Evolution of Fear

by Paul E. Hardisty

  She was moving quickly but he closed the gap, the sound of his boot soles on the pavement reverberating between the close-built, balcony-studded façades. He’d reached the vans when the woman stopped. She was alone, the next intersection still twenty metres away, the traffic lights burning green, waiting cars painting the tarmac with their headlights. Then she turned and looked back at him.

  16

  Constantinople Electric

  They moved like assassins through the dinnertime streets. Just before the main road they turned down a narrow lane, all Ottoman facings and overhanging balconies, electric light banding through shuttered windows. The lane narrowed, split. They veered south across scattered islands of lamplight, through wide channels of darkness. The laneway ended at the high wall of an anonymous mosque, ancient even here, another of the many converted Christian churches, the minarets grafted afterthoughts, prosthetics. He swung open an iron gate. She reached for his hand. He led her through the unlit grounds, under centuries-old cypresses swaying among the first stars, past tombstones with names long since erased, up through the empty courtyard to the eastern gate. From there they followed a stonework footpath to a narrow stairway that twisted up through the lithic guts of the city until they emerged at a promontory.

  All of Istanbul lay below.

  The Golden Horn pulsed like a diode, electrons pouring in through the Galata Bridge, Constantinople electric.

  They were alone.

  ‘Magnifique,’ she said.

  He looked into her eyes. ‘Ja, definitely.’

  Her eyes smiled.

  He reached up for her veil but before he could pull it aside she took his hand, moved it away. ‘I am being followed,’ she said.

  ‘I noticed.’

  She looked down, still holding his hand. ‘I know, Claymore. Please do not say it.’

  Clay glanced back along the pathway. ‘There is a place we can go. The proprietor is a friend. We’ll be safe there, for a little while anyway.’

  She nodded.

  He glanced at her case, smiled. ‘Planning to stay the night?’

  She tutted, took his hand. ‘Let’s ontrek.’

  He smiled again, couldn’t stop smiling. The French-accented Afrikaans sounded sweet from her tongue. Soos engele. Like angels.

  After half an hour of backtracking and careful halts, she – the one trained in counter-surveillance – was sure they were not being followed. Ten minutes later they slipped into the service entrance of the Pera Palas hotel and made their way to the lobby. Kemal Atatürk glared down at them from his portrait above the reception desk as if he were still here, plotting the revolution from these very rooms, from the Long Bar across the lobby.

  The proprietor was happy to see Clay, agreed it had been some time, and with a discrete nod agreed that he was in fact not here at all, nor had they ever met, then passed him a room key without registering them. Clay led Rania to the old, wrought-steel, open-cage lift. The uniformed operator touched his fez, closed the grille and pushed the lever, starting the cables hissing up to the fourth floor.

  Clay dumped their bags on the floor, bolted and chained the door, walked to the balcony and opened up the big French doors. Night air streamed in, the sounds and smells of the city, all of its layered chaos.

  He turned to face her.

  Rania pulled off her burqa. She was the same woman he’d first met in the wilds of Yemen barely seven months ago, the one who’d uncovered in him a few dim coals of hope for the future, the same, but different somehow, older, more bruised, despite the heart-stopping beauty. Two metres separated them. It felt like two kilometres.

  He was about to ask her why she’d said what she’d said – about going back to Africa on his own, about it all being, what was the word she’d used? premature – when she raised her finger to her lips. Then she stepped towards him, wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her, her lips micron close so he could feel the pulsing heat of them.

  ‘Hurry,’ she whispered.

  Later he woke to the sounds of the street. She moulded to him, head on his chest, naked thigh drawn up over his knees. He breathed her in, filled his lungs with her to overdose from it.

  She stirred.

  He kissed her head.

  ‘Chéri,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Clay said, expecting a rebuke.

  ‘Tu es impossible,’ she said, delivering it. She ran her hand along his torso, down to his stomach, taking him in her hand. Then she pressed her lips to his ear, as if frightened that someone might hear. ‘Do it again,’ she whispered.

