Tallis took advantage of the Turk’s natural inclination to make the most of every commercial opportunity. Enterprising young men selling cans of Coke and bottled water, stuffed vegetables, mezes and Turkish bread were milling about, doing their bit to feed the city in its hour of need. Tallis paid top dollar. Worth every luscious mouthful, he thought. It had been over twenty-four hours since he’d last eaten.
An hour later, he’d bought enough convincing clutter to stuff in his rucksack to trick the most astute customs officer. Half an hour after that, Tallis’s patience was rewarded. Kerim, his podgy frame distinct amongst the crowds, went over to his boat and jumped aboard. Tallis jumped in after him. At first Kerim’s face expressed alarm, but as his mind made the connections he broke into a beaming smile. ‘Friend,’ he said, clapping Tallis on the back. ‘You come. You are safe. Praise Allah!’
Good, Tallis thought, Kerim wants his money. ‘And you,’ Tallis said, reciprocating with a hearty slap that made Kerim cough, ‘your family is also safe, all those children?’
‘Indeed. All is good. Very good,’ Kerim said expectantly, drawing the small parcel from the pocket of his trousers. ‘I brought as you said. I bring every day in case you come.’
‘Good man,’ Tallis said, taking the package and opening it. Inside was the Turkish equivalent of five hundred pounds in sterling. He gave two hundred to Kerim, keeping the rest for extra expenditure. Of more interest was the passport he’d secreted inside. It belonged to none other than Paul Tallis.
Using up the bulk of Rezul’s money, he took an expensive cab ride to Ataturk Airport. Spacious and modern, the arrivals hall was crawling with people. There he made his way straight to the international terminal. He went to the desk for reserved tickets, showed his passport. After brief enquiry, he discovered that his KLM flight was delayed, predicted to leave at 4.30 p.m. Tallis tried not to look too disconsolate. With a stopover, he wouldn’t arrive until 2.30 a.m. Pocketing his economy-class airline ticket, he glanced at the clock in the airport lounge. He had almost four hours to kill.
He spent the intervening time trying to stay out of trouble. He bought a stash of magazines and newspapers, including the Turkish News, and topped up his calories. Whenever he saw a police officer, he resisted the temptation to either turn away or run. Instead, he tuned out, acted the part of tourist, just another traveller bumming his way round the Med.
At the earliest opportunity, he went to the check-in counter, joining the queue displaying the hand luggage sign. It was extremely busy. When it came to Tallis’s turn, the looks were stony, but he was cleared and given the appropriate accreditation.
Approaching 3.30 p.m., Tallis found himself anxiously watching the terminal’s clock. Still his flight had not been called. A curdled feeling slopped about in the pit of his stomach. What if Koroglu turned up? What if he arrived with a bevy of armed police? What if CIA operatives stalking the airport already had him staked out and in their cross-hairs? What if…?
There was some disturbance down the far end of the lounge. Several armed police officers were on the move. They were making for the departure lounge for British Airways flights. Oh, Jesus, Tallis thought. Koroglu was striding along behind them. Then came an announcement:
‘KLM, flight number 082, originally due to depart at 14.35 hours and departing now at 16.30 hours, will be leaving from terminal…’
Tallis was on his feet, jaw grinding, walking with as controlled a step as he could. He handed his passport and ticket over to a young Dutch woman with milk-white skin and almond-green eyes. He met her steady gaze with a relaxed smile and watched her cheeks flush pale pink. She handed back his belongings. ‘Have a safe journey, Mr Tallis.’ She smiled back.
Amen to that, he thought.
He wasn’t happy until the plane had taken off. Even then he spent the first couple of hours fretting. Only when they finally touched down at Madrid did he start to breathe easily.
