The Templar Salvation (2010) ts-2

by Raymond Khoury

  He was somewhat familiar with Istanbul, a city he’d visited on a number of occasions in the course of various assignments. But he didn’t know its road configuration that well, and he certainly didn’t know the narrow streets of the Phanar district well enough to know where he was going. He didn’t really care where he ended up. He’d gotten what he wanted from the library of the Patriarchate. All he needed to do now was put a reasonable buffer zone between him and the Orthodox compound while making sure he hadn’t been followed, then dump the van and grab a cab to join up with Steyl and their captive archaeologist.

  He reached an intersection and turned right, heading toward the waterfront and the dual highway that snaked up and down the south bank of the Golden Horn. If he could make it onto it, he was home free. It was a major artery that he could comfortably ride to distance himself from Reilly and his posse. It had to be close to the water, he thought, the tension across his body starting to dissipate. No more than a handful of streets away.

  The squeal of a car sliding around a corner brutally guillotined his reprieve.

  He glanced in his mirror. A dark hatchback had skidded into view and was eating up the road behind him.

  A glimpse of the driver was enough to tell him it was Reilly.

  Madar jendeh, he swore under his breath as he mashed the gas pedal and tightened his grip on the wheel.

  He reached a busy intersection, and punched the brake pedal before hitting the horn and barging through. He scrutinized his rearview mirror for a couple of tense heartbeats before he heard the long dopplery howl of a car horn and spotted the hatchback emerge from the chaos of the intersection and scurry after him like an angry terrier.

  He stormed through a couple of more intersections, cutting past infuriated drivers and using the van’s bulk to bully them out of his way as if he were in a demolition derby, and managed to put a few cars between him and Reilly. He dove into another street just ahead of a big truck and motored away, keeping an eye on his side mirror to see how many car lengths he’d gained by the maneuver—and then disaster struck. He’d reached the on-ramp to the coastal road, a dual parkway that consisted of two separate two-lane roads, one heading north and the other south, that ran alongside each other in places and were far apart in others.

  The problem was, the access road he was on was blocked by traffic.

  He slammed on his brakes and scanned ahead. The road that the ramp was leading to, the one heading north, was totally swamped. Frustratingly, the one heading south was clear, but he couldn’t get on it, not with cars and trucks now backed up behind him and two-foot aluminum barriers on either side.

  He was boxed in.

  Worse, he glanced in his mirror and, about seven car lengths back, spotted a burgundy-colored car door swinging open and Reilly bursting out.

  He grimaced, impressed and angered in equal measure by the agent’s relentlessness, and lunged out of the van.

  He sprinted down the access road, clambered over one of the barriers, and cut across a parched grassland to reach the main road. He glanced back and saw Reilly rushing after him, and thought about pulling out his gun and taking a shot, then decided against it. Instead, he kept moving, snaking through the stalled cars, hurdling over another barrier, and tearing across another bit of grassland, then over a farther barrier to reach the south parkway that was flowing with cars.

  He looked back. Reilly was closing in. He turned and sized up the oncoming cars. He spotted a white sedan with a single occupant coming toward him, and stepped into the middle of the road, his hands held out high and wide, waving them as if calling out for help. He calculated that the priest’s cassock he was wearing would help—which it did, as the car slowed right down and pulled in close to the barrier. A couple of cars behind it slid to a halt, tires and horns shrieking. Zahed ignored them. He just approached the driver with a sheepish, friendly look on his face. The driver, a slight, balding man, started to open his window. It had barely slid down a few inches when Zahed’s hand darted in and wrenched the door open, then he reached in and released the hapless driver’s seat belt, grabbed him, and yanked him out of his car in one ferocious move. He flung him onto the asphalt as if he were unloading a duffel bag, sending him tumbling across the lane divider and causing an oncoming truck to swerve away to avoid flattening him. Zahed didn’t notice. He was already behind the wheel of the human skittle’s Ford Mondeo and streaking away down the open road.

