Thornton leaned to his side and Duplessis whispered something into his ear, to which Thornton nodded. ‘In addition, and for the record, I find your story highly unlikely. In effect, you are calling a candidate for the Presidency of this country an extortionist. This Commission cannot and will not tolerate slander.’
The audience erupted in a wave of cheering and clapping.
Hope put her hand over her microphone and leaned towards Thornton. They spoke for a long time, back and forth, Thornton shaking his head, Hope animated, pressing her point. Finally Thornton took the microphone and peered down through smudged bifocals. ‘Mister Straker, I am told you have information regarding the decline in turtle populations in Cyprus.’
‘I have physical and documentary evidence,’ said Clay.
‘You may continue, on the condition that you restrict your testimony to this evidence.’
‘May I be allowed to present exhibits?’ he asked.
Thornton nodded.
Clay reached into the duffel bag, pulled out the marine loud-speaker and held it up for all to see. The dark cabling hung from its body like severed tentacles.
‘Four days ago, I recovered this device from Toxeflora Beach.’ He explained its placement and intended function. ‘There is a similar system in Karpasia,’ he said. ‘Doctor Bachmann can confirm what I’m saying.’
The crowd was hushed now, attentive.
An orderly shuttled the exhibit to the dais. Thornton examined the object, passed it to Duplessis, then leaned over, covered his microphone and spoke to Hope at length.
‘No turtles, no reason to protect the beaches,’ said Clay.
Thornton looked up. ‘We understand the implications, Mister Straker.’
Chrisostomedes stood, glanced at Dimitriou and addressed the dais. ‘May I be allowed to comment, Mister Chairman?’
Thornton nodded.
An orderly handed a spare microphone to Chrisostomedes. ‘How do we know this item was taken from Toxeflora? It could have come from anywhere. Are there photographs, eye witnesses?’
‘Mister Straker?’ said Thornton.
‘I don’t have photos,’ said Clay. ‘But Doctor Bachmann was there with me when we found it.’
Chrisostomedes laughed. ‘The photos in the newspapers today suggest that Mister Straker and Doctor Bachmann were doing something else that day at the beach.’
Laughter skittered across the room.
Thornton again: ‘Anything to add, Mister Straker?’
‘Only what I saw. Someone had also installed some sort of pipework system along the beach. Doctor Bachmann and I collected samples of the sand adjacent to the piping.’
‘Do you have any results to share with us, any data?’
Clay shook his head. ‘No. No I don’t.’
Chrisostomedes raised his hand, was given permission to speak. ‘I would invite the Commission to immediately send a team to investigate whether such a system exists. I have no knowledge of Karpasia, of course, but I assure you no such system will be found at Toxeflora, either onshore or offshore.’
‘Mister Straker?’
‘Of course you won’t find anything now. As soon as they realised we’d discovered what they were doing, they went back and took it all out.’
Chrisostomedes pointed at Clay. ‘The very idea that anyone would do such a thing is preposterous. This man has no credibility whatsoever.’
Thornton nodded. ‘We shall do exactly as you have suggested, Mister Chrisostomedes. We will send a team to investigate the site. Thank you for the suggestion.’ And to Clay: ‘Do you have any further evidence, Mister Straker?’
As Clay scanned the audience, all those expectant faces, Dimitriou smug, Chrisostomedes with arms crossed, triumphant, he realised that coming here to testify had been a colossal error in judgement. Without hard evidence, it was their word against his. And here, his word wasn’t worth shit. Not only that, but by revealing Clay’s past and associating him with Hope, Chrisostomedes had ensured that Hope’s own testimony was devalued. Every time Clay opened his mouth he was weakening Hope’s case.
‘We’re waiting, Mister Straker. Do you have any more evidence to present?’
Clay reached into his bag, touched Erkan’s dossier. If Hope wanted to use it, she would have to do it herself. He closed his eyes, fought back the despair crushing his lungs. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t.’
