by Gary Haynes
“Easy,” Tom said, pulling out his wallet.
The doorman stepped back and Tom put his arm out to stop Lester from going for him and knocking him unconscious for half an hour or so. He eased out a thousand lira in bills, around four hundred and eighty US dollars, and held them out towards the doorman.
“It’s yours. I just want a meet with the baba, Maroof. Tell him it’s about the flesh business. Tell him we are talking five million lira. Cash.”
“Tell black to move back,” the doorman said.
“Lester, I’d be obliged if you do as he asks.”
Lester stepped back to the kerb.
The doorman began to speak Turkish on the radio, keeping an eye on Lester as he did so. About thirty seconds later an older man appeared, his white T-shirt bulging with folds of fat beneath his short leather jacket. He looked as if he dyed his hair and moustache and was about a foot shorter than the doorman. He gave Tom and Lester the once-over, took out a cellphone and retreated a way back into the entrance. The doorman put the hammer back into his overcoat and looked to relax a little.
After a minute or more the older man came back out and handed Tom a piece of paper. “Baba will see you,” he said. He shook his head then, said something to the doorman and they both began to laugh. He looked straight at Tom. “And only you. Not black.”
Tom looked down at the piece of paper. There was some Turkish writing, which he didn’t understand, and an obvious address.
“Show to taxi driver,” the older man said.
“Which one?” Tom said.
“Any one.”
Tom nodded. He turned and saw that Lester was obviously finding it difficult to hold it together. He walked over to him, put his hand on his shoulder and led him away from the house.
“Don’t take it personally,” Tom said as they walked side by side up the street, the sidewalk littered with empty takeout containers and plastic bottles.
Lester sucked his teeth, said, “Easy for you to say. But these guys don’t mess around, Tom. I’m talking blowtorches, acid. All kinds of nasty shit.”
“I know, Lester.”
And for the first time in a long time, Tom felt sick to his stomach with a mixture of fear and anxiety.
Chapter 48
Tom and Lester decided to wave down a new cab at the head of the street. On the way there Lester had asked Tom how he was going to play it and Tom had said like walking a tightrope between prompting the baba to say something and getting chopped up. He couldn’t afford to get them too spooked, but he had to create enough of a stir to act as a catalyst, something to get them discussing Ibrahim after he’d left.
Tom popped something into his mouth and fiddled with his ear. It was the listening device and the earpiece recording device that Jack Donaldson had passed over to him at the embassy, part of the package ordered by Crane.
“The hell you doing?” Lester asked.
Tom grinned. “Presents from Crane.”
“Crane sends you candy? Shit, Tom, you wanna tell me somethin’?”
“Funny guy,” Tom said before telling Lester what they were.
Forty minutes later, after a chaotic drive across the congested city, the taxi driver stopped opposite a piece of waste ground between light blue cinderblock industrial units. He was a stocky guy, with patchy hair. He was wearing shades, even though the sky was still overcast.
“You not Turkish,” he said, without turning around. “Don’t repeat what I say, but do not go in there. I know who own it. He dangerous man. He wrap you in barbed wire, you cross him.”
Tom glanced at Lester, who shook his head.
“Can you wait here for me?” Tom asked the cab driver.
“Sorry, no.” The driver turned around and handed Tom back the scribbled note the thug had given to him outside the brothel. “There is message here for taxi driver who pick you up,” the cab driver said. “That me. It says do not wait. So I do not wait. Sorry.”
“It’s looking good so far, Tom,” Lester said.
“I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”
“You sure?”
Tom nodded.
“Anything happens, I might miss ya, is all.”
“You got a better idea, old friend?” Tom asked.
“Not right now,” Lester said.
Tom took out his SIG, cellphone and ID and handed them to Lester.
“Okay then,” Lester said. Tom glanced at the driver and then back at Lester. He whispered, “I know I don’t have to tell you this, buddy, but be sure to get dropped off near the subway. Get a train a few blocks from the hotel.” The Ankara Metro, Tom knew, had forty-five stations and was a sophisticated rapid-transport system.
