The Babylon Idol

Chapter 44

‘It’s me.’

‘I know it’s you. There’s something nowadays called caller ID, you know? Anyway, you don’t have to keep phoning me all the time. I told you I’d be in touch if there was a change.’

‘Which there hasn’t been?’

‘He’s stable. But there’s no improvement in his condition. I wish I could tell you more, but that’s it.’

‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you. I won’t call again.’

‘No problem.’ A hesitant pause in her voice, then: ‘I like it when you call.’

He said nothing.

‘When are you coming back?’ she asked.

‘I can’t say.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘Stopped for fuel at a motorway services in the Urus Mountains, about three hundred kilometres south-east of Ankara, Turkey.’

‘What are you doing there? What’s happening?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘That’s what I was afraid you’d say. Don’t do anything—’

‘Stupid? You already said that.’

‘Or whatever.’

‘You want to come and hold my hand?’

‘I would, but I’m too busy holding Jeff’s.’

‘Keep doing that. Talk to him. He’ll hear you.’

‘It’s your voice he needs to hear. Come back soon, okay? I’m worried about you.’

‘Why?’ he asked her.

‘I don’t know why. I hardly know you.’ Another pause, longer this time, as if she was searching for more words but didn’t want to commit to saying them. ‘Just come back soon, okay?’ she repeated. ‘And promise me you’ll look after yourself, Ben.’

He put the phone away and got back in the car. ‘Here, I got us some sandwiches,’ he said to Anna, holding up two plastic packs. ‘Lamb or cheese?’ She picked the cheese. They sat in silence for a moment, ripping open the plastic twin-packs, both just now realising how hungry they were. Anna wolfed down half of her first sandwich with little care for ladylike manners, then paused for breath and asked, ‘Who were you talking to just then?’

‘Sandrine Lacombe, the doctor looking after Jeff.’

‘That’s who I thought it was. I take it there’s been no change in your friend’s state?’

‘Not yet.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Me too.’

‘I wish there was more I could say.’

‘I know.’

‘He’ll pull through it, I’m sure.’

‘Maybe,’ Ben said. ‘Thanks for the thought.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Anna said, and then a small smile curled the corners of her lips. ‘She likes you, doesn’t she? And you like her, too.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Ben said through a mouthful of lamb sandwich.

‘I can tell. From your face when you talk to her.’

‘What about my face?’ he said, hardening it into a scowl.

‘It certainly doesn’t look the way it does now. The opposite. And I could tell from the warmth of your voice when you were talking to her. And from the way you didn’t want to end the call.’ Anna smiled. ‘Is she nice? Tell me about her. What colour eyes does she have? What colour hair?’

‘This is a daft conversation,’ he said, tossed away the empty sandwich pack and twisted the ignition. The battery was fully recharged from all the driving, and the engine fired instantly.

A hundred kilometres further down the road he broke his silence and said, ‘Blue eyes. Blond hair. Don’t ask me any more questions about her.’ Anna made no reply. The little smile on her face remained there for a long time.

The old car was sedate, but it was comfortable and reliable, and the heater worked fine. Anna dozed off now and then, while Ben smoked the last of his cigarettes with the driver’s window wound open a crack and the icy wind whistling at his ear. As the journey rolled further southwards they left the snow and the mountains behind for the more temperate climate of south-eastern Turkey. It was still cold, but the roads were clear and the sky was blue.

Six hours after setting off from the hills of Ankara, they were arriving in Sanliurfa. A city of half a million inhabitants, built on a plain eighty kilometres east of the Euphrates. Anna knew it as the birthplace of some twelfth-century Armenian historian she mentioned. Ben knew it as the site of massacres during the First World War. Then again, just about everywhere had been the site of massacres during the First World War, like the second, and most likely the third too.

By the time they were driving into the city, Anna’s mood had changed and she was looking sombre. ‘What were we thinking? Now we’re here, I have no idea what to do next.’

‘One thing at a time,’ Ben told her. ‘First let’s see about getting you kitted out with some decent shoes and clothes. Then we’ll think about establishing a base somewhere nearby, preferably as close to Harran as possible. Then, we’ll worry about what we’re going to do next.’

