The Solomon Effect

by C. S. Graham

  Jax squinted against the gleam of sunlight reflecting off the oily water, his gaze on the silent crane. “Looks like one of the cables broke.”

  Switching directions, they crossed the dirty shoreline past a bizarre assortment of refuse that ranged from sinks and copper piping to rusty metal bunks and old filing cabinets. White and brown clumps of what looked like asbestos were everywhere. As they approached, the man in the expensive suit swung to face them.

  “Merhabe,” called October from the water’s edge.

  Kemal Erkan was not in a good mood. Letting loose a stream of incomprehensible—to Jax—Turkish illustrated by energetically waving arms, he waded toward them, fine navy Italian wool dragging in the dirty salt water.

  October answered him with a fluency that seemed to take the man by surprise. They jabbered back and forth, Erkan breaking off to shoot a glance at Jax, along with an obvious question. Who is this guy?

  Jax caught his name in the reply.

  Kemal Erkan said to him in heavily accented English, “You don’t speak Turkish?”

  “No.”

  “Then we will speak English.” He nodded toward the idle crane. “One of the cables broke, dropping a load of steel and nearly toppling the damned thing over. I’m afraid it might have put a strain on the tower. You have five minutes. Why did you wish to see me?”

  Jax and October exchanged glances. Jax said, “I wanted to talk to you about a business arrangement you had with Jasha Baklanov.”

  Kemal Erkan turned to walk with them along the dirty beach, away from the ship. “Which one? Jasha and I have been doing business for more than twenty years. He’s a good salvage operator.”

  Jax wondered how the captain of a salvage ship all the way up in Kaliningrad got to be on such good terms with the owner of a Turkish shipbreakers yard, but all he said was, “Did you know he’s dead?”

  The animation in the man’s swarthy, fleshy face slowly collapsed. “Dead? But…when did this happen?”

  October said, “Saturday. Someone murdered the Yalena’s entire crew.”

  Erkan stood very still. A gaunt, smoke-blackened man walked past, carrying a load of pipes on his shoulder. Erkan didn’t even turn his head.

  Jax said, “When was the last time you talked to him?”

  Erkan seemed to gather himself together. “Jasha?” He shrugged. “Last week. Maybe the week before. I don’t know. Why?”

  “What can you tell us about the World War II U-boat he was salvaging?”

  Erkan cast a glance at the U.S. Air Force officer waiting in the distance beside his car. “A German submarine? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Jax narrowed his eyes against the sun and gazed out over the milky, oil-fouled water. “That’s the problem with modern technology, you know. It makes it so hard to keep things private. In the last two days, you’ve left three messages on Baklanov’s voice mail. And you sent him a fax.”

  The Turk’s head jerked up and back as he let out a hissing noise that sounded like sssk. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, turning back toward the ship. “I have work to do.”

  Jax fell into step beside him. “What was on that U-boat that was so valuable? It wasn’t just the steel Baklanov wanted, was it?”

  The Turk swung to face him again. “Since I don’t know anything about this submarine, how could I know about its cargo?” He gestured toward the idle crane, the Rolex watch on his wrist shining in the hot sun. “I have a serious situation here that I must deal with. You’ll have to excuse me.” He nodded to Tobie. “Miss Guinness.”

  Jax stopped at the water’s edge. He was wearing a four-hundred-dollar pair of Forzieri handmade Italian leather loafers. No way was he getting those suckers wet. “If you change your mind, I’ll be at Pasaport Quay,” he called after the Turk. “Just don’t wait too long.”

  Erkan waded deeper.

  Jax raised his voice over the reverberations of hammers striking steel and the throb of the diesel engine. “Think about this: whatever was on that U-boat cost your friend and his crew their lives. Baklanov was involved with some seriously scary people. And when you’re dealing with people like that, even a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.”

  “Erkan obviously doesn’t know anything,” said Lowenstein, thrusting a piece of pita bread in his mouth and chewing heartily.

