“How?” was all she could muster.
“Madhavy started out as a pickpocket before he hit the big time,” he explained as he strapped the watch back on. “I guess that makes him as good at putting stuff back into pockets as taking them out. If I know Amin, while he was happy to take the win, his sense of honor wouldn’t let him keep the watch without winning it fair and square. You see, despite what you might think, not all thieves are robbers.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY
The dark waters of the Golden Horn, the wide harbor that separates Europe on one side from Asia on the other, East from West, Christianity from Islam, were stained pink by the setting sun. And a lone, chanting voice rose clearly through the thin air.
“Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar… Ash’hadu ān lā ilaha illa-llah… Ash’hadu ānna Mūhammadār rasūlu-llah.”
The words fell from the neighboring minaret only to be buffeted joyfully across the jagged rooftops as first one, then another, then another voice took up the same chant. The haunting sound of the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer spread and rose over the city like a forest fire fanned by a hot summer wind.
“How long are we going to wait here?” Jennifer asked.
“Not long. Just until it’s dark.”
They were both sitting in the dark blue BMW that they had rented at the airport. Outside, the light was beginning to fade and the last few stragglers were hurrying to their nearest mosque.
“So, what is the Cistern of Theodosius?” Jennifer settled back into her seat and turned the air-conditioning up a notch.
“When the Romans were here they built huge aqueducts to bring fresh water to the city,” Tom explained. “The cisterns were underground reservoirs, built to store the water once it had got here. There are several of them all over the city, although they’re all disused now.”
Jennifer nodded thoughtfully. They were both silent as the sun finally sank below the horizon and the water was plunged into blackness, its surface oily and dark. A small white bird landed on the front of the car and hopped about on the smooth blue metallic surface as if it were a shallow puddle.
“Tom, there’s something I want to tell you.” Her eyes were full, her voice unsteady. “Something I think you might understand. I’d rather you heard it from me than anyone else. I just don’t know how to begin.”
Tom turned round to face her, pulling one of his legs up underneath him, his face suddenly serious.
“You know, the Byzantines closed the mouth of the Golden Horn with a thick chain to stop anyone invading by sea. But when the Arabs got here they just took their boats out of the water and moved them overland on rollers and slides before launching them back into the water on the other side. A few years later and the city was theirs.” She was silent. “You see, sometimes, the largest obstacles can be easily overcome if you just don’t approach them head-on,” Tom added gently.
She smiled and nodded, then took a deep breath.
“You remember I told you that there used to be someone. That he’d died. That I’d killed him. I wasn’t joking, you know?”
Tom said nothing.
“His name was Greg. I met him at the Academy. He came to give a talk about a case he’d worked. I’ll never forget when he came into the classroom. He was so confident and determined and strong.”
Jennifer spoke quickly. Although she sounded excited, her eyes were dead. They looked straight ahead as she talked, absently tracking the small white bird as it bounced along the paintwork. Tom listened in silence.
“A few weeks later, he came to find me. Asked me out.” She flashed Tom a look as she said this. “We started dating. It was good. He made me feel good.” Now the images came back thick and fast; images that she tried not to think about. Greg smiling across a restaurant table. Greg laughing as he slipped an ice cube down her back. Greg lying in a pool of his own blood.
“Then I got assigned to work with him. It was just dumb luck, really. No one else knew we were seeing each other. If they had, they never would have allowed it. But we got a bit of a thrill from it all.”
Her voice now was hard and unfeeling. The white bird stretched its wings and flitted off into the night.
“One day we got called out on a raid of a warehouse. Some bullshit joint op with the DEA over in Maryland. We’d all fanned out through the building. Suddenly a door burst open and there was a guy there with a gun. I didn’t think. It was just instinctive. He was dead before he hit the floor…. I killed him…. I shot him.”
She looked at Tom, gave him an awkward shrug, then turned away again. “I can’t even cry about it anymore. I ran out of tears a long time ago. Now, mostly, I just feel numb.”
“What happened? After?”
“There was an inquiry, of course. A special investigation team went through every second of that day a hundred times. And it came out that we were seeing each other. It’s funny, but I think that freaked them more than the fact I’d shot him. So they looked into whether we’d been fighting or split up. Whether this was some sort of revenge killing or lovers’ quarrel. You know, whether I’d murdered him.”
She gave a joyless laugh.
“But in the end they concluded that it wasn’t my fault. That Greg had wandered ahead of everyone else and not kept up radio contact. That he shouldn’t have been where he was. That under the circumstances any other agent would have done the same. But I could tell that they didn’t entirely believe it. Not all of them, anyway. I could see it in their eyes, that suspicion that I was guilty of something, even if they didn’t quite know what. When they posted me down to Atlanta they said it was in my interest to keep a low profile until it had all blown over. Really, it was for theirs. Because it was easier for them to keep me out of sight than accept what had happened.”
There was a long silence and outside the car, for the first time since they had been there, nothing seemed to move or speak or shout or bang. The city paused. Expectant.
“I don’t know what to say,” Tom said, eventually.
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Only… I understand what it is to lose someone you love.”
And she knew that he really did understand.
“And I understand what it feels like to be rejected, to be viewed as a terrible accident that needs to be hidden away. I understand that it never gets any easier. That no matter how much others blame you, you blame yourself even more.” She gave a barely perceptible nod of her head and there was a long pause before Tom spoke again. “He was a good guy?”
“A great guy. And a good agent.”
“In that order?” Tom asked, smiling.
“Yeah.” She laughed.
“It was a mistake, Jen.” Tom’s voice was gentle and this time she found the use of her pet name strangely comforting. “That’s all. A mistake, an accident. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I killed the man I was in love with. My best friend. Now it’s like I have to live up to his expectations as well as my own.”
A stream of people, filtering home from their evening prayers, parted around them like water around a stone.
“So this case…?”
“Is my first real break in years. It took a lot of hard work to earn this chance. That’s why I don’t want to blow it. I owe it to myself. I owe it to my family. I owe it to Greg.”
“But you know solving this case won’t bring Greg back. Won’t stop the hurt.”
She nodded.
“I know that. But it might just help me to stop hating myself.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE