Evolution of Fear (10 page)

By now Clay was pretty sure that LeClerc had been compromised. His erratic behaviour on the phone, the fear in his voice, the sudden change from recalcitrant and defensive to apologetic and helpful – all suggested something was seriously wrong. Was he being manipulated? Had he been paid off? Knowingly or not, and for reasons Clay could only begin to guess, LeClerc had sent him into a trap. Rania, too, most likely. The tail from the airport was proof enough. Whether Hamour was a willing participant or a witless pawn made little difference. Medved’s people were here, and they were closing in.

But in chaos was safety. The bazaar was packed. He had a sixty-second head start and a thousand possible routes. Clay calibrated his internal compass for east, veered left into a narrow-arched passageway and emerged into a snaking artery walled with oriental carpets. Medved’s people – he was assuming that they were Medved’s people, or Crowbar’s, working for Medved – would have no idea where to start. There were too many alleys, too many people, too many shops and turnings, and far too many exits to watch. He moved quickly through the throng, turning right into the broad, high-arched gold souk and quickly left again into the clutter of brasswares, moving steadily north and east. Ten minutes later he emerged, eyes blinking, at the Nurosmaniye Mosque, the domes and minarets on his right, the gardens green and cool, the trees ancient, trunks as thick as cars. His pace was quick but unhurried as he came out onto Bezciler Street. It took him less than thirty seconds to hail a taxi. He jumped in, haggled a price and sank down in the back seat for the ride through the Golden Horn and across the Galata Bridge.

Twenty minutes later the taxi dropped him in one of Tepebaşi’s narrow side streets. Rubbish overflowed from ancient bins ranked along the pavement, stinking even in the cool of late afternoon. A cat limped from behind one of the bins, scurried across the road, disappeared down a laneway. Clay found the door he was looking for, pushed it open and moved along a dimly lit corridor, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. The lobby was small, an extension of the corridor, but better lit. He’d stayed here a few years ago, and it didn’t look any better now than it did then: the same few plants along the front windowsill, the faded one-star tourist-hotel emblem on the door, the badly laid tile floor, the DIY wood veneer front desk. Clay booked a single room with a phone, one night, paid cash.

The second-floor room was small but clean, with a view of the street. He flung open the shutters and scanned the street below, the modest façade of the Seglik Merkezi Hotel directly opposite. Like most of this part of the city, the buildings were a monotony of grey stone, monuments to another era. Diesel fumes wafted through the open balcony door. A bray of car horns. Clay positioned a chair near the window, placed the telephone nearby, sat and started his vigil. He thought of lighting a cigarette but he didn’t smoke now, hadn’t since the war. Instead he pulled out a cheap switchblade he’d picked up in the bazaar, weighed the thing in his hand and flicked out the blade, turning it over in his fingers.

The street was busy, cars trundling past, a trickle of pedestrians. An hour passed. At dusk a troika of tourists returned to the hotel, an older couple slung with cameras and umbrellas, a younger woman, their daughter perhaps. Later a taxi pulled up, discharged another couple, idled there a moment and continued on its way. The
Akşam
came, the evening prayer, the first he’d heard in months, a thousand voices scattering shards of hope across the city, the sun lost now to the world, the start of a new day in Islam: God is Great.

Waiting was always the worst part. Those hours before an op, the chunks of time that stuck inside you like a tragedy, endless moonlit wanderings through forests of doubt, blown away once you were in
the Puma’s open cargo bay, the Angolan bush tearing away below you so close and green, a blur, the wind in your face, all of you packed in tight, shoulders and arms and backs pressed close, men’s bodies fused, weapons ready, hearts racing.

God, he could use a drink.

Zdravko free. Jesus Christ. It had been Zdravko, ex of the Russian war in Afghanistan, who had done Rex Medved’s dirty work in Yemen: money laundering, assassinations, murder of unarmed villagers. After Clay had put the nine-millimetre slug into the bastard’s knee, one thing was sure: he’d be limping.

