City of the Lost

by Will Adams

  As for the commanders themselves, they loaded the explosives they’d taken from the forest lair back onto vans and trucks, then drove them to multi-storey car parks, railway stations, street markets and other designated spots. And, finally, in a disused warehouse on a run-down industrial estate outside Ankara, five men of quiet purpose stripped down a horse-box in the livery of the Ankara mounted police, then oiled it and checked it all over one final time, as though their lives depended on it.

  III

  The girl Visser was inside the bank twenty minutes, plenty of time for Yasar to get them a room in the Nicosia Grand then rejoin them outside. She no longer had her red bag when she came out, and she looked in something of a daze. She waited for a break in traffic then hurried across the road and into the hotel. They went in after her. She headed for the lifts but the receptionist called her over, handed her a message. She ripped the envelope open as she went to the lifts. Emre ushered her in ahead of him. ‘Which floor?’ he asked, as Yasar and Rageh got in behind him.

  ‘Ten, thanks,’ she said.

  Yasar’s room was on the third floor. Emre punched the buttons. It was one of those ones with doors that take forever. He hit the button irritably to make them close. Visser frowned and looked oddly at him. Emre tried a reassuring smile but for some reason it didn’t seem to reassure her. She made abruptly for the closing doors. He grabbed her by her arm and threw her violently back against the mirrored rear wall. Then he clamped a hand over her mouth and pressed his knife against her throat. Her face drained of colour; her eyes went wide with terror. Emre grinned. Nothing thrilled him quite like the fear of a pretty woman. They set off upwards, reached the third floor. The doors slowly parted. Yasar looked out then gave the thumbs-up and hurried on ahead to open his room for them.

  ‘One sound, bitch,’ Emre warned Visser. ‘You understand me?’

  Her nod was barely perceptible, but enough. He looked out. A maid’s trolley was heaped high with used sheets and brushes, but there was no one in sight except for Yasar, beckoning from the far end of the corridor, right down by the fire exit. Stupid fuck could have got something closer. He put one hand on Visser’s arse, pressed his knife into her tit with his other, then fast-marched her along the corridor.

  A burst of TV laughter from one of the rooms gave him a start. He glanced around. The pain in his foot when the girl stamped on it was indescribable. He yowled to wake the dead. She tore herself free of him, fled through the fire-escape doors. A blink of stillness as Rageh and Yasar stood there open-mouthed, unable to believe he’d been bested by a girl. ‘Get her, you idiots,’ he yelled, hobbling towards the fire-doors. ‘Get her.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  I

  Huge crowds had been expected in Taksim Square. But not this huge. Marchers kept pouring in by the thousands, the tens of thousands, and the bridges and the approach roads and arcades were thronged as far as the eye could see. There were thousands of policemen too, many already dressed in riot gear, and dozens of empty paddy-wagons waiting for arrestees. Yet the mood was buoyant. And why not? It was spring, it was sunny, it was Friday. There was free music and treats for all the family: iced drinks for the children, roasted chestnuts and charred corn cobs dandruffed with salt.

  There was purpose in the air too. These were proud people. They didn’t ask for much. They harboured no wild ambitions for wealth. All they wanted was a fair wage for their hard work, enough to live on and raise their families. But fair wages weren’t the norm any more. The economic crisis had been bad enough; the recent bombings been worse. Tourism was devastated. Property prices had slumped. New construction projects had been mothballed, multitudes of workers laid off, undermining wages elsewhere. And don’t even mention the price of food and fuel and all the sneaky tax hikes that the politicians had thought they could slip through without anyone noticing.

  Even so, they might have borne it had they felt their troubles were being taken seriously. They didn’t. The new Prime Minister seemed sympathetic enough, but he was hapless; he didn’t have the balls. And the rest of his cabinet were a venal lot, career politicians in it for what they could get their hands on. So, for all the good humour, there was an edge to the singing that made the police nervous. And that nervousness gave the marchers extra voice, and made them bang their pots and pans all the louder, for it was a fine thing to be a part of such a vast movement, a fine thing to feel this kind of solidarity with so many good people just like themselves.

