Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train

by Maria Hudgins

  Jason Remmick walked in accompanied by Kemal and said, “I’m Michael Craven. I’m here to claim my brother’s body and take it home.”

  “May I see your identification?” This question, also in English, came from a youthful but accented voice, probably Sergeant Osman.

  Lacy allowed herself another peek. Jason stood on one side of the chest-high counter, Osman on the other side, bent over a document and making notes. Kemal stood close behind Jason. Paul and Bob had slipped in and appeared to be edging themselves counter-clockwise around the room, hugging the wall. When Osman handed a dark blue booklet back to Jason, Kemal said, “Are you ready? If you will step outside with me . . .” And they were gone.

  Lacy popped out from her hiding place and said, “The passport you gave back to him, what name?”

  “Michael Craven,” Osman said.

  “Was it a real passport?”

  “It looked real to me.”

  “How did he get a fake passport done so fast?”

  “Why fake?” Paul asked.

  “Because that’s the man who kidnapped me, taped me up, and left me to die in Istanbul. That’s the man I met on the train who called himself Jason Remmick. That’s the man who must have killed Max Sebring! Could he really be Michael Craven?”

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute!” Paul made a T with his hands. “Before we make a fatal mistake, we need to be sure we know what we’re doing. There must be a list of passengers who were on the train that day.” He turned to Osman. “Is there?”

  The young man scowled, his gaze darting randomly around the room. “It would be in the files. Yes. The files.”

  “And where are the files?”

  “Follow me.” Osman’s hands shook as he gathered his paperwork and stuck it in a desk drawer, locked the drawer, and headed for the back room. “I am not sure I should.”

  “You should! Hurry.” Paul followed right behind him, nearly tripping when Osman stopped in front of a metal file cabinet. Unlocking one of the sliding drawers, the sergeant thumbed through and selected a folder, removed some pages and handed them to Paul.

  Lacy pulled on Paul’s arm so she could read along with him. The names were written in several different hands by several different conductors. She found her own name and beside it, her passport number. No Jason Remmick or anything similar appeared anywhere on the list. But Michael Craven did.

  Osman’s quick check of the paper he’d just locked up in the front desk showed same passport number.

  “Out we go then,” Paul said. “Sergeant? You need to run out and tell Captain Kemal the man he’s talking to needs to be arrested for impersonating an officer, kidnapping Dr. Glass, and leaving her to die.” When Osman ran out Paul said to Lacy and Bob, “What about us?”

  Lacy said, “If he sees me, he’ll know he’s screwed.”

  “At this point, I don’t think that matters.”

  “What if he runs?”

  “From the Turkish Gendarmerie? They’d nail him before he got to the road.”

  The three moved to the parking lot where they stood watch, leaning against the side panel of Craven’s van. Kemal marched Michael Craven past them and into the station, one hand firmly clamped on the back of his captive’s belt. Craven looked toward his van and saw Lacy. He stiffened, twisted out of the captain’s grasp, and lunged forward. In a flash, Kemal grabbed him around the neck, whipped out a pair of handcuffs, and snapped them onto Craven’s wrists. Paul stepped forward and held the gendarmerie door open for them.

  “What next, Twigs?”

  “We need to find Henry,” Lacy said, “but I can’t leave here yet. They’ll need to ask me some more questions, and probably want me to sign another statement.”

  “And I want to be here when the Interpol agents arrive,” Bob added.

  “Damn. I forgot about that. Todd’s still cooling his heels inside, isn’t he? But we’ve given them the loot we found last night,” Paul said, as if he were planning and talking at the same time. “He needs to see a doctor. I know I broke his tailbone, and the way he was walking when they hauled him off last night I may have cracked a few of his ribs as well. I could leave you and Lacy here and run back to camp. If Henry’s not there, I could come back and pick you up.”

  That proved unnecessary. A blue Fiat was approaching from the south, its turn signal flashing its intention.

  “It’s Henry. What do we do now?”

  “Behind Craven’s van. That way he won’t see us until he’s out of the car.”

