by Will Adams
III
Iain had known he was under surveillance from the moment he’d left the hotel. In his line of work, it was second nature to notice people looking hurriedly away. He’d seen, too, the man’s loaded glance at the second table, the way he’d cupped his hand over his ear and murmured into his collar. A posse, then, and an incompetent one at that.
The prudent move would have been to retreat inside the hotel. But Mustafa was dead and so fuck prudence. Besides, he was pretty sure he recognized Michel Bejjani. The Bejjanis were bankers, not gangsters. If he couldn’t handle this lot, it was time to get a new job.
His meander through the market had revealed their numbers and disposition; it had also given Maria time to send file photos of the Bejjanis to his phone, to confirm their identities. He’d told Maria what to do should he disappear then had led them into his ambush. He yanked Michel’s head fiercely back by a hank of hair. ‘I won’t ask again,’ he warned him. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
Bejjani wailed pitifully and held up his hands. ‘Michel Bejjani. I’m Michel Bejjani.’
‘And why were you following me?’
‘You were in Daphne yesterday,’ he said. ‘My father wanted to know why.’
‘You think I set off that fucking bomb?’ said Iain furiously. ‘It killed my friend.’
‘We know. We know. My father himself asked what kind of assassin would give his business card to a paramedic. But still: you were there because of us. My father wanted to know why, and who for.’
‘Then why not ask?’
‘Would you have told us?’
Iain nodded. It was as he’d figured. ‘Call him,’ he said.
‘Call who?’
‘Your father.’
‘But I—’
Another yank of his hair. ‘Now.’
Michel fished his phone from his pocket, dialled the number. Iain took it from him. ‘This is Iain Black,’ he said. ‘I’m with your son Michel. He says you wanted to talk to me.’
A moment or two of silence. Butros Bejjani was reputed to be as sharp as knives. ‘Yes, Mr Black,’ he said. ‘I was hoping you’d join us for lunch.’
‘To eat it or to be it?’
Bejjani laughed. ‘You’d be my guest, Mr Black. My honoured guest. If you know anything about me, which I think we both know that you do, you’ll be aware that I take the obligations of hospitality most seriously. Besides, if you weren’t as eager to discuss yesterday’s horrors with me as I am with you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?’
‘Okay,’ said Iain. ‘Lunch it is.’
ELEVEN
I
The road out of Antioch was cramped with roadworks, a dual-carriageway reduced to a slow slalom of single lanes. They passed an apartment block in mid-demolition, lumps of concrete hanging bizarrely like dreadlocks from bent and rusted reinforcing rods. But finally traffic loosened. They crossed a ridge and the crescent bay of Samandag lay beneath them. They drove north along a coastal strip, whose hotels, cafés and shops were either closed or lightly used. It was early season still, and bombs weren’t good for business.
They passed out of the town. A sandy track split the beach from a scrubby hinterland of farm buildings, overgrown plots and polythene greenhouses. They overtook four boys playing Ben Hur on a pair of pony-carts. They crossed a small inlet bridge. It grew prettier. The sea somehow looked warmer here, the sand more golden, the apple and cherry blossom brighter, groves jewelled with lemons and oranges. A flight of white birds frolicked and whirled, weaving joyous patterns against blue sky and green hillsides. They reached a fishing village with a walled harbour of dinghies, smacks, even a coastguard gunboat. But the Dido was a class apart, the largest and most gorgeous catamaran Iain had ever seen, its twin hulls of dazzling white fibreglass set with perfectly polished black windows. A slightly built man with thinning silver hair and pale blue-grey eyes was waiting for them on deck. Butros Bejjani. He was wearing blue deck shoes and cream cotton trousers and a collarless white linen shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, and he held his hands clasped lightly behind his back. He smiled drily at Michel’s dishevelled state then turned to Iain. ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ he said.
‘How could I refuse?’
‘Any fault was mine, not my son’s. I was upset by yesterday’s horrors. Yet I shouldn’t have let it get to me as I did.’ He turned his gaze on Iain. ‘It’s just that I like to look a man in his eye when I ask him whether he tried to kill me.’
