Sleeper 13: The most explosive must-read thriller of 2018

by Rob Sinclair

  The second drawer was empty, as was the third, save a couple of loose paperclips and the last few pieces of plain white printer paper from a pack of five hundred.

  The printer. Aydin spotted the machine atop an ornate table in the corner. It was a professional piece of kit, designed for a small office with multiple terminals. Aydin hoped he might be in luck after all.

  He grabbed his backpack from the lounge and brought it back into the office, pulling out the laptop as he moved. He didn’t need any specialist equipment. Most office printers routinely received large batches of documents throughout the day. Computers didn’t transfer those documents one page at a time, it all went to the printer in one go. Printers therefore needed a small memory to store those documents while they spat out the paper. Spool data was quickly overwritten by subsequent jobs once printing was completed, though some machines had bigger memories than others. Regardless, the data on the printer could prove useful, and he connected the laptop, navigated into the printer’s memory, and located the spool data of all recent activity.

  With the laptop busy downloading, Aydin moved back to Katja and again took out her gag.

  ‘Where’s Ismail’s safe?’ he asked her. He was certain Wahid had one. He thought he might have found it in the office but there was nowhere it could be, unless it was well hidden under the floor or in a wall recess.

  Katja said nothing. Aydin brought his face closer. He felt her soft, warm breath on his cheeks.

  ‘Is it in here?’ he asked, staring at her face for any tell. She didn’t answer and her eyes gave nothing away. ‘The bedroom?’

  Just the slightest flicker on her face gave the answer away. Despite everything, he was occasionally grateful for the skills he’d developed at the Farm.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and began dragging her through the apartment and into the bedroom.

  Rummaging around in cupboards and drawers, he found nothing other than expensive clothes, shoes, watches and other fashion accessories. He got on his hands and knees and examined the carpet around the edges of the room. He pulled a bedside drawer out of the way. And there it was. A corner of the carpet was up just slightly. Not even an eighth of an inch, but the difference was noticeable with the frayed material around the edge not properly tacked underneath.

  Aydin pulled the corner up, and then the green underlay, to reveal the concrete floor. Mostly concrete, anyway – except for the square of sheet metal that sat flush. Lifting it revealed the safe door, and its keypad. Not a particularly sophisticated unit, just the type generally seen in hotels. He used his multi-tool to prise off the front panel of the keypad. He saw the USB port, tucked away, revealing exactly what kind of override measure the safe had. With the laptop and a bit of time he could crack the code himself. But he’d rather Katja just gave it to him.

  ‘What’s the code?’

  No response.

  ‘No one’s coming for you,’ he said. ‘It’s just you and me here. Give me the code and I’ll be gone in minutes. If you don’t, it’s going to be a very long evening for you.’

  Still nothing, but he could see her resolve was cracking.

  ‘The last person I tortured was trained to resist. You don’t want to know what I did to him. What I had to do to break him. He only lasted a few minutes. Now he’s dead. Do you really want to find out if you can do better?’

  ‘I think I know it,’ Katja said as a tear fell from her eye. ‘But it’s easier if I type. You know how it is, I can’t remember unless I’m typing it.’

  Aydin scoffed at that.

  ‘I’m serious. Help me up. I’ll do it.’

  He sighed then moved over and put his hand under her armpit and pulled her up. With his help she hobbled across the room towards the safe. But just before they got there she made the dumb move he’d hoped she wouldn’t. She swung her elbow into Aydin’s gut and tried to shove him away. The full-force blow knocked the wind from him and he side-stepped to keep himself upright and reached out to grab her as she lurched away, towards the wardrobe. He couldn’t get to her quickly enough. She hauled open a door, pulled out a drawer and reached her arm inside just as Aydin grabbed her by the shoulders.

  A piercing alarm blared.

  ‘No––!’ Aydin growled, anger rising up. He wrenched her away from the drawer and flung her to the side. She crumpled over and her head smacked off the wooden end of the king-sized bed, her body going still.