  They were eating meze at an outdoor café near Pasaport Quay, looking out over the wide sweep of the Gulf of Izmir. The sun sparkled on an achingly blue sea, the salty breeze blowing off the water was fresh, and Captain Lowenstein was still trying to hit on October.

  Jax raised his Perrier to his lips and drank deeply. “He knows.”

  Lowenstein’s sandy eyebrows went up in two contemptuous arcs. “So why aren’t you doing something?”

  “I am.”

  “Really? What?”

  “I’m waiting for Erkan to change his mind.”

  “I can’t believe you.”

  “Got a better idea?”

  Lowenstein leaned back and grunted in disgust, just as a passing waiter in a white dinner jacket discreetly slipped Jax a note.

  Turning his back on Jax, Lowenstein said to October, “So where exactly are you stationed?”

  “The Algiers Support Facility, in New Orleans.”

  “Really? That’s fascinating.”

  Quietly amused, Jax glanced down at scribbled writing. MEET ME AT 3:00 AT THE AGORA. COME ALONE.

  Lowenstein said, “What do you do there?”

  Before October could come up with an answer, Jax said, “How about you, Captain? Surely you have more important things to do than babysit a couple of people from Washington. Maybe go help the Turks bomb the Kurds or something?”

  Lowenstein shifted his frosty blue stare back to Jax. “Right now my job is making sure you don’t kill anyone on my turf.”

  Jax glanced at his watch. It was already a quarter past two.

  He was aware of October staring at him in that still way she had. He met her gaze. He’d have sworn no one saw that adroit delivery of Kamil Erkan’s message. But she must have, because she suddenly gave Lowenstein a wide smile and said, “Walk out on the quay with me, will you?”

  The Captain’s face broke into a grin that fell as he threw an uncertain glance at Jax.

  Jax leaned back in his seat and yawned. “Don’t look at me. I’ve got a great view of the bay from right here.”

  Lowenstein hesitated, torn.

  “We won’t be long,” she said, cupping her hand beneath the Captain’s elbow and drawing him up with her.

  Jax would have sworn she was a woman without an ounce of subterfuge or feminine guile. But as he watched her walk away with the Captain, he realized that in that, he had erred.

  33

  Washington, D.C.: Tuesday 27 October

  7:30 A.M. local time

  The two men walked along the Reflecting Pool in the Mall. A cold wind ruffled the waters beside them, splintering the image of the Washington Monument mirrored by the pool’s surface. Gerald T. Boyd clasped his hands behind his back and fixed his gaze on the towering obelisk before them. “So what have you managed to learn, Colonel?”

  Colonel Lee cleared his throat. “I’m getting a little uncomfortable with this, sir.”

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “I saw the station’s report on what happened in Berlin.” Lee hesitated, then pushed it out. “I didn’t realize I was setting Alexander up as a target.”

  “Alexander made himself a target.”

  “But…he’s CIA, sir. He’s one of ours.”

  “You need to remember, Colonel: this operation is more important than one man. The very future of America is at stake here. We’re talking about the survival of our entire way of life. Freedom, democracy—everything we hold most dear. You do understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A gust of wind buffeted the grass as a cloud half obscured the rising sun. Lee turned to stare down at the choppy wate
rs beside them. Most people thought of the CIA and the Pentagon as two distinct organizations, and in many ways they were. But there were always a significant number of military personnel assigned to the CIA. In fact, by tradition either the Director of the Agency or his Deputy was always a general. Sam Lee might work for the CIA, but he was still an Army colonel. Which meant he not only owed his plum job at the Agency to Boyd; Boyd could destroy Lee’s entire future in a heartbeat, if he wanted to. And they both knew it.

  Boyd said, “Where is Alexander now?”

  A muscle began to tic beside the other man’s left eye. “Turkey, sir. Izmir. But I don’t think he’s planning to be there long.”

  “Where’s he going next?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, keep on him. Is the Guinness woman still with him?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What have you found on her?”

  “I’m working on it, General.”