The room was dark. Passing cars painted the walls with drifting wedges of yellow light. Clay stood, stretched his legs and was about to call down to the front desk for a bottle of water when a lone figure appeared at the corner opposite and started towards the hotel. A woman, covered head to foot in a
burqa
– not nearly as common a sight here as in Yemen, but not unusual. Her stride was steady and smooth, her head still as she swayed beneath the black cloaking. Clay watched her approach, slow, stop then stand facing the entrance to the Seglik Merkezi Hotel. She was carrying a small case. Her back was turned, her shape silhouetted against the yellow lights of the hotel’s windows. She glanced quickly left and right and disappeared inside.

Clay grabbed the phone and dialled the number for the Seglik Merkezi’s front desk. The number rang.

A clerk answered in Turkish: ‘
Iyi Akşamlar
.’ Good evening.

‘Good evening,’ Clay repeated in Turkish. ‘
Lütfen
,’ he began. Please. ‘A woman has just walked into the hotel. Can you see her?’

‘Yes. She is here.’

Just then, a taxi pulled up in front of the hotel. A man stepped out onto the pavement. He was broad-shouldered, dressed in jeans and a dark jacket. The black spearpoint of a pronounced widow’s peak split the pale expanse of the man’s forehead, signposting a wide, much-damaged nose.

‘Please ask her to come to the phone,’ Clay said. ‘I need to speak with her.’

Clay heard the clerk put down the phone and call out something.

Spearpoint paid the taxi driver, turned and disappeared into the hotel’s entrance. Clay stood, heart and blood and breath stalled, the receiver to his ear.

‘Sir?’ came the clerk’s voice, unsure. ‘She, the woman, she has gone, Sir.’

Clay dropped the handset, grabbed his bag, flung open his door, took the stairs four at a time. He burst out onto the street and sprinted to the hotel. The lobby was small, a narrow foyer flanked by a reception desk set along one wall. Beyond the desk, towards the back of the lobby, a single elevator and a windowed service door. Rania was nowhere to be seen. Spearpoint was standing at the front desk talking to the clerk. He looked up as Clay entered. His eyes were grey, the colour of weathered concrete. He looked youngish but stressed, prematurely aged somehow, as if he hadn’t slept for a long time. He looked Clay up and down with a quick flick, then lowered his eyes and returned his attention to the clerk. Clay continued across the lobby towards the desk at a slow walk and stood behind Spearpoint as if waiting to check in, bag in hand.

The clerk pointed to the back service door. Spearpoint nodded and started towards the door with long, steady strides.

Clay looked at the clerk. ‘
Bayan?
’ he asked. The woman?

The clerk gave him a quizzical look.

‘Where did she go?’

The clerk pointed again towards the service door.

By the time Clay burst through into the corridor, Spearpoint was three-quarters of the way to the rear exit. Clay called out to him. Spearpoint slowed and glanced back over his shoulder. Then he stopped, turned and faced Clay, squaring himself.

‘
Problem?
’ Spearpoint shouted, the same meaning in Turkish as English.

Clay didn’t answer. Just kept closing the fifteen metres that separated them, his hand in his jacket pocket closing around the switchblade’s grip, watching Spearpoint’s shoulders coil, the fists
starting to take shape, and in that action telling Clay everything he needed to know.

Clay was about five metres away when Spearpoint turned and ran, crashed through the back door and into the night. Clay followed, out into the alley. Spearpoint was running east towards Tepebaşi Street, his footfall echoing across the brick. Clay checked back in the opposite direction. Here, where the rooftops were higher, it was dark. But further along, dim city light rinsed one side of the alley. In the facing shadows, a black shape emerged from behind a rubbish bin and moved away towards the intersection. The woman. Clay swivelled round just in time to see Spearpoint reach Tepebaşi Street and disappear into the traffic. By the time he turned back again, the woman was gone.

