The Istanbul Puzzle

by Laurence OBryan

  The barrier had the Metropolitan Police logo emblazoned on it. Beyond the barrier, the dome of the cathedral reached up into the sky. A small orb glistened at the top of the dome, like a golden cherry.

  I turned up my collar. Rain trickled down my face. It had eased, but it was still uncomfortable, seeping into my clothes, making everything damp. We ran into the doorway of a book shop.

  Despite the rain, throngs of people were moving through the barrier towards St Paul’s.

  ‘Where the hell are we going?’ I said.

  Isabel’s hair was sticking to her forehead. In the distance I could hear the slow beat of a drum. It sounded more like a call to war, than something you’d hear at a demonstration.

  ‘Peter’s place is in St George’s Tower, near St Paul’s,’ said Isabel. ‘This is the easiest way to get there.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing his face when we tell him why we came,’ I said.

  She leaned towards me.

  ‘I’ve agreed to this, but I hope to God you don’t make me regret it.’

  ‘You won’t, but he better have a good explanation,’ I said.

  There was a sense of anticipation around us – people were walking fast, talking to each other. When she spoke again, she changed the subject.

  ‘There have been wild claims on the Internet that Allah’s going to perform a miracle today. That he’s going to convert London,’ said Isabel. She raised her eyebrows.

  A bolt of lightning split the sky above the chalk-grey dome of St Paul’s. Its tiers of pillars and statues of saints, peering out expectantly, were lit up for a moment as if by a giant spotlight.

  ‘It’s certainly the right weather for miracles,’ I said.

  As I watched people passing through the barrier, I felt a sense of expectation grow inside me. I was about to pass through an ECP demo. Should I say something if I met one of the organisers? But what? Do you know anything about a bomb two years ago in Afghanistan? Sure, I was going to get an answer to that question.

  The rain lashed the road.

  ‘Come on,’ said Isabel. She led the way, her head down.

  We passed through the steel barrier along with a group of four-foot-something women dressed all in white, their heads covered. On the other side of the barrier, white police vans lined each side of the street. A large truck had ‘Incident Unit’ in red lettering on its side. Policemen in white shirts and armoured vests were sitting in rows in the vans.

  ‘They’re worried that someone might attack the demonstration,’ she said, as we walked together, heads down, towards St Paul’s.

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ I said

  She replied in a soft voice. ‘I hope not.’

  Just up head, across a small triangular piazza, was the high-Baroque citadel of St Paul’s, its wide grey Portland stone steps glistening in the rain. The tiers of wedding cake style Corinthian columns and twin towers on its west front looked like time travelling relics from the 17th century.

  Some of the people around us were waving black banners now. Some were holding up see-through plastic covered placards with ‘Repent or Prepare’ written on them. They were prepared for the rain anyway.

  As we came onto the piazza in front of St Paul’s, the crowd grew thicker. Still, there was little sign of any organisers or stewards marshalling everyone. There were simply knots of people standing around in the rain, waiting for something to happen. Looking up at the cathedral I felt its timeless majesty. It reminded me of how I’d felt looking up at Hagia Sophia.

  That was an older, darker edifice, but the feeling of being in the presence of something sublime and brooding was similar. If anything, I felt it more distinctly here. This was the place where British pride began, where Arthur drew the sword from the stone, where England’s great heroes, Nelson and Wellington, had their crypts.

  We wove our way through the crowd, headed towards the buildings on the left, the northern side of the piazza. In places, the clumps of bearded men and penguin-like huddles of black-cloaked women were too thick to penetrate. Many of the crowd had umbrellas too. We had to detour around them. The rain was easing. I felt damp right through. I had goose bumps on my arms. Even my shirt cuffs felt damp. In the distance, thunder rumbled, as if there was another storm on the way.

  We walked under the awning of a coffee shop. Isabel took her iPhone out, tapped at the screen for a few seconds. Then she put her phone away.

