by Ellis Shuman
* * *
July 2001
The first time that Ivan Zhekov praised his work, Boyko Stanchev was still on foot patrol, having only joined the Burgas police force a few weeks previous. Boyko arrived in the coastal city shortly after completing his criminology studies. He had jumped at the first available position, despite being confident he was overqualified for patrol duties. He would have to prove he was capable of much more than walking the streets in uniform. His eventual goal was to make it onto the detective squad.
Galina had accompanied him to Burgas, but she complained constantly in their new home. The prices were higher here, she claimed. The salty sea breezes were bad for her fair complexion. She missed her friends from school. She couldn’t find employment that would utilize her knowledge of biology and she longed for Sofia’s rich cultural offerings. A short while after they moved, Boyko proposed to Galina, hoping the preparations for their upcoming marriage would shut the woman up. Most of the time, though, he just ignored her. Instead, he volunteered for extra shifts and concentrated on making a mark for himself on the force.
Burgas was experiencing a rash of pickpockets. Citizens reported the loss of purses and wallets, with many of the thefts occurring in Morska Gradina, the public park overlooking the Black Sea coast. With wide sidewalks, exotic plants, shady trees, and thick shrubbery, the gardens had served as a belt of tranquility in the midst of the bustling port city for over a century. Now, there was less serenity amidst the greenery. At certain hours of the day, residents avoided the area altogether, fearing they could be robbed. Or worse.
Boyko was one of the patrolmen assigned to the park. The regular patrols of uniformed cops were intended to allay the citizens’ fears and discourage pickpockets. Walking his beat, Boyko knew the only way to put an end to the crime wave was by catching the criminals in the act.
One Saturday afternoon, he began his patrol at the park entrance. City residents crowded the pathways to take in the warm summer sunshine. A multigenerational parade of strolling families marched by. Rambunctious youths demonstrated daring skateboard skills. Mothers pushed baby carriages and strollers. Fathers patiently tried to launch kites into the blue sky. Grandparents followed toddlers, who giggled as they chased balls tossed onto the grass. Young lovers ignored the crowds and held hands. A dapper gentleman hobbled along with a cane, the war medals on his breast brilliantly reflecting the sun. Off to the side, older matrons passed the time on wooden benches desperately needing maintenance. Occasionally a dog would approach the benches and lift its leg, only to be restrained at the last moment by an embarrassed owner. It seemed every other family owned a dog. Dachshunds and Dalmatians, German shepherds and poodles—the canines paraded through the park with the rest of the citizenry.
Everything seemed in order. Boyko nodded to the pedestrians and they acknowledged his presence. He stopped next to a busy ice cream stand and turned around to get a better look at the passersby. In the distance, folk music blared from a loudspeaker. A peddler offered colorful balloons to eager children as their parents forked over a few coins. A long line of customers waited patiently to buy popcorn.
And that was when Boyko spotted something unusual.
A young couple pushed their baby stroller along the side of the pavement. The father was thin, clad in faded jeans and a white T-shirt. The mother was well-endowed; it seemed her low-cut blouse’s sole purpose was to highlight her ample physical attributes. An inappropriate choice of clothing, Boyko thought. He watched as the couple approached the benches lining the square. The white-haired women sat forward to peek inside the carriage. The resultant “oohs” and “ahhs” could be heard from a distance, drawing additional visitors to the stroller and its young occupant.
While his wife kept up a steady conversation, smiling seductively and keeping her audience focused on the stroller, Boyko noticed the father circling behind them. Boyko moved forward to get a better view. At first, he was uncertain that what he was seeing was actually happening. As he watched, the man deftly dipped his hands into purses and pockets in quick, practiced motions. His sleight of hand was nearly impossible to detect; Boyko only recognized the actions for what they were because the possibility of such thievery was what had brought him to the park in the first place.
Amazingly, the man didn’t run from Boyko when he made the arrest. Perhaps it was due to the proximity of his wife and child, who would escape detention. Or maybe the man knew the overburdened judicial system would fail to keep him behind bars for long. He smiled as Boyko slipped on the handcuffs, leaving the novice patrol officer with a sensation of not having fully accomplished his assignment.
“You did good,” Zhekov commended him at headquarters. “While I doubt this couple is responsible for all the pickpocketing in the Burgas metropolitan area, I am confident their arrest gives notice that there is no immunity for even the most minor of crimes.”
Despite the rhetoric of the commander’s speech, Boyko took pride in having arrested the petty thief. Returning home that evening eager to boast of his achievement, he found Galina glued to a Turkish soap opera on television. The woman couldn’t be disturbed. Her coldness deflated his ego and sent him searching for comfort and companionship at the neighborhood pub.
A year later, Boyko was promoted to the station’s detective squad. His first case was in response to a robbery at a convenience store in a rundown neighborhood. The owner had opened his shop in the morning only to discover broken locks on the back door and an empty cash register. After uniformed policemen finished taking initial statements and questioning witnesses, Boyko arrived with his partner, a veteran officer suffering from a severe head cold. The older man stayed on the street, sneezing repeatedly, while Boyko went inside to talk to the owner.
