Bob had been determined to prove his father wrong when he left for college, excelling at his studies in his first year. But then had come that semester abroad in Mexico City when his roommate, Tony Santelli, had invited him to a number of parties where pot had been smoked. He had slipped back into his old ways, and by the end of his second year, his grades had deteriorated to the point where he had been asked by the college administration to leave.
His mother had been forgiving, even overly protective, sparing him from his father’s wrath. Somehow he had managed to pull himself together, surviving in a tough job market because of his good looks and quick wit. But success at a major company or investment bank in New York had eluded him. He had ended up working for the Ottoman Trading Company and peddling drugs on the side to support his expensive lifestyle.
Then he had fallen into a police trap. Only a few weeks ago, although it seemed like eons now. Right around the time his friend Tony Santelli had been killed. His boss, Murat, was the guilty party—if his FBI handler, John Shafer, was to be believed. But that was the thing about Shafer. You could never be certain that he was telling the truth.
Tony had been on the run from the police when he had called him at the office and left a voice-mail message. He had sounded desperate—out of money, needed his help, thinking about surrendering to the police. Could they meet? He would call back later. Except that he had never called back. His body had been found in the Hudson River. Bob had failed Tony by not being at his desk when he called.
Tonight his botched mission to ransom Ozmen had left the hostages in the cathedral in Morelia at the mercy of a Mexican drug gang. If he and his fellow prisoners were not rescued soon, many innocent people could die. His only dealings with Los Zetas so far had been with Diego Alvarez, but maybe he wasn’t representative. Rodriguez, who worked for the DEA, should know what he was talking about. How had he described Los Zetas—brutal and murderous?
God, he hoped that Mama Bear app worked.
Chapter Ten
The three men ate their breakfast of fried beans and bitter black coffee in silence. Their outbursts of the previous night cast a pall over the room, inhibiting conversation beyond a curt morning greeting. Dave had requested (in English) to see Pedro Guerra when the two armed men had delivered their food, but they had spun on their heels and left without saying a word. He realized that he should have asked Bob to make the request in Spanish.
In the gray morning light filtering through the overhead skylight, Dave could make out the morose features of the tall, thin man whom Bob had introduced last night as Demir Ozmen. He sat on his cot, chewing methodically, his eyes fixed on the floor. Dave had seen him before somewhere, and it had been recently. In Mexico? No, that was not possible. Apart from hotel staff at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mexico City and the waiter at the restaurant last night, he had met only with members of his own bank regulatory team and with managers at the local headquarters of Europa Bank. New York was also unlikely.
Then it had to be Europe. Istanbul? Ozmen was an employee of the Ottoman Trading Company headquartered in Istanbul. But he could not recall their paths crossing on his recent business trip to Istanbul to meet with the general manager of Europa Bank’s Turkish subsidiary.
Except that they had. The realization jolted him. He could feel his pulse quickening. Dave had not made the connection last night when Bob had revealed the name of the third occupant of their room, the Turkish businessman who had been kidnapped and whom Bob had intended to ransom. After all, there could be a hundred Turks with the name Demir Ozmen.
But this morning, there was no mistaking that their fellow prisoner, bearded and balding, resembled the clean-shaven, smiling young man whom Dave had seen in a photo in a meeting at the home of Hayat Yilmaz, a university professor who had been brutally attacked and was now a patient in an Istanbul hospital. Two decades had taken their toll, adding wrinkles and gray hairs, but the tall, thin build was the same, and a week’s stubble could not disguise the resemblance in facial features.
The parents of Hayat had identified the youth as the man to whom their daughter had once been betrothed, but their engagement had been broken off when she had discovered that he was dealing in drugs. The Istanbul police were still puzzled over who her attacker could be but suspected a lovers’ quarrel. Could this man be implicated in her savage beating? Dave had suggested to the Istanbul police that it was certainly worth an inquiry, even if Ozmen was a lover from the distant past. But that proposal appeared to have been lost in the Istanbul police bureaucracy.
Other memories came flooding back. There had been another encounter with Demir Ozmen in London four weeks ago, before the meeting with Hayat Yilmaz’s parents in Istanbul.
He had been forced to interrupt his Aegean Sea cruise by flying from Athens to London to attend a meeting at Europa Bank’s headquarters at Canary Wharf. He had been standing in line, waiting to check into his hotel after the taxi ride from Heathrow, when a tall man ahead of him, taking an incoming call on his mobile phone from someone he had greeted as Mehmet, had suddenly turned and bumped into him before rushing off to the hotel entrance. He remembered the incident now, not because of the man’s perfunctory apology but because of the anxious (even shocked) expression on his face as he hurried away from the reception desk.
When the tall man was joined a few minutes later by a business associate—a short rotund man who had been trying to ingratiate himself with the pretty receptionist as he checked in—their excited voices initially echoed across the lobby. Dave understood only the first few words they exchanged in English. “Not again!” They then started speaking in more guarded tones in a language he did not understand.
What chain of events had brought this Turkish businessman in a matter of weeks from the luxury of a London hotel to this squalid motel, the captive of a Mexican drug gang? Could there be a link to what he had witnessed in the taxi ride from Heathrow to his hotel?