  Surely, this time, someone had to listen.

  II

  The stairwell was tight and poorly lit, the stone steps polished and slippery. Karin grabbed the rail to turn the corner, but she was going too fast and her ankles slipped from under her and she crashed into the wall and went tumbling. The double doors above her burst open again and two of the men came charging through together, followed by the third, limping badly but pointing his knife at her in promise of horrific revenges. She hauled herself up by the rail, ran down another two more flights only to take another tumble. Her hard heels were ideal for impressing bank managers and stomping the feet of abducting thugs, but hopeless for taking polished stairwells at speed. She kicked them off, ran on barefoot. Swing doors ahead. She punched through them and stumbled out into the hotel’s dining room, fighting to keep her balance. The place was empty except for an early lunch table giving orders to a waiter. They stared blankly at Karin as she raced past. One of the men closed up behind her, scrabbling at her shoulder, his wheezing sounding perversely like strained laughter. She crashed through more doors out into the hotel foyer. The receptionist was talking to a man who looked miraculously like Iain. He saw her and came racing over. She swerved at the last moment and he clubbed the man with his fist, sent him tumbling to the ground. But the man staggered back to his feet and then his two friends burst through the dining-room doors, and she grabbed Iain by his wrist and dragged him out of a side door into the hotel’s car park. There was a narrow alley to its rear. They fled down it onto a side road, jinking left and right until finally they reached a fringe of park across from the Old City and she couldn’t run any further and she stopped and put her hands on her knees and looked fearfully around, expecting the men to appear behind them. But they didn’t. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ she gasped. ‘What are you doing here? Who were those people?’

  He ignored her questions, gestured instead across the park at Nicosia’s Old City, a minor labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys. ‘There might be more of them,’ he told her. ‘We need to get off the street as soon as we can. They’ll be looking for couples. So you go first. Briskly but not too fast. I’ll be directly behind you. If you hear me shout, do exactly what I tell you. Okay?’

  She felt conspicuous without her shoes, but she began walking and didn’t look around. They reached the Old City without incident, went through a gate into a cobbled alley of tourist shops and pavement cafés. There was a boutique hotel ahead, its courtyard ablaze with baskets of blooming flowers. A woman with fleshy arms and a plastic red apron was clearing plates and cups from a table. ‘Do you have rooms?’ asked Karin.

  ‘We’re a hotel,’ she said, frowning down at Karin’s bare feet. ‘Of course we have rooms.’

  ‘Terrific,’ said Karin, as Iain arrived behind her. ‘Then perhaps you’d show us one.’

  III

  The jamb had splintered beyond easy repair. Zehra barely had to lean against the front door for it to give. She slipped inside, closed it behind her. Her overpowering first impression was the smell, as though something had died beneath the floorboards. No wonder the police had laughed and left in such a hurry.

  The note they’d left was a terse invitation to call the local station. She left it where it was, set straight to work. She photographed indiscriminately, not sure what might prove significant. There were pale patches on his walls where pictures had once hung. The furniture was old and shabby, crudely mended with black tape. Several of his floor tiles were broken and his oven and refrigerator were almost as
old as Zehra’s own. His cupboards contained a few jars and tins of food, but nothing fresh. His study was lined with learned-looking histories in a variety of languages. She photographed their spines. His desk drawers and filing cabinet were empty. Either he’d packed everything up before he’d left, or someone had beaten her here.

  The wooden lean-to against the side of his house proved to be his workshop. Rakes, spades and mattocks were lined up against the wall like irregular soldiers, while saws and chisels and hammers hung from pegs. He had a number of electrical and motorized tools too, all of which looked old and very well used, other than a heavy-duty hand-drill still in its original box, along with a selection of drill-bits whose perfect black finish suggested they’d never been used at all – except for the largest, which was already worn down to the grey steel beneath, and which was lightly powdered with cement dust, as though he’d used it to dig up his floor.

