Caught! “Well,” said Hughes, “I helped get him an airplane.”
RAF Akrotiri Air Base, Cyprus
July 23, 10:34 a.m.
But Cleveland was not planning on driving the car on the two-hour trip from southern Cyprus to Ercan Airport in the north, where his reservation was waiting. Instead, he drove less than half-a-mile to the east, to the Cost Cutter Car Park near the base post office. Cleveland found an empty slot near the center of the crowded lot. He locked the car, dropped the keys into the postal box in front of the post office, and headed north on foot, winding his way past the soccer field and the cinema, less than a mile, to the base helipad.
Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv
July 23, 10:35 a.m.
Anger shimmered off Mullaney like sunshine on asphalt in August. An anger that was now lasered onto her. “You helped Cleveland leave the country without me knowing about it?”
The blade of betrayal sliced in both directions. Hughes was bleeding regret. “He was hoping to convince Edwards—”
“That won’t happen,” snapped Mullaney. “Edwards is not going to stage a raid on a sovereign nation without orders.”
Parker broke into Mullaney’s response. “Cyprus is a lot closer to Turkey than Tel Aviv,” she said. “And Dad has a long, personal relationship with President Kashani. He may be holding out hope, but he knows in his heart Edwards won’t move. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kashani is his ultimate target. I’d put my money on Turkey.”
“That crazy old …” Mullaney’s cell phone rang. He looked at the screen. McKeon. Oh, Lord … no!
RAF Akrotiri Air Base, Cyprus
July 23, 10:35 a.m.
The Turkish chopper with the NATO markings—a massive, twin-rotor Chinook CH-47F—sat on the closest pad. Its rotors started moving as soon as Cleveland walked out of the lee of the hanger and onto the tarmac. At the conclusion of his eleven-minute, roundabout trip through the air base, Cleveland ended up less than fifteen hundred feet from the Akrotiri Terminal where McKeon and the other DSS agents were growing more anxious with each minute that passed. Cleveland slipped through the door of the white, military helicopter.
McKeon began muttering the same Irish epithets she’d heard her grandmother mumble after her third whiskey. She flipped the toggle switch in the opposite direction just as the agent bolted out of the men’s room and ran in her direction, holding an object in his right hand.
She knew the truth before he opened his mouth.
“He’s not there! I searched every stall. The only window is locked from the inside. And I found this in the trash.”
The agent had a small, rectangular printed circuit in his right hand. A SIM card. Cleveland’s SIM card. Wiping the memory of her grandmother from her thoughts, McKeon still flogged her psyche with a silent litany of those cutting Irish epithets. Four days ago, she let Palmyra Parker out of her sight, and she got abducted. Now Cleveland? Not again!
“Go to the plane,” she said to the first agent. “He’s not there, but we need to be sure. Call me as soon as you know.” She turned to the agent on her left. “Go to the desk and get them to call whoever is in charge of base security. I want this base locked down now!”
McKeon looked at the phone in her hand. Several messages flooded in, one after another. She tapped the speed dial number for Mullaney. This would be painful.
30
Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv
July 23, 10:36 a.m.
Mullaney looked at the ringing phone on his desk and knew to abandon all hope of good news. He tapped the Speaker icon on the screen. “Talk to me, Pat.”
There was no evasion from McKeon. “We’re on Cyprus, at the RAF Akrotiri Air Base. The ambassador came here to meet with Colonel Edwards,” she said. “Their meeting ended. But the ambassador is … gone. Not abducted,” McKeon was quick to add. “He skipped on his own. He slipped a jamming device into my pocket—why you and I couldn’t make contact. He was sick when he went to the men’s room … probably faked his stomach cramps. But he wasn’t there when we checked. And he tossed his SIM card into the trash to keep the locator in the men’s room. The base is locked down, and the Brits are looking under every rock—three of our guys too. But so far we have not found him.”
As McKeon gave her truncated report, Mullaney felt a profound change permeate his mind and his spirit. The rage he felt moments ago was replaced with peace that reached to his core. He was trained to deal with crises. He’d lived through days when everything that could go wrong, did. Anger and fault-finding would not help them find Cleveland.
“How long ago?”
