The Istanbul Puzzle

by Laurence OBryan

  ‘Careful,’ Isabel hissed. She pinched my ankle. I moved up a rung. How was I supposed to know she’d stopped? All around there was only shadows. The only light was a faint glow from the grating far above.

  I was scared now, and nauseated by the smell. A tiny part of me almost thought it might be better to go back up and face whoever was up there.

  Then I heard another shout, and a moment later louder voices, different voices, someone angry.

  Shoes tap-tapped across the grating above. The light dimmed, as if there’d been an eclipse. A vein throbbed in my neck.

  Then the light dimmed more and I distinctly heard a match being struck, and the tiny sound of something dropping onto the grating.

  Someone was standing up there. And they were smoking. Maybe they were looking down at the grating. Did they know we were down here? Were they doing this deliberately?

  Looking up, I thought I could make out the shape of boots cutting the light out. This was it. Any second. It were over.

  I thought about Alek, what had happened to him up there. Something tightened inside me, as if a cable was being pulled. I wasn’t going to give up. They’d have to come down here and get me.

  Then there was another distant, excited shout. The shadow moved. A sprinkling of dust fell on my face. I closed my eyes. Something touched my leg. I jerked, shook it. An image of a giant rat pawing at me flashed through my mind.

  ‘Stop,’ whispered Isabel.

  I put my foot back on the rung.

  ‘There’s a passage down here. Maybe we can use it.’

  She switched her torch on, her hand covering it almost completely, making the light dim and red. Slimy grey brick appeared all around. I looked down.

  When Isabel had said passage, I’d imagined a walkway we could stand up in. What she’d meant was a brick-lined pipe about four foot high, running off horizontally from the drain we were descending. Its slope must have been only a few degrees.

  The pipe’s entrance was next to the rung Isabel was holding on to. I had serious doubts about going into it – we’d have to crawl – and God only knew what was in there.

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘It looks dry at least,’ she said, softly. ‘I’m going in.’

  ‘Excellent,’ I whispered. ‘That means I’m coming after you.’ I don’t think she heard me.

  I moved down another rung. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I imagined. I could see a little bit of the passage now. It didn’t look slimy. In fact, it looked inviting.

  And it would be a good idea to be out of this shaft, if they opened that grating up above.

  Isabel had disappeared into the passage.

  ‘Sure glad you found some use for my torch,’ I whispered. I was in almost total darkness. Then, just for a moment, she shone the torch beam back through the pipe, so I could see enough to pull myself into it. She must have heard me that time.

  In the pipe, all I could see of Isabel were the dark soles of her runners. There were long fingers of green slime embedded in them. She pointed the beam in front of her most of the time, illuminating the grey bricks all around us as she moved forward.

  The smell was different now. It was more clayey, less rotting water. And I could feel the enormous weight of the earth above us, because of the way the tunnel bulged in places, as if it had blisters, as if it might burst.

  As I moved forward I scuffed my hands on pieces of brick lying on the curved floor of the tunnel. Who or what had put them there?

  ‘Can you go a bit faster?’ I said. I wanted out of the place, and to stand up.

  After about fifty knee-scraping feet, I stopped. It was stuffy now. Sweat was prickling my brow. My head was ringing too. The ear-splitting explosion in Iraq had left me with a dull headache that came and went at odd times. I could ignore it in the open air, but down here, with walls pressing in around us, it was coming back for another shot at the title.

  I closed my eyes, took three deep breaths, held each of them and released them slowly. I’d done a course in Pranayama yogic breath control, where I’d learned to control my breathing, the summer before as a way to improve my free diving times and to help me feel calmer. As I slowly let out the last breath a distant voice came to me. Was I imagining it? I opened my eyes. I couldn’t hear Isabel moving anymore. She must have stopped. And she’d turned the torch off. The darkness had enveloped me completely. It felt as if I’d been swallowed.

  I took another deep breath.

