The Babylon Idol

Chapter 46

They set off, quickly leaving Harran behind as their guide sped out into open country, talking and joking animatedly as he drove. From March through October, it would have been the kind of unbearably hot, dusty trek that Ben had endured a thousand times before. In winter, it was just unbearably uncomfortable as Diya charged up into the barren hills, never slowing down for a rock or boulder smaller than a watermelon or bothering to avoid a rut unless it threatened to engulf the entire truck. Ben wedged his feet against the door and transmission tunnel to prevent himself getting too badly thrown about. Behind him, Anna was being bucked out of her seat at every bump, but she was too excited to complain.

The landscape was an arid panorama yellowed by sand and sun, dotted here and there with sparse vegetation. They passed through the outskirts of a village where feral children came out to throw stones. Deeper into the wilderness they had to slow for a sheep herder leading his flock across their path. Further on again, they passed the bleached-white skeleton of a camel; then the carcass of a wrecked and overturned car, blackened by fire and peppered with large-calibre bullet holes, a silent witness of the warfare that now and then strayed over the border into south-eastern Turkey.

‘In your line of work I’d carry a weapon for self-defence, Diya,’ Ben said in Arabic over the roar of the engine. ‘What with all the trouble in these parts.’

Diya glanced at him in surprise that he could speak the language, then shrugged and replied, ‘Forget it. That’s a sure way to get yourself killed, around here.’

‘I’d take the risk, personally,’ Ben said.

‘Rather you than me, chief.’

‘So you don’t have a gun?’

Diya shook his head, all the way left, then all the way right, in an exaggerated motion for emphasis. ‘Never wanted one, never needed one, never will.’

‘Sorry I asked,’ Ben said. ‘Just wondered, that’s all. So, are you really the only guide in Harran?’

‘Only one worth his salt.’

‘Nice little monopoly you have there. No competition. You make much money?’

Diya shrugged and grinned wider. ‘A man has to earn his crust. You know how it is.’

‘Yeah, I think I do know how it is,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll bet your phone never stops ringing, does it? I’ll bet it was ringing even last night, sometime after she and I got into town.’ He pointed a thumb back at Anna, who was gazing out of the window and oblivious of the conversation.

Diya looked at him uncertainly, the grin wavering. ‘You ask a lot of questions, chief.’

‘Bad habit of mine,’ Ben said.

Soon afterwards the terrain began to climb. Diya took a winding hill path up and up through all sorts of spectacular ravines and canyons and escarpments. Anna was watching it all roll by, gazing out of the window in fascination. Ben was watching Diya. For the last few kilometres the guide had stopped smiling and talking. He kept glancing at his watch, biting his lip. Peering this way and that as though checking for landmarks, then consulting the GPS reading on the sat nav.

Ben asked him, ‘What’s the matter, Diya? Lost your way?’

‘No chance,’ Diya replied. ‘I been coming out this way all my life, chief. Nobody knows it better than me.’

‘Maybe you’re in a hurry because you have a plane to catch later, or a hot date.’

Diya threw him another uncertain look. ‘No worries, man. Almost there. Just a couple more minutes.’

‘This’ll do,’ Ben said. ‘You can drop us off here.’

Diya stared at him. ‘You crazy? This is no taxi ride.’

‘You heard me. This is far enough.’ Ben reached out and yanked the handbrake. The truck skidded to a halt at an angle across the track. Anna was thrown forwards against the front seats.

‘Ben, what are you doing?’

The engine had stalled. Diya clutched the wheel and kept staring at Ben. He was sweating. Ben said nothing, either. Before Diya could speak or attempt to restart the engine, Ben threw open his door and jumped out. They had stopped in a shallow canyon that a million years ago could have been the bed of a fast-flowing river. Its banks sloped upwards on both sides in a wide V. Here and there, landslides had brought part of the canyon walls down to form piles of boulders around which scrubby bushes had sprung. Ben hit the stony ground with both boots and started striding fast towards the rear of the truck. Stepped up on the tow-hitch, reached into the pickup bed among the wooden-handled utensils carelessly wrapped inside the piece of frayed canvas tarp, grabbed something solid and heavy and slid it out of the roll with a sharp tug.

Ben always found it interesting what people carried with them for travelling in the wilderness. Especially when one of the items in their tool roll wasn’t a shovel or a pick, but rather a clumsily concealed bolt-action Mauser main battle rifle of the sort that had flooded Turkey by the million during and since World War Two. And even more especially when the same rifle’s owner insisted he carried no weapon. By anyone’s standards, the 8mm Mauser was a hell of a weapon, as lethally effective now as when it had rolled off the assembly point at the Steyr-Daimler-Puch factory in Austria, 1943, and into the eager hands of the Waffen SS.

