Laurence O’Bryan - The Istanbul Puzzle

Some of them glared at us as they passed, but luckily we weren’t their target. They were after symbols of their oppression. And they were out of their heads on it. After they were all gone, my pink-haired friend shuddered, then ran off.

Screaming alarm bells and broken windows were the most obvious signs of the mob’s passing, along with a whiff of danger. Was a police raid on a mosque worth all this?

I caught sight of a woman in a tiny leather jacket on the other side of the street. Her face was turned away from me. She was running. My vision tunnelled.

‘Irene!’ I said, softly. My legs started towards her. I stopped them.

Irene was gone.

But even though I knew that was true, my heart still wanted for the woman to turn, to smile, for my heart to pound like a rocket ship going into orbit again. No one had ever affected me like Irene. Before I met her I’d never believed that a woman could make your heart thump, just by walking into a room.

And a big part of me still didn’t want to get over what had happened to her, didn’t want to move on, not now, not ever, no matter what anyone said or did.

The woman was almost gone now, her black hair flying behind her as she disappeared into a glow of flickering lights. If I went after her, all it would mean was that I was crazier than I thought.

I let out my breath, slowly. I’d had what my grief counsellor had called a legal hallucination. People don’t come back from the dead. No matter how much you want them to. No matter how unfair their death was.

When my mom and dad had died back in the States, within eighteen months of each other, I hadn’t felt this way. They’d both had a good innings, but Irene had barely got to bat.

A helicopter flew low, its searchlight wandering. It was time to get away from this madness, to get back to normality, to my own frustrations. Alek hadn’t responded to my last text message. He was due back on Monday when the image enhancement program I’d spent the last week fixing would finally get properly tested.

If we messed up this project, I wouldn’t be able to hide from the rumour mill.

I could imagine what they’d say. How can you expect a project director not to make mistakes after what happened to him? Wasn’t it obvious he wasn’t over his wife’s death, wasn’t up to the job any more? Wasn’t this why he’d been demoted?

I started walking, checked my phone again. Nothing. Why was someone with every communication option the world had devised been uncontactable for six freaking hours?

Photographing mosaics of angels, emperors and saints shouldn’t have been this difficult. Even if he was doing it in what had once been the Islamic world’s St Peter’s. We’d worked in the Vatican for God’s sake. And in the British Museum.

Then it was raining and I was running. It was lashing in Piccadilly Circus by the time I got to the entrance of the Underground. I was totally soaked. My shoes were squelching. I knew I’d be looking like a half-drowned marsh creature, tails of brown hair straggling across my way-too-pale forehead, my four AM shadow even more pronounced than usual.

The train was packed. It was not a good time to be wet. But we all stood shoulder to shoulder, trapped, swaying, dampness and tension filling the air.

I read the headlines on a girl’s iPad. ‘New London Riots’ was the big story. Her finger hovered over it, pushed it away. ‘England Awakens’ read the next headline. Our train lurched, then stopped. The lights flickered. Someone groaned. It was ten minutes before the train started again.

Chapter 3

In the basement of a villa belonging to the British Consulate, in the affluent Levent suburb of Istanbul, two men were staring at a laptop screen.

Loud moaning noises filled the room. On the screen, a big-breasted blonde was bouncing up and down on top of a scrawny dark-skinned older man. The bed they were on, in a hotel near Taksim Square, where the Iranian biological scientist had been staying, squeaked like a busted door on a moving train.

Surely a man that age should have stopped to consider why a woman so young and beautiful might be interested in him.

As the man let out a gasp the blonde pulled back. The view of his face was quite a sight. The man sitting in front of the laptop clicked his mouse. A still image appeared for a moment, then flew to the bottom corner of the screen. Peter Fitzgerald tapped his colleague’s shoulder.

‘That should be enough for you to open him up,’ he said. ‘His superiors in Iran won’t be inclined to forgive him for this.’

Peter frowned as he went over to the printer. It hummed to life. This was going to be easier than he’d thought. But had they moved quickly enough? The Iranian had been in Istanbul for two weeks already.

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.