As they were about to enter the highway on the final approach to Canary Wharf, the driver narrowly avoided colliding with a white truck that was pursued by several police cars. Dave had no time to prepare himself. Despite his seat belt, he crashed against the window, and his overnight bag, placed on the floor beside him, was hurled against his leg. The driver was very apologetic, but Dave assured him that he was fine—only a few small bruises—and a trip to a hospital was not necessary.
The driver then maneuvered the taxi onto the entrance ramp of the highway but almost immediately came to a stop. Police blocked the road where the truck had been pulled over to the side of the highway. Two men leaning against the side of the truck were being frisked, their arms extended upward. A third man, who tried to escape when the truck had been forced to stop, was being wrestled to the ground by police. Oncoming traffic on the other side of the highway slowed to a crawl as motorists gawked at the evening’s unexpected entertainment.
The driver explained, “The police have arrested some criminals. It looks like a bad business. See that registration plate on the back of the lorry?”
Dave squinted in the fading daylight and shook his head. “No.”
“It’s Bulgarian. You know what that means? Drugs.”
“Why drugs?”
“The Evening Standard has had a number of stories in the last week or so about the drug trade in Britain and the rest of Europe. See, most of it is controlled by Turkish gangs.”
The gist of the articles was that despite NATO’s efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, the heroin business there is bigger than ever. The drug flows through Iran, Iraq, and Syria into Turkey. There the middlemen break up shipments into smaller packages that are put on vehicles bound for Bulgaria and Romania. The drugs are often hidden in shipments of goods like vegetables, shoes, cement, and bales of cotton before they are transferred to other trucks headed for Holland, Germany, or Britain.
“The police haven’t been able to put a stop to this trade?”
“The Standard says the Turkish government is cooperating. Someone must have tipped off our police about this shipment. Imagine driving all the way from Bulgaria to be welcomed into the open arms of the police!” The driver chortled.
Then he became sober again. “Still there’s plenty of heroin on the streets in London. Turkish officials may be trying their best, but there are so many ways that heroin can be smuggled into or out of their country. Same with Britain. Not everything comes by lorry via the Chunnel into Britain. Some of it comes by air or by sea.”
“These Turkish gangs in London—the British police have been unable to break them?”
“It’s not easy to get into these gangs, you see. The drug business is a family affair.”
The driver provided Dave with some background information. Some Turks, especially those who came from Cyprus when it was part of the British Empire, have lived in Great Britain for generations. Others came more recently, in the seventies or eighties—Turks and Kurds from the southeastern part of the country. Most may be law-abiding, but those who are criminals use family connections (brothers, cousins, uncles) here and in Turkey to get supplies of heroin and distribute it.
A police officer walked over to their taxi to apologize for the delay. The driver then returned to his story, showing a surprising memory for detail.
“When I was in the police force in the nineties—I retired ten years ago and now drive cab to top up my pension—the Baybasin clan was the most prominent drug family. They were originally Kurdish. There were four brothers. The organization they ran was closely associated with two gangs in north London, the Kurdish Bulldogs and the Bombers. Not only did they smuggle drugs into Britain, they also ran a protection racket.”
“Wasn’t there a horrendous murder recently in north London?” asked Dave. “The police found a dismembered body.”
“You must have read about it, right? The gangs extort money from Kurdish businessmen, claiming they support the cause of Kurdish secession from Turkey. But really, they are only lining their pockets. If businessmen resist, they can be very persuasive—killings, torture, kidnappings, that sort of thing.”
“What’s happened to the Baybasin clan?”
“The oldest brother, Huseyin, known as the Emperor—the one who got the business going by starting a travel agency with a fleet of buses to smuggle drugs throughout Europe—ended up in prison in England under a false name. While there, he spilled the beans to interrogators, how he had been aided in his business by corrupt government officials in Turkey. The Turkish authorities, knowing who he was, got him released through an exchange for a British citizen held in a Turkish prison. Soon he returned to his old ways, got caught, and was jailed for life in Holland.”
“End of story?”
“Not quite. His three brothers had, by this time, established themselves in London. One of them, Abdullah, who was arrested shortly after I retired from the force, revealed during his trial how the clan laundered money through Scottish and Cypriot banks and then invested the money in real estate. They owned office and apartment buildings in some of the most posh parts of London—even a retirement home for police officers, if you can believe that!”
By this time, the police roadblock had been lifted and traffic had begun to move again. As the driver merged his cab into the flow of traffic, he twisted his head back to look at Dave and grinned.
“Want to hear a funny one? Although Abdullah was convicted at his trial, he was given refugee status in Britain because his life would be in danger if he were deported to Turkey. The judge was sympathetic because he had been crippled in a gunfight in Amsterdam years before. Then in a retrial, Abdullah was acquitted because the judge found that prosecution evidence was insufficient. That’s British justice for you.”
If that was British justice, thought Dave, what chance was there of getting justice for Hayat Yilmaz in Turkey, especially when there was so little concrete evidence to work with? Still, his shared captivity with a potential suspect in the attack on his friend was an opportunity that he did not intend to let pass.
