Sleeper 13: The most explosive must-read thriller of 2018

by Rob Sinclair

  ‘On the inside?’

  Rahn frowned.

  ‘It was an old van, right?’ Cox asked.

  ‘Fifteen years old.’

  ‘Probably heavily rusted.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Rahn said, shrugging in acknowledgement.

  ‘So plenty of iron oxide on display. And what about that container?’ Cox pointed over to the charred metal sheet. ‘Can I pick it up?’

  ‘Wear these,’ Rain said, taking a pair of latex gloves from the back pocket of her suit trousers.

  Cox pulled them on then walked across the plastic sheets to the twisted piece of metal. She lifted it up and rubbed at the layer of ash that clung to the surface. Sure enough as the black smudged away there was a definite tinge of blue, dotted about the metal surface.

  Cox looked over to Rahn, whose face was now covered in concern.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Cox said.

  ‘I hope not,’ was Rahn’s answer.

  ‘Prussian Blue. A dark blue pigment known to be produced when iron reacts with––’

  ‘Cyanide.’ Rahn twitched, then shook her head. ‘I think I’d better call my boss.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  Rome, Italy

  Obbadi dragged open his eyelids. His head was pounding, a horrific stabbing pain right between his eyes. He fought through it, his lids doing their best to shut, but Obbadi eventually won the battle for control.

  He realised he was on the sofa. In his lounge. He lifted his hand up to look at his Patek Philippe watch. It wasn’t there, and instead he was left looking at the ring of lighter skin around his wrist. He tried to sit up, but only managed to get halfway before he gave up because of the throbbing in his head. His eyes shifted over to the windows. The blinds were closed. He could tell from the dark outline around them that it was nighttime outside.

  Then he heard a noise in the kitchen that sent a wave of clarity over him. He looked over and spotted Katja, who was hunched over as she searched through a drawer.

  Obbadi shot up from the sofa.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said, more a statement of warning than a polite question. Katja bolted upright and spun round, the base of her spine smacking off the open drawer she was standing by. Obbadi saw her fight through the pain as she gently closed the drawer behind her.

  ‘Honey, you’re awake,’ she said, sounding both surprised and concerned.

  She moved towards him and Obbadi, as much as he was fighting to keep his weary mind focused, had to put a hand up to his head and press against his temple to try and ease the thumping pain. As she came closer Obbadi could see she was looking rattled.

  ‘What were you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘Just putting things away.’

  A clear lie.

  She was wearing a long black dress, silver earrings and necklace with a drop pendant that ended in her pushed-up cleavage. Formal wear, for her. His brain began firing as he recalled. He looked down and saw his own clothes; black trousers, white dress shirt.

  ‘You said you were feeling sick,’ Katja said, answering one of the questions he was asking himself.

  ‘The ambassador’s dinner,’ Obbadi said as the memories began to take shape. After the recce with Arab’ah in England he’d headed straight back to Rome for the event. He had to keep up appearances after all.

  ‘I don’t know if it’s something you ate or if . . . well, it’s not like you drank too much, is it?’

  Obbadi stared at her, trying to figure out what was going on, and looking for any deceit in her eyes. Was it just tiredness from all the recent travel catching up with him?

  Shit. Bruges. He realised he still didn’t know how that had panned out. The last he’d known, Itnashar had been trying to lure Talatashar into a trap. When he and Katja had headed to dinner Obbadi had still been waiting on confirmation of how that had turned out. In this case he firmly believed no news was likely very bad news.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked.

  ‘About midnight.’

  ‘We came home early?’

  ‘I practically had to carry you out of there. You could barely walk.’

  He couldn’t remember any of it. He moved past her and towards the kitchen. What had she been doing in there?

  Katja rushed past him, getting to the kitchen first and he saw her head bouncing this way and that. Double-checking everything was in place. What a piece of work she was.

  ‘Here, let me get you some water,’ she said, grabbing a glass from the dishwasher. Obbadi spotted it was full. Putting things away. I don’t think so, he thought.

