One of Colonel Riza’s agents watching the complex reported their arrival and notified the other men on duty nearby. The arrival of the bombers had been expected for days and was the signal for a large-scale operation with the Americans to begin.

  Bahadir was in his office making a call when one of his security men, who was also his personal bodyguard, knocked and entered. ‘The men you’ve been expecting have arrived,’ he said, ‘and would like to see you.’

  This was unusual as Bahadir rarely, if ever, met the new arrivals personally, and would leave all arrangements concerning them and their movements to IS operatives working undercover in his restaurant. Bahadir only concerned himself with intelligence communications – usually with his handlers in the States – which he always attended to personally in the privacy of his fort-like underground office.

  ‘Oh? Did they say what it was about?’ he asked, obviously annoyed.

  ‘Yes; an important message …’

  ‘All right. Give me a minute and then show them in. But you stay in here while I see them, understood?’

  The first thing Bahadir noticed about the three men who came to see him was their age. They were much older than most of the men who had passed through his restaurant complex before. One of the men appeared to be well in his forties.

  The second thing Bahadir noticed was less obvious. At first, it was just a feeling. Something about the men made him uneasy. The way they moved, their body language, the look in their eyes, all radiated authority and danger. Bahadir looked at his armed Albanian bodyguard standing near the door and smiled. He always found the huge man’s presence and unquestioning loyalty reassuring.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’ began Bahadir, the tone of his voice curt. He sat back in his chair and poured himself a drink.

  ‘We bring greetings from Al-Gharib,’ said one of the men and stepped forward, ‘and a message.’

  ‘A message from “the Stranger”? How interesting. What kind of message?’

  ‘He’s alive and well, despite the American air attack we believe you initiated.’

  Taken aback, Bahadir looked up, surprised. ‘What do you mean? I … I don’t under...’

  ‘Stand up!’ barked the man, taking another step forward.

  ‘What did you say?’ asked Bahadir, surprised.

  ‘You heard me. Stand up, you dog!’

  Before the bodyguard could react to the insult, one of the men standing closest to him moved like lightning. He pulled out a gun from under his shirt and pressed it against the bodyguard’s chest before he could reach for his own. ‘You move, I shoot; clear?’ he said.

  The bodyguard nodded. The man then reached into the guard’s holster, pulled out the gun, a Glock, and handed it to his companion standing next to him.

  ‘Now stand up and put your hands behind your head,’ continued the other man calmly, addressing Bahadir.

  In a daze, Bahadir stood up slowly and did as he was told. ‘Wh-what’s all this about?’ he stammered.

  ‘Ibrahim el-Masri, you have been tried, found guilty and sentenced to death—’

  ‘What do you mean, Ibrahim el-Masri?’ Bahadir almost shouted, turning pale. ‘I am Kemal Bahadir!’

  ‘You are now, but in truth you are Ibrahim el-Masri, the despicable traitor working for the Great Satan, the Americans. There’s no point in denying it … we know.’

  ‘This is all a mistake,’ protested Bahadir.

  The man walked up to the desk, reached into his pocket and threw two photographs on the desk where Bahadir could see them. They were the photos Haddad had given to Al-Gharib, showing el-Masri on the operating table before his face operation. The other was a close-up of Bahadir’s face after the operation.

  Bahadir kept staring at the photographs, realising for the first time that this was all deadly serious and not some unfortunate mistake.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said, sounding hoarse.

  The man began to laugh. ‘What do we want? You think you can make a deal? Is that it? To be expected, I suppose, from scum like you. What we want is justice.’

  ‘What do you mean, justice?’

  ‘You will see soon enough. For now, this is what we’ll do …’

  The man pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, smoothed out the wrinkles, and placed it on the desk. It was a rough plan of the Sultan’s Table complex, showing underground passages leading in various directions through excavated sections of Constantine’s ancient palace. The man pointed to a tunnel leading to an exit near the Hagia Sophia. ‘This is where we are going.’ The man held up the paper and showed it to the guard. ‘And you will take us there – now! Understood?’

  The guard nodded.

