Authors: Will Adams
The man himself poked his head out from his hiding place, like a wary tortoise. ‘Thank God,’ he muttered. ‘I thought you were them.’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘My leg,’ he said.
‘Don’t move. I’ll come down.’ But right then a rumbling noise, much like an underground train passing in a neighbouring tunnel, made him look up. Dust, grit and earth shaken loose from the ceiling danced in their torchlight. The noise faded for a moment then returned more loudly. The shakes grew worse, dislodging stones, earth and clumps of rock that landed in puffs of sand and dust all around them. Vehicles were arriving above.
Heavy
vehicles. In a militarily restricted zone like Varosha, that could only mean one thing.
Alone among them, Asena seemed to glow. ‘It’s the Lion,’ she exulted. ‘
Now
you’re for it.’
It was well past Katerina’s bedtime, but Zehra couldn’t bring herself to send her to bed. She was too mesmerized by the news pouring out of Turkey to miss even a minute of it; mesmerized by the sense of its connection to Andreas and Professor Volkan, by the sense that it would have consequences for her son, and thus for Katerina herself. But, for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what that connection was, or what those consequences would be.
The studio switched again to outside the Prime Minister’s residence. A doorstep press conference was expected at any moment. But then it had been expected at any moment for at least the past half hour, and nothing had yet happened. The camera panned around to show a vast bank of journalists waiting there, like a pack of hounds champing for their prey. And one of the reporters at the front was busy checking her smartphone in the exact same way that Andreas always did.
Forty years Zehra had spent out of the world. Forty years in which technology had kept marching on without her. That was a lot of catching up to do. But they always said there was no time quite like the present. She turned to Katerina, munching salted sunflower seeds on the sofa beside her. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of something called Twitter, have you?’ she asked.
The call from Colonel Ünal reached General Yilmaz as he approached the square. He had to clamp his headphones against his ears to hear. The
Dido
was seized, Michel Bejjani arrested. And he was already talking his mouth off about how his father, brother and others had infiltrated Varosha in search of some mysterious Phoenician treasure.
Not such a shock, therefore, to see the heap of artefacts, the corrugated iron sheets, the rope ladder, the figure cowering in the shadows, trying to hide from the sudden dazzle. Ragip saw him too. He jumped down and raced across the square, his gun drawn. He scragged the man by his collar and brought him back to the Jeep. The man was ashen with terror, wondering what to say to save his life. He chose shrewdly. ‘General,’ he said. ‘Such an honour. Asena told us you—’
‘Asena?’ Yilmaz waved Ragip out of earshot. ‘What’s Asena got to do with this?’
The man nodded vigorously at the shaft mouth. ‘There were people down there. She said we had to stop them. For your sake. For the cause.’
Yilmaz felt hollow. He could see it all. ‘She’s down there now?’
‘I offered to go with her. She made me stay up here, to trap them if things went wrong. There was a gunfight. It didn’t go well.’ He spread his hands helplessly. ‘I only did what she’d ordered me to do.’
‘And Asena, you idiot? What happened to Asena?’
‘She’s down there still. I think they took her captive.’
‘They?’
‘The man from Cairo. Iain Black. His girlfriend Visser too. And others we didn’t know.’
Yilmaz nodded. Black must have pooled forces with Bejjani somewhere along the way. ‘And they’re armed, you say?’
The man looked around the square, visibly awed by the number of troops and their hardware. ‘A few handguns only. Nothing like you.’
Yilmaz nodded. He’d planned to bury the site forever without having anyone go down. He could still do so and be back in Ankara before morning. But that would mean sacrificing Asena. A man sometimes learned ugly truths about his own true nature when faced with decisions as stark as these. But Yilmaz was gratified to discover that this time it went the other way. He beckoned Ragip back over. ‘Your twenty best men,’ he said, gesturing at the shaft mouth. ‘You’re going in.’
There was no time to treat Andreas with the care appropriate to his wound. Iain tore his shirt into strips to bandage his leg then hoisted him up the ladder of seats to the top, where Karin helped haul him out. His trousers were sodden with blood; he bit back a yelp each time he put any weight on his foot. They took the long way round, staying clear of possible lines of fire from the shaft mouth. Butros had arrived to join them, was surveying his dead men with horror and dismay, while Georges covered Asena with a gun in one hand even as he tried in vain to get a signal on their various cell radios with the other.