‘Happens a lot, does it?’
‘More than I would wish.’ He gestured at a man in blue flannel trousers and a yellow linen shirt standing in the shadow behind him. ‘My son Georges,’ he said. ‘He went ahead of me into Daphne yesterday, to make sure it was safe. He was driving a black 4×4 with tinted windows, exactly like the one I was in myself, both of which we’d hired through one of our Turkish subsidiaries. He was barely a hundred metres from the hotel when the bomb went off.’
‘I was closer than that. My friend was closer still.’
‘I know, Mr Black. And I am truly sorry for your colleague. So I do not believe you planted or triggered the bomb yourself. On the other hand, you weren’t there for pleasure, were you? You were there on a job. You were there, specifically, because a client of Global Analysis hired you to spy on me.’ He gave a nod to a crewman, and they cast off at once, began to burble backwards out of their mooring. ‘So it must have crossed your mind that perhaps they wanted you there for more than just spying. It must have crossed your mind that perhaps they hired you to find out for them when I was within range of their device, perhaps even to use you as scapegoats in the aftermath.’
‘I won’t tell you who our client is, if that’s where this is heading,’ said Iain, following Bejjani up steps to another deck where a table was sumptuously laid with heaped platters of mouthwatering Lebanese starters beneath a canopy of white silk. ‘But I will tell you this: I’m going to find out who killed my friend, whatever it takes. Then I’m going to make them pay. Even if they are a client.’
Bejjani nodded as he motioned for Iain to sit beside him. ‘And will you keep me informed of your progress?’
Iain considered this. ‘If it turns out you were the target yesterday, then yes. I don’t hold with assassination. And I’ll also let you know what you need to do to protect yourself. Beyond that, I make no promises. Not until I know more.’
‘Very well.’
‘And you? Will you tell me what you learn?’
Bejjani spread his hands. ‘I am a simple banker, Mr Black. I wouldn’t know how even to start such an investigation. But should any relevant information come my way, I will, of course, gladly share it with you.’
‘Like who you were going to meet in Daphne yesterday?’
‘Any relevant information. That is not relevant.’
‘And you’re sure about that, are you? You were quite right earlier when you suggested I’d done my homework on you. One of the things I discovered is that enough people mean you harm that you rarely leave Tyre these days, let alone Lebanon. Yet here you are. So how can you be certain that your meeting yesterday wasn’t a trap?’
Bejjani frowned slightly. To Iain’s surprise, it seemed he genuinely hadn’t considered this possibility before. But then he shook his head. ‘It wasn’t a trap,’ he said.
‘You’re sure?’
‘As sure as I can be of anything. But should that change …’
Iain nodded. Bejjani would no more give up a client than he would – especially as his were rumoured to include Mexican cartels, Russian oligarchs, Arabian royalty and Chinese kleptocrats. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘That seems fair.’
‘Good,’ smiled Bejjani, reaching for a wicker basket of bread and the nearest bowl of hummus. ‘Then let us eat.’
II
Zehra stood in the doorway of the Salamis Road fast-food restaurant and looked for Andreas Burak. The place was full but only one man answered the description she’d been given: a heavy-set forty-someth
ing sitting by himself, spooning up lunch with one hand while he tapped away at his phone with the other. She went to stand by his table and waited for him to force-swallow an outsized chunk of spit-roasted lamb. ‘So you’re Taner’s mother, eh?’ he asked.
His question took her aback. When she’d referred to her son on the phone, as a way to explain her interest in his footage, she was sure she hadn’t mentioned his first name. ‘Do you know him?’ she asked.
‘I met him a few times,’ shrugged Burak. ‘He always spoke fondly of you.’
‘No he didn’t,’ said Zehra.
‘No he didn’t,’ acknowledged Andreas. He gave her a transparently false smile that was somehow disarming even so. ‘All these arrests,’ he said. ‘It’s hard for a man to know who he can trust.’ His phone vibrated. He checked it briefly, frowned, set it back down. There was something slightly manic about him, as though trying to do one thing too many, and failing. ‘So you wish to see my footage of that rally, yes? Why that one? Your son gives lots of speeches.’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You can if you want to see my footage.’