  “We’re acting like we know he’s guilty!” Bob protested. “We only want to talk to him.”

  “Behind the van! Now!”

  Bob acquiesced and joined them on the upslope side of the van not visible from the driveway. They heard the motor die, the door open, then close. As Henry approached the front door, his hand out to open it, Bob ambled casually toward him. “Morning, Henry. I guess you heard about what we found last night.”

  Brilliant. Lacy’s opinion of Bob Mueller rose a couple of notches. He was telling Henry, I assume you’re here for the same reason we are: To find out what you can about the smuggling of antiquities. After all, Henry, as a representative of the Sebring Foundation, would be directly affected by last night’s discovery and any scandal that might arise from it. Lacy whispered to Paul that it would be helpful if they could delay Henry’s finding out they suspected he was culpable in the death of Max’s imposter.

  Nice try, but not good enough. Henry had parked near Michael Craven’s van. Now he turned at Bob’s greeting, saw the men standing around a hole with a cloth-wrapped lump beside it, and Lacy. Did he think she was dead? Lacy wondered if he thought he’d finished the job with the pillow before he fled the hospital. He nodded toward them, paused a moment, then took off toward his Fiat. He scrambled around the front of the vehicle, colliding with the left headlight, and lunged for the door. He fell into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and let out a scream.

  Lacy figured he was thinking, “She’s already seen the man she knows as Jason. I’m screwed.”

  “You forgot your keys,” Paul said, dangling them high, from his latest position on a rocky knoll west of the parking lot.

  Lacy opened the passenger side door of the Fiat and bent down enough to see Henry’s face. “It’s time to tell the truth, Henry. You can probably fake them out for a few minutes, but there’s no way you’re going to convince anyone you spent two weeks with a man and didn’t notice he wasn’t your boss.”

  “Get in, Lacy.” Henry’s voice came out in a croak.

  Lacy sat on the passenger seat but left one foot on the ground outside.

  “Close the door. I want to talk to you.”

  “Uh-uh. The door stays open.”

  Tears were flowing down both his cheeks now. “You have no idea! No idea what I went through working for that man. I did everything for him. I had no life of my own. Twenty-four-seven. Get so-and-so on the phone. Pack my bags. Stay with my wife so the nurse can take a break. Change my wife’s diapers! He promised me I was his heir. He promised I’d be head of the Sebring Foundation when he retired. He lied. I was never his heir! I’m not even in his will.” He swiped his forearm across his eyes, took a deep, shuddering breath. “I never meant for anyone to die. All I wanted was to get back a bit of what he owed me.”

  Lacy looked through the windshield of the little Fiat. Paul and Bob stood no more than a couple of feet ahead, arms folded across chests, feet planted.

  “It’s time to go inside, Henry,’ she said. “I’ll walk with you.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  A cleansing rain came in mid-afternoon, pulling cooler air behind it. When Lacy, Paul, and Bob finished their interviews at the station and returned to camp, they weren’t surprised to find no work being done but were pleased to see that the workers had covered the excavation with protective tarps and secured the corners with rocks. Paul and Bob trekked across to the river to search for other secret holes or for any museum pieces that might have been
dropped accidentally.

  Lacy’s first task was to make peace with Süleyman Güler, whom she had last seen in her rearview mirror waving his arms and shouting, “Don’t leave me!” She found him in the lean-to they called a kitchen. He was arranging a tray of luscious-looking pastries and, at first, refused to make eye contact with her. She didn’t blame him.

  “Put yourself in my place, Süleyman. I’d had two serious attempts on my life and I was more than a little paranoid. You see, I knew the attack on Sierra was meant for me. I’d been chased all over Istanbul and I was getting email threats from an anonymous sender who called himself Golden Boy. While I was playing with the puppies, I got a call from a man who said, ‘Leave. Get out of there. Süleyman is going to kill you.’ He identified himself as Milo, a friend of mine from Istanbul. A man I trust. I know now that it wasn’t Milo. It was Henry Jones, faking a British accent. He gave me a big story about how he, Milo, was tracking me with GPS and I believed him.”

  “That was stupid of you.”

