him that if he knew anything he had to go to the police. He said he knew nothing, he simply wanted to make sure he could trust us before contributing. He asked me what we needed. I didn’t want him around the campaign, if I’m honest, so I told him we needed money. He promised to see what he could do. That’s all, I swear. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.’