  REILLY LEAPT OVER THE LAST BARRIER and reached the commotion on the main road with the tailgate of Zahed’s stolen car barely still in view. Gasping for breath, he saw the stunned bald man talking animatedly with the drivers of a couple of cars that had stopped. They were blocking one of the lanes and causing a ripple effect of irate shouts and horns behind them.

  Can’t let him get away. Not again.

  He rushed up to the men, pointing at the lead car with manic urgency. “Is this your car?” he asked one of the men. “Is this yours?”

  The bald man and one of the others eyed him suspiciously and took a step back, shaking their heads to indicate that it wasn’t, but the third, a strong-boned man with a thick neck and craggy, leathery skin, stood his ground and started spitting out a tirade of angry words in Turkish while waving his hands defiantly.

  I don’t have time for this.

  Reilly shrugged, reached behind his back, and pulled out his handgun. He held it up, his other arm also raised, the gun and his palm facing the man appeasingly.

  “Calm down, will you?” Reilly ordered them. “You want this guy to get away? Is that what you want?”

  The bald man looked like he was about to say something, but the hot-headed bruiser wasn’t impressed. He resumed his tirade, clearly berating Reilly and back-slapping the air to show he wasn’t impressed by the artillery.

  Screw this, Reilly frowned as he brought the gun down and fired three shots at the ground by the man’s feet. The man leapt back like he’d just stepped on a snake. “Your keys,” Reilly shouted, pointing at the car again and shoving the heated muzzle into Mongo’s face. “Give me your goddamn car keys, you understand me?”

  The big guy’s face crinkled with confusion, then he held out his hand with the car keys in it. Reilly snatched them from him and spat out a grudging “Thank you” as he darted over to the car, a station wagon of nondescript provenance. He slid behind the wheel, avoided gagging from the stench of a mound of stale cigarette butts that clogged an ashtray in the dashboard, and tore off in pursuit of his target.

  The first mile or so flew by with barely any other cars to overtake as a result of the choke point Reilly had left behind. He spotted a white dot in the far distance, and the sight energized him further, though there wasn’t much more he could wrangle out of the car’s engine. He was blowing past an old, overloaded bus when a ring from the inside of his jacket startled him. While he kept one hand gripped on the wheel, his other dove into his pocket and fished the BlackBerry out.

  Nick Aparo’s ebullient voice boomed down his ear canal, as clear as if he were calling from another car beside him and not from Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. “Hey, what’s going on? Your European vacation getting any better yet, Clark?”

  Some vague connection to an old Chevy Chase movie flashed across Reilly’s frazzled mind, but he was too focused on reeling in the white tailgate for it to register.

  “I can’t talk now,” he said, breathless, his eyes locked dead ahead.

  “You’ll want to hear this, Clarkie,” Aparo insisted, still oblivious to what his partner was going through. “It’s about your mystery man. We got a hit.”

  Chapter 21

  Later,” Reilly fired back. “I need you to call Ertugrul for me, right now. Tell him I’m driving down the waterfront in a station wagon”—he glanced at the steering wheel that, helpfully, had a name and not some obscure logo on it—”a blue Kia, and our target’s in a white sedan just ahead of me and we’re heading”—he glanced out quickly to get a read of the sun’s position and did a quick
mental jam to figure out his heading—”south, I think, along the waterfront.”

  True to form, Aparo’s tone went from jovial to dead serious as if a hypnotist had just snapped his fingers. “What target? The bomber?”

  “Yes,” Reilly blurted. “Just make the damn call, will you?”

  Aparo’s tone morphed into manic. “Hang on, I’m dialing him on another line. What’s the asshole driving?”

  “I’m not sure, I didn’t get a good look at it. But he won’t be hard to spot, not at the speed he’s going.”

  “All right, hang on, it’s ringing.”

  Reilly hit the loudspeaker button and chucked the phone onto the car seat next to him as he shot past the stalled traffic in the opposite direction at a dizzying speed. The road snaked left and right slightly while maintaining a broadly straight heading, and Reilly’s pulse spiked as he saw the white sedan swerve far to the left to try to get past a slow-moving and packed dolmu share-taxi that had been trundling down the lane divider. He finally managed it, but the lumbering minivan had delayed him, and the son of a bitch was now within reach. Reilly hit his lights and mashed the horn and swept past the dolmu without delay, gaining precious ground on the white sedan, which he could now distinguish as a Ford.

