Authors: Mark Gatiss
There was a single, neat droplet of blood on the tablecloth. I touched a finger to my face and winced. Then I drank the last of my coffee with a suddenly less than firm hand.
I
woke with a start and realised the train had stopped moving. Evening light washed into the cabin, staining the walls peach. Above the jug and basin on the lopsided washstand hung a cracked photograph of Attaturk–the face tinted with colour, slightly sinister in his severe black hat. The dying sun was slicing a dusty beam through a gap in the pale blue curtains.
I was fully dressed and hadn’t even taken off my shoes. My mouth tasted as though something had crawled into it to die and there was a thudding pain behind my eyes. I knew the symptoms only too well. I’d been drugged!
Damn that boy. How had he done it? Could only have been the coffee. That textbook stunt, knocking over the pot. I cursed myself. I was getting too old for this. I’d learned precious little from him, other than his name–and that he was already acquainted with mine! At least my instincts had been right in one respect. Kingdom Kum
had
been involved in the bizarre death of Vyvyan Hooplah. However, I certainly had no intention of being scared off by his crude threats.
Istanbul announced itself with the achingly mournful call to prayer. I eased myself up off my bunk, scowled at the throbbing pain in my head and my sore cheek, and quickly left the train.
Of course, Kingdom Kum was long gone.
He could have been anywhere by now. Perhaps Istanbul was merely a staging-post for him. I could only hope that, if my contact in the city were half as good as his reputation promised, I could soon be back on Mr Kum’s trail.
There was a reply waiting for me at the telegraph office, as I’d hoped, welcoming me to the city and giving the address of an hotel into which my contact had booked me.
I walked down from the station, the lemon-and-honey smoke that rose above the ancient city creating a bluish miasma. I lit a cigarette and took a moment or two to gaze out over the wonderful Bosphorus, alive with shipping on a fantastic scale. Trawlers, tankers, pleasure cruisers and yachts spangled the expanse of shimmering blue, rather like a Tudor map showing the arrangement of the Armada.
After a while, I found the hotel. It was one of those cosy places constructed in the old colonial style: a three-storey clapboard structure, painted an attractive green, the window frames outlined in white. Downstairs, all was cool and shadowy. A beaming concierge in a comical fez showed me to my room where I bathed, luxuriously, and surrendered my suit to be laundered. I put through a call to London and spent most of the afternoon shouting coded messages down the blower to Delilah. Of course, the old girl was officially retired, but she still had plenty of contacts amongst the ‘Domestics’–the Academy’s loyal
staff of functionaries. Could they find a connection between those deaths: Gobetween, Watchbell, Meddler, Hooplah–and possibly Miracle? The crackly connection kept breaking, necessitating tedious journeys to the front desk. When I was done, I stretched out to sleep on the neat bed.
The night was very warm. Little blocks of charcoal burned brightly in swinging lamps outside shut-up shops, in which bejewelled scarves and mottled mirrors glinted. Here and there, a bundle of rags would suddenly stir into life and a swarthy face turn upwards, eyes glistening in the starlight. Clothes freshly laundered, I made my way up a stone stair and found myself on a raised concrete platform on which sprouted half a dozen cafés. Outside the first, a dervish was–well,
whirling
–for the benefit of giggling tourists, sprawled out on striped cushions. As they sucked on tall hookahs, a sickly-sweet aroma of apples and tobacco assailed me. I walked on until I came to the third café, parted a thin muslin curtain and went inside.
Formed from the intersection of a series of low arches, the room seemed to be the remains of some exquisite aqueduct, the brickwork still solid and dry, rough edges softened by cushions and fluttering drapes. The ceiling was so low, I had to stoop as I groped my way towards a hexagonal table.
A great rolling fug of tobacco smoke billowed overhead. The light sources were so discreet as to be almost negligible, just the odd red or blue lantern, throwing laughing faces into
sharp silhouette, blurring the lines of lovers as they sank back into the downy embrace of the cushions.