A murmur echoed through the room. Clay could hear the voices refracting from the bare walls and the window glass and the hard tile floor, the individual and distinct becoming dull amalgam. He opened his eyes. Hope was staring past him, towards the back of the room, her mouth open in a half-formed word. Clay swivelled in his chair, followed her gaze.
The big back doors to the conference room were open. Half a dozen people, TV cameramen and reporters, turned to look. There, silhouetted against the light streaming in from the big lobby windows, stood Crowbar. He had a folded-up newspaper in one hand. The other was clamped around Maria’s arm.
57
Her Dark Insanity
The future remains hidden, waiting for our triggers. Or, as Rania believed, was Allah the determiner of all things? As Clay watched Maria squinting into the lights, saw her raise her hand and flick a wisp of hair from her face, he considered that perhaps life was nothing more than a battle between fate and determinism, each side gaining ground and then losing it again to counter-attack in a war of attrition neither side could win.
Crowbar escorted Maria down through the crowd to the front row of seats, whispered something to her, and ushered her forward. She looked as if she’d been camping in the mountains for a week, living in a tent. Her clothes were stained. She’d put her hair up, and what spilled from under her cap was tangled and laced with leaves and twigs.
Hope beckoned her forward. Maria approached the dais, clutching a small backpack to her chest. The two commissioners spoke to her for a long time. Then she turned and walked to the witness stand.
Clay stepped aside and retook his seat in the front row, next to Crowbar.
‘Did you hear?’ Crowbar said. A strong whiff of whisky.
‘Hear what?’ said Clay.
‘Medved died this morning. That little icon was better than a bullet.’ Crowbar handed Clay a newspaper. It was a copy of the International Herald Tribune, dated today. Crowbar jabbed his finger onto a page two piece. ‘Read this.’
Clay read, reread, looked up and tried to catch his breath. ‘Jesus. When did she do this?’
‘Must have been between operations.’
‘She never said anything about it.’
Maria sat and adjusted the microphone. She stated her name, listed her qualifications in marine biology and chemistry, her position at the university. Then she reached into her bag and produced what looked like a medicine phial. ‘This,’ she began, holding the thing up, ‘is one of a dozen samples of sand collected at Toxeflora Beach in the south, and from the UNESCO World Heritage beach in Karpasia, in the north.’
Maria handed the phial to an orderly, who shuttled it to the dais along with an envelope and a sheaf of papers. She continued: ‘Each of these samples was collected at the depth and position where female turtles lay their eggs. Each sample was collected adjacent to a perforated irrigation pipe that had been buried along the beach, connected to a stem input valve, as you can see in the photographs before you.’
A growing silence crept over the assembled, the interested public, the paid supporters and coerced witnesses, the press and the politicians, the guilty and less guilty. Thornton looked over the photographs one after the other, passed them to Duplessis and Hope in turn.
‘After obtaining the samples from Doctor Bachmann, I halved them as a standard precaution.’ She paused a moment, glanced up at Hope, then continued. ‘As instructed, I went to submit one set to the commercial laboratory here in Nicosia for rush analysis. But before I could do so, I was confronted by two armed men who took the samples and warned me to keep quiet. They made it very clea
r what would happen to me if I said anything.’
Maria looked shaken, but she kept her composure, spoke clearly and with authority. She explained how she’d decided to go into hiding. With the help of her boyfriend, she’d gone to Toxeflora, found the buried lines and taken photographs. Realising the danger, she’d decided to analyse the duplicate samples herself at the university laboratory. She found that the samples all contained significant concentrations of organochlorides and organophosphates, along with residuals of xylene and ethylbenzene. All the samples were similar, at Toxeflora in the south and Karpasia in the north.
‘That system of pipes,’ said Maria, ‘is for pumping diesel laced with pesticides, DDT, and chlorobiphenyls into the sand, just above the tideline.’
The room was completely silent.
‘Could it affect the turtle eggs, if they were in contact with this mixture?’ asked Duplessis.
