The Istanbul Puzzle

by Laurence OBryan

He put a sticky plastic tape over my mouth. I could taste the glue. I tried to jerk again, but my head dropped back on to the marble floor. I actually saw stars. Then I opened my eyes. The ceiling seemed strangely near. I was breathing way too fast, through my nostrils. My chest was heaving in and out.

  I could feel the edge of the pool against my left shoulder. I needed to roll back. I turned my head. The rest of my body wouldn’t respond. Then it jerked. Then it stopped.

  I looked around, wildly. My eyes weren’t focusing properly. Then I saw Isabel was on the ground, trussed up near the desk. She was staring at me. Her eyes were wide and wild. She had black masking tape over her mouth too. Her body had stopped jerking. I saw horror in her eyes. She knew what was about to happen.

  My head turned again. All I could see was the glistening blackness of the water, a great beast with a dark mouth waiting for me.

  The initial effect of the taser shock had almost worn off. My muscles had stopped jerking. But with my hands pinned behind me, and my legs strapped together with tape, and someone pushing me in the side, all I could do was jerk spasmodically. And I did, even as my body turned slowly towards the water.

  And then a vision filled my mind. My body lying on a shelf in a morgue, the way I’d found Alek, cold, blue-veined. I tried to shout, scream, plead. Then I stopped. There isn’t much you can scream with tape over your mouth.

  ‘You should have stayed away,’ said Peter, bending down over me. The next push he gave would send me into the water. ‘You should have given up. I warned you.’

  I breathed hard through my nose, filling my lungs. Then again. Peter smiled at me. I looked away. I could feel the dark presence of the water.

  I turned my head. Isabel had rolled on her side. Our eyes met. Her expression said I’ll get the bastards if I can.

  ‘Do it,’ came a voice. Not Peter’s. ‘We have to go down.’

  He pushed me. I tumbled over.

  There was an enveloping splash as I fell into the freezing black water. Terror raced through me. I shook and rolled until I didn’t know which way was up. All I knew was a mind numbing fear.

  The icy water closed over me like a door and I sank into a grave-like darkness. And I still hadn’t found out why Alek had died. What had he seen that he had to be killed for? That I had to be killed for?

  Chapter 55

  There was a rumour going around London that afternoon. It quickly became a trending topic on Twitter. A man, whose sister was a Special Constable, had told his fellow drinkers in a bar at lunchtime that all police leave had been cancelled that day.

  It had something to do with the demo at St Paul’s.

  The authorities were right to be nervous.

  MI5’s A4 London security team was at that time actively tracking one hundred and twenty-four known high-category terrorists, including twelve far-right targets. On the ground, officers had orders to shoot on sight, if any suspect they were monitoring was believed to be a grave danger to the public.

  Such blanket orders were given only a few times a year, when there was a credible threat to large numbers of people.

  The BBC News site recorded an all-time record ten million page requests per second at 4.27 PM, when an article about the size of the demonstration near St Paul’s went online.

  The article speculated on the significance of the event.

  Chapter 56

  ‘You really shouldn’t have brought him with you, Isabel,’ said Peter loudly.

  Malach pushed Isabel roughly down the last few stairs. She stumbled, almost fell.

  ‘I warned you, but of course you wouldn’t listen. You could have stayed in Istanbul, like I told you to, but oh no, you know better. Well, there’s nothing I can do for you now – or for him, so don’t beg.’

  ‘You are some sick bastard,’ shouted Isabel. Her voice was trembling.

  ‘My, my, you weren’t growing close to him, were you?’ said Peter. He shook his head. ‘How very unprofessional of you.’

  Malach pushed her forward at the bottom of the stairs. Isabel stumbled again, then steadied herself. They’d tied her hands behind her back, but her legs were free. She was able to walk, though the prospect of falling was ever present as she couldn’t reach out to hold onto anything.

  The passage ahead was lit by recessed lighting. About fifty feet ahead, it ended at a stainless steel door.

  When they reached the steel door, Peter punched a code into a panel set into the wall beside it. The doors slid open. Malach pushed Isabel forward. There was a strong smell of polish, as if the elevator they were in had recently been cleaned.

  It moved down with a barely audible whuuussh.

  ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Peter. ‘If you’ve got the right codes, you can go anywhere.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘I’m sorry we had to leave Sean to die, my dear, but it should be over now. At least it was quick. Well – relatively quick.’

  Chapter 57

  Henry’s jacket was off. His sleeves were rolled up. There was tension in the air. In front of him, video feeds from locations across London played on a semicircle of five LCD screens. He looked up for a second as his screens blinked, glanced at the curved brick roof above his head. He had to wait a few seconds before he made contact again.

  Henry was in MI5’s London Control Centre, the main threat monitoring unit for central London. This was the room he enjoyed working in most, despite where it was. He could feel a real connection with his long-dead father here. He’d been part of the first team to work here after the war. And he’d told Henry a little about it.

  In early 1942, eight deep-level bomb shelters were dug out in central London. At between 123 and 155 feet deep they became the deepest wartime shelters ever built in Europe.

  One was located beneath Chancery Lane tube station, now part of the Central Line of the Underground, between St Paul’s and Holborn stations.

