The Templar Inheritance (14 page)

THIRTY-ONE

Hart felt sick. The sequence of public hangings he had just watched had turned his stomach. He’d heard about them of course, but he’d never seen one. A crane hanging wasn’t like a conventional hanging, in which the condemned man’s neck snapped thanks to the drop. In a crane hanging the victim was slowly strangled by his own body weight. In some of the worst hangings, people from the crowd would run out and grab hold of the hanged person’s feet to add a little extra weight to the proceedings. He’d just seen one of those, thanks to Amira’s privileged access to some otherwise prohibited websites.

‘Then I’ll use my Johannes von Hartelius passport. The one I used in Germany last year.’

‘But it’s a fake.’

‘It got me out of England and onto the continent. And no one questioned it.’

‘But it’s still a British passport, not a German one. The Iranian Embassy in Dublin will check it out big time.’

‘What can they do if they find it’s a fake? Get in touch with MI5? Hardly. All they’ll do is keep it, and I won’t be any the worse off then, will I?’

‘Oh God.’ Amira paced round the room like a lioness in a cage. ‘I can’t believe you’ve been in this profession for nearly twenty years and I still have to change your nappies. You’re all heart and no head, John. It’ll be your downfall one day.’ She stopped her pacing and stared at him. ‘No. The Iranians won’t get in touch with MI5 and hand you in. They’re not that stupid. They will okay your visa and lie in wait for you at Teheran Airport. . .’

‘Tabriz.’

‘Tabriz Airport then, and take you straight into custody, knowing they have a complete fool on their hands whose story they can manipulate in any way that pleases them. You’ve just been to Iraq, where you killed a man, albeit in self-defence. Then you try to enter Iran using a false passport. Clearly you work for MI6. You will be gifting the Iranians a massive propaganda coup against your own country. Not that I give a damn about MI6, but I do give a damn about you. . .’

‘Thank you, Amira.’

‘. . .and so I want you to give up on this stupid obsession you have with your family’s distant past, and your ancestor’s even more dubious role in it, and do something sensible with your life. I’ve just told you that you can write your own ticket now. Get in touch with my editor and propose something to her. She’ll commission you like a shot. Star photojournalists with name recognition are few and far between. Believe me.
I know. We’ll even collaborate on something again. You take the shots and I’ll write the story. It’ll be like old times. Except that you’ll get the double-page byline this time, and not me. That should make up for all those years you spent in the doldrums – and pander to your male vanity to boot. A double whammy.’

Hart stood up. He gave Amira an abrupt nod. He felt both angry and subdued at the same time – as if he’d just missed being gored by a wounded buffalo thanks to his own crass stupidity in following it into the undergrowth. ‘Cheers for the meal, Amira. And the advice. And the offer. And the fascinating but gruesome PowerPoint presentation. But I’m dog-tired. So I’m going to head back to the Frontline Club, like I said, and use the room I have booked there to get some rest in. I’m due at my mother’s tomorrow.’

‘And you’re not going to Iran?’

‘Probably not, if all that you say is true. But I am going back to Iraq. I have unfinished business there. I need to find out, on the ground, if there is still some halfway rational way I can get across the border and check out my ancestor’s story about the Copper Scroll.’

There were moments in her relationship with John Hart when Amira felt like wailing out loud. When God invented obstinacy, she decided, He must have used John Hart, or someone very much like him, as His template. ‘But the stupid bastard wrote on that piece of parchment eight hundred years ago, John. Eight hundred fucking years. And even a thirty-year time gap would be too long. What do you
think this scroll of his will look like now? If you even find it, that is.’

‘It was made of copper, Amira, so it won’t have rusted. It will only have oxidized and then turned green. And the verdigris corrosion may well have protected it. Look at the Statue of Liberty.’

‘The Statue of Liberty is barely a century old.’

‘A century and a quarter, actually.’

Amira stifled a groan. ‘I can see that nothing I say or do is going to change your mind.’

‘Nothing. No. By rights I should have died over there in Iraq. It was a miracle that I didn’t. And it’s not the first time such a thing has happened to me. I think God may be trying to tell me something. Something important. About priorities maybe.’ Hart collected his overnight bag and coat from the one uncluttered table in the hall. ‘I need to go back there. I need to work things through.’

