by Churton, Alex; Churton, Toby; Locke, John; Lustbader, Eric van; van Lustbader, Eric
‘Mississippi. It’s coming back now. And Rikanik?’
‘Found dead, 16 November 2001, in his bed. Only ten days after meeting Daley in Boston to discuss DNA sequencing. Colleagues said he was in good health. Rikanik is the Russian who fled to Britain from the Soviet Union in 1989. He brought us Russian plans to use cruise missiles to spread smallpox and plague.’
‘Such charm!’
‘Said they got the idea from us, sir.’
‘Of course. What didn’t they steal from us? Fucking plague, that’s what!’
‘The Russian plans ended with the fall of the old regime. Rikanik warned MI6 debriefers the weapons could be used by terror groups, with missiles from China or North Korea. I personally believe Kelly was one of the debriefers, sir, and that he also helped Rikanik establish a laboratory for his company, Omicron Biotech, at the UK’s defence research establishment at Porton Down. Among other things, they were working on the diagnostic and therapeutic treatment of anthrax.’
‘Useful. Go on.’
‘Rikanik was a senior advisor in the establishment of RIBOTech at Paradise, California.’
‘Interesting. Suspicious death?’
‘Rikanik’s death was only announced a month after the event by Timothy Randall, an ex-MI6 officer – Randall is also a specialist in DNA sequencing – currently living in Virginia. The autopsy was apparently undertaken by MI6. Details were not given at the inquest.’
‘No surprises, Beck. What’s all this got to do with Sami al-Qasr?’ Kellner looked at his watch. ‘And your time is running out.’
‘He works at RIBOTech, sir. In January 2002, Professor al-Qasr contacted Leanne Gresham at the Directorate of Science and Technology. He demanded special protection.’
‘From whom?’
‘From the Israelis, sir.’
25
Ashe lay in bed, watching the rain beat the ivy against his bedroom window. He’d woken feeling guilty. Somehow, his casual relations with Amanda and the explosion in Hertfordshire had become fused. Had the blow to his head been some kind of punishment? The idea was absurd, but he couldn’t quite get rid of it.
Was his memory playing tricks? He could remember the row with Amanda but little else until the meeting at the Tower. Something had happened in between; he was sure of it.
Now there was Melissa. What was her part in all of this? They’d kissed; they’d watched the sun set over the Cheshire Plain. She’d wanted more. He’d wanted more, but something held him back. Was it guilt, or something else?
A parcel tumbled onto the hall carpet.
Ashe tore open the jiffy bag to find a bundle of printed papers: a list with some explanatory notes.
Aslan had been true to his word: a list of names. Two columns:
1: Lodge Members. 2: Guests.
Ashe sat, naked and cross-legged on his sheepskin rug, sipping a glass of champagne as he worked his way carefully down the list.
There had been many guests at the Kartal Lodge on that fateful March night in Istanbul: several Jewish businessmen, some police officials, a few visitors from Sweden and Germany, a Turkish Buddhist, someone called Baba Sheykh, and, most interestingly to Ashe, a number of Kurdish politicians based in Istanbul. These Aslan had underlined in red, adding some supplementary printed notes on an appended sheet. The names were:
Hatip Semdin
Sabri Gunay
Resit Yazar
Ali Yildiz
The supplementary notes, evidently compiled by someone in Aslan’s team who wrote excellent English, were instructive. Colonel Aslan had decided to give Ashe a basic lesson in Turkish politics.
In the early 1980s, a minority of Turkish Kurds, mostly in southeastern Turkey, began campaigning for recognition as a distinct culture, demanding the right to use their own language and enjoy their own literature and traditions. The Turkish Constitution did not recognise anything but Turkish identity within its boundaries. Even the use of the Kurdish language – Kurmanji – was forbidden.
A small minority of Kurds agitated for self-government. These agitators, and persons sympathetic to them, were accused of imperilling national unity and Turkish identity. Acts of terrorism began. Atrocities on both sides escalated quickly; many innocent people suffered.
By the mid-nineties over 30,000 people had died in the conflict; hundreds of villages had been forcibly evacuated. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds had been resettled to other parts of Turkey. Many suffered hard times.
Until 1991, Kurds operated within the national parties, particularly the Social Democratic People’s Party, the SHP. The SHP was sympathetic to full Kurdish equality. After the ’91 elections, a number of Kurdish deputies formed their own party, the Labour Party (HEP).
Ashe checked the guest-list names and saw that two of those deputies – Resit Yazar and Ali Yildiz – had been invited to the Masonic Lodge that night.
In April ’93 the HEP was declared illegal, but by then the deputies had already formed a new pro-Kurdish party: the Demokrasi Partisi. The Democracy Party was also banned in 1994. It was succeeded by the Halkin Demokrasi Partisi, or HADEP.
HADEP is widely recognised as the moderate voice of Kurdish aspirations in Turkey, in contrast to the illegal pro-Kurdish party that supports armed resistance and acts of terror. That illegal party is the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK.