“You wanna gimme a fresh supply of diapers, too?”
“I’m sorry, Lester, I just got a bad feelin’ ‘bout this one.”
He told Lester the address of the safe house and to wait for him there and to contact a CIA guy called Jack Donaldson at the US embassy if his meeting with the baba went to rat shit. Otherwise he should just wait at the hotel.
“And Tom?”
Tom had his hand on the cab’s door handle but turned around to see what his friend wanted. Just as he did so, Lester slapped him so hard across his face that he bit the back of his tongue. His head spun, his cheek ached. Instinctively his hand went to his face and he could feel the heat there. “The hell you do that for?”
Lester’s dark eyes seemed to be on fire. “Shape up,” he said, his tone devoid of anything other than a contemptuous concern.
As Tom swung the door shut he knew that his friend had done him a favour. He spat blood. Damn right, he thought.
He watched the cab pull away. It was a quiet industrial area of the city. Beyond the waste ground there was a tarmac parking lot in front of the units, with a white minivan and a tailgate truck parked on it, and a couple of rusted dumpsters overflowing with flattened cardboard boxes and lengths of plastic. To the left, a gated entrance protected the rear. The sun came out without warning, and with it Tom smelt a faint odour, something akin to rotting cabbage and old gym shoes.
As he reached the gate he saw a wall-mounted intercom system to the right. Before he had a chance to use it a man walked out from behind the far end of the nearest wall and headed for the gate. With that a second guy emerged from behind the truck and pulled out a MAC-10 machine pistol from underneath his baseball jacket.
A dark blue SUV appeared from the far end of the lot and pulled up beside Tom. The first guy opened the gate and as he came close Tom noticed a revolver in his right hand. He was tall and thin and unshaven, with pockmarked skin, and apart from his dark irises and pupils, his eyes were almost completely bloodshot.
As the guy with the MAC-10 opened the SUV’s back door, Bloodshot blindfolded Tom with a bandana, frisked him, and guided him into the back and pushed him down into the footwell. He felt the snub-nosed barrel of the revolver press into the back of his neck.
The SUV took off.
Just over a half an hour later, still blindfolded, Tom was bundled out of the SUV. Flinging his head back, he sucked in air, and caught a glimpse through the loosened bandana of a half-derelict brick tenement. He was led up the stone steps, covered with crispy lichen.
After entering the house, he looked down underneath his blindfold again. He was being led up a staircase, with flaking paint on graffiti-ridden walls. The staircase was nothing more than rotting, bare floorboards. It stank of damp and stale urine, as if it was a rundown retirement home.
At the top of the staircase a battered door opened and he was shoved into a first-floor room. He heard footsteps leaving the room.
“Take it off,” a voice said.
He put his hands behind his neck, undid the knot, and tossed the bandana on the floor. Bright sunlight was pouring into the room through the broken windows to his right. The room was about thirty foot square, devoid of furniture, save for a few stacked chairs beneath a windowsill.
The Turk in front of him was at least two hundr
ed and thirty pounds. His head was shaved and he was wearing more gold than a rapper. He had a Glock 9mm tucked into his belt, a heavy ring on each finger. His baggy sportswear looked expensive. He had about three days’ facial hair growth. Intermittently, he fiddled with one of his rings. He was standing about three yards away, and he was sweating.
“What now?” Tom said, as nonchalantly as he could muster in the circumstances.
“You meet him. Then maybe you live and maybe you do not.”
Chapter 49
After a more thorough frisking, Tom was led into an adjacent room, which had a wooden revolving fan hanging from the damp-stained ceiling. The baba was not what he’d been expecting. He was sitting at a wonky table, his stained undershirt riding up to expose the folds of his stomach and the dense hair on his forearms. He was eating a plate of fried peppers and potatoes, with yogurt and tomato sauce. His double chin was unshaven, his thinning hair arranged in a thin ponytail. Three other men were sitting at the edges of the room, wearing suits, which Tom felt was incongruous.