  His fingers tightened against the wheel, feeling their quarry’s neck within their grasp, while up ahead, the first of two bridges across the Golden Horn came into view. Reilly gained more distance on the Mondeo as it slowed slightly to ride a cloverleaf ramp system, and within seconds, he was tailing the bomber across the Ataturk Bridge. It was old, more of a causeway than a bridge really, given that it sat on concrete piers and had two lanes in each direction, with a narrow pedestrian sidewalk on either edge. There was a lot more traffic on it, which slowed the Mondeo down and allowed Reilly to reel him right in and tuck in behind him as the bomber ducked and weaved and bullied his way past the hapless Turkish drivers.

  “I’m right behind him now, we’re going across a bridge,” he yelled, leaning sideways, in the direction of the BlackBerry, as he swerved around a slower car. “I can see an old tower on the other side, to the right, looks like something from an old castle.”

  “Got it,” Aparo’s voice squawked back, muffled against the seat now. “Ertugrul’s passing it on to some local cop he’s with. You stay on him, buddy.”

  It’s happening too fast, Reilly thought. They’re not going to be able to help. I have to do this alone.

  “That’s the Galata Tower,” Aparo came back, as breathless as his partner. “They’ve got a handle on where you are. Hang tight.”

  Reilly kept his foot jammed and charged ahead, now within yards of the Mondeo’s tailgate—and kept going, ramming the white car, hard, watching it fishtail left and right before it resumed its straight heading.

  He floored the pedal again and went in for another hit.

  THE KIA WAS NOW SO CLOSE BEHIND that Mansoor Zahed could actually see the hunger that was blazing in Reilly’s eyes.

  Madar jendeh, he cursed again as he watched the blue station wagon eat up his mirror. He mashed the throttle and swerved out of harm’s way, squeezing between two slower cars and avoiding another pounding.

  He saw Reilly drop back as the cars behind him slowed down and settled back into their lanes.

  The American’s possessed. He’s not going to be easy to shake off. Not now. Not after all this.

  Zahed knew the traffic could snarl up again the minute they left the bridge. He had to do something now, quickly, if he was going to avoid another running chase with the bloodhound that was breathing down his neck.

  With his hand hard on the Mondeo’s horn, he muscled past a few more cars, leading one of them to ride up the low curb of the sidewalk that ran along at the water’s edge.

  That, and a crowded bus up ahead—an old, 1970s-era Mercedes, its roof stacked with luggage, its exhaust spewing out a thick black cloud of diesel—inspired him.

  He raced on until he was almost alongside the bus, then jinked his sedan left and right and rammed it sideways. The bus groaned and bounced off to the right, its windows suddenly crammed with the startled faces of its passengers, suitcases and boxes snapping their ties and tumbling down off its roof and into the path of the cars behind it. Zahed jerked the wheel to keep the Mondeo pressed against the side of the bus, shepherding it off on an angled trajectory and sending it bounding onto the sidewalk and pulverizing the thin metallic railing before flying off the bridge.

  Zahed straightened his own car’s trajectory and eyed his mirror, where, much to his delight, he saw Reilly do exactly what he’d hoped the agent would do.

  REILLY’S FACE CLENCHED as he watched the white Mondeo launch the old bus over the curb and off the bridge.

  It just flew off with little fanfare and dove out of view for a nanosecond before a huge white plume erupted out of the estuary. Given the mountain of luggage that had been stacked precariously on its roof, Reilly knew it was probably packed with people—people who he could imagine were about to be dragged underwater.

  The car ahead of him slammed on its brakes, and he did the same. Screeching brakes and crunched fenders chased after him. He saw that there was room for him to squeeze past the cars ahead of him, but he couldn’t do that. Not with a bunch of people possibly sinking to their deaths.

