The cop’s name, she gathered, was Melik Gul, and he was presented to her as the senior officer in charge of the Polis Merkezi, a team of experienced men who had jurisdiction over something the Turks were calling “Severe Crimes,” which, she could see, included shooting the stuffing out of a warehouse by the side of the Bosphorus and then setting it on fire.
The firefighters were gathering up their gear now, rolling up reels of thick hose and sloshing through puddles of sooty water, some of the men staring at Nikki, their eyes white against the ash that covered the upper parts of their faces.
The warehouse smelled of hot steel and cracked earth, and something else: roasted flesh, a throat-catching reek that hung in the still air like a miasma. According to the fire chief, they had found three bodies in the ruins, all of them burned into twisted logs, hardly recognizable as human. They had been zipped into body bags and stacked in a coroner’s wagon, taken away for a forensic examination in the morning. Nikki, watching the men loading up their trucks and wagons, tried to read Micah Dalton’s mind in all of this.
Because she was reasonably sure that this had something to do with Dalton—leaving a trail of dead men and flaming wrecks seemed to be a Dalton trademark—and she’d listened in as a couple of young boys who had been fishing in a runabout just off the wharf described the Sarişin Şeytan—Melik Gul translated this for Nikki, with a mournful sigh, as “Blond Satan”—who had almost shot them dead as he fired a very big gun into the back of a fishing boat. No, they hadn’t got the name. Nikki thought the kids had looked a little evasive when asked for particulars, but they were quite eloquent on the physical details of the Blond Satan. If it wasn’t Micah Dalton, then it was his evil twin racing up the Bosphorus like Sherman through Atlanta, leaving fear, fire, and ruin in his wake.
Sofouli hadn’t missed the similarities either, and had taken Nikki aside after the boys had gone off to make a written statement, speaking softly to her but with some force, not unkindly, yet unwilling to be “handled” by the NSA.
“This Blond Satan the boys speak of, this is your man, yes?”
Nikki could hardly be evasive here, even if she wanted to, and Sofouli was her only friend in the vicinity. She had admitted that it was. For a few minutes, Sofouli pushed her hard on the man’s real identity, but she held firm on that point, saying only that, whoever he was, she and the NSA would dearly love to find him and have “a frank exchange of views,” as she put it.
Sofouli had given her a wry smile and gone back to Melik Gul to work out some sort of investigative compromise. In the meantime, Nikki got on her BlackBerry, dialing up Hank Brocius in Crypto City. It was after midnight local time, which would make it around six in the afternoon in Maryland. The line buzzed a few times and then a woman’s voice answered: Alice Chandler’s, some tension in it, obvious even to Nikki.
“Nikki, is that you?”
“Yes, Alice. Is he there?”
“No, he’s gone up to New York City. Took the shuttle to La Guardia. Is everything okay? Where are you?”
“In Istanbul, Alice—”
“Istanbul? I thought you were going to Greece?”
“Yes, and now I’m in Istanbul. Should I try his cell?”
“I already have, dear. There’s a huge storm in central New York State now. All the way from the Adirondacks down to Philadelphia. We’re starting to get some of it here. I think it’s done something to the cell service. Is there anything I can do?”
Nikki thought it over.
“Yes, there is. Can you do a corporate search for me?”
“Of course. What do you need.”
Nikki looked at the notes she had taken, what little she had been able to gather from the rapid cross talk among Sofouli, Melik Gul, and the fire marshal in charge of the site.
“Okay, I’m at a place in Istanbul called Sariyer. It’s a fishing village on the Bosphorus, close to the Black Sea. There’s been a fire here, at a warehouse. The warehouse is leased to a company called Beyoglu Trading Consortium.” She spelled out Beyoglu, emphasizing the
g
since it was silent in Turkish. “The address is Suite 5500, Dizayn Tower.” She read out the rest of the address in military radio code. “In Istanbul. Got that?”
Alice repeated it, calm now, all business.
“I have. What do you need?”