  ‘I had to send a text,’ she said.

  I heard a huge noise, looked up. Two Royal Air Force jets, dart-like new Eurofighters, flying low, roared straight overhead. Each of them was trailing an amber glow. For a moment, the hubbub of the crowd in front of us died as everyone looked up, followed the jet trails. Then, after executing a tight turn, the planes came roaring back over us.

  That was when I noticed that people nearby were staring at us. We weren’t obviously Muslim, and I hadn’t felt unwelcome, up until now, but an uncomfortable feeling of wariness crept over me.

  ‘What time is all this kicking off?’ I said.

  ‘Soon. They’re going to have some ceremony in front of St Paul’s, by the statue of Queen Anne. That’s all I know.’

  To our left, stone and glass office buildings reared up like a prison wall, their rows of rectangular windows staring implacably down at us. Two passageways provided a way between the buildings. Isabel pushed through the crowd and headed for the smaller of the passageways. At the end of it, after making our way against a stream of demonstrators, we crossed a street empty of vehicles, but full of people heading for St Paul’s.

  It felt like we’d met a crowd going to a football match, except that we were wearing the wrong colours.

  We crossed the street, made our way towards a shiny steel gate set into the granite wall of a keep-like building. There was a keypad at shoulder height on the wall, which reared straight into the sky. We were supplicants at a castle gate.

  Isabel jabbed at the keypad. Nothing happened. She pressed two of the keys again. People passed behind us, looking at us. Finally, an accented voice called out from a speaker somewhere.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s Isabel, for Peter.’ She waved jauntily at the camera embedded in the wall beside the keypad, as if we were there for a party. There was no reply.

  The gate had slits in its metal surface. I could see a stone flagged passage beyond.

  There was a dim patch of artificial light at the other end of the passage. What else was down there was far too indistinct to make out. The rain began to beat down again. Some people on the street began running to find shelter.

  Isabel gave me a nudge.

  ‘Nice place, ain’t it?’ she whispered. ‘There used to be a hospital on this site, a long time ago.’ She looked over her shoulder.

  ‘You’d think they’d have something better to do on a wet Friday afternoon,’ she said.

  We waited. More demonstrators rushed past us, squelching loudly.

  I pressed the bell. ‘We’re not going away, Peter,’ I said. ‘We just need to ask you a few questions. Then we’ll go.’

  We stood there. I was sure he wasn’t going to let us in. I asked Isabel for her phone.

  ‘Who are you going to call?’ she said.

  ‘If he doesn’t let us in, I’m going to call a journalist I know, tell him everything I overheard in Istanbul. He can get a TV news crew here in fifteen minutes.’ It was true that I knew a journalist at the BBC. He’d be surprised to hear from me, but he would listen if I called him.

  ‘I can tell you his name, if you want,’ I said.

  Seconds later, there was a metallic click from the gate. I pushed at it. It opened. The curved roof and walls of the passage beyond were constructed from centuries-old brown bricks. As the gate closed behind us, the light grew dim for a moment.

  ‘Welcome to St George’s,’ said a disembodied woman’s voice. Lights embedded in the wall lit up. They were blue, tiny, and ran in two inch-apart lines. They drew my eye to the far en
d of the passageway.

  As we walked on I saw the wall on our left was no longer brick. It was made of smoky glass. I could see something moving beyond the glass too. A woman in a long alabaster dress was walking parallel to us. It felt weird, as if we were being shadowed. I stopped. So did Isabel. So did the woman on the other side of the glass.

  I’d heard of apartment buildings with electronic concierges, but this was the first time I’d seen one. We’d stepped into a private world of privilege.

  ‘Follow me,’ the woman’s voice said. She smiled through the glass, turned and walked on. If I didn’t know better, I would have assumed she was smiling at me.

  ‘This isn’t your average crash pad,’ I said.

  The door at the far end slid open with a low shusssh, revealing an enclosed circular courtyard that must have been a hundred feet wide, with tiers of reflecting windows in rows above us, and unmarked cream doors at the main compass points.