‘Yes,’ said Maria. ‘Definitely. These are highly toxic chemicals. There are studies in the literature that have looked at the effects of organic pollutants on turtles. Exposure decreases hatchling success, increases deformities, and makes hatchlings more susceptible to disease. Hatchlings born in this environment would have little chance of survival.’
By the time she was done, a new kind of murmur was rippling through the audience.
‘This represents a deliberate attempt to kill off the remaining turtle populations of Cyprus,’ said Maria. ‘With the turtles gone, the main reason for protecting these beaches goes away. Developers on both sides of the border are the big winners.’ She looked out at the crowd, locked her gaze on Dimitriou. ‘This is my country. If I don’t look after it, who will?’ She sat and folded her hands in her lap.
Pandemonium. Flash bulbs going off. Everyone speaking at once.
Chrisostomedes, visibly shaken, stood and was granted permission to speak. ‘With respect, commissioners,’ he began, adjusting his tie, ‘even if such a horrific thing has occurred, any suggestion that I have been in any way involved is pure slander. Anyone could be responsible. Indeed, the fact that a similar system supposedly exists in the north would point the finger squarely at the Turks.’ He took a deep breath. ‘My record on conservation stands for itself.’
Clay reached into the duffel bag at his feet and grabbed the dossier. He stood, holding it above his head. Bemused silence from the audience, a few whispers from the back of the room. Thornton waved Clay forward.
Clay placed the folder on the dais. ‘Mohamed Erkan gave me this, two weeks ago in Istanbul,’ he said to the commissioners. ‘Have it verified. It’s absolutely authentic. These documents prove that Chrisostomedes has been colluding with Erkan for years, with Dimitriou’s help, to illegally develop Turkish-owned coastal land in the south. It’s all in there: bank details, names, places, dates.’
Thornton took the dossier, opened it and started leafing through the pages. After a moment he handed the folder to Duplessis. ‘Astounding,’ he said.
‘Same systems, north and south,’ said Clay. ‘Chrisostomedes took care of the southern beaches, Erkan the north. Erkan told me so himself.’
Duplessis looked up from the dossier, wide-eyed. ‘If this is true…’ he said, stopped.
‘I have one more exhibit,’ said Clay.
‘Proceed,’ said Thornton.
Clay turned to face the audience. Most of them seemed to be staring at his legs, the floor around his feet. ‘It wasn’t only about land.’ Clay reached into the bag and pulled out the Patmos Illumination, held it up for all to see.
A few in the crowd recognised it instantly, most sat perplexed. Chrisostomedes looked ashen, pre-cardiac. Clay let him look at it a good while.
‘This is perhaps the most famous of all the iconic Greek Orthodox artefacts that disappeared during the 1974 invasion,’ said Clay in a clear loud voice, taking his time, letting it hit home. ‘For twenty years Greek Cyprus has been blaming the Turks for its loss. I recovered this from the home of Nicos Chrisostomedes five days ago.’
‘Mister Straker,’ said Thornton into the microphone.
Clay turned and faced the dais.
Thornton pointed to Clay’s feet.
Clay looked down. The floor around him was covered in bright red shoe prints. Blood pooled at his feet, soaked the cuffs of his trousers, filmed his shoes. He reached for the back of his right leg, felt the wet tackiness there. A few of his stitches must have ruptured. He hadn’t even noticed.
He looked back up at Thornton, shook his head. Then he stepped forward and placed the illumination on the dais, turned back to the audience. ‘If you look at the back of the icon, near the lowermost nail hole, you will see a tiny silver square. It’s a microchip. Every piece in Chrisostomedes’ private collection has a chip like this. I’m sure if you have it analysed, you’ll see his name there, quite clearly, and if anyone is interested, they can match the chip to the ones on all the other pieces in his collection. Who knows what you might find.’
The room was silent, the implications of this whirring in brains and beaming through live TV feeds.
‘So,’ Clay continued, ‘in July 1974, when the Turkish Army was advancing through Northern Cyprus, what do you think the young Nicos Chrisostomedes was doing? Fighting to protect his country as so many others did? No. He was busy raiding every church he could find, carrying off as many valuable artefacts as he could. And ever since, he’s been blaming the Turks for their disappearance.’