“Anything you can get. As soon as you can get it. And while you’re at it, do you have a way of seeing if any of our sister agencies made an inquiry about Beyoglu Trading?”
“Yes, we share the same databases. There’d be a ‘Request Agency Source’ number. They keep track of subscribers pretty well, partly for the budget. What sort of time frame?”
“Anytime in the past twenty-four hours.”
“Okay, dear. I’ll get right on it. Are you going to call the AD of RA?”
Nikki saw that the group was breaking up, Sofouli and Melik Gull now walking toward her talking softly.
“No. But when you get the information, can you text it to me?”
“I can. Look for it in a few minutes.”
Nikki turned the BlackBerry to vibrate and put it back in her shoulder bag, straightening as the two men reached her, pulling her coat tight around her, partly because it was getting very cold and partly to cover her “infidel whore” wardrobe. She held the collar tight at her neck, the wind whipping her long auburn hair, her brown eyes wary in the light of the streetlamps. Mr. Gul, as he preferred to be called, spoke first, in fairly clear English.
“Some questions I have for you, Miss Turrin. What interest has your agency in this matter?”
“My interest falls under the protocols of international cooperation in criminal matters that your government agreed to in Alexandria last year.”
Mr. Gul didn’t like the answer, his face drooping even more.
“This is unresponsive. If you have information about what has taken place here—there are three people dead—then, in any interpretation of international law, I have a right to your information. I wait on it now.”
Sofouli gave her a warning look but said nothing.
Nikki knew she’d have to give him something if she didn’t want to be in a cop car and on her way to Atatürk Airport and the first plane back to the USA in about five minutes.
“Captain Sofouli has told you about the two Americans who came to Santorini asking about a Montenegrin national named Kirik Lujac?”
Gul nodded, his face becoming a little less morose.
“He has,” said Gul. “We have looked into what is known about this man. He was reported dead a while back, according to Captain Sofouli, but now there is some basis for believing that this is not so. Am I correct?”
“Yes. Both Captain Sofouli and I think that he may be alive.”
“And your interest, miss, in Kirik Lujac’s health?”
“We have some reason to believe he may have killed a woman in London.”
“An American national?”
“Yes.”
“Would this not then be a matter for your Federal Bureau of Investigation? I do not recall the NSA as being a police agency?”
“The woman killed was a retired employee of our agency. I have been asked by my superiors to assist in an internal investigation into her death.”
Melik Gul was following her fast enough to get to the end of her thoughts before she did.
“An investigation the results of which you are not yet ready to share with your brother agencies, am I right?”
Nikki kept her balance.
“Of course. Nor would you, Mr. Gul, until your work was complete. If my visit here can confirm that Kirik Lujac is dead, then I can go back to the States and leave you to your work.”
Gul was silent for a time. Seabirds whirled above them, attracted by the reek of death, and the crowds gathered across the road, some of whom had brought their children out and were making a picnic out of the event.
“A boat was stolen this afternoon,” said Gul, “out of a marina in the south. The Ataköy Marina. The boat was registered to the same firm that owns this warehouse. Beyoglu Trading. My people looked into the ownership and discovered that the boat had recently been bought from another entity. The entity was Kirik Lujac. The date of sale, according to information provided by Captain Sofouli, was a few days
after
Mr. Lujac’s body was found in the Aegean. I think it is reasonable to conclude that a man interested in the fate of Kirik Lujac—I speak of our Blond Satan—known to Captain Sofouli as Mr. Pearson and to you as . . . as a man I suspect you will not name. Setting that aside, I think it is safe to . . . imply?”
“Infer.”
“Yes, thank you. It is safe to
infer
that the boat was stolen by the mysterious Blond Satan you will not name. I am so far okay with you?”
“You are constructing a theory. So far, that’s all it is.”
Gul bowed, an amused expression tugging briefly at his cheeks like someone behind a stage curtain pulling at the drapery. Nikki began to understand that she was running a real risk playing games with this man.