  Upstairs, now. Yellowed walls in his bathroom, an unflattering mirror, smears of black-spot mould in hard to reach places. No toothbrush, toothpaste or soap. The first bedroom was so dusty that it couldn’t have been used in months. A cobweb caught in her hair. She brushed it off. A matching set of wheeled suitcases stood against the far wall, except that the two largest of them were missing, to judge from the patches of dust-free floor. Nothing in the wardrobe but a cardboard box containing several empty picture frames that perhaps explained the pale patches on the walls downstairs.

  The next room along was clearly where he’d slept, though it lacked personal touches. Surplus hangars in his wardrobe and empty spaces in the drawer beneath both suggested he’d packed for perhaps three or four days, certainly not enough to justify two large suitcases. And she couldn’t find any socks or underwear, which was odd. She looked around. His bed was covered by a tatty white spread that dropped almost to the floor. She checked beneath it, one side and then the other. Yes. There were two drawers in the bed’s base. The first contained his missing underclothes; the second was half filled with photographs and documents, print-outs from the Internet and handwritten letters in multiple languages, some of which were still in their envelopes. Perhaps these were the missing documents from the desk and filing cabinet downstairs, or perhaps whoever had taken those had simply not found these. She sat on the bed and skim-read a few of the letters. His name appeared to be Yasin Baykam. He had a sister in Istanbul. He’d been at loggerheads with some local farming commune over who should pay for the—

  Something banged loudly outside. She went to the window. An old truck was passing along the road. Her nerve was shaken, however. It was time to leave. She fetched the smallest of the wheeled suitcases and packed all the photographs and documents into it. It was so heavy that she had to bump it downstairs one step at a time. She closed the front door behind her then ducked her head and hurried back through the citrus grove, dragging the case after her like a sulking child.

  An army Land-Rover drove by just as she reached the road. Her heart went crazy on her. They were sure to stop and ask her to explain her flustered appearance and odd behaviour, demand to see inside the suitcase; but they simply gazed past her as if she wasn’t there. Nothing in this world was quite so invisible as an old woman in widow’s black struggling with a suitcase. Normally, this would have infuriated Zehra. But sometimes, she had to admit, it had its benefits.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I

  The uniforms and helmets were copies rather than the real thing, but you’d have needed a close examination to tell. They had no badges or tags, of course, though that wasn’t the give-away it might have been, because it was standard practice among riot police to remove or cover up anything that could identify them on days like this, precisely to avoid being caught by some do-gooder with a camera-phone.

  They chose a young man with a union banner, a pronounced limp and lips reddened from drinking pomegranate juice from a fat-mouthed bottle. He had soft plump features and the wary eyes of the picked-upon. They seized him and dragged him down an alley cluttered with bins and black bags into a boarded-up shop. They punched him to the ground and kicked him in the stomach and face while their comrade filmed through a broken window so that it would look like some random passer-by had stumbled upon the incident by chance.

  The young man soon fell unconscious. They carried on kicking him anyway, then left him for dead. They uploaded the footage anonymously onto YouTube and the unofficial Facebook page for the Day of Action, then sent out alerts and links on Twitter and other social media. Within an hour, it had been viewed over 100,000 times; and those who hadn’t yet seen it had been told about it through the grapevine. And suddenly there was a new edge to the chanting in the squares.

  Suddenly there was anger.

  II

  The concierge showed them to a snug double with powder blue walls and pink-and-white chintz bedclothes. She took their passports to copy and tried to tell them about breakfast. Karin thanked her and hustled her out the door. Then she turned to Iain. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘What the fuck’s going on? Who were those men? What did they want with me? And what are you even doing here? You’re supposed to be in Egypt.’

  ‘I ran into these guys last night. Friends of theirs, at least. They pretty much admitted they were the ones behind Daphne. They wanted to shut me up before I could go public.’

  ‘Shut you up? You mean …?’

