I Am Pilgrim (87 page)

‘Quiet!’ Bradley yelled, repeating it even louder and raising the gun at her when she still wouldn’t stop.

She shook again with tears, the little guy’s sobs grew more pitiful, and all Bradley wanted to do was to get it over with. It was ahead of time, but he took the nanny’s phone off the charger and –

despite my insistence that he had to stick absolutely to the schedule – he rationalized it by telling himself it would take time to dial Cumali’s cellphone and there would be a delay while she answered.

It rang four times –
come on, come on
!

It answered – thank God, he thought – and he heard a woman’s voice speaking in Turkish. He only

caught a few words before he talked loudly over her, asking if it was Leyla Cumali and telling her to listen carefully …

The woman kept speaking, her tone unaffected. It was if she was a … Bradley realized – it was an

automated voice.

The nanny – tottering on her feet, all three hundred pounds of her bearing down on her weak knees,

saw through her tears that something was badly wrong: Bradley was close to panic. He was breathing

hard, not saying a word – the voice was speaking in a language he didn’t understand, he had no way

of deciphering it and he didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t in the manual – where the hell was the

Turkish cop?!

He looked at his watch – thirty-two seconds until the four minutes was up. He was about to hang up

and try again when the voice, out of courtesy to the phone company’s customers, repeated the message in English: ‘The subscriber you are calling is either out of cellular range or has their mobile phone switched off.’

Bradley lowered the phone and stared into space. Oh, Jesus.

Chapter Thirty-four

CUMALI HAD WALKED down a flight of broken marble steps and entered an area which, more than any

other, had attracted legions of archaeologists and historians to the ruins.

Deep underground, in a vaulted space still decorated with fragments of mosaics and frescoes, she

stood beside a reflecting pool, its surface as still as death. It was the centrepiece of what had once been a temple, a place where the highest officials made offerings to their gods in thanks for a safe journey.

Cumali had first seen it years before, and had returned to its mysterious beauty in the belief that being so far underground would make it impossible to hear Spitz’s screams and desperate pleas. She didn’t

realize it, but the subterranean space was equally good at deadening cellphone reception.

She stared at her face in the mirror-like water, telling herself that whatever her brother was doing to the American was little different from what had been visited upon Muslim men at Abu Ghraib and

Guantanamo Bay. Bright Light, too.

Comforted by the thought, she walked on, passed the end of the reflecting pool and headed deeper

into the temple’s catacomb-like passages.

No sound or signal would ever find her there.

Chapter Thirty-five

MUSCLEMAN AND THE helper had retrieved a short wooden plank that had been hidden among the mound of rubble and trash. I fought and struggled, trying to chew up time, but my injured knee and

the pain in my chest meant they had little trouble binding me to the wood with heavy leather straps.

I was face up, trussed so tight I couldn’t move, when the Saracen’s face appeared above me –

impassive, his hand reaching down and taking my wrist. He was a doctor, and he was checking my pulse. He gave a grunt of satisfaction – he knew from my heart rate I was scared.

He pointed at Nikolaides. ‘When I’m finished,’ he told me, ‘the man with the dental problem will

question you about a murder your intelligence agencies committed in Santorini.

‘He wants to know who ordered the attack and the names of those who did the killing. You understand?’

‘Santorini? I don’t know anything about Santorini.’

They didn’t look convinced. Nikolaides threw a bucket to Muscleman and picked up a length of dirty towel from the rubble. They were about to start.

The Saracen kept looking at me. ‘You can avoid this,’ he told me. I said nothing, and he shrugged.

‘When I was in the Hindu Kush, some people helped me. As you know, one of them has decided to

betray us. Obviously, I can’t allow that to happen. I want you to tell me the name of the traitor.’

‘Even if I knew it,’ I replied, ‘once I told you, you’d just kill me.’

He nodded. ‘I’m going to kill you anyway.’

‘I figured – otherwise, you’d be trying to hide your faces.’

