I Am Pilgrim

  Bradley lowered the phone and stared into space. Oh, Jesus.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  CUMALI HAD WALKED down a flight of broken marble steps and entered an area which, more than any other, had attracted legions of archaeologists and historians to the ruins.

  Deep underground, in a vaulted space still decorated with fragments of mosaics and frescoes, she stood beside a reflecting pool, its surface as still as death. It was the centrepiece of what had once been a temple, a place where the highest officials made offerings to their gods in thanks for a safe journey. Cumali had first seen it years before, and had returned to its mysterious beauty in the belief that being so far underground would make it impossible to hear Spitz’s screams and desperate pleas. She didn’t realize it, but the subterranean space was equally good at deadening cellphone reception.

  She stared at her face in the mirror-like water, telling herself that whatever her brother was doing to the American was little different from what had been visited upon Muslim men at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Bright Light, too.

  Comforted by the thought, she walked on, passed the end of the reflecting pool and headed deeper into the temple’s catacomb-like passages.

  No sound or signal would ever find her there.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  MUSCLEMAN AND THE helper had retrieved a short wooden plank that had been hidden among the mound of rubble and trash. I fought and struggled, trying to chew up time, but my injured knee and the pain in my chest meant they had little trouble binding me to the wood with heavy leather straps.

  I was face up, trussed so tight I couldn’t move, when the Saracen’s face appeared above me – impassive, his hand reaching down and taking my wrist. He was a doctor, and he was checking my pulse. He gave a grunt of satisfaction – he knew from my heart rate I was scared.

  He pointed at Nikolaides. ‘When I’m finished,’ he told me, ‘the man with the dental problem will question you about a murder your intelligence agencies committed in Santorini.

  ‘He wants to know who ordered the attack and the names of those who did the killing. You understand?’

  ‘Santorini? I don’t know anything about Santorini.’

  They didn’t look convinced. Nikolaides threw a bucket to Muscleman and picked up a length of dirty towel from the rubble. They were about to start.

  The Saracen kept looking at me. ‘You can avoid this,’ he told me. I said nothing, and he shrugged.

  ‘When I was in the Hindu Kush, some people helped me. As you know, one of them has decided to betray us. Obviously, I can’t allow that to happen. I want you to tell me the name of the traitor.’

  ‘Even if I knew it,’ I replied, ‘once I told you, you’d just kill me.’

  He nodded. ‘I’m going to kill you anyway.’

  ‘I figured – otherwise, you’d be trying to hide your faces.’

  My best guess was that I would end up in a waterproof shroud, probably already hidden in a locker on the half-cabin cruiser, and it would likely be years before a fisherman finally hauled it aboard. If Ben didn’t come through, I just hoped I was dead before they put me inside.

  ‘If you know you’re going to die, what’s the point of suffering first? The name, Mr Spitz.’

  ‘I am an FBI agent. I came to Bodrum to—’

  ‘I’ve seen an email!’ he snapped, his face coming close to mine. ‘From the deputy director of the CIA.’

  I did my best to look shocked. He registered it, and smiled. ‘Now – the name of the traitor.’

  ‘I’m an FBI agent—’

  Exasperated, he signalled to Nikolaides. The Greek wrapped the dirty towel over my face, covering my eyes and nose, jamming my mouth open. Nikolaides took both ends of the rag behind the plank and tied it tight. I was in darkness, already finding it difficult to breathe, my head bound so firmly to the plank I couldn’t move.

  I felt them lift me and, in my private blackness and terror, I knew they had me suspended over the water.

  Twenty-nine seconds by my count – the same amount of time the drug courier had endured. Despite my own weaknesses, even though I had always doubted my courage, I only had to withstand it for as long as he did.

  They started to lower me down, and I dragged in a breath. The towel stank of sweat and engine oil. The last thing I heard was the Saracen: ‘You’re shaking, Mr Spitz.’

