Empire of Lies

36

The small room was a nightmare in gray: covering the walls, doors, floors, and ceilings was the same austere, cruel hue in a shiny vinyl finish that seemed chosen as much for its grimness as for its ease in allowing compromising stains to be wiped away. Even the furniture was gray, only in a dull hue—a large metal table bolted to the floor, a heavily scratched cuff bar running along its center, and four metal chairs. Apart from the door, the walls were bare, save for a wide mirrored partition that covered most of one wall.

Nisreen and Ramazan were seated at the table. No words were exchanged. They just sat there, equally frightened, equally in shock from all that had happened. But mostly they were equally fearful of where their children were, for they weren’t in the room with them. They’d been brought in there almost an hour earlier, alone, and their insistent, desperate queries about their children went unanswered and then they’d been left to stew alone in the gray bunker.

They weren’t alone anymore. A man was now facing them across the table. He was tall and slim, and had deep-set, vivid eyes and a jutting chin that seemed threatening in itself. He’d introduced himself as Huseyin Celaleddin Pasha, the bashafiye, even though he needed no introduction. His being there in person hadn’t instilled any comfort in Nisreen or in Ramazan. Quite the opposite.

Another man stood by the door. He was squat and round and sported a distinctive, ink-black trapezoidal goatee. He wasn’t dressed in a guard’s uniform; instead, he also projected an air of seniority, although not as chillingly prepossessing as that of the bashafiye.

“Where are our children?” Nisreen asked again. Her first attempt had been brushed off and replaced by the introduction.

“They’re fine,” Celaleddin answered. “And I can assure you they’re being well looked after.”

“Looked after?” Nisreen fired back angrily. “They’re children, for God’s sake. They must be absolutely terrified. You have to let us see them.”

“Why not? Let’s have a look, shall we?”

He turned to the man by the door and gave him a nod. The man pulled a small remote control from his pocket and pressed a button on it.

The large mirror turned into a clear glass partition, revealing a similar room to the one Nisreen and Ramazan were in.

The room was also morbidly gray and furnished similarly. Tarek and Noor were sitting at a table with ice cream bowls and a plate of honey and pistachio delicacies. The children seemed calm as they sipped from cups through white plastic straws, their attention spirited away by whatever they were playing or watching on the screens of the tablet computers they each held.

Behind them stood a woman. She was dressed in civilian clothes and was watching over them in silence, her arms folded. Her expression was trying to be neutral, but Nisreen could see the menace simmering behind her eyes.

Nisreen couldn’t help herself. She bolted out of her seat and rushed up to the glass partition, rapping it hard with the flat palms of her hands while failing to hold back a burst of tears.

“Tarek, Noor,” she screamed, but there was no reaction from the other side of the glass. She was now right up against it, her hands stilled, her fingers spread out as she pressed against it in a desperate, futile attempt to get even nearer to them. “Tarek… Noor…” she moaned. “My babies.”

No reaction.

They evidently couldn’t hear or see her.

“It’s one-way glass and totally soundproof,” Celaleddin informed them. “But as you can see, they’re fine. And they’ll stay fine as long as you answer my questions fully and truthfully.”

“What questions?” Ramazan said, his voice quivering. “Why are we here?”

“You know why you’re here. And I want to hear it all, every bit of it. Every detail, every word. Start from the beginning and don’t leave anything out. And I beg you to take extra care and make sure you tell me everything. Because if I feel you’re holding back, I’ll have to instruct my assistant in there to behave less pleasantly.”

He stared at them for a moment, making sure his words implanted themselves firmly. Then he turned to the man by the door and gave him another small nod.

The man raised a small radio to his mouth and mumbled something undecipherable into it.

With Nisreen still standing at the edge of the glass partition, Ramazan turned to face it too, both of them overcome by a crippling dread.

The woman standing behind the children unfolded her arms, reached behind her back and drew out a large knife. It had a smooth, wide blade that shone as it caught a glint of light when she tilted it slightly and held it up, out of view from the children who were still mesmerized by their screens. Not content with the debilitating effect it already had, she then ran two teasing fingers along the edge of its blade.

A funereal silence suffocated the room.

“She’s very skilled,” Celaleddin said. “Her particular talent is knowing how to make sure things last as long as necessary.”

Nisreen’s shoulders hunched, then she turned to face their interrogator. A hatred like she’d never felt before swelled up inside her. “You’re a monster,” she said coldly, her voice trembling.

“Perhaps,” he shrugged with chilling nonchalance. “But I have to do whatever is necessary to protect the realm, and I need you to believe it. But it doesn’t need to come to that. I just need to know what happened in that hospital ward. And the sooner you tell me, the sooner we can all get out of this dreadful place.”

He sat back and spread out his hands. “Who wants to go first?”

Above ground at the Citadel, Kamal felt like a caged animal in his own way.

