“We have to get out of here now,” I said.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s not be too hasty.”
“Look, the longer we stay here, the harder it will be for us to continue moving west.”
Kostas shook his head. “I don’t know. I think we’re better off staying put. For all we know, Demir’s men are nowhere near this town. This guy is just an unlikely coincidence, that’s all.”
“Nonsense. We must keep moving.”
Kostas threw his hands up. “Well, if you’ve already forgotten, we can’t. Our car still needs to be fixed.”
“We don’t need that car,” I said, looking out the window.
“No. No way. We can’t take his truck.”
“We can move under the cover of dark. We only need that vehicle until we can get our hands on another. Get your stuff. My mind is already made up.”
Before Kostas could make a rebuttal, we both heard the familiar creak of the door opening down the hall. We froze. The light was off in my room, but the door was still slightly ajar, maybe an inch or so.
A floorboard in the hall creaked, but we heard no steps, as if someone were purposely being quiet. I motioned for Kostas to crouch near the window before moving toward the door with my knife drawn.
My mind flourished with options as to how to dispatch this person. Attack first? Wait and strike? Another body would only complicate things. I thought more about what Kostas had said, that maybe it was all an unlikely coincidence and my active imagination had gotten the best of me. Still, my thinking had kept me alive all these years in a profession where the life expectancy wasn’t very long.
Another creak pierced the silence followed by soft steps moving closer until they stopped just outside the door. My breathing slowed. I gripped the handle of my blade tighter. I knew that, from this person’s position in the hall, he could easily see that my door was open, but that was it. It was too dark to see inside my room. I, on the other hand, stood blind to the left of the door. While I couldn’t see into the hall, I had the advantage of striking from behind should that person enter the room.
I could hear shoes and then the twisting of the knob to the door of Kostas’ room. A soft click and then a barely audible squeak signaled the door had been opened. I heard nothing after that, not even the slight shuffling of feet. Had the person entered the room, or were they simply standing in the doorway?
Each second of silence felt like an hour. Why had that person stopped? Could he see that the room was empty? Was he deciding his next move? My muscles remained tense, waiting to strike. I kept anticipating a hand gripping the knob to my door. A droplet of sweat snaked down the left side of my neck, tickling me, but I maintained my current stance with my knees slightly bent.
And then the moment came. The one I had been patiently waiting for. The door to my room inched its way open. I drew a breath. A shoe softly scuffed the floor. I raised my knife.
41
Demir remained in Siverek much longer than he had anticipated. He had already ordered his men and the Askeri Inzibat to comb every town along highway E96 and set up checkpoints on the small roads heading west to the coast. It was a lot of distance to cover entirely, though Demir had no intention of sounding the alarm of both escapees by utilizing more men. The hunt for Sei and the missing Wolf were both being kept under wraps. He already assumed he had lost the Wolf via a border crossing out of Turkey. He had no intention of losing the assassin. One was better than none, and he could pin the Wolf’s escape on her.
But before Demir himself could join the hunt for Sei, he received word that the Askeri Inzibat had picked up Basir Kashani as he attempted to board a fishing boat in the small coastal town of Karatas. Demir figured Sei had to have help, and created a list of people who were to be apprehended and brought to him for questioning. Kashani was at the top of that list.
Demir entered the same jail cell he had used to interrogate the goat herders earlier; the floor was still dotted with red stains. There was hope in Demir’s demeanor, for Kashani had a lot of friends. If there was something worth knowing, he would know it. The Askeri Inzibat had already loosened Kashani’s mouth and had assured Demir that he was on the verge of saying anything to stop them from snipping off any more of his fingers.
“My friend, it’s been a long time,” Demir said as he entered the cell. “Almost a year, if my memory serves me right,” Demir continued as he took a seat.
Kashani sat slouched on a wooden chair. His left hand had fresh gauze wrapped around it, and both of his eyes were puffy and swollen shut.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve only just noticed your eyes. It’s me, Rakin Demir, your old friend.”
While Demir had met Kashani on one or two occasions, they were not friends. The missing fingers were a definitive sign of that.
Demir took a seat opposite Kashani, who was flanked by two guards from the Askeri Inzibat. They had noticeable bloodstains on their uniforms. “I trust my friends here have treated you well, as you are a very important guest of mine.”
Kashani mumbled a few indistinguishable words.
“What’s that you say? You want to help me? So thoughtful, aren’t you? Well, since you’ve broached the subject, no sense wasting our breaths. I’m looking for an assassin, an Asian girl. She goes by the name Sei. Do you know where she is?”
Kashani shook his head and mumbled.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear your answer. It sounded like you told me to go fuck myself, but we’re friends, so I must have misunderstood you.”
Kashani cleared his throat and repeated what he’d just said, only louder and clearer this time. Demir had hoped for more cooperation. He drew a deep breath, exhaled, and then signaled to the guards.
One placed his hands on Kashani’s shoulders and held him put on the chair. It wasn’t too difficult, as he could barely put up a fight, having no strength from the loss of blood. The other guard gripped Kashani’s right hand and selected a finger.
