Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [45]
The woman desk clerk from downstairs was arguing with a cleaning woman. They stood in the doorway of Ace’s room, exchanging rapid, low Turkish. The cleaning woman was holding up the quilt from Ace’s bed. Draped over her trolley was the life jacket, deflated and limp, air cylinder swinging at one corner. Ace didn’t wait for the desk clerk to look up and see her. She turned and walked quickly back the way she’d come. When she pushed the button for the elevator her hand was steady. But as she descended in the high‐speed metal cage her stomach turned over. The quilt and the life jacket had been riddled with holes. Bullet holes.
Down by the harbour she went into a yachting shop and bought a new inflatable life jacket. Then she walked through the Old Town to the coach station to catch a bus to Marmaris. She listened for motor scooters all the way.
* * *
8
A large turtle was crawling sluggishly across the road, trying to make its way back to the water. A car thundered past, only just missing it. Ace trotted out into the road and scooped the animal up. She carried it to the water’s edge, its blunt feet flailing helplessly, and set it down. The turtle crawled to the edge of the sea and studied the glittering water for a few moments. Then it looked up at Ace, tiny eyes in a shrivelled face, and turned in a slow circle and started back towards the road. Ace sighed and left it.
In Marmaris the docks had been converted to a European‐style marina at one end of the bay. At the far end she’d find the boat she’d hired for the use of the Kurdish mercenaries. They’d all be on board already, along with the equipment she’d inspected in Miss David’s warehouse. And Massoud would be with them.
Ace walked among the yachts. The wind whipped the lines of their sails against the masts with a sound that reminded her of flagpoles. Young Germans and New Zealanders lounged on the decks, rich kids recording themselves with camcorders, drinking and tanning in the brilliant lethal sunlight.
On the mahogany deck of one boat a tattooed teenage boy with long blond hair was sprawled out on a towel. He looked up and called out to Ace as she walked by. Despite herself Ace turned to him and immediately he reached into a plastic ice‐bucket and pulled out a bottle of Polish vodka. Ice and water dripped off the bottle, glittering in the intense sea light. The boy brushed his long ragged blond hair back from his face. He smiled at her, white teeth in tanned face. His eyes were invisible behind sunglasses but then he took the glasses off and looked at her directly. His eyes were shy. He called something again, in German. He laughed at himself and shrugged, shaking the bottle. He gestured for Ace to come up on to the boat. Ace felt the nine kilos of her rucksack dragging at the sunburn on her shoulder. She could imagine the fat satisfying splash the rucksack would make when she threw it into the harbour. The German boy’s boat was called WitchKraft. It was lolling gently on the water, a metre away from the rubber tyres nailed to the jetty. She could jump across in one smooth motion. The muscles in her legs rehearsed the action. They ached to move. Her sunburned skin itched under the abrasion of the rucksack. Ace stood on the splintering wood of the dock, flagpole noise all around her.
* * *
Two of the Kurdish mercenaries were lounging in the shade of the cabin structure, smoking and talking. Ace couldn’t make out their faces. She climbed on board, lifting her rucksack carefully over the drop to the water. The boat was moored among the excursion vessels that ferried tourists among the islands, to visit the tombs and eat