The PKK revoked a ceasefire declaration in 2003. The Turkish government estimates that there are currently between 4,500 and 5,000 PKK guerrillas across the Turkish border in the ‘safe zone’ or autonomous Kurdish Region of northern Iraq. In effect, they have been protected both by the UN and by US firepower since the first Gulf War.
Iraqi Kurds do not favour the PKK’s methods, because the PKK threaten the Iraqi Kurds’ own position, compromising their own desires for independence. As a result of the PKK’s presence, Turkish troops crossed the border into Iraq with very different objectives to those of American troops in the region.
The Americans wish to secure broad Iraqi Kurdish support for a democratic settlement in Iraq. The Turkish premier, Erdogan, has accused the United States of double standards in its definition of its war against terror, because the USA gave no encouragement to the annihilation of PKK guerrillas in northern Iraq. The Turkish government perceives little effective difference between the PKK and al-Qaeda, since al-Qaeda is prepared to exploit the PKK cause as a means of destabilising Turkey’s secular Constitution.
Aslan had added another note, but already Ashe felt like he was poking about in a hornets’ nest.
Last week, Turkish police raided the office of the legal Kurdish nationalist party, HADEP, in Istanbul. Twenty-four arrests were made – some as a result of the raid, others after protest marches for Kurdish rights. Among those arrested were Hatip Semdin and Sabri Gunay – both of them visitors to the Lodge on the night of the bombing.
What could Ashe conclude from this information? Who had most to gain from the deaths of Semdin, Gunay, Yazar and Yildiz? Islamic radical terrorists, or Turkey’s military and security interests? It was unkind of Aslan to leave his new friend with this dilemma. The issue was complicated even further by the new question. Who had most to gain from blowing up a British intelligence advisory committee investigating threats to British interests in Istanbul?
There were other questions: what were four Kurdish politicians doing at a Masonic Lodge in Istanbul in the first place? However much the Lodge prided itself on representing a modern, secular, even progressive Turkey, a country open to the world, it was absurd to think a Turkish Lodge would promote Kurdish rights, even indirectly. Urban, secular-minded Turks frequently associated Kurdish rights with a reactionary, rural, fundamentalist Muslim culture. For many ‘Westernised’ Turks, the Muslim traditionalist demand that Islamic girls wear the headscarf epitomised the issue of encroaching backwardness.
Aslan’s last note – almost valedictory in its plainness – was a simple fact, but ambiguous in its implications:
Resit Yazar and Ali Yildiz are currently in
Iraq, sought by Turkish agents for observational purposes.
No further information is available.
Aslan was clearly urging Ashe to see a link between the Kartal Lodge bombing and the atrocity at the Tower. But where was the link? Aslan pointed to Iraq; the clue rested with Yildiz and Yazar.
The conclusion seemed inescapable. Ashe should go to Iraq. Find them. See what they were doing – and what they knew. Had not even the PM recommended that ODDBALLS concentrate its energies on Iraq? Nothing could be simpler.
Nothing could be more dangerous.
Go to Iraq? The whole wide world was aware of the perils in Iraq: a country split open like the belly of a stricken dragon, fought over by any number of interests.
Ashe knew whom he should contact. His hand stopped by the phone. Just hold on, Ashe. Think. Think. What would Loveday-Rose have advised? Thinking of the archdeacon made him think of Melissa.
Melissa. Another life; another promise. Melissa… The good life; friends, family, invitations above the fireplace, the bosom of society; cosiness, children, holidays, breezing into country pubs, gazing into each other’s eyes, growing old comfortably.
Bollocks.
The voice of the archdeacon came into his head. ‘You must face what you fear.’
Faith. It was a risk.
Ashe found himself dialling an old number.
26
Dogs were barking; the old cobblestones were wet with urine and early morning drizzle.
‘Shit!’
‘Dog shit. It’s everywhere round here.’
The old man wiped his shoe against the kerb. The bar opposite was still open. It was called ‘Babylon’.
‘Want to go in?’
The younger man looked around Hein-Köllisch-Platz. They had entered the heart of St Pauli, close to Hamburg’s red-light district and the famous haunts of the early, so-called ‘savage’, Beatles. The Beatles had been tamed, but Hamburg, thankfully, still had a few rough edges.
The old man spotted a bench beneath a tree and sat down. The younger man felt his friend’s need for a hot drink and a bed. There was another corner bar opposite. Within its cosy shadows, two young Kurds drank coffee, smoked and discussed football.
‘I’m looking for the Kurdish Centre.’
The youths stubbed their cigarettes out. ‘You alone?’
‘I’ve a friend outside. He’s not well.’
They nodded to the barman. The barman whisked up a cappuccino and grabbed a chocolate croissant.
The old man had passed out. The Kurds tried to wake him. A ship’s horn echoed up from the docks at the bottom of the steep cobblestoned hill.
The old man was coughing.
‘Drink this. Speak Kurmanji. Where you from? Turkey? Iraq?’
‘My case. Where is it?’
‘By your feet.’
‘Thank God.’