My best guess was that I would end up in a waterproof shroud, probably already hidden in a locker

on the half-cabin cruiser, and it would likely be years before a fisherman finally hauled it aboard. If Ben didn’t come through, I just hoped I was dead before they put me inside.

‘If you know you’re going to die, what’s the point of suffering first? The name, Mr Spitz.’

‘I am an FBI agent. I came to Bodrum to—’

‘I’ve seen an email!’ he snapped, his face coming close to mine. ‘From the deputy director of the

CIA.’

I did my best to look shocked. He registered it, and smiled. ‘Now – the name of the traitor.’

‘I’m an FBI agent—’

Exasperated, he signalled to Nikolaides. The Greek wrapped the dirty towel over my face, covering

my eyes and nose, jamming my mouth open. Nikolaides took both ends of the rag behind the plank

and tied it tight. I was in darkness, already finding it difficult to breathe, my head bound so firmly to the plank I couldn’t move.

I felt them lift me and, in my private blackness and terror, I knew they had me suspended over the

water.

Twenty-nine seconds by my count – the same amount of time the drug courier had endured. Despite

my own weaknesses, even though I had always doubted my courage, I only had to withstand it for as

long as he did.

They started to lower me down, and I dragged in a breath. The towel stank of sweat and engine oil.

The last thing I heard was the Saracen: ‘You’re shaking, Mr Spitz.’

Then the water hit me.

Chapter Thirty-six

IT WASHED OVER my torso as the plank sank into the trough, chilling my genitals and aggravating the

open wound on my chest. I dropped lower, helpless, and felt the tide hit the back of my strapped skull and cover my ears.

Then they tilted the plank backwards.

Water flooded across my face. Trying not to panic, unable to use my arms or twist my body, I took

another huge gulp of oil-stained air and only succeeded in sucking the moisture faster through the towel. Water ran down my throat, and I started to cough.

A wall of water hit my face and I wasn’t coughing any more, I was choking. In darkness, my head

tilted back, I had no idea whether the water had come from a bucket or if they had plunged me deeper into the bath. The sensation of drowning – of a terrifying need to drag air through the sodden towel –

was overwhelming.

Instead, fluid was flooding into my nostrils and mouth and running down my steeply inclined throat. The gag reflex kicked in, trying to save me, and became a rolling thunder of spasms and choking.

More and more water was hitting me, and I was becoming disoriented. I had only one thought, one

belief, one truth to cling to: eighteen seconds and Bradley would call. Seventeen seconds and salvation would be at hand. Sixteen …

I was bound so tight I couldn’t thrash and kick despite the cascading terror. More water entered my

nose and mouth, seemingly drowning me, and the constant gagging and spasms were turning my throat raw. I would have screamed, but the filthy towel and surging water prevented even that release.

With no way to express itself, my terror turned inward and reverberated through the hollow chambers

of my heart.

My legs and back jerked instinctively, trying to make me flee, using up precious energy, and I felt

myself being tilted further backwards. Water swamped me. Another surge of gagging hit. Where was

Bradley? He had to call.

A fragment of my whirling mind told me I had lost count of time. How many seconds? There was

nothing but blackness and the desperate urge to breathe. To endure, to survive, not to falter was all that was left.

I spun through darkness and overwhelming fear. My head was tilted even further back and I was plunging down. Maybe it was just another huge bucketful of water, but I felt as if I was deep under the surface, choking, gasping and retching in a watery grave, desperate for air, desperate for life.

I knew I could endure no more, but suddenly I was rocketing up, the water draining off my face,

and I could drag air through the towel. It was tiny and insignificant, but it was a breath, it was life and they were standing me upright. Bradley had called – he must have!

I tried to suck more air into my throat – I had to be ready to play my part – but I kept gasping and retching. Then the towel was gone and I was pulling in breaths as my chest kept heaving, with my windpipe shuddering and spasming.

I knew that I had to control it, I had to be in command – by God, it was the Saracen’s turn now to sit down to a banquet of consequences.