A boy of about ten came wandering over as I sat. He was dressed in a plain white smock with an encrustation of paste jewels around the collar. I ordered a glass of coffee and the honey and nut sweetmeat
kadayif
. Both were utterly delicious, the coffee glutinous. Lighting a cigarette, I leaned back against the brickwork and let the scene wash over me. Lord, I’d missed Istanbul. I hadn’t been there since the early days of the Franco-British Occupation, when a young man with a shy smile and tackle like a gorilla had kept me royally entertained. I had been tracking down the spy known only as Rosehip–the best belly-dancer in old ’Stamboul, who dusted her nipples with icing sugar in imitation of the snow-covered domes of the Topkapi. Happy days, happy days.
Glancing at my wristwatch, I turned as the muslin curtain parted and a huge man pushed his way inside. Interested heads turned his way as he barrelled forward, shoulders as broad as though he’d left the hanger inside his crumpled white suit. He plonked himself down at the table next to mine and barked at the boy to fetch him a pipe. The mosaic of light and deep shadow played over the contours of his huge head. He was like a bear in white linen, the swarthy face bisected by a drooping black moustache. Two gold rings sparkled in one ear. I noticed that the tip of the ear was ragged as though it had been bitten off. He glanced towards me and I saw that, though one eye gleamed darkly, the other was missing, replaced by a gold sovereign that had been screwed into the socket. It blazed briefly in the light, leaving the after-image of dear, dead George V on my startled retina.
The pipe seemed to soothe the huge fellow and, as the water bubbled in the steaming glass bowl, a look of easy contentment replaced the scowl he had worn on arrival. His good eye darted from side to side, missing nothing.
At length, he withdrew the mouthpiece of the water pipe and swivelled in my direction. A thick Newcastle accent came rather unexpectedly from his brutish Balkan form. ‘I like your shoes, pet.’
‘Thanks. I prefer brogues,’ I replied.
‘But only from Churches.’
The silly code-words exchanged, he moved sideways over the cushions and gripped my hand with his massive paw. ‘All right, hinnie!’ he grinned. ‘You must be Lucifer Box. I’ve heard a lot about you.’
‘Whitley Bey?’ I ventured.
‘None other,’ he cackled. ‘Didn’t bring any tabs, did ya?’
‘What?’
‘Tabs, man! Ciggies. From England.’
‘Oh–yes.’ Reaching into my pocket, I retrieved my case. ‘I have them made up especially. A Turkish mixture, actually—’
Whitley Bey shook his head and harrumphed. ‘Nah, man. I meant Woodbines.’ He caught my eye and laughed, his piratical face creasing into leathery lines. ‘Aye, I know what you’re thinking. All that bloody lovely tobacco out here and what’s the fool want? Coffin nails! It’s a long story.’ He took one of my cigarettes and lit it. ‘I’ll have one, mind. D’you fancy a drink?’
Bey was an old contact of Delilah’s and, though we’d never actually met, his reputation preceded him. Whilst maintaining
a respectable public façade as a University professor, he was the secret leader of a cadre of psychoanalysts-cum-mercenaries known as the Jung Turks. Their speciality lay in imagining themselves into the minds of the enemy and then working out, through analysis, what their next move would be. If this failed, they fell back on good old-fashioned Balkan brutality. It was a potent combination and the Jung Turks were feared and respected as a result. Despite sterling work, however, keeping an eye on Soviet activities in the great melting pot of the former Constantinople, even they were soon to be absorbed into the great faceless monolith of MI6. Whitley Bey wasn’t best pleased.
‘I’ve got me own methods, you see. And they
work
,’ he muttered, pouring us some wine. ‘All that “Station T for Turkey” shite. Takes the fun out of it. But there you go. Anyway, listen to me bloody rabbiting on. How can I help?’
I quickly told him about the queer deaths of the elderly dignitaries, Hooplah’s accident and Kingdom Kum’s threats on the train.
‘If the bugger’s in Istanbul,’ said Whitley Bey in a low voice, ‘we’ll find him.’
I nodded. ‘Good. I hoped you’d say that. Oh, there’s one more thing. Hooplah said something as he was dying.’
‘Oh, aye?’
‘“
Le papillon noir
”–the black butterfly. Mean anything to you?’
