Hard Rain - 03

by David Rollins

  ‘No, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it . . . Jesus, I feel like taking a shower. One day I’m going to even the score with that bitch.’

  ‘A little tit for tat?’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Forget it,’ I replied. I pressed the bruise on my side to see how bad it was. The rib wasn’t broken, but maybe it was cracked.

  ‘That punch of yours, how’d you do it?’

  ‘There’s a thing right here,’ I said, touching the skin on her neck below the ear, ‘called the vagus nerve. Runs from the brain stem all the way to the heart. Hit it just right, or squeeze it with a certain wrestling hold, and the heart stops. Dead, if you’re not careful.’

  I could see the pulse in her neck and, despite the cold, her skin was smooth and warm. A couple of fine hairs waving in the breeze curled around my finger.

  ‘It was a lucky punch. I’ve tried it a few times in the past and it’s never worked.’

  ‘Well, it worked this time. Nice bit of theatre, too,’ she said with a smile.

  A vehicle honked its horn close by and spoiled the moment. I looked up and saw Emir’s Renault weaving towards us through the traffic. He pulled to a stop beside the kerb, tyres locked up in the wet road grit. I opened the door for Masters.

  ‘Where have you been, Emir?’ I asked as I went in behind her.

  ‘Looking for you, sir,’ he said, instantly on the defensive.

  ‘You didn’t see us get muscled into a van?’

  ‘What is “muscled”? Sir, I cannot stop here. I have been driving round and round. But I could not see you.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Emir,’ Masters said. To me, she added, ‘What could he have done about it anyway?’

  True, we couldn’t exactly expect Emir to be the cavalry.

  ‘So what do you think those assholes wanted?’ she asked.

  ‘You mean aside from Fedai?’

  ‘Did you buy the whole, we’re-after-an-ex-Mossad-agent shit?’

  ‘No,’ I replied.

  ‘If Fedai were ex-Mossad, you’d think the CIA would’ve picked that up when they ran the guy’s background. They’d have put him through the wringer for sure before they let him butler for Portman.’

  ‘You’d think so, only you’re assuming the CIA wasn’t busy someplace else, shooting itself in the foot,’ I said.

  ‘So let’s say they are Mossad.’

  ‘Then the whole hunt-for-a-rogue-ex-agent thing might explain them stomping around with guns in a foreign country, abducting and smooching beautiful military policemen . . .’

  ‘Vin – shut up,’ said Masters.

  ‘Sorry. Okay, whether Fedai is ex-Mossad or not, the fact remains that those people – whoever they are – obviously want to get their hands on him.’

  ‘Could it be that he has something they want?’ Masters wondered.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, take your initial hunch, the one about Fedai returning to find Portman murdered, seeing the wall safe blown, opening the floor safe and taking off with whatever he found inside it.’

  ‘Right, that hunch.’

  ‘Which brings me back to wondering who those people were,’ she said.

  Whoever they were, they were interested in Fedai, interested enough to push us around. And that made me interested in them.

  ‘Excuse, please,’ Emir interrupted. ‘But I think someone behind follow us.’

  ‘What . . . ? Where . . . ?’ Masters said as we both turned to check our six.

  ‘A white Hyundai,’ said Emir. ‘Can you see it?’

  ‘I can see about thirty of them,’ I replied.

  ‘This one is clean. I turn here, you will see.’

  Emir swung into a narrow side street. Several vehicles followed, and one of them was a late-model white Hyundai. And it was dirt- and dust-free – something I had to admit was unusual on the streets of Istanbul.

  ‘You got it?’ I asked Masters.

  ‘Yep.’

  The vehicle was too far away for us to see who was behind the wheel.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Emir asked.

  ‘You want to lose them, Vin?’ Masters said.

  ‘No, let’s talk to them. Emir?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Turn into the next main street. Don’t drive fast. Take it nice and easy.’

  ‘Nice and easy. Yes, sir.’

  Emir did as I asked and turned into the next main street, coming off the gas.

  ‘Did the Hyundai take the turn?’ I asked him, not wanting to look around and, potentially, give the game away.

  ‘Yes, he turn,’ Emir replied, squinting into the rear-view mirror.

