City of the Lost

I

Inspector Ozgur Karacan turned his pillow to its cooler side then slapped it three times like a mouthy suspect until it had the shape he wanted. He rolled onto his front and rested his face sideways upon it with his hands up either side, trying to surrender himself back to sleep. But his father was snoring upstairs and the bakers next door had opened their doors so that he could smell their bread and hear their banter with their first customers, and his mind began inexorably to hum and whirr again with yesterday’s unanswered questions, and he knew in his heart it wasn’t going to happen.

It was that damned email and its attachment. He couldn’t get it out of his head. The consensus view of a jihadi video struck him as self-evident nonsense. For one thing, Cypriot reunificationists were not jihadis. And even if they had decided to film their handiwork, then surely they’d have known better than to film from inside the blast zone.

His pillow was already too warm. It promised to be a muggy day. He flipped it over again, but it was no good. The trouble was, he knew, making progress on the email and the footage required people who understood computers and the new digital age. He was of the wrong generation, that was the fact of it. A dinosaur in an age of…

With a slight start, he realized he’d been thinking about it wrong. He shouldn’t be trying to work out who had sent the footage. He could leave that to the IT guys. He should be trying to work out who had taken the footage. That traumatic first afternoon, the witness interviews he and his fellow first responders had conducted. Everyone shocked and bewildered, except for the burly Englishman with the excellent Turkish, the only one close to the blast who’d been sharpened rather than dazed by it. He never had explained satisfactorily what business it was that had brought him to Daphne.

Tiredness left Karacan in a blink. He threw back his bedclothes and reached for the uniform folded neatly on his bedside chair.

II

Karin woke to find Iain still lying beside her in her bed. She wasn’t quite sure whether to be pleased or dismayed by this development. Certainly, she’d felt a powerful hankering for his companionship last night, which was why she’d first refused a room of her own then had offered him the opportunity to join her in her bed. She liked him a great deal, was attracted to him, and was immensely grateful for everything he’d done for her. Yet her life was such a mess right now that she needed no further complications. When you had important decisions to make about your future, you wanted your head clear.

She removed her hand from his, edged carefully from the bed. She washed and dressed and came back out to find him still dozing. She turned on her smartphone to check her messages. That done, she tried to log on to the password-protected website that the police had set up to publish bulletins for people affected by the blast. The page was running some script that kept freezing her phone. It had played up the same way yesterday, so she’d ended up using the hotel’s guest computer down in reception. She was about to head off down there when she noticed Iain’s laptop zipped away in its bag beneath the dressing table. She sat down beside him on the bed, shook him gently by his shoulder. ‘Hey,’ she said.

He turned onto his back, stretched, smiled fondly up at her. ‘Hey yourself.’

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘There’s this website I need to check. Is it okay if I use your laptop?’

His expression didn’t flicker, yet somehow she got the sense he was suddenly on alert. ‘I wish I could,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got client information on there. It’s absolutely against company protocol to let anyone else use it.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘No problem. They’ve got one down in reception.’

‘If you tell me the website address…’

‘It’s honestly no problem,’ she assured him. ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes. We’ll have breakfast.’ She smiled and left the room, took the stairs down to reception. The computer was free. She sat down and typed in the address. No updates had been posted since last night. Instead of ending her session, however, she stayed where she was. Iain’s story about client information and company protocol had been a lie. She wasn’t quite sure how, but she was certain of it. So what was on his laptop that he didn’t want her seeing? Was it merely embarrassing or something more serious? And, realizing how little she truly knew of him, she opened a new browser and began to Google him.

III

Butros Bejjani was taking breakfast on deck when Michel appeared, reading a folder of documents in the ostentatious manner of someone wanting to be asked about them. He ignored him, therefore, returned to his coffee and his correspondence, until finally Michel couldn’t contain himself any longer. ‘Remember that detective you had me hire to watch Iain Black,’ he said.

‘What about him?’

‘It was a her,’ said Michel. ‘And she’s sent her first report.’ He moved the bowl of manakish and the jug of mango juice, then laid out six photographs of Iain Black with a tall European-looking woman. ‘Black and this woman went out together last night. They ate dinner then returned to their hotel.’ He touched a photograph of them all but holding hands as they walked through the foul night. ‘As you can see, they’re on friendly terms. Very friendly. They’re even sharing a room.’

‘So the man has a girlfriend,’ said Georges, joining them on deck. ‘So what?’

Michel smiled faintly. ‘Her name is Karin Visser,’ he said. ‘She’s a Homer specialist. Until two days ago, she was personal assistant to Nathan Coates, the American who Black himself said had come here to bid against us.’

