by Gregg Loomis
Walsh shook his head. “I think you can comprehend what you need to understand, Mr. Reilly.”
Reluctantly, Lang began to read.
A minute later he put it down. “I’m not familiar with this Emre Yalmaz. Should I be?”
Behind the desk, Dr. Walsh was touching his fingertips as he shrugged. “He’s the hematologist Dr. Aksoy hired a year or so ago. Keeping up with the people our individual institution directors hire is my job. In fact, we have an office of two or three people who do just that. Would you like to . . .?”
Lang placed the envelope back on the desk. “Toxicological immunity? That mean what I think it does?”
Walsh shrugged, the answer obvious. “It means the subject appeared to suffer no ill effects from a venomous snakebite.”
“Didn’t I see something about an immunity to other toxins?”
Walsh sniffed his depreciation for such ideas. “I wouldn’t get overly excited about the wilder conclusions of a young doctor. Science knows there is no such thing as a universal immunity. For one thing, I doubt this Yalmaz person had the material at hand to make such a conclusion. It’s remarkable enough that the young boy withstood the bite, but that doesn’t mean a neurotoxin, like a cobra’s, wouldn’t be fatal. Or, for that matter, a dose of any number of poisons.”
Lang sat back in his chair. “But wouldn’t it be great if it were true, that there really was such a thing as universal immunity?”
“Sure. It would be great to find a universal cure for cancer, too. All it takes is time and money, mostly the latter.”
Lang recalled his thoughts of a few minutes ago about the waste of money. “You’re right, of course. But you called me to come by for some reason.”
“This letter is it. I wanted you to see it.”
“But, I thought you said there was no such thing as universal immunity.”
Walsh smiled again. “I did, but I simply felt you should be informed.”
That’s what fax machines and e-mailed PDFs are made for, Lang thought grimly. The time visiting here could have been better spent . . .
The buzz of the phone on Walsh’s desk did little to diminish Lang’s irritation. Simple courtesy would require the man have his calls held.
From his embarrassed expression, Walsh was thinking the same thing. “Excuse me. I told my administrative assistant to hold my calls.”
Lang nodded toward the offending instrument. “Then it must be important.”
The doctor swept the receiver from its cradle. “I thought I asked my calls be held. What? Yes, put her on.”
Lang didn’t see him press the speaker button but a woman’s voice filled the room. “Dr. Walsh?”
“Yes, Dr. Aksoy, this is Dr. Walsh. Mr. Reilly happens to be here with me. What can I do for you?”
The voice was tense. Lang could detect the anxiety along its edges. “It’s Emre, Dr. Yalmaz . . .”
“Yes?” Walsh asked, making no effort to conceal his impatience. “What about him?”
There was an audible intake of breath. Or a sob. “He’s dead, murdered.”
Lang was out of his chair, leaning over the speaker. “What, what happened? When?”
Another intake of breath. “About an hour ago. I found him in the lab. He had been shot. The police are here now taking statements.”
“But why?” Lang asked. He had never met the hematologist, but the idea of someone being shot in a children’s hospital, the Foundation’s Children’s Hospital, was unsettling to say the least. “Anything missing?”
“I . . . I’m not sure,” her voice quivered. “His files had been, what do you say? Ransacked, yes, ransacked.”
The conversation lasted a few more minutes, ending with Lang’s request to be informed before sympathies were extended along with offers of whatever assistance might be needed.
Walsh and Lang were silent for a full minute after the disconnection before the latter said, “Someone doesn’t accept what science supposedly knows.”
“Beg pardon?”
“That there is no such thing as universal immunity.”
Walsh shook his head. “Surely you don’t believe . . .”
“From here I can’t see any other reason a young doctor in a fairly obscure hospital should be killed and his records stolen.”
“But, you don’t know . . .”
It was Lang’s turn to shake his head. “No, I don’t. But I’m damn well going to find out.”