  Up ahead, a streetlight turned red, bringing a block and a half of the traffic behind us to a stop.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  Masters and I jumped out and ran through the crowd of stationary vehicles. The Hyundai was maybe thirty yards back. As we approached it, I saw two silhouettes in its windscreen. I took the driver’s door, Masters the passenger’s.

  ‘Hey, look. It’s my favourite crime-fighting duo,’ I said as the window came down.

  ‘You think you’re so goddamn smart,’ drawled Special Agent Arlow Mallet.

  ‘And you need to be smart when Howdy and Doody are on your tail,’ said Masters through the other window.

  Goddard and Mallet looked angry and self-conscious.

  ‘You want to tell us why you’re following us?’ I asked.

  ‘We weren’t following you, Cooper,’ said Mallet.

  ‘C’mon, fellas. You were either following or blundering – take your pick.’

  ‘We don’t have to explain anything to you, Cooper,’ Mallet replied.

  ‘We think you do,’ I said. ‘You keep showing up just a little after the fact. We want to know why.’

  ‘Blow me, Cooper.’

  ‘Say, Special Agent Masters. That was quite a show you put on in the park,’ said Goddard with a leer, switching to the offensive.

  Mallet took the cue to join in. ‘Yeah, who’d have thought you swung both ways?’

  ‘So you have been following us,’ I said.

  ‘Just happened along, Cooper.’ Mallet smiled, which had the effect of further sinking his cheekbones, so that his face reminded me of a deflated football.

  Masters was incensed. ‘You saw all that going on in the park, but you did nothing about it?’

  ‘Next time you’re thinking of putting on a show like that, lady,’ sniggered Goddard, ‘give us a little advance warning and we’ll try and get a webcam on it.’

  Masters put her hands on the Hyundai’s roof and balled them into fists.

  Mallet inched the Hyundai forward. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, step back from the vehicle,’ he said.

  The blaring of horns suddenly entered my consciousness. I hadn’t noticed the traffic snarl we’d caused. Up ahead, the traffic light was green and Emir was parked in the middle of the road gesticulating at the motorists hurling abuse at him for refusing to move.

  Eighteen

  Harvey Stringer, CIA station chief, Turkey, filled his chair like the breasts in a fat girl’s bra. His huge stomach, a continuation of chins that hung like hammocks under his ears, rolled over the edge of his desk and advanced and retreated with each breath. He glanced up from his laptop as Masters and I appeared at the door, and beckoned us in with one enormous hand while he continued tapping away with the other, a large index finger stabbing the keys one at a time.

  The office was devoid of any touches of a personal nature. Not a single photograph, desk ornament, plaque – nothing – was on display. It was the office of a guy who wanted his private life to remain that way. Maybe he didn’t have one to display.

  ‘And . . . send,’ he said aloud for our benefit, clicking the mouse on an email. Job done, he leaned back in his chair. It groaned, presumably in pain.
‘Afternoon, y’all,’ he greeted us. ‘Sit, sit. How’s the investigation going?’

  ‘We’re making some progress,’ I replied, sitting.

  ‘Yes, I heard they pulled some potential evidence from the Bosphorus. Blast blankets. Everyone’s coming on board with your two-killer theory, by the way. That’s good police work, Special Agents.’

  ‘We met some folks just now staking out Adem Fedai’s house,’ I said, pushing aside the pleasantries.

  ‘Fedai?’

  ‘Portman’s manservant.’

  ‘Yes, yes – Fedai,’ he said, the name clicking.

  ‘Do we have any people out there working freelance on this?’ I asked.

  Stringer didn’t ask for elaboration. He knew exactly what I meant. ‘No, what did they look like?’ he asked in reply.

  ‘Generally Middle Eastern. We’ve passed the descriptions on to the Turkish police.’

  ‘Well, I guess you have to tick that box,’ he said dismissively. He then sat forward, his elbows on the table, hands clasped in front of his chin, considering us like he might ponder the next move in a game of chess.

  ‘These people claimed Fedai was ex-Mossad,’ Masters added. ‘Were background checks performed on Fedai?’

