Читать книгу The Istanbul Puzzle - Laurence O’Bryan - Страница 9

Chapter 4

The following night, Saturday night, I went to a barbecue near my house in West London. The Institute had an apartment in Oxford, but I rarely used it any more. My attic office was more than good enough for the days I didn’t feel like battling up the M40.

It had been over thirty hours since I’d heard from Alek. If he didn’t make contact until he came back on Monday I’d give him a chance to explain himself, then I’d tell him what I thought of his bullshit.

The barbecue was one of those gatherings where everyone dressed in similar, expensively-distressed clothes to demonstrate their individuality. I left before midnight. The host had been trying to hook me up with one of her friends, and while she was certainly attractive, my heart wasn’t it. All everyone wanted to do was talk about the riots starting up again.

And all I wanted to do was get away from thinking about them. I walked home, crossed New King’s Road, passed a bar with thumping music, people laughing outside. Everything looked normal. Maybe the riots weren’t kicking off again. Good. I needed to get some sleep if I was going to go for a run in the morning.

My plan was to do the Kauai Marathon in September, which was only six weeks away. Ten days in Hawaii was a break I needed. I’d been looking forward to it for months. It would be the holiday that would mark a proper break with my past. That was what Alek had said, and I was hoping he was right.

I kicked off my shoes in the hall downstairs as soon as I got home. They skidded across the black and white tiles. Then I hung my jacket on the pile over the bottom of the banisters. I really needed to sort them all out. But where would I find the time? God only knew how Irene had kept the place tidy. The cleaner who came in now had enough work keeping the kitchen from turning into a health and safety disaster.

I checked my iPhone to see if I’d missed anything. There was still nothing from Alek. No texts. No emails. No missed calls. No tweets. Nothing! What was he playing at?

Was this all some stupid game? Was he trying to make a point about how important he was? I wouldn’t put it past him.

A creak sounded from above my head. The pipes in the building had a habit of doing that. I reckon they were installed when Victoria was a princess.

The house had four floors and was at the end of one of those white stuccoed terraces West London is famous for. We’d grown used to its moods. Living there was our greatest luxury, Irene had said. Working seventy-hour weeks and being one of the founding directors of the Institute of Applied Research in Oxford had to have some advantages, I used to reply.

But I knew I’d been fortunate to end up owning the house. I’d been lucky to get a place on an exchange programme with University College London. And I’d been lucky to meet Irene while I was there. The work I did that year led to an article on patterns in human behaviour, which was published in the New York Times magazine to some acclaim. The success of that article helped us start the Institute.

I’d worked in a software company in Berkshire for three years after we got married. Then a few of us from college decided to set up the Institute. It had taken off way quicker than we’d expected, with serious projects in each of our specialisations.

We’d been lucky in many ways, but I’d give up every dime of our success, if that meant Irene could still be alive. We’d had plans and a house that was just waiting to be filled up with the sound of children’s laughter.

And sometimes in my dreams I could still hear the echoes of what might have been.

I headed upstairs. I always kept a light on on the floor above, so it didn’t feel like the house was brooding. That was the theory, anyway. Though it didn’t seem to have the desired effect.

As I was undressing, the landline rang. It had that insistent tone only a telephone ringing late at night has.

Was it Alek? It had to be.

I found the phone on a foot-high stack of documents by the bed.

‘Mr Ryan?’

The voice wasn’t Alek’s. It sounded like one of those city types who wear their sock suspenders to bed.

‘Yes?’ A needle-sharp sense of foreboding is difficult to ignore.

The sound of a car horn came over the phone line. A tinny noise, a radio station playing what sounded like Middle Eastern hip hop, echoed over the line.

‘The name’s Fitzgerald, sir. Peter Fitzgerald. I’m sorry to disturb you.’ He spoke slowly, emphasizing each syllable, his manner exceedingly polite. ‘I’m with the British Consulate, here in Istanbul.’

A shiver ran through me, as if I’d brushed against a wall of ice.

‘Yes?’ I didn’t want to talk to him.

‘I’m sorry, sir. It’s bad news, I’m afraid.’

My mouth was as dry as sandpaper. Then my stomach did a backflip.

‘It’s about Mr Alek Zegliwski, sir. I’ve been told you’re his manager on a project out here. Am I speaking with the right Sean Ryan?’ The tinny Middle Eastern music played on in the background. What time was it there? 3:00 AM? Had he tried calling earlier, when I was out?

‘Yes.’ My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.

Alek was more than a colleague. He’d been one of Irene’s closest college friends. Then a drinking buddy of mine. We free-dived together. He was coming with me to Kauai.

Laughter echoed from the street below, from another world.

‘Please sit down, Mr Ryan.’ The voice seemed distant.

All the kinds of trouble Alek might have gotten himself into flickered through my mind, in a bizarre slide show. I stayed standing.

‘I’m afraid it’s my unfortunate duty to have to tell you that the authorities here have informed us that your colleague Mr Zegliwski is … ’ He hesitated.

‘… dead.’

A void opened beneath me. That was the one word he wasn’t supposed to say.

