* * *
LIKE A LOT OF OLD CITIES Ankara had narrow twisty streets right alongside broad well-traveled thoroughfares, giant
skyscrapers rubbing glass-and-steel shoulders with brick tenements and blocks
of modest shops. Some of that could be found in the Kavaklidere south of the
Sheraton.
Annja preferred the dimmer backstreets to the bright modern lights. They
allowed a more pleasant walk with a degree of solitude. Even if her thoughts
were too roiled and dark for her to enjoy walking through the exotic Turkish
capital as much as she usually would. She still found it both odd and pleasing
that she had these streets, even this particular relatively long and straight
uphill stretch, pretty much to herself, when just a few blocks away on Talat Pafla Boulevard the traffic was flowing bumper to bumper and the nightspots were
hopping.
A brisk wind edged with cold like broken glass sent dry leaves from the
avenue's many trees skittering along past Annja's feet like small frightened
animals. Not all the trees were bare; some were evergreen here, too, as in the
botanic garden, and most impressive in size. The smell of spices and boiling
water was stronger here than the inevitable city-center diesel stink. Floating
from somewhere came the faint strains of Turkish music.
She didn't know what to make of the aged Mr. Summer. It was tempting to dismiss
what he said as nonsense. But there was the fact that he knew Roux. And Garin.
And also that she was off on a quest to prove the literal truth of the Old
Testament, totally against the laws and wishes of their host country. Surreal?
The whole damned thing was surreal.
She trudged up the hill toward the light-encrusted tower of the Sheraton. It
was steep here. It didn't tax her particularly. In fact she was thinking of
hitting the hotel's beautiful and well-equipped exercise room when she got
back—maybe take a few laps in the indoor pool afterward. She was wary of
jogging on the street under the circumstances; best not to attract undue
attention to herself….
Striding down the hill toward her from the hotel she saw a familiar figure: the
lean, beak-nosed general Orhan Orga. For all his near-depressive appearance at
the negotiating table he walked with erect military bearing, looking taller
than normal in his high-peaked cap, with his black leather greatcoat flapping
around his stork legs. Behind him, and seemingly having to hustle to keep up,
were a pair of huge and burly plainclothes goons. Apparently a Turkish army
general worried more about being mugged on the Ankara streets than Annja. Then
again, he probably had higher-level enemies than random street criminals on his
mind.
A black SUV with dark tinted windows waited gleaming by the curb, nose toward
Annja and two blocks uphill. Its lights flashed and its alarm system beeped
reassuringly twice as Orga gestured grandly with a gloved hand. He thoughtfully
slowed enough to allow one bodyguard to scuttle ahead of him to open the
driver's door and lever his bulk inside. The other stepped fast to open the
passenger door for his master, then clambered into the backseat.
She heard the car's big engine growl alive. The SUV rolled away from the curb
toward her like a big black cat headed out for a nocturnal prowl.
Then it exploded with a brilliant yellow-white flash.
The heavy car flew skyward on a
column of yellow flame.
At the same instant a sharp crack hit Annja's eardrums. She was already
dropping onto her palms on the sidewalk, preparatory to flattening herself like
a lizard on a hot rock. As a louder, heavier boom rolled over her on a breath
of hot wind she realized she'd just seen a two-stage explosion going off. The
first, sharper blast had been to rupture the car's fuel tank and turn the
gasoline inside into an aerosol—which when ignited itself served as a high
explosive.
The movies loved using two-stage blasts because they were showy, with lots of
bright yellow fire. But out in the big bad world Annja knew they were
relatively rare because they took extra effort and knowledge to plant. That
meant they were reserved for those people who had really annoyed somebody who
was really, really skilled.
I guess this means the Turkish government disapproves of our little scheme, she
thought as chunks of debris began to rain down around her.
The blasts were still echoing around Kavaklidere when she thrust herself
upright. She wasn't superstitious but she sure believed in bad luck. As in, it
was bad luck to be the only person visible on the street when a car containing
a reasonably major public figure blew skyward atop a pillar of fire.
With her usual gymnastic grace she snapped to her feet in a single spasm of
effort. Time to get off the street and find a nice dark corner to fold myself into,
she thought. She figured her next priority after that was a call to the
Sheraton to let her friends know they needed a brand-new set of plans. In one
heck of a hurry.
Before she could take a step a heavy hand clamped her right bicep. Another got
her left one. They felt like iron bands.
Despite the length of her legs and her lean muscle weight, she felt herself
picked up bodily off the ground. She smelled stale male sweat and harsh
tobacco. Not a good sign. Not one little bit.
Looking hurriedly around, as she was dragged back down the street and around
the corner, she saw she'd been seized by a pair of burly, swarthy goons in
ill-fitting suits. One had a shaved head; the other took the opposite tack with
a shaggy head of hair. Both had thick moustaches. Both also wore impenetrably
dark mirror shades.
"I don't suppose the fact I've got an American passport will make much of
an impression on you gentlemen, huh?" she said. "Huh. No. Thought
not."