  Stringer now leaned back in his chair, the evaluation continuing. I couldn’t read him. Finally he said, ‘Of course we checked him out. And Fedai was definitely not ex-Mossad. Fedai was a Kurd who belonged to a sect known as the Yezidi. You know who they are?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Masters.

  ‘The Yezidi is a sect that worships the devil – Satan.’

  Masters and I shared a glance.

  ‘Yeah, you heard right – Beelzebub. Last I heard, Mossad was basically a Jewish organisation and they worship the big guy upstairs. Though, from my experience with Mossad, I doubt many of its agents believe in anything other than doing whatever it takes to stomp on threats to the Jewish homeland.’

  ‘Would it be possible to see your file on Fedai?’ Masters asked, pushing it.

  ‘I will make it available,’ Stringer replied, surprising us.

  ‘Also, sir,’ I said, ‘we’re being tailed by a couple of US Army CID types. Has the Company got anything to do with that?’

  Stringer smiled with half his mouth. ‘If we had an eye on y’all, you really think you’d know about it?’

  I took the path of least resistance. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well, then, you’ve just answered your own question, son. Can you think of any reason CID would put a tail on you?’ he asked.

  ‘To learn how it’s done?’ I suggested.

  Stringer smirked. ‘You put the question to them?’

  ‘Politely, sir.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure you did, Cooper.’ Stringer scratched an earlobe. ‘Sorry, can’t help you with that one either. Anything else?’

  I considered the wisdom of revisiting the subject of the assholes in the park. I wasn’t so much perturbed about being abducted or having pistols waved in my face. What did concern me was that the folks doing the waving were hot for what was most probably the last person to have seen the Attaché alive, the only person who might be able to give us some kind of lead or insight into what happened on the night of his murder. It seemed to me that Masters and I were now under the gun to reach Adem Fedai first – assuming he was still alive.

  The more I thought about it, the more I decided to change the subject, maybe bring up the weather. I didn’t want to show Stringer my cards. I figured he was keeping his hand under the table, too. But then, he was CIA.

  We stood. I said, ‘Well, sir, thanks –’

  ‘Oh, and before you go . . .’ Stringer opened his desk drawer. ‘I got this for you. I’ll also forward you a soft copy.’ He dropped a stapled wad of laser printouts on the desk in front of me.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘I was thinking about your request for satellite imaging of the Bosphorus on the night of Portman’s murder. That there’s the next best thing: the shipping schedule for the night in question. Every boat coming up and down that stretch of water is logged – the time, its flag, last port of call, cargo, and so forth. It covers the night of the murder from midnight to 5:30 am. Perhaps you’ll find what you’re looking for in there.’

  *

  ‘What do you think?’ Masters asked as we walked down the hall.

  ‘That he needs to make friends with Jenny Craig,’ I said.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  I was thinking about the fact that there hadn’t been a lot of trust doing the rounds. But maybe that was changing. ‘Stringer didn’t give us a copy of this log just so we’d drop it in the recycling trash,’ I noted.

  ‘What about this Satanist angle? What are they called – the Yezidi? We’ve got a guy cut up into little pieces, blood everywhere. Could all this have something to do with some kind of weird ritual?’

  ‘I don’t think so. That piece of information is out on its own. No, there’s something else at work here,’ I said. ‘But, like Stringer said, it does eliminate the ex-Mossad claim.’

  ‘What about Mallet and Goddard?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘We are looking for two killers . . .’

  I’d had the same thought, briefly. Those guys kept arriving on the scene and, as Masters had correctly summed it up, there were two of them. ‘Our killers are smart,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Perhaps Mallet and Goddard are just playing dumb.’

  ‘No one can act that good,’ I said. But could we really discount them?

  ‘Ah! There you are. Just in time,’ said Colonel Wadding, catching us off guard as we walked into our office.

  ‘Richard,’ exclaimed Masters, almost bursting with excitement.

  I took my eyeballs for a run around their sockets.

  ‘I was just admiring your painting here,’ said Wadding.

  He was standing back from the horror I’d renamed ‘Conquest. With Body Parts’, tilting his head one way and then the other as he regarded Mehmet II and his army trampling over all those corpses like they were grapes in a wine press. ‘They don’t paint ’em like this anymore, do they? I find it quite uplifting. How about you, Vin?’