Clay sprinted along the alleyway to the intersection. A narrow street with a few shops, the occasional tree, a mosque further up, a couple of pedestrians. He scanned the street up and back. More shops, a couple of delivery vans parked half up on the narrow concrete pavement. And just beyond, a flash of black passing under a streetlamp, a shrouded figure moving away at pace.

Clay looked back along the length of the alleyway, the leaking bins and talus slopes of rubbish, the stained concrete, the windowless rear walls of buildings serried like ranks of half-held secrets. He started after the woman.

She was moving quickly but he closed the gap, the sound of his boot soles on the pavement reverberating between the close-built, balcony-studded façades. He’d reached the vans when the woman stopped. She was alone, the next intersection still twenty metres away, the traffic lights burning green, waiting cars painting the tarmac with their headlights. Then she turned and looked back at him.

They moved like assassins through the dinnertime streets. Just before the main road they turned down a narrow lane, all Ottoman facings and overhanging balconies, electric light banding through shuttered windows. The lane narrowed, split. They veered south across scattered islands of lamplight, through wide channels of darkness. The laneway ended at the high wall of an anonymous mosque, ancient even here, another of the many converted Christian churches, the minarets grafted afterthoughts, prosthetics. He swung open an iron gate. She reached for his hand. He led her through the unlit grounds, under centuries-old cypresses swaying among the first stars, past tombstones with names long since erased, up through the empty courtyard to the eastern gate. From there they followed a stonework footpath to a narrow stairway that twisted up through the lithic guts of the city until they emerged at a promontory.

All of Istanbul lay below.

The Golden Horn pulsed like a diode, electrons pouring in through the Galata Bridge, Constantinople electric.

They were alone.

‘
Magnifique
,’ she said.

He looked into her eyes. ‘
Ja
, definitely.’

Her eyes smiled.

He reached up for her veil but before he could pull it aside she took his hand, moved it away. ‘I am being followed,’ she said.

‘I noticed.’

She looked down, still holding his hand. ‘I know, Claymore. Please do not say it.’

Clay glanced back along the pathway. ‘There is a place we can go. The proprietor is a friend. We’ll be safe there, for a little while anyway.’

She nodded.

He glanced at her case, smiled. ‘Planning to stay the night?’

She tutted, took his hand. ‘Let’s
ontrek
.’

He smiled again, couldn’t stop smiling. The French-accented Afrikaans sounded sweet from her tongue.
Soos engele
. Like angels.

After half an hour of backtracking and careful halts, she – the one trained in counter-surveillance – was sure they were not being followed. Ten minutes later they slipped into the service entrance of the Pera Palas hotel and made their way to the lobby. Kemal Atatürk glared down at them from his portrait above the reception desk as if he were still here, plotting the revolution from these very rooms, from the Long Bar across the lobby.

The proprietor was happy to see Clay, agreed it had been some time, and with a discrete nod agreed that he was in fact not here at all, nor had they ever met, then passed him a room key without registering them. Clay led Rania to the old, wrought-steel, open-cage lift. The uniformed operator touched his fez, closed the grille and pushed the lever, starting the cables hissing up to the fourth floor.

Clay dumped their bags on the floor, bolted and chained the door, walked to the balcony and opened up the big French doors. Night air streamed in, the sounds and smells of the city, all of its layered chaos.

He turned to face her.

Rania pulled off her
burqa
. She was the same woman he’d first met in the wilds of Yemen barely seven months ago, the one who’d uncovered in him a few dim coals of hope for the future, the same, but different somehow, older, more bruised, despite the heart-stopping beauty. Two metres separated them. It felt like two kilometres.

He was about to ask her why she’d said what she’d said – about going back to Africa on his own, about it all being, what was the word she’d used?
premature
– when she raised her finger to her lips. Then she stepped towards him, wrapped her arms around his neck
and pulled him down to her, her lips micron close so he could feel the pulsing heat of them.

