The Washington Stratagem

by Adam LeBor

  The policewoman handed Yael her passport back. “Enjoy your stay in Istanbul,” she said.

  Süleyman Mevsim perched on the entrance of his home in Üsküdar, playing with his toy car, sweeping it back and forth across the front step. The car was his favorite, a red Porsche, although the back left wheel was hanging off and he didn’t know how to fix it. A crippled car, for a crippled boy, he thought. Süleyman was used to playing on his own. He was only nine, but he had to be strong, like his hero and namesake, Süleyman the Magnificent, the most powerful Ottoman sultan in history, the scourge of Budapest, the conqueror of Baghdad. Süleyman had a withered right leg, a legacy of childhood polio. He could not keep up with the other children’s games and so they didn’t invite him to play. It wasn’t too bad during school time, but he didn’t like the holidays because he was on his own all day, apart from his mom and two younger sisters, whom he loved, of course, but they weren’t much good as playmates. Sometimes one or two of the neighborhood boys were nice to him for a while, but they always changed. They said things like he wasn’t a “good Muslim,” even though his family prayed several times a day, went to the mosque at least on Fridays, and kept Ramadan. Still, Süleyman loved living in Üsküdar. This part of Istanbul, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, was quieter and more traditional than the European side. He could see the sea at the end of the street; there was a synagogue, an Armenian and a Greek Orthodox church all just a few minutes’ walk away. The shopkeepers were always friendly to him, giving him fruit, sweets, and chocolate.

  Süleyman looked like he was absorbed in his game, but he was not. He was on a mission. He was watching what he had named the “target house.” Süleyman knew there was something strange about that place. The house next door was smart and clean, painted dark green. But the target house looked old and dirty. The paint was peeling; big flakes of dirty white hung from the gray woodwork. Two plants stood outside the front door, but both were turning brown from lack of water. Every morning, the local women opened their windows and sometimes brought the rugs down to beat on the street, sending puffs of dust into the air. But nobody ever opened a window in the target house. It always looked dark and gloomy inside. The curtains were always drawn, brown grubby things that looked as if they had not been washed for years. The only new thing was the giant satellite dish on the roof, bigger than all the neighbors’.

  A car pulled up and parked nearby. Süleyman quickly dropped his head down and swept his Porsche back and forth across the step, apparently completely absorbed in his task, but secretly still watching. The car, a brown Fiat sedan, was nothing exciting, not like his Porsche. Three men got out. He had seen the driver and one of the other men before, many times—they were thin, and dark, darker than most Turks, especially the Istanbulis. They spoke Turkish with an unusual accent. The third man must be important, Süleyman thought, because the driver had got out of the car first and opened the door for him, and the second one carried his bag. The new arrival had thick black hair, Süleyman noticed. And then something strange happened. The driver turned around, yawned, and stretched his arms out. The driver didn’t see that the new man was next to him, and his right arm brushed against the new man’s head. His hair moved. All of it.

  Süleyman moved the Porsche faster back and forth, pretending to look down at the step but secretly watching even harder. He had never seen anything like that before. Now he really had a lot to report when his cousin came over tonight for dinner. His cousin had an important job. He worked for the government, “catching the bad guys,” he said. Süleyman had told him about the target house. His cousin said he should keep an eye on it, but carefully, so the bad guys inside did not notice. Although he knew his cousin was joking, Süleyman had followed his instructions. There was something not right about the place. And now this. His cousin had given him a mobile telephone. It was an old model, but he didn’t care. It had a camera with a zoom lens.

  The smell of the sea coming up the street was making him hungry. Süleyman picked up his car and went inside. His mother had promised to make his favorite lunch today: lamb köfte with french fries. He would eat and then perch himself on his favorite place, by the window of the wooden balcony, watch the house some more, and take some pictures. Then his cousin would really be impressed. Perhaps they would sit and read Süleyman’s favorite books together, the old ones with the Greek and Spanish writing, which the family had kept for hundreds of years.

