Istanbul by Colin Falconer Page A

roasted meat was sickening. Not all the greenshirts stayed to watch the fun. Three of them passed within a few feet of where Nick and Max lay, headed west towards the square. A few minutes later the others hurried after them.
    Nick imagined what would happen to Daniela if these bastards found her. He would not even let himself think he might be too late.
    When the greenshirts were out of sight, they started to run. Nick spared a glance for the blackened corpse lying in the middle of the cross street but he had mercifully stopped screaming and now lay quite still, like a bundle of charred rags.
     
     
     
    The Jewish Quarter was deserted. Frozen bodies lay in the street like litter. Daniela’s building had been looted and burned, blistered wood smouldered among the blackened shell of the walls.
    Nick heard sniper fire in the next street. He pressed his back against a wall. It was still warm.
    ‘We’re too late,’ Max said.
    They huddled side by side against the wall, watching their breath form into white vapour. ‘You did your best. Let’s get out of here.’
    ‘Not yet.’
    Nick ran across the street, leaping over broken armchairs and torn books. He slipped on a trampled prayer shawl lying in a pool of congealed blood. The fire had collapsed the roof and it lay in a blackened rubble around the stairwell. A brass menora lay under a piece of twisted tin.
    He was about to turn away when he heard a noise. It sounded like someone coughing. A cement staircase led down to a basement beneath the skeleton of the stairwell.
    ‘Is there anyone there?’ he shouted.
    He climbed over the tangle of beams and tin. Dried blood was smeared on the concrete, where it had mixed with the melting ice.
    He heard the coughing again and he kicked open the basement door. There was someone in there, in the dark. ‘Hello?’ he called and then in French: ‘ N’avez pas peur. Je suis Anglais. Je veux vous aider .
    ‘Don’t be afraid. I am English. I want to help you.’
    ‘... Nick?’
    Someone struck a match and lit a candle. Daniela was crouched in the corner, beside her father. He appeared to be unconscious.
    ‘Daniela?’
    The old man coughed again, and a pink froth bubbled on his lips.
    ‘He’s dying,’ she said.
    He knelt down and put his arms around her. She was wearing her fox fur, high French fashion encrusted with filth, but at least doing the job that nature intended, keeping a body warm and alive through winter nights.
    She pushed herself away from him, angrily wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. ‘When the greenshirts came, we hid down here. ‘I carried him. Like he carried me when I was a child.’
    He’s going to die anyway, Nick thought. The old man’s breath smelled like the grave.
    ‘We have to get you out of here.’ He helped her to her feet.
    ‘What about papa?’ she said.
    An exercise in futility. But they couldn’t just leave him here. He scooped the old man up in his arms. It was like picking up a bundle of dried twigs.
    ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him.
    ‘I came looking for you.’
    ‘Why?’
    Why. A good question. He didn’t have an answer for her, any more than he had the answer for Max. ‘You’re my most beautiful spy.’ He carried the old man up the stairs, Daniela following him. He picked his way through the rubble to where Max still crouched behind a burnt-out van.
    ‘Fuck is that, old son? Moses? He’s dead, for Christ’s sake, put him down.’
    ‘He’s still alive.’
    ‘Could have fooled me.’ Max looked at Daniela and shook his head in astonishment. ‘Don’t believe it. He said he’d find you. This bastard’s mad.’
    Daniela was too exhausted to answer.
    ‘Must get your story for the paper,’ Max said and his mad laughter echoed along the street, over the bones of the burned and newly dead.
     
     
     
    They ran towards the boulevard, saw the Humber on the other side of the intersection. Max led the way, but when he reached the end of the strada ,