  Aydin’s body twitched. Should he just go? No, he had to get into that safe.

  He dashed back to the office and checked the laptop. The spool data had downloaded. He pulled the cable from the printer and ran back to the bedroom, skidding down to the ground by the safe. He plugged the cable into the port on the safe and as quickly as he could found the online software that would read the safe’s memory and reveal the override code.

  He glared over at Katja. She was beginning to stir. He realised his leg was tapping furiously. He looked at the laptop’s clock. A minute had passed already. He wondered who would arrive on the scene first. The building’s security team? The local police?

  Or was it his brothers who would come bursting in?

  Aydin checked the clock again. He couldn’t wait another minute. Then a ping came. He looked at the small window in the corner of the screen. The swirl of numbers stopped, revealing the six-digit code. Aydin hit enter and the signal transmitted through the cable to the safe. A green light flicked on the box and he heard the lock release.

  Aydin reached inside and grabbed everything there was and flung it all into the backpack: rolls of money. Two passports. A thumb drive. A brown envelope. He zipped up the backpack as he rose to his feet. Katja was still lying on the floor, but her eyes were open and she was staring up at him. She looked terrified. Perhaps it was the rage she saw on his face. But he wasn’t interested in her. He had to get out of there as quickly as he possibly could.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Aydin crashed through the stairwell door and clambered down the steps two at a time. He contemplated breaking into one of the other apartments to hide out, but he didn’t know exactly who Katja had called, or how big the response would be. It was possible the police would sweep the entire building if they understood exactly who it was they were after.

  Staying inside was too big a risk, so he kept going to the bottom then slowed down and took a deep breath to try and calm his pounding heart. He calmly pushed open the door that led out onto the main foyer, glancing left and right. Off to his left were the entrance doors, but it was the two men standing closer to him, by the concierge desk, that his eyes found first. Dressed in their grey-blue uniforms, their jackets had Polizia emblazoned in large letters across the backs. Aydin spotted their blue Alfa Romeo patrol cars outside. Two in total.

  There was another exit to his right – perhaps a service route, or the entrance to an underground car park. But the moment he turned towards it the officers’ shouts came.

  ‘Arresto!’

  Aydin had no intention of stopping. Instead, he slammed through the door and into another stairwell, racing down before banging through another door and skidding into a car park. He stopped momentarily. A smattering of shiny black and silver and white cars gleamed back at him. He raced across the concrete, looking for the ramp that would lead to the exit as the policemen burst in behind him, panting and yelling in Italian.

  He didn’t heed their warnings. They were armed but would they really shoot? The problem was that he was armed too – he needed to dump the gun. He’d try his hardest to escape them, but if he was to get caught the last thing he wanted was to be found with a weapon on him.

  Darting between the parked cars, he was up the exit ramp, the glare of the outside daylight getting closer with each step. Fresh sirens whirred. Were there more police cars in the chase or the same ones from the front? He reached the top and ducked under the barrier before he saw any sign of the vehicles. As he moved to the left he saw a Fiat patrol car speeding towards him. That was three cars now: quite some re
sponse to a burglar alarm.

  The police car screeched to a halt and the doors opened and two more men stepped out, their pistols drawn. Aydin raced across the street and scaled a fence onto a small square that contained a bare patch of grass and a children’s play area; mums and dads yelled and cowered around their children as he sprinted by.

  Aydin weaved in and out of the people and around trees as he burst across to the other side, over another fence. The officers were closing in, he could hear them pounding through the play area behind. Satisfied there were no witnesses, he dropped the gun into the bin nonchalantly and then hit a crossroads at full tilt, jumping awkwardly across the bonnet of a car as it screeched to a halt. A moped driver buzzed round the turn, and, to avoid Aydin, twisted the bike’s handlebars away so the small machine wobbled viciously and, lurching sideways, spat the driver off, sending both him and the bike clattering across the tarmac to a stop at Aydin’s feet.