  He had to help.

  He scrambled out of the car and ran toward the big gap in the railing. In the distance, he could see the back of the white Ford disappearing down the bridge, and for an instant he imagined the smug face of his quarry. Motherfucker, he thought, the anger and the frustration propelling him even faster to the edge of the bridge. A few people from other cars converged to join him, looking down, pointing, talking animatedly.

  In the water, the old bus was only partly visible, the back of its roof sticking out like a tiny iceberg. Reilly scanned the surface of the water, but couldn’t see anyone floating around. The windows of the bus looked like they were sealed shut, with only a narrow section at the top that slid open and wasn’t anywhere near wide enough for anyone to slip through. Reilly watched for an extended second or two, wondering if the doors were hydraulically operated, if they were jammed shut since the electrics had shut down, if the passengers were too shocked to figure out where the emergency exits were. No one was coming out. They were trapped inside. And no one was doing anything about it.

  He glanced at the stunned faces around him—a mixed bag of young and old, men and women, all in shock, blabbing and looking down gloomily—and moved.

  No more deaths. Not because of me. Not if I can help it.

  He kicked off his shoes, yanked off his jacket, and leapt in.

  The water around him was littered with pieces of luggage and cardboard boxes, hampering his progress, but he managed to reach the back of the bus and grab on to its roof rail just before it disappeared with a final belch of air.

  He hung on as the bus slid under, slowly. Through the murky water, he could see the ghostly, fear-stricken faces of the passengers on the other side of the bus’s rear window. They were tugging at the emergency release handle, which wasn’t responding, and banging their fists against the glass in desperation. Hanging on with one hand, he reached down to his side holster and pulled out his gun, then waved it at the passengers closest to him, hoping they’d understand. They weren’t moving away, but it didn’t stop him. He just put the gun against the very top of the glass and angled it right up, aiming it at the underside of the bus’s roof—and fired, again and again—five quick shots that punched through the window before dying out in the water inside the bus. The shots weakened the window enough for him to be able to kick and hammer it in with the butt of his handgun, until it finally gave way and blew out with a big whoosh of trapped air that almost made Reilly lose his grip.

  One after another, the trapped passengers streamed out in a mad frenzy, a shoal of desperate arms reaching out to Reilly and taking hold of his outstretched hand before kicking away and gliding up toward the light. He hung on a
s long as his lungs could last, then he finally let go and followed them up to the surface, the elation of knowing all the passengers were safe not quite making up for the bitter frustration that was gnawing at his gut.

  Chapter 22

  By the time Reilly made it back to the Patriarchate, the compound was one big, chaotic mess. The approach road was choked by fire engines, ambulances, and police cars. Emergency services personnel were swarming around frenetically, doing what they did best.

  He’d swum onto one of the support piers and climbed back onto the bridge. A cop had finally made it onto the scene and, after some wrangling, agreed to drive him back to the Phanar. He’d taken off his shirt and slipped on his jacket, which he’d pulled off before jumping into the water, but his trousers were still drenched, which hadn’t exactly endeared him to his driver either. Because of the mess and the security lockdown, he’d had to walk the last couple of hundred yards and found Tess standing by the gates. Ertugrul was alongside her, as were a couple of young paramilitary soldiers who looked a bit too trigger-happy for comfort. Frustrated cops were having a hard time keeping reporters and curious bystanders away while a small army of cats—revered in Istanbul as the bearers of good luck—sprawled on the walls and sidewalks around them and calmly observed the proceedings.

  Tess’s face erupted with relief when she spotted him, then her expression went all curious as his shirtless-and-soggy-pants look came into focus.

  She gave him a quick kiss and held his arms. “You’ve got to get out of those clothes.”

  “My bag still in the car?” he asked Ertugrul.

  “Yeah,” the legat answered. “It’s parked down the road.”

  Reilly glanced into the compound, where some paramedics were loading a gurney into an ambulance. The body lying on it was fully covered up by a gray blanket, head included. A gaggle of priests were crowding around it, their expressions forlorn, their shoulders sagging.