Chapter Thirty-one

I LED CUMALI deeper into the tunnel, the walls decorated with fragments of ancient mosaics, huge cracks bisecting the vaulted roof from centuries of quakes, the silence pressing down on us.

On either side were the ruins of what were called the hypogeum, the underground vaults and cells which housed slaves and animals used in wild-beast hunts, and I felt the deep melancholy of the place surrounding me. It was as if misery had taken root in the stone.

Cumali pointed at the barred pens, talking a little too fast, a little too nervously. ‘The cells would only hold a few hundred people, ’ she explained. ‘The huge spectacles and naval battles, which would often kill thousands of prisoners or slaves, were almost exclusive to the Colosseum.

‘Here in the provinces, without the wealth of a Caesar, it was mostly gladiators and the re-creation of famous myths. Of course, those stories were wildly popular too – lots of violence and killing, but not much plot. ’

‘Sounds like a Hollywood movie, ’ I said, through my parched lips, trying to act normal. Cumali didn’t seem to hear.

We turned a dog-leg, came out of the tunnel, and I saw the amphitheatre for the first time. Cumali had been telling the truth about it – the symmetry, the stacked decks of almost intact marble colonnades and the sheer size of it were remarkable. So was the stillness. In the harsh midday sun, the Theatre of Death felt like it was hushed and waiting, ready for a new performance to begin.

‘Where is everybody? ’ I asked.

‘Above us, ’ she said. ‘There’s a platform with a great view of the arena. If we follow the colonnade, we’ll find a set of steps and they’ll take us up to it. ’

She turned to lead the way, and I glimpsed the first of them. He was standing deep in a ruined passage, unaware that, to a trained eye, darkness is often a relative thing – he was dressed in black, a pool of greater gloom in the shadow. I guessed that his job was to move behind me and cut off any chance of escape down the tunnel.

I swept my eyes around the arena, acting like any interested tourist: the Saracen and his hired help would have me triangulated and, from the single data point of the hidden man, I had a good idea where the others would be.

Cumali, walking a little faster, pointed to the middle of the site. ‘Two thousand years ago, the sand on the arena floor would have been dyed a deep red, ’ she said.

‘To disguise the blood? ’ I asked.

‘That’s right. ’

I located another member of the team, a thickset bull of a man, standing in a honeycomb of crumbling arches just above us. I was surprised – he was in his sixties, far too old for this rodeo, I would have thought – and there was something about him that pinged my memory, but I had no time to dwell on it. Cumali had led me into a towering, crumbling passage – a dead end, I was sure – talking all the time to allay her nerves.

‘Of course, the bodies had to be removed before the next event could start. Two men dressed as mythological figures would enter the arena to supervise it.

‘The first was supposedly Pluto, the god of the dead. He would hit the corpses with a hammer, showing that the man, woman or child now belonged to him.

‘The second was Mercury, who, according to myth, carried a wand and escorted souls to the underworld. In this case, the wand was a hot iron and he would touch the bodies to see if the person was really dead. ’

‘So even faking it was no escape. ’

‘None at all, ’ she said.

We walked deeper into the gloom. Up ahead, sunlight was spilling through the shattered roof, and I guessed that was where I would meet Zakaria al-Nassouri face to face. My journey was almost over.

I had to time everything perfectly now. I couldn’t make a mistake – my life and everything else depended on it.

I slipped my hands deeper into my pockets, nice and relaxed, and I was certain that the men watching me from the darkness had already registered the small bump in the waistband at the back of my trousers. They would be smiling, I thought, knowing that I wouldn’t have time to get my right hand out, reach behind, draw the pistol and start shooting.

Dumb American.

I had been taught how amateurs worked – they would be concentrating on the pistol, thinking that was where the danger lay, not worrying about my left hand, which was wrapped around the only weapon I cared about: my cellphone. It was powered on, ready to go, every button on the keypad set to speed-dial the same number – Ben Bradley’s phone, in his pocket, back at the nanny’s house.

In the seconds before the men jumped me, all I had to do was hit a button on the keypad. Any button.

Bradley wouldn’t answer: he would recognize the number and it would start a countdown. Exactly four minutes later he would pick up the nanny’s cellphone, take it off the charger and dial Cumali. She would look at the caller ID, see that it was the nanny and, worried there was a serious problem with the little guy, would answer. She would then learn something that would change everything.

The four-minute gap was crucial. It was the period I had estimated would elapse between first being grabbed by the muscle and the Saracen emerging from the shadows. If his sister’s cellphone rang too soon, the Saracen might realize that something was wrong and turn and vanish into the ruins. How could I coerce a man who had already run?

If Cumali’s phone rang too late, I was going to be in a world of trouble. The Saracen was desperate for information about the supposed traitor, and he didn’t have much time. He wouldn’t waste it on a polite conversation and I figured he would have something like a twelve-volt truck battery and alligator clips close at hand. As every torturer knew, that instrument was highly portable, easy to acquire and, if you didn’t mind how much damage you caused to the victim, extremely fast. I wasn’t sure I would be able to hang on for very long.

Four minutes – don’t screw it up, Ben.

We passed a mound of rubble and trash – shards of broken glass, empty beer bottles, the polished steel lid of a freezer box. Groups of kids had obviously broken in over the years and partied hard.

Next to the mound was a long marble trough. Once used by the dignitaries to wash their feet, it was fed water from a stone gorgon’s face. One end of the trough was broken, and I should have paid it more attention – it had been blocked with rocks and the trough was full. But my mind was in another place: I was waiting to be attacked, waiting to hit the magic button before they had my arms pinned to my back.

We stepped into the sunlight filtering through the shattered roof and I saw that the path ahead disappeared into a huge fall of masonry.

I had reached the dead end, I was trapped in a box canyon, and the index finger of my left hand was the only thing between me and disaster.