‘So, where we going?’ I asked.
‘The Grand Bazaar,’ said the doc. ‘Emir knows the place.’ A brief exchange between them in Turkish followed, establishing the minor details.
Emir pulled away from the kerb with a smile, his eyes darting to the rear-view mirror as usual, unsure what to make of the woman sitting beside me. His allegiances lay with Anna Masters, but part of him also wanted to be nice to the extraordinary piece of ass occupying the back seat.
I read his mind. He was thinking that in the unlikely event he might get to have a crack at this woman, it would pay not to be churlish.
‘This is my uncle I tell you about – Kemel,’ Emir bragged. ‘He has rug shop.’
Kemel turned around, beamed a fistful of gold teeth at us, and said, ‘Merhaba’, which by now I’d figured out meant ‘hello’.
‘Of course he has,’ I said, and gave him a ‘Merhaba’ in return. I waited for the sales pitch, but it never came. Emir must have briefed him. If so, the guy was learning.
Situated on the side of the hill facing the Golden Horn, the centuries-old Grand Bazaar packed four thousand shops into a couple of miles of covered, crisscrossing laneways. The place hummed mostly with tourists out for mementoes that would sum up the essence of their visit to Turkey.
My mementoes were memories, and all of them were bad – except for the ones involving the doc. The memories were of seeing Dutch Bremmel sitting with his head beside him, of watching Ten Pin getting gnawed by a jet fighter, and of pulling the skin off a rat. But, like I said, there were also memories of the doc. Adding to the ones of her, I now had the memory of seeing her dance, of watching her hips and pelvis move in a way I’d never seen a woman’s hips and pelvis move before. And by the age of thirty-four, I figured I’d seen just about every way possible for a woman to move. In this, the doc proved me wrong. She apparently took belly-dancing classes – it was her hobby, she told me afterwards.
Thirty-six
Emir stopped next to the Grand Bazaar’s main entrance. I asked him to wait, and the doc and I joined the crowds moving back and forth like a restless sea beneath the arch. We passed by the gold and jewellery sellers, past the spice merchants and clothing shops, ducked behind the knife quarter and ended up outside a row of shops specialising in technical equipment.
The doc walked up to an old man in a threadbare cardigan behind the counter. He put his cigarette down on the glass counter, the burning end hanging over the edge. The doc and the old guy then embraced and kissed each other’s cheeks a couple of times, back and forth like Europeans do, and exchanged a few words. ‘My brother’s wife’s uncle’s neighbour would like to know if you would stay for tea,’ Aysun asked me.
‘Love to, but you know . . .’ I jiggled my wrist. ‘Time.’
Even though he couldn’t speak English, the old guy got the drift, reached behind his counter and lifted up a box with a handle. He opened it and gestured for me to come closer. The shop was empty, as was every other retailer in this corner of the Grand Bazaar, it being a long way from the bargain T-shirt quarter. Inside the carrying case was a robust-looking yellow box the size of a house brick with a large dial on it, a carry handle, a range switch and a simple on/off switch – a Geiger counter. The old guy chugged on his cigarette, put it down, then showed me how to use the instrument; which, I gathered, was basically to turn the switch to ‘on’ and walk the box towards the suspected hot source until the needle jumped into the your-hair’s-about-to-fall-out zone. He pointed it in a couple of directions and the speaker gave off two single crackle-like pops.
He said a few words in a voice that was thin and emphysemic. I shrugged apologetically, not understanding. He raised a finger and then pointed the box at his wristwatch to demonstrate. The needle went nuts, accompanied by a continuous stream of popping sounds. He adjusted the scale knob, the noise disappeared and the needle settled down again. I got it – the scale was adjustable from radiation that was ‘background’ to ‘Chernobyl’.
I said thanks and told the old guy, through the doc, that I’d return the instrument when I was finished with it. He replied with body language that said, ‘No hurry’.
Ten minutes later Aysun and I were walking back across the road towards where Emir had illegally parked, causing a minor traffic jam. A couple of uniforms in a patrol vehicle had pulled up behind his Renault and were attempting to get him and his uncle to move along. They were all waving arms at each other like Will Robinson’s Robot. The issue was resolved when the doc and I materialised from the crowd, whereupon Emir acquiesced to the police demands and moved to hold a door open for the doc. The uncle waved at the officers, who had the surly look of traffic cops the world over. They got in their car and drove off to the next inevitable snarl, somewhere down the road.