  Then, just ahead, as my eyes adjusted, I saw a faint light, dancing about twenty feet away, playing on the floor of the tunnel like an apparition. Then a shadow blocked my view. Isabel was moving forward again. I followed her, slowly, my hands and knees scraping on the brick under me.

  As I came closer to it, I saw the light was a faint beam streaming down from a pipe heading up into the roof of the tunnel. For a brief moment, hope surged inside me as I imagined a hole just wide enough for us to escape through. When I came closer though, I saw, to my disappointment, that the pipe wasn’t even a foot wide. Isabel was beyond it. I could hear her breathing.

  I looked up the pipe when I reached it. There was a grating at the top, maybe fifty feet away, tantalisingly close, but sickeningly far. The grating was casting a pattern in the shaft of light streaming down.

  I pulled back. I could just about make out Isabel’s shadow now beyond the beam of light. The light gave the tunnel floor a ghostly sheen. A feeling of being trapped, buried alive, rose up in me as I looked up the pipe again. It felt as if the walls around me were tightening, moving in slowly.

  Then I heard the voice again. It was clearer this time. It sounded as if whoever had spoken was only a few feet above us. The man had only said a few words –‘Have you found them?’ – but unsettlingly I knew the voice. Could it be?

  Our heads banged softly as we both peered up towards the grating. I rubbed mine, pulled back to let her look up.

  Isabel moved back after a few seconds. I looked up again. Through the grating above, as my eyes focused on it, I could make out an arched brick roof. That was all.

  Then the voice spoke again.

  ‘She didn’t tell us she was coming here.’

  My suspicions were confirmed. I don’t know how close Peter was to the grating, but the sound of his voice had travelled down clearly to me, as if he was only a few feet away.

  I said the word ‘Peter’ softly to Isabel. I could just about make out her expression. Her gaze was fixed on something in the middle distance. She blinked and nodded.

  We heard Peter’s voice again, but it was more distant, indistinct now. He was moving away.

  I put my hand on Isabel’s shoulder. She’d moved a little closer to the beam of ghostly light and was looking upwards into it. She seemed to be about to fall towards me, she was stretching forward so much.

  ‘What’s he doing up there? Why is he talking about us?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’ She sounded angry, and her expression was as dark as a storm.

  ‘We simply heard a conversation. It proves nothing.’

  ‘So who’s he talking to?’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’

  ‘What the hell’s he doing here? He’s walking around up there as if he owns the place.’

  She didn’t reply.

  Thoughts were racing each other through my head. If Peter knew about this dig, was he also involved with the bastards behind Alek’s murder? Was that too crazy? But why else would he be up there, talking like that? Then something clicked, like a lock opening. This was why he was being so weird, why he hadn’t told me that Isabel wasn’t going to meet me, why he wanted me out of Istanbul quickly.

  He was working with them, the people who’d murdered Alek. It would certainly explain a lot.

  I felt stupid. I shouldn’t have told him anything.

  ‘We gotta keep moving,’ I hissed. ‘Look for another way out. I’m not hanging around here.’

  ‘Can you hear water?’ said Isabel.
r />   ‘No.’ The thought of water down here was not pleasant. I imagined slimy, unrecognisable creatures living in it. At least with a dry tunnel you knew what you were dealing with.

  ‘I can hear water,’ she said. She turned the torch on, pointed it ahead and crawled on.

  When I caught up with her, she was sitting on the far side of a three-foot wide circular opening in the floor, shining the torch beam down into it. Below, an arm’s length away, I could see water. I felt a sinking feeling as I looked at it. This could well be a way out of here, but there was almost definitely something disgusting down there too. I just knew it.

  ‘I wonder if we’re still under Hagia Sophia?’ I said, glancing around.

  ‘No idea, but this has to go downhill. It’s flowing. There has to be a way out for all this water.’

  ‘I’m going to put you forward for the Nobel Prize for Observation for that.’

  ‘Stop, Sean. Feel this. It’s marble.’