CHAPTER 9
Ataturk International Airport
Istanbul, Turkey
12:07 Local Time the Next Day
The Gulfstream 550 used slightly more than a third of Runway 17 Left before turning off onto the high speed and awaiting Ground Control’s selection of taxiways to the general aviation terminal. It took only minutes for the aircraft to lumber onto the tarmac in front of a modern building and take its place among a Hawker Beechcraft, a Bombardier, and several Citations.
Lang Reilly stood and stretched. It had been a long flight: Atlanta to Karlsruhe/Baden Baden, where the plane had been met by Gurt’s father, who gleefully accepted a few days’ custody of his grandson, Manfred, now enjoying the temporary liberty of summer vacation. At the small boy’s insistence, his constant companion and frequent partner in mischief, Grumps, the family dog, had been allowed to come along.
The arrival at this particular airport, not one of Germany’s three official ports of entry, had required some amount of private diplomacy.
But it was the large, long-haired dog with one blue eye and one brown and no discernible specific ancestry that had drawn attention from the khaki-uniformed customs official who had boarded the plane. A presentation of proof of rabies vaccination and an exchange in German between him and Gurt settled whatever issues might have existed. No doubt the toy dogs that had become almost a fashion accessory to the wealthy arriving to gamble in the casino or take the medicinal waters had become commonplace. But 90 pounds of dog that didn’t even stop snoring until it was time to trot down the stairs behind his small master?
Then on to Istanbul.
“He will be fine,” Gurt said minutes after takeoff.
Lang had been looking at but not really reading a book he had just downloaded. “Huh?”
“Manfred. You were already missing him.”
Her ability to read Lang’s mind was both astonishing and annoying. He was an open book to her; her thoughts frequently remained her own. “It will do him good to spend time with his Grossvater, perhaps even learn a little discipline.”
This last was a barb directed at Lang, who was frequently slow to quiet the noisy exuberance of a seven-year-old. In fact, he was just as likely to join in. It was a subject best allowed to die from neglect. He had changed the subject.
Two and a half hours later, they were clearing customs and purchasing visitors’ visas in Istanbul before approaching the rent-a-car booths.
“Trabzon does not have an airport?” Gurt asked.
Lang was digging his driver’s license and credit card out of his wallet. “It does, but I thought a drive along the Black Sea might be a little vacation for us. We can fly back.”
“You mean you do not want to announce our arrival by landing in a Gulfstream.”
“That, too.”
Although he had no reason to anticipate trouble, experience had taught him the less attention attracted, the better. Google had informed him the Trabzon airport was hardly small, with over a million passengers a year served by half a dozen domestic and international carriers. Still, a private jet the size of the Gulfstream would not go unnoticed.
Besides, he had never driven the Black Sea coast.
There was no reason to notice the swarthy young man in American jeans and a Polo golf shirt who was just one more transient swirling around the rental car booths. Had there been a reason to observe him closely, two things might have seemed odd: first, he had no interest in renting an automobile, and second, he seemed fixated on the American man and the woman as he spoke American-a
ccented English into a cell phone.
“Excuse me!”
Lang shot a look of annoyance at the young American-dressed man who had jostled him just as he was signing the rental contract. “Quite all right.”
“Look,” the young man said, not disposed to move from the head of the line into which he had broken. “I have no idea about these cars. I mean, this is my first trip outside the U.S., and most of the cars listed here aren’t even in the States.”
Lang picked up the rental contract and keys, nodding his thanks to the young man behind the counter. “I have no idea what suits your needs, but you might bear in mind gas in Turkey is nearly ten bucks U.S. a gallon.”
“In other words, I need an economy.”
Lang shrugged. “That’s up to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”
Lang and Gurt headed for the rental car lot shuttle only a few minutes before Hertz’s bright yellow van pulled up. In minutes, they were passing rows of freshly washed, shiny vehicles. The van stopped.
“Your car,” the driver indicated.
