‘Vin, we’ve already talked about that and the answer’s no.’
‘Funny.’
‘Then what?’
I rested the cast on a piece of marble column. ‘You need to get a block of granite.’
‘Why a block of granite?’
‘You’ll need it to break my hand.’
A couple of minutes later, I was biting down on a chunk of root, the block in Masters’ hands poised about a foot above my hand. ‘Here we go,’ she said.
I closed my eyes, flinched, and waited for the explosion of hurt.
‘On three. One, two, three . . .’
I felt the pressure of the strike but the rock just bounced off the cast. I spat out the root. ‘Jesus, Anna . . .’
‘All right, all right.’
‘You need to put your shoulder behind it, goddamn it.’
‘Okay, this isn’t so easy, you know.’
I felt sorry for her, but sorrier for me, which cancelled out my sorrow for her. ‘Do it, for Christ’s sake!’
She held the block over her head this time. I bit down on the root
and watched with morbid fascination now as it smashed down onto the cast.
‘JESUS CHRIST!’ I got up and walked around, the pain in those knuckles of mine on the wrong side of blinding.
‘You okay?’ said Masters. ‘Was that too hard?’
I did a circuit of the cistern walls, my knuckles throbbing, feeling like a bunch of smashed eggs. The fibres of the cast around my fingers were shattered. I closed my eyes tight and hoped this dumb-ass plan of mine worked. I made my way back to where Masters was sitting.
‘Ready for step two?’ she asked.
I nodded, biting my lip, and sat down opposite her. I picked up some mud off the ground and smeared it around my fingers – lubricant. What we were about to do would probably hurt more than step one.
Masters hooked her fingers inside the cast up around my forearm and buried a foot in my armpit. ‘You want me to apply steady pressure or give it one big tug?’
‘Steady pressure,’ I grunted.
Her heel dug into the cracked rib, the worst possible spot. I felt something push into my lung. The cast squeezed against the newly broken knuckles, the bones sliding and grinding over each other with the pressure. ‘Do it!’ I said, groaning, on the edge of passing out.
‘I’m doing it, for Christ’s sake. It doesn’t want to come free.’
‘Pull . . .’
Masters dug her foot into my side and kicked out.
‘Agghh!’
The cast suddenly flew off and sailed across the cistern, landing in the water.
‘Oh, god,’ I said, breathing hard, lying back on the ground, sweat beading my forehead. ‘That hurt.’
Masters retrieved the cast.
‘You’re going to have to do the rest,’ I told her, nursing my unfortunate hand, cradling it carefully in the other.
‘I know what to do,’ she replied, collecting the dead guy’s bones.
I watched her go to work, feeding a femur into each end of the cast.
She wedged them in place with smaller bones, hammering them in with a chunk of granite. Mud was then packed into the spaces that remained between the bones and cast so that nothing moved. Finally, Masters took her belt and slipped it around the cast.
‘You’ll have to test it,’ I said.
She found a gap between two blocks, set the contraption between them so that it formed a bridge, stepped up onto the cast and bounced up and down.
Nothing broke.
On the cistern floor directly beneath the hole was a mound raised from mud and stone. Masters, standing on my shoulders Barnum & Bailey– like, pushed the cast-and-bone contraption up through the hole in the roof using a fork made from the dead guy’s ribs and tree roots tied together with shoelaces. Once it was through the hole, she simply turned the cast ninety degrees and lowered it. The ends of the femurs were now wider in this axis than the hole, and the end of her belt dangled within reach of her fingertips. If I’d had a paperclip I’d have made escalators.
I stood and stared at the triangle of light in the roof, at the belt hanging down. Somehow Masters had found the strength to pull herself up that belt, hand over hand, determined not to fail.
That was thirty minutes ago. Thirty minutes was a long time – too long. Maybe Yafa and co. were still out there. Maybe they’d recaptured her. Killed her.
My knuckles throbbed. My ribs whined almost as much as the shoulder Masters had nearly dislocated when she removed my cast. It wouldn’t be long before all these complaints became a chorus and reminded me of my ex-wife’s legal team.
‘Hey, you down there! You okay?’ came Masters’ voice from above, her face again haloed by the white light suddenly appearing in the hole. A length of cable came down.
I
woke as we flew into Istanbul, the Turkish Airlines 737 sweeping low over the Bosphorus. The city felt like an old acquaintance. I took in the view out the window as we broke through the sparse cloud. I could spot all the great monuments – the Aya Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace, the home of Doctor Aysun Merkit.