They might have had different ideas about what constituted decent shoes and clothes, but thanks to the limited options available in the stores they checked out, it was Ben’s that mostly prevailed. She stalked out of the store wearing leather winter boots, heavy denim jeans and a good, warm, if utilitarian, thigh-length jacket that padded out her figure with thick quilting. She was grateful for being able to junk the pink wellingtons, but the new coat wasn’t such a hit. ‘It’s like something you’d put on a horse,’ she said, looking disapprovingly at her shapeless reflection in a shop window. ‘Is this meant to be part of my re-education? Learning to live the Ben Hope way?’

‘You look fine,’ he had to say at least six times before they reached the car.

Now that that task was taken care of, it was time to make their way to their destination, Harran. The road from Sanliurfa seemed at first to be taking them due south, straight towards Syria; then just a few kilometres before reaching the border town of Akçakale it veered eastwards. The ancient site that had been the stopping point for Abraham in the Old Testament was a sprawl of ruins scattered over an arid plain of semi-desert scrubland, encircled at a distance by the modern town of Harran. Like a couple of sightseers, Ben and Anna trekked on foot across the barren scrubland of the plain and spent a while wandering about the ruined sandstone walls and archways and towers that were all that remained of the place. It was like Olympia, but with none of the serenity and little of the mystique. The only intact buildings on the plain were the clusters of beehive houses that had been built a lot more recently, centuries rather than millennia ago, from the stones of the ruins. Incongruously surrounded by pylons and wires that hummed in the cold desert wind, some of the beehive houses appeared still inhabited — until it turned out that they were strictly used as a tourist trap by locals ever-ready to exploit the unwary for all they could get. The children were less subtle about it, crowding around Ben and Anna everywhere they went like a cloud of mosquitoes, clamouring for money. Ben noticed that some of the kids were speaking Arabic. Refugees from over the Syrian border, just twenty-five kilometres away. He felt pity for them, until one of the little urchins pulled out an imitation 9mm Beretta realistic enough to have caused most tourists to soil their pants, pointed it at Ben and yelled ‘Bang, bang, you’re dead!’ Ben replied to him in Arabic. The kid lowered the gun, stared at Anna in horror and then beat it along with his crowd of friends.

‘What did you say to him?’ Anna asked.

‘I told him you were a Seventh Dan Karate master, and you were going to break both his little arms and shove his gun where the sun doesn’t shine.’

‘This is a dismal place. There’s nothing for us here anyway. We should be looking for Ashar’s fortress.’

Ben shook his head. ‘It’s getting late, and we wouldn’t know where to start. I suggest we get a place to rest up for the night, a shower and a meal.’

The modern town of Harran wasn’t much less dismal than the ancient one, but had a motel handily situated right on the edge of the plain. Anna wasn’t impressed with their adjoining rooms, and even less so with the shared bathroom. ‘There are cockroaches.’

‘It’s winter.’

‘They’re hibernating. But they’re here. Don’t tell me you’ve seen worse, because such a thing isn’t possible.’

‘Except maybe in summer,’ he said. ‘When the cockroaches all come back out to play.’

The narrow street leading up from the motel was crowded with tawdry gift shops, coffee bars and a handful of restaurants that looked more or less in the same league as the motel, but within a five-minute walk they found a café that was a little better than the others. Over dishes of Urfa kebab and chicken and rice, they talked about the possibility of hiring a local guide to help them locate the fort, or at any rate the site where it had once stood. ‘There must be dozens of them in this town, with little work during the low season,’ Anna pointed out. ‘And in a place like this, where everyone knows everyone, it’s just a matter of asking.’

‘What are the chances that some local guy just happens to know where this fort is?’ Ben said.

‘I’ve used guides before, on research trips. It’s surprising how knowledgeable some of them can be.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ Ben said. ‘But assuming we even find anything out there, it could be a long trek. And the terrain will be rough as hell. I could go alone. I’ve spent a lot of time in places like that.’

‘You think I’d let you find the golden idol of King Nebuchadnezzar without me?’ she fired back. ‘I’ve survived this far. I’m ready for anything.’