  ‘If we meet someone, you clear the way – unless you want to drown in a bloodbath.’ The man reached into his backpack, pulled out a grenade and held it up. ‘Do you understand?’

  The guard nodded again.

  ‘You go first. I’ll be right behind you. Act naturally and don’t try anything stupid. Move!’

  The tunnel leading from the restaurant to the Hagia Sophia exit was rarely used. After many twist and turns, navigating crumbling steps and climbing shaky, cobwebbed ladders, they reached the end of the tunnel with a padlocked, rusty door blocking their way. One of the men stepped forward, attached a silencer to his gun and shot the padlock clean off the door before pushing it open with his shoulder.

  Two men, who had been waiting in the shadows under a tree, walked up to the man, embraced him and then helped him clear away the tree roots and other vegetation that almost covered the entire door on the outside.

  ‘You have brought everything?’ asked the man.

  ‘We have,’ replied his friend and pointed to two large backpacks on the ground. ‘Come, I’ll take you to the entrance I mentioned. It’s just over there. What about him?’ The man pointed to the bodyguard standing next to Bahadir. The man who had addressed Bahadir earlier said something in Arabic. His companion with the gun nodded, walked up to the bodyguard from behind and calmly shot him in the back of the head.

  Feeling quite sick, Bahadir stared at the dead bodyguard lying on the ground, a wave of panic washing over him like a bad dream. The man standing next to him pointed to the bleeding corpse. ‘He’s the lucky one, trust me,’ he said, laughing. ‘All right, let’s go inside.’

  The concealed tunnel exit faced a small, deserted courtyard next to the Mausoleum of Selim II behind the Hagia Sophia, which towered above them in the dark like an ominous sentinel, guarding terrible secrets of generations past. One of those secrets was the brutal murder of Osman da Baggio’s nineteen brothers the day his father had died, clearing the way for his older brother, Mehmed, to become sultan.

  They entered the deserted church through a side entrance next to the Imperial Gate, used only by guides during the day. Surrounded by high walls and fences, the whole complex was in darkness and secured for the night. The elderly security guards patrolling outside had been bribed and would turn a blind eye to what was happening inside.

  The two men with the backpacks seemed to know the huge church well. Working quickly and quietly to unlock doors and only using torches where necessary to show the way, they entered the staggering nave covered by a vast dome reaching fifty-six metres towards heaven.

  Once inside, they quickly made their way towards the tall, ornate mihrab in the apse, pointing towards Mecca, where the altar used to stand. Flanked by two giant candlesticks brought back from Hungary by Suleiman the Magnificent to commemorate his conquest in the sixteenth-century, the death squad had decided the mihrab would be the perfect setting for the bloody drama to come.

  Because the mihrab – a semicircular niche in the wall of a mosque – always indicates the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca, the symbolic significance of the chosen venue would therefore be clear to all Muslims. However, as the Hagia Sophia was now a museum and no longer a mosque, no offence would be caused by what was about to happen.

  The two men with the backpacks quickly went to work. They had brought all the necessary equipment, including batteries, lights and a high-quality camera to record everything for a video to be posted on social media in the morning. Once the lights directed at the mihrab had been switched on, crazy shadows began to dance across the stone floor, and then crawl up the walls towards the galleries, giving the huge nave a sinister appearance, like an arena preparing for a bloody spectacle to please the bloodthirsty mob cheering from above.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ asked Bahadir, barely able to speak, fear clawing at his empty stomach.

  One of the men held up the black IS flag, inspired by the black flag of the Prophet. Scrawled in white across the top was the Muslim profession of faith: “No god but God” with “Muhammad is the Messenger of God” inserted in black into a white circle below.

  ‘It’s about justice. Prepare yourself, you are about to die,’ he said quietly, and then walked over to the mihrab and attached the flag to the back of the niche to form a dramatic backdrop.

  The man who had earlier addressed Bahadir in his office pulled a black balaclava over his own head, stepped into the niche and faced the camera.

  ‘They call me the Just One,’ he said. ‘This is how we deal with traitors. Bring him over here!’

