Birth of an Assassin, Books 1-3: Killer Plots and Powerful Characterization (Birth of an Assassin - the series)

by Rik Stone

  Mehmet’s legs suddenly found a well of energy as he reached the railings. Whoever was shooting knew where he was, so he wouldn’t be able to hide on the floating pontoon as Senturk had suggested. But if he could get into the water, maybe he could swim to a float on the other side of the waterway.

  No more time to think. He climbed on top of the barrier, straightened his body ready to dive, but then a bullet sparked off the ironwork and he jumped instead. More gunfire and he suddenly felt like his body had been hit by the Orient Express. He plummeted, turned circles as he went, a bright sky was followed by dark waters. The sequence rolled out until he did a belly-flop onto a surface that felt like concrete.

  The late morning had been balmy, but hitting the cold depths sobered him. He plunged deep into the canal, deep enough that echoing drummed in his ears. He forced his eyes open, but only saw clouded water. The pain was unbearable and scorched his shoulder as he tried to swim to the surface. He’d been shot and his left arm had stopped working. He kicked his feet while clawing at the water with one hand and eventually bobbed to the surface. Bullets zipped by on either side of him from a number of angles; taking prisoners obviously wasn’t on the minds of the shooters this day. But then the noise of the gunfire was drowned out by a churning drone. Mehmet looked behind to see the bow of a small craft, metres away from pounding him into the outlet.

  He pushed furiously, trying to get out of the way, but it was too late; the bow absorbed him and his body was drawn under the hull. The engines rumbled and the propellers whumped a death knell. He was about to be ploughed back into the depths.

  Just before the propellers could claim him, he surfaced on the blind side from where his pursuers had shot at him. But he couldn’t sustain the effort much longer, his body screamed for oxygen and when the boat passed he would be an open target to the shooters. Then he saw the huge end knots on large braided rope-fenders coming at him; the skipper hadn’t yet pulled them up. Mehmet ducked as the first fender almost struck him and then lunged to grab the knot of another. The boat chugged on, dragging him with it. His energies were spent, but he consoled himself that, for the moment, he was clear of his would-be killers.

  Nearing the strait, Mehmet looked back and saw Zeki. The bastard was standing next to a policeman and they were gaping over the rail to where he’d fallen from the jetty. Zeki had betrayed them. Mehmet ignored his own pain and thought of Senturk. He cried uncontrollably. He couldn’t understand Zeki’s betrayal, but knew intuitively that it had something to do with the man at the bridge, and with that thought he realised that Senturk being shot down had been his fault. If he hadn’t insisted they follow Zeki, none of this would have happened.

  The boat left the Golden Horn and motored into the Bosporus Strait to starboard. Turning his head slightly, Mehmet saw the east bank, the Asian side of the city. Too far; even in good shape he couldn’t swim such a distance. His only hope was that the craft would cross the strait or at least get near enough to the bank to give him more of a chance. But those thoughts were academic; he lost his grip and was left bobbing in the water. The vessel ploughed on. He was lost.

  He swam as best he could with one arm, but strength deserted him. He couldn’t lift his face from the water. He didn’t gulp. He wasn’t choking. And surely, that was the way to drown. But not him; he just stared down into the black depths until consciousness left him.

  Chapter 9

  Yuri Aleksii was thirty-six years old and had spent much of his early life globetrotting on active service for one of Russia’s elite armed forces: Spetsnaz. In that period, he’d seen his share of enemy fire; in fact, he was a shining example to his comrades. But towards the end of his active service weaknesses unfolded; he became aware that he was as fallible as anyone else and fear came to the fore.

  His commanding officer and friend, Colonel Michel Petrichova, noticed the decline and gave him an easy way out. “I need your expertise away from front-line action, Yuri,” he said. “You speak fluent Turkish, so I’m sending you on permanent assignment to Istanbul. I want you to work undercover alongside the city’s racketeers, pimps and other under-classes. Find out what you can about minor officials who mix in the wrong company and those whose desires follow the white powder trails, gain little bargaining chips for times when local influence might be needed.”