‘I am very sorry, sir. I’m sure it’s an awful shock.’

I opened my mouth. No sound came out.

‘We do need someone to identify his body fairly quickly. It’s the Turkish authorities you see. They do things differently out here.’

Alek was coming back on Monday. We were meeting up in the evening. He was coming to my house. We were going for a run.

‘Are you sure about this?’ Please, let it be a mistake.

‘I am sorry. They found his wallet, his ID. It’s a bad time to ask, I know, but do you have contact details for Mr Zegliwski’s relatives?’

I slumped onto the edge of the bed. Its scarlet Persian cover, half off already, slipped to the floor.

‘I don’t, I’m sorry. They’re in Poland. I think.’

‘He’s not married?’

‘No.’

‘What about a girlfriend?’

‘Not for a few months. And that was only for a week or two. He rarely talks about his family.’ I wanted to be more helpful, but Alek was about as single and as independent as you could get. The only time he’d been asked about his next-of-kin in my presence, he’d pointed at me. That was his idea of a joke. He never went back to Poland either – not that I knew of anyway.

‘No relatives in the United Kingdom at all? Are you sure?’ He sounded sceptical.

‘Not that I know about, no.’

Alek couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be. More than anyone else I knew, he was able to look after himself. He was six foot tall, full of life, in his twenties for God’s sake.

Something around me seemed to be changing, as if a hidden door had opened somewhere and a breeze had begun blowing.

‘In that case, Mr Ryan, we’ll have to ask you to come to Istanbul to identify Mr Zegliwski’s body. I believe the authorities here have some questions about the project he was working on too.’

I didn’t reply.

‘Are you there, Mr Ryan?’

‘Yes.’

‘When can you come out? The earlier the better, really.’ His tone wasn’t soft any more.

The line between us hummed. I took my mobile out of my pocket, scrolled to Alek’s number, tapped it. I had a phone to each ear now. Maybe, just maybe, this was all some stupid mistake. A joke even.

‘This is too crazy,’ I said, buying time. ‘Do you know what happened to him?’

My mobile beeped. I looked at the screen. Alek’s number was unavailable.

‘We’re not sure. The Turkish authorities are investigating. That’s all I can say for now.’ The line fizzed. ‘Oh, and I spoke to your colleague, Dr Beresford-Ellis.’

The conversation had turned a surreal corner.

‘I know you’re aware of the current sensitivities with our Turkish friends. So you’ll understand why we want to get all this done as quickly as possible.’

‘I’ll be on the first flight I can get a seat on.’ My voice was firm. The truth was, he couldn’t have stopped me going to Istanbul.

He coughed. ‘Very good. Now finally, and I am sorry, but I must ask you this: Was Mr Zegliwski involved in anything political or religious, or anything like that?’

‘No, not really. Nothing you wouldn’t hear in any pub in England.’

I could hear the line between London and Istanbul hiss again as Fitzgerald waited for me to add to my answer. But I didn’t want to say any more. I had nothing to hide. Alek had nothing to hide as far as I knew. But would there be consequences if I repeated every crazy opinion he’d ever expressed?

‘What work does the Institute do, sir? I haven’t heard about you.’

I could imagine my interrogator’s eyebrows shooting up as he asked me that question.

‘We apply advanced research to practical problems. Imaging technology is one area we’ve been working on, technology to find criminals in crowds for instance.’ It was the standard description I’d been using for years whenever anyone asked me what the Institute did.

‘Very good, sir.’ He didn’t sound interested. ‘I’ll tell our people you’re on your way. You’ll be met at Istanbul airport by someone from the Consulate. We’ll know which flight you’re on. The Turks will do the identification formalities on Monday, most likely. And please, do ring the Foreign Office emergency helpline to verify this conversation. The UK number is on our website. Goodbye, Mr Ryan. I’m very sorry for your loss.’

The line went dead.

I held the handset tight. My knuckles were porcelain white. A picture of Alek grinning outside Hagia Sophia, which he’d emailed me only the day before, came to me. He’d looked so happy. What the hell had happened? My hand trembled as I called his landline in Oxford. I was still hoping that somehow it was all a mistake.

His answering machine took the call. I hung up.

This couldn’t have anything to do with our work at the Institute, could it? Alek had helped us win the project he was working on in Istanbul. It was a real opportunity to establish our credentials in that part of the world. But I’d allowed him to go out there on his own. My stomach turned.

‘How complicated do you think taking photos is?’ he’d argued at the time.

I stabbed my fist into the mattress.

What was going to happen?

Beresford-Ellis would lap all this up. His appointment as Director of the Institute last year had been a not-too-subtle attempt to sideline me totally. It wasn’t enough that I was demoted for the stunt I’d pulled in Afghanistan. The other founders of the Institute had demanded I relinquish, temporarily, many of my responsibilities, for my own good.

And I’d agreed, reluctantly. So the last thing I needed now was for one of my new projects to end in disaster.

I shook my head. What happened to me didn’t matter. All that mattered was what had happened to Alek.