‘I’m going to go it alone from here,’ I said. The doc was about to protest but I headed her off. ‘I have to do a little break-and-enter. It’d be best if you weren’t with me. Emir will take you back to your place. If you like, I’ll stop by later and let you know how I made out.’
‘Yes, okay. Please . . .’ Aysun smiled, took my good hand and squeezed it before climbing into the back seat.
Emir witnessed this apparently intimate and traitorous exchange between the two of us and shot me a poisonous glance – which, of course, I ignored. I whistled at a cab that happened along on the other side of the road, heading in the right direction.
Bebek was maybe fifteen minutes across town, enough time to think about why exactly Portman, Bremmel, Ten Pin and the Onur crew had been killed. Enough time also to wonder whether Masters would want to make good on her threat and go to work on me with her nail file. But that would only happen if I took the coward’s way out, unburdened my guilt, and told her what had happened. Assuming, that is, I had guilt.
The cab deposited me outside the familiar Portman residence. The cop guards and their portable armour shields had long gone, replaced now by the estate agent’s leasing sign affixed to the front wall. I walked up the steps, case in hand, and tried the door, just in case the previous visitors had been careless. Locked.
I took my notebook from my jacket pocket and removed the thin, filed-down hacksaw blade that lived in the spine for just these occasions, and went to work on the deadlock. The door clicked open. I went in, closed the door behind me, and the scents of a house freshly cleaned but unlived-in washed over me. I began the climb up the stairs.
I put the case on the floor in Portman’s study and extracted the Geiger counter. I turned it on and the device was quiet. I pulled back the chair and the carpet, opened the floor safe; the box stayed quiet when I waved it around inside – a couple of pops, background stuff.
The wall safe was next in line. The painting in front of it hadn’t been changed – the hunting party was still doing its best to bring down that elephant. I swung it wide on its hinge. The box sounded off a handful of pops. I opened the safe door, put the Geiger counter in the space, and the thing went crazy. I adjusted the scale and a screech came out of the speaker like the noise a badly tuned radio makes in a violent thunderstorm. The needle hovered over the 12,400-becquerel mark.
There was another competing noise in the room. My cell. The screen told me it was Masters.
I switched off the Geiger counter. ‘Hey,’ I said, answering it. ‘Guess what?’
‘Jesus, Vin . . .’ There was relief in her voice. ‘So you’re at Portman’s place?’
‘Yeah, why? What’s up?’
‘Something terrible has happened . . .’
Thirty-seven
The early evening was still and quiet. Somewhere close by, folks were crying. The Istanbul police had set up floodlights, getting down to business, taking statements, earning their pay. Istanbul police forensic teams were already on the scene. They’d been getting a hell of a workout, it seemed to me. Anti-terror guys picked and poked their way through the scene.
Just about everyone I knew in Istanbul was in attendance. Iyaz and Karli were taking a sta
tement from a witness, the same old lady I’d pegged as the grandmother of the kids playing in the gutter earlier. I couldn’t see the kids anywhere. The old woman was sponging her eyes with a hanky, pressing into them hard. I feared the worst.
Goddard and Mallet stood around, hands on hips, shaking their heads, discussing something with Stringer. Masters had her arms around Nasor, Doc Merkit’s nephew and sometime receptionist. Rodney Cain stood by himself in shock, staring into nothingness.
Ambulances and cop cars were everywhere, their flashing blue, red and orange lights bouncing and shearing off hundreds of shattered windowpanes that now lay across the sidewalks, the road, over the parked vehicles – over everything – lending a jagged kaleidoscope effect to the scene. There was the gagging, sweet smell of burnt human flesh in the air, the smell you never forget once you’ve experienced it.
The epicentre of the explosion was a car-sized crater in the asphalt, twenty yards down from Doc Merkit’s place. Opposite, Emir’s Renault, now a twisted, scorched half-ton of metal, had come to rest upside down on the sidewalk against a tree trunk. A paramedic had climbed into the upper branches and was in the process of recovering blackened body parts caught up in them. The bomb must have detonated with pinpoint accuracy, which to me indicated an observer somewhere with a cell phone. Something glinting in the gutter, reflecting a bank of floodlights, caught my attention. I bent down and picked it up: the silver head and torso of a miniature human skeleton.
