the pavement, stinking even in the cool of late afternoon. A cat limped from behind one of the bins, scurried across the road, disappeared down a laneway. Clay found the door he was looking for, pushed it open and moved along a dimly lit corridor, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. The lobby was small, an extension of the corridor, but better lit. He’d stayed here a few years ago, and it didn’t look any better now than it did then: the same few plants along the front windowsill, the faded one-star tourist-hotel emblem on the door, the badly laid tile floor, the DIY wood veneer front desk. Clay booked a single room with a phone, one night, paid cash.
The second-floor room was small but clean, with a view of the street. He flung open the shutters and scanned the street below, the modest façade of the Seglik Merkezi Hotel directly opposite. Like most of this part of the city, the buildings were a monotony of grey stone, monuments to another era. Diesel fumes wafted through the open balcony door. A bray of car horns. Clay positioned a chair near the window, placed the telephone nearby, sat and started his vigil. He thought of lighting a cigarette but he didn’t smoke now, hadn’t since the war. Instead he pulled out a cheap switchblade he’d picked up in the bazaar, weighed the thing in his hand and flicked out the blade, turning it over in his fingers.
The street was busy, cars trundling past, a trickle of pedestrians. An hour passed. At dusk a troika of tourists returned to the hotel, an older couple slung with cameras and umbrellas, a younger woman, their daughter perhaps. Later a taxi pulled up, discharged another couple, idled there a moment and continued on its way. The Akşam came, the evening prayer, the first he’d heard in months, a thousand voices scattering shards of hope across the city, the sun lost now to the world, the start of a new day in Islam: God is Great.
Waiting was always the worst part. Those hours before an op, the chunks of time that stuck inside you like a tragedy, endless moonlit wanderings through forests of doubt, blown away once you were in the Puma’s open cargo bay, the Angolan bush tearing away below you so close and green, a blur, the wind in your face, all of you packed in tight, shoulders and arms and backs pressed close, men’s bodies fused, weapons ready, hearts racing.
God, he could use a drink.
Zdravko free. Jesus Christ. It had been Zdravko, ex of the Russian war in Afghanistan, who had done Rex Medved’s dirty work in Yemen: money laundering, assassinations, murder of unarmed villagers. After Clay had put the nine-millimetre slug into the bastard’s knee, one thing was sure: he’d be limping.
The room was dark. Passing cars painted the walls with drifting wedges of yellow light. Clay stood, stretched his legs and was about to call down to the front desk for a bottle of water when a lone figure appeared at the corner opposite and started towards the hotel. A woman, covered head to foot in a burqa – not nearly as common a sight here as in Yemen, but not unusual. Her stride was steady and smooth, her head still as she swayed beneath the black cloaking. Clay watched her approach, slow, stop then stand facing the entrance to the Seglik Merkezi Hotel. She was carrying a small case. Her back was turned, her shape silhouetted against the yellow lights of the hotel’s windows. She glanced quickly left and right and disappeared inside.
Clay grabbed the phone and dialled the number for the Seglik Merkezi’s front desk. The number rang.
A clerk answered in Turkish: ‘Iyi Akşamlar.’ Good evening.
‘Good evening,’ Clay repeated in Turkish. ‘Lütfen,’ he began. Please. ‘A woman has just walked into the hotel. Can you see her?’
‘Yes. She is here.’
Just then, a taxi pulled up in front of the hotel. A man stepped out onto the pavement. He was broad-shouldered, dressed in jeans and a dark jacket. The black spearpoint of a pronounced widow’s peak split the pale expanse of the man’s forehead, signposting a wide, much-damaged nose.
‘Please ask her to come to the phone,’ Clay said. ‘I need to speak with her.’
Clay heard the clerk put down the phone and call out something.
Spearpoint paid the taxi driver, turned and disappeared into the hotel’s entrance. Clay stood, heart and blood and breath stalled, the receiver to his ear.
‘Sir?’ came