  ‘Uplifting?’ I replied. ‘How do you get that, Colonel?’ Maybe I was missing something. All I got from the painting, aside from concern that it might leak, was the confirmation from another age that the human thirst for other people’s blood and misery was something embedded in our genetic code.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Wadding, doing that head-tilting thing again. ‘I’m hardly an art critic, but to me it says . . . it says . . . winners are grinners.’

  ‘Okay . . .’ Winners are grinners. Hmm. I wondered if this guy had ever done any of those Rorschach ink-blot things. Maybe he had. Maybe some law faculty had tested him and found deficiencies in certain fundamental areas of humanity and streamed him straight into litigation. The Wad was made for it.

  I happened to catch sight of Masters. Her head was on a tilt too, but looking at her fiancé rather than at the painting, perhaps seeing him in some new light. Perhaps it was something admirable she saw: maybe, like me, she saw a man insulated from other people’s dreams and hopes by an upbringing that had instilled in him an isolating class superiority. Or perhaps that’s what I hoped she saw. I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that I couldn’t read Masters at all. But then, what the hell – it was just a goddamn painting and I was tired. Outside, it was already dark.

  There was a tap on the door. ‘Come on in, Rodney,’ I called out. It was Cain.

  ‘Richard, this is Captain Rodney Cain,’ said Masters, playing hostess. The Wad and Rod shook on it.

  ‘You’re JAG,’ Cain observed. ‘Here on a case, Colonel?’

  ‘No,’ Wadding replied. ‘Just paying a social.’

  ‘The captain’s our local liaison, working on the Portman murder with us,’ Masters explained.

  ‘Great. Well, Anna, ready to go?’

  ‘Um . . .
well, it’s pretty early,’ Masters answered, glancing sheepishly at me and then Cain, and then back at me.

  ‘I’m sure Vin won’t mind. Vin, you don’t mind if I steal the special agent for the rest of the day?’

  In fact, I did mind. We had work to do. But I wasn’t Masters’ boss, so I said, ‘Sure. Captain Cain and I were only going to sit around here flipping cards into a hat. You go, Anna. We’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Masters gave me a wan smile. ‘You sure?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure I’m sure. Don’t forget we’re headed to Incirlik tomorrow,’ I reminded her.

  ‘What time?’

  ‘See you downstairs at seven.’

  As I turned away, I could see her indecision out of the corner of my eye. She wanted to stay. And go. I asked Cain, ‘You got those cards handy?’

  He looked at me funny.

  ‘See you at seven,’ Masters repeated, dragging it out. Wadding waited impatiently for her at the door, drumming his fingers against it.

  ‘Yeah, tomorrow,’ I replied, giving her a wave without looking up.

  After another few moments of second thoughts, Masters finally picked up her jacket and walked out.

  ‘What’s going on between Masters and the colonel?’ Cain asked.

  ‘Marriage,’ I said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What you got for me?’

  ‘I don’t have any cards.’

  ‘Forget the cards.’

  Cain opened his briefcase. ‘Local forensics pulled one out for us and got stuck into the items found in the Bosphorus. Worked through the night. Unfortunately, everything had been in the water too long and Portman’s blood drove the fish and the crabs crazy. There wasn’t much left.’

  ‘Which leaves us with?’

  ‘Well, three blast blankets and two coveralls. I think that means we can say two people really did carve up Colonel Portman.’

  ‘Can we? I’m not so sure.’ Doubts about my own theory rushed back at me. I hit command-print on an email from Istanbul homicide on their Bosphorus discoveries, and a box popped up on-screen to inform me that my new old printer was low on toner.

  ‘What? You don’t think that firms things up at all?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, shaking my head, preoccupied. The damn printer. Couldn’t they have checked the thing before they brought it over? I shot IT a note to come and replace the cartridge. ‘Maybe, maybe not. We’ve got two murder victims. There’s the assertion that two killers were caught on camera in the Hilton parking lot, but it’s hardly conclusive. And the blast-blanket theory at the Portman scene only suggests more than one killer.’