The Eighth Sister

by Robert Dugoni

  “Can you outrun it to Turkish waters?”

  “If it is a Russian patrol boat, Turkish waters will not save you. The Russians do not respect territorial waters when they want something, and it appears they want you very much.”

  “How would they know?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps they found your transponder. We had no choice but to leave it, and now they know why we were there in the first place. Go. Call my sons. If we are smart, we can deceive them. Tonight the fog is a blessing from Allah.”

  With Federov’s urging, the Russian patrol boat made good time and had been tracking the Turkish fishing vessel, the Esma, for almost half an hour. The fishing vessel moved at a strong clip and was not changing course. The Esma was taking the shortest and most direct route back to Turkey.

  “It has increased speed,” Popov said to Federov. “They know we are coming. The captain is trying to make the Bosphorus strait.”

  “That cannot happen,” Federov said.

  “He cannot outrun us. We will intercept him in minutes.” Popov paused. Then he said, “We will be in Turkish waters, Colonel.”

  Federov ignored the statement. “I want that boat stopped and searched. If it comes down to it, we will say it invaded Russian territorial waters and is smuggling cargo.”

  “And if the boat will not heed our warnings?” Popov asked.

  “Then you will sink it,” Federov said, “and take on board anyone who lives.”

  The patrol boat quickly closed the distance. The radar image, despite the thick fog complicating satellite communications, projected clearly what was most certainly the Turkish fishing trawler.

  “I am picking up other ships, closer to the Turkish shore,” Popov said.

  “Turkey is filled with too many fishing boats,” Federov said. “Ignore them. Stay on the trawler.”

  “I am going to try to hail him,” Popov said.

  “No,” Federov said. “You will not.”

  “The Esma has radar,” Popov said. “We are not a surprise to them.”

  “Then there is no point hailing them,” Federov said.

  “The boat is two hundred yards off our starboard side,” a technician said.

  “Slow your speed,” Popov said, “but stay on course.”

  Another minute and the fishing trawler appeared, shrouded in the gray mist, still running hard.

  “I must hail it,” Popov said. “To not do so is to risk a collision.”

  “Issue a warning shot across its bow,” Federov said without hesitation. He wanted the captain to understand the ramifications of his continued actions, that he was putting himself, his men, and his boat and livelihood at risk. Federov suspected the trawler captain to be nothing more than a well-paid courier who would feel no kinship to Jenkins. He had somehow fooled Popov, but he was not about to fool Federov.

  Popov nodded to his men. The order given, a large echo exploded from a gun on the deck of the ship. Seconds later, Popov said, “It has slowed.”

  Federov nodded. “Now that the captain knows you are serious, you may hail him and advise him to stop his engines immediately. Tell him we wish to board his vessel.”

  Popov did as Federov instructed, and the fishing boat stopped. Federov pulled open the door and walked onto the deck. The temperature had warmed, though not much. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets as he descended the stairs and waited for the men to lower the Zodiac inflatable. When they had, he climbed down a ladder, along with Popov and two armed guards. Within seconds the skiff had crossed between the two vessels, and Federov was assisted onto the deck of the Esma by the captain and his son.

  “You are the captain?” Federov spoke Russian to a stout man with a salt-and-pepper beard.

  The captain looked at him as if confused, then looked to Popov, who repeated the question in Turkish.

  “As I was several hours ago when you boarded my ship,” the captain said. “Did you think things would change?”

  “Search the ship, thoroughly,” Federov said to the armed guards. Then he said, “For your sake, Captain, I hope things have not changed. I am Colonel Viktor Federov of the Russian Federal Security Service. Tell me, what were you doing in Russian waters?” Federov asked.

  Again, Popov translated.

  “I told the captain that our nets became tangled and we were working to untangle them.”

  “And you drifted all that way? Nearly to the Russian shoreline? On a calm night such as this? I find that difficult to comprehend,” Federov said. Popov began to translate. “Enough,” Federov said, eyeing the captain. “This man has played you for a fool. He understands every word I am saying. He could not have fished the Black Sea for so long and not have learned Russian. He chooses not to acknowledge you.”