Questioning the duty officer at the main reception had yielded nothing: there was no record of Ramazan’s or Nisreen’s arrest. Over in the operations room, the desk sergeant had claimed he had no record of the team that had been dispatched after them. Kamal had then gone down to the holding cells and interview-room area and asked the duty officer if he knew anything. Again, he got nothing. With no options left, he’d decided to escalate the matter to the Z Directorate boss, but he was told that Fehmi Kuzey had already left the building for the night. Kamal left a message saying he needed to speak with him urgently. After much debate, he decided to take the big step of going to see the bashafiye, but he was told in no uncertain terms that the head of the Hafiye wasn’t at the Citadel either.

He was being stonewalled—of this he had no doubt. Celaleddin had been clear in his warning about Nisreen, but something else was at play here, clearly. Something bigger, something that involved Ramazan, too. Something big enough to warrant shutting him out, an act that, Kamal knew, meant his brother and sister-in-law were in serious trouble.

Standing outside the entrance to the fortress, which was now engulfed by the shadows of nightfall, he felt hobbled by equal doses of fury, frustration, and worry, but he couldn’t give up. He needed to find a crack in the system, a way to find them.

He was racking his brain when his phone rang. Hope sparked, then fizzled just as fast when he saw it was only Taymoor.

“Where are you?” his partner asked. “What’s going on?”

Kamal hesitated. “I’m—there’s something I need to take care of.”

“What?”

“A problem. Family business.”

Taymoor went silent for a couple of seconds. “Anything I can do?”

Kamal hesitated again. If he was going to ask for Taymoor’s help, now was the time to do it. Then again, until he knew what was happening, he thought it might be safer for everyone if he kept things to himself. “Better you don’t get involved,” he finally said.

Taymoor sounded affronted. “I’m your partner, brother. We’re a team.”

“I know. And I appreciate it. Look, it could be nothing.” He lied.

“It doesn’t sound like nothing.”

Kamal shrugged—then an idea elbowed its way out of the gloom that had enshrouded him. “I wish I could disagree with you. I’ve got to go.”

Before Taymoor could object, he clicked off.

He marched back to the operations room. The desk sergeant frowned as he spotted him, clearly not relishing another stubborn interrogation. Kamal read him and tried to adopt a less belligerent tone.

“I was at the Hurrem Sultan earlier, after the shooting. I spoke to the two agents who were there when it happened, and I need to follow up on something with them, but in the whole mess I didn’t note down their names. Could you check on who they were?”

The desk sergeant eyed him guardedly, then relented and tapped a few keys into his station. “Terrible thing that happened.”

“A bad, bad day,” Kamal agreed, layering the empathy.

“I’ve got Marwan Jamal and Omar Salamoun,” the sergeant said.

“Do you know where I can find them? I imagine they’ve got a pretty monstrous debriefing to go through.”

“I haven’t seen them all day.”

This surprised Kamal. He feigned a different kind of frustration, a purely professional one. “Damn it. I really need to talk to them.”

“I can send them an alert to contact you.”

“Great. Would you let me know when they respond to it?”

“Will do, but given the day they’ve had, I wouldn’t hold my breath”—said with a shrug that didn’t exactly fill Kamal with hope.

He returned the shrug and walked off, heading for the exit.

There was nothing more he could think of. All avenues of inquiry seemed barred. As much as it killed him to sit on his hands, there was no point sticking around the Citadel. He could only wait for Kuzey or one of the agents from the hospital to call—not that he held out much hope of that. He’d try to come up with some other way to find his brother and Nisreen, and if all else failed, he’d march up to Celaleddin’s office in the morning and demand to see his brother.

He was digging a hand into his pocket to retrieve his motorbike’s keys when his fingers fell on something else: Nisreen’s phone. He pulled it out and stared at it, debating whether to fire it up, which would activate its tracker. He thought about the risks involved. He was still by the Citadel. If they were aware that they’d missed taking it, if they were looking for it, seeing it light up at the Hafiye headquarters was probably as good a place as any to have it appear. They might conclude that it was sitting innocuously in an agency car or tucked away in an evidence box somewhere in the department, waiting to be claimed by the agents working the case. Firing it up would not necessarily be a great help in discovering what happened to them. The phone was probably locked with a passcode that he had little chance of figuring out.

He decided to try anyway. He put the battery back in and switched the phone on. The screen went through its motions, then lit up with a picture of Tarek and Noor, smiling half-mischievously into the camera. He lingered on it for a long moment, staring at their little faces, the picture awakening a painful reminder of all the good times he must have missed out on since he and his brother’s family had drifted apart, times he’d never get back. He wondered if things would ever return to the way they were. Right now, he’d more than settle with just knowing they were all safe and well.

He thought about what numbers to key in and felt embarrassed at how much he had to concentrate to remember the children’s birthdays. Still, he managed it and made a few attempts using various combinations of the dates, which he knew wouldn’t work. Sure enough, they didn’t. Nisreen was too clever to use something so easy to crack. He decided to give up for now, pulling the battery and pocketing it again.

He headed for his bike, trying to rein in his fears and convince himself that nothing disastrous would happen that first night. It might all be cleared by the morning, and maybe he’d wake up to find out everything was back to normal.

That hopeful notion lasted all of three seconds before his instincts and experience booted it to oblivion.

Something very bad was going down, and right now he was helpless to stop it.