“Why didn’t you empty the register when you closed the store last night?” Boyko asked.
“And walk through the dark Burgas streets with so much cash in my pocket?” the owner lamented, standing behind a barrier of candy bars and chewing gum. “I would have been mugged for sure.”
“How often do you empty the register?”
“I go to the bank every Tuesday morning. What am I going to do? We had a lot of income this week.”
A standing weekly deposit at the bank? Apparently it wasn’t a coincidence that the robbery occurred sometime during the night between Monday and Tuesday. In Boyko’s mind, a picture was forming. The robber was familiar with the store owner’s regular procedures.
“I need to know the names of your employees,” Boyko demanded. “And also, provide me with names of any employees who stopped working for you in the past year.”
“I did have a falling out with one of my workers. He claimed I owed him back pay, but I insisted he had received everything to which he was entitled. He quit two months ago. Now that I think about it, he stormed out of the store. He swore at me, called me names. He vowed to get even, but I didn’t pay too much attention to his threats at the time.”
“Can I have his name, please?” Boyko asked. “And if you know where I can find your former employee, it would be very helpful.”
This would lead to a quick arrest, he was sure. The subsequent discovery of a large bolt cutter in a garbage bin outside the disgruntled worker’s tenement building provided further evidence tying the man to the crime.
“This tool is definitely capable of cutting through the locks at the back of the store,” Boyko’s partner remarked, holding up the metal tool. “We’re lucky we got here before the Roma walked off with this.”
The gypsies were constantly rummaging through the garbage bins, taking anything they believed to be of value, Boyko knew. But, in this case, the discarded tool was in very good shape. Why would anyone throw it away?
“Let’s talk to the guy,” he said, the first tinges of doubt forming in his mind. It was a bit too coincidental that they had already discovered the tool used in the break-in.
The dismissed worker didn’t have a clue why the two detectives had come to question him.
When asked about his whereabouts the previous night, he had a ready response.
“I was at a bachelor party,” he said, a drunken smile on his face. His eyes were bloodshot; a distinct odor of alcohol lingered on his body. “We got a little carried away. Too much booze. There were girls, too. But, it was a party. What do you expect? I only got home at four in the morning. Now, what did you want to question me about?”
A short while later, the two detectives left the apartment. “He didn’t do it,” Boyko whispered to his partner, who was again sneezing like crazy. “This guy is innocent.”
“Just because he has some dumbshit alibi? I do not believe a word of what he’s saying.”
“His story is easy enough to check out,” Boyko said. “We need to question the store owner again.”
“That’s a waste of time. Boyko. You are blind to what is obvious. This guy’s the crook.”
“I don’t buy it.”
The two officers returned to the convenience store where the robbery had taken place. They walked in to find the owner standing behind the cash register with a huge grin on his face.
“Did you arrest him? It’s about time that no-good bastard spent some time behind bars.”
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” Boyko said. “Unfortunately, your former worker did not commit the crime. He was elsewhere last night, in no state to break into this store.”
“But, of course he did it! He had the lock cutters and knew there was cash in the register. He struck just before my weekly deposit at the bank! He deserves to be in jail.”
“What do you mean—he had the lock cutters?” Boyko’s partner asked.
At last, the older detective was seeing the light, Boyko thought.
“I mean, he could easily have taken a pair of cutters, or some other tool, and used them to break the locks on the back door,” the owner stuttered.
The man was becoming extremely flustered, Boyko saw. He lowered his eyes and started to back away. He muttered something under his breath and continued to insist that his former employee was guilty.
“He knew when to come. He knew about the money. You must arrest him!”
“The judge will not look favorably on your attempt to frame an innocent man,” Boyko retorted. “We need to have a little talk.”
When they arrived at the station a short while later, the store owner’s face could no longer hide his guilt. Boyko went to his desk and began typing up his report while his partner stepped into the hallway to deal with another sneezing fit.
“Boyko,” Zhekov addressed him, approaching with a handful of papers. “Many officers would have quickly arrested that former worker, but you have shown me that you are capable of making the correct assumptions, of acting on the appropriate clues. Good job.”
Boyko smiled; the arrest would look good on his record. His first case closed successfully. Yet still, even a rookie detective was capable of solving such a simple robbery. Future cases would not be as easy. The clues would not be as apparent; the evidence would be harder to find. He would be tested, for sure, but one day he would prove his worth and demonstrate how capable and competent a detective he truly was.
* * *
“I hear Zhekov dismissed you from the case.”
Boyko looked up from his temporary desk at Burgas police headquarters and instantly a scowl formed on his face. Kamen was the last person he wanted to see. The heavyset detective smirked at Boyko, quite pleased that the SANS officer would no longer be part of the bus bombing investigation.
“You must be eager to return to Sofia. Your plush desk and diplomatic liaisons await you there.”
“Enough already!” Boyko barked. He hadn’t enjoyed working with Kamen when the two of them were assigned to cases together and his aversion to him hadn’t paled in the years since. Boyko hardly trusted the man, or his motives. Kamen was not fit to be a detective!