The next flight to London left at 7.10 via Iberian Airways. The ticket desk was closed. Already well past midnight, he decided to sit it out at the airport. By the time the desk was open, the flight had already left. Pissed off and exhausted, he eventually caught a flight that arrived at Heathrow, terminal 2, shortly after three in the afternoon. He fully expected to be stopped and searched at Customs, but was waved through, mainly, he suspected, because it was choking with people as a result of delayed flights, understaffing and a lack of screening machines. From Heathrow, he took the tube to Kensington and booked into the Kensington Close Hotel, where he was escorted immediately to the room already allocated to him. Inside, he found a wardrobe of clothes his size. He also found the safe. Entering the code, the door clicked open, yielding one thousand pounds in used notes and a mobile phone. Tallis pocketed the money and punched in the number given to him by Asim. He waited while the call was routed. Asim answered straight away.
‘Paul,’ he said, warmth in his voice. ‘How are you?’
‘Apart from surviving an earthquake, having a gun pulled on me by an a-Q operative and escaping from the clutches of some CIA bastard who took a fancy to my balls, I’m good, thanks.’
8
* * *
WHEN Tallis finished, Asim said, ‘Welcome to the club.’
Tallis pointed out dryly that he wasn’t part of anyone’s club.
‘Is that the reason you didn’t reveal your true ID?’
‘What is this? Phone a friend?’ More to the point, whom should he have called? Tallis wondered. As far as MI5 were concerned, he wasn’t officially working for them. He was, without doubt, one of many freelancers, paid for his expertise, yet utterly deniable if he screwed up, a spook of sorts but without formalised backing. Strangely, it didn’t bother him, perhaps because he had nobody to worry about and nobody to worry about him. The attraction for the security services was obvious: expendability.
Asim’s voice trickled with laughter. ‘Wasn’t a criticism. You did the right thing by keeping schtum.’
‘What I want to know is why they thought I had connections to the Moroccan.’
‘They mention the guy’s name?’
‘No, but shouldn’t be too difficult to find out.’
‘True.’ Asim paused. ‘Sounds to me as though they had limited intelligence, you burst into the picture, they decided to add three and three together and made fifteen.’
‘They being?’
‘Not entirely certain.’
Bet you have some idea, Tallis thought. ‘And Morello?’
‘A side-show.’
Tallis didn’t agree.
‘You said at least one of the hit team was British,’ Asim said.
‘Yup.’ He remembered the words: ‘…fuckin’ out of here’.
‘That may be significant as far as the hunt for the people behind Morello’s murder are concerned.’
More than significant, Tallis believed. He thought it was their first cock-up. All he had to do was find the next.
‘And this guy, Koroglu—an American you say?’
‘No doubt about it.’
Another pause. Tallis decided to go the direct route. ‘Are the Yanks outsourcing their detention centres to Turkey?’
‘The Turks are under pressure from extremists, too. They might see it as being to their advantage.’
‘Are they, or aren’t they?’ Tallis said, stubbornly pushing his luck.
‘I don’t know,’ Asim said smoothly.
‘Oh, come on,’ Tallis said. ‘You must have some idea. We’re all supposed to be best buddies.’
This time Asim’s laugh was hard. ‘Notwithstanding the change of head honcho across the water, a political event that takes time to download to the game on the ground, the Americans are no longer happy to play when it comes to intelligence concerning potential a-Q suspects.’
‘Because our government decided to voice opposition to Guantanamo Bay, and reduce our forces in Iraq?’
Asim concurred. ‘We’ve reached a fairly dire situation. If we want to know s
omething from a suspect held in American custody, we’re no longer able to fly out and talk to them. We have to put the question to the American operative who will ask on our behalf.’
How very Russian, Tallis thought, remembering the Litvinenko investigation in which Scotland Yard officers were denied direct access to suspects.
‘It signals a grave lack of trust,’ Asim continued, ‘something that needs to be restored and quickly, which is why the head man is so hell-bent on getting Five, the Secret Intelligence Service and all the other British law enforcement agencies to bond together in the fight against terrorism.’