  Quite what she was up to he didn’t know. But he didn’t like it. This wasn’t the first time he’d had suspicion of her snooping, but would she really go so far as to drug him to render him unconscious so she could do it?

  She poured the glass of water and turned around, ready to hold the glass out to him. When she saw the look in his eyes she paused, the glass staying pressed up close to her chest. Obbadi studied her, wondering what he should do.

  His phone buzzed, over on the coffee table. Katja breathed a sigh of relief as Obbadi turned and groggily headed for the handset.

  A message. And not the first he’d received over the last couple of hours. He was needed. Katja would have to wait.

  He said nothing to her as he walked to the office door, took the key from around his neck and unlocked the door then stepped inside. He glared over at his girlfriend as he shut the door behind him, her face eventually disappearing out of sight behind the wood.

  ‘I’m here,’ Obbadi said, once he’d logged on to the encrypted call on his laptop.

  ‘It’s me,’ came the voice of Tamaniyyah – the second of his brothers stationed in Bruges.

  The fact that it was Tamaniyyah he was speaking to and not Itnashar was enough to cause Obbadi to slump.

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘Itnashar is dead.’

  ‘You fucked up,’ Obbadi said, anger rather than disappointment clear in his tone. ‘Is Talatashar still alive?’

  A delay. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you really fucked up.’

  ‘But we will make this right. He won’t get far.’

  ‘Yet he’s already gone much further than he should have, and you still haven’t stopped him yet.’

  Obbadi’s statement was met with silence and he was glad that Tamaniyyah had chosen not to further defend his poor performance.

  ‘Go back to your position,’ Obbadi said.

  ‘You don’t want me to keep on him?

  ‘No. He won’t stay in Bruges. Most likely he’s coming for me next. You stick to the original plan. The operation is too important for you to abandon post. Is everything else in hand?’

  ‘Of course. Itnashar completed what we needed. All the plans are in place.’

  ‘Good. I’ll come soon to collect.’

  ‘Okay. So that’s it?’

  ‘No. You failed with Talatashar, and you know I have to pass that back to our father—’

  ‘But brother, please!’

  ‘I’m sorry, but there is no exception. Stay in position and await further instruction.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘It’s not long now before you’ll receive final word. That will be your chance to redeem yourself.’

  ‘This is what I’ve been waiting for. I will redeem myself. I will make you and all the others proud.’

  ‘I would expect nothing less, brother.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Berlin, Germany

  The LKA building in the centre of Berlin was a six-storey sandstone structure on a corner of Tempelhofer Damm – a long straight main road leading from the city to the defunct Tempelhof airport. The windowless room Cox had been plonked in was tiny, though she was happy enough – it was now dark outside anyway as the clock wound slowly towards the convergence of night and morning, so she didn’t care about having a view.

  Following the discovery at the evidence warehouse, the LKA’s response to the investi
gation had ratcheted up several notches given the alarming and unusual circumstances of the deaths of the six men. Cox’s knowledge of hydrogen cyanide and the effect of the gas when it reacted with iron was one of many previously useless facets of knowledge stored deep in her brain. On this occasion, the knowledge had come from her longstanding interest in twentieth-century warfare, though it didn’t surprise her that the police in Berlin were also acutely aware of the poisonous gas and its heinous history.

  Hence the heightened interest in the case. Cox knew that in the rooms next door to her there were half a dozen other police officers now helping on the expedited search to identify the victims and culprits. Cox’s hypothesis that cyanide was somehow involved in the crime was far from proven, but based on the evidence had been enough to kick-start the LKA’s big machine. Forensic scientists were busy scraping samples from the remains of the van to confirm Cox’s theory, but in the meantime she was busy helping the LKA with other avenues as they accelerated their efforts to determine who the victims – and perpetrators – were.

  A colleague of Rahn’s had set Cox up with the recordings of all the CCTV cameras in the area that the LKA had access to, and other officers were working on gaining access to other recordings from private businesses to add to the mix.