  Federov turned to one of the guards. The man handed him the transponder. “What is even more perplexing is that this transponder was found and calculated to have been in the exact area that your vessel was initially boarded.”

  “It is not mine,” the captain said, still speaking Turkish. “Though I thank you for retrieving it and being so determined to return it.”

  Popov translated.

  “You were following this transponder’s signal because it was leading you to your pickup.”

  “I was not following anything,” the captain said, “and I do not pick up things out of the water unless they are fish.”

  “Where is your other son?” Popov asked.

  “What?” the captain said.

  “Where is your other son? There were three on board. Where is he?”

  Kaplan did not answer.

  “Find the other man,” Federov said to the guards, then redirected his attention to the captain. “Do not play games with me, old man. My patience is waning and I am in no mood for your games.”

  After almost ten minutes the two guards returned from searching the ship. Both shook their heads. “There is no one else on board.”

  Federov continued to stare down the captain. “You will tell me where your son and Mr. Jenkins have gone, Captain, or I will order the patrol boat to sink your ship.”

  Kaplan spoke Turkish. “I do not think that would be wise.”

  “No?” Federov said, smiling at the man’s hubris.

  “No. We are in Turkish waters and tensions between our two countries have been high since the war in Syria, when your Mr. Putin called us Turks terrorists.”

  Federov looked to Popov, who translated. “Good point,” Federov said. “So, maybe we will not fire upon you, Captain. Maybe we will simply ram your boat and blame this damn fog. A tragic accident.”

  “The inflatable is gone,” one of Popov’s men announced.

  Federov said, “Tell me where your son and Mr. Jenkins have gone, and I will not sink your ship, Captain. Refuse and we will do so, and I will still get the information from you. What is it going to be?”

  “And I told you, Colonel Federov, that would not be wise,” the captain responded in Turkish. “I have alerted the Turkish coast guard to your presence in Turkish waters. They are old friends of mine. Check your radar. They are fast on their way. The way I see it, you have very little time to get back to your patrol boat and get back in Russian waters.”

  Federov appreciated the man’s courage. “Perhaps your son can tell us where they have gone.”

  Emir shook his head. “I do not know.”

  “No?”

  Federov removed his pistol and stepped to Emir, pressing the barrel to his forehead. “As you said, Captain, we don’t have much time. I’m going to ask you again, just this once, and I want you to think very carefully before you answer me, in Russian. Yes? Now, where are your son and Mr. Jenkins going?”

  36

  The inflatable skimmed across the water’s surface, the rigid hull slapping at the waves as the rubber bow bounced. Yusuf had the twenty-five-horsepower engine open full throttle, the boat going as fast as possible. Jenkins knelt on the rigid fiberglass floor in the middle of the boat to provide ballast. He wore a life
jacket over a red survival suit. His hands gripped the rope holds on each side of the inflatable, and he felt each bounce reverberate in his back and his knees. Several times the waves were so jarring he thought the inflatable might flip. Those hours of warmth on the Esma now proved to be a curse, contrasting sharply with the cold air and the spray of frigid water.

  Yusuf used a compass to keep the bearing he and his father had agreed upon. If he stayed on course, with the Esma running parallel to the inflatable, it would shield them from the Russian Coast Guard’s radar, and he might just make it to the Bosphorus strait. The technique was called radar shadowing. Demir had learned it in the navy. If done correctly, it would allow Demir to defeat the Russian radar, which would see just the larger boat, the Esma, on its monitor. By the time the Russian patrol boat stopped the Esma, took the time to board it, and the additional time to notice Yusuf’s absence, the inflatable boat would be half an hour closer to shore—if it didn’t capsize first. At least that was the plan.

  Jenkins’s hands hurt from gripping the handholds, and the muscles throughout his arms and his core ached as he fought against inertia threatening to throw him overboard. The wind and the noise of the engine prevented the two men from speaking. The only thing Jenkins could do was look into the fog and hope he spotted an oncoming ship or floating debris before it killed them.