  Kemal Burhan sat motionless, wreathed in smoke, cigarette in hand, as he calculated the likely consequences of the operation: for Turkey, for his service, and, most of all, for himself. His basilisk face was a mask, his angular features so sharp they seemed to have been chiseled from granite. In theory, the plan was a clever one. The bungled kidnapping would be blamed on Kurdish terrorists seeking a high-profile target while the eyes of the world were on Istanbul. But still, the death of a foreigner, especially one with connections, would bring trouble. Embassies would be involved, journalists would arrive, foreign journalists. A plane load of reporters, traveling with the United Nations secretary-general, was due in the next day. Unlike the troublesome domestic variety, they could not simply be thrown in jail and forgotten about. But orders were orders, and these were his. As was the $500,000 sitting in his numbered Swiss bank account. His mind started to wander to Natalya, his twenty-two-year-old Russian mistress, and how grateful she would be after a shopping trip in Paris. And how she would show her gratitude. He banished that delicious vision and stubbed out his cigarette. The decision was made.

  Burhan looked around the table. There were just two others there. His most trusted operative and this young woman, a new recruit, just three weeks out of her training. He had been doubtful about using her so soon on an operation as important as this one. The target’s psychological profile indicated that she would be least suspicious of another female, but judging from the young operative’s initial debriefing, her attempts at bonding did not seem to have been especially successful.

  A crystal bowl sat in the center of the table, overflowing with candies wrapped in shiny paper, the tray next to it heaped with nougats and pieces of lokum, Turkish delight. Apart from his mistress, sweets were Burhan’s greatest weakness. He reached for a chunk of lokum studded with pistachios. He chewed it slowly, savoring the contrast of the crunchy nuts and the sticky sweetness. He looked at the young woman. “Show me the film again.”

  She swallowed, touched her short brown hair, clearly nervous, but her chubby face showed her pride at being chosen for such a sensitive mission. “Yes, sir. The second segment is the clearest.”

  Burhan wiped his fingers on a blue silk handkerchief, carefully chosen to be a shade darker than his hand-tailored Italian suit. “Play all of them.”

  The sound of airplane engines filled the room. The computer monitor showed Yael’s profile from the left side. Her face was clear, but the screen was pixilated and vibrating slightly. After twenty seconds or so, the picture moved to show her from a slightly different angle, and then did the same again.

  “The front-facing camera is considerably lower resolution than the rear one,” said the young woman, apologetically, as the film finished, the last frame frozen on Yael’s face.

  “It’s fine. And the sound file?”

  She pressed several keys. Yael’s face vanished, replaced by a graphic that looked like a cardiogram, with a straight line running through the middle. She pressed play.

  The sound of an airport terminal: the murmur of nearby conversations, announcements about flight delays. The straight line moved up and down, in time with the sounds. A female voiced asked “Julia Albihari?”

  There was no answer. The voice said, “Please answer me, Ms. Albihari.”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “The purpose of your visit?”

  “Tourism.”

  “What do you plan to see?”

  “The Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, maybe take a ferry to the Asian side. Is there anything you would recommend personally?�
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  The first female voice did not reply. The click of her fingers on a keyboard cut through the background hum. After several seconds she said, “Enjoy your stay in Istanbul.”

  Burhan drummed his fingers on the top of the desk, thinking. He turned to the man sitting at the table.

  “You can confirm her identity?” Burhan asked.

  Yusuf Çelmiz nodded. “Yes. Visual and audio confirmed. That is Yael Azoulay.”

  “Good, Melita, if you could go over the chronology again, please.”

  Melita checked her notes. “Yael Azoulay arrived just over four hours ago. The plane landed at 5:32 p.m., about two and a half hours late. She was through immigration by 6:38. She was not questioned at customs. She took a taxi into the city. She had a reservation, prepaid, at a budget hotel in Sultanahmet. We had it covered. The room was prepared. We had a team outside in a car and in the building across the street.” Melita paused and bit her lip.