‘Vin, I’m so sorry.’ It was Anna. I felt the warmth of her arms around me, but it couldn’t chase that smell out of the back of my throat.
We stood there not moving for some time. Over Masters’ shoulder, I watched the scene playing out around us with a detached emptiness. We have forty minutes left. How do you wish to spend them?
‘I just spoke with Detective Iyaz,’ Masters said, leaning against the side of an ambulance. ‘The old lady saw Emir drive past. There were two other people in the car with him at the time of the explosion. Um . . . only one of those has yet to be positively identified.’
I appreciated that Masters was doing her best not to say the hands and feet found up in the tree belonged to Doc Merkit. ‘Emir had an uncle who lived nearby,’ I told her. ‘His name was Kemel. He owned a rug shop. He came along for the ride.’ I sipped the sweet, thick black Turkish coffee Masters had bought from a vendor a couple of blocks over. It helped.
‘I’ll pass that on,’ said Masters. ‘They’re talking about this being the work of the KKK.’
‘I didn’t know the Klan operated this far north.’
‘Vin, hereabouts “KKK” stands for the Kurdistan Democratic Confederation. A local terrorist group. It’s also called the PKK, if you’d rather. They blow people up in Turkey every other day.’
‘This KKK claimed responsibility?’ I asked.
Masters shook her head. ‘No.’
‘I’d just as soon believe it was the Klan. You and I both know who did this. Forensics are going to find traces of the same explosives made in the US, shipped to Israel and supposedly fired off at Hezbollah.’
One of the many ambulances present backed away from the scene and drove off quiet, in no hurry.
‘I pressed Karli and Iyaz about Yafa and her entourage,’ Masters said. ‘I think they want to believe she’s a figment of our imagination.’
‘Some figment,’ I replied. ‘She’d have had Doc Merkit’s home staked out. They would have known Emir was our driver. The two people in the car with him were mistaken for you and me.’ I remembered circling the block with Emir, looking for what, I wasn’t sure, but obviously my gut had picked something up . . . ‘Where’s Harvey Stringer?’ I asked suddenly.
‘Took off half an hour ago.’
I gave a grunt.
‘You think he’s the inside man?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘His hall monitors, Goddard and Mallet, have been running about on his behalf, keeping an eye on us. He has full access to the day-to-day on this case. And he knows more than he’s prepared to share about Yafa. Stringer would have known about Emmet Portman’s trips to southern Iraq, but has chosen not to come clean about them. Someone ran Portman’s emails through a filter – Stringer has access.’
‘We should go to Burnbaum.’
‘When we’ve got something solid.’
I caught a glimpse of the granny I’d seen earlier. She was helping a much younger woman herd the three young boys into a doorway. Here was some good news at least.
‘So what did you dig up at Portman’s place?’ Masters enquired.
‘Ays– Doc Merkit found me a Geiger counter. That’s why she was in the vehicle with Emir and his uncle.’ I knew I was wandering from the point. I felt Masters’ hand on my shoulder.
‘Don’t blame yourself, Vin. This was just . . . bad luck.’
‘Yeah, bad luck.’ I watched Karli and Iyaz in conversation with a couple of guys wearing paper shoes – forensics. ‘Portman’s wall safe was hot,’ I added.
‘Radioactive?’
‘Seems like it wasn’t the perfect crime after all. I figure Yafa went too heavy on the explosives and accidentally burst the radioactive water sample. That would explain why the safe was cleaned out so thoroughly – had nothing to do with wiping away prints. If forensics had found fluid in the safe, they’d have tested it. And that was the last thing Yafa and her people wanted.’
‘So when Yafa found out about the existence of the secret floor safe, they must have come to the same conclusion you did about the existence of a duplicate water sample and report. Which would explain why they were after Fedai and seems to confirm your theory that an inside source must have debriefed them.’
Being right didn’t carry a lot of satisfaction, not today.
‘Vin, I can tell you a little about uranyl fluoride now if you’re interested. But it can wait till tomorrow.’
What I wanted, needed, was to keep busy. ‘I’m okay. What is it?’
