‘But…’ Rob started. His throbbed with pain, where he had been punched.

Kiribali silenced him. ‘I went to the apartment, your hotel room. Empty! Both empty. I knew you must have come here. You are so foolish. Such foolish people!’ The BMW was speeding down the wide, lamplit road. Kiribali spoke in hurried Turkish to the driver; the driver answered obediently.

Then the officer flashed a very dark frown at Rob. ‘You have a couple of bags in the back. Passports. Your laptops. We will send the rest of your possessions. You are leaving Turkey tonight.’ He tossed two items into the back seat. ‘Your tickets. For Istanbul, then London. One way only. Tonight.’

Christine protested, but her reply was faltering, and her voice tremulous. Kiribali gazed at her with infinite disdain, then he and the driver exchanged some more words. The car was now on the outskirts of town. The flat semi-desert was quiet in the night, the colour of tarnished silver in the moonlight.

When they reached the airport the driver handed them their bags from the boot. Inside the tiny airport, Kiribali watched them check in. Then he pointed at the departure gate. ‘I do not expect to see either of you again. If you return the Kurds will probably kill you. Even if they don’t, I will throw you both in jail. For a very long time.’ He clicked his heels together, like a Prussian officer obeying an order, then he gave them another angry, contemptuous glare-and then he was gone.

Rob and Christine filed through security and boarded the plane. It taxied, and took off. Rob sank back into the seats, his whole body throbbing with pain and adrenaline. He could really feel it now: the surge of emotion, the fear; the eager fury. It was the same feeling he had experienced after the Iraqi suicide bomb. Rob clenched and unclenched his jaw muscles. His lip still hurt, his tooth was cracked. He tried to relax himself. His mind was racing, almost painfully. The story wasn’t over. He was a journalist. A good journalist. That’s all he was-but he could use it. He needed to channel this anger, this impotent anger, his humiliated masculinity. If they thought they could frighten him away with guns and knives they were wrong. He would get the story. He wouldn’t be scared away. He had to relax, though he felt like shouting. He looked across at Christine.

And then, for the first time since the baby urn had broken open, she spoke directly to him. Quietly but clearly she said, ‘Canaanites’.’

‘What?’

‘That’s what the ancient Canaanites did. They buried their children. Alive.’ She turned and stared ahead. ‘And in jars.’

Rob put down his phone and surveyed the tedious bustle of Istanbul airport. He’d spent an hour talking to his daughter: a happy, chatting, wistful, delightful hour. He’d then spent a slightly fractious and annoying ten minutes talking to her mother. His ex-wife, it turned out, was taking his daughter Lizzie to the country for a fortnight, starting today. Even if he flew home this minute he would miss her.

Rob rubbed the tiredness from his face. They’d arrived in the middle of the night and grabbed some frazzled sleep on the airport seats. It hadn’t really de-stressed him. What an incredible twentyfour hours it had been. What a bizarre chain of events. And what was he going to do now?

‘Hey soldier.’ Christine was brandishing cans of Diet Coke. ‘Thought you could use one of these.’

Rob took his can, gratefully, and cracked it open; the icy cola stung his broken lip.

‘Is everything OK at home, Robert?’

‘Yes…’ He watched a Chinese businessman hawking exuberantly into a rubbish bin. ‘No. Not really. Family stuff…’

‘Ah.’ She gazed levelly across the transit lounge. ’Look at it. All so ordinary. Starbucks. McDonalds…You’d never think we were nearly kidnapped. Just last night.’

Rob knew what she meant. He sighed, and gazed resentfully at the Departures screen. Their flight for London was many hours away. He really didn’t want to be here, killing time. But he didn’t want to go back to London if his daughter wasn’t there. What was the point? What he wanted to do was to resolve the story, finish the deal. He’d already spoken to his editor and told him a slightly bowdlerized version of the latest developments. Steve had sworn, twice, and then asked Rob if he felt safe. Rob had said that, despite it all, he felt fine. So Steve had tentatively agreed that Rob could continue-‘as long as you avoid getting shot in the head’. He had even promised to put some more money in Rob’s account to help things along. So the compass was pointing in one direction. Don’t quit. Don’t give up. Press on. Get the story.

But there was a big problem with pressing on: Rob didn’t know how Christine was feeling. The ordeal at the museum had been extremely frightening. He felt he could deal with what had happened, because he was used to danger. He’d handled Iraq. Just about. Could he expect Christine to be equally stoical? Was it asking too much of her? She was a scientist, not a news journalist. He finished the Coke and wandered over to the rubbish bin to toss the can. When he came back Christine scrutinized him with a faint smile. ‘You don’t want to fly home, do you?’

‘How did you guess?’

‘The way you keep scowling at the departure board, like it’s your worst enemy.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I feel exactly the same, Robert. Too many loose ends. We can’t just run away can we?’

‘So…what shall we do?’

‘Let’s go and see my friend, Isobel Previn. She lives here.’

Half an hour later they were hailing an airport cab; ten minutes after that, they were streaking along the motorway: heading into the hubbub of Istanbul. En route, Christine reprised the backstory of Isobel Previn.

‘She lived in Konya for a long time. Working with James Mellaert. Catalhoyuk. And she was my tutor at Cambridge.’

‘Right. I remember you saying.’

Rob gazed out of the cab window. Beyond the flyovers and housing estates he could see a huge dome surrounded by four lofty minarets: Hagia Sophia, the great cathedral of Constantinople. Fifteen hundred years old.

Istanbul, it seemed, was a curious and kinetic place. Ancient walls collided with shiny skyscrapers. The streets were filled with western-looking people: girls in short skirts, men in smart suits-but every so often they sped past some Levantine neighbourhood, with grimy blacksmiths, and veiled mothers, and lines of lurid washing. And surrounding it all, visible between the apartment blocks and the office towers, was the mighty Bosphorus, the great arc of water dividing Asia from Europe, and the West from the East. The barbarians from civilization. Depending on which side you lived.

Christine called her friend Isobel. Rob gleaned from the overheard conversation that Isobel was delighted to hear from her former student. He waited for the call to conclude, then asked, ‘So where does she live?’

‘She’s got a house on one of the Princes Islands. We can get a ferry from the port.’ Christine smiled. ’It’s very pretty. And she’s invited us to stay.’

Rob assented, happily.

Christine added, ‘She might well be able to help with the…archaeological mysteries.’

The hideous little mummy in the amphora: the olive jar. As the cab driver shouted at the lorries, Rob asked Christine more about the Canaanites.

‘I used to work at Tell Gezer,’ Christine said. ’It’s a site in the Judaean Hills, half an hour from Jerusalem. A Canaanite city.’

The car was heading downhill now. They’d turned off the road and were crawling through crowded, energetic streets.

‘The Canaanites used to bury their firstborn children, alive, in jars. Some were found at the site. Babies in jars, just like the ones in the museum vault. So I think that’s what we found in the cellar. A sacrifice.’