Chapter Eleven
Dave thought carefully about how he could best extract the information that he wanted from the Turk. If this man had anything to fear, a direct approach might cause him to clam up. He decided on an indirect strategy—getting the Turk to talk so that he would relax and possibly divulge some personal details relevant to the attack on Hayat Yilmaz.
“Demir, we were never properly introduced last night, and I apologize for disturbing your sleep. I am Dave Bigelow, Bob’s brother.”
Ozmen seemed startled when Dave called out his name. He did not smile but acknowledged Dave’s apology with a nod of his head. “Please understand the reason why I cursed yesterday. Being a prisoner for nearly a week has been a terrible ordeal.”
Dave was sympathetic. “I can well imagine. Your story has been all over the media, especially the last twenty-four hours with the seizure of the cathedral in Morelia.”
“What seizure? What are you talking about? Remember I have not seen a newspaper since I was made a prisoner. Your brother did not mention it last night.”
“Yesterday, terrorists claiming to represent Los Zetas, a drug cartel, took control of the cathedral and threatened to kill members of a wedding party inside unless you are released immediately.”
Ozmen grimaced. “That is unfortunate. I do not welcome publicity of any kind, nor does my company.” Almost as an afterthought, he asked, “Has anyone been killed?”
“Yes, one hostage was executed last night, and who knows what has happened since? This crisis could put pressure on the Mexican government to get you released.”
Bob joined the conversation. “Omer Tilki does not want governments to get involved. When I was asked to come to Mexico City to deliver the ransom, Tilki was going to contact the kidnappers directly to arrange how to drop off the money.”
“How would he do that?” asked Ozmen. “I was going to ask you this morning how the kidnappers knew to call you.”
“Simple. Your kidnappers allowed you to use your phone to call Omer Tilki. He called them back on your phone.”
“Ah, I see, and the kidnappers picked up,” murmured Ozmen. Something still puzzled him. “Did you coordinate with Diego Alvarez on this plan?”
“No, we are doing this on our own,” Bob replied quickly. “Omer Tilki felt that bringing a third party into the negotiations would only hinder communications.”
He wished Ozmen had not brought up Alvarez’s name. He could be straightforward with Dave about Tilki but had to be circumspect about Alvarez. He could not tell Ozmen in front of his brother that Alvarez’s links to the Los Zetas cartel would destroy any chance of reaching an agreement with the Sinaloa Cartel, the suspected captors. Dave had to be kept ignorant about the kind of company he worked for, even if his evasive answers ran the risk of irritating Ozmen.
“Who are these people?” Dave’s curiosity was piqued.
Bob interjected before Ozmen could respond. “Alvarez is our business contact in Mexico. He came to New York in early September to meet with Demir and Murat to discuss future trade deals between Ottoman Trading Company and his firm, Veracruz Sugar. Demir and Batur Comooglou were invited to Veracruz for further discussions after the New York meeting.”
Ozmen frowned at Bob. He expected this junior employee to be more deferential to him, especially after bungling his ransom mission. Another score to be settled if they survived their captivity, but he decided to let it pass for now.
“That is correct,” said Ozmen. “We were pleased with the success of our business trip to Mexico as guests of Diego Alvarez in Veracruz. He was a gracious host.”
“But security must have been lax,” protested Dave. “How did you get kidnapped?”
“Security was very good, or so it seemed. Our villa was heavily guarded. Each morning, Comooglou and I were picked up by a chauffeur-
driven limousine with bodyguard and taken to the docklands. We were greeted there by Alvarez’s assistant, a young man working in the shipping department of Veracruz Sugar. He ushered us past friendly security guards and customs officials at the docklands with ease. We were impressed.”
“What about the police? Were they visible in the streets?” asked Bob.
“The police?” Ozmen snorted contemptuously. “Two years ago, the central government of Mexico dismissed the entire local police force of Veracruz because it was considered to be in the pocket of Los Zetas.”
“Los Zetas is …?” Dave had heard the name in reference to the seizure of the cathedral in Morelia.
“A drug gang which—by reputation at least—controls much of the Gulf coast of Mexico,” responded Ozmen. He glanced at Bob, whose gaze wavered uneasily. He understood the signal. That was all Dave Bigelow needed to know.
“On our last day in Veracruz, Batur and I were sitting in a sidewalk café in the center of the city at the Plaza de las Armas. I was on my phone reporting to Omer Tilki in Istanbul. Our bodyguard sat at a separate table nearby.”
He could recall that morning in perfect detail—the square lined by palm trees, shops, and restaurants; the Municipal Palace of the city council with soldiers standing guard outside; a cathedral; Comooglou flirting with the pretty waitress who was bringing them coffee.
“The attack occurred in the square?” Bob was incredulous.
“No, too many soldiers in the square. When I finished my call, Comooglou and I walked, our bodyguard a few paces behind, to a side street where our driver and car were waiting. I was about to open the back door of the car when I heard the bodyguard swear. A shot rang out. He collapsed in a pool of blood, a bullet in his head. I heard the sound of feet running toward the car. I did not see the man who knocked me down from behind and then pinned me to the ground. The rest is a jumble.”
Accidental Encounters Page 4