‘You get uranyl fluoride when you dissolve uranium hexafluoride in water. You also get hydrogen fluoride. Both are highly toxic, and I mean highly. Breathe too much hydrogen fluoride and it’ll kill you.’
‘And what’s uranium hexa-whatever?’
‘Uranium hexafluoride is part of the cycle that ends in either fuel for nuclear reactors or thermonuclear bombs.’
‘Well, I guess if Karli and Iyaz’s forensics people had found that in the residue left in Portman’s wall safe, it would’ve shifted the murder investigation to different ground. We need to get out of here.’
‘And go where?’
‘To different ground.’
Thirty-eight
I zipped the flight jacket up tight under my neck as the MH-60 Pave Hawk climbed into the haze. ‘What’s that?’ I said into the mike, gesturing at the huge, obviously ancient ruin sliding by below.
‘That’s Ur,’ replied the flight engineer.
‘Err . . . as in you don’t know?’
‘No, Ur, as in the ancient ziggurat of Ur, temple to the moon goddess, Nanna. That there’s the world’s oldest ziggurat, Special Agent. Over four-and-a-half thousand years old – older than the Great Pyramids of Egypt. Back when it was built, it was sited near the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, on the Persian Gulf. If the experts are right and all those ice shelves melt, maybe that’s where it will end up again – on the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Ha ha. Ironic, right? If you’re interested, I do a little tour guiding there in my spare time.’
‘Really,’ I said.
Masters made a sound that implied we might just take him up on it. I doubted it. Our schedule was tight. And even if it was loose, I doubted it.
‘It’s within Tallil’s secure perimeter,’ the flight engineer continued. ‘Can’t miss it – the only thing you can see rising above the plain. Perhaps when you people are done, you can look me up at the squadron.’
Any moment the guy was going to hand us his business card. ‘What’s with the haze?’ I enquired, heading him off, a band
of grey tinged with orange sitting on the horizon off to the north-west.
‘That’s a sandstorm we got coming in around two hours from now. If Kumayt was any further out, we wouldn’t be going. Engines and sand don’t happen to agree with one another, and these things have been known to crash. But we’ll get this baby out and back before it hits.’
My sphincter did the sphincter equivalent of nervously licking its dry lips. I’d only just gotten over a fear of flying, something I’d picked up on a tour of duty in Afghanistan – having two helo crashes back-to-back in one morning will do that. The Pave Hawk banked hard left, the rotors thudding as they chopped into the dry air, my arms and head heavy with the gs. ‘How’ll we get back?’ I enquired.
‘Wait out the storm and then we’ll come get you. Pretty much all you can do.’
‘How long will it last?’
‘The weather boys say it won’t be a bad one. A day and a half, max.’
I sat back against the bulkhead, the webbing on the body armour rubbing up against that problem rib, and watched Iraq slip past the Pave Hawk’s open side. Down on the ground, temps were sitting on 30 degrees Fahrenheit, the sand frosted white here and there by the last of the moisture that the cold had wrung from the air. It’d been snowing here just two weeks ago. In six months, it’d be hot enough to melt lead. What a place.
The chopper settled into the flare, nose high and tail low, all 24,000 pounds of it shuddering from wind buffeting and the various rotating masses working hard to counter-balance each other.
Masters’ voice bellowed in my headphones. ‘That must be the welcoming party.’
I scoped the LZ out the door on her side and saw a platoon-sized detachment of Brits – specifically, the Queen’s Dragoon Guards – a Mastiff troop carrier and several Land Rovers equipped with mounted and manned machine guns, parked upwind. Members of the platoon had set a defensive cordon around the detachment. I took a guess that the guy leaning against the windsock with a hand shielding his eyes was a Lieutenant Hamish Christie. I’d talked to the lieutenant already, back when we arrived at Tallil. He’d drawn the short straw and been assigned as our liaison. Apparently, the Brit military police, our usual sitters, were all down in Basra cracking heads. A riot had erupted there because some local politician had got himself whacked. The whole province of Maysan was on alert, which, Christie informed me, had been the general state of play here ever since the Ottoman Empire failed to come to grips with this place. The lieutenant turned his shoulder into the clouds of dust spun up by the MH-60’s rotors.
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