  Aydin made for the bike. It was battered but the engine was still running and the wheels didn’t look buckled. With the driver groaning on the ground, Aydin heaved the moped to its wheels. He heard sirens behind him; to the side too. Tyres screeched, and the shouts of policemen and women came from all angles. Aydin jumped onto the bike and pulled the throttle. The engine of the moped whined but the wheels didn’t move.

  Out of luck, Aydin dropped the bike to the ground and was just about to move off to restart his escape when a gunshot boomed, the ricochet not far from his feet. He stopped dead. There was no exit. There were now six police officers within yards, all with guns drawn, fanning out in a circle around him and closing in.

  Aydin saw no other option. This wasn’t a fight he could win, and he had no reason to try and kill all of the officers – a chance to escape, he had to hope, would come later. So he did exactly what they were telling him to do. Hands above his head, Aydin sank down to his knees.

  FORTY

  Istanbul, Turkey

  Cox felt derailed by Kamil Torkal’s forthright opinion of his nephew. He seemed so certain of Aydin’s guilt over his mother’s death, and of the young man’s psychotic nature. If Aydin really was part of the Thirteen, as Cox believed he was, then he was absolutely a dangerous man capable of extreme violence. So why was she finding it so hard to buy Kamil’s story? Was Kamil seriously misguided and misinformed about his nephew, or was he an outright liar?

  ‘Neither Aydin nor Ergun were seen again after they left London in two thousand and three,’ Cox said to Kamil. ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘You need to understand about my brother. You never met Ergun, but he was a good man. He didn’t have the same lucky breaks in life that I had. He didn’t go to university, and for years he felt lost in this country. He had the opportunity to move to England, and he took it.’

  ‘Opportunity?’

  ‘My brother was a deeply religious man. More so than me. While I took great pleasure in studying ancient civilisations, Ergun took great pleasure in studying the Quran. He went to England to teach others.’

  ‘My understanding is that Ergun never found employment in England. He became disgruntled not just with his own position there but with the entire way of British life. He harboured great resentment.’

  Kamil’s face twitched.

  ‘His decision to leave England wasn’t about money and it wasn’t about resentment towards English people, or non-Muslims. It was simply about his devotion to Islam, and to his boy. But you’re right, he struggled. Ergun didn’t fit in over there. I begged him to come back home to Turkey. I even offered to find him a job. But then . . .’

  He looked away.

  ‘Then what?’ Cox asked.

  ‘Then came the time for him to remove Aydin. Something had to be done about the boy.’

  ‘But where did they go? What happened to them?’

  ‘They went to Kandahar. The whole family agreed it was for the best. Kidnapped? Whoever said that is an idiot and a liar.’

  ‘His mother said that, Mr Torkal. She went to the police soon after they disappeared, but, the way I understand it, the police did nothing to help.’

  ‘She was just confused. She was grieving,’ Kamil said. He was now becoming increasingly animated in his movements, gesticulating as he spoke. It was clear there was a lot of ill-feeling in the man, though it was hard to gauge who, or what, those feelings were directed at. Cox noticed, too, that the more rattled he became, the more fragile and frail he seemed, as if her being there was sucking the energy from him. ‘This school, it was exactly what Aydin needed. But, it seems it wasn’t enough.’

  ‘What was the name of the school?’

  ‘It was . . . Oh, I don’t remember now. This was many years ago. I never went there myself.’

  ‘You’ve never been to Afghanistan?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘And did you ever see Aydin or Ergun again?’

  ‘No,’ he said, more sternly now, as though riled by Cox’s questions. ‘Perhaps that school was the right place at the wrong time for both of them. Ergun was killed over there, you know that?’

  ‘I understand he was killed by an American drone strike. That he was actually one of the intended targets of that strike because he was believed to be a close affiliate of an Al-Qaeda cell.’