  “I know, I know. I’m so sorry. He was actually watching me, probably through binoculars, from the road about a mile away. I was so leery of being ambushed again that I did as he said. I left. I deserted you. I’m sorry.”

  “It isn’t so bad that you deserted me. What’s bad is that you believed I was going to kill you! Do you not trust me more than that?” He looked up from his tray of pastries, a heart-wrenching plea on his face.

  Lacy felt like dropping to her knees in abject humility. “I do trust you, Süleyman. At that moment I wasn’t thinking straight. Can you forgive me?”

  “Oh, why not?” He smiled a little and lifted his tray of desserts, turning it and offering. They were small cake-like cubes and one was sliced open, revealing a creamy chocolate filling. “Peace?” He pointed to one.

  Lacy took it and smiled through a film of tears. This was a good man. She bit into the little cake and felt the soft center squish out, flooding her mouth. Then she gagged and spit the whole thing onto the ground. “Oh my God!”

  “You don’t like chicken liver cake?” He giggled. “Perhaps I should cook the liver first?”

  Stuffing her shirttail into her mouth, she scrubbed out the worst of the fatty glob, but a film still clung to her teeth and tongue. “Okay. I deserved that.”

  * * *

  After dinner, Bob addressed the whole camp as all were finishing their desserts, none of which were filled with anything but chocolate. He told them what he knew about the smuggling of antiquities from the Iraq museum and asked them to come to him with anything they’d seen that might shed more light on the illegal operation. It was useless to deny that Todd Majewski was the middleman since he was conspicuous by his absence. He told them Todd was being transferred to Ankara and asked them to cooperate with any officials who came around asking questions. “If you have any reason to suspect someone isn’t really an official, come to me,” he cautioned. “There may be fortune seekers who try to horn in, looking for buried treasure we missed.”

  Paul nudged Lacy and grinned. Fortune seekers? Bob Mueller warning his minions against fortune seekers? A touch of irony there.

  Paul and Lacy had been ordered not to tell the workers anything about Henry Jones and the Sebring conspiracy. The murder investigation was ongoing and, unlike the smuggling operation, one that might be compromised by gossip. The police were moving Henry and Michael Craven, alias Jason, to separate locations to prevent them conferring with one another. Istanbul police were looking for an Elaine Farrell, a former employee of the Sebring Museum and known to Lacy as “the woman with bright orange hair.”

  As the workers filed out, Madison Penrose came up to Bob and touched his elbow. Lacy heard her whisper, “You need to talk to Tyler. He knows something about the smugglers.”

  * * *

  The students drifted off to their evening pursuits but Paul, Lacy, Bob, and Gülden stayed in the big tent, comparing notes and catching up. Süleyman joined them when he finished puttering around the buffet table. Paul, his boot-clad feet resting on an extra chair, said, “Would any of you mind if we included Sierra in on this? She won’t talk to the others if we tell her not to, and I think she deserves to know why she got attacked.”

  Lacy started to bristle but realized Paul was right. Sierra could easily have been killed. The stitches had only recently been removed from her partially shaved head. Paul left and came back with Sierra, pulling up a chair for her. Sierra had taken to fluffing her dark, tousled hair so the bare spot hardly showed.

  “I, for one, am totally confused,” Gülden said. “I’ve been hearing bits and pieces all day and none of it is making any sense.”

  Paul said, “Let’s let Lacy explain. She’s the only one who knows the whole story. I’m missing a few pieces myself.”

  Lacy nodded. “It started with a kidnapping plot. Henry Jones detested the way he’d been treated by Max Sebring and he found three others who shared his hatred for the man. A woman who’d been fired from the museum, and a plumber and an electrician. The plumber and the electrician were brothers whose reputation and business had been damaged when Max Sebring accused them of using the museum for a smuggling operation. The charge may not have been justified. They may have been innocent. Michael Craven, the electrician, swears it was a false accusation. All of you knew his brother Clifford as Max Sebring.”