And they needed to, Tallis thought. It was reputed that at any given time there were two thousand terrorists and two hundred plots aimed against British citizens. No longer was it a case of if there would be an attack but when. In response to the threat, MI5 had launched a hip recruitment campaign aimed at young Brits, including Muslims, doubled its size, regarded languages for its operatives as crucial and had adopted a policy of international and national co-operation right across the board.
‘They ever thought about using organised crime?’
‘What?’ Asim said, baffled.
‘Use a thief to catch a thief.’ Asim gave a snort of ridicule. But Tallis wasn’t going to be deflected. ‘The CIA recruited Mafiosi to kill Castro.’
‘One man,’ Asim pointed out. ‘We’re up against entire legions, people from every walk of life, who think nothing of exploiting each single easy route into our country.’ Tallis thought of the Middle Eastern doctors who’d taken advantage of a shortage in the NHS to blag their way in and initiate a reign of terror in Scotland. ‘Who, in case you’ve forgotten,’ Asim continued pointedly, ‘are rumoured to have links with organised crime, which is what we’re investigating.’
‘I was wondering when you’d come back to that,’ Tallis said briskly. ‘Well, this is how I read the runes. I think the two incidents are connected. Morello discovered something. The fact he chose the Byzantium, a known criminal hangout, for a meeting is significant. Whatever he knew, someone wanted to shut him up. Somewhere our Moroccan is involved. You mention the purported links between British organised crime and terrorism. Well, I think I just stumbled across them.’
‘You’re making some fairly big assumptions.’
‘It’s the only picture that fits.’
‘In this line of work there are usually several pictures that fit, Paul, and the obvious one is usually a blind.’
Ouch, this was the nearest Asim, who it had to be said he didn’t know that well, had come to a rebuke. ‘Point taken,’ Tallis said with as much humility as he could muster.
‘Going back to the hit. Are you really sure it was meant for Morello?’
Tallis let out a sigh. He’d been over and over it. ‘Yes.’
‘Reason?’
‘Something Morello said before he died. He kept repeating the word “report”.’
‘What kind of report?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re sure that’s what he said?’
‘Quite certain.’
‘And you think this is what got him killed?’
‘Possibly. Not sure, could be a blind,’ Tallis said, a smile in his voice. Asim let out an appreciative laugh. ‘And there was something else,’ Tallis said. ‘Morello asked if I’d ever come across a guy called Kevin Napier.’
‘And have you?’
‘He fought in the first Gulf War same time as me and, like me, left to become a police officer, only his route took him to the dizzy heights of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency.’
‘Go on,’ Asim said, voice sharpening.
‘That’s it. I confirmed I knew the guy.’
‘And Morello didn’t state the reason for his interest?’
‘Didn’t get the chance.’
There was a brief silence. ‘SOCA is the UK arm of Interpol,’ Asim said, as if thinking aloud. ‘It also maintains a large network of overseas officers.’
‘So Napier might have been posted to Turkey?’
‘It’s possible.’
Another little piece in the jigsaw, or simply a meaningless piece of detritus? Tallis thought.
‘You’ve done really well,’ Asim congratulated him. ‘Shame about the screw-up with Morello, could have done without it, but you handled everything superbly. I’ll see what I can find out from my contacts and get back to you. In the meantime, I suggest you go back home, get some rest, forget about it for a bit.’
Forget about it? And poor Garry relegated to nothing more than a gross inconvenience. Tallis sadly shook his head. He really felt like a most reluctant spook.
He didn’t go back home. He stayed the night in London. The hotel was overrun with American kids doing a sightseeing tour. As he went down to breakfast the next morning, an anarchic help-yourself affair, he stood in line behind a youth wearing a T-shirt that announced he wanted to shoot all the fucking jackasses. Couldn’t agree more, Tallis thought drolly.
The earthquake in Turkey featured well inside most newspapers’ covers, sometimes not making it until the ‘World News’ section. Loss of life was reported as minimal, a couple of dozen deaths scattered over Istanbul, many more injured. Tellingly, there was no mention of those crushed deep within its city streets.