‘Then at the very least will you promise me that you’re not going back there to get inside your cute little translator’s pants?’

Hart rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. ‘I am not going back to Iraq because of Nalan Abuna.’

‘Promise me.’

‘I promise.’

‘Right then. I don’t really know why I’m doing this. But I’ll approach my editor on behalf of both of us. See if I can get you on the payroll for a piece about you and your piss-arse ancestor. And we’ll interleave the story of your close shave
into it. I started this whole thing, so I’ll finish it. Do yourself one favour, though. Take some shots of the Red Interrogation House while you’re over there. And the place where you killed the terrorist. Bloodstains and suchlike. The shell of the blown-out cafe where you were when the bomb went off. Maybe even the skeleton of the car that contained it if it’s still there. Fill the thing in a bit. With you and Miss Dinky-pants in some of the pictures. And when you’ve got the whole sorry mess out of your system and you’re ready to talk to me, call me over, and I’ll write your story for you. Do we have a deal?’

Hart hesitated. He knew Amira far too well not to suspect some subtext behind her sudden change of heart. But he also knew that she was first and foremost a journalist, and that this fact coloured everything she did.

He nodded. ‘We have a deal.’

THIRTY-TWO

Erbil, Iraq

WEDNESDAY 8 MAY 2013

Scarcely six days had passed since Hart had said goodbye to Nalan Abuna for what he had supposed would be the final time. But he had thought about her constantly in the days that followed – days in which he had tried, but failed, to focus his mind solely on the deterioration of his mother’s Alzheimer’s, and on the increasing mental fragility of her long-time partner and carer, Clive.

His solemn promise to Amira that he was not returning to Iraq because of Nalan had been somewhat cavalier, therefore. But Amira’s jealousy made it next to impossible to deal with her rationally. After all, Hart told himself, they’d been living apart for nearly a year now, but Amira clearly felt she owned a part of him. Still tried to punch his ticket whenever she could. It wasn’t reasonable. It wasn’t acceptable. But it was there. Still. There were moments in life when a man had to move forwards, and this was one of them.

Hart had every intention of searching for the Copper Scroll if it was humanly possible to do so – the very thought of its existence created a void in his stomach that he knew he would need to fill or go mad. But the prospect of seeing Nalan again, even though she was explicitly promised to another man, overrode whatever passed for stable logic in his mind. One thing bled into another, as it were. No Copper Scroll without Nalan – and without Nalan his search for the Copper Scroll would be a pointless exercise anyway. He would as soon be capable of landing unassisted on the moon as he would be of getting into Iran unaided. So, after a certain amount of prevarication, he had phoned.

Nalan had seemed surprised to hear from him again so soon. But he had swiftly reminded her of the manuscript he had shown her in the Red Interrogation House cellars, and explained the bare bones of the translation to her, and of how his newspaper was unexpectedly commissioning him to take the thing a step further. As a result of this he would be able to pay her well above the daily market rate for her continued assistance, with an added bonus at the end of their collaboration if the story actually led anywhere. Surely this would help her with her imminent marriage plans? No? After a little more persuasion, Nalan agreed to go back on the payroll.

Hart’s first suggestion had been that she should meet him at Erbil International Airport, but for some reason Nalan had rejected that idea out of hand. They had finally arranged to meet inside the 7,000-year-old Citadel of Erbil, at the place where the guided tours generally started. Nalan was a
registered guide as well as a qualified translator, and so this would not seem out of the ordinary. Hart had no idea why she was being so cautious, but he was sufficiently up on Arab and Kurdish customs to know that things were done differently in Iraq than they were in London. There were parameters. Bridges one couldn’t cross. Hart sensed that he would need to keep everything on a very formal level indeed, despite the unprecedented intimacies that he and Nalan had shared as a result of the bombing.

He arrived early at the citadel and sat down on the edge of a fountain, near to the tourist office, to await her appearance. When other guides approached him he waved them away, saying that his guide was arriving shortly. After a while they gave up trying and left him alone.

He stood up when Nalan appeared beneath the entrance arch. For a moment she did not see him, and he had the opportunity to observe her afresh. He had forgotten how small she was. Five foot five at the utmost. Her red-gold hair was gathered behind her head, from where it fanned out across her shoulders like a cloak. Her bangles and bracelets flashed in the early-morning sunlight. As she walked she glanced nervously to her left and right, searching for him.