  Boyd grunted and turned toward the Capitol Building. “Work faster, Colonel.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  34

  Izmir, Turkey: Tuesday 27 October 3:00 P.M. local time

  The ruins of the ancient Greek agora lay on the slopes of a fortified mount known as Kadifekale, overlooking the city and the bay beyond. Once, this had been the commercial, judicial, and political heart of the ancient Greek city of Smyrna. Re-founded in fine style by Alexander the Great, the grand municipal buildings had been toppled by an earthquake, only to be rebuilt again by Marcus Aurelius. But that was nearly two millennia ago. Now it was just a collection of broken columns and underground vaults baking in the hot Mediterranean sun.

  Jax wandered along the western stoa, his watchful gaze roving continually over the area. The message from the Turkish shipbreaker was welcome, but vaguely ominous. Men like Kemal Erkan didn’t frighten easily.

  A fly buzzed Jax’s ear. Swatting it away, he turned to look out over the old Greek site. From here he had a clear view of the courtyard and its surrounding portico of fragmented marble columns standing up stark and white against the vivid blue sky. The ancient basilica lay beyond that, while over it all loomed the dark crenulated battlements of the fortress begun by Alexander the Great and expanded many times down through the centuries.

  The agora was nearly deserted. The hordes of tourists from the cruise ships that docked in the port below tended to prefer day trips to better-known sites like Ephesus, to the south. Jax understood why Erkan had selected it as a meeting place.

  The purr of an expensive engine drew Jax’s attention to the parking lot. A dark blue Mercedes SLK-Class Roadster pulled up outside the simple guard’s hut. Kemal Erkan got out of the driver’s side and walked through the gate with a nod to the attendant. That the shipbreaker had come alone, without either driver or bodyguard, was significant.

  Jax stood at the edge of the ancient stoa and waited for the Turk to walk up to him. Erkan said, “I called Anna Baklanov.”

  “And?”

  “I got some old woman. She said Anna is dead. Someone broke her neck this morning.”

  Jax thought of the little girl proudly presenting that bouquet of roses to Brezhnev, and felt a pain pull across his chest.

  The Turk pursed his lips. “The old woman said Jasha is dead, too.”

  “You didn’t believe me?”

  Erkan raised one eyebrow. “Why should I?”

  They turned to walk along the colonnade. After a moment, Erkan said, “Why is the American Government interested in the murder of a simple Russian ship’s captain?”

  “We think he was involved with terrorists.”

  “Terrorists.” Erkan huffed a soundless laugh. “You Americans. Always going on about terrorists. Which terrorists? The ones your government pays to blow up mosques and pipelines in Iran? Or maybe the ones you’ve been sending against Cuba for the last forty years?”

  “Not those. The ones who don’t like us. I’m hoping something you can tell me will help us figure out which ones—and help us find the men who killed your friend.”

  Erkan sneered. “You don’t care about Jasha.”

  Jax didn’t deny it. “But you do. Our motives might be different, but our objective is the same. We both want the people who killed Jasha Baklanov…and his wife.”

  Erkan stared off into the distance, to where the once grand stadium was now no more than a depression in the grass. His thick, dark eyebrows drew together in a frown. He hesitated, then said, “Jasha contacted me two, maybe three weeks ago. He said he had a contract to raise some Nazi sub that sank off the coast of Denmark at the end of the war.”

  “Did he say who hired him?”

  Erkan jerked his head up and back, his eyebrows lifting in that peculiarly Turkish way of saying no.

  Jax said, “There was something on the sub they wanted?”

  Erkan gave him a sideways glance. “You know the kinds of things the Nazis were sending out of Germany at the end of the war?”

  “You mean gold?”

  The Turk laughed. “That was my first assumption as well. But not Jasha’s. He thought the U-boat might have been carrying uranium or something equally as dangerous.”

  Jax could feel the heat of the sun baking his shoulders and the top of his head. He said, “Yet he agreed to raise it anyway?”

  “They showed him the submarine’s original manifest.”

  “Not a copy?”

  “No. The original.”

  Jax studied the man’s fleshy, sweat-sheened face. “So what was the sub carrying?”