  Two men, also wearing balaclavas, dragged Bahadir over to the niche and made him kneel down in front of the Just One, but facing the camera. Having turned his back on Islam, Bahadir would die facing away from Mecca.

  ‘This is Ibrahim el-Masri, aka Kemal Bahadir,’ continued the Just One, ‘the famous masterchef. He has betrayed Islam by becoming a slave of the Great Satan, America. The punishment for his betrayal is death. Hear this, my brothers. The final battle heralding the End of Days foretold in the Dabiq Prophesy is about to begin. Rejoice, the Mahdi is on his way. The Day of Judgement is near ...’

  68

  Gendarmerie Command Centre, Istanbul: 26 June

  Colonel Riza was woken by an early morning phone call from his aide. It was just after four am. The aide told him there was something important that he should see. The colonel put on his uniform and hurried to his office on the floor below his room in the Gendarmerie General Command Centre.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘This just came in,’ said the aide and pointed to a computer screen. As a matter of routine, all IS social media sites were constantly monitored by the intelligence services.

  ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘This here.’ The aide called up a recorded video and pressed the replay button.

  A man wearing a turban and a scarf covering his face, armed with a machine gun, stood in front of the smouldering wreck of a Toyota.

  ‘I am standing in a field not far from Dabiq,’ said the man. ‘At five forty-five this evening, 25 June, a US fighter plane attacked three vehicles travelling towards the Turkish border, which is five kilometres from here.’

  The man pointed over his shoulder.

  ‘Four men were killed. One of them was Chief Inspector Naguib Haddad of the Turkish Gendarmerie. Here, let me show you.’ The camera moved closer and the man pointed to another wreck a few metres away. Colonel Riza gasped as the camera zoomed in on a bloody corpse hanging out of the shattered windscreen of the twisted vehicle. The right arm was missing, but the face, while badly disfigured, was nevertheless recognisable.

  ‘Naguib,’ whispered the colonel, obviously shocked. ‘How?’ What on earth was he doing in Syria? he thought.

  The camera swung around and focused once again on the man holding the gun.

  ‘Al-Gharib, our illustrious leader, was the target, but the Americans killed one of their allies instead,’ he said, raising his gun and firing into the air. ‘Rejoice my brothers; this is a sign. The day of the final battle is near. Perhaps it has already begun; here, right now, as foretold by the Dabiq Prophesy. Allah Akbar!’

  In a way it was all classic IS propaganda, but something told the colonel there was more to all this. First, the arrival of the Paris suicide bombers the night before, and now this. Coincidence? Hardly. Something was definitely going on. Something big.

  The colonel turned to his aide. ‘We are going into the Sultan’s Table complex at first light. Get everything ready and tell the Americans we can’t wait any longer. And tell Chief Superintendent Conti and Mr Rogan to come here as soon as possible for a briefing.’

  Jack walked into the Gendarmerie’s operations room in the basement an hour later. Conti and Cesaria were already there, waiting.

  ‘When did you get in?’ asked Conti, lighting a cigarette, his first for the day.

  ‘Last night, late.’

  ‘How was the funeral?’ asked Cesaria, shaking her head. She still found it difficult to come to terms with Gambio’s brazen assassination. ‘Grimaldi told us you were there.’

  ‘I was. Difficult to describe; a bit like a Godfather movie.’

  ‘One down, two to go,’ said Conti and slapped Jack on the back. ‘Perhaps today’s the day to make that three; what do you think?’

  ‘Could be. We waited long enough for this.’ Jack looked at Conti. ‘I’m worried about Belmonte,’ he said, lowering his voice.

  ‘Why?’ asked Cesaria.

  ‘Well, no-one seems to have seen him since he arrived here, what, two weeks ago? A man like that, holed up in a restaurant? Come on ...’

  ‘The place has been under surveillance ’round the clock.’

  ‘Still ...’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Conti. ‘I’m worried too.’

  ‘We’ll know soon enough.’

  The atmosphere in the room was electric. The day everyone had been waiting for had arrived at last. The preparations had been extensive, and the waiting had stretched nerves and patience to the limit.