  He nodded but didn’t elaborate. ‘I got away from them. They threatened to come after you if I blabbed. I tried to warn you but I’d lost your mobile number so I caught a flight here then had a colleague call you at your hotel.’

  ‘They left a message with reception. I was reading it when those guys jumped me.’ She sat heavily on the bed. ‘Jesus. What do we do? Do we go to the police?’

  Iain grimaced. Going to the police would inevitably lead to the whole story coming out, including the taxi-driver locked in his own boot. That was certain to bring a shit-storm down upon his head unless he could first find a way to establish his innocence. ‘It’s not that simple,’ he told her. ‘They’re bound to call the Turks to check our story. But these people have got good connections in the Turkish police.’ His bruises had stiffened; he winced as he sat beside her. ‘And if they find out where we are …’

  She frowned at him. ‘What’s up? Are you hurt?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The way you grimaced just now. And when we were running earlier.’

  ‘Like I said, I ran into these people last night.’

  ‘Take off your clothes,’ she said.

  ‘Now you’re talking.’

  ‘You have injuries,’ she said severely. ‘They need attention.’

  ‘They’re fine.’

  ‘Show me.’ He shrugged and stripped off his shirt, revealing the welts on his forearms and wrists, the bruising on his chest. Karin’s initial shock hardened into anger. ‘Stay here,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

  ‘You’re not going out,’ he said. ‘Not on your own.’

  ‘Those cuts will infect.’

  ‘I don’t care. You’re not going out on your own.’

  She sighed, relented. ‘I’ll ask the concierge for a first-aid kit.’

  He sat on the edge of the bed, gingerly pulled off his trousers. His socks had glued to his ankles with blood and other seepage. He went to the bathroom to wipe away the worst of it. Karin returned. He wrapped a towel around his waist and went back out. She held up a red first-aid box in mock triumph but stopped smiling when she saw his ankles. ‘Those fuckers,’ she said. ‘I hate them.’

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ he told her. ‘Truly, it isn’t.’

  She had him lie on his back on the bed then sat beside him and attended to his feet. She swabbed them with cotton wool and iodine, rubbed in antiseptic cream, covered them with gauze and bandage cut from a roll. Her back was to him, her T-shirt tucked into her waistband, tautening each time she leaned forwards, emphasizing the ridge of her spine, the strap of her bra. The way Tisha had looked after
him in hospital had played a big part in his falling for her: that potent combination of concern and not taking any of his shit. Without thinking, he placed his hand upon Karin’s lower back, began caressing her with his thumb through the thin cotton. She glanced around at him. ‘Stop that,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, taking away his hand. ‘Damned thing has a mind of its own. It can be really embarrassing sometimes.’

  ‘I’d imagine.’ She finished his ankles, turned to face him. She rested a hand on the bed the other side of him to take her weight as she checked his chest. Wisps of hair spilled forwards over her eyes. She tucked them back behind her ears. She took a tube of heat-rub from the first-aid kit, squeezed a thin white worm of it onto her fingers, massaged it in to his chest, making his heart go hot. A little double crinkle appeared between her brows whenever she concentrated. Her eyes were a slightly paler blue than he’d remembered. She locked her elbow to take her weight so that her arm was bent slightly beyond the straight. Light freckles ran down to her wrist before dispersing into the darker tanning of her hand. She had silver rings set with semiprecious stones on many of her fingers, but not on all. ‘So do you have a boyfriend back in the States, then?’ he asked.

  She smiled but shook her head. ‘Nathan kind of made it impossible.’

  ‘Good,’ he said.

  She laughed at his directness. ‘It wouldn’t work,’ she said. ‘Like I said the other day, I don’t do flings any more. And we live halfway across the world from each other.’

  ‘I thought you were going back to Holland.’

  ‘I’m thinking about it. I haven’t decided yet. It depends where I can get work.’

  ‘Come in with me,’ he said. ‘I’m about to set up on my own. We can pool our skills, set up the world’s first Homeric-themed business intelligence agency. It’d be our edge. Our USP.’