The baba wiped his sloppy mouth with a white napkin, rubbed his baggy eyes and said, “So, you want to make me money?”
“I do,” Tom said, noticing that the man’s teeth were the colour of butter.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
He grinned. “Why not?” he mimicked, raising his hands in the air.
The bodyguards grinned, and Tom thought them sycophantic lowlifes.
The Turk snorted. “You come here to ask me a favour and you don’t tell me what favour.”
After a difficult and intimidating exchange, the baba agreed to a potential deal. Tom had said he was an American of French descent and that his forefathers were famous slavers. As for his black associate, he’d said he had good connections in East Africa due to his heritage and security business. Like all good lies, there was an element of truth to it. They would supply the people to be trafficked, supposedly from Somalia and Eritrea, funnelled up through Egypt and on to Libya, whereupon they’d be ferried across the Mediterranean to Italy. The Turks would arrange the transport to Western Europe.
The baba nodded to one of his men, who brought over a bottle and two long cylindrical glasses. He gestured to the chair opposite him, and Tom sat down at the table to drink a glass of straight raki, the unsweetened anise-flavoured alcoholic drink made from distilled pomace. To seal the deal, he imagined.
“To business,” the baba said, raising his glass of clear alcohol.
Tom took a long slug. He grimaced and spat some of it out, feigning coughing. As he did so he released the listening device. It was the size of a shirt button and looked like a small stone. He had it held between his gum and bottom lip since he’d popped it into his mouth as he and Lester had gone to hail down a taxi near the brothel. He’d coughed to mask any sound it might make as it hit the bare floorboards. In his right ear he still had the tiny flesh-coloured recording device. The CIA equipment would allow him to record what was said in the room from a distance of one hundred yards after he’d left. He just hoped that would be enough time, given that it was certain he’d be driven away from the property once the meeting was over.
After the baba’s men had finished laughing at him, he said, “Strong stuff. No offence intended.”
The baba hadn’t laughed and Tom wondered if he was just being polite, hadn’t found it funny, or suspected something was up.
“We traffic anyone,” Tom said. “Two thousand, six hundred and twenty-three men, women and children to date. More if you include the babies inside pregnant women.”
“Anyone you would not take?” the baba asked.
Tom thought about it, knowing it was his chance to up the stakes and that another one might not come along anytime soon, which wouldn’t seem contrived. But before he could speak he was beaten to it.
“What about terrorists?” the baba said, lowering his glass and staring hard. “Would you traffic terrorists?”
“What kind of terrorists?” The baba had caught Tom by surprise and it was all he could think of saying.
“It’s time for you to go now, American. My men will drive you to your hotel. We have drunk raki, but I make some calls. If this is not real, we will work on you for a week.”
Tom looked at the baba and nodded. He didn’t doubt it for a second. He didn’t doubt that something wasn’t right, either.
The guy on his left came to within an arm’s reach, holding what looked like a Beretta handgun out in front of him like a real amateur instead of tucking it in close to the waist. Tom figured he’d let them know he was serious. Besides, Lester’s slap had shaken him out of the malaise he’d been in since the attempt on his father’s life, which he may never recover from.
He turned ninety degrees and used his left hand to grab the gun-held wrist and jerked the man down and forwards. He hit the unsuspecting guy in the throat with the V between his splayed thumb and forefinger, causing his victim to gag and collapse. Tom knelt down and snatched the handgun from the guy’s limp fingers, the whole incident taking less than two seconds.
Raising himself up and levelling the weapon, he saw the other Turks staring at him, their hard faces registering either shock or bemusement. But the baba’s face was as unreadable as hieroglyphics on a stone wall. None of the gangsters had been fast enough to react and draw their weapons, which Tom had banked on, figuring they weren’t the types to practise manoeuvres to the degree necessary to be lodged in long-term muscle memory.
There followed a full ten seconds of silence before the baba said, “Put gun down. The door behind you is unlocked. My men will drive you away as I said. You have my word.”