Bey’s one good eye widened, stretching the dark skin around the sovereign. ‘You interest me, Mr Box,’ he said at last. ‘You interest me very much.’
I drank some wine. It was rich and dark. ‘How so?’
‘It can get pretty rough out here,’ he replied, folding his trunk-like arms. ‘Gypsies. Russians. Mind, there’s very little actual crime here in Istanbul. We’re bloody lucky. Not many muggings. Bit of burglary…’
‘Or Bulgary.’
‘But what we do have a problem with is narcotics.’
‘Oh?’
‘Shite floods through here,’ he went on. ‘It’s a gateway to the West just like it’s always been. Once it was spice, now it’s heroin from Afghan poppies. Then there’s the other stuff. More in your prescription line. Penicillin in the war…’
He left a pause so pregnant it was practically having contractions.
‘And now…?’
‘We’ve been picking up whispers,’ he said. ‘Nothing much.’
‘A drug?’
Whitley Bey nodded. ‘“Black Butterfly”. It’s a new one on me.’
‘Mm. Me too. It’s what the French call the dumps. Depression. So–what does it do? Do you know?’
Whitley shrugged. ‘That’s what I hope we’ll find out. Tomorrow–at the Hagia Sophia. We’ve got a contact on the inside.’
‘The inside of the mosque?’
‘The inside of the organisation. We reckon the pills are made up in a part of the city called Beyoglu. It’s north of the Golden Horn. Nice area–dead posh back in the day. Up past the fish market there’s a wood. Used to be a park but it’s all overgrown, like. Has this big entrance like a ruddy fort. Our
contact has only given us a few hints but me lads and I have pieced it together and we reckon that’s their base of operations.’
I sipped some more wine. ‘The drug’s made there or distributed from there?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine, pet.’ He straightened up and stretched. ‘These old gadgies who died: someone slipped them the drug, is that what you’re thinking?’
‘It’s perfectly possible. Question is, why?’
‘You reckon it’s this blackie lad?’
‘He’s obviously up to his neck in something. And he was with Hooplah when he went berserk.’
Whitley Bey broke wind explosively and unblushingly. ‘What do you wanna do now?’
I downed the rest of the wine. ‘Sleep,’ I said. ‘After all, there’s nothing we can do til we meet up with this contact of yours.’
Whitley Bey stubbed out his fag and nodded to the boy waiter. Clearly payment wasn’t required. ‘Aye, fair dos,’ he said. ‘You must be knackered. I’ll call for you at nine, though them buggers in the minarets’ll have you up well before that.’
I
was up and out early next morning, but the famous Istanbul bazaar was already active, heavy with the delicious scents of roasting meat and spices. Picking my way through the crowd, I suddenly felt my sleeve pulled by an ancient man wearing a suffocating brown cardigan. He grinned, exposing a nest of sugar-rotted teeth, and gestured at his treasure trove of carpets. Then Whitley Bey appeared, pushing the shopkeeper violently aside and greeting me with a thump on the back that set my own teeth rattling.
‘Sleep all right, sparrow-shanks?’ he asked, scooping a handful of green figs from a nearby basket. The pale sun sparkled off his sovereign eye, giving him a white-gold wink.
‘Not bad,’ I said.
In truth, I had not slept well at all, my mind buzzing with speculations and my fitful dreams haunted by the slim, dangerous figure of Kingdom Kum. But after a cup of sweet, strong coffee, I was feeling a little better.
We found ourselves walking slowly down a narrow alley
towards the Hagia Sophia. A boy in a striped jersey wandered past, lost in thought and scouring his nostril with a crooked finger. ‘You’ll forgive me for asking,’ I said to Whitley, ‘but you don’t sound like a local man.’
He laughed explosively, and shreds of fig flew from his teeth. ‘Me mam, she was Turkish, like. But me dad was from South Shields. A brickie. He come out here looking for adventure. Didn’t find much, just more bricklaying. Mosques instead of churches. But he also found me mam and he married her. Then we all moved back to England till I was fifteeen. That’s how comes I speak like this and why I miss cheap fags. Woodbines, man. Nowt like ’em.’
A big mongrel dog, hyena-striped with too much interbreeding, tottered past. Its tongue lolled, improbably pink.
