Free The Istanbul Puzzle by Laurence O’Bryan Page A

seventy-two hours. They’d threatened to charge me too, but my visa to get into Afghanistan had been legitimate. I must have had ten people shouting in my face before the plane doors closed. I’d put lives at risk. I had to accept I shouldn’t have done it.
    I’d also put my own life at risk. But I didn’t care about that. My parents were dead. My beautiful wife was dead. We had no children. Who the hell would care if I was history?
    I was a hollow human robot with a ghost haunting it. All I did most days were tasks I cared nothing about.
    And going out to Afghanistan hadn’t cured me. It had just created more problems.
    The fact that the Institute was banned from Afghanistan for ten years was one of the reasons I’d had to accept that my role at the Institute was going to to change. I had to get approval from Beresford-Ellis before I went off on any project now, no matter what I thought of him. It irritated me – I’d co-founded the place – but I couldn’t argue with the logic of it.
    ‘You’ve definitely stepped on someone’s toes this time too,’ she said, softly, after a minute had passed. ‘Hagia Sophia is a big deal here. The oldest copy of the Koran in the world is in Istanbul, a few minutes’ walk from it.’ She went to the balcony.
    ‘Are you ready?’ she said.
    ‘For what?’
    ‘We’re going.’ She shaded her eyes. She was looking along the coastline. A low-flying white helicopter was coming towards us. I watched it approach.
    ‘I’ve just realised,’ she said, turning towards me. ‘That’s an upside down V.’ She pointed at the top corner of the mosaic in Alek’s photo. ‘That could be the Greek letter lambda, our letter L.’
    ‘L, what does that stand for?’
    ‘It could stand for Luna, the goddess of the moon. Maybe this isn’t Christian after all.’ She laughed, grabbed the photos off the table. She had a high-pitched laugh.
    Her laughter was drowned out by the roar of the helicopter. It was almost level with us now.
    ‘It’s a bit noisy, isn’t it?’ she shouted in my ear.
    The helicopter descended towards a patch of grass in front of the building, between the sea and the road.
    ‘Where are we going?’ I said.
    ‘To meet that expert I told you about.’
    ‘Is this the way you always travel?’ I shouted.
    ‘No, only when people’s lives are in danger.’

Chapter 13
    In Whitehall Sergeant Henry P Mowlam was looking at his screen. His hands were curled into fists.
    He closed his eyes. Would they listen to him? The raid on the London mosque had led to two riots already. As far as he was concerned, traffic checkpoints in the city should have been in place for at least another two weeks. The unrest in other European cities had continued during the last twenty four hours. All across Europe similar raids on mosques had been conducted in search of terror suspects who’d gone on the run after the escalation in the Middle East. Acting on rumours, looking for scapegoats, was how it had been described by some in the media. The civil rights mob had been having a canary, live on television.
    He listened to the drone of the underground control room. Some days it reminded him of a symphony, all that humming and buzzing and heels clacking and coughs and clicks.
    ‘Are you all right, Henry?’ a woman’s voice whispered.
    He nodded, opened his eyes. Sergeant Finch was standing beside him. She always looked so good in her starched white shirt. He pointed at his screen.
    A message in a secure window read:
    DO NOT PROCEED WITH PTRE/67765/67LE.
    ‘What’s that about?’ said Finch.
    The matter of the checkpoints would have to wait. This was something Sergeant Finch could help him with.
    ‘I am not to place surveillance on Lord Bidoner, despite the fact that he’s met two other men we’ve been monitoring in the past week!’
    Finch looked surprised. A troubled look crossed her face.
    ‘That request was playing with fire, Henry. You do know who Bidoner is, don’t