Barely a day later, the five days we’d spent in the cistern almost seemed unreal. Masters had come across a four-by-four belonging to some forestry workers parked amongst the pines, miles from anywhere. The keys were left in the ignition. Conveniently, it also had a winch and a hundred feet of steel cable mounted on the front fender. An hour later, we left it where she’d found it – the owners none the wiser – hiked down to the road snaking through the trees and waited for a tourist bus. The newspapers would be all over the discovery of the cistern hidden between two small hills, so we decided to keep it under wraps for as long as possible. We had a little strategic advantage up our sleeves; be a shame to give it away instantly. Better to let Yafa continue to believe for a while longer that her lust for Masters would remain unfulfilled.
Codeine forte was taking the edge off the pain in my knuckles, which had been wrapped up temporarily by a quack back at Izmir.
The guy had wanted to reset and recast them properly, only he first had to duck out and geld a horse for a neighbour. I decided to wait, get more specialised medical help at the consulate-general, preferably from someone whose patients walked mostly on two legs.
The 737 landed, taxied, and pulled up with a jolt before shutting down. I saw that the terminal was across the ramp, way over on the other side of the airport. A buzz of concern rippled through the cabin at this, so I gathered parking halfway to Greece wasn’t normal practice.
‘Please remain seated,’ said a woman in Turkish, followed by English, followed by a language that sounded like she had a sticky fly caught in the back of her throat.
The doors at the front of the aircraft and down the back opened simultaneously. And suddenly there was a rush of black. An anti-terror team swarmed aboard. They raced down the aisle in the familiar hunched crouch, MP5s raised to their eye goggles.
‘Shit, it’s –’ Masters was suddenly jerked from her seat and dragged to the floor. All nice and efficient.
I got the same treatment an instant later. They pulled and pushed until I was on the floor, nose flattened against the carpet. Expert hands patted me down, took my wallet. Handcuffs came next, steel jaws around my wrists. We were then hauled to our feet and shoved forward past the terrified passengers to the front hatch.
Arrayed around the front of the plane were assorted marked and unmarked Istanbul police vehicles, their lights all flashing now the job was done. I was lifted down the stairs towards a couple of guys I was getting to know quite well, Detective Sergeants Karli and Iyaz.
‘You are under arrest,’ said Karli, his pants riding especially high.
‘Hey, Detective,’ I said, keeping it light. ‘I see you’ve dressed to the right today. What’s the occasion?’
‘You will be quiet.’
‘What’s the charge?’ Masters asked.
‘We arrest you for the murder of Adem Fedai.’
*
They had taken my belt and shoelaces, the bandages off my hand and chest – anything I might use to stretch my neck if I was so inclined. Standard practice. I sat on the cot and listened to a guy in a cell two down from mine try to knock himself out by diving off his cot head first. The jailers hadn’t thought about confiscating gravity. I was surprised how many attempts it took him to succeed. They carried him out cuffed to a gurney, his face looking like bolognese sauce.
I invoked Ambassador Burnbaum’s name and got nowhere. We didn’t kill Fedai, but I had a fair idea who did. I thought we’d have been released with a brace of apologies within an hour. But seven hours later – thousands more of those listless seconds later – I was still sitting on the cot consoling my knuckles. Karli and Iyaz eventually strolled into my cell, unaccompanied by any US officials.
‘I want to speak to someone at the United States Embassy,’ I informed them.
‘When we are ready and not before,’ said Karli, which made me think perhaps the embassy wasn’t even aware of our detention.
‘Where is Special Agent Masters?’
‘We are holding her also.’
‘If you’re going to charge us, get on with it so as we can post bail, or however you run it here.’
‘Yes, it is different here. This is not the United States – you have the rights
we
are prepared to give you.’
‘If you like, we could make it worse for you,’ Iyaz added.
‘You’re gonna sing?’ I asked.
‘We found your rental car five days ago at the town of Kusadasi, near Izmir,’ said Iyaz, ignoring me. ‘Adem Fedai was found dead inside the car. He had been beaten and shot through the ear. We found your DNA in the car, and your partner’s. Also, we have many eyewitness who saw you and Special Agent Masters with the deceased at Ephesus.’
‘You find anyone else’s DNA lying around inside the vehicle?’ I knew it was a dumb question the moment I asked it.
‘Of course, it was a rental car,’ said Iyaz.
‘Don’t you think that also accounts for the presence of our DNA?’
Both detectives were implacable.
‘So tell me, do I look a little thinner than the last time you saw me? And Masters, too?’ I asked, trying a different tack. Karli and Iyaz looked at each other. ‘We’ve been on a rat diet for the past week. Karli, you ought to try it. Makes Atkins look like a glutton. Incidentally, your killer is a woman named Yafa. She’s around thirty-two years old, height five eight, 125 pounds, dark complexion, great figure and sado-lesbian tendencies. She has a partner: male, dark, same age, five nine, 190 pounds. Has an appetite for silver toothpicks. They travel with a bunch of thugs I’d loosely describe as deadshits. But you know all that, because I gave you their descriptions well over a week ago.’ Stringer had said that involving the Turkish police was a tick in the box. Now I was pleased I’d done the ticking. ‘When you find them,’ I continued, ‘you should also ask them about the murders of Portman, Bremmel, and a guy called Denzel Nogart, otherwise known as Ten Pin, down at Incirlik Air Base. And while you’re at it, you could drill them about the entire crew of the good ship
Onur
.’
