I turned to the right, crossed a road and sprinted into another alley. It was a long one. I put my head down, ran, then crossed over to the next alley. Someone shouted at me in Turkish. A car horn beeped. I ran on. At the next junction I turned, stopped running, crossed the road and walked straight into a café.
It was busy. A waiter was handing out plates of food. He looked at me, then looked away when I nodded at him, as if I knew him. I walked to the back, then into a corridor, praying that I’d find a toilet there.
I did – it was clean, of the old-fashioned French variety with just a hole in the floor.
Unfortunately, the window in the toilet was too small to climb out of. Bad luck. I went back into the red wallpapered corridor and walked to the door at the end. I thought I heard a noise from the other side – perhaps this door led to the kitchen?
I reached for the handle and turned it, but it was locked. I looked back along the corridor. My pursuer hadn’t arrived, but it was probably only a matter of seconds before he was outside. The thumping in my chest became insistent.
I knocked on the door loudly. No one came. I knocked even louder. One thing I was sure of: I was being jerked around by Peter. He’d probably turned that sat nav system off deliberately.
Well, I’d had enough.
I heard a banging noise, a pot falling maybe. Then the door opened. An old woman, built like a chunk of iron, but with a friendly face eyed me suspiciously.
‘Hi,’ I said. I motioned to move past her. She shook her head firmly. I put my hands together as if I was praying.
Her eyes widened. Then her gaze flickered over my shoulder. I reached for my wallet. She waved fast, indicating that she didn’t want money. Then she opened the door wider and stepped aside.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
Beyond the door, there was a small kitchen with shiny pots and pans hanging from the ceiling. She was the only person in the kitchen. A radio played jangly Turkish music. I could smell spices, the aroma of cooking.
The room was dominated by a long steel table, on which a pile of onions sat waiting, half chopped. I went around the table and headed for the door beyond.
I stepped out into a narrow rutted lane. Houses backed onto it. At intervals in each direction, streets cut across the lane. I didn’t run. I walked fast. I turned at the first junction, my heart slowing in my chest at last. To hell with Peter and his stupid games. He didn’t give a damn about what had happened to Alek, about finding out who’d killed him. I knew what I had to do.
I had to talk to Bulent again.
I used the lanes and side streets to make my way back to Hagia Sophia. It was seriously hot, even in the shade. The sun was a furnace in the sky. I had to stop to buy water. I splashed half the bottle on my face, my head.
When I arrived back at the gate into Topkapi, the bus that had been blocking the way was gone, but no one was going through the gate. Its three-storey high iron-studded wooden doors were closed. Topkapi was closed and it was only four thirty. I hurried around to the front of Hagia Sophia, a two-minute walk away. When I reached the main entrance it was closed too. No late opening for museums in this part of the world
I waited by a busy stand selling guidebooks near the main entranceway to Hagia Sophia. Mottled, sick-looking pigeons squawked around, fighting for crumbs.
I watched the stragglers coming out of Hagia Sophia. I knew Bulent might still be in there.
And even if I didn’t catch him now, I’d come back in the morning. One way or the other, I’d find him.
I stood. Someone who looked just like Bulent was walking across the street about fifty feet away, by the tram tracks. I walked towards him, squinting, with the sun in my face, trying to check if it was him.
It wasn’t. I turned away in disgust, found a bench in the shade that allowed me a clear view of Hagia Sophia. I was keeping an eye out for Peter’s Range Rover too. If I saw it I’d have to move fast. God only knew what kind of stunt he’d try next.
The minutes crept by. The number of tourists had dwindled now. The street vendors were packing up. I bought a few postcards from a persistent boy. I felt briefly like a tourist.
And then I saw Bulent driving past.
I put up my hand.
He recognised me, waved and drove on.
Chapter 23
‘Did you know that the young Count Dracula visited this city before it fell?’ asked Malach.
The doctor shook his head, straining at his gag. His hair was wet with sweat. He was trembling. His gaze was fixed on the long black-handled knife in Malach’s hand.