She met his gaze frankly. ‘You don’t want me to tell you. I assure you.’
He picked up his can of fizzy orange, sucked it through his straw until it made rude noises. But then he came to a decision. ‘With me, then,’ he said. The booth was narrow. He had to edge sideways out of it, push himself to his feet. He led her out then down an alley to a litter-strewn road of shabby housing. He didn’t talk to her or even look at her, but rather checked his phone like a nervous tic. Occasionally he’d snort or laugh. Twice, he stopped to tap out some new message. Zehra grew increasingly irritated, but it was hard to shame a man who wouldn’t even look at you. He led the way into the lobby of an apartment block, let the door slap back in her face. He belched inside the lift as they were going up to the top floor, filling the cramped space with pungent smells. His apartment proved surprisingly plush and spacious. A work-table against the facing wall was cluttered with computer equipment. ‘I’ll need a minute,’ he said. She nodded and stood beside him. ‘No,’ he said, pointing her at his balcony doors. ‘Out there.’
She sniffed as she went out. She knew all too well the things men got up to on their machines. The view from his balcony, however, drove such thoughts from her mind. The city had somehow vanished. Instead, a lake of wading birds surrounded by swaying walls of rushes, then grassland all the way to the sea. ‘Belongs to the army, of course,’ grunted Andreas, coming out to join her, as if everyone had the same question. ‘Those bastards always grab the best land for themselves. Imagine what we Cypriots could do with it if we were allowed.’
‘Ruin your view, for a start.’
Andreas laughed loudly. ‘That’s what your son said.’
She looked sharply at him. ‘Taner was here?’
‘I teach new media at the university, among other things. Plus I run the news section of the website. That makes me a journalist of sorts. Being a journalist means I have to appear neutral; not that I have to be neutral.’ He led her back inside, had her sit, played footage of the rally. A huge banner above the stage declared CYPRUS FOR THE CYPRIOTS, while a thin man with a high-pitched voice talked about DNA-testing and how Greek and Turkish Cypriots were one beneath the skin.
‘I want to see the audience,’ said Zehra.
Andreas fast-forwarded. On stage, the thin man charged comically through his speech. The camera panned around a mostly empty auditorium. She leaned in and squinted but saw no one old enough to match the Professor’s description.
‘Who are you looking for?’ asked Andreas.
‘No one.’
‘If you tell me, maybe I can help.’
The thin man finished with a raised fist. The camera tracked him off the stage past several other attendees, including a brief glimpse of an older man in a worn leather jacket, with short grizzled hair and a three-day beard. But it was his eyes that gave him away, the deadness in them. ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Can you go back?’
‘Of course.’ He played the footage in reverse. The man reappeared. ‘Hell’s teeth!’ he muttered. ‘He looks a charmer. Who is he?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Sure!’ he scoffed. But he didn’t push it. ‘You want a copy, yes?’ He put a rectangle around the man’s face, enlarged it, sharpened it, sent it to his printer. He folded the page in half before handing it to her. ‘You should be careful with men like this,’ he warned her.
Zehra nodded soberly. ‘I will be,’ she said.
III
The breeze was light but the catamaran was so slick it still sliced through the gorgeous Mediterranean afternoon, heading north-west towards Karataş. No sign of women or children on board, though Iain knew that all three Bejjani were fathers as well as husbands, confirming for him that this trip was pure business.
Course followed course, each with its own wines. After the starters came red snapper in a sharp chilli and coriander sauce; succulent spit-roasted lamb so salty and fatty it would make a dietician blanch. Baklava and kanafeh and then thick sweet coffee that Butros Bejjani poured himself from a golden coffee pot into fine-white porcelain cups that seemed incongruous on a boat as built for speed as this, and which rattled in their saucers as they headed back to harbour, tacking into the breeze.
