Tanker (A Tim Burr Thriller Book 1)

by Nicholas E Watkins

  “No problem. I enjoyed the walk and needed the exercise,” Tim lied.

  Jason Delonge was your typical old Etonion, totally confident, comfortable in every situation and knew anybody who was worth knowing, added to that, he had obtained the trendy must have Philosophy Politics and Economics first from Oxford, suits from Dege and Skinner in Saville Row and was set for all steam ahead in the diplomatic World of today.

  Tim knew that Jason was actually brilliant at his job but couldn’t help feeling a bit irritated by how easy it had come to him. Tim also had his suits made by Nick at Dege and Skinner but he always felt like he did not quite belong there and somehow the suits seemed to look better on the Ambassador. In truth the Ambassador had run to a paunch while Tim worked out in the gym daily and had practiced martial arts since joining the society at Cambridge.

  The conversation could only take part in short bursts in the brief relative quiet when the cars were not flying past. “How did your trip to Menton go?

  “Nobody turned up,” he picked the wrong moment to reply. Clearly the Ambassador had not heard a word but by force of habit seemed fully engaged.

  “That’s good then. You can sort it out on Monday with the naughty boys.” He wandered off heading towards the decorations dancing on the lower deck. Tim turned his attention back to the Grande Prix. The naughty boys referenced were the attachés assigned by MI6. The spies every embassy had.

  “Hi.” He turned to see an oriental girl in her mid twenty with a massive straw hat garnished with flowers wearing what appeared to be a recreation of a Mary Quant lace mini dress. His eyes were automatically drawn to her chest where her nipples were clearly visible through the gaps in the crocheted work. She was stunning, too young, too obviously on the make but very pleasing to look at.

  “Hello, are you enjoying the race?” he asked.

  The roar of the engines did not make conversation easy. He did establish that she was planning to be an actress, model or something in PR and that she knew a great deal about shoes and fashion. Clearly they had a great deal in common. He liked the look of her body and she liked his career prospects and the fact he was divorced with no children.

  He had met his wife at University and they moved in together for the second year in a house share. The third year at Selwyn meant he had a room in the College so there had been a brief separation before they reunited in and moved to London. In hindsight he probably would have done worse on his course if he had lived with her in the third year. She obtained her first without breaking sweat. She had the brains. They married when they got to thirty and planned on children.

  Then it all started to go wrong. Lisa’s career went cosmic. A whole new world, she was a banker, then a fund manager. He saw the change in her. There was nothing he could do. He knew he was boring, pedestrian, and irrelevant. She was dynamic, energised and a winner. They were no longer the people they were at Cambridge. They were now poles apart. The divorce had been quick more painless for him than for her. But life goes on.

  He looked at the girl standing beside him and decided that life was not going to go on with her that day. He made his excuses and watched as Roseberg lost pole allowing Hamilton to go on to win.

  In the office on the lower deck the translators provided by the Turks were lacking in co-ordination and leadership. Yosuf was furious. “Where the fuck is Berat?” He shouted at his aide.

  Chapter 5

  Booking the Hotel Belgique had taken Berat, a few clicks the night before and there had been no queue at Mote Carlo for his return ticket to Menton. It was early Sunday morning and most of his colleagues would just be making their way down for breakfast. He made his way along the long marbled halls to platform two. The platform was virtually empty. He immediately spotted the Englishman from the British group waiting for the same train. He recognised him from the cocktail party the Friday night and the qualifying session which they all watched from the Lady Heloise. They had not spoken but he was pretty certain he would recognise him in turn.

  He had not expected this turn of events. He in no way wanted to be identified as the source of the information. Turkey was a member of NATO and shared intelligence with the other member States. One slip and his name would be out and the Turkish authorities would know that he had aided his brothers in-law.

  He sat down on the benches which were positioned at intervals along the platform. Unlike most seating on station platforms they did not face the rail track but were positioned at right angles facing the bench opposite. There was a middle aged man and a teenage girl sitting opposite him. They were very engrossed in each other. Berat now had his back to Tim.

  Berat’s mind raced. He needed to rid himself of the memory stick, memory sticks to be accurate. He had taken the precaution of copying the original. He could feel them like two enormous weights in his jacket pocket. In hindsight his plan of meeting a British agent in a hotel room seemed a bit simplistic. Pass an anonymous note, meet a spy, dump the information and go home to a normal life. Now it seemed far more complicated. True he wanted to prevent the deaths of innocent people at the hands of ISIS but he did not want the source of the information traced back to him and his wife,

  He jumped, as a train rushed through the station without stopping, shaking him from his thoughts. His stomach churned with nerves and he felt himself sweating despite the cool of the subterranean platform. He took several deep breaths in an attempt to calm himself. He needed to come up with an alternative plan that did not reveal him as the source and expose his links to his brothers in-law.

  The Menton trailed pulled in on time. He remained seated and watched as Tim boarded the train. At the last instant he jumped up and he also boarded. The journey was only around ten minutes with just two stops. As the train pulled into the Menton station he made sure to be by the doors. Pressing the button to open the doors he hurried from the train and platform. On exiting the station he instantly saw the Café across the car park. From his visit to Google he knew that the hotel Belgique was just a hundred metres past the Café on the road to its left.

