Laurence O’Bryan - The Istanbul Puzzle

‘Got any water?’ I said.

The man in the left-hand driving seat who’d waved at us, the only occupant of the vehicle, opened a black refrigerator box that sat in the front passenger footwell. He passed me a bottle of the coolest water I’d ever tasted.

As I took my first sip, I noticed he had put his hand on Isabel’s arm. She had climbed into the front seat next to him. She slapped his hand away.

‘Nice to see you too, my dear,’ said the man. The Hummer started with a roar.

‘Sean meet Mark Headsell, one of our…’ she hesitated, as if she was debating with herself how to say what he did, ‘representatives in Mosul.’ She spat out the word representative. ‘He’s an old friend.’

‘Good to meet you, Sean. Don’t mind Isabel. Welcome to the front line’

‘I thought the front line was in Afghanistan,’ I said.

‘We’re still busy here, I can tell you,’ said Mark.

Isabel was looking out the side window. Peter was outside on his phone. He was standing with his back to us.

He finished his call, jerked the door of the Hummer open. ‘How is your personal hellhole these days, Mark?’ he said, loudly. Then he slapped Mark’s shoulder.

‘Wonderful, if you don’t mind sewage pipes that back up, gun-toting locals with grudges, and fleas as big as rats.’

‘That sounds like progress,’ said Peter.

‘You’re heading for Magloub, right?’ said Mark. ‘Where that crazy Greek priest is digging?’

‘How long will it take to get there?’ said Peter.

‘Well, if we don’t get blown up or have to take a lot of stupid detours, we should be there in less than two hours. It’s only fifty miles or so.’

At the exit from the airport there was a checkpoint. It was manned by bearded security guards wearing the same yellow lion insignias. They also had black bulletproof vests on. Mark told us they were from a new Golden Lions security force that had taken over after the last US Marines had left. A sign nearby in English and Arabic read Deadly Force Area. After an exchange of words between Mark and one of the guards, we were waved on.

We travelled for a while in silence. I was soaking up the sights outside the tinted windows. The road from the airport was wide and dusty. There were one or two wrecks of houses, but most of the buildings looked untouched by the years of war. There was even some building work going on.

There were small craters on the road occasionally, probably where IEDs had gone off. We passed a big petrol station a few minutes after leaving the airport. It was surrounded by cement walls, except for a small entrance manned by security guards. There was a queue to get into it.

Then we passed a cluster of low houses at a crossroads. Some of them had sandbags piled haphazardly near their doors. One had a cement wall in front of it. They looked deserted.

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