McKeon looked at her watch. “We last saw him seven, eight minutes ago as he was hustling down the hall to the men’s room, half bent over at the waist.”
Seven or eight minutes? Mullaney’s first thought—he couldn’t have gotten far—was trumped by his second thought. If Cleveland was planning this escape, he must have known two things. How he was going to get off Cyprus. And how little time he would have before McKeon would be on his tail.
“I doubt you will find him on the base,” said Mullaney. “Find out every possible way Cleveland could get from Cyprus to Turkey and concentrate your attention there. We think his plan all along was to get to Ankara … to get face-to-face with President Kashani. Lord willing he’s not off the island yet.” Mullaney paused. What to say next. “Just find him, Pat. Then don’t let him out of your sight.”
St. Archangel Michael Monastery, Tel Aviv
July 23, 10:41 a.m.
His fingers flying over an ergonomic wireless keyboard, Puccini’s La Bohème blasting through unseen speakers, Father Poppodopolous was talking to his computer screens as he hammered in a new search code. “Okay, Mr. Gaon, let’s run a series of kabbalah symbols against what we’ve found so far and see what comes up.”
Finishing his code, the monk hit Enter and sat back and watched the screens of four of his huge computer monitors whirl like runaway slot machines. Numbers, letters, symbols, and pulsing colors raced across each screen in an accelerating blur. His chair was comfortable, cradling Poppy’s significant mass. It wasn’t long before heaviness assailed his eyes, and his lids started to droop. He tried to stay awa—
Poppy’s head snapped up from his chest and he shook his eyes open. The thought that he must have nodded out stalled in his mind as his eyes stared at a massively muscled, long-haired man sitting on the other side of his desk.
Pinpoints of light glistened across the surface of his silver breastplate.
What?
“I am Bayard, sent to you from the throne room of God.”
Bayard … Where had he heard that name before? He looked around. He was aware of his surroundings. But he couldn’t move. He wanted to move. His body was imprisoned by an invisible heaviness. But his eyes were riveted on the man in silver.
“I have been sent to you with a message.” The man stood—and he was no man. He wore the silver armor of an ancient warrior, a great sword in a silver scabbard hanging by his side. But from behind his shoulders, immense pearlescent wings unfurled, filling the width of Poppy’s vision. “Watch with me.” The man turned, the wings swung away like an immense curtain, and a different room emerged.
Poppy thought he could feel the warmth of a glowing fire on his cheeks. He was looking into an old-fashioned room … heavy, rough-hewn wooden furniture; wide-plank wood floor with a well-worn rug before the fireplace; functionally crafted wood shelves, overflowing with books, spanning the walls.
Poppy’s eyes followed the sound of a voice. Off to the left, an open window at his back, an elderly man sat behind a desk that was nearly buried—books and Torah scrolls and stacks of paper. He wore a round, black fur hat that looked like a box on his head. The white hair escaping from under the hat migrated down the sides of his face and culminated in a long, full, white beard. Framed by the white hair, two crystalline blue eyes thrummed with the power of joy and wonder.
The huge, winged visitor now knel
t on the floor across the desk from the old man, his head and furled wings barely clearing the low ceiling. The tableau was so vivid, it forced Poppy to suspend his state of unbelief. Not only was he looking at an angel, Bayard, but he was confident he was also looking at a room in Vilna, Lithuania. This was the home of the Vilna Gaon. Two hundred years in the past.
“Greetings, favored one,” said the angel, Bayard. “I have been sent in answer to your prayer.”
The old man lifted a leather pouch from atop a stack of papers. “This pouch is for you to deliver to the last guardian, my final heir, at the appointed time,”
Bayard extended his muscled arm across the desk and took the pouch in his hand.
“And I have a message for our beloved monk,” said the Gaon. “Tell him that the truths that rule the world are always the most simple. Faith, love, trust—all simple concepts to the creator of man. It’s man who makes them complicated.”
The Gaon raised his right hand, palm up. “As simple as on.” Then he turned his palm down. “Off.”
He turned his palm up. “One.” Flip. “Zero.” Palm up. “True.” Flip. “False.”
The Gaon looked up from his hand toward the angel. “Tell him he is making his search too complicated. He should seek the simple answer.”
