Breath of Hell (Harry Bauer Book 8)

by Blake Banner

  “Harry?”

  I sighed, and for a second wallowed in self-pity. “I blew it.”

  “Explain.”

  “They were expecting me.” I told him how Marianne had come to the Apollonis, how we’d hit the sack and then gone out to dinner. “I was overconfident, sir. I bought her act as an arrogant, naïve narcissist. She was convincing. They both were.”

  “Learn from it and move on. So what happened?”

  “We had dinner and she said she wanted to go to a small bar on the beach before bed. My plan was to take her to my room, put her lights out and go and get the colonel.”

  “Good.”

  “But she and Yushbaev were several steps ahead. She took me down to a cove and four of Yushbaev’s boys joined us with knives.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No. I killed them. But she told me they had never believed the Bob Foley story. Yushbaev had been waiting for me ever since I killed Cavendish. When I asked to be shown the yacht it alerted them Bob Foley was probably Harry Bauer.” I sighed. He didn’t say anything. I went on. “I was uncomfortable boarding that yacht without some kind of recon. I thought I could fool them. I was wrong. They were smart.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I would probably have done the same. It’s in our training, Harry. Prepare, prepare and then prepare some more. After that…”

  “Prepare again.”

  “Precisely. What you probably didn’t need to do was respond to Yushbaev’s arrogant provocations. Am I right? Did you show off?”

  “Maybe a bit, yeah.”

  “Didn’t we teach you to be meek, and whimper and simper when necessary? It’s an essential part of counterinterrogation.”

  “Yeah, my mother sent a note that day.”

  He grunted. “What you see as a strength, Harry, is a weakness. It may have cost the colonel her life. Make it right. If you haven’t already run out of time. It may be too late.”

  “I know.”

  “Now, what about Charlotte?”

  “Yushbaev owns her hotel, or at least one of his companies does. I am pretty sure he is going to want to sell it now, to distance himself from the shit storm that’s about to hit the fan. He will instruct his people to sell it tomorrow. I told Charlotte we’d buy it in her name if she’d alibi me.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said it wasn’t enough. She wanted me to kill him too.”

  For a moment he sounded alarmed. “Did you tell her about Cobra?”

  “No. She assumes I am CIA.”

  “All right. I’ll get the finance department onto it now. Tell her to expect somebody in the next forty-eight hours. But, Harry? You pay for the hotel. We’ll handle it, and we’ll explain the terms and consequences of any breach of the agreement. But this is on you. You pay, and you had better make damned sure the colonel has not been hurt as a consequence of this.”

  A wave of hot shame washed over me. The brigadier was about the only person on the planet who could do that. I said, “I understand.”

  “I know you do. Now, go to Naxos. There will be a plane waiting for you. Go to Istanbul. Make this right, and no more showing off.”

  I hung up and went inside. Charlotte raised her face and watched me with big, wet eyes.

  “It’s a deal. I’m going to leave now. The hotel will be bought and put in your name sometime this morning. Somebody will come and see you in the next forty-eight hours. They will bring the deeds and explain the terms of this agreement.”

  “You mean they’ll threaten to kill me too if I don’t comply.”

  “No.” She gave a dry laugh but I ignored her. “They might ridicule you, attack your credibility, maybe even sue you for libel or slander. But all we want is for you to forget that this ever happened. We had a party, we all drank too much. I left early in my yacht. You slept the night through. What you assume is that four of Yushbaev’s boys left the boat, got into a fight, either with each other, or with some local guys. Nobody will ever know for sure.” She nodded and I drove it home. “Try and implicate me and we’ll prove you’re lying. They’ll make you look like a crazy, alcoholic conspiracy nut.”

  “I don’t want to implicate you. I like you. Just find him and kill him.”

  I nodded, turned and left the hotel with a dull ache in the back of my head and a sick feeling in my belly.