  She had her hand below the opening. I put my hand in the same place. Our fingers touched. She gripped my hand. I could just about make out her troubled expression in the torchlight reflecting back from the water below.

  ‘I hate this place,’ she said, softly. Her grip tightened. I felt her shiver. ‘I hate it so much. Don’t ever bloody leave me down here.’ She sounded angry again.

  ‘I won’t. I promise. What makes you think I would?’

  She paused before answering. ‘I was left behind before. It was the worst thing that ever frigging happened to me.’

  I looked into her eyes. ‘It won’t happen here.’

  She released her grip on me. ‘The bastard said he’d come back.’ I could hear her take a deep breath. ‘But he didn’t.’

  ‘Who?

  ‘Mark. My ex. The guy you met in Mosul. I was married to him once.’

  ‘Why the hell did he leave you?’

  She looked into my eyes, as if assessing whether to tell me more. Then she looked down at the water flowing below us.

  ‘There’s not much to say. We were with a British building contractor in Kurdish Iraq. The guest house we were staying in was attacked. Mark went out the back door, left us. That’s it.’ She shrugged. ‘I waited with this big Scottish businessman who’d actually shitted himself. We were lucky. The attackers fled after they shot the place up a few times.’

  ‘Mark didn’t come back?’

  ‘He said he wanted to, but the Iraqi police unit he found detained him. The next time I saw him was in a police station in Kirkuk. He was full of apologies. But things were never the same between us.’

  ‘I can definitely understand that,’ I said. ‘And I promise you. We’ll find a way out of this together.’ I was trying to be positive for the both of us.

  ‘This has to run into one of the old underground cisterns. They had them all over the city for when they were besieged. They had the best aqueducts here, the best water management system in the whole Roman Empire. We’re probably near a way out.’

  A smile crossed her face. She looked down at the water. It was black, unpleasant looking.

  ‘This is very scary, Sean.’

  ‘It’s only water,’ I said.

  ‘The odds of dying underground are a million to one, right?’

  ‘Unless you’re underground already,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  There was a salty fishy smell in the air. It was coming up from the water.

  ‘Can you smell salt water?’ I said.

  She sniffed. ‘A little. Is that good?’

  ‘The Bosphorus is very salty. We can’t be that far from it.’

  The light from the torch became dimmer. Now it was only about half the strength it had been when I’d turned it on. Why hadn’t I bought extra batteries? Beyond the beam of fading light, the darkness pressed in, like an animal that knows when its prey is faltering.

  If we were going to do this, we had to get moving. ‘I’m going down to have a look,’ I said.

  The torch beam became weaker.

  ‘I won’t be able to pull you back up,’ she said. There was anxiety in her voice.

  ‘Don’t worry, I can wedge myself against the sides if I have to.’ I peered down. It looked doable, just. ‘I have to check this out, Isabel. We could be near an exit.’

  That was the optimist talking again. I’d definitely have preferred to stay in the dry tunnel. But if anyone came after us they’d probably come through the tunnel first, before going down into this water. Going this way would buy us time.

  Then I felt something fall on my shoulder. Something heavy.

  ‘Uuuhhhh.’ I jerked and brushed frantically at whatever it was. Something black fell in front of me. It was the biggest spider I’d ever seen. It had hair like an old hippie’s. It scuttled away into the darkness. I shuddered, half stood, banged my head against the roof, sickeningly hard, bent down quickly and rubbed it.

  ‘Are you OK?’ said Isabel.

  ‘Sure. No problem. I just love it down here.’

  ‘Look, a fish,’ she said. She pointed upwards. A fish shaped sign had been carved into a brick above our heads. ‘Amazing.’ She traced her finger over the sign in the jaundiced light from the torch.

  ‘You know a Byzantine emperor, Alexius III, was supposed to have escaped this city through a tunnel under Hagia Sophia just like this?’ I said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘That’s what they say. He got away in a fishing boat waiting for him in the Bosphorus. He fled with his mistress, a Serbian princess, and his daughter the night before this city was taken during the fourth crusade. A wonderful crusade that was. That was about this time of year too.’ I leaned over the hole.