‘A Serbian legend says the Count learned his tricks here. The Byzantines were renowned for their cruelty to prisoners in the years before the city fell. Skinning spies alive was one of their specialities.’ He put the edge of his knife close to the doctor’s cheek. The doctor flinched. A vein pulsed in his forehead.
‘I studied his technique for skinning victims. He always started at the neck, to allow the skin to be removed almost completely from the body, while the face remained untouched.’
The doctor was trembling uncontrollably now. They were parked in a truck in a tiny unmanned car park behind the main street of the Istanbul suburb of Bebek. The Bosphorus was only a few hundred metres away, as were the busy restaurants and shops that lined the main Bebek drag.
‘We have a job for you, but before we start, I want to make sure you know the penalty for making trouble. You understand?’
The doctor nodded, eagerly. Then he was crying. Not loudly, quietly.
Chapter 24
Bulent was driving a dirty green Renault Espace, one of those older models with the big bumpers. The car was badly in need of a wash. I ran straight after it.
A dog barked madly. People turned and stared. I pounded on. The beggar boy I’d bought the postcards from ran after me. I had no idea why.
Then he whistled. The sound that came from his mouth could have penetrated steel.
I shouted ‘Bulent!’ as loud as I could.
The whistling and the shouting must have made him look in his rear-view mirror.
He stopped, then reversed to meet me. The boy had his hand out and a big smile on his face, as if we’d won a medal.
‘Give him nothing, Mr Ryan, bey,’ said Bulent, from his half open door. He called the boy over and passed him something. The boy looked disappointed. Bulent made an exasperated noise. The boy ran back to me with his hands outstretched. I gave him the smallest Turkish note I could find in my wallet. He ran off gleefully. Bulent’s face was a picture of disapproval.
‘Boys like that make more money in the summer than is good for them, Mr Ryan. Now how can I help you? I have no more information to give you. I have told you that already.’
‘We have to talk. There’s something crazy going on. And I’m going to keep coming back until you see me.’ It must have been the tone of my voice that convinced him. I wasn’t angry, just determined.
He looked around, then told me to get in the car. Ten minutes later we were in the basement of a restaurant near the Grand Bazaar. Outside, above our heads, the narrow street was packed with people, like a down-at-heel cinema audience shuffling its way out of an auditorium. I’d never seen such a narrow street so jammed.
The elaborate gold arched entrance to the Grand Bazaar, the greatest bazaar in the whole world, so Bulent said, the forerunner of all our modern shopping malls, was only a few yards up the street. All I’d seen of it though was a blue-tiled tunnel of shops, and sacks of multicoloured spices outside the nearest one.
Below ground, where we were, a fan languidly stirred the air above our heads. It wasn’t very effective, but I was still grateful for it.
‘This place is owned by Armenians. It’s quiet at this time of the day, but it won’t be for long,’ said Bulent, as we eased ourselves into the high-backed wooden chairs around a table in a corner of the room. Aside from us, the room was empty. Bulent did not look happy.
A waiter poked his head down the stairs. Bul
ent snapped at him,‘Iki Nescafé.’
‘Why don’t you give up with this?’ he said, turning to me. ‘Your friend is dead.’
‘My father told me never to give up. It was one of the last things he ever said to me.’ It was true. It had been a few weeks before he’d died, but I’d never forgotten his words.
‘My father is dead too,’ he said, softly.
The yellow light bulbs hanging in brown plastic shades from the ceiling, and the ancient nicotine-coloured walls, gave the place an old-fashioned feel, as if we were spies in some cold war movie. The muffled footfall of passers-by and the occasional cries of street vendors could be heard above our heads.
He put his hands on the table, as if the place was his personal office. ‘OK, so what’s so important you have to see me again?’
‘You’ve helped me, Bulent, and I’m grateful, but I need to know who’s running those excavations under Hagia Eirene. I have to find out before I can go back to London.’ I paused, took a deep breath, then continued, ‘And I will find out.’