Butros looked with renewed interest at the photographs. There clearly was something between the two of them. But what? How long had it been going on? And what did it mean for his own plans? Until now, he’d been content to wait here for a few days in case the seller had somehow survived the blast, or had a confederate. If they were dead, after all, he’d have all the time in the world to find the site for himself. But these pictures changed all that. Nathan Coates presumably had been sent the same materials he had. If Visser knew of them, and had teamed up with Black, then suddenly he was in a race. ‘They’re in it together,’ he said flatly. ‘They’re going for the treasure themselves.’

‘That’s certainly how it appears, Father,’ agreed Michel. ‘But it’s not all bad news. Maybe we can even turn it to our advantage.’

Butros raised an eyebrow. ‘How?’

‘This man Black is highly skilled and can call on unusual resources. There’s a good chance that he’ll find the site, even if we can’t. Unfortunately, he’s already demonstrated that he’s likely to spot us if we try to track him. But this woman Visser has no such talent. And, if they’re in this together, then following her by definition means following him too.’

‘If they’re in it together,’ pointed out Georges, ‘then Black will spot us following her.’

‘Not necessarily. Our London friends have developed an app for Android devices like this one here.’ He tapped a photograph of Karin Visser checking her smartphone at the dinner table. ‘Load it on to her phone and it will send us copies of all her texts, emails, conversations and browsing activity. It will also send us her GPS coordinates every fifteen minutes. And she’ll never know a thing.’ He smiled broadly. ‘That way, if they do find the site first, they’ll lead us straight to it, like truffle pigs. Then we simply haul them back by their collars and say thank you very much.’

Butros laughed at the image. ‘And how exactly do we get this app onto her phone?’

‘If yesterday proved anything,’ said Michel, ‘surely it proved that Georges is far more suited to such tasks than I am.’

Butros turned to him. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

Georges nodded. ‘It’s worth a shot.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Butros. ‘It is.’

IV

Iain cursed himself as he turned on his laptop. As he’d feared, he’d left thumbnails of the four video-files visible on his desktop. He hadn’t worried about them because his laptop was password protected; but passwords offered little protection against a friend who asked nicely. Now Karin no doubt suspected him of something shameful or even nefarious. Just when things had been going so well.

He moved the video-files to a secure folder, wiped away all traces of them. Then he checked his inbox. He had two emails from colleagues. The first was from Quentin, a curt message that if he still wanted to know who their client was, he should call a certain London telephone number, ask for Richard Brown and cite reference number 26301. Iain recognized the phone number instantly as the main switchboard number for the SIS. So their client was British Intelligence. It wasn’t the first time. They often used outside help where deniability was important or where they lacked good sources. But why their interest in Bejjani? He could only imagine it was on behalf of the Americans, perhaps in an effort to get at the Mexican cartels for whom he laundered so much money. Whatever, he wouldn’t find the bombers there. The CIA might conceivably take out a hotel if the target were important enough, but they’d never risk it in an ally country like Turkey.

The second email was a long and distressed message from Maria. Layla had called three times asking for details of her husband’s life insurance, yet he hadn’t been covered under the new policy, and Quentin was refusing point-blank even to discuss it with her, or to acknowledge Global Analysis’s responsibility. She couldn’t stonewall Layla forever, nor could she file a false claim. What should she do?

Iain rested back his head and stared up at the skylight. He’d planned to stay in Antioch as long as his clients wanted. But maybe it was time to go home. The trouble was, Quentin was clearly struggling for cash, and he had no way to force him to do the right thing. Besides, he had his other promise to fulfil: to find Mustafa’s killers and make them pay. He sighed heavily. What a mess. He’d known Mustafa for eight years, since working with him on a counterterrorism mission that had straddled the Turkish — Iraqi border. They’d got on from the first, had become firm friends. When he’d decided to open an office in Istanbul, he’d only seriously considered one candidate for the job. He’d thought he’d be doing him a favour.

A shower. Fresh clothes. They did little to cheer him. Karin wasn’t yet back. He was about to go look for her when he heard soft footsteps on the corridor carpet outside. They reached his room and stopped. Then nothing happened. Maybe she’d forgotten her key. He went to the door, opened it. It was hard to say who was the more surprised, he or the squad of armed and body-armoured policemen poised outside with a battering ram. He tried, instinctively, to close the door on them, but they were too quick for him, too many and too strong. They charged their way in and threw him to the ground, spinning him onto his front then cuffing him and hauling him roughly to his feet and frog-marching him to the door and out.