  “So that’s why he kept sorting out the finds in nonsensical ways,” Gülden said, clapping her hands in delight at a mystery explained. “He didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “Right,” Lacy went on. “And he did other things that the real Max wouldn’t have done. Why, after designing symbols for the handmade rug he’d ordered and continuing to issue explicit instructions to the weaver over the course of a whole year, did he say nothing more than, ‘That’s nice,’ when he picked it up?”

  “And why was he reading archaeology books for beginners?” Paul interjected. “The books next to his bed were beneath the level of a freshman archaeology student.”

  “I’m getting ahead of myself,” Lacy said. “Let’s back up. So we have these four people who hate Max Sebring and want to get even. How can they get money out of him? They all feel he owes them. Owes them big. But Max doesn’t have any money of his own. It’s his father’s money. The Sebring Foundation and Max are both supported by money that’s managed by accountants who answer to Max’s father. The old man is about ninety but still going strong. Aha! How about kidnapping Max and hitting his old man for a huge ransom?” Lacy drained the last of her coffee. Her stomach contracted when she caught a glimpse of half-eaten pastry on a paper plate. She recalled the taste of raw liver.

  “So they kidnap Max. They decide they can’t manage it in the U.S. Too risky. Too many people know where Max is and where he’s going next. But what if Max disappears when he goes to Turkey? When Max starts making plans for coming here, Henry figures they can grab him here and no one at home or at the Sebring Foundation will miss him. Someone else would have to take his place here, of course, or Bob and Paul would have called home immediately. They were anxiously awaiting his arrival. How hard would it be to get a stand-in? Who, here, knew Max well enough to know it wasn’t him? Only Bob. Paul had never met Max. And—forgive me, Bob—though Dr. Mueller is good with artifacts, and he can spot the slightest change in a layer of soil, he doesn’t pay that much attention to faces.”

  “Hold on,” Bob said defensively. “I told you I didn’t really see Max that often when I worked at his museum, plus that was years ago. People change.”

  “Of course. Even with photos of both men on my computer, I couldn’t tell for sure, myself. They were about the same age, their hair and basic features were similar. Only their eye colors were different, and it took hours of work with color balance and spectral analysis to even see that.” Lacy reached across the table and squeezed Bob’s hand. “I can totally understand.”

  “You’re getting off the subject again,” Paul said.

  “Got somewhere you want to
go?” Lacy teased. “Anyway, Henry and Max fly to Istanbul and take a cab to the Pera Palace Hotel. Clifford and Michael Craven and Elaine Farrell fly separately and take possession of a small room over the Egyptian Spice Market. I don’t know if they rented it or what. The fishmonger with the stall down below may have been in on it. I don’t know.” Lacy shrugged.

  “A few minutes after they arrive at the hotel, the real Max goes downstairs to the bar, where he meets Milo Dakin, one of the few men in the world who will remember every detail of the meeting because he sort of lives in a fantasy world where everyone, including himself, is an international spy. Sheer luck that of the millions of people in Istanbul, Max runs into Milo.”

  Lacy noticed that Paul was grinning at her. She was letting her enthusiasm run away with her and her arm gestures were threatening the listeners on both sides of her. She clasped her hands in her lap.

  “So Henry calls Max out of the bar and they take a cab across the bridge to the Old Town, get out, and guess who’s waiting for them? The Craven brothers. Poor Max is hauled off to the little room over the fishmonger where they hold him while they send their ransom demands to Max’s father. They probably take the opportunity, during the next few days, to make Max’s life as miserable as possible. I know they taped him to a chair but I don’t know what else they did. I’ll bet they took a picture of him taped to the chair and holding that day’s newspaper. Sent it to his father.

  “Then, their plan goes wrong. When Max’s father hears about his son’s kidnapping, he has a stroke! Or maybe a heart attack. At any rate, he’s taken to the hospital in the States, where he still lies, today, in a coma. Bummer! How can a comatose man arrange for the ransom payment? They can’t tell anyone else. They’ve counted on secrecy by telling Max’s father he must tell no one or they’ll kill Max. But who else loves him enough to play by those rules? No one but maybe his wife and she’s in an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s.