  Then the water hit me.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  IT WASHED OVER my torso as the plank sank into the trough, chilling my genitals and aggravating the open wound on my chest. I dropped lower, helpless, and felt the tide hit the back of my strapped skull and cover my ears.

  Then they tilted the plank backwards.

  Water flooded across my face. Trying not to panic, unable to use my arms or twist my body, I took another huge gulp of oil-stained air and only succeeded in sucking the moisture faster through the towel. Water ran down my throat, and I started to cough.

  A wall of water hit my face and I wasn’t coughing any more, I was choking. In darkness, my head tilted back, I had no idea whether the water had come from a bucket or if they had plunged me deeper into the bath. The sensation of drowning – of a terrifying need to drag air through the sodden towel – was overwhelming.

  Instead, fluid was flooding into my nostrils and mouth and running down my steeply inclined throat. The gag reflex kicked in, trying to save me, and became a rolling thunder of spasms and choking.

  More and more water was hitting me, and I was becoming disoriented. I had only one thought, one belief, one truth to cling to: eighteen seconds and Bradley would call. Seventeen seconds and salvation would be at hand. Sixteen …

  I was bound so tight I couldn’t thrash and kick despite the cascading terror. More water entered my nose and mouth, seemingly drowning me, and the constant gagging and spasms were turning my throat raw. I would have screamed, but the filthy towel and surging water prevented even that release. With no way to express itself, my terror turned inward and reverberated through the hollow chambers of my heart.

  My legs and back jerked instinctively, trying to make me flee, using up precious energy, and I felt myself being tilted further backwards. Water swamped me. Another surge of gagging hit. Where was Bradley? He had to call.

  A fragment of my whirling mind told me I had lost count of time. How many seconds? There was nothing but blackness and the desperate urge to breathe. To endure, to survive, not to falter was all that was left.

  I spun through darkness and overwhelming fear. My head was tilted even further back and I was plunging down. Maybe it was just another huge bucketful of water, but I felt as if I was deep under the surface, choking, gasping and retching in a watery grave, desperate for air, desperate for life.

  I knew I could endure no more, but suddenly I was rocketing up, the water draining off my face, and I could drag air through the towel. It was tiny and insignificant, but it was a breath, it was life and they were standing me upright. Bradley had called – he must have!

  I tried to suck more air into my throat – I had to be ready to play my part – but I kept gasping and retching. Then the towel was gone and I was pulling in breaths as my chest kept heaving, with my windpipe shuddering and spasming.

  I knew that I had to control it, I had to be in command – by God, it was the Saracen’s turn now to sit down to a banquet of consequences.

  A hand slid inside my shredded shirt. I blinked the water from my eyes and saw that it was him, checking the rhythm and strength of my heartbeat. I caught sight of the old bull standing behind him, laughing at me through his stained teeth, enjoying my distress and fear.

  A surge of wild panic tore through me: nobody was acting as if the tables had been turned. I knew then that there had been no phone call. Where the hell was Ben?

  I slumped – I was alone in the Theatre of Death and, this time, I really was dying to the world. I would have fallen to the ground, but Muscleman and the Helper were holding the board, and kept me upright.


  ‘The name of the traitor?’ the Saracen asked.

  I tried to speak, but my throat was ripped raw and my mind, awash with adrenaline and cortisol, was struggling. Instead, staring down at the ground, I just shook my head – no, I wouldn’t be telling him any name.

  ‘That was thirty-seven seconds,’ he replied. ‘It was longer than average and you should be proud. You’ve done as much as anyone could expect. But it can go on for minutes if we like. Everybody breaks; nobody can win. What is the name?’

  My hands were shaking, and I didn’t seem able to stop them. I looked up and tried to speak again. The first syllable was so soft it was inaudible, and the Saracen leaned in close so that he could hear.

  ‘Put the towel back on,’ I whispered.

