City of the Lost

I

Andreas was losing too much blood to move again so Iain gave him one of their two remaining cell radios and instructions on the story he needed to tell. Then he set Butros and Karin to clear the doors while he and Georges headed back up to the banqueting hall with the other radio, to make a relay of it and so maximize their chances of a signal.

The last of Yilmaz’s soldiers were climbing up out of the site when they arrived. The rope ladder snaked upwards after them, marooning them inside. Iain’s heart sank, though it wasn’t exactly a surprise. Arc-lamps sprang on around the shaft mouth, throwing a halo of bright white light upon what looked almost like snow on the rubble mound. Iain cautiously edged forwards, looked upwards. The shaft had been significantly widened; the snow was freshly drilled cement dust. A fat yellow pipe now wriggled like some grotesque maggot down through the mouth, then a second and a third. Engines started, making the roof thrum. The maggots cleared their throats and coughed out spatters of thin grey slurry. Then they began to vomit in earnest, torrents of watery cement thundering down onto the mound, splashing down its sides and spreading quickly around the chamber.

Iain checked the radio. No signal. He moved closer to the shaft but there was still nothing. The concrete was already washing around his calves. They didn’t have time to waste. He stepped out into the circle of light, though he knew he was putting himself into possible lines of fire. The hint of a signal at last, but it vanished as quickly as it had come. He needed to get higher up. He began climbing the hummock, fighting his way through the heavy waterfalls of slurry. He reached the top and held the cell radio above his head.

Muzzle flashes up top. Automatic gunfire churned the ground beside him. He lost his footing as he tried to get away and fell hard, was swept down the mound in a deluge of concrete. His elbow hit a rock; the radio spilled from his grasp. He fumbled frantically for it but it was swallowed by the slurry and further bursts of gunfire chased him from the circle of light before he could retrieve it.

‘What now?’ asked Georges, coming to help him to his feet.

Iain looked around. The concrete was already almost up to their knees; they had no time to fetch or find another radio. And unless they could find some way to stop it here, it would quickly stream down to the antechamber, where it would catch Karin, Butros and Andreas utterly defenceless.

A marble column fallen across a passage mouth gave them something to work with. They built a barrier of rock and stone upon it, packing the gaps with sand and earth, racing against the bath of concrete filling so rapidly on the other side. They completed their makeshift dam just moments before it would have been over-topped. The pressure, however, was so great that almost at once it began to bulge. Cracks appeared and started dribbling slurry. They patched it as best they could, added ballast to thicken it, though both of them knew in their hearts that their frantic labour wouldn’t save them; that even if they somehow held the concrete at bay, all they were actually doing was walling up their own tomb from within.

II

Katerina had fallen asleep on the sofa with her head on Zehra’s lap. It felt good to have her lying there and Zehra couldn’t tear herself away from the spectacle of Turkey on fire, not with a new story breaking every few minutes and now the Prime Minister himself at the podium.

Something beeped. She looked around but saw nothing so she put it from her mind. It beeped again, then for a third time before she realized what it must be. She carefully lifted up Katerina’s head and set a cushion beneath it. Then she went into the kitchen. Katerina had earlier set up her son’s mobile phone to alert her to any tweets from Andreas. She’d left it here when she’d done the washing up. But now it was buzzing and its fascia was alight and she picked it up and read the message on its screen:

She read it again, in disbelief. Then the next one and the ones after it.

Zehra stared at the small screen, the accusations, the links to evidence. For a moment or two, she felt completely numb, as though her nervous system didn’t quite know how to process it all. But then an intense, illicit, sick, sweet thrill ran right through her, like how she’d always imagined adultery must feel.

She went back through to the sitting room, shook Katerina by the shoulder until she woke, yawning and rubbing her eyes. ‘What is it, Grandma?’ she asked.

‘I need to retweet something to your father’s friends,’ Zehra told her. ‘Show me how.’

III

The noise around the square was extraordinary, what with the generators, cement mixers and pumps all working flat out, plus the rumble of emptied trucks and tankers heading off to be refilled. Asena and Yilmaz had to walk off a little way to find privacy and relative quiet in which to talk. She longed to embrace him, to thank him properly for risking so much to rescue her from Black and his friends, and thus proving in the most categorical way possible his steadfastness and love; but his men were everywhere, leaning against walls, smoking and drinking from water bottles; and while they were fiercely loyal, many were also staunchly conservative in their social outlook and disapproved of open displays of affection, especially on an operation like this. So she held herself back.

They had access to the Internet via a tablet computer and a mobile communications mast. They found a quiet courtyard in which to watch the Prime Minister spouting his usual platitudes. ‘I told you it was all he had,’ smiled Yilmaz.

‘Yes,’ agreed Asena. She slipped her hand into his. Their breathing fell into rhythm as they watched. All these long years of planning. All these long years of sacrifice, hardship and loneliness.

Any moment now.

Any moment.