  Afterwards, Clay picked up the phone, ordered some late dinner to the room: salad, dolmades, roast chicken, bread, fresh lime juice, water. Rania rose, put on a hotel housecoat and started unpacking her case.

  ‘Don’t get too settled,’ he said, watching her. ‘We may have to leave in a hurry.’

  She stood facing him, a small book cradled in her hands. The page edges had been gilded once, the silver text-block now a worn, tarnished grey. She looked up at him. ‘It was my father’s Koran,’ she said. ‘I always have it with me.’ She held it out for him.

  It was a small leather-bound volume, the Arabic script dense, impenetrable. On the inside front cover was a handwritten dedication, also in Arabic. All Clay could make out was the year, 1980. He closed the cover and handed it back to her.

  ‘Madame Debret told me your father was killed when you were young,’ he said.

  She took the book, held it in both hands. ‘I was twelve.’

  ‘Algerian Islamists, she told me.’

  Rania combed one hand through her hair and placed the Koran on the bedside table. ‘They came into our house, herded my mother and me into the sitting room, made my father kneel in front of us and shot him in the head.’

  Clay felt his heart stop. ‘Jesus, Ra, I’m sorry.’

  Rania looked at him for a moment as if she was going to say something, hung on it, frowned, then picked up her bag and disappeared into the bathroom. Moments later, the sound of a bath being run, steam wisping from the half-closed door. He lay back on the bed, closed his eyes. He heard the taps squeak, the rush of water slow then stop, the lap as she stepped into the tub, sank in. Then water lifted in cupped hands, poured over bare shoulders, laving over breasts, dripping from nipples. He could feel the hormones swimming through his body, the echo of her touch, the adrenaline there too. He was hard again, aching. He stood, walked naked to the balcony, gripped the rail as if it were a lifeline and looked out over the city, all the distance there, a half-moon rising over the Sea of Marmara, big and red through the smog and the haze from the sea.

  She called to him, her voice echoing off the bathroom tile.

  She was lying in the tub, wet hair plastered over her skull, her chest. Her breasts bobbed on the surface. They were big. Bigger than he remembered.

  ‘Times like this I wish I still had two hands,’ he said, staring.

  She smiled up at him, lowered her eyes. ‘You do well enough with one.’

  He pulled up a stool and sat next to her.

  She ran her hands through her hair, wrung out one of the tresses. ‘You should marry me,’ she said.

  Clay ran his gaze from her eyes to her feet and back up again, slowly. He did not want to ask her about what she’d said on the phone, why she’d pushed him away. Not now.

  ‘I should,’ he said. ‘It’s late, now. How about tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, not smiling. ‘Let’s.’

  ‘And then we’ll ontrek, wife. Disappear.’

  Rania crossed her arms across her chest. ‘After,’ she said.

  ‘After what?’

  ‘After I finish this story.’

  Clay sat a moment staring into the water. ‘They burned your place down,’ he said, his tone flat.

  She looked up, confusion in her eyes. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I was in Champéry two days ago. Your chalet burned to the ground. It wasn’
t a coincidence, Rania. I was trying to tell you on the phone, they’re on to you.’

  Rania gasped, put her hand to her mouth. ‘Mon dieu. Heloïse. Madame Debret. Is she safe?’

  ‘The aubergiste said no one was home when it went up.’

  ‘Al hamdillulah,’ she muttered. ‘That explains why I have not been able to reach her. I hope she is alright. She must be very sad. It was her grandfather’s house.’

  ‘I looked everywhere for her. All over the village. No one has seen her since the fire.’

  ‘Hope warned me this would happen,’ she said.

  ‘Hope?’

  ‘Hope Bachmann. We have been working together in Cyprus. Or rather she has been providing me with information. We…’ she hesitated, crossed her legs under the water, ‘we have become friends.’ Rania reached for a towel. Clay passed one to her. She stood and wrapped herself, did the same with her hair.

  ‘University of California?’ he asked.

  Rania nodded. ‘She said that sooner or later, if I wrote those stories, I would be threatened.’

  Clay sat looking at her. Sooner, then. He didn’t say it.