‘So you do not deny that you met with Adem Fedai at Ephesus?’ Karli enquired, getting back to something he could deal with.
‘Of course not. He chose the venue. He knew we were investigating his boss’s murder. He wanted to tell us what he knew about the night Portman was killed.’
‘What did he tell you?’ Iyaz asked.
‘That he wasn’t the one who did it,’ I replied.
‘And that is all?’ Karli asked.
‘Pretty much.’ I wondered whether Masters had been interviewed first, and if she had, what she might have told them. I gambled on as little as possible. ‘Fedai gave us a rundown on what he saw, what time he came to work that morning, the time he left – the details. It all tallied, by the way.’
‘What about the safe?’ said Iyaz.
‘He said he opened it but there was nothing inside.’
‘Nothing?’
I shook my head and added a shrug, the disappointing-but-there-you-have-it combination.
‘Did he see Portman’s murderers?’
‘No.’
‘He told you nothing else?’
‘He said he wanted us to leave him alone, that he believed people were trying to kill him – Yafa and the folks I just described to you – and that he would only feel safe back at his home in the mountains somewhere in northern Iraq. Seems his fears were justified.’
Iyaz’s arms were folded. He was buying this. ‘Adem Fedai made you go all the way to Ephesus to tell you nothing?’
‘Like I said, the guy was scared. He saw what happened to his boss. And after the little adventure Masters and I have just had, neither of us feels all that secure around here either. Maybe once you let us out, we might head for those mountains too . . . Seriously, you guys need to put some manpower onto finding this hit squad running around your neighbourhood.’
Iyaz and Karli shared another glance.
‘Tell us what happened to you and Special Agent Masters,’ Iyaz said, leaning against the basin, making himself at home.
I began with the meeting at Ephesus in the rain, leaving out – as I hoped Masters had also done – any mention of a USB stick, water-quality report, radioactivity, the words ‘uranyl fluoride’ and the town of Kumayt. I then moved on to the shredded bus tyres, road spikes, our subsequent off-road detour, the moonlight meeting with Yafa and her buddies, us waking up in the cistern and, finally, a rundown on our escape. When I’d finished, Karli came in for a close-up on my knuckles. They were badly swollen with fluid, the pale skin marbled with dark bruising.
The two detectives talked amongst themselves for a moment. There was plenty of nodding. Karli said, ‘The tourist bus you saw with tyres blown. It was stolen. We found it in the valley near Ephesus, burnt out.’
‘What about the Michelins on the rental?’ I asked.
‘They were all new. One was the wrong type – it did not match the others.’
‘So maybe the folks I’ve been telling you about had difficulty locating
a new identical set of four.’ And maybe Yafa and her team were starting to make all sorts of mistakes – and I counted not shooting Masters and me dead amongst them – that were going to snowball and run right over them.
I looked at Karli and Iyaz, and they looked back at me. There was a lot of looking going on. It occurred to me that these guys were so in the dark, it was a wonder they weren’t bumping into things in broad daylight.
‘Your story is the same as that of your partner’s,’ said Iyaz after he’d done enough looking. ‘We did not believe her but now we are sure you are innocent of this crime. Also, your hire car. It had been in an accident – hit a tree. But there were no trees in the area we found it in. This confused our forensics people. Your story also explains it. We apologise for your treatment at the airport.’
‘Forget about it,’ I said, feeling benevolent. ‘Just let me out and we’ll call it square.’
‘However, we are unhappy that you chose not to keep us informed of your movements. If you had done so, perhaps you would have been found and rescued earlier.’
‘Sure. When you’re right, you’re right.’ I stood up and gestured at the barred door. ‘Now, if you don’t mind . . .’
‘When you find new developments or evidence on this case, you will tell us.’
‘Cross my heart,’ I said.
Neither detective made a move. I could sense some resistance to ending my incarceration.
There was a little more conversation in Turkish, punctuated by nods and smiles. A consensus between them had been reached and there was happiness all round. They walked towards the door, opened it, walked out and closed it behind them. Through the bars, Iyaz said, ‘We believe your story ninety-nine per cent. For this one per cent we don’t believe your story, we will keep you here overnight.’
Karli leaned up against the bars. With a smirk he added, ‘Yes, seeing an American policeman in a Turkish prison. This is the occasion for which I dress to the right.’