He’d been the one I’d talked to when things had gotten too much, when the emptiness had won, when I’d decided I couldn’t go on. I would have never survived without him.

I checked the Foreign Office website, rang their emergency number. As I waited for an answer I thought about how people would react to the news.

Beresford-Ellis had been disdainful about the project in Istanbul from the beginning. When I’d told him we’d won it, he’d said, with his trademark pessimism, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Ryan. Isn’t any project like this in a Muslim country a bit too controversial these days? We don’t want a bloody fatwa on our heads.’

‘It’s a small project,’ I’d said. ‘Who gives a damn about someone taking pictures in a museum?’

‘Hagia Sophia may be a museum, Ryan,’ he’d replied. ‘But it was once the supreme mosque ruling the Sunni Islam world, and the seat of the Islamic Caliphate. And before that it was the Orthodox Vatican. There are a lot of toes to be stepped on out there.’

Having made his point, he left our office, sniffing as he passed Alek’s empty desk.

But he was right. Hagia Sophia was important. It had been built when the Byzantine Empire was at its peak in the 7th century and had been dedicated to Holy Wisdom, Sophia, a concept that spanned both the Christian and pre-Christian worlds.

The Orthodox Greeks had lost their Vatican when the all-conquering Ottoman Turks had captured Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul in 1453. In doing so, they’d snuffed out the Byzantine Empire, the direct descendants of ancient Rome.

Sure, fundamentalists were angered when Atatürk had turned Hagia Sophia into a museum in 1934, but their argument was with the Turkish state, not us.

In any case, our project – comparing digital images of mosaics to prints and sketches produced by artists over the centuries – was just about the least invasive thing you could do in a world heritage site. And it was also exactly the type of project our Institute had been set up to do.

A friendly Indian lady finally came on the line. After receiving permission from her superior, she told me about a note on her system from the Istanbul consulate detailing how someone called Alek Zegliwski had indeed been involved in a serious incident in Istanbul. Their contact in relation to the matter was a Mr Fitzgerald. She didn’t have any more information to give me. She couldn’t even tell me Mr Fitzgerald’s first name.

I fell asleep as the first rays of dawn were softening London’s skyline. I’d spent all night thinking about what had happened. One memory had replayed itself over and over in my mind.

The day before he’d flown to Istanbul – only a week earlier – Alek had leaned towards me and whispered,

‘You do know the Devil’s caged under Hagia Sophia, boss? Let’s hope I don’t disturb him, eh?’

I’d laughed. Such superstitions had seemed ridiculous in our shiny glass-walled offices in Oxford.

When I woke, the first thing I did was look for Beresford-Ellis’ number. It was 8:00 AM, but I didn’t care.

Beresford-Ellis was the kind of guy who kept pictures of himself with prominent people on his wall. He had one with David Cameron, another with the chancellor of the university he’d worked in before he came to us, another with Nelson Mandela, and another with the head of the US Geological Service. He was so good at social climbing he could have run PhD-level courses on it. The cherry on top of all that was that he was about as trustworthy as an Afghan warlord with an empty war chest.

When the other founders had decided to take on a qualified manager to lead the Institute, because each of us was immersed in our own projects, I’d said nothing. Irene had died only a month before. Getting Beresford-Ellis in had seemed like a good idea.

I soon found out that his appetite for corporate-speak was prodigious. We didn’t have projects any more, we had ‘collaboration initiatives’ or ‘research value actualisations’. And he’d been subtly critical of every ‘initiative’ I’d worked on since he’d joined. The work we’d done in Bavaria identifying Bronze Age settlements from satellite images hadn’t identified settlements from the target period, he’d said. And our trial security initiative in New York, for a big American bank, hadn’t turned into anything lucrative. All he wanted, it seemed, were projects that got us major contracts quickly.

He was right in his own way, if you disregarded the fact that it took months for the impact of many of our projects to come to light.

These faults weren’t compensated by his demeanour either. He seemed to be uninterested in everyone around him, not just me. Most of the time, it was almost as if his colleagues were invisible to him. What he preferred to do was talk about his own achievements.

‘Bad publicity is the last thing we need right now,’ he said, after I got through to him and told him I was planning to fly out to Istanbul that afternoon. He was good, as always, at finding the down side.

‘If there’s anything in the press about the Institute being involved in something it shouldn’t have been, it’ll be a disaster for our fundraising this year, Ryan. I know this is a bad time to say it, but there are some board members who think we’ve given you too much rope already.’ He waited for a moment for his words to detonate.

What a bastard! Not a single word about Alek’s death. He’d be happy with our scalps on his wall next to those photos.

‘I won’t dodge my responsibilities,’ I said. ‘But I think you should reserve judgement until we know the facts.’ I cut the line.

A few hours later I headed for Heathrow feeling sick, totally unprepared, and unplugged from reality.

It knew it could easily have been me who’d been murdered out there. I could have gone to Istanbul instead of Alek, if I’d insisted on it. And there was more too. If what had happened to Alek had been because of our work in Hagia Sophia, how careful would I need to be?

What was going to happen in Istanbul?