  Erkan’s gaze slid away. The agora was virtually deserted, an open space of weed-grown paving stones and row after row of white marble columns. A Scandinavian couple were exploring the water channels and reservoirs of the western stoa. Two boys on the other side of the chain-link fence were playing a jumping game. Jax could hear the lilting sound of their laughter carrying on the breeze as a large man in a light blue windbreaker crossed the courtyard, his hands in his pockets.

  “Jasha was a great one for running schemes,” Erkan was saying. “Once he learned what was on the U-boat, Jasha knew he could find a buyer for it.”

  “You mean, another buyer?”

  “That’s right. The men who hired him planned to be there when the Yalena raised the submarine. They were going to remove the cargo and just sink the U-boat again, so no one would know it had ever been raised. But Jasha, he got the idea to raise the old submarine a day early. He was going to take it back to Kaliningrad, remove the cargo, and then sell the U-boat to me for the steel. You know about pre-1945 steel?”

  “Yes.” The man in the windbreaker was getting closer. He was taller than Lowenstein’s driver, and darker, but he had that same swooping handlebar mustache. “In other words,” said Jax, “Jasha was going to double-cross the men who hired him.”

  “He planned to hide the U-boat at the shipyard, then go out with the men who’d hired him the next day and pretend to be as surprised as anyone when they discovered the sub already gone. He thought he was just dealing with thieves.” Erkan exhaled sharply through his nostrils. “Not killers.”

  “What was the cargo?”

  Erkan paused in front of one of the massive columns. He’d changed suits, Jax noticed. A fine lightweight gray wool rather than the navy he’d worn that afternoon. He fiddled with the jacket’s top button, buttoning and then unbuttoning it.

  “What was the cargo?” Jax said again. “If it wasn’t gold, what was it?”

  “You think—” Erkan began, just as the man in the windbreaker walked up to him, pulled a big Heckler and Koch from beneath his jacket, and shot Erkan point blank in the chest.

  35

  The Heckler and Koch was a massive model 23. The mustachioed man in the light blue windbreaker squeezed off three rounds, one after the other. The big hollow-point through-and-throughs tore through Erkan and blew out his back. Blood splattered the white marble column behind him as shattered shards of stone exploded into the air.

  The man in the wi
ndbreaker shoved the H&K beneath his jacket again and kept walking.

  For one suspended moment, Erkan wavered, still on his feet, his white shirt blooming a charred scarlet. He opened his mouth to speak and a torrent of blood spilled down his chin. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed.

  He fell backward in an ungainly sprawl, arms flung out at his sides, his exquisitely tailored gray suit falling open to reveal a small Walther PPK in a holster clipped inside the waistband of his slacks. Jax snatched it up.

  Walking quickly, the killer had almost reached the gate. Jax shoved Erkan’s Walther under his shirt and followed him, also at a walk. It was never a good idea to run away from a dead body. It tended to attract attention.

  Other people were running—running toward Erkan. Jax kept walking. At the gate, the man in the pale blue windbreaker threw a quick glance over his shoulder. He saw Jax and began to run.

  “Shit,” said Jax, and sprinted after him.

  They pelted down a crooked lane between narrow whitewashed houses that loomed up to cast the worn paving stones into shadow. This was an old part of town, one of the few areas that had escaped the Great Fire of 1922. Jax dodged café tables, scarlet geraniums spilling out of clay pots, a sleeping gray cat.

  The killer hung a quick left, into a shady, stone-paved passageway so steep it soon gave up and became steps. Jax tore after him, the soles of their shoes clattering on the broad ancient stairs, the scent of damp stone and ancient decay wafting up around him.

  The steps emptied into a winding street filled with market stalls hung with baskets and brass pots that glinted like gold in a shaft of early-evening sunlight. The driver of a green van laid on his horn, its brakes screeching as the man in the blue windbreaker darted across in front of him.

  Jax ducked around behind the van, his gaze on the dark mouth of an alley opening up on the far side of the street. The killer bolted down it, Jax twenty steps behind. The air here was cool and dank, the houses shuttered, silent, the only sounds the pounding of their feet and the rasp of their breath and the swish of traffic from the street ahead.