  Cox had been steadily analysing the data she had for the best part of two hours, working backward from the site where the van was found and looking over a twelve-hour time period. She needed to identify the victims as they arrived at the crime scene, and the assailants as they left.

  In the dimly lit room the lack of proper sleep was quickly catching up with her and her eyelids were becoming heavier and heavier. Through a combination of sugar and caffeine she’d kept herself going, though she knew sooner or later she’d crash.

  But it felt like she was getting closer to something. She’d honed her search onto six vehicles in particular; each had followed a similar pattern of travel during the relevant time period. But she needed a way of whittling that down further. So far, none of the CCTV shots had provided clear enough images of the occupants’ faces, and certainly none that any image recognition software could work with.

  There was a knock on the door and Cox turned to see Rahn standing in the doorway.

  ‘We have some more data coming your way,’ she said.

  ‘Perfect,’ Cox said. ‘Actually, you can come and have a look at this. I need some help with these vehicles I’ve found.’

  Rahn came over and hovered over Cox’s shoulder. Cox clicked through the various files where she’d saved the relevant snippets.

  ‘I think this could be the white van,’ Cox said, showing the grainy still taken from a camera on a busy road junction about a mile away from the warehouse. ‘This was at eleven twenty-nine.’

  ‘There’s no shot of the front to see the driver?’

  ‘Not here, no, but I’ve got some other vehicles that may or may not be relevant too.’

  Cox quickly clicked through the files to bring up images of each of the vehicles. When she turned to Rahn the officer’s mouth was wide open.

  ‘What?’ Cox said.

  ‘Heiliger Strohsack!’

  Cox raised an eyebrow. ‘You recognise one of these?’

  ‘The BMW. Give me a second.’

  Rahn walked out and Cox was left waiting, wondering what on earth she’d just found. Less than two minutes later Rahn was back with a look somewhere between satisfaction and fright.

  ‘The car belongs to an associate of Tomas Streicher,’ she said. ‘Streicher is a well-known neo-Nazi. A white supremacist. Basically the leader of an organised criminal splinter group with close ties to the NPD. I suppose you’ve heard of them, too?’

  ‘The National Democratic Party of Germany. Yeah, I’ve heard of them.’

  Cox’s heart sank as she stared at the picture of the man. Neo-Nazis? That was hardly what she’d expected or wanted to hear. She could imagine Flannigan’s reaction to her having spent the best part of twenty-four hours chasing down a domestic issue involving the far right.

  ‘So, is he one of the dead guys, or the man who did this?’ Cox asked. If it was the latter then her time in Germany had been a waste.

  ‘Have you found any more images of that vehicle leaving?’ Rahn asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Cox said, ‘but again there’re no clear pictures of the driver or passengers.’

  ‘What time?’

  Cox opened up the file. ‘Three twenty-four. The same junction.’

  ‘Wait there,’ Rahn said before again disappearing.

  Cox sat staring at the picture for a couple of minutes, part of her already planning how soon she could leave Germany. Rahn came back into the room with a weary-looking man traipsing behind her. He looked to be in his fifties with a thin frame and thinner white hair, a bedraggled appearance and a pair of glasses hanging off the tip of his pointed nose.

  ‘This is Polizeiobermeister Bierhoff.’ Cox nodded in greeting. ‘I think he can help you find a face for the white van driver and for the BMW.’

  Bierhoff nodded and walked over. Cox leaned out of the way as Bierhoff bent over the keyboard and began typing away. Cox held her breath as the stale odour from his armpit hit her.

  ‘This is the data I sent you just now,’ Bierhoff said. ‘There’s a camera near there, for a nightclub. Oxygen it’s called. Here, just give me a minute.’

  Bierhoff opened up a video file and quickly began fast-forwarding. Cox watched the time stamp in the corner of the screen whizz forward.

  ‘Stop!’ she snapped.

  Bierhoff clicked and the screen froze.

  ‘A minute after that,’ Cox said.