  ‘She has had death threats, Clay, just for speaking out.’ Rania stood before the mirror, wiped away the condensation with a hand towel and considered her reflection.

  Clay looked down at his feet, the steam beading on the marble floor. ‘It’s not because of what you’ve written, Rania. I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s Regina Medved. She wants revenge.’

  Still staring at his feet, he told her about Eben, the threats delivered through his bank, about Crowbar’s betrayal, his escape across the Channel. ‘I think LeClerc sold us out.’

  Rania turned. ‘Impossible,’ she said.

  ‘He told me you were here. His Istanbul station chief is the only one who knew about our rendezvous at the Seglik Merkezi Hotel.’

  ‘Hamour, yes. He passed on your message. Marcus Edward. He did exactly what you asked him, Claymore.’

  ‘And that thug arrives at the hotel moments after you.’

  ‘He was following me before I got the message from Hamour.’

  ‘Broad shoulders, pronounced widow’s peak?’

  She nodded. ‘I thought I had lost him.’

  ‘LeClerc was the only person who knew I was coming to Istanbul. I was tailed all the way from the airport, for Christ’s sake.’

  Rania scowled at him in the mirror. ‘Medved has informants everywhere, Clay, in the customs services, in the government, the airlines. It could have been anyone.’

  There was a rap at the door. Clay turned, closed the bathroom door behind him, walked to the suite’s entrance and looked through the door lens. A liveried bellboy stood in the hallway with a trolley, blown out, spherical. He was alone. Clay opened the door, ushered the bellboy in and watched him open up the table, spread white linen, centre a single rose in a crystal vase, remove the silver cloches and lay out the food. Clay signed the bill, palmed him a tip then bolted the door behind him.

  Rania emerged fifteen minutes later, radiant, wearing a clinging, white silk nightgown. Clay poured them some fresh lime juice.

  ‘Not drinking?’ she asked, eyes like black obsidian.

  ‘Trying to stop,’ he said.

  ‘Are you changing for me?’ she asked, smiling. ‘I hope not.’

  ‘For me.’

  ‘Good, then.’

  He tried to eat, watched her. He wasn’t hungry.

  Later that night they woke, bodies entwined. The curtains streamed in a cold breeze and the shutters banged on their hinges. Clay rose and closed the shutters, then slid back in beside her, soaking up her warmth. Lying there in the darkness, she told him everything that had happened since London.

  After fleeing the hotel room with only the clothes she was wearing, her passport and her purse, she’d booked the first flight from Heathrow to Geneva, gone back to Champéry as he’d asked and stayed put, expecting to hear from him. A week passed, two. Then she’d heard Medved’s murder reported on the radio, and while she’d hoped he hadn’t done it, she knew he had. She was angry, she said. Angry with him for leaving her, angry with herself for doing as he’d asked, angry with that conservative Muslim part of her that reflexively sought to defer to a husband she didn’t have. She used the word without irony or artifice, as if it were fact. After six weeks, she’d resolved that it was over. That he didn’t love her. That the whole thing had been stillborn, nothing more than a short-lived chemical reaction born of fear and proximity and lust and shared purpose.

  Clay said nothing, let her speak. The infernal husband.

  ‘And then LeClerc contacted me and asked me to cover a story about stolen religious artefacts in Northern Cyprus. I have always been fascinated by the clash of cultures in the Levant. I grew up with it. So I took the assignment, started researching and flew out there. It was good to have something else to do.’ She shifted up onto her elbow, ran her hand across his chest.

  ‘Madame Debret told me that LeClerc insisted you take the job.’

  ‘He was very résolu, very keen.’

  Clay said nothing, remembering the last time he spoke with LeClerc, his voice clear of the hesitation and fear Clay had heard through the phone in Santander. He wondered what had changed and why.

  ‘On my first trip to Nicosia, I met Nikos Chrisostomedes,’ Rania continued, ‘a powerful, ridiculously wealthy Cypriot businessman. He is rumoured to be the money behind Neo-Enosis. Greek Cypriots see him as something of a hero, tilting at the nasty Turks and the UN. He is very popular at the moment.’ She traced her hand towards his shoulder blade, touched the pendant that hung from a leather string around his neck, turned it over in her fingers, just as she had months ago in that little village in the Yemen hinterland. ‘You never told me what this was,’ she whispered.