Kashani yelled, low grunts at first until he worked his way up to a coarse cry. He struggled to free his hand but couldn’t. The guard removed the clippers from his back pocket and within seconds had snipped off half of Kashani’s pinky finger. Kashani’s mouth widened and emitted a long wail. A stream of blood spurted from his finger stump with each pump of his heart.
Demir watched as tears rolled down Kashani’s cheeks. He felt no compassion for the injured man. Here was a man who trafficked weapons on the black market to anyone who had money. He had no qualms about selling to terrorist groups in the region, some who even used the same weapons to attack the Turkish military at the border. In Demir’s mind, Kashani had operated in Turkey with impunity for much too long. Demir ordered the guard to wrap the wound. All that crying irritated him.
“I’m sorry about that, my friend, but I have a feeling you know where this woman is, and the luxury of time isn’t something I have. So I’m going to ask you once more.”
Kashani lost two more fingers on his right hand before relenting and telling Demir of his involvement in helping Sei plan her attack and providing her weaponry. He also told him where she was headed with Kostas.
Demir knew it would be very easy to cross over to the Greek island of Chios from her destination in Cesme. And if that were to happen, he and he alone would face the blowback from his screw-up.
42
Baki let out a shriek before I could clamp a hand down over his mouth and silence the little boy. “What are you doing sneaking around?” I asked as I lowered my knife.
“I, I… Why do you have a knife?” he asked.
Kostas stood up in front of the window, revealing himself and giving the boy yet another scare, but this time I kept his mouth shut.
I closed the door behind us and locked it. “I asked my question first,” I said ushering the boy to the bed where I sat him down.
“I’ve come to warn you.” His voice was timid and cracked slightly.
“Warn us about what?” Kostas asked.
Baki
held a piece of paper in his hand. “My brother brought it home from work. He left it on the kitchen table.”
I grabbed it and pushed the curtain back, letting the moonlight stream into the room. It looked like an official document, but it was written in Turkish.
“I think it’s about you,” Baki added.
I turned to Kostas. “Can you read Turkish?”
Kostas took the document and scanned it for a few seconds before his head nodded in agreement with the boy. “This document was issued by the Askeri Inzibat. It’s basically a wanted poster. It has a pretty good description of you. It says you were seen traveling in a truck transporting goats to Siverek where you switched vehicles, possibly to a silver Peugeot driven by a man. The military police are instructed to apprehend you, as well as the driver. If necessary, deadly force can be used.” Kostas handed the paper back to me. “Seems like they have a pretty good handle on us.”
“Demir must have intercepted the goat herders.”
“Still, it doesn’t say anything about where we might be heading, so that’s a positive.”
“Demir isn’t stupid. He knows I need to get out of the country and will assume we’re heading west to one of the coastal towns near the Aegean Sea.”
“There are many. He can’t cover them all.”
Baki sat quietly on the bed while Kostas and I carried on with our conversation. I turned to the boy. “Where’s your brother now?”
“He’s sleeping. He won’t wake up until lunch.”
I looked back at Kostas. “We have until noon to distance ourselves as far as possible. Expect the Askeri Inzibat to be looking for us in every town. We can’t stop until we reach the coast.”
Kostas let out a breath and nodded his agreement. “But the car?”
“I told you, we don’t need it.”
“You can’t be serious.”
I shifted my weight from one foot to another. “I am. We’ll hide in the open. They’ll never suspect.”
Kostas rested his hands on his hips and then looked out the window. “I hope you’re right.”
I bent down to look Baki in the eyes. “Do you know where your brother keeps the key to his truck?”
Baki nodded.
“Could you get it for us without waking him?” The boy paused long enough for me to think he had grown a conscience. “It’ll be our little secret, okay?” I continued.
“That won’t work. He only understands one thing.” Kostas dug into the front pocket of his jeans and fished out fifty euros. “Hey, buddy, how much candy do you think you can buy with this?”
Baki’s eyes widened and huge grin appeared on his face before he snatched the bill from Kostas. He then jumped to his feet and hurried over to the door.
“Shhhh,” I said. “Remember to be very quiet.”
He nodded and then slipped out of the room.
We sat quietly on the bed, waiting for Baki to return.
“What are the odds he tells his brother that we took the truck?” Kostas asked “Maybe we should tie him up and leave him in the room. I mean, he could go running back and blab right after we leave.”
There was a real possibility that our bribe wouldn’t work. “Okay, we’ll tie and gag him. Hopefully that’ll buy us time until the morning when the family wakes and realizes he’s missing.”
It seemed like every decision we had to make relied on the actions of some other person. But I had to remain positive; I had a daughter to find. However, there was a silver lining—Kostas was as just as deep in that mess. From that point on, I figured I could count on his full cooperation.
It felt longer, but ten minutes later, we heard a soft knock on the door. I looked at Kostas and pressed a finger against my lips before making my way to the door. I turned the knob and pulled it open… only I didn’t find Baki on the other side. I found the barrel of a gun pointed at my face.
The man holding the revolver grunted something in Turkish and motioned with his weapon for me to back up. I did, and he followed me into the room, flipping the light switch on along the way. The low wattage bulb in the ceiling fixture lit the room in a brownish light. If it had been brighter, our eyes would have had a harder time adjusting.