Poppy felt the warmth of the fire sink deeply into his bones. Heaviness returned to his eyes. He fought to remain in the moment. The simple answer?
“If something is not impossible,” the old man said to Bayard, his voice slipping away from Poppy, “it is possible.”
Like a curtain closing across a stage, a wash of feathers swept past Poppy’s sight.
Father Poppodopolous jolted out of his dream … his vision? … so abruptly, he almost fell out of his comfortable chair. He scanned the room quickly, then closed his eyes. An angel? The Vilna Gaon? He shook the cobwebs out of his thinking and tried to fix each image, each word into his memory. A simple answer.
Opening his eyes, Poppy noticed that all four screens were motionless, the flashing collage of light and color replaced by a single, stationary image of two lines—a string of letters in one line then a sequence of numbers in the second. On all four screens, the sequencing of the letters and then numbers were identical.
He started breaking down the letters into words.
31
RAF Akrotiri Air Base, Cyprus
July 23, 10:43 a.m.
The reports came in at almost the same time. A British captain strode through the front door of the terminal at almost the same moment one of the DSS agents slammed down the phone on the far end of the terminal’s reception desk.
“The ambassador bought an online ticket on a commercial flight to Ankara,” called the DSS agent as he trotted over to McKean’s unofficial command post—a table and a few chairs in a corner of the empty lobby. “Out of Ercan Airport, up in Northern Cyprus, east of Nicosia. The only flight connections to Turkey are out of that airport.”
“Bloody bad luck, that, but it makes sense,” interjected the British officer. “Captain Throwright, base security, ma’am.” Ramrod straight, he saluted McKeon. “Ambassador Cleveland hired a rental vehicle—in advance—from Stephanos Rentals, just a short walk from here. A black Ford, signed out just under fifteen minutes ago. Plenty of time to exit the air base and be on his way to the airport.”
“Why bad luck?” asked McKeon. “Because we can’t allow the ambassador’s disappearance to go public? Because we can’t get the local cops involved?”
“Aye, that too,” said the captain. “But bad luck because Ercan is in Northern Cyprus … Turkish controlled ever since the war in seventy-four, you see, but still claimed by Greece. And none of us in the West recognize Northern Cyprus’s existence. We have no one on the ground there.”
“How far to the airport?” asked McKeon.
“Two hours, give or take.”
“Then we may have time to catch him. Can you get us a car?”
“Yes … but you won’t get past the Turks. You look too much like bobbies on a mission.”
“We’ll deal with that,” snapped McKeon. “One problem at a time.” She opened up Contacts on her iPhone.
Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv
July 23, 10:45 a.m.
Only four people were left in Mullaney’s office: Mullaney, Herzog, Levinson, and Hughes. Palmyra Parker had returned to the ambassador’s private quarters to see if she could find some clues to Cleveland’s whereabouts in his study. And Kathie Doorley went back to supervising the resurrection of the ambassador’s residence to a viable and safe entity.
Looking like an old man with little sleep, Rabbi Herzog appeared to be taking a nap in his chair. Meyer Levinson was speaking softly into his phone in a corner of the office. And Ruth Hughes was trying her best to be invisible. But Mullaney skewered her with a stare.
“This could go badly for you.”
That was obvious. Hughes waited.
“I thought I could trust you.”
“You did. You still can. I was helping the ambassador do what he convinced me he had to do. I serve the ambassador, Brian. You know that.” Hughes took the other avenue that was available to her. “And we couldn’t reach you.”
Mullaney shook his head. “No excuse, Ruth. You know what I would have said if you had reached me. This is a fool’s errand, a dangerous one. And you gave him the means to do it. This is a big withdrawal from your account with me.”
She could hear both anger and hurt in his voice, a hurt that stirred up regret in her emotions but failed to change her mind. “I know, and I’m sorry for—”
Mullaney’s cell phone rang. It was still sitting on top of his desk. He tapped the speaker button.
“Pat.”
“Cleveland made significant preparation for his escape. He rented a car online at a base car rental agency. He also made an advance reservation on a flight from Ercan Airport, outside Nicosia, to Esenboga International Airport, north of Ankara. It looks like that’s where he’s headed.”
“Can you catch him?”
