City of the Lost (13 page)

The cameras had no microphones. They were too easy to check for, and might have given their surveillance away. The video was therefore synchronized with his laptop audio. Unfortunately, all he saw was Karin, the motorcyclist and various other staff and guests walking to and fro. The third camera had been set up on the main Antioch road, because that was the direction from which they’d expected the Bejjanis to arrive. But neither the motorcyclist nor the truck had come that way. Now for the fourth and final camera, attached to a telephone pole across the road from the hotel. The motorcyclist arrived, parked, went inside. Time passed. She came back out, walked along the front of the hotel, then turned and guided in the truck. The driver got out, shoulders hunched and head bowed. The woman straddled her bike and rocked it off its stand. The man had his back to the camera. He took off his cap and sunglasses and stuffed them in his pockets. Then he made to put on his helmet.

‘Look around, you bastard,’ muttered Iain, leaning closer. ‘Look around.’

The café door banged at that moment. The man couldn’t help himself, he glanced over his right shoulder. Iain stared at the screen almost in disbelief. ‘Got you,’ he said.

Iain froze the crucial frame then zoomed in on the man’s face. The resolution wasn’t great but it caught his short, dark hair, his high, wide forehead, his weak chin and the crescent scar by his left eyebrow. Not perfect, granted, but surely recognizable to a friend, colleague or relative.

What now?

He had to get this to the investigating team, of course, but that was easier said than done. They were bound to ask why he’d been filming the hotel; and while private surveillance wasn’t exactly illegal, you didn’t want to have to explain it to the police in the aftermath of an atrocity like this. They’d make his life miserable, force him to name his client, probably deport him from Turkey, maybe even ban him from ever returning. So he needed to remain anonymous.

The media had been pushing hotline numbers and other ways to get in touch with the investigating team. He quickly found an email address for them. The last section of footage from the fourth camera, from the arrival of the motorcyclist up to the moment of the blast, contained everything they’d need. If he sent it from a bogus Hotmail account set up via his new computer, ISP confidentiality would normally make it untraceable. But this was a terrorism case and so the rules were different. He couldn’t risk using the hotel wi-fi, and he was liable to be remembered if he used a local Internet café. And if he used Tor or one of the other programs people like him used to cover their digital tracks, it might prompt the police to look for someone with his particular skill-set and so steer them straight to him.

He needed another way.

The day he’d arrived, he’d wandered around the market, had taken coffee in a café with free wi-fi. He’d used his old laptop but he remembered the password. He checked his watch. The market shut down at night. The café was certain to have closed. But such places often left their routers running overnight. It had to be worth a shot. He zipped his laptop into its bag then hurried down and out.

Such food as her son had had in his apartment, they’d eaten the night before. Zehra therefore had Katerina show her to the nearest shop after collecting her from school. Plastic crates of tired produce looked as limp as she felt after her long day, but there was still enough for a meal or two. The first molohiya of the year was in. She added vine leaves, an onion, a pepper, a lemon, two small potatoes, a tomato, a garlic bulb, a few pinches of fresh herbs and a single chicken thigh, which was all her purse and arms would allow. The checkout woman eyed her sourly as she weighed each item in turn but Zehra paid her no mind, except to watch the scales to make sure she wasn’t cheated.

Back in the apartment, she gave Katerina the molohiya to prepare. Katerina looked dumbly at her, as though she’d never even seen it before. Zehra frowned. ‘It’s molohiya,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know how to prepare molohiya.’

Katerina shook her head. ‘No.’

Zehra sighed. She found a knife and showed Katerina how to hold it so as not to cut off her fingers, then chopped the dark green leaves into long thin strips. ‘Now your turn,’ she said.

Katerina bit her lower lip in concentration as she worked. Her fingers were tiny and boneless compared to Zehra’s own gnarled, arthritic stubs. But she kept at it until she was done, when she looked up with such shining eyes that it was a thump in Zehra’s chest. ‘Are we having this tonight?’ she asked.