  Thirty minutes after launching, Yusuf reduced speed, and the boat’s shimmying and bouncing decreased enough that Jenkins dared to remove his hands from the holds. He balled his fingers into fists, then cupped his hands and blew hot air into them. As he did, the fog suddenly dissipated and Jenkins stared up at a blanket of stars sparkling in the blackened sky. The stars seemed to descend all the way to the water’s surface, but a closer inspection revealed lights from hotels and houses littering hillsides rising on both sides of the tiny boat.

  “The Bosphorus strait,” Yusuf said. “I think, Mr. Jenkins, we might just make it.”

  Under other circumstances the setting would have warranted stopping the boat and taking time to appreciate the beauty. This was not that time. They passed beneath an enormous suspension bridge spanning between the two land masses. Lights atop the towers flashed a warning to approaching planes.

  Jenkins kicked out his legs from beneath him and stretched his limbs. The waters had calmed considerably inside the strait. Yusuf slowed still further and fit the end of a metal rod with a blinking blue light into a hole. Jenkins quickly saw why. As they made their way through the strait, they passed large tankers, anchored in place, and cargo ships getting an early start to their day. Hit one of them and it would be like a gnat colliding with the windshield of a car.

  Yusuf further reduced his speed as they approached a marina, and he deftly maneuvered around a rock outcropping providing protection for the boats moored there. That proved to be the easy part. A myriad of boats of different shapes, sizes, and colors crammed the marina, all seemingly moored without consideration to boat slips. Yusuf guided the inflatable around trawlers as large as the Esma and fishing boats no larger than their craft. There seemed to be no organization to the moorage—the boats stacked three and four deep, in the same slip, as if a tsunami had swept through, lifted the boats, and dropped them in a haphazard manner.

  Yusuf maneuvered the inflatable boat to the far end of the marina and cut the engine, letting the rubber hull bump against a wooden boat docked in the last slip. He tied a mooring line to a cleat on the wooden boat and gripped the railing to pull the inflatable close. “Climb up,” he said to Jenkins.

  Jenkins stood slowly and uneasily, feeling like he was skating on ice. He grabbed the railing and lifted himself onto the boat’s deck. Yusuf did the same, though with much greater ease.

  “Come,” Yusuf whispered.

  The night air was perfectly still and quiet, without the sound of moving cars or voices. Somewhere in the distance, a foghorn bellowed. It sounded almost alive. Yusuf led Jenkins to the other side of the boat and jumped a three-foot gap to a concrete pier. Jenkins followed him past wooden benches to the street, where a small town awaited dawn—two- and three-story buildings, colorfully painted, with retail stores on the ground level and apartments above them. Cars lined the street, parked with as little attention to parking spots as the moored ships to their slips, and seemingly making the street too narrow for even a single car to pass.

  Yusuf led Jenkins down the sidewalk to a commercial van. He moved to the front and reached under the bumper, snatching a key and unlocking the side door, sliding it open. Jenkins climbed inside. The interior smelled of vegetables and was packed with empty cardboard boxes and wooden crates.

  “Stay down,” Yusuf said. “The fewer who see you here the better.”

  Jenkins did as instructed.

  Yusuf slammed shut the door. A moment later he opened the driver’s door. The dome light remained dark. Yusuf slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and drove from the curb. “You can sit up now,” he said. “But stay in the back, away from the windows.”

  Jenkins sat up, removed his survival suit, and rested against the crates to see out the windshield. The road ascended from the marina, cutting through foliage. Between the trees and shrubs, Jenkins got occasional glimpses of the strait and the lights of the anchored tankers.

  “Where are we going?” Jenkins asked.

  “If the patrol boat followed us, the Russians know we have you. If they stop my father he will stall for time, but he will not risk his son or his boat to save you.”

  “I understand.”

  “The Russians have many assets in Turkey, especially in Istanbul. Many of your spy novels have been written about Istanbul, and with good reason. Those assets will be searching for you, and for me. They will find me eventually, and I will have to tell them where I have taken you.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “The only safe travel for you now is by bus. It will not be convenient, but you can buy a ticket without showing identification, and you can get off of one bus and onto another. Remember, good information is disinformation. So this you will need to do often. Leave false trails.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “I will drive you to Taksim. There you will catch a bus to Izmir and from Izmir to Çeşme. Once in Çeşme, secure passage across the Aegean Sea to Chios.”