“You will be interested to hear that this evening one of our patrol boats found two men hiding on monument island down at the far end of the strait, an island we call ‘Kiz Kulesi’ but the Europeans call the ‘Maiden’s Tower.’ The men had been stripped naked, all their belongings taken, and had been tortured as well. From their speech they were obviously Russians. We ran their photographs through our Intourist Visa program. They were identified as an Anatoly Viktor Bakunin, born in Krasnodar, Russia, and a Vassily Kishmayev, born in Smolensk. Each man had listed ‘shipping facilitator’ as his profession. Would you care to guess who their employer was? No? Well, I think it will not shock the observer if I tell you they were employed by Beyoglu Trading Consortium, the same firm that owns—used to own—this warehouse behind us.”
“Did these two have any explanation for their situation?” asked Nikki genuinely puzzled. “Naked, tortured, and stranded on Maiden’s Island?”
“They have said not one word to my people. Right now, they are in a military hospital being treated for hypothermia, burns to sensitive areas, and some dental injuries. When they are better, we will conduct a more vigorous interrogation. Now, as an
investigator,
I would like to ask you what you think should be our next line of inquiry?”
Gul put a stress on
investigator
that wrapped it in suspicion and gathering hostility. Sofouli, unwilling to see Nikki harassed—he felt an affection for her that was almost but not quite fatherly—sent Nikki a warning glance, and turned to Gul.
“Miss Turrin is here as an observer attached to my staff and as such falls under the protection of my service. She is, in effect, a Greek official here, with as much standing as I have. So I will answer your question for both of us. We should go immediately to the headquarters of this company and see what is to be—”
“I have already given these orders. My men are at the Dizayn Towers now securing the facility. They are holding a man for questioning. Do you wish to accompany us?”
They did.
GARRISON
NELSON’S CORNERS, ROUTE 9 SOUTHBOUND
Pushing forward now blindly, the visibility close to zero, crawling at less than ten miles an hour and expecting to smack into the rear of a stalled car at any moment, Brocius saw through a fleeting gap in the snowfall a road sign that said INDIAN BROOK ROAD, next to a narrow opening in a stand of trees. He slowed down enough to click the DRIVE selector into FOUR-WHEEL, made the right turn, and eased the big SUV around a gradual curve to the south again.
Scrub trees lined the slope, and the road began a descent into a thinly wooded valley. It was past six, and what pale winter light there had been was dying fast. Perhaps there was a sun high up above the granite-gray clouds, but the light from it was purely theoretical down on earth.
The whole landscape was falling into a deep-velvet blackness filled with falling snow, pierced only by the twin cones of the SUV’s headlights. The snowflakes spiraled inward, swept from the windshield by the wipers only to build back up again in a few seconds. He was still four miles from Briony’s house, and the power bars on his cell phone were registering zero, the screen displaying a NO SIGNAL warning.
His chest had been getting tighter as the time stretched out, and driving in this kind of a snowstorm with only one good eye wasn’t helping his stress level. Although he was a reasonably young man and in good condition, the pains in his chest and neck were worrying him more than a little.
There was nothing for it but to go on, get it done, and he went on, pushing the heavy machine hard as it ground through the piled-up snow, the bare branches of the trees hanging over his path so that he felt he was in a gray rock tunnel, burrowing his way deeper into the hillside.
The road rose above him, and he felt the truck shudder as the wheels dug in. The Escalade was huge and powerful, with deep-ridged snow tires, and with every mile he covered he thanked God and General Motors in no particular order.
He checked his odometer. It was about a quarter mile from the Indian Brook Road turnoff to a fork where Avery Road branched off and ran south another mile or so, until it ran into Philips Brook and Snake Hill Road. He looked up, saw the turnoff coming, gunned the engine to force the truck through a huge drift that had accumulated across the fork. The rear tires broke free, and the truck started to slide. He turned in to the slide, feeling control come back, keeping his foot off the brake. And then the rear end of the truck smacked into a wall of brush.