Diya was clambering out of the truck. Anna peered open-mouthed from the dusty window. ‘Let me guess,’ Ben said, clutching the rifle. ‘This old thing has been bumping around so long in the back of your truck, you forgot it was there. Is that right, Diya?’

Diya made no reply. Ben cracked open the bolt and saw the big, long, bottlenecked rounds stacked on top of each other in the receiver. He pulled the bolt all the way back, then pushed it all the way forward, feeling that famous slick Mauser action, and locked it down tight. Now there was a round in the chamber.

‘You really shouldn’t leave firearms lying around like that,’ he said. ‘Too many nasty, dishonest people around. The kind of people who might point a loaded rifle at you when they pretended they were unarmed.’

‘Ben, what’s happening?’ Anna called from the truck cab.

Diya took a step towards him. In one fast motion Ben swivelled the butt of the rifle to his shoulder and fixed the battle sight right on Diya’s centre of mass. The 8mm Mauser cartridge was good for over a thousand yards and could penetrate light armour at half that distance. At this range it would blow a man in two.

Diya presumably knew that, it being his rifle. He took a step back and raised his hands.

Ben said to him, ‘Let’s have a little bit of truth, Diya. You can start by emptying out your pockets. Nice and easy. If I thought you had a pistol in there, I might get really nervous. And nervous folks have twitchy fingers.’

Diya moved slowly, partly because he didn’t want to get shot with his own rifle, and partly because he was understandably reluctant for Ben to see what was in his jacket pocket. More precisely, what was in his wallet, which he left until last to pull out. The worn leather was stuffed as thick as a double burger.

‘Open it up so I can see inside,’ Ben said.

Diya’s eyes bulged. He held open the wallet. A fat wad of banknotes fell out, scattered and caught the wind and swirled about his feet like autumn leaves, but he made no move to pick them up.

‘Business really has been good for you, hasn’t it?’ Ben said. ‘Looks like another couple of thousand Turkish lira, on top of the five hundred you stood to get from us. Why don’t you go crawling after it, before it all blows away? Wouldn’t want you to have sold us out for nothing.’

Anna’s door opened and she peered out. ‘Ben, please tell me what’s going on here.’

‘What’s going on is that there is no ancient Assyrian fort anywhere nearby,’ Ben told her, still keeping the rifle pointed at Diya. ‘And if there were, our deceitful friend here wouldn’t care one way or the other. Because he didn’t drive us out into the middle of nowhere for an archaeological excursion, but for a prearranged rendezvous with a certain someone. Isn’t that correct, Diya?’

Diya boggled at him. ‘They said to bring you here. That’s all I know. Said it was for a surprise.’

‘You’re an idiot, Diya. The biggest surprise would’ve been when they put a bullet in you and took the money back. And if you thought packing a rifle as insurance was going to save your worthless skin, you have no idea who you’re dealing with. When did they call you? Yesterday?’

‘Last night,’ Diya admitted.

‘And they didn’t wire you that cash through the bank. They paid it to you in person. Which means they’re here, in Harran. Who did you meet?’

‘I don’t know his name. I don’t know anything, I swear.’

‘The last bloke who swore to me he knew nothing died pretty soon afterwards.’

‘Okay, chief, okay. One was in charge. Older than the rest, with white hair, maybe in his sixties. A big man, spoke with a foreign accent. Italian, sounded like. He had three others with him. Heavy-looking guys. Two who spoke, one who didn’t. Just kinda looked at me.’

‘Bozza,’ Anna breathed.

Ben asked Diya, ‘They came to your place?’

Diya nodded reluctantly. ‘Told me to expect your call in the morning. Gave me the money. Half now, half when the job was done.’

‘The job being to cart us out into the middle of nowhere like two lambs to the slaughter,’ Ben said. ‘And you knew just the spot to bring us. So far, the only thing you haven’t lied to us about is that you know this area like the back of your hand. You probably even gave them the GPS coordinates, which is why you kept checking your sat nav as we got closer. And my guess is that you called them just before we set off, which is why you kept checking your watch, too. Because they’re up ahead, waiting for us.’

Diya nodded. He pointed mutely deeper into the rocky canyon, about five hundred yards further on. ‘Where I was taking you.’

‘That’s all I need to know,’ Ben said. ‘You’re a very lucky man, Diya. A less nice person than me would have blown your brains out and left you where you dropped, for the jackals and lynxes and whatever other hungry things live out here. I’m just going to make you walk home. You’ll have to pray you make it back alive.’

But Diya wasn’t going to make it back alive, and Ben might as well have shot him anyway.

Because in the next instant, his brains burst all over the side of the truck.