Your word isn’t worth rabbit shit, Tom thought. But then he remembered that the Turkish mafia, despite their despicable traits, had a peculiar code of honour, and if a baba gave his word, it meant it could be relied on. He placed the handgun down on the floor near the guy he’d sent there, who was breathing now like an asthmatic.
“Sure, but the next one of your men to stick a snub nose in my neck will get his broken. Are we clear?”
Chapter 50
Tom had been bundled out of the SUV at some unknown side street in Ankara, a place lined with dumpsters overflowing with the waste from fast-food takeouts. For the first couple of minutes he’d heard the baba talking to his crew via the earpiece. He didn’t speak Turkish so he’d been anxious to send the recording to Crane as soon he’d gotten back to the hotel.
He’d arrived back forty minutes later after catching a cab to three blocks away. Lester had been waiting for him in the room, watching some local soap opera on TV. Tom had sent the recorded Turkish conversations to Crane via the secure satphone that the CIA had provided for him.
When the phone rang less than twenty minutes later Tom snatched it up from the low-slung table he was sitting beside, as Lester seemed to turn off the soap reluctantly. He put it on speaker.
“We got something,” Crane said. “And it fits. The Israelis nearly got that sonofabitch Ibrahim in Gaza, heading out to the harbour area. The baba said something about their worries being over once they got a call from Marseilles, so you don’t have to be Einstein to work out Ibrahim could be going across the Med. But that’s an underlined could be. And Tom, you need to get outta there now. He don’t trust you. He made a call and they know that we’re after Ibrahim. You need to get to the safe house. Pronto.”
“Who did he speak with? Tom asked.
“We don’t know. But a Turk in MIT told your father about the baba so that’s who my money’s on.”
“What’s his name?”
“Hassam Habib. But it coulda been anyone in MIT. Coulda been a MIT asset. Now get to the safe house, then I’ll get you and Lester outta there.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Tom said, putting down the satphone onto the table and looking at Lester. “Whatcha think?”
“That Habib’s a louse, that’s for damn sure.”
“Could be, but we’d better split up and meet at the sa
fe house.”
Lester nodded.
Tom walked over to a mahogany dresser and picked up the items he’d handed to Lester in the taxi, weighing the SIG in his hand. “Hold onto it,” he said, gesturing to Lester with it. “I’ll make me feel better. The cellphone, too. It’s got a CIA guy called Donaldson at the embassy and Crane on speed dial.”
Lester shook his head. “No way, man.”
“Lester, just take the SIG. I got you into this, but it’s personal for me. And don’t shoot anybody with it. Just scare them off. This ain’t Iraq.”
Chapter 51
Lester arrived at the safe house twenty-five minutes later, an apartment above a closed grocery store, with a side door. As Tom had the key, he knocked and waited, feeling a little conspicuous. The streetlights were intermittent and he turned and checked out the immediate area, seeing an alley leading out of the darkness some twenty yards down. There were a few local men buying cigarettes from a late-night newsstand to the left, but other than a young guy riding a moped bareheaded, the place was quiet.
After thirty seconds, he turned and walked to the alley, squatting down behind an upturned cardboard box. The alley stretched out of eyeshot behind him, the walls on either side housing shuttered-up stores, with similar residential accommodation above. He lent his shoulder against the brick wall, realizing how tired he was. He’d been travelling for almost twenty-four hours without sleep and still hadn’t slept since he’d been here, unable to doze off while Tom had been meeting with the baba. As a jarhead he’d been able to stay awake for a couple of days, but that was twenty years ago and he had the odd ache that he hadn’t noticed until a year back.
Within seconds, Lester’s eyelids were fluttering, his head bobbing like that of a wading bird. After struggling to keep just one eye open, he fell asleep.
The sound of a revving car engine woke him. He shuddered from the cold and realized his back was slumped against the wall, such that he was looking at the blackened wall opposite. He shook his head, stood up and felt for the SIG and then his wallet. Satisfied, he peered around the wall just as a black SUV pulled away.