  He backhanded me hard across the face, splitting my lip. But he couldn’t scare me any more. In a corner of my mind, I had found a small reservoir of courage – I was thinking about Ben Bradley and those sixty-seven floors.

  Muscleman and the Helper upended the plank and carried me back to the trough. The Saracen was about to reattach the towel when Nikolaides called out, telling him to step aside. I saw that he had picked up a stonemason’s hand hammer – a heavy, brutal thing – from among the equipment they had hidden next to the rubble.

  When I was flat on the board, my shoeless feet directly in front of him, he pulled his powerful shoulders back and swung as hard as he could.

  The hammer hit me full force on the sole of my left foot, bursting the flesh and crushing the matrix of tiny bones and joints. A searing, vomit-laden flash of pain – like a massive electric spear – went through my shin, up my leg and into my groin. He might as well have been crushing my testicles. I would have passed out but, somehow, my howling scream tethered me to consciousness.

  Nikolaides laughed. ‘See – his voice is stronger already,’ he said to the Saracen. ‘Sometimes, the old ways are still the best ways.’

  He hit me again. It was closer to my toes, I heard more bones crunch and I screamed even louder. I was going over the waterfall into unconsciousness, but the Helper – standing next to my head and cheering the old bull on – slapped me hard across the face to keep me in the present.

  He called to the bull: ‘Another one.’

  ‘No,’ ordered the Saracen. ‘This has taken too long already. If he passes out we’ll be here all day.’

  He turned to me. ‘Tell me the name now.’

  ‘I am Brodie David Wilson. I am an FBI—’

  They put the towel back in place and lowered me towards the water.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  CUMALI HAD WALKED through the rear of the temple, passed between the remains of thick masonry walls and entered an underground space called the spoliarium – the area where dead gladiators were stripped of their weapons and the bodies disposed of.

  She wondered what was happening above – surely it couldn’t be long before she heard her brother calling out to tell her that it was over and they could leave.

  What a waste, she thought – Spitz was a brilliant investigator, certainly the best she had ever known. The idea about the mirrors in the French House alone was evidence of that. He would have got away with the whole subterfuge of his identity too, except for driving across the border in a rent-a-car that could be traced to him. Didn’t they have cameras with licence-tag recognition in America? They probably invented them. Strange that such a clever man would make a mistake like that.

  Of course, she would never have known who he really was except for the call from the man at MIT. And what about those guys? One phone call and then nothing – no follow-up questions, no approaches to check on Spitz’s movements or details. By using her drug-world contacts, she had found out more about him with one break-in than Turkish intelligence had achieved with all their resources. In fact, it didn’t seem as if they were very interested in Spitz at all.

  A terrible thought struck her – what if the American hadn’t made a mistake by driving across the border? Say the deputy director of MIT was in their employ, or somebody had re-routed her call and she hadn’t been speaking to him at all? What if all the clues she had followed had been planted? Imagine if it was a sting. It would mean that she had been supposed to show the information to her brother and get him to emerge from the shadows.

  ‘In the name of God—’ she said, and started to run.

  She passed the vaults where the gladiators’ weapons and armour had once been stored and raced up a long ramp towards the Porta Libitinensis – the Gate of Death – through which the bodies of the dead entertainers were removed.

  She had almost reached its ruined arch, the whole arena spread out in front of her, when her cellphone – no longer in the dead-spot – started to ring. She pulled it out and saw that she had at least a dozen missed calls. All, like the current one, were from her nanny.

  She answered, desperately frightened, speaking in Turkish. ‘What is it?’

  But it wasn’t her nanny’s voice that replied. It was an American man speaking English.

  ‘Leyla Cumali?’ he said.

  Terrified, she yelled, ‘Who are you?’

  But he didn’t answer, using instead the exact words the two of us had planned in my hotel room: ‘I have sent you a video file. Look at it.’

  In her confusion and fear, she didn’t seem to hear, demanding again to know who he was.