  There were a few diners in the dining room, having breakfast but know one else to be seen in the Hotel Belgique. He had entered via a glass door into an outer lobby and then into what was the reception area. There was a desk with an open door to the right which led to the dining room. He looked on the reception counter for a bell or something. There were the usual brochures for things to do in the area and a note saying the desk was manned from seven to eleven in the morning and five till nine in the evening. In the dining a room a short black woman appeared carrying breakfasts and placed them on a diner’s table.

  She saw him “Just a moment,” she called as she went behind the bar at the end of the dining room and began to operate the espresso machine. Coffee served she came to the desk. “You were due yesterday evening, two nights,” she said.

  “Delayed,” he had booked for two nights so he would have the room available today. She gave him the key to room fifteen and the code to the front door should he need to get in after nine in the evening. He paid in cash.

  To the left of the desk was a grubby grey marble spiral staircase. Room fifteen was on the second floor. The grout, between the marble tiles on the steps, was black and the handrail wobbled as he grabbed it walking upwards. The hotel had location on its side, directly by the rail Station but very little else. It had been neglected for years. Probably the only time it even approached being full was during the Grande Prix. This was borne out by the diners, who either wore their supported teams logos and colours on their clothing or on their caps. He climbed the stairs to the first floor, paused on the landing and continued up to the top floor of the building.

  Room fifteen had a double bed to the left as you entered and single along the wall at the bottom. A small table, an old chair and a hang rail completed the furnishings. To the right there was a stud wall that didn’t reach the ceiling. This contained the smallest basin, toilet and shower known to man. He sat on the chair and considered th
e turn of events. He placed the two memory sticks on the table. He felt relief at relinquishing them even if he had only distanced himself from them by a few inches.

  He slowly came to the outline of a plan. He looked around the room for a hiding place. He knew the longer he had the sticks in his possession the more he was potentially providing the smoking gun that would shoot his wife and her brothers. At that moment a train went by causing the whole room to shake. It galvanised him. He looked around the room for a place to hide them. The usual suspects came to mind bed, toilet cistern or stuck to the bottom of the table or the chair. All he considered too obvious. His eyes fell on the half closed shutters to the window at the bottom of the bed. Perhaps he should consider outside the room and not in it. He squeezed between the bottom of the bed and the second bed to the Juliet balcony and opened the shutters. He looked around the window opening and gingerly put one foot on the balcony, which he did not trust to support his weight. There was a crack just above his head. It would do. He pushed one stick in, one down one to go. He left leaving the room unlocked.

  On his way down he noticed the old stereogram, sitting on the mezzanine landing. It presumably had been part of the owners decorating theme, forties retro, or just left over tatty. It had a vase with a bunch of plastic flowers on it. Moving the flowers he lifted the lid in the centre revealing the turn table. He put the stick on the table, put the lid down, replaced the vase and made his way down and out on to the Rue de la Gare.

  Berat turned left as exited the hotel into the pouring rain and entered the Terminus Café from the side entrance. He could see the Englishman through the glass window sitting on the terrace, with his back to the bar. He bought a coffee and swiftly scribbled a note. He pointed out Tim to the owner, handed him the note and an extra ten euros and left. He knew he would have to meet the Englishman at some stage, explain all and trust that his identity would be kept secret.

  He stood on the pavement wondering if the Englishman would spot him as he passed the Café and made his way across the car park to the station. While he hesitated he became aware of the two strangers beside him before he actually saw them. “Stay calm, this is a gun you can feel.”

  Chapter 6

  Celik had barely left her two brothers. There was a fire going in the waste bin and their computers lay smashed on the floor. The doors flew open and the room was filled with shouting bodies. “Get down, armed police, police, on the floor hands behind your head.”

  The shouting continued as Emir and Ahmet had hoods placed over their heads, cuffed and were dragged from the building. They were bundled in the back of a van that raced through the streets of Istanbul. The next twenty four hours were a blur. No water, no food, no sleep and no toilet facilities. A plane and another van ride followed.

  The hood was pulled off and the handcuffs removed. Emir found himself in a windowless cell with a single light bulb in the centre. The door slammed and he blinked his eyes dazzled by the brightness after hours of darkness. His lips were cracked through thrust, his skin hot and parchment like. His body was filthy. His own piss and shit were in his trousers and down his legs which had rubbed raw through hours of being left sitting in his own excrement.

  He noticed a jug of water in the corner, on the concrete floor. It just stood there in the bare room. He half crawled and half staggered. Water had never tasted so good. He gulped it down. Too much, too quick, his stomach cramped twisting like a knife. He vomited. Then more calmly he sipped at the water. Over the next few hours he was left, left to let the fear grow inside. The only sound was the occasional loud banging and screaming.