‘Any joy?’ asked Iain.
Georges shook his head. ‘When Faisal fell, it must have broken our relay.’
A long-shot, but worth a try. Iain clambered back down the bus to retrieve and then check Faisal’s dropped radio. It was still working, but it had no signal either. The bleak truth settled over him. They were trapped down here, cut off from the outside world, the Turkish army parked above their heads. ‘What now?’ asked Karin.
‘We make things hard for them,’ said Iain. ‘You lot have explored this place. Is there anywhere we can hold them off?’
‘Those doors,’ said Georges, glancing at his father. ‘If we could get behind them …’
Iain saw it from the corner of his eye, a metallic tear-drop falling down the shaft. He yelled for everyone to get down, grabbed Andreas and Karin and hauled them to the ground either side of him. The loudness of the explosion, the brightness of the flash even through closed eyelids, he diagnosed it instantly as a stun grenade, of no direct danger itself but a sure sign of danger imminent. A second detonation, a third, then a beat or two of silence. He risked a glance around even as a cluster of yellow ropes dropped down the shaft, bounced briefly before hanging there like creepers in the rain forest, then dark shadows abseiling fast down them, silhouettes bulked up with body-armour, assault rifles at the ready.
He picked Andreas up, threw him in a fireman’s lift over his shoulder, then grabbed Asena by the arm before she could sneak away. ‘Run,’ he yelled at the others. And they ran.
Under other circumstances, Deniz Ba
ş
türk would have been heartened by the new spirit of cooperation and even enthusiasm in the cabinet room. Just a shame that he’d had to write and then sign four copies of his resignation letter to bring it about. Nevertheless, for the first time, there was a genuine focus on dealing with the protests and riots. Not that agreement was straightforward, even now. Some argued for showing understanding of the demonstrators’ grievances. Others demanded a crackdown and ruthless retribution. The usual compromise emerged. Make examples of the worst hooligans and anarchists while quietly letting marginal cases slide. Then flood the streets with uniforms and stamp down ruthlessly on anything that sniffed of trouble while simultaneously announcing a package of measures to boost employment and relieve the worst poverty and hardship.
He had no part in this conversation. No one asked his opinion or even spared him a sympathetic glance. He had become a ghost. Six months in office, and it wasn’t just allies he lacked, it was friends. In truth, the only person to become anything of the sort during his tenure was General Yilmaz. And if there was any silver lining to this situation, he reflected, it was that the Chief of the General Staff wasn’t a member of the cabinet, and therefore not here in person to witness his humiliation.
General Yilmaz waited apprehensively for Ragip to report back on the success or otherwise of his assault. At last he came on the radio. ‘The main chamber is secure, sir,’ he said. ‘No resistance and no casualties. But there were bodies already down here.’
Yilmaz braced himself. ‘Any women?’
‘No, sir. But my first two men down saw people running, including at least one woman. And there’s a blood trail. We’ll find them soon enough. What do you want done when we do?’
Yilmaz hesitated. This situation was too tangled yet delicate for delegation. He needed to oversee it in person. ‘Wait there,’ he said. ‘I’m coming down.’ He turned to Nezih, his project manager for tonight’s works. ‘You know the plan,’ he told him. ‘Use the approach roads for parking. Keep as much weight off the square itself as you can. But be ready to start pumping the moment we’re back up.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Abseiling was beyond him, so he tossed the rope ladder back down the shaft then sat awkwardly on the broken ground and felt for a rung with his left foot. He took a firm hold then twisted himself around and began his descent. It was a shock to him both how awkward and how taxing he found it. Appearances mattered hugely in the army. You had to look capable. That was why he’d taken to dying his hair these past few years, to improving his diet and adopting a strenuous exercise regime, even to paying annual visits to a discreet Swiss clinic. But then one day you had to climb down a rope ladder and you realized you were old.
