Gilbert pointed to the laptop on the dresser. The chat window was open.
“They are supposed to contact us when they arrive. If they were able to catch the afternoon flight out of Dallas, I expect them to arrive within the next couple of hours. Maybe you could show me how this canister works.”
Matt pulled a dull silver tube from his bag. It had ornate floral decorations etched into the sides. One end looked like the base. It was flat and slightly larger. The other end had a hollow in the end.
“The canister is made of stainless steel. It is twenty-one inches long and four inches in diameter. It is meant to fit inside a normal travel bag or suitcase and is used by smugglers moving high value materials via a mule.”
“A mule?” asked Gilbert
“The courier. They’re usually freelancers, so they cannot always be trusted with valuable articles.”
He laid the canister on its side and pointed to a row of barely discernible letters underneath the cap. The cap had several lines of varying lengths, also very faint, along the rim pointing down to the symbols. “Remember the little arrow that marked the stopping point on your school locker?”
“Are you kidding? I still remember the combination – sixteen clockwise thirty-one counter-clockwise and nine clockwise,” said Gilbert.
“Well, this canister has no arrow. Only one of these lines serves as the arrow. In this case, it is the shortest one. Each canister is custom-made, and only the owners know which of the lines to use as the marker. There is no clicking, so very few people even suspect it is a container. In fact, it is usually called a candlestick if anyone should ask.”
He pointed to the hollow at the narrow end.
“Candles fit perfectly in this hollow. The end with the cap serves as a base. This one has a rare added security feature. The hinge on the lid turns a series of small gears so that the combination changes each time the canister is opened. In other words, it is a rotating combination. This one is a 1-2-3 sequence on a letter combination. In other words, right now the combination is A E H. That means the next time it is opened the first letter moves forward one, the second letter two and the third three, so that the combination will change to B G K. You must know the sequence not just the combination.”
“So what do we want with it?” asked Gary, clearly confused about its purpose.
“Ask your brother,” replied Matt.
Gilbert continued staring at the canister almost as if he hadn’t heard.
“Gil, what’s your plan?”
“I’m not just going to hand this document back to those sorry bastards. They killed our father, kidnapped my family and tried to kill our sister. I want a guarantee that my family will be set free.”
“You’ve lost your mind. You’re going to get them killed. Don’t try to screw these guys, Gil.”
“Listen gypsy boy, family may not mean much to you, but my wife and children are somewhere in this city of fifteen million. For all I know, they could be gagged and tied up in the room next door. Do you have any idea what that is like? Any idea what kind of hell I have been going through, wondering how they are being treated?”
Gary averted his gaze.
“No, I probably don’t. It’s your call.”
Gilbert picked up the canister and spun the cap.
“Tell me how the tracking system works.”
“It’s equipped with a GPS device. The signal has a range of five miles and uses cellular networks to relay coordinates. The battery will last about six days. It’s all state of the art. The tracking software is integrated with Google Earth. I can have it set up in fifteen minutes.”
“Great,” said Gilbert. “Let’s do a test run. Gary wants to look in on a friend anyway. He can carry the canister, and we’ll stay here to wait for Gwyn’s call while we track his movements.”
Gary walked over and grabbed his bag off the bed. He realized just a split second too late that he had forgotten to zip it up, and the contents spilled all over the floor. Gilbert bent over and started picking the stuff off the floor and then froze. Gary looked up at his brother, saw what was in his hand, and took a deep breath.
“I thought you said you didn’t have a cell phone,” Gilbert said slowly.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re right. I don’t understand why you lied to me!”
“I didn’t lie to you.”
“You said you didn’t have a cell phone, but you do. I call that lying.”
“No, you asked if I had a cell phone and I said, ‘Sorry.’ Sorry doesn’t mean ‘I don’t have a cell phone’, so it wasn’t a lie.”
“But you led me to believe you didn’t have a cell phone,” said Gilbert, as he began thumbing through the menus.
“I led you to believe nothing. You believe whatever you want to. Now, give me my phone.”
“So, why wouldn’t you give me the number?” he asked without looking up from the screen.
“I have my reasons.”
“Reasons you won’t share?”
“That’s right. Now, I need my phone.”
Gilbert began reading the names from the cell phone directory out loud, “Ardavan, Armeen, Atash, Babak, Bahar, Bahram, Darya…”
Matt interrupted, “Those sound like Iranian names.”
Matt’s tone was icy. “Gary, what the hell is going on here?”
Gary stared at the floor.
“Gary?”
“Listen, Gil, you don’t tell me about your job, do you. I don’t have to share details about mine with you either.”
“Job? What kind of job? Your clients are Iranians?”
“Listen, I have to go or I’m going to be late.”
Gilbert, looked at him for a minute and then said,
“Fine. Have it your way. Keep us all at arm’s length. We’re used to it,” he said, handing the phone back to his brother.