Conversation was a dance: they each tried to lure the other into indiscretion, but they were all skilful enough to waltz back to safe ground without being rude. And Butros took the opportunity to show himself better than his reputation as banker to the underworld would imply. He enthused about the sports teams he sponsored, the hospitals he supported, the Moustafa Farroukh landscapes he’d donated to the Beirut Art Centre. His love for Lebanon was obvious, even if his stated hopes of a brighter and less sectarian future came across as somewhat pious. In short, he treated Iain like a journalist to be charmed, and made sure to tell him nothing.
An irony, then, that by telling him nothing, he told him all he needed to know.
Iain sat back in his canvas chair. It creaked luxuriously, as if it had enjoyed the meal as much as he had. ‘So then,’ he said. ‘Tell me about Dido.’
Bejjani’s bland smile didn’t flicker for a moment. But his eyes did. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.
‘Your boat,’ said Iain. ‘What made you call her the Dido?’
A faintly rueful smile played on Bejjani’s lips, as though he suspected he’d been rumbled. ‘I’m from Tyre,’ he said finally. ‘Home of the Phoenicians, the greatest seafarers the world has ever seen.’ He waved a hand at the expanse of Mediterranean that lay around them, at the harbour mouth they were fast approaching. ‘Dido was their most celebrated princess. What else would I call my boat?’
Iain nodded. When first he’d heard that Bejjani was heading to Turkey for a meeting, he’d taken it for granted that it had to be with a very important client. Why else would he risk leaving Tyre, after all? Yet once Karin had told him of Nathan Coates’ purpose, he’d begun to suspect another possibility. What were the odds, after all, of two billionaires having unrelated meetings in the same hotel on the same day? Besides, Butros Bejjani didn’t merely support Lebanese sport, medicine and art. His most generous gifts had been of Phoenician artefacts to Lebanon’s National Museum. Yet no mention of those over lunch, almost as though he’d not wanted to draw attention to them. Iain looked levelly at him. ‘Have you ever heard of Nathan Coates?’ he asked.
‘Nathan Coates?’ Bejjani looked genuinely puzzled. ‘Who is he?’
‘A very wealthy American oilman,’ said Iain. Crockery rattled on the table as they nudged the harbour wall, and crewmen hurriedly yet quietly secured them to their mooring. ‘An avid collector of historic artefacts, just like yourself. More to the point, he was in a meeting in the Daphne International Hotel yesterday when the bomb went off. He was almost certainly killed in the blast, along with his head of security and the black market dealer he was there to see. So let me take a wild guess: you were head
ing into Daphne to see these same artefacts and maybe buy them for yourself.’
Bejjani was silent for several seconds as he considered this information. ‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken,’ he said finally. ‘I’ve never heard of Nathan Coates, or of this mysterious dealer of yours.’
‘Yes, you have,’ said Iain. ‘Maybe not of Coates, but of the dealer, for sure. Who was he? What was he selling? Phoenician pieces? Mycenaean?’
Again Bejjani gave himself time to think. Again he decided to play coy. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I have phone calls to make. My bank doesn’t run itself, you know.’ And he smiled politely and put down his napkin and rose to his feet to indicate that lunch was at an end.
TWELVE
I
Georges Bejjani walked Iain Black to the SUV. He thanked him for coming then told Sami to drive him to his hotel or wherever he wanted to go. He smiled broadly until they were out of sight then he whirled around and marched back on board to where his father and brother were waiting. ‘Artefacts?’ he asked incredulously. ‘All this for artefacts?’
Butros gave Georges a sour look then beckoned him and Michel to join him in his cabin. ‘To start with,’ he said, closing the door, ‘our recent guest confirmed he was in Daphne yesterday because of our meeting. That he didn’t know who it was with strongly implies that the leak is on our end. Our security is therefore compromised. So please think in future before you speak loudly enough for the whole world to hear. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Father,’ said Georges. ‘I’m sorry. But I still can’t believe you thought it worth risking your life for—’
‘Michel,’ interjected his father. ‘Perhaps you might get the search for our leak underway.’
‘Now?’
‘Yes. Now. I’d also like to know more about this man Nathan Coates. And please arrange to have our recent guest watched too. He’s seen our faces so you’ll need to hire someone new, someone local. But make sure they can be discreet. We don’t want them spotted too.’