  Colonel Riza stood in front of a large conference table surrounded by his team and was about to begin the briefing, when one of his men burst into the room. ‘Sir, you have to see this – now!’ he shouted, walking over to one of the monitors and turning it on. ‘This just came in. Look!’

  Almost instantly, a close-up of a man wearing a black balaclava came into view. ‘This is Ibrahim el-Masri, aka Kemal Bahadir,’ said the man and pointed to someone kneeling in front of him on the floor with his hands tied behind his back, ’the famous masterchef.’ The camera closed in on the kneeling man’s face. Radiating terror, the eyes staring into the camera said it all.

  Jack turned to Cesaria standing next to him. ‘Can you believe this?’ he whispered. Cesaria didn’t reply and kept looking at the screen, mesmerised.

  ‘He has betrayed Islam by becoming a slave of the Great Satan, America,’ continued the man on the screen. ‘The punishment for his betrayal is death!’ The man paused, obviously for effect, and kept looking at the camera. ‘Hear this, my brothers,’ continued the man, raising his voice like a preacher addressing the faithful. ‘The final battle foretold in the Dabiq Prophesy is about to begin. Rejoice, the Mahdi is on his way. The Day of Judgement is near ...’

  ‘I know where they are!’ shouted one of the men in the room. ‘This is the mihrab in the Hagia Sophia; no doubt about it, look!’

  ‘It is!’ shouted someone else.

  ‘Silence! Listen!’ called out the colonel and held up his hand.

  The man on the screen reached under his shirt and pulled out a large knife with a long, serrated blade, and held it up. Then he grabbed a handful of Bahadir’s hair with his left hand and pulled back his head.

  ‘Allah Akbar!’ shouted the man and then quickly cut Bahadir’s throat with one, deep incision from left to right. Blood gushed out of the deep wound in pulsating spurts as the camera moved in for a gruesome close-up.

  The man then quickly made several further incisions along the side of the neck and at the back. Within moments he had expertly severed the head and held it up like some obscene trophy, as Bahadir’s headless corpse fell forward and hit the floor.

  ‘For this traitor, the Day of Judgement has already arrived!’ shouted the jubilant man. ‘Allah Akbar!’

  The camera closed in once more on Bahadir’s bloody head – sightless eyes wide open, staring into eternity – before everything went fuzzy and then blank.

  For a long, pregnant moment, everyone in the room stood still. Then Colonel Riza picked up the phone on the table and gave orders for a SWAT team to go at once to the Hagia Sophia to investigate. At the same time, he also gave orders for the commandos standing by, to take up positions at the Sultan’s Table and wait for further orders.

  The colonel put down the phone and looked around. ‘You heard,’ he said. ‘Let’s go!’

  69

  Basilica Cistern, Istanbul: 26 June

  Belmonte had taken the news of Gambio’s assassination very badly. He had first heard about it on the news the day before, like everybody else. Life had just taken a mega-shift, changing everything. Gambio’s death couldn’t have come at a worse time. The man who held his future and his fortunes in his hands, was no more. Belmonte was on his own, and on the run. When he had tried to talk to Bahadir about this, Bahadir gave him the cold shoulder and told him he had his own urgent problems. Instead of taking immediate action to find a way out of his predicament, Belmonte took to the bottle instead, and got terribly drunk.

  The security guard who burst into his room below the restaurant found him asleep, still fully dressed, on his bed with an empty whisky bottle next to him.

  ‘Wake up! We are being raided!’ shouted the guard, shaking Belmonte with both hands. Belmonte opened his eyes and stared at the guard, sleep and alcohol fog clouding his brain. It wasn’t until the guard repeated what he had just said on his way out that Belmonte sat up. ‘What do you mean?’ he growled.

  ‘Police raid! Get out fast now! Use the cistern exit I showed you. It’s the only safe way out of here.’

  Within seconds, Belmonte’s self-preservation instincts took over. As a man used to dealing with danger and the unexpected, he had the presence of mind to realise this was serious. He reached for his gun on the bedside table next to him and tucked it into his belt. Then he ran out into the corridor and down the stairs into the basement.

 

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