His face remained impassive.
‘And I’ll go as soon as I find out. This is one last favour, that’s all. What harm could it do?’
‘What harm?’ asked Bulent, sharply. ‘I think Alek would know about that.’ He looked at the stairs, as if he was expecting a troop of terrorists to come marching down any moment.
‘You know nothing, effendi. Nothing about how difficult it is to operate while being watched. Nothing about the people who want Hagia Sophia to be a grand mosque again. Nothing about the others who want concerts there, like they have in Hagia Eirene, but bigger. Can you believe it?’ His rolled his eyes. ‘They have a Wagner concert there tonight. Some people think we’re going to have Wagner in Hagia Sophia soon, or maybe a concert of Christian carols? Can you imagine?’
I waited. He stared glumly at the chequered red-and-white tablecloth. It was faded, but clean.
‘All I need is a name, an address, an organisation, Bulent. Something I can go back to London with.’
He shook his head emphatically. We sat looking at each other, playing who-blinks-first-loses.
‘If you want the dig to stop you should tell me. I know people in UNESCO. I can find out if they have all the right approvals for the work they’re doing. If they don’t, it can be exposed. Somebody has to protect Turkey’s heritage, Bulent, find out if they’re a bunch of crooks.’
We listened as a street seller above our heads called out in a sing-song voice. Finally, he spoke.
‘I will do this for my country,’ he said, while pointing a finger at me. ‘Because these are our sites.’ He paused, rubbed his forehead. ‘Have you been to Büyükada?’
‘No, where is it?’
‘Büyükada is one of the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara. It’s only twenty miles from Istanbul, forty minutes on one of our ferries. Byzantine emperors and princes used to be exiled there. Sometimes, after their eyes had been gouged out.’ His face was impassive, his cheeks pink and glistening.
‘Not much of a retirement.’
‘It was worse than that for some.’
‘Rough justice.’
He leaned back in his chair. He looked every inch a professor about to give a lecture.
‘Yes, and I’ll tell you a story. The year before Islam first took Jerusalem, 638 by your calendar, Atalarichos, a son of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, predicted his father was going to let Islam take Jerusalem, and that Christ could not return if that happened. For saying that, his eyes were gouged out, and his limbs cut off. Afterwards, Jerusalem was taken by the Prophet’s army, just as he’d said.’
‘How did he know Jerusalem was going to fall?’
‘Maybe it was planned, as he said, or maybe Heraclius underestimated his enemies. His son certainly did. After we took Istanbul in 1453, the Princes’ Islands became a refuge for Greeks, Jews and Armenians. These days it’s a suburb of Istanbul, and not its furthest point.’ Bulent downed his coffee.
‘Ask for the Villa Napoleon. The people who work under Hagia Eirene take everything they find there. That’s all I know. I do not know their names.’
‘How did you find this out?’
He looked around. ‘I saw the papers for their application to investigate under Hagia Eirene. I was asked for my opinion. Can you believe it?’ He shook his head, sorrowfully. ‘I said it shouldn’t be allowed, but who listens to an old man?’
If the people working under Hagia Eirene were based at the Villa Napoleon, I could go there, see what I could find out, discreetly. Then I could put in a request to UNESCO to see who these people were, if they were approved for this type of project.
Was I getting close to uncovering what had happened to Alek? It certainly felt like it.
‘The villa was a gift from the French government, Mr Ryan, but the Ottomans never took possession of it. Monsieur Napoleon stepped on too many Ottoman feet, I mean, toes.’
‘Thanks, Bulent, I mean it. You won’t regret this.’
It crossed my mind I might be proved wrong about that, but I dismissed the thought.
A few minutes later we left the restaurant. Soon after, I was in a taxi.
As it barged its way through the streets heading down to the Golden Horn, I felt a sense of expectation. What would I find on Büyükada?