The bonnet of the bus was exposed, its windscreen gaping. His heart sank at the thought of all the people who might already have looked inside. But then he’d been living with that fear for forty years. Almost from the 1974 ceasefire, the international community had urged Turkey to hand back Varosha as a gesture of goodwill. Under other circumstances, he’d have lain low and hoped to find anonymity in the general fog of war. But that photograph of him had made anonymity impossible. Besides, it hadn’t been just him and his men who’d stood to lose from discovery of the bodies, it had been the reputation of the whole army too, even of Turkey herself. With great trepidation, therefore, he’d requested a private interview with his commanding officer. It had been the most uncomfortable half hour of his life, choking on his confession like on a stuck bone. Thankfully, his CO had seen where he was going, had stopped him before he could reveal it all. A man experienced in war as well as peace, he’d known how fickle the public could be, how quickly they’d come to declare abhorrent the very tactics for which they’d so recently clamoured. And the next Yilmaz had heard was that Varosha was being permanently sealed off, without real explanation, under the direct command of the Turkish army. And so it had remained ever since, despite the occasional prodding of some new UN initiative, until Ba
ş
türk had become Prime Minister and signalled his willingness to treat. What choice had he had then but to destroy that willingness with bombs? No choice at all.
He reached the bottom rung, stepped onto the mound. ‘Well?’ he asked.
Ragip snapped out an uncharacteristically sharp salute, as became this whiff of combat. ‘We’ve found them, sir. There’s a long ramp or staircase at the far end of the site. They’re trapped in some kind of chamber at its foot.’
‘Good,’ nodded Yilmaz. ‘Show me.’
Nothing was said, but by the time they reached the antechamber, Iain was the acknowledged leader of their small band. He gagged Asena to prevent her from yelling out their position or tactics then gave Andreas a gun to cover her with. He set Karin, Georges and Butros to clearing the bronze doors as a possible further fallback, then he himself returned a few feet back up the shaft and built a defensive rampart of rubble and sand to hide them and to offer cover for returning fire.
A first flash of light at the top of the passage. The sudden dazzle of a directly pointed torch. He expected the attack at any moment after that, but as the minutes passed and nothing happened he began to fear instead that they wouldn’t even bother. A few judiciously placed explosive charges in the main chamber would bring this whole place down, burying them and the bus for ever beneath countless tons of rock and sand. But then a man called out from the top of the passage. ‘Asena?’ he shouted. ‘Are you there?’
‘Who’s asking?’ answered Iain.
‘My name is General Kemal Yilmaz,’ said the man. ‘You’re Iain Black, yes?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Is Asena with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let her tell me that for herself. If we’re to make a deal, I first need to know she’s alive.’
Iain nodded at Andreas. He ungagged her to let her speak. ‘I’m alive, my love,’ she shouted.
‘Let her go,’ said Yilmaz.
Iain almost laughed. ‘Sure,’ he said.
‘I have fifty men with me. We have body-armour, assault rifles, stun grenades, CS gas and time. What do you have? No one even knows you’re here. And don’t think your comrade Michel Bejjani will save you. He and his boat are both now in our custody. Negotiation is your only hope. Let Asena go and we will leave you here unharmed. You have my word on it.’
‘Your word!’ mocked Iain.
‘My word,’ he insisted. ‘As a Turk. As a soldier. I swear this on my life, my service, my country, my honour, on everything I hold dear: release her and we leave. These old treasures mean nothing to me. All I want is Asena and your oath of silence. You have one minute, starting now. Choose wisely.’
‘He wouldn’t dare attack,’ murmured Georges. ‘Not while we’ve got his girlfriend.’
‘He’ll attack,’ said Butros. ‘He has no alternative.’
‘And you honestly think, if we give her to him, that he’ll just leave us here unharmed?’ scoffed Andreas. ‘Have you forgotten already those poor bastards on the bus?’
‘That was forty years ago,’ said Karin. ‘People change.’
Everyone looked at Iain. The casting vote. But his heart was heavy. In life, he knew, there sometimes were no winning moves. He turned to Asena. ‘Your boyfriend,’ he asked. ‘Is he a man of honour?’
‘He is the Lion,’ she said.
Iain nodded. ‘I think it’s our best bet, guys. We can’t hold them off, not with three handguns and a couple of dozen rounds.’ He glanced back at Asena. ‘Unless you’ve got more in that pack of yours.’