‘No, child,’ said Zehra, more severely than was warranted. ‘It’s too bitter. It needs to soak.’ She filled a pan with water, tossed in the leaves. Then she took out the chicken thigh, two potatoes, the vine leaves, an onion, a lemon and a selection of herbs. ‘These are for tonight. Do you want to help?’

Katerina nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, please.’

‘Very well,’ said Zehra. ‘Then those potatoes aren’t going to peel themselves, are they?’

Inspector Ozgur Karacan leaned back wearily in his chair and covered his face with his hands. Another brutal day. It wasn’t just that the bomb had devastated his home town and killed two old school-friends working in the hotel, it was that the investigation into it was such a shambles. Part of that was excusable. A large team had had to be put together in a rush. It comprised local, regional, and national officers as well as specialist technical teams and gendarmerie under the broad authority of the Turkish National Police Counterterrorism Authority, all working hand-in-hand with the National Intelligence Organization. Each had overlapping areas of responsibility and conflicting reporting structures. Each had had to procure for itself suitable workspace and accommodation. To add even more confusion, a lieutenant colonel had arrived that afternoon from the Office of the General Staff. He’d claimed his brief was to observe and advise only, but no one believed that for a moment. With so many competing interests at work, it was no surprise that already people were manoeuvring crudely for what little credit was going, as well as to avoid blame. And so it had become painfully clear to him exactly how the terrorists had run their campaigns with such impunity, and why—

‘Inspector,’ said a woman.

He looked around. Melisa Avci, no doubt with yet another piece of nonsense from the incident hotline. ‘What now?’

‘Footage,’ she said. ‘It came in a minute ago. You can see a white truck backing up against the hotel. You can see the driver’s face.’

Karacan stood, electrified. So much police work was about luck; but this was extraordinary. He followed her to her desk. She played it for him. He watched the driver park his truck and get out. He watched him walk around the bonnet. Then he watched him glance around. Even as he exulted, he struggled to make sense of it. The camera must have been directly across the road from the hotel, yet that whole area had been wide open, to afford the hotel’s guests uninterrupted views. There’d been no CCTV cameras in the vicinity; it was about the first thing he’d checked. And what tourist would film the front of a hotel?

‘Fantastic work, Melisa,’ he told her. The hotline was soul-destroying work, what with all the whackos calling in their theories, so she deserved full credit if only for stamina. Within minutes, the room was filled with braided uniforms. A
jihadi
video, they all agreed. Perhaps sent in by a turncoat of some kind. But what to do with it? Some wanted to give it to the media in hopes of a quick identification and arrest. But others cautioned against alerting the bombers to the breakthrough and thus giving them time to cover their tracks. So up again it went, to the Minister himself. In the meantime, there was plenty to be done: licence plates to check out, emails and footage to examine, suspect photos to be searched for a match.

Ozgur Karacan’s jaw trembled as he fought a yawn. The notion of a
jihadi
video made little sense to him, but back-to-back twenty-hour days meant he was in no state to offer anything better. His first boss had once told him that the best next move in a hard case was often a good night’s sleep. Never had that advice sounded sweeter than right now.

The shower was on when Iain returned to his room. Karin was back. He stowed his laptop beneath the dressing table then turned on the TV both to catch the latest news and to alert her to his presence. Yet she still looked startled to see him when she came out a few minutes later, a white hotel towel wrapped around her chest.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘How dare you barge into your own room like that?’ She grabbed clean clothes and vanished again, re-emerging several minutes later. ‘God, I needed that,’ she said.

‘Tough day?’ he asked.

‘My Dutch consul guy is an angel,’ she said. ‘But the Americans are such pricks.’

Iain laughed. ‘Is that a general observation, or did something specific happen?’

She sighed. ‘I have this thing called an EB-1B visa. It’s a green card for researchers and academics and the like. But it was with my passport in my hotel safe. The thing is, Nathan arranged it for me before I could go to work for him. And now that he’s dead they’re saying they can’t issue me a new one, not unless I have another offer of work. I mean Jesus! You’d think they’d give me a little leeway. All my stuff’s over there. My apartment!’