Lang and Girt exchanged glances.
Lang sighed as he checked the tag on the keys in his hand against the license plate, hoisted both bags from the van’s overhead rack, and stepped to the ground. The Ford Mondeo was a four-door hatchback that would have been unremarkable had it not been a shade of yellow so bright it might have been suggested by a child’s crayons.
“It is good we will not be attracting attention,” Gurt observed dryly.
CHAPTER 10
Sinop-Istanbul Highway
Between Amasra and Sinop
Three and a Half Hours Later
After half an hour of four lanes, the road from Istanbul shrunk to two as it climbed steadily upward. By the time it reached the Black Sea fishing village of Amasra, only a single narrow lane writhed between mountain peaks where the green of the hills dropped precipitously into the green of the sea, a road far better suited to the occasional flock of sheep that blocked passage than motorized traffic. Periodic raindrops fell from a pewter sky to splatter against the windshield like fat bugs.
Gurt braced herself against the dash and the floor as the Mondeo braked for entry into a blind hairpin. Lang had thought the reaction would have tired her an hour ago. He was wrong.
“What happens if someone’s coming the other way?” she wanted to know.
“Hopefully, they will be driving as cautiously as we are.”
Her expression indicated she preferred to depend on something a little stronger than hope, but she changed the subject. “The scenery is beautiful. It reminds me of Maine or Northern California. I’m surprised the road is so poor here.”
Lang took a hand from the wheel long enough to point skyward. “No sun, no tourists. Almost always cloudy, unlike Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast or even Turkey’s a little farther east.”
She turned to look at him. “I thought you’d never been here before.”
The hand was back on the wheel. “Haven’t, at least not in person. Amazing how much you can learn from a virtual tour. I . . .”
The narrow road ahead was blocked by a light truck — Toyota, Nissan, something like that. Painted bright blue, it bore the word JANDARMA across the side. From a previous visit to Turkey, Lang knew the Jandarma Genel Komutanligi was a branch of the country’s military, whose prime duty was to function as civil police in rural areas that had a population insufficient to justify a national police outpost.
“Odd,” he murmured.
“What?” Gurt asked.
Lang was studying the men beside the truck. Though long ago, Agency training still alerted him to anomalies, things out of the ordinary: a street person or a junk auto in a upscale neighborhood, a man acting drunk without the smell of alcohol. “The uniforms — dark green pants, light green blouses,” he replied.
Gurt looked closely at the three men who were slowly trudging uphill from the truck crosswise in the road. “That is what they are wearing. So?”
“One too small, the other two too big. As if they were wearing someone else’s. Plus . . .” Lang squinted. “Plus one doesn’t seem to have the collar patches, the red and blue patches that denote rank.”
The uniforms, armaments, and various protocols of the military and law enforcement of foreign countries, both allies and enemies, had been a subject the Agency had drilled into its trainees.
Now alerted, Gurt observed, “I don’t recall the AK-47 as the standard rifle of any Turkish police or military, either.”
Two of the men carried the distinctive Russian assault rifles in the crook of their arms.
“No, it’s the German G41 built under license right here in Turkey.”
“So . . .?”
The men were close enough now that their facial features were distinct. All three jaws were framed with dark hair, short dark hair that could not have been seen at a distance.
“So, moustaches are okay, but beards strictly forbidden in the military, as I recall,” Lang said.
Lang and Gurt exchanged glances. He nodded. They each opened their door a crack.
It did not escape either’s notice that the men in uniform split so there was one on each side and one behind the Mondeo. With the road blocked ahead by the truck, they were effectively surrounded.
Not the move of your friendly neighborhood cop on the beat.
The one beside Lang’s window made a rolling motion to lower the glass.
He did so, mentally cursing his and Gurt’s decision to come unarmed. Although Turkey’s restrictive gun laws carried a penalty light in comparison to many other nations, three years’ imprisonment plus fine, the risk of having their mission interrupted by being arrested was far greater than any risk to their persons known at the time.