‘I suppose you’ve found all the adventure your father lacked?’ I said.
‘Oh, hell aye. Never a dull moment,’ cackled the big man.
‘And this Black Butterfly contact of yours? You’ve met them before?’
But Whitley’s contact, it seemed, was something of an enigma. Whispers about
le papillon noir
had reached the Jung Turks and they’d begun some discreet snooping. Shortly afterwards, hastily scribbled notes had been sent to Whitley’s HQ at the University, promising details and the names of those involved in the drug’s manufacture. The meeting in the silvery domed Byzantine wonder was to be the first physical contact between the two parties.
And now the Hagia Sophia, at various times both mosque and church, loomed before us, its spindly minarets rising like
rockets into the clear blue sky. We merged with the crowd of tourists and crossed through the arched entrance. The contrast from dusty heat to chilly shadow was like stepping underwater. Sunlight pierced the wonderfully sepulchral gloom, as though dappling a reef.
High up, studding the ebony-hued balconies of the upper levels, were great Islamic roundels, chased in black and gilt, declaring the names of Allah, the Prophet and the Caliphs of old times. Huge chandeliers, like swinging incense burners, were suspended from the ceiling, and mosaic Christs gazed down blankly from the crumbling walls.
We slipped into the shadow of a fat column. ‘This contact then,’ I said. ‘What does he look like?’
‘He’ll make himself known,’ intoned Whitley.
‘But you must have some idea.’
The big man tapped the side of his nose. I rolled my eyes, weary of this obfuscation. Whitley chuckled. ‘Listen, pet. This is the East.’
‘So?’
‘So, when push comes to shove, things aren’t so different to how they used to be in the old days–when the Turks were having their turbans nailed to their heads by bloody Draclia.’
‘
Dracula
,’ I corrected.
‘Aye, whatever,’ scowled Whitley Bey. ‘The point is, you have to play by my rules or you’ll get yourself in trouble, d’you understand? Once–and only once–I’ve let me guard down and…’ He tapped his golden eye.
I leaned back against the pillar and said stiffly: ‘What happened?’
‘A gypsy took my eye with a boat-hook. Mind, I had it coming.’
‘You did?’
‘Aye. I was having it away with his daughters, like. Twins, man. Bloody lovely,’ he laughed. ‘He was well within his rights.’
I glanced over his huge shoulder as a knot of tourists began to ascend the stone stairway to the building’s next level. Vulgarly dressed Germans. A lone blond boy in a red jumper with his back to me. Americans with shopping bags and cameras. Was our contact among them?
‘They offered me a glass ’un,’ said Whitley, tapping the coin that was screwed into his socket. ‘But I says I’d rather show off me patriotic colours, like. Me dad used to have this sovereign on his watch-chain, so…’
‘And what happened to the gypsy?’
‘Too early to tell,’ said Whitley in a low, dangerous voice. ‘I’ll think of something. One day.’ His good eye swivelled round as he checked his wristwatch. ‘They’re late. Seen any likely candidates?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ll go up a level. Have a look around.’
There were too many of the broad stone steps, and I was panting by the time I reached the next floor. I crossed through the cool shadows to an ornate black balcony and looked down. Behind me, tourists began to cluster, laughing and daring each other to peek over the side.
Far below, footsteps echoed hollowly off the marble. Whitley Bey was where I’d left him, leaning casually against a pillar, and smoking. Suddenly a woman–tall, blonde and
wearing a belted mackintosh–detached herself from a corner and crossed the floor.
Her heels beat a tattoo on the cold marble.
Clack, clack, clack
…
Was she the contact?
Clack, clack, clack
…
She was heading towards Whitley Bey. I leaned over a little too far and felt a sudden vertigo, the chamber below seeming to leap up at me. In the same instant, I noticed another figure behind a pillar, whippet thin in a charcoal suit and sunglasses. His dead straight fringe seemed to cleave his smooth face in two. Kum again!
My pulse quickened. The boy flattened himself against the stonework and pulled a pistol from his jacket. The muscles in his neck stood out like whipcord. He took aim at the woman. I opened my mouth to cry out–
–there was a soft
phut
, a gory hole appeared in the woman’s forehead and she collapsed to the floor.