  * * *

  I touched down at Istanbul International Airport at noon the following day, feeling pretty ragged. Cobra had booked me a room at the 10 Karakoy, a luxurious brown and beige marble boutique hotel a stone’s throw from the Golden Horn, where it meets the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. It was, however, a good half hour’s drive from the airport—in spite of the driver’s attempts to reach warp speed ten—some fifteen or twenty miles to the north and west of Istanbul.

  The million-dollar question, once I had got to Naxos, was what to do with the hardware I had stashed onboard. I had assumed the brigadier would have his man come from the mainland and collect it. But he had said no. He’d have someone collect it and take it to Kabardinka, a holiday resort on the Black Sea, just twenty miles from Yushbaev’s palace. It seemed crazy to me, but I figured he knew what he was doing. He usually did.

  I checked in, had the bellhop take my bags up to my room, gave him fifty bucks and told him not to let anybody disturb me for the next four hours. That was how long I allowed myself to sleep the sleep of the dead.

  I awoke at five in the afternoon, had a long shower alternating between scalding hot and cold, and emerged feeling almost human, but in bad need of food.

  Down in the lobby, I was planning to go and get a drink and some food at the Atakoy Marina. Some rough mental arithmetic had told me the Bucephalus would be doing anything up to forty knots to put nautical miles between herself and Koufonisi. That would give her an average speed of forty-five miles per hour over a distance of about three hundred and ninety miles. That meant that the Bucephalus would have been arriving in Istanbul about eight and a half hours after she left the island—about four hours before I had.

  A call to the brigadier from my taxi had confirmed that they had satellite images of the Bucephalus docking at the Atakoy Marina, about six or seven miles from the mouth of the Bosphorus. After I had slept, I figured it would be a good idea to take a stroll down there and have a look. But like Joseph Heller said, nothing ever works as planned. Which means that the only point in making a plan, is so you can adapt it to all the things that go wrong with it from the moment you start to execute it.

  What went wrong as I crossed the lobby was that the concierge hailed me and said, “Oh, Mr. Bauer, you have somebody here to see you.”

  I approached the desk. “Somebody to see me? Who and where?”

  “Mr. Armitage, sir. He is in the bar. You told us not to disturb, so I advised him he might have to wait a while.”

  I nodded. “Good, thanks.”

  Armitage. It took me a few seconds while I moved toward the bar. Then it came to me. Colonel James Armitage of the United States Air Force. He’d shown up at my apartment in Los Angeles just after the colonel had disappeared, asking about my relationship with her.[7]

  The bar had wooden walls, subdued lighting and potted palms. I found Colonel James Armitage sitting at a table with what looked like a large Scotch in front of him. He had an attaché case beside his feet and he was reading a file. He was not in uniform. He looked up and removed a pair of reading glasses from his nose when I leaned on the back of the chair across from him.

  “Mr. Bauer, good of you to see me.” He laid the file on the table in front of him. “Would you like a drink?”

  “I haven’t much time, Colonel. What’s this about?”

  “May I give you some advice, Mr. Bauer?”

  “I guess that depends on the advice.”

  “Make time.”

  He held my eye and I knew I had no choice. I had to find out what he was doing there, and why he wanted to see me. I signaled the barman. “Macallan, double, no ice.
” I pulled out the chair and sat. “Are you following me?”

  He gave a small laugh that was not entirely humorless.

  “You say that as though it were an easy thing to do. We have been trying to follow you. Have you heard of the Five Eyes?”

  I had heard of the Five Eyes. It referred to an intelligence alliance between the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, founded on a treaty for joint cooperation and signals intelligence. Departments within those five governments had also come together to form Cobra, the very special kind of NGO I worked for. Its brief: identify the trash, and take it out.

  I knew what the Five Eyes was, but I said, “No, what is that, Lobsang Rampa with glasses on?”

  If he got my allusion to the author of The Third Eye, he didn’t show it. Or he didn’t think it was funny.