  Yuri had collected more than a few minor officials since first living in Turkey, but his self-esteem had never quite recovered. And then a chance for all that to change came with Levent Pasha telling him of a rogue Russian military man setting up a club in Icmeler with Beyrek Ozel. But he couldn’t even do that right. He’d kept the information back from Michel instead of making immediate contact, choosing to get Levent and his boy to safety first. If he’d contacted Michel, there might have been enough operatives on active duty in the area to move in straight away. But he had to show Levent what a good friend he was and because of it, Levent was murdered and Yuri had put himself in a position that he couldn’t tell anyone about what had happened.

  He’d terminated enough people himself in his time, but the death of Levent was different: Yuri had been cowardly and that fact still haunted him. Thoughts drifted, noon ticked by and Yuri watched the Bosporus Strait as it melded into a blue horizon. And it was out of the blue that he suddenly needed to spin the ship’s wheel hard and swing the vessel to port to avoid hitting an oncoming fishing boat.

  “You fucking moron!” he shouted, mixing Russian with English and flipping a hand out in anger. “Don’t you know any rules of the sea?”

  Yuri could see into the boat’s wheelhouse and the strap on a spindle that kept the Turkish vessel on a straight course: a simple automatic pilot allowing the Turkish skipper to wander the deck and pull in large braided fenders, left hanging over the gunwales, but that was no excuse; he should have kept vigil whatever the distraction.

  Yuri pointed a finger to his eye and changed back to Turkish when shouting, “Keep an eye on what you’re doing – fool!”

  The Turk pulled the last of the fenders over, stowed it against the bulwark, opened both hands out in bemusement and gave Yuri a cheesy grin. Before the Russian could come up with a response, the skipper had turned his back and taken command of his vessel.

  Anger spiked. Yuri could have cheerfully throttled the man, but then his own vessel wandered and he had to hurry to release the throttle. The boat slowed to a halt and rocked in the water. He went back out on deck, took a Druzhba cigarette from his shirt pocket and ignited it. “Crazy fuck!” he said in English.

  Drawing hard on the cardboard-tubed end of the cigarette, he smiled a smile that turned into a grin and swallowed toxic smoke that seared his throat. Quickly, he exhaled. He’d started smoking the strong cigarettes in the hope of cutting down. If they didn’t cure him of the habit, they would kill him in the attempt. Walking to the bow, he put a foot on the bulwark and flicked the butt over the side. It wasn’t much past midday. If he could get back early, it would give him a chance to sink a couple of vodkas and then collar one or two of his contacts, find out what was happening in the murky world of deceit and deception.

  Something caught his eye off the starboard bow: a dangerous-sized log, a dead animal, maybe even one of the drunken bums who sometimes ended up in the drink. He couldn’t be sure what it was, but it wouldn’t take much to find out. He took the helm, throttled up and approached the object. The outline cleared and he saw the body of what looked like a young boy face down in the water. It was not the first time Yuri had seen this, but finding dead children wasn’t an easy thing to get used to. He edged the starboard of the vessel alongside the body, grabbed the boy’s waistband with a boathook and fished him up onto the deck. There was a hole in the back of his left shoulder. It looked like he’d been shot.

  Thin blue lips, no sign of breathing and no pulse at neck or wrist. Yuri pressed an ear to the boy’s chest: no discernible heartbeat. He pulled the eyelids back: the pupils had dilated widely.

  Yuri shook his head. “Last chance, boy
,” he said, and he began compressing his chest at the centre.

  No joy there. He had a dead boy on his hands.

  So much for his plans for the rest of the day – he’d have to hand the problem over to the authorities in Eminonu. Maybe they could find out who the boy was – had been. But it wouldn’t matter, Yuri thought, noticing how dirty and smelly the child was; he must have been a street urchin and the authorities certainly had no interest in those little ones. His final journey would end at the morgue and there wouldn’t be a tear or a sigh from anyone.

  The boat had drifted midway across the strait, on a line with the Golden Horn. Yuri looked at the boy and thought of his friend Levent being drowned in the Bosporus all those years earlier. Thoughts of weakness came and he felt ashamed. He should have had the courage to do more that night. If he had, they might both have walked away unharmed.