Appalled, I began to turn away from the balcony, only to feel a heavy shove in the small of my back. My stomach connected with the rail and suddenly I was falling through space.
Christ Almighty, or someone very like Him, zipped past my boggling gaze as I scrabbled at empty air, senses reeling, my blood turning to ice. Desperately, I managed to claw hold of something wooden, embracing it like a long-lost lover. My vision swam. Mosaic archangels with great dark, tragic, Byzantine eyes and crumbling Cyrillic texts–all span round and round. I struggled to catch my breath, then realised with a start that I was hanging onto one of the great wooden
roundels next to the balcony. Now, with my nose pressed flat against the peeling woodwork, the Islamic script appeared huge in its faded gilt glory.
Attempting to get a better purchase, I stiffened as a stream of plaster trickled from the wooden frame.
‘Help me!’ I yelled. ‘Help me, for God’s sake!’
I threw a panicked glance towards the balcony. Horrified tourists looked on helplessly. I could just see the thin blond hair of the little boy in the red jumper.
‘
Help me!’
I gasped, every muscle in my old limbs begging for release.
A chorus of screaming erupted from below as the masses looked up and spotted yours truly hanging there. I was desperate not to look down. I hugged the black shield, knuckles whitening, sweat flowing freely over my brow and down my back. Then I tried to shift my feet again, sending another rivulet of ancient plaster spilling over the toes of my shoes. Gasping with effort, I pressed myself even harder against the roundel and managed to haul myself up a fraction, giving me the chance to move my foot and get a tiny bit closer to the balcony.
I threw a quick look down. The floor seemed to do a giddy dance and nausea gripped me again.
Suddenly, without warning, a whole chunk of the wall gave way beneath my foot and smashed to the floor. My audience shrieked. With absolute desperation, I dug my fingernails into the ebonised woodwork and wrapped both legs about it for good measure.
Then, amongst the impotent knot of people at the balcony,
jerking out their arms towards me and gabbling away in a riot of languages appeared–thank God!–Whitley Bey!
‘Hang on, hinny!’ he cried. ‘Just hang on!’
With no thought for his own safety, he clambered onto the balcony rail, others gripping him by his huge legs as he attempted to reach across and grab me.
Just at that moment, there was a strange, bright popping sound, as one of the bolts fixing the shield to the pillar sheared off. It sang past my ear and there was a fresh outbreak of wailing from the tourists. Then a huge sigh as, with a protesting groan, the roundel suddenly moved beneath me, turning clockwise like a great cog on its axis. I shifted my weight and splayed my fingers, as I attempted to grab hold of Whitley’s outstretched hands. His thick fingers waggled, tantalisingly distant.
The big Geordie, securely held at the waist by the rest of the crowd, was now wobbling on the lip of the balcony.
‘Reach, man! Reach!’
A second bolt shattered, exploding outwards. I pressed my face hard to the wood and grimaced as the lethal nugget tore past my cheek. The shield shifted again and I with it, legs akimbo. Two more bolts spat out from the masonry, leaving my fate to the solitary fixing that remained. The black shield gave a great lurch, creaking from its housing and now hanging at a perilous ninety degrees.
‘Jump!’ yelled Whitley Bey. ‘You’ll have to jump, man! It’s your only chance!’
I glanced down and wished I hadn’t. The gawping faces and the patterned floor sixty feet below me see-sawed as though
viewed through a distorting mirror. And there was Kingdom Kum, staring up at me, the light from the chandeliers setting fire to his expensive sunglasses.
The shield groaned. There was nothing for it. I uttered a prayer to God, Allah, and whichever other deities may have been included in the building’s heritage, took one great breath into my aching lungs, and leaped towards the balcony.
My hands connected with the ironwork just as the last of the bolts gave way and the massive roundel crashed to the floor in a great cloud of dust and ruined masonry.
Brown arms scrabbled over the balcony, attempting to reach me. Hands clutched at my wrists. But I’d used up the very last of my strength leaping from the shield. In spite of everything, I felt myself begin to slide from their grasp.