Gary turned to Matt.
“Gil told me about your new line of work. Angela, the girl I’m going to meet, is here looking for her sister Bianca. She has good reason to believe the girl has been forced into prostitution. I was wondering if you had any contacts here in Turkey that might be able to help her.”
“I could make a few calls if you give me a photograph.”
“Thanks.”
CHAPTER
45
Gary left the hotel and took a right.
Maybe Matt will be able to help.
He thought about his last conversation with Angela and how horrible it must be to have a sister abducted and forced into prostitution. It had seemed so distant then, the grief of this Romanian family, but now it struck much closer to home. Against his will, images of Ginger falling prey to a similar criminal network and being humiliated in the same way flooded his mind. As he started trudging up the steep hill, he felt for a moment that he was going to be physically sick.
That morning he had received an email saying that Angela had been trying to get in touch with him for three days. She had sent a message every day, each more desperate than the last. He picked his way along the narrow sidewalk heading for their rendezvous point at Galata Tower. He had been up and down the street dozens of times on his way to visit the old imam at the Sahkulu mosque and knew it well. Like many Turkish cities, certain artisans congregated in a certain area. He knew it was because the country and infrastructure were so much older that it was easier for shoppers if they knew they could go to one place and find a selection of a certain product from different vendors. This particular street was lined with shops selling musical instruments.
The few cars were parked helter-skelter wherever they could find a spot. This neighborhood was a Genoese city six hundred years before Henry Ford. Parking was a challenge that had not yet been accommodated. A street vendor blocked the sidewalk with a cardboard stand offering a selection of best-selling authors, all pirated. He stepped out into the street to get around the stand and noticed that Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
was among the books being sold. One of his students had said that the ultra-nationalists had financed a new printing of the Turkish translation. It seemed hard to believe, but there it was right in front of him - Aryan Supremacy in a land whose forefathers hailed back to the steppes of Central Asia. He shook his head in disbelief.
How absurd can it get? People Hitler would have viewed as second-class or worse reading his book. What gives?
He stopped in front of another dingy-looking shop that sold sketches of the Istanbul skyline and Ottoman motifs. He had browsed through the shop several times, but always left empty-handed. He noted that the window display had not changed in the week since he had been gone. Then, he passed a tiny shop that had literally been a hole in the old castle walls. Now, it sold world-famous Zildjian cymbals and drumsticks. The contrast of bright, state-of-the-art musical instruments was striking in a shop so old it had probably seen Fatih Sultan Mehmet storm the walls of Constantinople.
Another fifteen meters and he was at the end of the street, standing on the southern edge of Galata Tower square, scanning the crowd for Angela. The enormous tower blocked at least a third of the small square from view, so he began walking in a circle to the right and soon spied her reading the informational plaque on the northeast side of the square at the tower’s base.
Dressed in a pair of old jeans, threadbare at the knees, she had her dark hair pulled up in a ponytail to keep it off her neck in the humid August weather. She was wearing a non-descript, light-green t-shirt with writing that had long since faded away. He liked that about her. She didn‘t try to draw attention to herself. Yet, her pure natural beauty always stood out in a crowd.
She was five years younger than he was but in some ways seemed older, more mature. The post-communist Romania of her childhood had not been an easy place to grow up. The fall of Ceausescu and the collapse of Communist rule may have brought some measure of freedom and openness to the outside world, but it could not make up for decades of neglect to infrastructure and trade. She was a rare combination of beauty, intelligence and toughness and right now it was the latter that was most evident. He could still read the same determination on her face and in her posture that he had seen the night she told him her sister had been abducted and forced into prostitution.
“Hey, Angela,” he called out.
She looked up quickly and her face softened into a smile when she saw Gary walking towards her.
“Hey. Thanks for coming.”
“No problem, I’m sorry if I kept you waiting.”
“No, I just arrived about ten minutes ago. I hopped on the Istiklal tram so I wouldn’t have to shoulder my way through the crowd.”
“Where shall we go?” asked Gary.
“What about the café at the top of the tower, unless of course, you have been there before and would rather go somewhere else?”
“No, that sounds fine.”
They both walked back around to the entrance on the south side and climbed the steps leading to the door. Once inside, Gary pulled a few Turkish lira notes out of his wallet to pay the admission fee, and they walked over to the elevators. He was surprised at how empty the place was. They entered the elevator and hit the button for the top floor.
“So, have you seen the news today?” she asked.
“No, but given my fluency in Turkish, or rather lack thereof, I doubt I would have benefited from the experience.”
“Well, it’s international news, so every English station or website is carrying the story,” she replied. “This morning, there were two separate bombings on the Turkish Mediterranean coast targeting foreigners. I never heard how many were killed, but the footage was gruesome. Then, the same group blew up the Levent market, a small square north of Besiktas known as a banking complex in the commercial district. The whole country is on high alert.”