And then an image of Baghdad flashed across his mind. The bomber’s face. Rob swallowed dryly. Not a good feeling. He turned and headed back, and as he did he heard it. The most horrible scream.

It sounded like an animal being tortured. Like a monkey being knifed open. Hideous.

He quickened his pace. He heard more shouting. What was going on? Then someone yelled again. Rob ran, the rucksack banging on his back.

He’d come further than he realized. Where was the main part of the dig? The hills all looked the same. Voices carried a long way in the clear desert air. And not just voices: shouts and cries. Christ. Something really was happening. Rob turned left then right and ran over the crest of a hill. And there was the dig. A crowd of people had gathered around one of the enclosures: the new trench. Workers were jostling each other.

His desert boots slipping in the dust and scree, Rob scrambled his way down to the side of the crowd and he pushed his way through, smelling sweat and fear. Rudely shunting the last man aside, he got to the edge of the trench and stared down. Everyone was staring down.

At the end of the trench was a new steel spike, one of the lethal-looking poles they used to hold up the tarpaulins. Franz Breitner was skewered, face down, on the pole. Skewered straight through his upper left chest. Blood was guttering from his wound. Christine was standing next to him talking to him. Ivan was behind them frantically calling on his mobile phone. Two workers were desperately trying to prise the steel pole from the earth.

Rob stared at Franz. He seemed to be alive, but the wound was savage, maybe right through the lungs. A desperate impaling. Rob had seen a lot of wounds in Iraq. He’d seen wounds just like this-blasts that sent girders and poles flying into people, spearing into their chests and heads; piercing them cruelly.

Rob knew Franz wasn’t going to make it. An ambulance would take a good hour to get here. There probably weren’t any medical helicopters between here and Ankara. Franz Breitner was going to die, here, in a trench. Surrounded by the silent stones of Gobekli Tepe.

12

In the fishponds of Abraham, the carp were roiling excitedly, clamouring for the tiny bits of pita bread he was throwing into the water. Rob watched them, mesmerized. Their desperate frenzy was a repulsive sight.

He had come here to calm down-it was the only bit of tranquil green space he knew in the crowded city. But the tranquillity wasn’t working. As he watched the thrashing fish, Rob kept twisting in his mind the events of the previous day. The hideous sight of Franz pinioned on the pole. The frantic mobile phone calls. The fateful decision, in the end, to saw the pole in half and drive Franz-still skewered-all the way to Sanliurfa in Christine’s car.

Rob had followed with Radevan. The battered Toyota pursued the Land Rover down the hills and across the plains to the Haran University Hospital in the new quarter of town. There Rob waited in the slightly shabby corridors with Christine and Ivan and Franz’s sobbing wife. He was still there when the doctors came out with the inevitable news: Franz Breitner had died.

The carp were now fighting for the very last bit of bread. Biting each other. Rob turned away. He saw a submachine-gun toting Turkish soldier lounging by a jeep parked at the edge of the greenery. The soldier scowled at him.

The city was on a special edge-and it had nothing to do with Breitner’s death. A suicide bomb had gone off in Dyarbakir, the Kurdish-Turkish city two hundred dusty miles east, the centre of Kurdish separatism. No one had died but ten people had been injured, and it had notched up the tension of the area once more. The police and the army were visible and everywhere, this afternoon.

Rob sighed, wearily. Sometimes it felt as if violence was universal. Inescapable. And Rob wanted to escape it.

Crossing a small wooden bridge over a tiny canal he sat at a wooden table. The tea house waiter came over, wiping his hands on a towel hanging from his waistband, and Rob ordered water, tea and some olives. He really had to try and not think about Franz for a moment. About the sight of the blood in Christine’s car. The pole sticking obscenely out of Franz’s torso…

‘Sir?’

The waiter had brought Rob’s tea. The teaspoon clinked. The sugar lump dissolved in the dark red liquid. The sun was shining through the trees of the little park. A small boy wearing a Manchester United shirt was playing with a football across the lawns. His mother was shrouded in black.

Rob finished the tea. He had to get proactive. Checking the time in London, he picked up his mobile phone and dialled.

‘Yup!’ Steve’s normal gruffness.

‘Hi, it’s…’

‘Robbie! My archaeological correspondent. How are the stones?’

The cheery cockney accent lifted Rob’s spirit a little. He wondered whether to ruin the mood by telling Steve what had happened. Before he could decide, Steve said, ‘Liked the notes you sent. Looking forward to the piece. When’s your deadline?’

‘Well, it was tomorrow, but…’

‘Good lad. File by five.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘And send me some jpegs! Nice shots of the-’

‘Steve there’s a problem.’

The end of the line went silent. Finally. Rob seized the opportunity and launched into it. He told Steve everything. The strange mysteries and difficulties surrounding the dig, the resentment of the workers, the weird death chant, the envenomed local politics, the odd nocturnal diggings. He explained to his editor that he hadn’t mentioned all this stuff before, because he wasn’t sure of the relevance. Steve snapped back, ‘And it’s relevant now?’

‘Yes. Because…’ Rob looked at the castle on the cliff with the big red Turkish flag. He took a deep breath. Then he told Steve the horrible story of Franz’s death. At the end of which Steve simply said, ‘Jesus. What are you like?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I sent you to this dig cause I thought you needed a break. Somewhere nice and quiet. A few fucking stones. No drama. No Luttrell in Trouble.’

‘Yes, I guess…and…’

‘And you end up in the middle of a civil war with a bunch of devil priests and then some Hun gets kebabbed.’ Steve chuckled. ‘Sorry, mate, shouldn’t make light of it. Must have been shite. But what do you wanna do now?’

Rob thought hard. What did he wanna do? He didn’t know. ‘I’m not sure…I think I actually need some editorial guidance.’ He stood up, his phone still pressed to his ear. ‘Steve, you’re the boss. I’m at a loss. Tell me what to do-and I’ll do it.’

‘Trust your instinct.’

‘You mean?’

‘Trust yourself. You’ve got a great nose for a story. You’re like a fucking bloodhound.’ Steve’s voice was firm. ‘So tell me. Is there a story here?’

Rob knew at once. He turned and looked at the waiter and motioned for the bill. ‘Yes. I think there is.’

‘There you are then. Do it. Dig around. Stay another two weeks, minimum.’

Rob nodded. He felt a professional excitement-but it was tainted with sadness. Breitner’s death had been so sickening. And he was yearning to go home and see his daughter. He decided to confess. ‘But Steve, I want to see Lizzie.’

‘Your little girl?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Softboy.’ Steve laughed. ‘How old is she now?’

‘Five.’

The editor went quiet. Rob glanced at the old mosque across the glittering fishpond. Christine had told him it was once a church-a Crusader church.

‘All right, Rob. If you do this for me we’ll fly you home straight afterwards. Business class, OK?’

‘Thanks.’

‘We like to encourage good parenting at The Times. But I’ll need something from you in the meantime.’

‘Like what?’

‘Give me the basic stones story. Need copy for Thursday. But I’ll put a little teaser in, hint that there’s more. We can make it a series. From our man in the Stone Age. With the demons in the desert.’