  Kamil’s face now twisted in disgust. ‘You know absolutely nothing about what my brother was.’

  ‘I’m just telling you what I’ve heard, the information I’ve seen.’

  ‘My brother was a good man, a man of religion. That’s all. He didn’t have a hateful bone in his body. His death at the hands of the British or the Americans or whoever it was, what do you think that would do to a boy like Aydin? Do you think it would help him to become a better man, or do you think it would only further foster that burning need for revenge, for violence? Yes, he was born bad, but he could have been helped. We were trying to help him. It was the West killing his father – among many, many other things – that made him the monster he now is. And this isn’t just about Aydin and Ergun, it’s the same story across the entire Muslim world. When your guns and your bombs kill innocent women and children, exactly what do you expect the response will be?’

  His words were strong but still measured. No venom or vitriol, more disappointment and hurt. But Cox wasn’t about to let up. She wanted to push this man as far as he’d let her, see if the facade would eventually crack. What he was saying was so far from what she believed the truth of Aydin and Ergun to be. How were the lines so crossed?

  ‘The school that Aydin went to. Is that the place commonly referred to as the Farm?’

  Kamil looked bemused. ‘The farm? I know lots of farms. I’m not sure what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Aziz al-Addad is believed to be involved there. Have you heard of him?’

  Kamil pursed his lips and shook his head.

  ‘You’ve never heard stories, rumours, of a place where young boys are taken to be trained as elite jihadi warriors?’

  ‘You want me to tell you about stories now?’ he said, frowning. ‘I know lots of stories.’

  Cox didn’t appreciate his scathing tone, and determined just to carry on. ‘What do you know about cyanide poisoning? About its use in terrorism and chemical warfare?’

  She didn’t expect a straight answer, her questions designed more to eke out any tells in the man. He remained ice cold.

  ‘Miss Cox, perhaps rather than asking me these silly, vague questions you could just come out and tell me what this is really all about, because it’s quite clear you are not just some liaison from the Consulate here to talk to me about my late niece.’

  ‘Please, there’s no subterfuge here,’ Cox said, holding her hands up. ‘I’m simply trying to find out about Aydin. You think he killed his mother. He’s now on the loose and he needs to be stopped.’

  ‘So you agree it was him,’ Kamil said, the anger in his tone now clear. ‘And now you’ve just made it clear that it’s because of that boy you’re here, not Nilay.’

  �
�I am here because of Nilay. This is about her too. I didn’t lie to you. I think her death is connected to what’s happening with Aydin.’

  ‘Connected to what? She was a bright young girl killed in a cowardly suicide attack.’

  ‘It’s my job to find out if that’s the truth.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I knew Nilay. She was a friend.’

  ‘Yet you just said there was no subterfuge to you being here. You were a friend of Nilay’s, who just also happens to work for the British Consulate in Istanbul?’

  ‘I’m not trying to trick you. I do work for the British government. But, Mr Torkal, this is personal for me, like it is for you. I want to find out what really happened to Nilay. I want to know why she was targeted, and I want to find those responsible for her death. Because I don’t believe it was an accident.’

  ‘If you’re intent on pursuing what happened to her then you’re in the wrong place,’ he said before starting to cough, struggling to catch his breath. He was still angry, but the conversation was taking its toll. Cox offered no sympathies, just waited for him to carry on. ‘I told you I haven’t seen the girl for years. If you want to find out who killed her then you should probably be in Aleppo, not Istanbul. That’s where she died after all.’

  ‘Actually, that’s where I came from. I’m just following the trail. And I know she was in Istanbul not long ago. She came to you, didn’t she?’

  Kamil held his tongue, but his cheeks were flushed and his breaths were wheezy, his chest heaving as he tried to appear calm and unfazed.

  ‘Why are you lying to me, Professor Torkal?’

  Just then footsteps caught both their attention. A smartly dressed woman entered the room wearing an expression of concern.

  Cox stood. ‘You must be Mrs Torkal.’