At that moment, Baki’s head popped into view from behind his brother. He had an even bigger grin on his face than before. You little shit.
“You’re in big trouble,” Baki sang playfully. He then spoke to his brother in Turkish. He sounded as if he were gloating about how he helped his brother catch us. It was sad to see, but it distracted his brother just enough. A mistake.
I reached up with lighting speed and disarmed him before he could utter another word in Turkish. I pointed the gun at him and gestured with my finger for him to lie on the floor. Kostas acted just as fast and silenced Baki as he started to yell.
“Now what?” he asked as he held the squirming boy, muffling his screams.
I hit Baki’s brother on the back of the head with the butt of the gun and knocked him out cold. I looked back at Kostas. “I took care of mine.”
Kostas rolled his eyes before slipping an arm under the boy’s chin and applied a chokehold. Baki lost consciousness, and Kostas laid him gently down on the bed. “We have no more than a few minutes before the kid wakes up.”
“Tie the boy’s hands and find something to gag him with.”
“What about him?” Kostas motioned with this head at Baki’s brother. “He could wake up any minute too.”
“You’re right.” I removed my knife and slit the brother’s throat. Another undeniable trail marker, unfortunately.
“Wait, did you just—?”
“You’re wasting time. Tie the boy up.” That room wasn’t the time nor the place to explain my actions. Kostas was right about the brother waking up, and I didn’t feel like we had anything strong enough to keep him tied and in that room. The thin bath towels would work fine for Baki but not his brother. It was our only option.
Kostas tied the little boy’s hands, and I proceeded to search the brother’s pockets.
“What are you doing?” Kostas asked.
“We still need the keys to the truck,” I said as I continued to rummage through the man’s clothing.
“We don’t need them. Trust me.”
43
Kostas fiddled with the wires under the steering wheel column of the truck, and a few minutes later, we were driving west on a highway disguised as the Askeri Inzibat.
“You’re a driver, so I can understand knowing how to hotwire a vehicle. But applying a chokehold to a small boy so that you render him unconscious instead of killing him, well, do tell.”
“To make ends meet while attending university, I worked as a bouncer at a bar. On-the-job training, I guess you could call it.” He shrugged and kept his eyes on the road. “And you? How did you learn to kill so efficiently and without hesitation?”
“Same as you. On-the-job training.”
We drove northwest on the D300 state road without saying much to each other. I enjoyed the silence, though the stretch of peace lasted only thirty minutes.
“We’re heading to a town called Cay. It’s about three hours away,” Kostas said.
“Can we avoid it? The dark seems to be suiting us just fine.”
“Not really. This highway we’re on is the most direct route west from Konya, and it runs into Cay. Other roads would have us heading south and then east. But once we pass Cay, lesser-traveled routes will open up to us.”
I nodded my head and crossed my legs.
“It’s only three hours away. We’ll pass Cay before sunrise.”
I could sense Kostas looking at me, even in the darkness of the truck. It was not that I terribly minded talking to him. I had other things on my mind—primarily my next move once I got to Greece and how to locate my daughter.
My initial thought had me making my way back to Paris and having a conversation with Dr. Delacroix. I hadn’t yet crossed that weasel off of my list of people who might need to die.
“I’ll try and stay off the major highways and—”
“Look, don’t take my silence as a sign of discontent. I’m counting on you to get me to Greece. I just need time to think about my next move from that point on.”
“I’m only trying to lighten the mood a bit. We had a close call back there and left another body. Speaking of close, don’t think I didn’t notice you checking me out in my room.”
“First off, your segue needs work. Second, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, you do. I’m talking about when you entered my room to wake me up and I had to get dressed.”
“I’m sorry, but you might be confusing your dreams with reality.”
“No,” Kostas said, shaking his head slightly. “I’m pretty sure you were taking tiny peeks at me.”
“I might have looked in your direction, but I assure you, I was not, as you put it, checking you out.”
“I’m flattered that you find me attractive.” A grin appeared on Kostas’ face.
“Oh, brother.”
“I mean, if you think about it, this is like one long date.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“A road trip where two strangers, due to the nature of the time spent together, fall hopelessly in love.”
“I didn’t realize you were a fan of fictional romance.”
“Could happen.”
“It’s unlikely.”
“Just saying.”
“Say no more.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at the blackness outside my window.
Kostas clucked his tongue a few times. “Yeah, you know your tough I-have-an-impenetrable-wall-around-me act doesn’t have me fooled. You stir down below just like any other woman.”
Did you seriously just go there? “If thinking that you’re stirring my nether regions gets us to Cesme quicker, then keep thinking that. If not, then I suggest you concentrate on driving.”
I wasn’t beyond admitting that Kostas was an attractive man, but he was also hired to help me get out of the country. We weren’t on a date. I had been double-crossed, a maniacal prison warden was hunting me, and someone had kidnapped my daughter. Getting to know him in any other way other than as a driver was the furthest thing from my mind.
[Sei Assassin 01.0] Contract: Snatch Page 12