It had been purely quixotic to ask—mostly to reassure herself with the sound of
her own voice, and assert her personal power with a smart-ass remark.
They bundled her into a four-door Mercedes sedan, black and shiny and imposing.
Keeping a low profile didn't seem to be high on the agenda for this team.
One of Annja's captors slid in beside her, staying firmly latched to her arm
while the other went around to the other side and got in, pinning her between
their bulky bodies. The car slid away from the curb.
"Just to be fair," she said, "I'm giving you gentleman one last
chance to let me go. Fair warning."
Dark sunglasses still on, they exchanged looks past her. Then as one they
started laughing.
Annja formed her right hand into half a fist. The sword's hilt filled it with
cool reassuring metal hardness. She leaned back against the luxuriant
leather-upholstered seat, and jabbed before either man could comprehend what
they had just witnessed.
The man to her right screamed shrilly as the blade's edge bit into his face.
The man to her left was struggling to shift his bulk. She felt him bunching to
deliver some kind of retaliatory attack. She couldn't get much hip into her own
blows but she did the best she could, swinging her body hard to ram the sword's
pommel into his face. She felt teeth splinter.
The other guy was thrashing and bellowing. Glancing back she saw his face
fountaining blood from a long gash. Seizing the hilt with both hands Annja did
quick nasty work in the tight confines. Periodically she gave his partner a
quick slam with the hilt. The man on her right shrieked and convulsed. The
inside of the driver's-side window and the rear window were sprayed with blood.
As he slumped into a bubbling mass of torn cloth and violated flesh his
compatriot recovered from his facial battering enough to grab Annja's arm
again. He was still strong; she couldn't break free, especially with too little
room to really get her hips into it.
She opened her hand. The sword vanished. The astonishing sight made the
assailant relax his grip slightly. Then she turned and jabbed him in the eye.
He squealed.
His shades were broken and askew on his face. Half-blind he tried to grab her
again. He still hadn't given up the notion that he was
big strong man
and she was mere
weak woman;
he was relying on muscles and now
adrenaline rather than going for the gun whose butt she could see tucked
beneath his left armpit.
As she fended off his blows Annja flicked a glance at the driver. He looked
smaller than the two bruisers who'd picked her up—literally—but that was a
relative thing. He was veering around some narrow street, dividing his
attention between steering the big black SUV, looking in the rearview mirror to
try to see what was going on in the backseat and bellowing what she thought
were alternate curses and advice at the top of his voice.
The guy on her right cocked a fist to smash her in the side of her head. She
couldn't afford to lose consciousness now or even focus.
Her problem was the car wasn't quite six feet side to side, internally. The
sword was four feet long and there was no room to maneuver. She leaned way over
the now quiescent, sodden body of her other assailant, held her right hand up
and back at a wonky angle and formed it into a half fist again.
Again the sword came to her call. The way her wrist was bent her grip was very
weak. She wrapped her left hand over the pommel again and, turning hard, drove
the sword with all her strength into her enemy's thick throat.
She overdid it. She barely felt the blade's passage through the cartilage
muscle and sinews of his neck, nor the seat padding. Only when the sword began
to bite deeply into the metal of the car's body itself did she feel a shock of
resistance.
And then the blade was well and truly stuck. The driver had finally turned his
head to see firsthand what was happening behind him.
His eyes were wide with shock. The olive facial skin around his dark eyebrows
and moustache was suffused with a dark hue that she figured was red; his blood
pressure was headed toward detonation. Spittle flew from his mouth along with
sounds Annja suspected weren't intelligible in Turkish or any other known human
language. It was the primal speech of rage and terror.
But he hadn't lost enough touch to forget his own handgun. He was obviously
grabbing for it, while trying to bring the car to a stop.
Annja released the sword. It vanished instantly back to the otherwhere. In the
milliseconds she had to estimate, she didn't see any way to wield it
effectively against the driver. Not before he got his own piece and started
blasting her.
But she wasn't tied to the Renaissance and its tools. The butt of the handgun
belonging to the man she'd just killed was prodding her in the right bicep. She
needed no more hint than that.
Her left hand snaked over and dived inside his jacket. It was a wet mess, damp
with a wider variety of fluids than she wanted to think about. Fortunately he
didn't have one of those trick holsters that only work for a certain angle, or
that you have to perform some kind of complicated ritual to get to disgorge its
contents. For a while those had been all the vogue in law enforcement, to keep
cops from having their guns taken away from them by suspects. Annja wasn't sure
how that worked out; she personally thought that the point to carrying a
firearm, which was at best heavy and inconvenient, was to have it instantly
available at need.
The dead man's piece was a Glock. It was boxy, reassuring and reliable and best
of all had no external safety to try to fumble to flick off. Annja was ready in
an instant.
The driver came out with his own piece, a shiny chrome Beretta. Then he
realized it was the wrong hand and the wrong angle to shoot into the backseat.
His elbow was in the way, his shoulder not hinged to rotate far enough to bring
the gun to bear.
