Читать книгу City of the Lost - Will Adams - Страница 21

Karin looked at Iain in consternation. ‘Have his father killed? What are you talking about?’

‘Someone set off a bomb today,’ said Iain. ‘You said yourself the crater was directly beneath his room. Maybe it really was Cypriot reunificationists out to inflict carnage for the cause. But isn’t it possible that it was a murder made to look like terrorism? That your boss was the real target?’

‘No.’ She shook her head emphatically. ‘His children aren’t angels, but they’re not like that. They couldn’t be. Anyway, Nathan only decided to come here two weeks ago. And he didn’t tell his family until a couple of days before we left. You’d need far more time than that to set up something like this halfway across the world.’

‘What if they had more time? What if they had weeks? Even months?’

‘Aren’t you listening? He only decided to come two weeks ago.’

Iain reached across the table to touch the back of her hand. ‘Don’t get mad at me. I’m only speculating. I don’t know Julian and these others. I owe them nothing. But I do owe Mustafa the truth. So put yourself in the shoes of one of Nathan’s sons. He hates his father for all the shit he’s made him eat. He sees him falling for you and now he’s panicked too. Maybe he’s a gambler. Maybe he has a high-maintenance mistress. He needs his inheritance. He needs it now. So he decides to act. But getting at his father isn’t easy. Rick was his head of security, correct? Not just a bodyguard. So he obviously took his personal protection pretty damned seriously, right? Getting to him in America was sure to have been hard. And he’d likely have been near the top of the suspects list. But what if he could lure Nathan somewhere he’d be vulnerable? He’s a collector. Dangle the right piece in front of him and he’d be on the first plane. And if he was killed by some random atrocity while he was here, no one would look at it twice.’

She shook her head. ‘And all those other people? Collateral damage?’

‘He wouldn’t necessarily have planned it that way. He could have hired a hitman and left the method up to him. It wouldn’t be the first time. Some of the gangs here are notoriously ruthless. There’s this group of ultra-nationalists called the Grey Wolves who …’ He frowned, sat back in his chair, scratched his neck thoughtfully.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

Iain didn’t answer at once. There was something darkly familiar about all this, he suddenly realized: about the worsening terrorism, the hapless government response, the growing public clamour for decisive action. But surely all that belonged to Turkey’s buried past. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘A weird déjà vu, that’s all.’

‘What about?’

‘I can’t really talk about it.’

She tipped her head quizzically to one side. ‘You have a past,’ she said.

‘Who doesn’t?’

‘Tell me.’

‘I’d rather not.’

‘I told you mine.’

He sighed and splayed fingers on the starched white tablecloth. ‘I was in the army kind of thing for a few years.’

That made her smile. ‘The army kind of thing?’

‘Afghan, Iraq, a bunch of other places. I saw the usual horrible things. I did the usual horrible things. It got to me. I left. Now I’m a business consultant. Nice, safe and boring, you know. All that shit well behind me. Until today. Until Mustafa.’ He shook his head. ‘Let’s not talk about it, eh? Not tonight. There must be happier topics.’

‘Fine,’ smiled Karin. ‘You lay off Nathan’s kids, I’ll forget the army kind of thing. Deal?’

‘Deal.’

‘Then what do we talk about?’

‘How about this Homeric Question of yours,’ said Iain. ‘Surely it can’t get any safer than that.’