  He examined his location. He touched the stained walls, scrutinising them closely and realised that the stains on the walls were blood. A few pictures, printed on a cheap printer, on A4 paper were stuck with sticky tape to the walls. They showed men and women mostly naked and all brutally beaten, with broken limbs and smashed and bloody faces. The worm of fear grew.

  He sat and waited and waited the fear growing stronger inside him. He looked at the cracks in the plaster on the walls. His imagination and sleep depravation causing him to see faces, monstrous faces, in the patterns in the plaster. Some seemed to be smiling, mocking him. He checked the thick wooden door with the stains, dirt and grime engrained in it. He looked for a source of light apart from the yellow dingy light suspended from the single strand of flex, He watched the cockroaches scratchily scamper to and fro disappearing into cracks in the walls and floors and then reappearing from another. In the background was the constant sound of voices, sometimes raised then interrupted by violent shouting and then moans, wailing and screams. His mind began to take over and imaginings dominated, Nightmare scenarios filled his head, demons from hell, ripping dogs and the walking dead. Lack of food, sleep and isolation forced delirium to the fore.

  How long, no way of telling, hours or minutes or day from night. He tried pacing, he tried sleeping, and he tried creating pictures of his family in his head. He tried reciting the Koran and placing his faith in the Prophet, “peace be upon him”, but fear still predominated and the isolation continued. No contact, no input, nothing to feed the senses just the background noise of pain and suffering.

  The door slowly opened. Nothing dramatic, no slamming banging or the sudden rush of bodies or clatter, just a small crack that slowly widened. A large Arabic looking man dressed in combat trousers, heavy boots and a black round necked t-shirt lumbered in first. His beard was full, his hair cropped in military fashion. He was a huge man with thick powerful arms, his neck short set above massive shoulders. Emir knew that this man was battle harden and had not only seen death but had caused it on many occasions. This man followed orders and would never shirk his duty.

  He was followed in by a much smaller man. A dapper man with neatly trimmed hair and a light blue shirt slacks and slip on beige shoes. He looked like he was off to the shopping mall or the cinema or perhaps off to start his daily role as a school teacher. He carried a clip board. They both stood briefly, staring at him huddled in the corner of the room.

  The smaller man spoke. He looked down at his clip board and then up at him. “Emir, you do seem to have put yourself in an awkward position. Don’t you?” he paused and smiled. “Well I think I may be just the fellow to help you out. Of course that rather depends if you can help me a little as well. You scratch my back and I will scratch yours“

  “Where am I?” Emir found his voice came out as a trembling whisper. He knew he sounded like a whiney schoolgirl.

  “I am not at all sure that is important but in a spirit of the cooperation that I hope will exist between us I will tell you this. We have a sort of agreement with the Government of your Country to undertake certain tasks. Think of it as outsourcing, a bit like moving the garbage or running a hospital. Yes that is it outsourcing. Your Government has outsourced, to us, the task of asking you some questions. You may ask why they don’t do this themselves and I shall answer that question for you.”

  He paused and looked at Emir. “You do want to know why you have been outsourced, don’t you. I am sure you do?” answering his own question. “The Americans like to call it rendition but I prefer the term outsourcing. So we are recognised leaders in the field of information extraction. It is a simple process. Gather up the subject, in this case you and of course your brother, pop them on a plane to us and just like that we get you the answers you want. “

  He continued, “You may ask what the advantage of this outsourcing is? Again in the spirit, of what I hope will become mutual cooperation, I shall answer that question. You can already see, I hope, what a reasonable man I am? Your Government, I might say like many other Governments are quite rightly, firm and staunch upholders of human rights and would under no circumstances use questionable interrogation practices. Turkey like its allies, the United Sates and the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe, which I might add some day hopes to join as a member of the European Union, all therefore do not carry out any such questionable practices. Of course this
would in the normal course of events make it harder and take longer to get answers from the bad men like you and your terrorist buddies.”

  “Now that both of us know where we stand I should appreciate it if you would answer a few questions for me?”

  Emir said nothing. The large fellow despite his bulk took a fast step across the cell and smashed his fist into the centre of his face. His nose cracked and his lips split and blood filled his mouth.

  “I think it is important we develop a line of communication. I should appreciate it when I ask a question that you have at least the good grace to answer. The first question I should like to ask is. Who are you working with?”

  This time Emir received a kick to the stomach that forced all the air from his body. He gasped and doubled up and retched only bringing up bile from a stomach that was completely empty.

  “Oh Emir I can see that you are going to be one of those troublesome individuals who would like to experience a great deal of pain before they give me answers to my questions. Given that this is your preferred way for us to proceed I think it is time that we went a little more high tech rather that us having my friend here do all this manual stuff like punching and kicking. “

  He banged on the door and another military clad figure pushed in a large cabinet on wheels. Emir looked at it. “This is an emergency power supply and you can up and down the voltage etc. state of the art and highly robust. And this is a cattle prod. “

  The door open again and a chair was brought in. “And this is for me to sit on,” he smiled at his own joke.” And this is for you to sit on.” This time a much more robust chair was wheeled in with wrist and ankle straps. “Please be so good as to remove your clothes.”