In his moment of dithering Annja rammed the Glock's blunt muzzle up into the
notch of the man's jaw, right behind the ear. He continued to try to get his
weapon aimed at her. Knowing she had no other choice, she pulled the long,
heavy trigger.
The gun's roar was astonishingly loud in the closed car. The brief, almost
white muzzle flash illuminated a look of terrible terminal surprise on the
man's face.
The driver slumped forward over the steering wheel. The car continued to roll
down the street. Fortunately it wasn't going very fast.
It didn't matter. For any number of reasons, all of them good, all of them
pressing, Annja was not going to stay in the charnel-house backseat a heartbeat
longer than necessary. She threw herself over the slumped inert mass of the man
on her right and yanked at the door handle.
The door opened. An icy blast of air hit her in the face. The diesel fumes of
downtown Ankara smelled as sweet as the finest garden in the height of summer
next to what she'd been breathing the last desperate minute or two. Which was
all the time the fight had lasted.
She scrambled over the dead man and threw herself out the door. She tucked a
shoulder and rolled. She still hit pretty hard, slamming her shoulder and then
a hip. But she'd had gymnastic training and martial arts training in falling
safely, plus way more experience at diving for safety on unsympathetic surfaces
than she cared to think about. She wound up on her back staring up between
dark, blank three-and four-story building faces at a dense, low cloud ceiling underlit
to a sullen amber by the city lights. She was bruised, contused, but alive,
conscious and with nothing she could detect broken or even dislocated.
The car rolled another twenty feet, hopped the curb and slammed into a darkened
light standard. The car's horn began to blare.
Annja felt like just staying there a spell, enjoying the comforting cold
hardness of asphalt on her back, the icy air on her face and in her lungs, the
lovely, lovely clouds. Few beds had ever felt more welcome.
But she knew better than that. Anyway, her body did. Survival instincts kicked
in. She got to her feet quickly and stumbled away into the nearest pool of
welcoming dark she could find.
"Pick up. Pick up."
Annja hated when people told her answering machine that. Now she was repeating
it as fervently as a prayer, listening to the ring through her cell phone.
She'd found herself a nice, dark, narrow alley. The smell of garbage was
appalling enough, she imagined hopefully, to discourage even street bums.
She was covered head to toe in blood drying to a sticky second skin. Although
she was beginning to come down from the adrenaline rush, feeling shaky and
clammy and not so happy in the stomach, her nerves still just stood out all
over her like porcupine quills.
She had fumbled and almost dropped the phone as she punched in the number. She
cursed herself for not having put it on speed-dial.
"Hello?"
Her knees buckled. Never in any moment of her existence had she ever expected
to hear sweet music in the voice of a man like Leif Baron.
"It's me," she said.
She wasn't sure if hostile ears might be listening to her conversation—which
was, after all, being broadcast over the airwaves like any other radio
transmission. She had to presume that any hitters heavy enough to plant a bomb
on a man as high-ranking as a general, and send three goons in a
top-of-the-line Mercedes to sweep the street of any witnesses, could well swing
the resources to listen in on cell phone calls.
There was a pause. Then, "Hello, me. What's gone wrong?"
A breath she didn't even realize she was holding gusted out of her in a sigh.
Her hands were shaky with relief. Hang on, girl, she commanded herself sternly.
You're not out of the woods yet. Baron was an unknown quantity. He gave good
tough talk. She'd yet to see him in action when the hammer started coming down.
"Listen fast," she said, "our local chum just went up in
flames."
"Shit," Baron said. "I copy. Wait one."
She did. She kept her head on a swivel, scanning up and down the blind alley,
even up to rooftops black against the amber overcast. Whoever her assailants
really were, they were powerful and there could be more of them.
She was good. She knew that. She'd seen plenty of danger, actual combat, in the
last couple of years. She could handle herself.
She also knew when she was in over her head. At the very least she needed to
warn her companions. Hopefully they could then all help one another get clear
of the crosshairs and safely out of the country.
In a moment Baron said, "Are you clear?"
"Affirmative. I had a…little trouble. I got loose."
"Roger that. Can you handle it?"
"Yes."
"I'll be in touch. We'll rendezvous later. Good luck."
The connection broke. She tucked the phone back in its carrier. She was
surprised Baron actually seemed to think she might possibly be competent to
look out for herself. It seemed not quite consistent with the fundamentalist
view of womanhood. As she understood it, anyway. Then again, evidently they
hadn't hired her just because they liked the way she looked on TV. Even if that
had probably figured into the equation.
I sure hope Baron can come up with a way to get everybody out of the country
safely, she thought. And fast.
Annja started off down the alley. Despite her circumstances she felt reassured.
I may get a slightly creepy vibe from Baron, she thought, but maybe he is very
good at what he does.
She headed toward the bright lights and the traffic sounds. Despite the fact it
seemed a lifetime had passed—and for at least six men, it just had—it wasn't
late.
Where she was going she had no good idea. Just away.