  I looked up. The building surrounding us had six storeys. High above, a white roof like a spider’s web separated us from the sky. A square, smoky glass pillar about six foot high stood in the centre of the courtyard. The pillar had the same blue lights around it as the wall in the passageway.

  Isabel led the way, walking briskly. When we’d got about halfway towards the pillar, our feet crunching softly on white gravel, I heard the voice of the concierge woman again.

  ‘You may view information about this building here. Please say ‘yes’ as you pass, if you would like to know more.’

  As we approached the pillar I said yes.

  Isabel turned and rolled her eyes.

  The blue lights dimmed and became an embedded video screen. A scene of dark water close up, a lake in winter, played on it.

  ‘The first recorded use of this site was as a temple to pre-Christian gods – nature deities,’ said the voice. ‘The foundations of a man-made pool were uncovered here when the complex was being constructed. Because of this, water pools are a feature in each building.’

  Isabel passed the pillar without looking at it and walked down the path to the right, towards the doorway at the end.

  As I passed the pillar, the video changed. A hand holding a black-hilted sword appeared out of the water, dripping. I slowed to look at it.

  ‘Before the first Christian church was constructed in the early 6th century nearby, where St Paul’s is today, there was a temple to the goddess Diana, the huntress, on that site. When the time is right, so the legend says, when he is needed, the once and future King will again come to prominence in this area.’ There was a brief pause. ‘To learn more about this site please say ‘yes’.’

  I didn’t say anything. The water scene disappeared. The square pillar became a pillar again.

  ‘They really overdid the marketing hype here,’ said Isabel, as I came up beside her. ‘Only a few of the apartments have been sold, you know. I think Peter still has this whole building to himself.’ She pressed a silver button on the wall by the cream door. I could feel anticipation rising within me.

  The door slid open, to reveal a long, dazzlingly-white, high-ceilinged foyer. Along the walls, on each side, there were four six-foot-high stones that looked as if they’d been brought straight from Stonehenge.

  We walked inside. The door behind us shushed closed. At the far end of the foyer were lift doors and an opening that appeared to be a stairway heading down.

  An aluminium sculpture, a criss-cross of wires, was suspended inches above a pool of dark water, which dominated the centre of the foyer. At the end of the pool was a cream reception desk, with a man standing behind it.

  This was a real show-off space, a way to tell people you could afford all this, just to make your entrance look interesting.

  The guy behind the desk was bald and was wearing a tight black short-sleeved T-shirt. He had the physique of a bodybuilder who’d been overdoing the steroids. His skull was slightly elongated at the back. And he looked familiar. Then he raised a hand, motioned us forward.

  ‘Come,’ he said, in an accent so rough it seemed loaded with gravel. I had no idea where he came from. Eastern Europe, maybe the Middle East.

  We passed the pool.

  ‘Peter is not available,’ said the man, as we came closer to him.

  He was looking at us as if we were interlopers trying to gain entry into his high-class nightclub. His head was down, his chin low, his gaze moving between us restlessly.

  We stopped a few feet from him. I wasn’t just being paranoid. This guy gave me the creeps.

  ‘You are?’ said Isabel. She sounded suspicious. ‘I thought this place didn’t have any security staff yet.’

  The guard looked at her. His face twisted into a sneer. There was definitely something wrong.

  ‘Is Peter here?’ I said.

  ‘I told you, he will not see you. You can email him, make an appointment. Now you must go.’

  ‘This is a national security matter,’ said Isabel curtly. ‘I need to see him now. You have no authority to prevent me from going up to him.’ She pulled an identity card from her pocket and held it out in front of her.

  Then she started for the lifts.

  I moved between Isabel and the guard. If he was going to try and stop her, he’d have to go through me first. He turned and raised his hand to the side, as if he was a bus conductor trying to stop people from getting on a bus.