Outside heralded a fine September day, warm and sunny, with puffs of light cloud. After a quick wander around Kensington Palace Gardens to take some air, he returned to the hotel, checking out shortly after ten. From there, he took a tube to Ladbroke Grove.
Gayle Morello lived in the heart of Notting Hill in a handsome loft apartment arranged on two floors. The visit was a flyer. There was a strong possibility that she might already have left for Turkey. If she was at home, he knew that, whatever came up in the conversation, he couldn’t admit to being with Garry in his final moments. The police were bound to have mentioned David Miller, the man Garry had met at the café. No way was he confessing to being the same man.
Getting out at the station, he walked past a range of local shops, including a number that had a culinary theme. Outside the Morellos’, he stood for a full minute, gazing up at huge arched windows, black wrought-iron balcony, red brick, freshly painted white rendering. He was wondering how the hell he was going to talk to a woman who’d lost not only her first husband in sudden circumstances but her second husband, too. But he had to. Gayle deserved no less. As for Garry, it was Tallis’s way of honouring his old friend’s memory.
With a heavy heart, he trudged up the four steps to the painted black front door and pressed the entry-phone. After a few moments, Gayle answered. ‘Yes?’ Her voice sounded tired.
‘Gayle, it’s Paul Tallis.’
‘Paul?’ she said, sounding confused then, as if it suddenly dawned on her who he was, she let out a small cry. ‘Come on up,’ she said, pressing the buzzer to let him in.
Tallis ascended two flights of narrow stairs. Must have been a bugger moving the furniture in, he thought, his frame constrained by the architecture. The front door to the apartment was already open, Gayle standing there. She was wearing dark glasses. Her skin was ashen. Although a tall, statuesque woman, she seemed to have shrunk since the last time he saw her. Stooped shoulders, long blonde hair unwashed, clothes thrown on anyhow. That’s grief, he thought, wondering if he too, perhaps more subtly, had morphed since Belle’s death. A sudden image of her dying in his arms flashed into his mind. She’d been shot. The man responsible for the order was Belle’s husband, Dan, a bent copper and wife-beater, the act perpetrated not out of jealousy, but as a means to get back at Tallis, Dan being Tallis’s morally disconnected older brother.
Tallis put his arms around Gayle, gave her a hug. A memory of Hikmet flashed through his mind. Was he becoming a magnet for the bereaved?
Gayle began to cry. ‘How could somebody do that to him? How could they? I keep going over and over it, imagining, wondering what it must have been like.’
Tallis murmured softly, letting her weep, feel
ing her tears soak into his shirt. Eventually she calmed down a bit, pulled away from him.
‘They said he died instantly, that he didn’t feel pain, so I suppose that makes it more bearable.’
‘Yes,’ he said, unflinching.
She nodded, attempted a smile. ‘You look well,’ she said. ‘Been on holiday?’
‘Sicily,’ he said, seizing on the first place he could think of.
‘Come on,’ she said, taking him by the hand, ‘can’t stand here all day, bawling.’ He admired her spirit. She seemed to be holding it together better than he’d done.
They went through to the kitchen. Hand-painted, handcrafted, and of traditional design, it made a refreshing change from the pathology-suite-themed cooking environment. Tallis sat down at the kitchen table and watched as Gayle made coffee with an amazing contraption that hissed and blew like an old steam train. The result was amazing, the real deal.
‘How did you find out?’ Gayle said at last, raising the cup to her lips.
He was prepared. ‘One of Garry’s mates. He works on The Independent.’
‘Typical journo. Always have their ears to the ground.’
‘And you?’
‘Police in Turkey traced me through Garry’s passport details, contacted our boys here. I received the proverbial knock at the door.’ She grimaced, putting the cup back down, clattering it against the saucer. ‘Two officers: one male; one female. I knew it was bad soon as I clapped eyes on them. Remembered from last time. I can tell you,’ she said, ‘having been through this once before doesn’t make it any easier.’ She reached for a box of tissues, blew her nose fiercely.
The Mephisto Threat Page 6