It was time for the final shot. Clay opened up the newspaper, handed it to Thornton and pointed to the article. His finger left a smudge of blood on the page just above the byline.
Thornton took the paper, read, looked up and passed it to Hope. After a moment, Hope leaned in and whispered something to Duplessis, then to Thornton.
She held up the paper. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, ‘before I officially close this morning’s proceedings, I would like to read you something from today’s International Herald Tribune. It is entitled: “The Evolution of Fear”. It was written by Lise Moulinbecq.’
In a clear, sure voice, Hope read the words that Clay had already committed to memory. Rania’s words. Written from her hospital bed just a few hours before, wired across the world to make the deadline, published and printed and sent back out around the world in time to be here, now. It was all there, in her wonderful prose, everything that had happened to her since Istanbul, the compromised stories she’d been forced to write, itemised and corrected, Chrisostomedes’ coercion, his abduction and murder of her aunt, Regina Medved’s dark insanity, all of it.
And as Clay listened, heard Hope declare the session closed, watched her raise her phone to her ear, Crowbar moving through the crowd towards her now, he saw her mouth open in a noiseless scream. Then her phone falling to the floor and shattering into pieces as she stumbled from the dais, tears pouring down her face, Crowbar folding her into his arms and them both turning to face him, Crowbar’s big jaw quivering on its hinges, Hope reaching out for him now, grief pouring from her eyes as the policemen pulled him away, started cuffing his only hand. It was over.
58
What You Had To Forsake
Seven months later
Clay walked along the outdoor corridor of the old, British-built Lefkosia Central Jail, breathed the cool air coming heavy with pine and cedar from the unseen mountains. He looked through the barred arches across the empty courtyard to the whitewashed crosses of thirteen EOKA fighters killed by the British during the liberation struggle of 1955. The British buried them inside the prison to avoid the uproar of public funerals. Incarcerated even in death. Clay stared at the pale, straight geometry of the grave curbs; to save space, the men were buried two to a pit. The white Cypriot flags hung motionless in the dead air, the nimbus of razor wire glowing on the crest of the penitentiary wall above the words: ‘A brave man’s death is no death at all.’ Clay thought that when he died it would be good to share a grave with a brother. He also knew, with absolute certainty, that he would die alone.
Crowbar was waiting for him outside on the pavement. It was a sunny day, clear and blue with the scent of lemon blossom and charred pine strong on the breeze from the Pentadactylos Mountains. Clay walked away from the prison gate for the last time, took Crowbar’s offered hand and clasped it hard.
‘You look good, seun,’ said Crowbar.
‘You too, oom.’
‘How do you feel?’
Clay stood on the pavement, breathed in the free air. ‘Older,’ he said, glancing back at the prison gates.
‘That’s what prison is for.’
‘How’s business?’
‘Booming. Someone’s always got a war to fight.’
‘Angola still?’
‘Long-term contract. You should join us.’
‘No, Koevoet.’
‘You know where to find me if you change your mind.’
They started walking along the pavement towards the old city.
‘Thanks for getting me out, oom.’
‘Not me, seun. Hope. She arranged it.’
‘Thank her for me.’
‘How was it?’ Crowbar said after a while.
‘Rough at first. After that everyone pretty well let me be.’
‘Hit first, hit hard.’
He had.
In the end, it had gone pretty quickly. A few weeks after Regina Medved’s death, Erkan had come forward and admitted to colluding with Chrisostomedes. His testimony had led not only to the destruction of Chrisostomedes’ by then shaky political career, but to his arrest and indictment for the theft of the Illumination, and for kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder. Erkan also provided information to TRNC police that led to the arrest of two Russian men for the fiery murders of the Karpasia villagers. The men had admitted to being in the employ of Regina Medved at the time. With no one left to hold it together, the Medved family empire was in ruins.
Evolution of Fear Page 37