  ‘If you want to save your nephew, look at the video,’ Ben demanded. ‘It is shot in real time, it’s happening now.’

  Her nephew? Cumali thought. They know everything.

  Hand shaking, almost in tears, she found the video file and opened it. She watched it and almost collapsed, screaming into the phone, ‘No … please … oh, no.’

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  I WAS DROWNING again – this time in pain as well as in water. I was fighting for my life, fluid cascading over my face and my shattered foot, generating surge after surge of agony. It was fast becoming the only consciousness I knew.

  My head was tilted back, my throat open, water flowing down and triggering endless spasms of gagging. My chest was heaving, my lungs screaming and my body collapsing. Terror had chased out every rational thought and had me cornered. I had tried counting again, but had lost it at fifty-seven seconds. That seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Behind the blindfold, I had travelled beyond the last star. I had seen the void at the end of the universe, a darkness without form or shape or end. I knew that they had damaged me in a place far beyond pain, scarred me in my soul.

  A wisp of memory found me in my corner. Whisperer had said something. He had said, if it ever got too much for me, I should finish it. Roll to my rifle and go to my God like a soldier. But that was the final cruelty of it – because the torturers controlled the amount of water, I couldn’t even open my throat, flood my lungs and drown myself quickly. Even the last dignity, the one of taking my own life, was unattainable. I was forced to go on, to suffer, to stand at the Door to Nowhere but never be able to step through it.

  The Saracen checked his watch – the American had already endured for one hundred and twenty-five seconds – longer than any man he had known, far longer than he had expected, approaching the mark set by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a great warrior, a follower of the One True God and a courageous student of the Holy Qur’an. Surely he must be ready to talk now? He motioned to the two Albanians.

  I felt water stream from my hair and the filthy towel rip free of my face as they pulled me out. I was shaking, my body completely out of control and my mind not far behind. The terror was physical, every fear in my life made manifest. I couldn’t speak but as I returned from the abyss the pain in my foot came back with a wild ferocity and I felt myself plunging into a welcome unconsciousness. The Saracen hit me hard on my broken cheek and the surge of adrenaline stopped me.

  He forced open my eyelids and looked into my pupils, seeing how much life was present, while his other hand probed my neck until he found an artery, checking to see if my heartbeat wa
s irregular and threatening to fail. He stepped back and looked at me – gasping for air, trying to control my tremors, forcing aside the pain in my foot.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said so softly I was probably the only one who could hear it.

  I saw the concern and confusion on his face, and it gave me strength. In our epic battle of wills, I was dying but I was winning.

  ‘The name?’ he said.

  I shook my head weakly.

  ‘Give him to me,’ Nikolaides said, exploding with impatience.

  ‘No,’ responded the Saracen, ‘you’ll end up killing him and we’ll know nothing. We’ve got hours if we need them.’

  ‘Until somebody sails past to look at the ruins and gets curious,’ Nikolaides said.

  ‘Go and move the boat then,’ the Saracen replied. ‘Put it behind the rocks so nobody can see.’

  Nikolaides hesitated, not accustomed to being ordered around.

  ‘Go,’ the Saracen said. ‘We’re just wasting more time.’

  The bull glared and gave in, turning to the two Albanians, ordering them to help him. The men vanished down the main passageway, and the Saracen looked down at me slumped against the trough, still bound to the board, my wrists swollen and twisted out of shape, the steel cuffs cutting into the flesh and my fingers as white as the marble from the lack of blood. He poked my shattered foot with the toe of his shoe and watched me wince. He did it again – harder – and, despite myself, I cried out.

  ‘It’s only going to get worse,’ he promised quietly.

  He lifted back his shoe to kick the raw flesh, but he never got the chance. From out of the darkness of the side passage, we heard a voice.

  She was yelling in Arabic, frantically.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  FROM WHERE I was lying, I had an unobstructed view as Cumali ran into the light, fear written all over her face, the cellphone clutched tight, her brother racing to meet her.