  ‘You know if those crusaders hadn’t sacked this city, Constantinople might never have fallen to the Ottomans. And then Christopher Columbus would never have raised enough money for his expeditions.’

  The torch became fainter.

  ‘Time to go,’ I said. The water looked darker now, ripples twisting on its surface as if it were alive.

  ‘All that water’s gotta go somewhere,’ I repeated, hopefully. It was true though. The tunnel we were in might just stop somewhere, but a tunnel with moving water in it had to have been built to exit into the Bosphorus or the Golden Horn. This had to be our way out.

  There was a gap of maybe four feet between the water and the roof of the tunnel holding it. I looked at Isabel. She had a gaunt look on her face, as if she were looking at a ghost.

  My chest tightened as I thought about the water. I had to fight off thoughts of what might be down there – worms, eels, snakes, leeches – all the slimy things in the world. I clenched my fists. Maybe they weren’t here.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll find a way out.’

  She nodded.

  I dropped into the water.

  A loud splash echoed. A fierce iciness engulfed me. The current tugged at me. I was in a pipe-like tunnel similar to the one I’d just dropped out of. But this one was bigger, and half full of water. And for a few seconds, I couldn’t get to my feet, the bottom of the tunnel, under the water, was so slimy. I looked up. Isabel was leaning down precariously, shining the torch along the tunnel roof in the direction the water was flowing.

  Then I steadied myself, found my footing, stood. I was wet all over. My hair was dripping down my back.

  ‘Can you see a way out?’ she said.

  I’d banged my ankle and my elbow. But the water was only up to my thighs.

  ‘No,’ I said. The tunnel just went on and on like the one up above.

  A violent shiver came over me. My earlier optimism seemed totally unrealistic.

  The water was a lot colder than I’d imagined. And my trousers felt heavy, as if they were dragging me down. This didn’t seem like such a good idea any more.

  I stood up straighter, shook myself like a dog, took a long breath, held it. I wasn’t going back. This water had to have a way out. And we had to follow it, no matter how bad it seemed. I wasn’t giving up.


  ‘I can stand. And it’s big enough to wade down,’ I said. My words echoed in the darkness. ‘The water isn’t that deep.’

  ‘Hold this,’ said Isabel. I looked up. She leaned down and passed me the torch.

  Then she dropped into the water beside me with a huge splash. I closed my eyes, and wiped the water off my face. Then I held my hand out to help her steady herself.

  ‘Great fun, isn’t it?’

  She held my hand tight. I passed her the torch.

  ‘Turn it off for 30 seconds, Isabel, the batteries need a rest. When you turn it on, do it only for a few seconds at a time. We’ve got to conserve power. I don’t know how long this tunnel is. When we need light, we’ll need some power, OK?’

  She turned the torch off.

  ‘I bet you’re glad you came along tonight,’ I said into the darkness.

  ‘You are a barrel of fun,’ she replied. I heard her teeth chattering.

  She blinked the torch on, briefly, then off again.

  The water was freezing, but the rate at which it was flowing gave me hope. We’d done the right thing.

  Suddenly rock-hard goose bumps broke out all over my legs, arms, and on my back. It was a weird feeling, but I had to concentrate on the positives. The torch was still working. Neither of us was injured. We’d be out of here soon.

  We began wading. I led the way. Above our heads bricks seemed to spring forward every time the light illuminated them. Their solid construction was reassuring though. If they’d lasted this long, they were definitely going to last until we got out of here.

  And then something thick and slithery touched my calf, moving with the current.

  I went rigid. What the hell was that – fish, eels?

  An instinctive terror gripped me. The sinews in my neck tightened. They felt like wires. I wanted to scream, but my mouth was clamped tight. Isabel didn’t need to know about this.

  I raised my hands towards the roof, controlled my breathing again. Whatever had touched me had passed. It was gone. Hopefully for good.

  Isabel flicked on the torch. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ I lied.