  Bierhoff pressed play and left the screen running as he delved into another folder. Within seconds he was fast-forwarding through that one too.

  ‘Three twenty-four, you said?’ Bierhoff asked.

  Cox nodded.

  ‘There it is,’ Cox said a couple of seconds later.

  Bierhoff hit pause and the screen froze on a clear image of the front of the BMW. He went back to the first video and seconds later the BMW came into view on that one too and he hit pause. Cox stared at the two images. On the earlier video there were two men in the front. Two white men.

  ‘That’s definitely Streicher,’ Rahn said.

  But it wasn’t Streicher on the second video. The man who’d driven the BMW away from the crime scene looked very different indeed. For starters, he wasn’t white.

  ‘Streicher was one of the dead men,’ Cox said.

  ‘And we have to assume that man is the killer,’ Rahn added.

  ‘Okay,’ Cox said, feeling a wave of first excitement, then of concern. ‘And now I really think I need to call my boss.’

  An hour later, back at her hotel, Cox sat by the window looking out over the lit-up bombed remains of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church on the corner of Kurfürstendamm. She had her head in her hands as she spoke to Flannigan. Sunrise wasn’t far off and both of them were tired, and both of them were edgy, though Cox was getting to the point where she might just roll over and be done with it. More than anything, she just wanted to sleep.

  ‘Seriously, Cox, listen to yourself. Cyanide? What the hell are they going to do with cyanide?’

  ‘Kill people, I’m assuming.’

  ‘Where? How?’

  ‘I don’t fucking know!’ Cox shouted. He’d asked the same damn question three times already. ‘I’m just telling you what I’ve found. Come on, you can’t tell me this is all meaningless.’

  ‘I’m not saying that at all. You’ve got six dead neo-Nazis, one of them a very prominent member of their organisation. It’s a serious crime, certainly, but you’re going to need to give me more to link this to your investigation than just a crappy image of a face.’

  ‘I’m trying,’ Cox said. ‘Data Ops have that picture. They’re doing everything they can to identify the driver. But you have to accept the possibility that the Thirteen have somehow equipped themselves with a deadly chemical we
apon. Maybe they sourced it from this Streicher, or maybe he was just a guinea pig. Possibly it was both.’

  ‘Or neither.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’

  Flannigan didn’t answer the question immediately.

  ‘Either way there’s no need for you to waste any more time there. The German police have the lead, they can figure out where it goes. I’d suggest you leave in the morning.’

  ‘Leave for where? Bruges?’ They’d already discussed the news coming from Belgium. The dead bodies there. The man escaping whose description bore more than a passing resemblance to Aydin Torkal. ‘Don’t you get it? We’ve missed him again. He’ll be long gone by now.’

  ‘Which is why I’m not suggesting Bruges. We already have a clean-up team there. I think you should head back to Turkey while we wait on the results from Berlin.’

  ‘But why Turkey?’

  ‘You passed a series of requests over to Data Ops last night.’

  ‘Yeah. You’ve got the results?’ Cox asked, not bothering to question how Flannigan had come across her requests – she certainly hadn’t passed them through him herself.

  ‘Did Nilay Torkal ever talk to you about her father?’ Flannigan asked.

  ‘Yes. It was what initially took her to Syria. She was looking for both her father and her brother. I think she was killed because of the questions she was asking about them.’

  ‘It seems she shouldn’t have bothered,’ Flannigan said, and Cox felt riled at his heartless tone. He’d never met Nilay, to him she was just another name, but to Cox she had been more than that – a friend. ‘SIS have files on Ergun Torkal dating back years. He was a known affiliate of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan back when the war there first started after nine-eleven. But him and his chums were killed in an American drone strike eight years ago.’

  ‘You know that for sure?’ Cox said.

  ‘This is based on your intel, we’re just following it through. Ergun Torkal is dead, and has been for a long time.’

  Which only made Cox feel all the more terrible about Nilay. She’d been killed looking for a dead man.

  ‘So, what am I missing here?’ Cox asked. ‘Where’s the link to Turkey?’