  “Greece,” Jenkins said.

  “You can practically skip a stone and hit Chios from Çeşme. From Chios you are on your own.”

  “How much time do I have?”

  “The bus ride to Izmir will take seven to eight hours depending on how often you get on and off. To Çeşme is another hour. I will stay away for as long as possible, but no longer than midday. I cannot risk staying away longer. I worry for my family. When confronted, I will tell the Russians that I dropped you at a bus station in Istanbul, but that you refused to tell me where you were going.”

  “Don’t lie for me,” Jenkins said.

  “I will not. I will stay away as long as I can, and I will do my best to stall them, but if they threaten my family, I will tell them that you are bound for Çeşme. Hopefully it will be enough time for you to get there and get out of the country.”

  Thirty minutes later, the landscape changed dramatically. The highway continued past hillsides covered with apartment buildings. Another fifteen minutes and Yusuf exited the highway, driving the surface streets of a city awakening. He drove into a large, open square and pulled the van to the curb.

  “Across the street. You see the white awning? You can buy a bus ticket from the kiosk when it opens. Look for Istanbul Çevre Yolu. Remember to get on and off the bus frequently. Disinformation. Be very careful.”

  “I have no lira,” Jenkins said. “Only rubles.”

  “You can exchange your rubles. There is a bank, just down the street.”

  “Thank you for your help, Yusuf. I will never forget you, your father, or your brother.”

  “I’m afraid that would be a mistake, Mr. Jenkins . . . for all of us.”
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  37

  Jenkins made himself disappear in Gezi Park, across the street from where Yusuf had dropped him, while he waited for the businesses to open. He sat with his back against a tree and his knees pulled to his chest. Convenience stores and fruit vendors were the first to open, at four thirty in the morning. Cars soon appeared, along with a smattering of people. He stood and massaged the pain in his knees before he crossed the street. He did not go to the bus kiosk. He walked down the street, past retail stores on the bottom floor of five-story apartment buildings, to the business Yusuf had pointed out, Alo Döviz. He didn’t know what it meant, but there were two ATMs and behind them a glass-enclosed counter with the universal sign for money—the dollar sign. As he approached, Jenkins saw the flags of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia. He handed the man behind the counter 10,000 rubles. He would need more, but too much would make him too easily remembered.

  The man counted the rubles, pressed the buttons on a calculator, turned the machine, and showed Jenkins the conversion: 850 Turkish lira. Jenkins nodded. “Spasibo,” he said. Jenkins held up his hand, as if holding a cell phone to his ear, and asked where he could purchase a phone, speaking Russian.

  The man pointed down the street and indicated Jenkins should veer to his right at the corner. “Yuva iletisim,” he said.

  Jenkins took his money, thanked the man, and proceeded down the street, finding the store. Inside, he explained to a young man, again using Russian and again with some difficulty, that he wanted to purchase two burner cell phones with international calling plans that would allow him to call other countries. After further discussion, the man directed him to something called a Mobal World Talk & Text Phone for 112 lira, which was roughly nineteen dollars. Jenkins declined the young man’s attempts to upsell him, said the phones were simply for business calls, and departed the store with two of the Mobal World cells.

  With the phones in the pocket of his coat, Jenkins hurried back to the bus station. Again, he didn’t immediately approach. He watched the people near the station, looking for anyone standing about, trying to look busy. Seeing no one suspicious, he approached the counter and repeated what Yusuf told him to say. The teller took his lira and issued him a ticket, then stood up, speaking Turkish and gesturing emphatically to a bus at the curb. Jenkins deduced from the man’s gesticulations that he had to hurry, and he took the ticket and ran across the street. He reached the bus just as it was about to leave. The driver opened the door, Jenkins stepped up, showed the man his ticket, and took a seat toward the rear of the bus.