The Double Eagle (31 page)
Authors: James Twining
6:17
P.M.
M
adhavy snarled out an order for another coffee and snapped at one of his bodyguards for talking. Tom knew now that Madhavy couldn’t afford to make a single mistake or he would lose. And, according to the rules, there was no opportunity to use the doubling dice anymore, with Tom being only one point from victory. Madhavy had no choice but to win three games in a row. No wonder he looked rattled.
The muttering onlookers, crowded round them in a tight, jostling circle, were feeding hungrily on the tension. Tom studied Madhavy’s face thoughtfully, took in his bulging eyes, the nervous fidgeting with his beard, the oily slick of sweat on his forehead, the continuous wetting of his lips. Madhavy looked up and returned Tom’s stare, smiling apprehensively. Tom could see that Madhavy was on show here, in front of his own people. He had to play this very carefully.
The next game started with a balanced exchange of moves between the two players, no real advantage accruing to either of them. About four rolls in, though, a succession of poor throws forced Tom to change his strategy to an all-out blitz of Madhavy’s pieces. Death or glory.
Madhavy reacted well, striking Tom back and with a few doubles closing out most of the points in his home board. Tom suddenly found himself in a very difficult position, his pieces strung out over the board like a ragged necklace.
Three rolls later and Tom was in the same position Madhavy had faced in the previous game—frozen out—except that he had three pieces off the board while Madhavy had only had the one. Madhavy swiftly bore off his pieces, Tom eventually getting one, then another, piece back on. With only four pieces left to bear off, Madhavy’s anxious face relaxed into a grin. He rolled. Boxcars—a double six.
He purposefully took the final four pieces off the board and looked up at Tom, smiling. Tom still had one piece on the bar. Backgammon. Three points to Madhavy and therefore the match.
The small crowd around them erupted into applause and Madhavy energetically shook Tom’s hand, all smiles now. His bodyguards slapped him on the back, the tea garden manager fussed round him appreciatively, and he waved regally at the chattering crowd, who nodded their appreciation back. Tom Kirk beaten. It would be the talk of the town.
“Well done,” said Tom.
“Better luck next time, Kirk-bey.” Madhavy didn’t bother to mask his elation. Tom loosened the watch strap from his wrist, took a last regretful look at it, and handed it over to Madhavy. He accepted the watch with both hands and then held it over his head like a small trophy. Again the small crowd clapped and cheered.
“Come on. Let’s go,” Tom whispered to Jennifer.
“Go? Is that it? We didn’t even…” She tailed off as she caught Tom’s glare.
“But we didn’t find anything out,” she whispered into Tom’s ear as they stood up. “What about the off-site?” Tom didn’t say anything, steering her instead toward the exit with a firm hand on her elbow. But just as they were about to leave, Madhavy called after them.
“Kirk-bey, wait.”
He walked up to them, leaving his admirers chatting excitedly in the middle of the garden.
“Come, let us part as friends.” He held his hands out and gave Tom a long hug, his head over Tom’s left shoulder, his arms around his waist, before shaking his hand again.
“Until next time,” Madhavy called after them as they walked out into the late-afternoon heat.
“What the hell was all that about?” Jennifer asked as they immersed themselves in the street’s clamoring tumult. The older men were clad in suits and neatly trimmed moustaches, the youngsters clean-shaven and wearing designer jeans and shirts. The women were smart, dressed in this year’s Italian fashions and last year’s Hollywood haircuts. Mobile phones were on show everywhere, clipped to belts or hung round necks like expensive necklaces. Stalls sold dates and orange juice, while others boasted Iznik pottery and Islamic prayer beads.
“Have you ever heard of the Cistern of Theodosius?” Tom asked her, an amused look on his face. He swerved past a marble block, the remnant of some ancient temple or pillar that had been left to rot at the side of the road.
“The Cistern of what?” She screwed her face up in confusion. “Wait a minute. Is that where it’s happening? Did he tell you?”
Tom nodded.
“He whispered it when he said good-bye.”
“Even though he won?” Tom nodded “Why?”
“I guess he was being gracious in victory.”
“You mean you lost deliberately?”
“The last time I played him, I won twenty games in a row. Ended up with his Mercedes. I heard he didn’t play for two years after that. I just figured he would be more likely to tell me if I lost convincingly than if I beat him again. Especially with all his people looking on. It wouldn’t look good to lose face twice.”
“But what about your watch? Didn’t you say your mother gave you that?”
“Oh, it was for a good cause. Besides,” Tom reached into his jacket pocket. “I don’t think I’ll miss it.” Grinning, he held his watch out.
Jennifer held her hands up in disbelief.
“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.”
NEAR THE GALATA TOWER, ISTANBUL, TURKEY
8:20
P.M.
T
he 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.”