Looking at her, Hart caught himself wondering, yet again, what she had to be so anxious about. He finally decided that it was only a few days since she had been involved in a particularly gruesome car bombing, in which she had come very close to death, and which had been conducted in a place that held abominable memories for her. So it was hardly
surprising that she should be suffering from some form of delayed shock. Christ, he was still in shock himself. Only that morning he had woken at 2 a.m. in his transit hotel in Istanbul, bathed in a muck sweat and babbling to himself about hangings. Such things took time to fade away. The memories were way too raw.

Nalan saw him and stopped in her tracks, her face a mass of conflicting emotions. Then she hurried the last few paces towards him and they embraced, much to the consternation of the citadel’s curator, who seemed unused to such public displays of affection. When Nalan smiled apologetically at him, however, he smiled right back at her, and flapped a hand in generous condescension.

Nalan stepped back and looked at Hart. ‘I’m sorry I hugged you in public, John. But when I saw your face I had to. All sorts of feelings welled up in me about what happened to us in As Sulaymaniyah. And we Kurds are an affectionate race.’ She smiled and canted her head to one side. ‘Although we don’t normally do it out of doors.’

Hart had caught her scent again when he had hugged her – that elusive mixture of musk, jasmine and citrus that reminded him of the very first time he had consciously touched her, when he was dragging her up into the loft above the Red Interrogation House rape room to escape from their pursuers. Then, as now, she appeared to talk one way and act another – her body language, as it were, was out of sync with her words. Hart, inured to the way Western women responded, was unused to it, and it unsettled him.

‘No need to apologize. I loved your hug. I think the curator did too. You should have seen his face when you ran up to me like that.’

Nalan turned away and checked out the other guides. Her expression darkened. ‘Do you really want to see around the citadel?’

‘I thought it would be as good a place as any for us to talk.’

‘Yes. It is. A very good place. But there is also the bazaar. Just round the corner. That might be better. I shall have to cover my hair, though. I think we will go there instead. We stand out far too much here.’

Hart had already caught the direction of Nalan’s gaze, and the man she had directed it towards. He knew enough about her by now to trust to her instincts. He watched while she tucked in her hair and settled her hijab about her shoulders.

‘Why the hijab there and not here?’

Nalan shrugged. ‘It is complicated. Sometimes, in Kurdistan, we women are free, and sometimes we are not. It is not as bad here as in Iran, though, where if you do not wear the hijab in public the Ershad – who are their “guidance” or morality police – will intervene and force you to cover yourself after beating you with sticks. Or if you wear too much lipstick, female Basij officers from the Revolutionary Guard will scrape it off your lips with a razor.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘It is true, John. What happens in the house and what happens in public are two different things entirely. Think of it like Britain in the 1950s, when everyone wore hats outside the
house, and if you did not conform to this you were worthless.’

Hart had to stifle a laugh at Nalan’s choice of example. ‘Until President Kennedy broke the taboo at his inauguration.’

‘The taboo. Yes. But there will be no President Kennedy here. And certainly not in Iran until the mullahs are gone.’

Situated one block down from the citadel, the Erbil bazaar was a mass of colour, light, and movement when contrasted to the citadel’s sand-coloured uniformity. From the moment one entered the main gate each separate sense was assailed – seeing, hearing, smelling, touching. Carpets, rugs and silks hung over the walkways. Gold and silver jewellery glittered behind the windows of shops, where tea-drinking mothers-in-law were busy negotiating the dowries of their future daughters-in-law with hard-faced merchants and their mercurial assistants.

The bazaar was laid out in sections – all the goldsmiths in one quarter, the butchers in another, the spice merchants in another. Over here for carpets, across there for the near-ubiquitous female jeans, which, like the innumerable varieties of hijab, were displayed on semi-realistic plastic dummies that all looked eerily alike. Women in pairs and trios were browsing the stalls – men were going about their business carrying, bartering, or taking their mid-afternoon breaks in the teahouses, smoking their rented hookah pipes. Policemen in bright blue shirts dodged amongst the crowds, checking whilst not seeming to check. The place was run like a well-oiled machine that merely gave the outward impression of chaos.

