I Am Pilgrim(242)

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.