The Ottoman Secret by Raymond Khoury

Author:Raymond Khoury
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241371176
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

41

‘We have a problem. My men at the castle—they’re not responding.’

Celaleddin was home in bed. From behind the edge of the curtains, he could see that dawn hadn’t yet broken, which meant that the call, coming at such an early hour, couldn’t be about anything good. Kuzey’s voice, and his tone, further confirmed that.

His wife had stirred, grumbled, turned over and fallen back asleep. Leaving her there, he climbed out of bed and padded out of their room barefoot in his nightshirt. ‘What about the team you sent to Kamal Agha’s?’

‘The same.’

Celaleddin entered his study, his jaw uncharacteristically dropped low, his gaunt face twisted in a scowl. Maybe they had been careless by only sending two men to take care of him. Kamal had demonstrated his resourcefulness more than once. No one was more aware of that than his superiors at the Hafiye.

‘You’ve sent men out to the castle?’

‘They’re en route,’ Kuzey confirmed, using one of the many old French expressions that had seeped into the Ottoman vernacular. ‘I’ve got the Zaptiye setting up roadblocks around the area.’

‘There are a lot of roads to cover. Country lanes and whatnot.’

‘I know.’

‘I want to know what they find the second they get there.’

‘We should know in the next ten minutes.’

Celaleddin pressed the buzzer to summon one of his servants. He needed coffee. A lot of it. It looked as if it was going to be a long, and fraught, day.

He thought about it for a quick second before his servant appeared at the door. ‘Coffee,’ he said to him abruptly. ‘A large pot.’

‘Pardon?’ Kuzey asked through the phone line.

Celaleddin ignored it, waving his servant off. But he did have something pressing for Kuzey. ‘Find me Kamal’s partner.’

‘Taymoor Agha?’ Kuzey asked.

‘Yes.’ His mind was already putting various permutations of what he imagined was to come through their paces. ‘I think we’re going to need him.’

With the first glimmer of dawn infusing the horizon, Kamal drove on, the big black SUV powering east along empty country roads. He was avoiding the main highways, maintaining an inconspicuous speed, his eyes alert to any sign of a roadblock or a surveillance drone.

Nisreen sat next to him, staring ahead, both of them observing a funereal silence, an unspoken rage smoldering inside them. Behind them, the three bodies were laid out side by side on their backs, covered by a tarpaulin Kamal had found at the castle.

They needed to be buried, and soon. Islamic tradition called for burials to be carried out as quickly as possible following death. But where?

Paris would have been the normal port of call. It was where Kamal’s family hailed from, where the family mosque was, where Kamal and Ramazan’s grandparents and great-grandparents were buried. He knew it was where his brother should be laid to rest. He owed him that. But Paris was out of the question. Too many people who knew them, too many law enforcement officers prowling the streets, too many surveillance cameras trawling licence plates and informants looking to ingratiate themselves with the authorities.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.