‘Yallah, yallah,’ shouted men pushing trolleys piled high with goods. And it was always men. The few women sellers usually sat cross-legged beside their wares, fanning themselves with the ends of their hijabs or khimars, and refusing to meet the eyes of any men but those they already knew, or who formed part of their family. It was alien but not alien – Hart had been to dozens of such places during his career, but each of them had a marginally different dynamic that required both active thought and appropriate response from the bystander.

‘Well,’ said Hart, ‘this place is certainly private. There can’t be more than a couple of thousand people filtering through it at any given moment. Tell me, is there any particular reason why we are meeting here?’

‘Please keep moving. And when you see police coming, break away from me and pretend you are a tourist.’

‘I am a tourist. That much must be pretty bloody obvious to everyone.’

‘Still, John. Pretend.’

‘Okay.’

Hart walked beside Nalan until they reached a quieter section which specialized in baskets, shoes and swatches of cloth.

Nalan turned to him after one final check around. ‘Now. I need to ask you something. And you must answer me truthfully. It is very important.’

‘Fire away. I’m all ears, believe me.’

Nalan glanced up at him to see if he was making fun of her, but the serious look on Hart’s face reassured her. ‘When we
were above the rape rooms in the Amna Suraka. Crawling through the attic space with Rebwar. We passed something. A bunch of old metal, you called it. Just some old junk. What was it that you really saw there?’

Something warned Hart that he should no longer attempt to prevaricate. No longer beat about the bush as he had the last time she had asked him the same question, when they had been in fear for their lives. ‘It was a Cinestar camera mount. The one we saw used to be state-of-the-art around 1990, when your parents were imprisoned. You often found them in helicopters. A camera mounted on them could move soundlessly. You could roll, tilt and pan with the help of an assistant. Do pretty much anything you liked, in other words.’

‘So Hassif was filming what went on in the room below?’

‘It seems like it, yes.’

Nalan’s face took on a haunted look. ‘So he would have filmed all that happened to my mother? Filmed all the rapes? Filmed me having to watch?’

Hart could scarcely bear to meet her eyes. ‘Yes. It seems likely. There was a hole in the floor beneath the Cinestar. It was there for a purpose, surely. They probably tricked it up with a two-way mirror, which was taken away when the place was dismantled. I can’t imagine why whoever looted the place left the mount behind. It must have been an oversight. Those things are worth good money.’ Hart could tell by Nalan’s expression that his discursion wasn’t working. He tried to sweeten the pill a little. ‘Maybe Hassif was required to send the film on to Saddam Hussein to show what was happening
in the prison? Maybe he was required to keep records? I should imagine the stock was all destroyed when Saddam’s palaces were looted. It is notoriously flammable.’

Nalan’s eyes flashed at him. ‘No. Hassif was doing it for his own private pleasure. And nothing was destroyed.’

‘How can you possibly know that?’

They breasted a corner of the walkway. Three policemen were coming towards them. Hart stopped to look inside a shop which specialized in the repair of electric hairdryers. A flat-screen television was booming in the background. A black-and-white Egyptian musical from the 1960s was playing – the women with heavy make-up and without hijabs, and wearing fashionably short skirts.

Nalan moved on ahead of him and past the policemen, as if she were shopping alone. None of them gave her a second look. When they passed Hart they smiled at him as if to say, ‘Well? And how do you like our wonderful bazaar?’ Hart smiled back and pretended to blow-dry his hair. The policemen laughed politely, but – and he immediately regretted this – they would remember him now.

He caught up with Nalan round the next corner.

She turned to face him square on, ignoring the few customers hurrying by. ‘I know Hassif filmed what happened to my mother, and my own and my father’s very private humiliation, because he told me so. What you tell me now only confirms that what he says is true.’

‘Says? He is still alive? I thought the Peshmerga got him. I thought they killed them all.’

‘Not Hassif. He is like an oily rat that slips out of the hands of anyone who tries to catch him.’

Hart looked around in consternation. ‘Is he here? Back in Iraq? Is that why we are being so circumspect?’

Nalan shook her head. ‘He is not here. No. He would not last a moment in Kurdistan. We would put him up against the nearest wall and shoot him. He is across the border in Iran. And he wants me to go there and meet him.’