  Yuri slouched as he took the leash from the wheel and motored towards the channel, but then noticed a commotion around the Galata Bridge. A police launch carrying several officers circled near the floating pontoons; three dragged boathooks through the water, the rest were leaning over the side and scanning under jetties. On the bridge’s upper and lower platforms a legion of dark-blue uniforms scurried around and even more busied themselves near a wagon parked at the Sirkeci quayside, loading up what looked like occupied body bags.

  Yuri wondered whether they might be looking for this boy, but that wasn’t likely; he was too young to draw such attention. Then his mind appeared to play tricks: the boy’s head moved. But, no, dead people don’t move.

  Of course, he’d love to think it possible that the boy had come around. And he had heard of children being trapped under the ice in Russia for long periods. Even doctors had pronounced them dead, so how had they miraculously come back to life? No one had come up with a scientific answer. All they could guess was that some primeval mechanism had allowed their bodies to shutdown … so why not this boy now?

  Yuri hitched the loop onto the helm and went to the body. The boy’s head had moved and the formerly dead eyes were staring fearfully. Broken red lines smothered the sclera, but otherwise he seemed to be focussing normally.

  “Can you hear me, boy?”

  “Yes,” he slurred.

  Surprised, Yuri raised his eyebrows. “How did you end up in the strait?”

  “Police shot…”

  Yuri looked up over the bow and pondered his next move. If he swung the boat back out into the strait, the police would come after him to find out what he was up to. He had to hold his course.

  The boy’s eyes had shut. He might have slipped back into unconsciousness, but Yuri thought he should let him know what he was doing. “We’re approaching the Galata Bridge. The police are still there, so I’m going to cover you and motor past. You mustn’t move until I tell you otherwise.”

  No response. Yuri covered him with a tarpaulin and sailed towards the bridge. Captain Ahmet was standing next to a familiar-looking young man. The captain had aged and looked different, baggier, but there was no mistaking the scruff beside him. He’d attended the first part of Levent’s murder. How could Yuri forget any of the faces from that night?

  Ahmet saw Yuri and shouted down to him, “You haven’t had any young thugs float past on your way in, have you?”

  “My hull did hit something, yes. Maybe I put one of them to the bottom of the strait for you,” Yuri answered and he laughed outlandishly.

  Ahmet threw out his hands and laughed also, but the young man just stared sullenly.

  Yuri carried on upstream, deciding to dock further up the Horn than usual, out of sight of prying eyes. Tomorrow he’d take the child to the eastern side of the Bosporus. He had a berth and a safe house over there. He could help the boy without anyone knowing about it. First, though, the child had to make it through the night. The wound in his shoulder looked like it could be life-threatening.

  After docking and securing his boat, Yuri carefully pulled back the tarpaulin. The child roused and Yuri looked down into a face full of terror.

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to help you. What’s your name, boy?”

  “Mehmet,” he answered.

  A shockwave tingled up Yuri’s spine, something about the boy’s face seemed familiar and the name jarred him.

  “Do you have a second name?” Yuri enquired.

  “Pasha,” Mehmet responded.

  Yuri fell back onto his butt. “And do you know your father’s name?”

  “Yes, Levent, Levent Pasha,” he said, and that, Yuri thought, was exactly who he looked like.

  Chapter 10

  Resident smog hovered over the Suleymaniye district, swirling menacingly over domes and minarets, sinister shapes rose up and hissed at the temples as if demons on the offensive. The big man got off his butt and pulled the covering all the way from Mehmet.

  “My name is Yuri,” he said.

  The face Mehmet stared into was unforgiving, but the large, square jaw underlined good-looking features. And he was a huge man, like the Turkish wrestlers Mehmet had seen practising in the parks near the Golden Horn – bigger. Yuri helped him to a sitting position and took a look at the wound. As he moved his fingers around the injury, Mehmet clenched his jaw, refusing to reveal to the stranger the mind-numbing pain he was suffering.