  Clay looked out into the darkness, the city glow coming like a blurred memory through the shutters. ‘Chrisostomedes is a property developer, isn’t he?’

  ‘Correct. According to him, the thefts of religious artefacts in the north are a coordinated effort led by one man, Mohamed Erkan, a Turk who has built up huge business interests in Northern Cyprus since 1974.’

  ‘I’ve seen pictures of him in the paper. Lots of them.’

  ‘Not recently. His money has brought misfortune. Three years ago his wife was blinded in an acid attack. His son was killed shortly after in a helicopter crash. Since then, he has rarely been seen in public.’ Rania snuggled closer, still fondling the pendant, tracing the flat curvature of it with her thumb. ‘It is so, how do you say, déchiré, as if it were torn from something. What is it from, Claymore?’

  He moved her hand away, propped himself up against the headboard. ‘What’s driving the market for the religious stuff?’

  ‘Most of the demand is coming from Russia. Communism is dead, faith has returned, and there is a new class of super-rich seeking to express themselves. The old illuminations are particularly prized, apparently.’

  ‘I’ve been following your stories,’ he said, too loud for the darkness. ‘Whenever I could.’

  She kissed his chest. ‘I interviewed government ministers on both sides of the Green Line, spoke to museum curators and Greek Orthodox priests. Everyone knows it is happening, but no one seems to know how to stop it. Most just do not seem to care. It was quite depressing, actually.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It also became apparent that artefacts are not the real issue.’

  ‘Land?’

  ‘Exactement. Ever since 1974, every reunification plan has included the stipulation that land in the north owned by Greeks should be returned, or appropriate compensation offered.’

  ‘And every plan has failed,’ he said.

  ‘Oui. It has always been the main sticking point in the negotiations.’

  ‘That’s because before ’74, Greek Cypriots owned ninety percent of the land in the north.’

  Rania glanced at him sidelong.

  ‘I lived there for three years.’ He wasn’t sure he’d eve
r told her. ‘It’s all you ever hear about.’

  She pushed herself up against the headboard, pulled the sheet up over her breasts. ‘Hope says Chrisostomedes is using the plight of the turtles to focus international attention on the theft of Greek land in the north. After all, it is the beachfront property they all want, the turtle-nesting beaches currently protected by the UN.’

  She reached up for the pendant again, traced her fingers along the kudu leather strap around his neck. ‘Why won’t you tell me? What is it?’

  He looked her in the eyes, square. ‘Bone.’

  ‘It is so jagged. So heurté.’

  ‘That’s what happens,’ he said, taking her hand gently in his and holding it tight. Something lurched inside him and he recognised it as fear, surfacing again, a recurrent malaria from whose delirium respite was only ever temporary. Fear, and something else.

  ‘Why are you here, Rania?’

  ‘Chrisostomedes is behind two of the biggest proposed seafront resort developments in the south, including one near Lara Beach, a major turtle-nesting site. Hope says he does not give a–’ Rania stumbled, stopped. ‘She says shit, about the turtles; that all he cares about is the land.’ The word seemed incongruous in her mouth, bitter of taste. She winced. ‘I have been up there, to Karpasia in the north. The TRNC Government people I spoke with were tentative and unhelpful. Everywhere I went, I was “escorted” by Turkish police. In Karpasia I tried to interview some of the locals. It was bizarre.’ She said it the French way, bizarre. ‘No one would speak to me. As soon as I mentioned the beaches, the turtles or the planned development, they would go quiet. And Erkan has already started work. New roads are going in, land is being cleared. It should not be happening – those beaches are UN World Heritage Sites – but it is. Chrisostomedes blames Erkan. Both governments seem to be blind to it, or worse. And people are dying – eight unsolved murders in the last month, all in Karpasia, usually the quietest, most out-of-the way place you could imagine.’