  ‘This is your last warning,’ he said. ‘You will stop now or you’ll be considered intruders.’

  He moved swiftly from behind his desk. I had a sudden sinking feeling. He was holding a black metal truncheon in his left hand. There was an electric blue glow at its tip.

  Chapter 53

  The screen on Henry’s left showed the exterior of a Turkish Ministry of Public Health laboratory. Henry was waiting for an official courier to appear. The man would be carrying a signed and stamped report from the forensic pathologist, Dr Illiyc, who worked on the building’s third floor.

  The practice of hand delivering pathology reports of special significance dated back to an earlier period, but was still in use, despite the availability of computer networks that could transmit the information in nanoseconds. There were still cases where a state prosecutor, senior police inspector or government department simply didn’t want a report transmitted electronically.

  The practice was limited now, used in very special cases only.

  This was such a case. The forensic pathology report for a new plague victim, an ambulance driver who had been within feet of a victim, and in his community for the last two days, had just been completed. What Henry needed to know was if this driver had died from the new plague virus too.

  Because if he had the Turks were going to have to quarantine a lot more people. Otherwise, this virus was going to spread like fire in a tinder-dry forest.

  Chapter 54

  I felt stupid. Real stupid. Of course he’d be armed. I could feel the blood draining from my face. Isabel turned and clasped her hands in front of her.

  She was pointing something that looked like a gun at the guard. It was a gun.

  ‘Stop now. Put your hands above your head,’ she shouted.

  The guard grinned.

  The end of the device he was pointing at me was glowing brightly. It did not look pleasant. I wasn’t scared though. I was angry.

  Then, one of the elevator doors behind Isabel opened soundlessly and I struggled to grasp what I was seeing: it was Peter, holding another of the blue-tipped devices. The gears in my mind turned slowly. This would be no polite confrontation. He was a traitor. He could do anything now.

  He stepped out of the elevator. My mouth opened to warn Isabel, but as her name came out, an arc of blue lightning reached from Peter to her, and she crumpled like a rag doll, twitching spasmodically as the blue light flickered around her like ball lightning.

  Peter was smiling. The bastard!

  Isabel was jerking, as if she was having an epileptic fit. Her gun fell from her hand. I did the only t
hing I could think of.

  I raced towards the security guard, my fists up. If I could only knock that taser from his grip.

  He must have heard my thoughts, because he lifted the taser just at that moment. A blue flash filled the air.

  And all my thoughts disintegrated. There was just pain. Muscles contracting. Cramps. Shock.

  Then I was lying on my back, jerking, stabs of agony piercing me. The taser had turned my muscles into burning jelly.

  I heard voices, felt my legs move. Someone was binding them together! I tried to kick out to stop them. Instead I jerked convulsively, my muscles cramping. Dread raced through me. What was going to happen?

  I felt hands turning me on my side. I saw Peter wrapping black tape around Isabel’s arms, pinning them behind her back. She was mouthing something I couldn’t hear. Then I was pushed over. I couldn’t see her any more.

  ‘You deserve your fate,’ said a man’s voice. My arms were being taped. I was being dragged by my feet, my muscles still jerking. Where was he taking me?

  To the pool!

  I made a desperate attempt to kick my assailant. But my foot just jerked in the air again. And before I could think of what else to do, I was at the edge of the pool. The water had a sickly, ozoney odour.

  ‘You do it, Peter,’ said a gravelly voice.

  ‘I will.’ Peter’s voice was firm, as if he was agreeing to make tea.

  I turned my head. Hatred boiled inside me. How could that bastard have betrayed Isabel like this? He must have been in on Alek’s death. I wanted to knock the smug expression right off his face.

  But he was standing over me, looking down at me. And I was all trussed up.

  ‘You should have drowned under Hagia Sophia,’ said Peter. ‘Now you will drown here.’

  Like being in a car crash, time slowed. I knew what was coming, knew it was going to be bad, and that there was nothing I could do about it.