  “Carry on,” said Burhan.

  “I’m sorry, sir. She didn’t go there. She went to the Hotel Fatima. It’s women only. We followed her but I couldn’t get too close. She would have recognized me immediately. I found a café nearby and watched from there. She checked into her hotel at 7:30 p.m. She ate in the hotel dining room and went back to her room. We are trying to get inside her mobile but the security and encryption are NSA standard. We have set up an operation in an apartment across the street. We have a laser directed at her window to pick up any sound vibrations if she speaks. We are inside the hotel switchboard if she uses a landline. So far she has not made any calls. There is no Wi-Fi at the hotel. She is still there now. We think she is asleep. We will keep trying her phone.”

  Burhan nodded. “Good.” He reached for the bowl of candies and offered it to the young woman. “You may leave us now. Well done on your good work.”

  Melita shook her head, flushing pink at his praise. Burhan waited until she had picked up her purse and left, before he turned to Yusuf. He opened a packet of Camel Turkish Gold cigarettes, offered it to Yusuf, took one himself, and lit both their cigarettes with a silver Zippo lighter.

  Burhan was silent for several moments, smoke trailing from his nostrils. He looked at his agent as though seeing him for the first time, appraising his strengths and weaknesses. A lot was riding on this judgment, Burhan knew. A mistake could be fatal, perhaps for more than his career. Burhan had not survived thirty years of service in the MI·T by making errors. His nickname was “the Hawk.” He knew when to ride the thermals and when to strike. Born in a slum in Fatih, Istanbul’s most religious quarter, Burhan had quickly learned to use his fists to survive. His father died when he was six, leaving his mother to raise four children on her own. Burhan had left school at sixteen, trained as an amateur boxer for two years, then joined the MI·T. He had started out as a foot soldier, doing the rough work the state deemed necessary for its survival. Burhan remained a loyal functionary of whichever regime was in power, well aware that, just as in Ottoman times, the higher he rose, the more danger he was in. Sometimes he awoke in the night, drenched in sweat, dreaming of a cushion on top of which lay a silken cord: a sultan’s message to a troublesome vizier that suicide would be the best of options.

  Despite his taste for hand-tailored shirts and suits purchased on London’s Savile Row, Burhan’s downtown office was modest: a plain room in a nondescript sixth-floor apartment, one of many owned by the MI·T. The walls were a pale cream fading to gray, the furniture drab and functional. A single sheet of paper, a fax of a newspaper article, sat on the desk. The only hint of luxury was the tray of lokum and the crystal bowl of sweets. Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, resplendent in a cream suit stared out from a framed portrait on the wall. The view, over the Sultanahmet quarter, the heart of old Istanbul, was spectacular.

  Burhan had served under army generals, secular democrats, and several shades of Islamists. These were, he liked to tell his subordinates, challenging times in a rough neighborhood. Syria and Iraq had collapsed into a patchwork of warring statelets. Iran was on the edge of… what exactly? Worst of all, the regional chaos had emboldened the Kurds to push for autonomy, which everyone knew was just a code word for secession and the eventual breakup of the Turkish state. The Kurds had to be derailed. And, if all went well, this operation would help do that. If…

  “Yusuf, there is some… concern about your involvement in this operation.”

  “Why, patron?” Yusuf used the slang term for boss, a rare privilege.

  The Hawk stared at Yusuf. “Because of your personal connection.”

  “I have no personal connection. I cleared the operation with you; you cleared it with your superiors. Everything was authorized. It all went well,” said Yusuf confidently.

  The Hawk inclined his head in agreement. “Yes, it did. At that time our interests and those of Yael Azoulay coincided. We will not let the Americans use our country for their dirtiest work. We both wanted to get rid of Cyrus Jones. A message was sent, and received. It will not happen again. Still, there is a feeling that you let your emotions become involved.”

  “I did not, patron. Nor were there any loose ends.”