It would be so easy to swing a punch at him, Boyko thought. But, before he could say anything else, Milen walked into the room and turned on the television set. The live news conference drew Boyko’s attention.
“Our investigators have well-grounded reasons to believe two of the suspects connected to the bombing belong to the militant wing of the Islamist group Hezbollah,” a government official stated. “Their names are known to us and we understand they have been living in Lebanon for years, one with a Canadian passport and the other with an Australian one.”
“What about the bomber?” a reporter asked, shoving his microphone into the official’s face.
“The identity of the bomber remains unknown, but we have shared DNA samples with intelligence agencies from other nations. So far, we have no DNA match. These things take time.”
Instead of asking another question, the reporter challenged the official with a statement that surprised the detectives watching in Burgas police headquarters.
“There are reports the bomber has been identified as Mehdi Ghezali, a Swedish citizen and a former Guantanamo inmate,” the reporter said.
“I cannot comment on that,” the official replied. He then refused to take additional questions.
Mehdi Ghezali? Had the bus bomber actually been identified? Or was this another false lead, like the original assumption that the culprit had been Michigan resident Richard Milkin?
As his former colleagues gathered in the briefing room to discuss the latest leads, Boyko remained in his seat, struggling to put together the pieces of the unsolved case in his mind. Could the tall, thin man who had paced back and forth in the terminal an hour before the flight’s arrival have been a Swedish citizen? Boyko could picture the video, broadcast ad nauseam by the media. The suspect was clearly wearing a wig. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses; he wore some type of sports cap. The Israelis who had encountered the man said he was pushy, nervous, and very much in a hurry. But none of these clues suggested he was Swedish.
Mehdi Ghezali? Really? Boyko doubted the former Guantanamo inmate was the bomber. What was it that made this suggestion unlikely? He couldn’t put his finger on it, not yet, but it called for further investigation.
He needed a drink, something to relieve the anxiety he felt for not being allowed to participate in the briefing. Did he have any whiskey left in his uncomfortable flat? Or had he finished the last of the rakia the other night? The night when he found the dead bird on the cold tenement floor outside his door. Torn feathers, gruesome entrails. The gory avian carcass.
No! He wouldn’t let the Hunter’s bloody message trouble him. Not now.
Boyko realized he had no reason to stay at the station. He searched in his pockets for his pack of cigarettes and without a word to his former colleagues, he left the building.
14
The air conditioning in the subterranean Tel Aviv office was operating at full blast, its noisy hum a constant background distraction as the analysts worked at their stations.
Sitting at her desk, Ayala pulled her sweater tight. She stared at the computer screen. Words and numbers shifted in and out of focus, totally indecipherable. She found it hard to concentrate on her tasks; her assignments made no sense. Research was literally impossible; her analytic mind was not functioning. She raised her hand to cover a yawn.
“Do you want coffee?”
Ayala shook her head, but then she realized that the motion had been up and down in a response more suitable to Bulgaria. The Bulgarian nod.
“No, no coffee,” she said out loud, looking up from her desk.
“But, you indicated that you wanted some.”
“No thanks. I’m a bit confused.”
“It’s not easy to be back in the office, is it?”
Ayala forced a smile as she fidgeted in her chair. This was not where she wanted to be. She should be in the field where she could ask questions and help look for the answers. That was her real calling in this job.
How could she have failed? And in Bulgaria of all places! Her first assignment overseas had been to a country whose mystery had dazzled her a
s a child. But, the trip had not been the fulfillment of childhood fairy tales and legends. Instead, the visit was one of bureaucracy and headaches—an incomplete mission.
She couldn’t even call her father to give her impressions of visiting his homeland; her visit had been so brief. Other than describe the Burgas airport terminal, the hotel where she stayed, and what she had seen from the window while traveling through the Bulgarian countryside, what would she say?
There was another reason she would never discuss her journey with him. She was not allowed to ever mention any of what had happened to her family. The hammering of bullets into the wall above her bed near the Turkish border still resonated in her head. That was an experience she would never share. She had to leave them in the dark.
Everything was surreal, as if she had never even traveled overseas. As quickly as it had been offered to her, the opportunity to serve in the field had been taken away. The once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a meaningful contribution to an important investigation had slipped through her fingers. The odds of getting another such position abroad were highly unlikely. Instead, she was left to face the endless stream of data on her computer, and none of it made sense.
“Ayala.”
What? The analyst sitting a few desks away was beckoning to her, inviting her to join him at his terminal.
“There’s something you should see,” he said.
The Swedish secret service and Bulgarian officials have denied that Mehdi Ghezali was the suicide bomber who killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian in a bus explosion in Burgas.
Ghezali, a Swedish citizen of Algerian and Finnish origins, was held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay from 2002 to 2004 and arrested in Pakistan in 2009.
“We can confirm he is not the suicide bomber,” an unidentified source connected to the Swedish secret service said.
Ghezali was captured during the battle at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in late 2001, and handed over to the U.S. military, which sent him to Guantánamo.