  The shelter, originally 1,200 feet long, was designed to have two floors, and was constructed with a twenty-foot thick concrete roof. It was still considered to be impregnable. When his father worked here it housed the Special Operations Executive’s central London monitoring unit.

  On one occasion his father had taken him to see the entrance to the facility, a reconstructed brick ‘pillbox’ structure at street level. He’d also told him about the floor-to-ceiling metal turnstile, located on a rarely used part of the lower concourse of Chancery Lane station, the other entrance to the facility. This was the entrance Henry mostly used now.

  These days both entrances had biometric entry panels, and wall mounted voice recognition systems that would have amazed his father.

  In the main control room on the lower floor of the facility, where Henry was sitting that afternoon, a mosaic of LCD screens covered one wall. Henry’s desk was the second from the right in a row of five.

  When he exited the station, Henry looked like any other middle-aged commuter in a rumpled silver-grey suit with a copy of The Times neatly tucked under his arm, folded open to reveal the crossword page.

  The resources Henry had access to would have amazed the early occupiers of the facility. He could watch multiple live video feeds from thousands of central London security cameras, including some mounted on helicopters.

  Despite all the expensive equipment though, Henry had lost one of his targets. He was waiting for a field team to check in.

  And he’d waited long enough.

  ‘A41,’ he said, brusquely, into the stalk microphone on the desk in front of him. ‘Anyone in that passageway?’

  There was a piercing crackle from the earphone in his left ear.

  ‘No, sir,’ came the reply.

  ‘Bugger,’ said Henry loudly. The tracking device he’d been relying on had been out of range for two minutes. He picked up a sleek black handset.

  The controllers on his left and right stopped what they were doing and looked at him.

  He spoke quickly, listened, then put the handset down.

  He looked at th
e main screen in front of him and pressed some keys on his curved keyboard.

  An image of two people, a man and a woman, the targets he’d been tracking since they’d left the House of Commons, filled the screen.

  He watched as his system replayed a stored video of the couple heading towards the St George’s building.

  ‘Sorry, A41,’ he said into his microphone. ‘Stand down. We’ve had a direct order.’

  He switched his main monitor to a feed from a camera overlooking the front of St Paul’s. A bearded man in a loose white shirt was standing halfway up its main steps. He was holding a fat black microphone and addressing the crowd pressing in around him.

  The man had moved from when he’d started his speech. Most likely because of the size of the crowd.

  But that was not what made Henry’s eyes widen. Behind the speaker, at the top of the steps, the main door of St Paul’s was cracking open at its centre. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Someone was opening the door from the inside!

  His gaze shifted to the live news feed from the BBC service. The text banner at the bottom of the screen read: ‘Speaker at Muslim rally at St Paul’s claims London will become an Islamic city’.

  The image above the text changed. People in the crowd had noticed that the doors were opening. Some began to rush forward.

  ‘What?’ said Henry. ‘Are they going to take over St Paul’s?’

  He let out a deep breath.

  The desktop speakers beside Henry’s screen fizzed with a light static. The hum from the equipment all around him gave the place the feel of a beehive.

  ‘Should we come back to base, sir?’ came a calm voice in his ear.

  He licked his lips. They felt like sandpaper. He had a bad feeling, down deep in his gut

  The small red phone on his desk rang. The only time that ever rang was when there was trouble.

  He picked it up.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  After listening for a few seconds, he placed the receiver down. All eyes were on him.

  The speaker on his desk squawked.

  ‘Are we back to base, sir?’ came the same male voice.

  Henry pressed some buttons on the keyboard to his left. One of his two screens blinked, went white, blinked again. An image appeared, moved.

  An officer in a police uniform came into the field of view. The body armour he wore was hidden under a bulky yellow jacket. He was accompanied by four others who were similarly dressed.

  Henry looked up. On every desk around him, one screen was showing the same image he was looking at. There would be other screens around the country watching this feed too, Downing Street included. He sat up straighter.

  ‘Has the security system been cut?’ he said.

  ‘Not yet, sir,’ came the reply from the speakers.

  ‘Change in orders. Proceed. Code green,’ said Henry.

  The image on the screen changed, bounced. The camera moved back. A handheld battering ram could be seen. It moved. The side of the door buckled.

  But it didn’t open. Most doors would have.

  This was going to take longer than expected.

  He turned to the keyboard at his right, began typing. He noticed the red timer on the top of his screen. It told him how long it had been since the tracking device he was following had gone out of range. ‘4:05’ it read.

  Chapter 58

  ‘Soon we will all be tested, that’s what they say, isn’t it?’ said Peter, as they made their way down a spiral staircase in a shaft of chocolate brown brick, the type you’d find in a Victorian Underground station. The walls pressed in around them. There was a musty smell too.

  ‘You’re in a good mood,’ said Isabel. ‘For a traitor. You won’t get away with this, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Do you want your mouth taped again?’ said Peter.

  Isabel didn’t reply.

  The lower they went, the mustier the air became. Isabel was behind Peter, a little ahead of Malach.

  She was taking each step slowly. A fall down these stairs would be seriously painful. Malach had warned her not to delay them, but she still went down at her own pace.