  “None at all. Especially not now,” he said, passing the fax of the New York Times newspaper article to Yusuf. The headline proclaimed, “Man Found Dead in Car in Manhattan.”

  Yusuf quickly read through the text. He looked up at Burhan, his eyes wide in surprise. “Did we…?”

  The Hawk reached for the bowl of candies. He took out a bonbon wrapped in gold foil, unwrapped it, and inserted it into his mouth. He shook his head as he slowly chewed the sweet. “No. Which makes me wonder who did. But what is done is done.”

  He turned to Yusuf, his face impassive. “And what needs to be done?”

  “Will be,” said Yusuf.

  20

  Najwa held the top of page 7 of Saturday’s edition of the New York Times in her left hand and flicked the lead article with a manicured fingernail. The sharp crack resounded across the aircraft cabin. Jonathan Beaufort, sitting in the neighboring row, jerked awake and turned around in alarm.

  Najwa waved at Jonathan, then folded up the newspaper and handed it to Sami. “Additional reporting by Najwa al-Sameera,” she said scornfully. “You promised me a joint byline. You would never have got half those quotes from the dips without me.”

  Beaufort groggily watched the scene, decided it was not worth staying awake for, and instantly went back to sleep.

  “Could be worse,” said Sami. “You could have got an ‘additional research by….’”

  Najwa pointed at the page, her expression severe. “This makes me sound like an intern.”

  Sami laughed. “Najwa, I don’t think anyone would ever mistake you for an intern. And I made sure that you get a proper byline in tomorrow’s newspaper. It’s being printed as we speak. You are getting so many bylines, maybe they will give you my job.”

  Najwa picked up her glass of champagne and looked ahead, as if properly considering the matter. “I’d have to keep my own office.” She turned to her side. “You could be my intern.”

  “Ha-ha,” said Sami. His voice turned serious. “You know he’s dead in the water now. We’ve finished him off.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Najwa, as she drank some of her champagne. “This is the UN we are dealing with.”

  “Don’t you ever feel kind of used? Like we are just one big channel for leaks?”

  “No, I don’t. They use us. We use them. It’s a win-win. Speaking of which, here comes our new best friend.”

  Sami looked up and watched Roxana Voiculescu walk down the left-hand aisle of the airplane, smiling and chatting to the journalists. Tall and slim with long chestnut hair and pale blue eyes, she was as attractive as she was ambitious. The daughter of the Romanian finance minister, Roxana had a degree in journalism from Bucharest University and a postgraduate diploma in development studies from Oxford. Now that Schneidermann was gone, she finally had the job she wanted. Every tim
e Sami saw her he remembered taking her for drinks at Grad, an upscale vodka bar, and the envelope he had stolen from her handbag containing Fareed Hussein’s itinerary of his journey to Geneva on the KZX Corporation executive jet. Sami ran his fingers over the fabric of the seat-back in front of him. The letters KZX were embossed in a tasteful shade of gray on a black background. Now it was his turn to accept a ride from the German media conglomerate.

  Roxana stopped at every seat, working the airplane like a presidential candidate, checking on the journalists and exchanging a few pleasantries with those who were awake.

  “Sami, Najwa,” she gushed when she reached their aisle, as though they were long-lost relatives she had not seen for years. “I’m so glad you could join us. Are you enjoying the flight?” Roxana looked at her watch, which Sami noted was a Patek Philippe. “I’m very impressed you are still awake.” She leaned forward and spoke more softly. “Do you have everything, all the information you need?” she asked, her voice injected with an extra layer of meaning.

  Najwa replied, “We’re fine, thanks. Congratulations on your promotion. And I love your jacket. Where did you get it?”

  Roxana smiled, a dazzling display of perfect dentistry. “Thank you. It’s MaxMara, the new spring collection. You know, I’m really looking forward to working together on this trip.”

  “Thanks. How about Caroline? Is she going to take a stroll down the aisle to say hello to the press?”

  “We certainly hope so, her schedule permitting. She’s deep in some paperwork at the moment.”