We passed through a narrow street and I saw an old man sitting on a step in a suit that looked like it belonged in the fifties. He had white bathroom scales, of similar vintage, in front of him. Was he weighing people for money? If he was, he didn’t have a lot of customers. But he continued to sit there, with a morose look on his face, as if he had no other choice.
Some of the buildings around us looked five hundred years old at least, and so beyond renovation that they would either have to be torn down or converted into museums.
This part of Istanbul was an ancient warren. I opened the window of the taxi. The air conditioning was useless. The smell of fresh bread and a heavy windless heat greeted me. Even the slightest breeze was a blessing here.
Bulent had told me it would be easy to find somewhere to stay once I got to Büyükada. Apparently there were lots of small hotels there. I would stay the night, find out what I could and come back to Istanbul the next morning.
My taxi pulled into a feeding frenzy of vehicles beside the slapping waters of the Golden Horn. ‘Büyükada, Büyükada,’ said the driver, pointing at a two-storey red catamaran that was out at sea, but heading towards us. All around people were hurrying towards a pale cream Ottoman-era ticket hall with a tiled roof that sat at the entrance to the short jetty. I paid the driver.
When I reached the ticket window I offered the man behind it one of my Turkish notes.
I didn’t understand what he said, so I just smiled in answer to his questions and hoped he didn’t take that as an agreement to purchase a season ticket.
The people in the queue behind me were getting restless. The ferry was sounding its whistle, as if it was about to depart. The ticket seller passed me back a ticket and some coins.
Fifteen minutes later I was seated in a brightly-lit indoor cabin, like an ultra-wide airplane. The rows of seats all faced forward, fourteen abreast, and there were two narrow aisles, one on each side. The windows, scratched oval portholes, were sealed.
Through the glass of a porthole, I watched flecks of phosphorescence flashing by on the surface of the purple sea. In the distance, twinkling lights covered the long ridge of hills on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus.
Though the ferry was far from full, there was a great chatter, people smiling, going home after a day out in Istanbul. I was a zillion miles away from roadside bombs and beheadings.
Two hours after that I was sitting in a café awash with light. Its location, at the bottom of the tree-lined street on which the Villa Napoleon stood, made it the perfect place to enjoy a beer and keep an eye on the villa. I’d picked a table outside. Most of the patrons of the café were inside, so it didn’t take much effort to ensure I g
ot a seat facing the long pink brick wall that extended from the front of the villa all the way down the steep street to the café.
In the previous hour, I’d booked a room at a tiny run-down hotel a block away, and after receiving directions to the villa, I’d walked all the way round the rectangular block it dominated, until I’d found this café. Shadows were lengthening and people were emerging from their houses as I passed. The wooden verandas and the creeping swathes of pink honeysuckle and drifts of purple wisteria on some of the houses gave the place the feel of a nineteenth-century holiday town. I could smell the tingle of ozone from the sea too.
All I’d seen of the villa so far was a glimpse of its ochre-tiled roof, as the brick wall that surrounded it must have been twenty feet high.
Horse-drawn buggies, phaetons, that was what a leaflet from the reception of my hotel called them, jingled along the street every few minutes. The leaflet claimed that no cars were allowed on the island. The only other noises were the occasional tinkling of cutlery, and a low murmur of voices emerging from the open door of the café.
Jasmine and wisteria peeked over the brick wall opposite and further up the street. In one garden I’d glimpsed tall pine trees and apple and apricot trees heavy with fruit. A tendril-like sea breeze gave welcome, if intermittent, relief from the evening heat.
I took a sip of my beer. Maybe it was time to contact Isabel again, find out what her excuse was for not turning up this morning.
I stood up and looked inside the café. There was an old public telephone on one wall. I went in, rang the Consulate number from the card Isabel had given me. After waiting for what seemed like ages, a woman with a north of England accent answered. She couldn’t tell me anything about Isabel, or whether she’d picked up her messages at all, but she did promise to leave her another message for me. I told her to simply tell Isabel that I’d rung. I walked back to my seat.
The Istanbul Puzzle Page 14