  When they reached the bottom, Peter stood in front of an old-fashioned steel fuse cabinet and pulled its prominent black Bakelite handle upwards. He then yanked it forwards and upwards again. The whole dull grey unit moved towards him in the dust, on hinges, as if it was a door. Behind it, there was a dim corridor with an arched brick roof. This was a medieval corridor many generations older than the spiral staircase they’d just come down.

  And it was barely wide enough for two people to pass, and too low for Malach to stand upright in. He had to bend his neck. The air in the tunnel left a dusty taste in Isabel’s mouth. There was a foul smell, as if dead rats had been left to rot here.

  ‘Lovely down here, isn’t it?’ said Peter, as they entered the passage. He reached out to a round black bakelite switch on the wall to their left. Lights came on along the corridor, which stretched far into the distance. Peter closed the door behind them.

  ‘Originally, this led to the old Fleet Prison,’ he said. His voice echoed in the passage. Isabel stood silently, arms behind her, a little way on.

  She was looking at the packed earth floor.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You better keep up.’ He prodded her to follow Malach, who was striding ahead.

  They passed a wooden door made from grey timbers with a small rusty grill at shoulder height. The yellow light from the mesh-covered bulbs set at regular intervals along the tunnel’s walls flickered.

  ‘You’re following a long tradition, Isabel. Some important prisoners were brought this way.’

  Malach had stopped and was waiting for them. Peter prodded Isabel in the back again.

  They passed another door and turned left into a side tunnel. There were no roof lights in this section until the tunnel branched again, a hundred yards further on. The light from that end of the tunnel lit only part of the section in between.

  As they walked into the gloom a cold fear gripped at her. She’d been taught how to suppress her feelings if she was kidnapped, to think about ways to escape, but she was struggling to remember much more of the advice.

  Her thoughts were jumping too fast.

  She bumped into Malach in the middle of the gloomiest part of the tunnel. He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to him.

  She turned her head in revulsion.

  He laughed. ‘Good,’ he said, in a tone that left little doubt that he was enjoying himself. He pinned her to his side.

  She tried to wriggle free. He held her tighter. Icy lumps of fear passed through her veins.

  He pushed at a door in the wall, just where it was gloomiest. A heavy damp smell hit her, and suddenly there was light.

  She had to close her eyes, it was so bright. When she opened them, Malach had released her. She was looking into a space the likes of which she’d never seen before. It was one… two… three… four… no, eight-sided, and its black-timbered ceiling angled steeply up from each wall towards a point, high up above the centre of the room.

  Peter closed the foot-thick door as soon as the three of them were inside. There was no way anyone would hear her scream down here.

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it? This place goes back to the 1640s,’ said Peter. He walked slowly around the room.

  ‘Part of it was used in Roman times as well, as an underground temple. The sort of place where they taught divination and magic, that sort of thing.’ He pointed up at the roof.

  ‘That hole up there points to the North Star,’ he went on. ‘Or it did, once.’

  Malach was locking the door.

  There was a rough stone mound in the centre of the room. It looked like the top of a huge ball, age-blackened and ten foot wide, protruding only inches above the floor. Near it there was an oak table, its edges worn soap-smooth from use. On the table, lying open, was the manuscript they’d found in Istanbul. Isabel moved towards it. Peter didn’t sto
p her. It was open at the last page. The symbol stared up at her.

  She wanted to ask how he’d got the book, but she didn’t. She wasn’t going to give him the pleasure. Anyway, someone had to be coming for her. They’d be looking for her already. The only question was, how soon would they find this place?

  A deep sadness filled her up every time she thought about Sean. Poor Sean. Tears threatened every time she thought about him, but they didn’t come, like a storm that wouldn’t break.

  ‘Can you hear something?’ said Peter. He was standing behind her.

  There was a distant rumbling. It might have been water. It might have been an underground train. She looked up at the roof.

  ‘That’s the River Fleet,’ he said. ‘It’s directly above us.’

  There was a cold slick of sweat all over her now, but her mind was floating, as if she was observing a nightmare happening to someone else.

  ‘This place became the Star Chamber for a time in 1641. Charles I used it.The Puritans who founded America were fleeing his regime. It was abandoned and then sealed up. Come and see this.’ He pointed at the mound in the centre of the room and walked towards it.

  When she came near it, she saw there was a six-inch gap all around the mound. When she looked into the gap she saw it ran down into the earth and grew wider further down. And in the crack, a few feet down, there were grey bones. Lots and lots of them. They could have been animal bones, she wanted them to be animal bones, but the human skulls here and there in the thick lattice of thighs and cracked ribs and brittle arms told her something different.

  The protruding ball shape looked like the top of a skull to her now. A skull bigger than any she’d ever seen. And the top of the skull, or whatever it was, was blackened, as if fires had been lit on it long ago. Around the protrusion, about six feet away from it, were four circles, smooth stone lids, set into the stone floor. Each of them was two foot in diameter, and equidistant, as if they’d been the base points for four pillars that could have held a roof or a canopy over the mound.

  ‘Do you want to see more?’ said Malach. He was standing behind her.