  “Barely a scratch. The bullet has gone straight through,” Yuri said, lifting Mehmet into his arms as if he were a small bag of feathers. He took him into a cabin behind the wheelhouse, sat him up against a bolster cushion on long bench seating and took a large first aid kit from a locker. He proceeded to sterilise and dress the shoulder wound and, on finishing the job, took Mehmet by surprise, saying, “I was a friend of your father.”

  Even through the pain, shock tingled over his skin. “You knew my father. Where is he?”

  “I heard he’d been killed,” Yuri told him, showing no emotion as he did so.

  Mehmet felt somewhat indifferent to the news. But talking of death brought Senturk to mind and for him he cried until he could cry no more.

  Yuri said, “Don’t worry, you have a home with me for as long as it takes for you to stand on your own two feet,” and looked uncomfortable saying it.

  They talked, Yuri shared the small amount of food he had on board and eventually they bedded down on the boat. The trauma had weakened Mehmet so much he slept through that night and the following day. In the evening of that next day, Yuri took the boat to a berth across the Bosporus Strait, on the Asian side of the city.

  “For the time being, this is our new home,” Yuri told him. “You’ll be safe enough here.”

  Yuri seemed so matter-of-fact about everything, unlike Mehmet, who was now feeling an overwhelming gratitude towards this new benefactor.

  *

  Usually, Yuri kept the boat in Sirkeci, but it had been moored on the Uskudar side of the Bosporus for a week now, though he’d keep it there on a more permanent basis. It didn’t make much difference to him in terms of keeping his lists of transgressors in line and it would be safer for the boy. And suddenly, Mehmet’s safety had become paramount to him. He felt his turning up had given him a second chance and besides, putting his bitterness aside, he was a likeable youngster, easy to be around. But in the main, Yuri hoped he could make amends for letting Levent down so badly.

  He’d not long had a communication from his commanding officer, Colonel Michel Petrichova; the message said he was coming to Istanbul and wanted to speak with him personally. Now Yuri watched Michel’s giant proportions as he walked the quayside towards him and reaching the boat, he stepped onto the gunwale before jumping down onto the deck. Yuri smiled; Michel was wearing a black, blouson, leather jacket, whose creases revealed many years of use, and a crumpled checked shirt tucked sloppily into workman-like jeans that had also seen better days. Yuri’s smile had been because he knew how formal Michel was in his everyday life in Moscow.

  “You know I’m always glad to see you, Michel, but it’s only been a couple of months since y
ou were here last. Is something wrong?” Yuri asked.

  Michel’s small features crinkled and his rich brown eyes flashed. “No, Yuri. There’ve been changes back home and I wanted to come over and tell you about them myself.”

  Mehmet had sat on the seating that wrapped around the aft gunwale and Yuri noticed Michel watching him while drumming fingers on the bulwark, agitated, but then he smiled towards the boy and said, “You have a new deckhand, I see. Does he speak Russian?”

  “No. Don’t worry, Colonel, it’s safe to talk. Mehmet joined me about a week ago and this is his first outing.” Omitting the part involving the Russian rogue and Beyrek Ozel, Yuri told the colonel the story – of Levent being weighted down and sunk in the Bosporus by local crime lords, through to how he pulled the boy from the strait.

  Michel’s brow furrowed. “Funny, you’ve never told me anything of this Levent before.”

  Yuri squirmed without answering.

  Michel continued. “Still, I understand why you want to look out for Mehmet… But enough of that; I want to tell you why I’m here. You addressed me as colonel a moment ago, but that’s no longer accurate. I’ve been promoted to lieutenant general and–”

  Yuri threw his arms around Michel, giving him the kind of hug you might expect from a grizzly bear. “Well done, my friend. I can think of no one who deserves it more.”

  Yuri noticed Mehmet shake his head before turning his attention across the water to the European side of the city: clearly not a hugger.

  “Thank you, Yuri, I appreciate the words. But – if you’ll put me down – I’ll tell you why I’m here. My promotion demands I relinquish command of my security units and take office in Moscow’s Kremlin. I’m to assist Nikita Khrushchev with his reforms.”

  Yuri had worked with Michel in one way or another for longer than he could remember. “Oh,” he said weakly, imagining being taken under someone else’s command. “And when does all this take place?”