  “We share intelligence and cooperate with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It means if I want to watch the airports in those countries, there are protocols we follow and if you enter or leave any of those countries by train, plane, ship or automobile, I get to hear about it, very quickly. I also have access to CCTV footage, and all other forms of intelligence.”

  “You have my number, you could have just called.”

  “Are you a funny man, Mr. Bauer? I haven’t got a great sense of humor. Especially at the moment. Jane was a friend of mine, and I am still not one hundred percent convinced that you didn’t kill her.”

  The waiter brought my drink and set it in front of me. I looked at it a moment and sighed. “So you tracked me across two continents—”

  “No, you dropped off the radar in California and nobody saw or heard anything of you until MI6 spotted you in Greece, and then again in Turkey. I have no idea where you have been in the meantime.”

  “MI6, huh? All right, so you found me. What do you want?”

  “I want to know why you are here, in Istanbul, and, above all, I want to know where Jane is.”

  “Why I am in Istanbul is none of your damn business, or the United States Air Force’s for that matter. And I have no idea…”

  He raised a hand. “Stop right there, Harry.” The gesture, and the use of my first name, pulled me up short. “Let’s cut the bullshit. We both know that you left Los Angeles to look for Jane. You can take it as read that the Air Force has me investigating her disappearance because I am not stupid. So I would take it as a kindness if you would show me the minimal courtesy of not treating me as though I am an idiot.”

  He paused and took a breath, looking down at his drink. He picked it up, thought about taking a sip and put it down again.

  “When we spoke in Los Angeles you told me you were talking to the Cavendish Foundation about providing Third World children with clean water, or some similar project.” He paused and held my eye. “A couple of days later Charles Cavendish was killed aboard his yacht fifty miles off Arroyo Grande.”

  I was shaking my head and frowning. “Wait a minute. What are you talking about? He wasn’t killed aboard his yacht. His yacht exploded because of a faulty gas fitment. The propane tanks exploded.”

  He shrugged in a way that was overtly dismissive. “If you like. The point is, I do not know how those two facts are connected, but I am damned sure they are. There is also the fact that his personal assistant was gunned down in your apartment, and you disappeared at exactly the same time that Cavendish was killed, a couple of days later.”

  “That he died.”

  “Two days after his assistant was murdered in your apartment.”

  “None of which means that I know where the colonel is, and none of which means I had anything to do with her disappearance.”

  He gave his head a brief shake. “No, in fact I don’t think you had anything to do with her disappearance. We checked the CCTV footage from the hotel. What you said was true. She climbed out of your TVR and entered the hotel. But the cameras inside the hotel lobby did not capture her coming through. It was as you said in Los Angeles. Whatever happened to her, happened between those two sets of doors. But none of that takes away from the fact that you are in some way involved. It’s just too many coincidences.”

  I was quiet for a moment. “She doesn’t enter the lobby.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “But somebody leaves.”

  His eyebrows twitched and knit momentarily. “Yes, somebody leaves. Two people.”

  “And one of them was carrying a long coat, a gabardine perhaps?”

  Now his frown deepened. “How could you know that?”

  “Because it would be the only way to conceal the very striking dress she was wearing. They must have put the coat on her and hustled her out to a waiting van or car.” I hesitated a moment, then, “So if you don’t think I had anything to do with her disappearance…” I spread my hands.

  “People have a habit of either dying or disappearing around you.” He pointed at me. “I believe you were there for Cavendish, and I believe you are here looking for Jane. And before you try to deny it, let me tell you that would be pointless.”

  “Colonel.” I picked up my glass and swirled the contents around for a second. “Assuming for a moment that you were right—and I am not admitting anything—assuming you were right, why would I admit it to you?”

  “The way I see it, Harry,” he paused, “do you mind if I call you Harry?” I gave my head a small shake. “The way I see it, Harry, is that you have information about where Jane is that I need. And I have resources that are second to none in the world. We might be able to help each other.”