‘
Hurry
,’ she whispered.

Later he woke to the sounds of the street. She moulded to him, head on his chest, naked thigh drawn up over his knees. He breathed her in, filled his lungs with her to overdose from it.

She stirred.

He kissed her head.

‘
Chéri
,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for coming.’

‘Thank
you
,’ Clay said, expecting a rebuke.

‘
Tu es impossible
,’ she said, delivering it. She ran her hand along his torso, down to his stomach, taking him in her hand. Then she pressed her lips to his ear, as if frightened that someone might hear. ‘Do it again,’ she whispered.

Afterwards, Clay picked up the phone, ordered some late dinner to the room: salad, dolmades, roast chicken, bread, fresh lime juice, water. Rania rose, put on a hotel housecoat and started unpacking her case.

‘Don’t get too settled,’ he said, watching her. ‘We may have to leave in a hurry.’

She stood facing him, a small book cradled in her hands. The page edges had been gilded once, the silver text-block now a worn, tarnished grey. She looked up at him. ‘It was my father’s Koran,’ she said. ‘I always have it with me.’ She held it out for him.

It was a small leather-bound volume, the Arabic script dense, impenetrable. On the inside front cover was a handwritten dedication, also in Arabic. All Clay could make out was the year, 1980. He closed the cover and handed it back to her.

‘Madame Debret told me your father was killed when you were young,’ he said.

She took the book, held it in both hands. ‘I was twelve.’

‘Algerian Islamists, she told me.’

Rania combed one hand through her hair and placed the Koran on the bedside table. ‘They came into our house, herded my mother and me into the sitting room, made my father kneel in front of us and shot him in the head.’

Clay felt his heart stop. ‘Jesus, Ra, I’m sorry.’

Rania looked at him for a moment as if she was going to say something, hung on it, frowned, then picked up her bag and disappeared into the bathroom. Moments later, the sound of a bath being run, steam wisping from the half-closed door. He lay back on the bed, closed his eyes. He heard the taps squeak, the rush of water slow then stop, the lap as she stepped into the tub, sank in. Then water lifted in cupped hands, poured over bare shoulders, laving over breasts, dripping from nipples. He could feel the hormones swimming through his body, the echo of her touch, the adrenaline there too. He was hard again, aching. He stood, walked naked to the balcony, gripped the rail as if it were a lifeline and looked out over the city, all the distance there, a half-moon rising over the Sea of Marmara, big and red through the smog and the haze from the sea.

She called to him, her voice echoing off the bathroom tile.

She was lying in the tub, wet hair plastered over her skull, her chest. Her breasts bobbed on the surface. They were big. Bigger than he remembered.

‘Times like this I wish I still had two hands,’ he said, staring.

She smiled up at him, lowered her eyes. ‘You do well enough with one.’

He pulled up a stool and sat next to her.

She ran her hands through her hair, wrung out one of the tresses. ‘You should marry me,’ she said.

Clay ran his gaze from her eyes to her feet and back up again, slowly. He did not want to ask her about what she’d said on the phone, why she’d pushed him away. Not now.

‘I should,’ he said. ‘It’s late, now. How about tomorrow?’

‘Yes,’ she said, not smiling. ‘Let’s.’

‘And then we’ll
ontrek
, wife. Disappear.’

Rania crossed her arms across her chest. ‘After,’ she said.

‘After what?’

‘After I finish this story.’

Clay sat a moment staring into the water. ‘They burned your place down,’ he said, his tone flat.

She looked up, confusion in her eyes. ‘What did you say?’

‘I was in Champéry two days ago. Your chalet burned to the ground. It wasn’t a coincidence, Rania. I was trying to tell you on the phone, they’re on to you.’

Rania gasped, put her hand to her mouth. ‘
Mon dieu
. Heloïse. Madame Debret. Is she safe?’