“We’re going to try. The base security chief is willing to send a car after him, and one of our guys can go along. It’s about a two-hour drive. Cleveland’s got a bit of a start. Hopefully they can catch him. If he gets past the border, it may be tough. Ercan is in Northern Cyprus. Turkish controlled, so I don’t know if we want to cross that border. And the Brits don’t have anybody on the ground.”
“Hold on.”
Mullaney put his phone on mute. “What kind of plane did you provide for the ambassador?”
Good idea, she thought. “It was a Gulfstream G450, one of the fastest private jets in the world. Can cruise at nearly six hundred miles an hour. It can beat him to Ankara. And yes … it’s still there, available to us.”
He released the mute button. “Pat, do two things. Yes … put one of our guys into a car with someone who speaks Turkish, someone the Brits trust, and have them try to catch Cleveland on the way to Ercan. Then I want you and the other DSS agents to get to Esenboga. Get back to the plane Cleveland used to get you all to Akrotiri. Ruth Hughes will arrange for the crew to be expecting you. The plane is superfast. It can beat Cleveland to the airport. I’ll send additional agents from the Ankara embassy, but—if we can’t catch him—I want you there when Atticus gets off that plane. Then I want you to stick him in your pocket, if necessary, get him on the Gulfstream, and bring him home.” Hughes knew a threat was coming—veiled, but a threat. But it had to be said. “You need this one, Pat.”
“Okay, I understand, Brian. I’ll stay in touch.”
Güvercinlik Army Air Base, Ankara
July 23, 12:08 p.m.
A nondescript vintage Opel—meaning dented, missing a fender, two red doors on the passenger side standing out from the dusty black of the rest of the car—waited twenty feet from the NATO helipad in a far corner of Güvercinlik Army Air Base in northwest Ankara. As the chopper’s rotors slowed down, the Opel pulled alongside. Cleveland—without a tie, his
jacket thrown over his shoulder, shirt sleeves rolled up, aviator sunglasses shading his eyes—looked like a tired NATO administrator getting out of the helicopter. No one except the driver noticed his presence.
As Cleveland lowered himself into the passenger seat, he glanced over at the driver. Dressed in black, head-to-toe, he had the look of a professional fighter who had lost more boxing matches than he’d won. The driver shifted into gear and didn’t move his eyes from the tarmac in front of him. “He’s waiting for you at the palace.”
The Opel lurched away from the chopper, a cloud of oil smoke in its wake.
32
Cankaya Palace, Ankara
July 23, 12:37 p.m.
In spite of its looks and condition, the battered Opel was immediately waved through a secluded, rear entrance to the Cankaya Palace, President Kashani’s Ankara residence. No inspection and no questions asked. Cankaya was huge, sprawling, and opulent. No Ottoman sultan lived in more ostentatious luxury. But instead of driving toward the massive, pink-stone residence, the driver diverted to the right, wound his way along a narrow garden road, and pulled up alongside an impressive greenhouse complex far from the main building.
Silent as the tomb the entire ride from the airport, the driver nodded toward an idyllic, secluded garden house alongside the greenhouse. “He’s in there.”
Not surprising. Kashani was an avid gardener. And this was a meeting he would want to keep under the radar. Without response to the driver, Cleveland pulled himself from the sagging bucket seat. He stretched the kinks out of his joints—winced as the pain in his back, from the rollover car crash four days ago, woke out of dormancy. Cleveland tried to erase from his mind all the pain from his myriad bruises and sprains. He would need his faculties on full alert if he hoped to discern Kashani’s true intentions and divert him from any foolhardy escapade.
As he walked up the stone path, Cleveland noticed the door to the garden house was slightly ajar. He pushed the door farther open and stepped across the threshold. The house was designed to take in the full grandeur of the spacious and colorful gardens that surrounded it. Floor-to-ceiling windows comprised three walls of a great room off to his left. The windows could open to admit any breeze or be covered by heavy curtains to keep out the heat. Two of the three window-walls were covered by the curtains, leaving the room in a muted state of dusk. Wicker and rattan furniture with luxurious and deep cushions were staged in three seating areas around the room, but the room still had a loose, airy feel to it.
Ottoman Dominion Page 19