‘Hell. What will you do?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Hope, I guess. The police have already recovered a bunch of the hotel safes, apparently, and their contents have been fine. If they find mine, and my passport and green card are okay, then I can at least defer it for a while.’

‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed.’

‘You’d better. All my bank cards are in there too. If things don’t sort out soon, it may be a while before I can repay you.’

‘Yeah. My two hundred lira. It’s all I’ve been able to think of.’

‘I hate owing people things.’

‘So I guess you won’t want dinner tonight, then?’

‘I don’t hate it quite
that
much.’

‘Great,’ he said. ‘Then let’s get out of here.’

The storm was brutal, lashing the Grey Wolf camp with the kind of fury that made one believe in ancient gods, pinning Asena inside the main cabin. To make matters worse, Hakan just wouldn’t shut up. His family lived less than an hour away. He wanted to go see them. She told him no but he wouldn’t let it go. He droned on so long that he drove the others off, even through the deluge. He insisted she owed him for delivering the bomb. He swore blind that he wouldn’t give anything away. But there’d been something perilously close to remorse about Hakan ever since he’d learned the death toll, and she simply didn’t trust him. ‘Enough!’ she cried. ‘Enough!’ She made sure she had all the vehicle keys and retreated to her room.

It wasn’t yet time for the Lion to call, and he was rarely punctual anyway, but she set up all the same. To her surprise and pleasure, he came on early. But then she saw his expression and sensed trouble. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘You went to Daphne yourself, didn’t you?’ he said angrily. ‘I told you not to.’

‘I have to make the men respect me. They won’t respect me unless I prove myself.’ Then she frowned. ‘But how did you know?’

‘We received footage this evening. Of you and your friend outside the hotel.’

‘What?
How?
’

‘We don’t know that yet. We’re working on it.’

She thought back. ‘It can’t be too serious, can it? We used false plates. We never showed our faces.’

‘Your idiot friend did. Before he put on his helmet.’

‘Shit.’ She bit a knuckle. ‘Is he identifiable?’

‘You’ll be able to judge that better than me. I’ve just sent you the clearest shot.’

Asena checked her inbox, opened the attachment. Not perfect of Hakan, but close enough. If it got wide coverage, someone was bound to finger him. Then they’d tear his life apart. He was the one who’d known of this remote forest camp, because he’d hiked here as a child. He’d even put her in touch with the former owners. They’d therefore have to leave tonight. They couldn’t take Hakan with them, however, not if this picture got out. Yet nor could they leave him here. ‘How long have we got?’ she asked.

The Lion shrugged. ‘It will come out eventually. If not from us, then from whoever sent it in. For all we know, the media already has it.’

Her heart squeezed. She felt hatred. ‘Who did this to us?’

‘We’re working on that. And we’ll find out, I promise. But right now we have a larger question.’

Asena nodded. When you were plotting to overthrow a government, a certain flexibility of planning was essential. There were simply too many uncontrollable externalities, from the economy and popular opinion to unforeseen political and world events. All you could do was work to make conditions as favourable as possible, then strike hard with everything you had when the moment was right. And while they weren’t there yet, they were close. ‘We’re not calling it off,’ she said flatly. ‘Not after everything we’ve already done. And postponing will just give them more time to find us. I say we move it up.’

The Lion looked pleased. It was evidently his view too. ‘Put those stories out,’ he told her. ‘We’ll aim for Labour Day next month. And please make sure that your idiot friend can’t cause us any grief.’

‘Leave him to me.’ She touched his cheek upon her screen. ‘The Lion and the Wolf,’ she said.

‘The Lion and the Wolf.’

His box went black then vanished altogether. She stared at the picture of Hakan still on her screen. How to handle him? With so much blood already on her hands, she wanted, if possible, to let him live; yet it would be crazy to risk everything they’d worked so hard to—

A floorboard creaked behind her. She whirled around. Hakan himself was standing there, wearing his wheedling expression, evidently come for one last plea. But then he saw the photograph of himself upon her screen, and he must have realized the implications at once, for the blood drained from his face and his expression changed before her eyes to one of mortal terror.