A hand slid inside my shredded shirt. I blinked the water from my eyes and saw that it was him, checking the rhythm and strength of my heartbeat. I caught sight of the old bull standing behind him,

laughing at me through his stained teeth, enjoying my distress and fear.

A surge of wild panic tore through me: nobody was acting as if the tables had been turned. I knew

then that there had been no phone call. Where the hell was Ben?

I slumped – I was alone in the Theatre of Death and, this time, I really was dying to the world. I would have fallen to the ground, but Muscleman and the Helper were holding the board, and kept me

upright.

‘The name of the traitor?’ the Saracen asked.

I tried to speak, but my throat was ripped raw and my mind, awash with adrenaline and cortisol, was struggling. Instead, staring down at the ground, I just shook my head – no, I wouldn’t be telling him any name.

‘That was thirty-seven seconds,’ he replied. ‘It was longer than average and you should be proud.

You’ve done as much as anyone could expect. But it can go on for minutes if we like. Everybody breaks; nobody can win. What is the name?’

My hands were shaking, and I didn’t seem able to stop them. I looked up and tried to speak again.

The first syllable was so soft it was inaudible, and the Saracen leaned in close so that he could hear.

‘Put the towel back on,’ I whispered.

He backhanded me hard across the face, splitting my lip. But he couldn’t scare me any more. In a

corner of my mind, I had found a small reservoir of courage – I was thinking about Ben Bradley and

those sixty-seven floors.

Muscleman and the Helper upended the plank and carried me back to the trough. The Saracen was

about to reattach the towel when Nikolaides called out, telling him to step aside. I saw that he had picked up a stonemason’s hand hammer – a heavy, brutal thing – from among the equipment they had

hidden next to the rubble.

When I was flat on the board, my shoeless feet directly in front of him, he pulled his powerful shoulders back and swung as hard as he could.

The hammer hit me full force on the sole of my left foot, bursting the flesh and crushing the matrix of tiny bones and joints. A searing, vomit-laden flash of pain – like a massive electric spear – went through my shin, up my leg and into my groin. He might as well have been crushing my testicles. I

would have passed out but, somehow, my howling scream tethered me to consciousness.

Nikolaides laughed. ‘See – his voice is stronger already,’ he said to the Saracen. ‘Sometimes, the

old ways are still the best ways.’

He hit me again. It was closer to my toes, I heard more bones crunch and I screamed even louder. I

was going over the waterfall into unconsciousness, but the Helper – standing next to my head and cheering the old bull on – slapped me hard across the face to keep me in the present.

He called to the bull: ‘Another one.’

‘No,’ ordered the Saracen. ‘This has taken too long already. If he passes out we’ll be here all day.’

He turned to me. ‘Tell me the name now.’

‘I am Brodie David Wilson. I am an FBI—’

They put the towel back in place and lowered me towards the water.

Chapter Thirty-seven

CUMALI HAD WALKED through the rear of the temple, passed between the remains of thick masonry walls and entered an underground space called the
spoliarium
– the area where dead gladiators were stripped of their weapons and the bodies disposed of.

She wondered what was happening above – surely it couldn’t be long before she heard her brother

calling out to tell her that it was over and they could leave.

What a waste, she thought – Spitz was a brilliant investigator, certainly the best she had ever known.

The idea about the mirrors in the French House alone was evidence of that. He would have got away

with the whole subterfuge of his identity too, except for driving across the border in a rent-a-car that could be traced to him. Didn’t they have cameras with licence-tag recognition in America? They probably invented them. Strange that such a clever man would make a mistake like that.

Of course, she would never have known who he really was except for the call from the man at MIT.

And what about those guys? One phone call and then nothing – no follow-up questions, no approaches to check on Spitz’s movements or details. By using her drug-world contacts, she had found out more about him with one break-in than Turkish intelligence had achieved with all their resources. In fact, it didn’t seem as if they were very interested in Spitz at all.