‘The
aubergiste
said no one was home when it went up.’

‘
Al hamdillulah
,’ she muttered. ‘That explains why I have not been able to reach her. I hope she is alright. She must be very sad. It was her grandfather’s house.’

‘I looked everywhere for her. All over the village. No one has seen her since the fire.’

‘Hope warned me this would happen,’ she said.

‘Hope?’

‘Hope Bachmann. We have been working together in Cyprus. Or rather she has been providing me with information. We…’ she hesitated, crossed her legs under the water, ‘we have become friends.’ Rania reached for a towel. Clay passed one to her. She stood and wrapped herself, did the same with her hair.

‘University of California?’ he asked.

Rania nodded. ‘She said that sooner or later, if I wrote those stories, I would be threatened.’

Clay sat looking at her. Sooner, then. He didn’t say it.

‘She has had death threats, Clay, just for speaking out.’ Rania stood before the mirror, wiped away the condensation with a hand towel and considered her reflection.

Clay looked down at his feet, the steam beading on the marble floor. ‘It’s not because of what you’ve written, Rania. I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s Regina Medved. She wants revenge.’

Still staring at his feet, he told her about Eben, the threats delivered through his bank, about Crowbar’s betrayal, his escape across the Channel. ‘I think LeClerc sold us out.’

Rania turned. ‘
Impossible
,’ she said.

‘He told me you were here. His Istanbul station chief is the only one who knew about our rendezvous at the Seglik Merkezi Hotel.’

‘Hamour, yes. He passed on your message. Marcus Edward. He did exactly what you asked him, Claymore.’

‘And that thug arrives at the hotel moments after you.’

‘He was following me before I got the message from Hamour.’

‘Broad shoulders, pronounced widow’s peak?’

She nodded. ‘I thought I had lost him.’

‘LeClerc was the only person who knew I was coming to Istanbul. I was tailed all the way from the airport, for Christ’s sake.’

Rania scowled at him in the mirror. ‘Medved has informants everywhere, Clay, in the customs services, in the government, the airlines. It could have been anyone.’

There was a rap at the door. Clay turned, closed the bathroom door behind him, walked to the suite’s entrance and looked through the door lens. A liveried bellboy stood in the hallway with a trolley, blown out, spherical. He was alone. Clay opened the door, ushered the bellboy in and watched him open up the table, spread white linen, centre a single rose in a crystal vase, remove the silver cloches and lay out the food. Clay signed the bill, palmed him a tip then bolted the door behind him.

Rania emerged fifteen minutes later, radiant, wearing a clinging, white silk nightgown. Clay poured them some fresh lime juice.

‘Not drinking?’ she asked, eyes like black obsidian.

‘Trying to stop,’ he said.

‘Are you changing for me?’ she asked, smiling. ‘I hope not.’

‘For me.’

‘Good, then.’

He tried to eat, watched her. He wasn’t hungry.

Later that night they woke, bodies entwined. The curtains streamed in a cold breeze and the shutters banged on their hinges. Clay rose and closed the shutters, then slid back in beside her, soaking up her warmth. Lying there in the darkness, she told him everything that had happened since London.

After fleeing the hotel room with only the clothes she was wearing, her passport and her purse, she’d booked the first flight from Heathrow to Geneva, gone back to Champéry as he’d asked and stayed put, expecting to hear from him. A week passed, two. Then she’d heard Medved’s murder reported on the radio, and while she’d hoped he hadn’t done it, she knew he had. She was angry, she said. Angry with him for leaving her, angry with herself for doing as he’d asked, angry with that conservative Muslim part of her that reflexively sought to defer to a husband she didn’t have. She used the word without irony or artifice, as if it were fact. After six weeks, she’d resolved that it was over. That he didn’t love her. That the whole thing had been stillborn, nothing more than a short-lived chemical reaction born of fear and proximity and lust and shared purpose.