City of the Lost

I

Karin and Butros had been joined by Georges in their efforts to clear the sand away from the bronze doors when the first shots cracked out. So absorbed was she by the task that it took her a moment to register the noise and then to realize what it was and what it might mean. She glanced at Butros for reassurance, but got none. Her heart seemed to freeze inside her. Iain was by the shaft mouth; she turned and scrambled for the ramp.

Georges grabbed her by her arm. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not till we know what’s going on.’ He picked up his cell radio and spoke urgently into it, calling on his men to report. But none of them did.

‘The Dido,’ said Butros.

Georges tried then shook his head. ‘No use,’ he said. ‘We’ve lost the satellite.’

More shots now. Clusters of them. Butros flinched with each one, knowing his men were exposed and unarmed. ‘We have to go,’ said Karin. Georges nodded. He put on his night-vision goggles and led the way back up the ramp. Karin followed closely after him. In the perfect darkness, she had only sound to go by. They reached the top of the ramp and hurried towards the banqueting hall. Sustained bursts of gunfire grew ever louder; she could hear shouting and shrieking. Now she could see stutters of light ahead; but then they suddenly stopped. Georges held up his hand for her to stay back. He crept forwards, peered out into the chamber. He muttered a soft curse then pushed himself up to his feet and walked out. Karin went after him. The relief of seeing Iain standing there, aiming a gun down at a kneeling woman, was dizzying to her. She hurried over to him and put her hand on his arm for the reassurance of touch. ‘Andreas?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘In the bus. I think he’s been hit. I haven’t had time to check yet.’ He turned to Georges, crouched by one of his fallen men, then nodded at the woman. ‘Keep an eye on her.’

‘I’ll do better than that,’ said Georges, his voice taut with rage. He picked up a dropped gun and aimed it at her chest, his arm trembling as he steeled himself.

Iain pushed down his hand. ‘I thought you weren’t those sort of men.’

‘They killed Ali and Faisal. They killed Kahlil and Youssef.’

‘Even so.’

Georges scowled angrily. But then he exhaled and the tension left him. ‘So what do we do?’

‘I don’t know yet. We need to see to Andreas first.’ He bound Asena’s wrists behind her back with a strap from a dropped pack, then went with Karin to the bus, knelt on its bonnet. ‘Andreas,’ he called out.

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.’

II

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.

III

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.’