  I nodded. “That would be great if I was looking for her, but I am not, and I have no information as to her whereabouts.” I made to rise but stopped. “Have you spoken to the local CIA representative?”

  He gave me a very steady look. “No, they don’t know I’m here and I would like to keep it that way.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a brown leather wallet. From it he removed an embossed card and handed it to me. “I have a feeling you are going to change your mind. If you do, this is my private cell number. Call me. I am not here in an official capacity, and this mission is not sanctioned, so I would be grateful if you called me Jim.”

  “Thanks for the drink, Jim.”

  I drained my glass but before I could stand he said, “I know about your background, Harry. I know about Captain Hartmann and Ben-Amini. I have friends in the SAS. I did a couple of training exercises with them when I was younger. I know what happened and I know what kind of man you are.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That the chances of your letting Jane’s abduction go unanswered are somewhat less than one in a million. If you are in Istanbul, it’s because you think she is.” He stood and drained his glass. “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  Thirteen

  The afternoon was on the brink of evening. The sun was just a few inches above the horizon, its light had acquired a coppery hue and it was making long shadows across the parking lot of the Ataköy Marina. Some of those shadows were the warped shapes of the few cars that were parked there. Others, more abundant, were from the trees that fringed the lot, providing me with cover but allowing me to keep an eye on the Bucephalus, moored just fifty paces away from where I was sitting in the Corolla I had rented from the hotel. It was a car without virtues, except that it was anonymous. And right then that was the best virtue it could have had.

  I had positioned myself at the northeastern end of the lot so that I had the dying sun reflecting off my windshield and driver-side windows, effectively hiding me from view; assuming anyone aboard the Bucephalus could see my car beyond the wall of trees.

  I waited an hour. During that time I saw activity aboard, but I didn’t see anybody I recognized, just crew members and staff. Then, just as the western horizon was turning flame red, I saw Yushbaev emerge onto the rear boarding deck. He was talking over his shoulder. Immediately behind him came Marianne. She stopped and turned back and that was when I saw the colo
nel emerge. She was in jeans, with a white blouse, a brown leather jacket and a leather bag hanging from one shoulder. She stopped to talk to Marianne and Yushbaev. There was no particular feeling to the way they were talking. They might have been discussing arrangements for dinner, or a shopping list. After a moment she put her hand on Yushbaev’s shoulder and kissed him on the cheek, then she walked down the gangway onto the quay.

  I was aware the rate of my breathing had increased, and I had hot coals in my belly. I watched her enter the parking lot and I saw the lights on an F-Type Jaguar flash. The colonel approached it and climbed in behind the wheel. The engine roared, I let her cross the lot and then followed her out onto Kennedy Avenue, headed east. I held back and allowed her to pull ahead. At the Ayetkin Kotil Park she took the exit onto the overpass and I followed her to the Ekrem Kurt Boulevard interchange. The streets were busy, anyone who has driven in Turkey knows that Turkish drivers believe traffic accidents are an American myth devised by Hollywood to undermine the Turkish economy, and that anyone inside a car is in fact invulnerable to death or mutilation. And that’s how they drive.

  The roads in that part of the city were broad and attractive, and there was an abundance of trees and green spaces, and lights which were widely and cheerfully ignored. I followed her around the circus and into Aksu Osmaniye Yolu Street, where things became more narrow and crowded and I had to fall right back to avoid her noticing me. We moved, stopping and starting, along a two-way street that was wide enough for one car. At Adelet Street she took a left and I followed her past two and three-storey apartment blocks with balconies and bright awnings. There the ground floors were all occupied by hardware stores, butchers, grocery stores, cheap clothes stores and cell phone shops, where the merchandise spilled from the shop out onto the sidewalks and groups of women gathered in clusters to view them and argue about the prices. And in every doorway that was not a store, there seemed to be an old woman sitting on a chair on the sidewalk, chewing on her gums and watching her neighborhood roll by.