City of the Lost

I

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.’

‘No,’ she said.

He pushed her down in the sand, rummaged through her pack. A water bottle and some energy bars, her silencer, a hunting knife and a spare torch, but three dozen extra bullets too. ‘You lie pretty well,’ he said, zipping her pouches back up. ‘Were you lying about your boyfriend too? What man of honour would lead a coup against his own government?’

‘They started it,’ she scowled furiously. ‘They wanted all the power for themselves and so they deliberately destroyed good men. They called them traitors. They called my father a traitor! My father! All he’d ever done was serve his country and yet…’ She shook her head, blinked back tears. ‘They asked for everything they’re going to get tonight, believe me. Tonight is justice.’

Iain frowned. There was something too emphatic about her words. That was when he realized. ‘You’re going after the Prime Minister himself, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Assassinate him and maybe his cabinet too, then declare a state of emergency and step in. Arrest all your enemies and stop the bombing and everyone will hail you as saviours.’

‘We are saviours.’

‘Sure,’ scoffed Iain. ‘They’ll write songs.’

‘We didn’t start this,’ she said.

Iain nodded. Their minute was up. He jerked his head at the passage. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Fuck off.’

She didn’t hesitate, she scrabbled away his crude barrier then crawled off up the passage. ‘Don’t shoot,’ she shouted, her soles a pale flicker in the darkness. ‘It’s me. It’s me. I’m coming.’

‘Your turn now,’ called out Iain. ‘Get out of here.’

‘We’re leaving,’ said Yilmaz.

There were grunts and scrabbling noises, but they quickly faded into silence. ‘I don’t believe it,’ muttered Georges. ‘They’ve really gone.’

‘For the moment,’ said Iain.

‘You think they’ll be back?’ asked Karin.

He shook his head. ‘I know men like Yilmaz. They’ll tell you solemnly that honour means everything to them. And so it will, until it actually threatens to cost them something real.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying he picked his words carefully. He promised to leave us here unharmed. He said he had no interest in all this old stuff. But he never said we’d be free to go ourselves, or to take these artefacts away with us. And why is he even here tonight? I’ll bet you anything he came here to seal this place up before it could get rumbled. And nothing he just said would stop him from sealing it up with us still inside.’

A few beats of silence. It was all too horribly plausible. ‘Then why the fuck did you let her go?’ demanded Georges.

‘Because he’d have come for us if we hadn’t. We’d have been screwed, trust me.’

‘We’re screwed now.’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe not.’

‘Maybe not?’ asked Butros.

Iain allowed himself a faint smile, calibrated to give them hope, though not too much. ‘I sneaked one of your cell radios into Asena’s pack while I was rootling around in there. With a bit of luck, once she’s up top again, we’ll get our satellite link back.’

II

The front door of the Prime Minister’s residence opened and aides came out to check the podium, microphones, lighting and other arrangements. A sure sign, apparently, that the man himself would be out any moment. Haroon knew he should wait until he was, but suddenly he’d had enough of this cramped darkness so he gave the word to his companions and they opened the rear doors from within and climbed down.

It was late and dark and there was no one else in sight. None of them had been here before but they’d all watched hours of reconnaissance footage, and knew exactly where they were and which way to head. They stretched their cramped limbs and shared words of exhortation and encouragement as they checked their own and their buddy’s weaponry and other equipment one final time.

They were ready.

On the radio, the Prime Minister’s front door opened again. Only this time he did come out, followed by several senior ministers. He made his way to the podium and began to talk. Haroon took out his earpiece and his radio. He wouldn’t be needing those any more. They set the timers running on the incendiary charges in the cab and beneath the false floor of the horse-box, partly to deprive investigators of easy clues about their methods and associates, but mostly to burn their own bridges so that none of them would weaken and turn back.

‘Head shots, remember,’ said Haroon, for every security officer between here and their destination would be wearing body-armour as standard.

‘We know what we’re doing,’ said Erol.

They set off. A year before, this whole government quarter had been open to the public and so there’d have been armed police on every corner. But since they’d encased it in its new ring of steel, there’d been less need for heavy security inside. There was just one checkpoint, therefore, between them and the Prime Minister’s offices, outside which he was currently talking to the media. They reached a corner. Haroon lay on the pavement and looked around it, scoping it out through his night-sight. Six armed policemen were standing in front of a pair of heavy-duty security gates. Only two of the six were on full alert, however; the other four were watching the ongoing press conference through gaps in the gate, cracking jokes about it amongst themselves. He let Erol, Mehmet and Samir each take a look, then he gave orders as to who would take out who. They concealed their assault rifles for the time being then fitted silencers to their handguns and tucked them into their belts. Then they made their way briskly but without menace around the corner and out onto the street.

They were a hundred metres away before the first policeman noticed them. He alerted his comrades and they all turned to look. Haroon waved cheerfully to them and they recognized their uniforms, and they relaxed again. Haroon and Mehmet walked shoulder to shoulder in front, giving Erol and Samir, their best marksmen, the cover they needed to take out and raise their handguns unseen behind them. When they were close enough, Samir gave the word and they stepped abruptly to the side. The suppressors worked so efficiently that the first two guards were down and dead before the others even realized the danger they were in. By which time, of course, it was too late for them too.

They dragged their bodies into shadow, retrieved their assault rifles. On the other side of the security gate, the Prime Minister was assuring the nation that the day had been an aberration, a one-off; that Turks could go to bed that night confident that morning would bring the restoration of order. Haroon allowed himself the smallest of smiles. For the first time since his life had been torn apart that harrowing day in his Aleppo hospital, he felt something approaching peace.