“Anything wrong, officer?” Lang asked innocently.
If the man spoke English, he didn’t acknowledge the fact. Instead, he gestured for Lang to get out of the car.
Decision time. Leave the automobile and what little protection it provided or make whatever run for it their predicament allowed.
The instant’s hesitation made the man on Lang’s side reach for the door handle with the hand not holding the AK-47.
That made the decision easy.
CHAPTER 11
472 Lafayette Drive
Atlanta, Georgia
At About the Same Time
(7 hours difference)
Father Francis Narumba felt like A burglar in Lang Reilly’s house. Or worse, a prisoner.
There really hadn’t been a graceful way to decline his friend’s request that he, Francis, take care of the small vegetable garden Gurt insisted on planting every year despite the house’s proximity to any number of grocery stores, farmer’s markets, and street vendors of fresh tomatoes, corn, beans, and the like.
Francis could understand her need to see her own produce come out of the 50 by 50-foot plot of carefully rotor-tilled, fertilized, and labeled dirt just past the shimmering, cool waters of the pool where the plastic snake writhed with life-like motion as it sucked up an errant leaf. Here squash was anticipated, there carrots planted, and so on. A peace and order among vegetables unobtainable among the humans, especially those of Francis’s parish of newly arrived African immigrants, gays, and no small number or parishioners whose attendance was directly related to the free meals served afterward. Having been a child in a country where having enough to eat was considered a luxury, he would have had a home garden himself had not the urban rectory in which he lived had a backyard of concrete.
No, watering the garden, watching the early morning sun turn the hoses’ spray into a rainbow, standing here among puddles of shade from towering oaks in their bright green spring garb was a pleasant deviation from his life as an urban priest.
It was going inside the house that made him nervous. Maybe walking around anyone else’s empty home would have affected him that way, particularly one where he spent at least an evening every week, playing with Manfred and Grumps, sharing maybe a few t
oo many single malt scotches with Lang. And certainly he ate far too much of Gurt’s marvelous cooking, a good part of which she insisted he take home in dishes wrapped in plastic.
She well knew both that Mrs. Adebayo, the rectory cook, was possessed of considerably less than gourmet abilities, and that as the sole support of her Nigerian immigrant family, Francis would eat her tasteless fare indefinitely before replacing her with someone more culinarily endowed.
It wasn’t the memories that haunted every room with warmth and friendship. It wasn’t the sense of trespassing on his friends’ privacy. It was the arcane locks and security devices that made him fear a single misstep would bring the entire Atlanta police force charging in upon him.
There were the concealed steel doors that dropped from the ceiling with the push of a button (“You’d be trapped in here till you starved to death if you pushed that”), not to mention locks that took keys Francis had never seen before, keys with holes rather than notches. He had an impression there were any number of really unfortunate things that could happen to an intruder in this house, all controlled by some panel or series of controls hidden away somewhere.
The priest was willing to accept Lang’s assurances that if he only disarmed the alarm and did as Gurt asked (“Water the spider plants and check the ficus. Careful not to overdo the orchids. They only need to be sprayed”), he would be fine. Lang had been mostly right even when Francis had touched an unseen switch or button that dropped steel curtains rattling down each of the den’s window frames. That had sent him dashing outside, all too mindful of the starve-to-death remark.
No, it wasn’t the gadgets themselves that really bothered Francis. It was the need for panic rooms, locks that couldn’t be picked, and God only knew what else.
He knew Lang and, perhaps, Gurt, had a period of their lives that never got discussed, simply skipped over in conversation as though whatever had happened hadn’t. He also knew his pal Lang had had problems with some pretty rough people, trouble also never discussed. Maybe it had to do with the man’s profession as a white-collar criminal defense lawyer. But Francis found it hard to believe that a whole lot of lawyers had homes with tighter security than Fort Knox.