‘Need a doctor?’
‘Coffee’s good.’
The old man nibbled at the croissant while the Kurds addressed his friend. ‘The Community Centre’s round the corner in Silbersackstrasse. If nobody’s up, we’ll find a way in.’
‘Have you a blanket?’
The barman nodded. ‘Anyone after you?’
‘It’s been… pretty bad.’
The old man gripped his friend’s hand. ‘No… It’s been interesting.’
Half an hour later, Hamburg’s streets were washed in dismal dawn light. As the men shuffled into Silbersackstrasse, they passed a newsagent’s window covered with posters in German, Turkish and Kurdish. Next door, a handpainted sign in rainbow-coloured letters announced that they had reached the St Pauli Kurdish Community Centre. Its spartan café served as an informal advice centre for newly arrived immigrants and asylum seekers. An emergency dormitory occupied the top floor. The light was on inside.
The younger man tried the reinforced metal door. Three youths in leather jackets were seated round a table in the grim reception; they did not look Kurdish. As the new arrivals entered, the youths disappeared round the back.
‘Hey!’ cried the younger man. ‘I thought they told you we were coming!’
No answer.
‘Please! A bed for my friend! What’s the matter with you? Please!’
There was scuffling round the front. The youths who’d rushed to the back emerged on the front pavement. Shadows darkened the front door. A car drew up outside. A door slammed. Some words in Turkish.
The front door was kicked open. The younger man looked up. ‘You!’
27
It was raining hard. Ali entered the Community Centre and slammed the front door. He slung his black mac over a worn Formica-topped table and looked at the two men sitting on chairs in the corner. The old one was wrapped in a blanket, apparently asleep; the other, dressed in a suit, was sitting back, relaxed, one ankle resting on his knee.
‘Recognise these characters, Ali?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Got the file?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Ali handed Aslan an oversized ring-file with a blue plastic cover.
‘Don’t give it to me! See if you can identify these men.’
Ali sat down at the table and began leafing through the inch-square photos of all politicians and their aides closely connected with Kurdish rights.
‘Ali!’
‘Sir?’
‘This man here thinks he knows me.’
‘Forgive me sir, why don’t you just ask them who they are?’
‘Brilliant, Ali, as ever. And you think I haven’t done so already?’
‘Their reply?’
‘No reply. But fear not, soldier, there will be.’
Aslan addressed the man at the table. ‘I’ve been misinformed. You are not Yildiz and Yazar.’ He waited to see if they reacted. ‘Yildiz and Yazar, I presume, are still in Iraq.’
The two men still did not react.
‘So, I suppose you’ve never heard of them.’
Aslan looked closely at the men. There was something familiar about their faces.
‘You have no residence permits.’
‘Forgive me, sir,’ said the younger man. ‘I wonder what the German authorities would make of your own unofficial visit. Or is this typical of Turkish security methods?’
Aslan nodded to the guard. The guard slapped the man about the face.
‘Wish to repeat the question?’
The younger man said nothing.
‘Please don’t give up talking to us. I really am interested in all that you have to say. What do you think I want to hear? Speak.’
The younger man said nothing. Aslan nodded. Another slap in the face.
‘I didn’t think you were the complaining type. In any case, who would listen? You could be Turkish citizens; you could be from Iraq. Our friend who works here doesn’t know. He did tell us two mystery guests were expected last night, and you’re about as mysterious as any I’ve seen for a while. Frankly, my friends, I’ve no interest in your lives. But you…’ He pointed to the younger man. ‘You know who I am.’
The man shook his head.
‘Yes, I think you do. Here we both are in a strange city – presuming it is strange to you – and yet here we are in this one rotten little room, and you indicate you know me. In fact, you couldn’t stop yourself from telling me you knew me! And now, all of a sudden, you’re bashful. Why would you know who I am? Are you a drug dealer? Many pushers wear smart suits. A bomber?’
‘I… think I was mistaken, sir. You looked like someone. The man I was thinking about. He would have recognised me too.’
‘You should have been an actor, my friend. Except actors try to make their performance credible. And I don’t believe a word you’re saying. Why? Because I look into your intelligent eyes, and I can see that you don’t believe a word you’re saying. I don’t think you’re a man who likes playing parts. I don’t even think you lie habitually. Unlike my colleagues behind you. Look at their eyes. They betray nothing. They could lie through their teeth on an order from me
. You’d never know. But you… tell me now, who did you think I was?’
‘I think there are many Kurds who would mistake you for another man.’
‘Which man?’
‘You can’t be him.’
‘Who can’t I be? Tell me! Who can’t I be? Tell me, my friend, who am I not? In your opinion. In the bad light. In Hamburg. This morning. Who am I like?’
‘I… thought you resembled a colonel in the Turkish Special Forces.’
‘A colonel?’
‘Yes… Aslan. Mahmut Aslan.’
Aslan bit his lip, hard.
‘Hear that, Ali? My fame has preceded me.’
‘Interesting, sir.’
‘Ali, the old man has a suitcase between his legs. Care to open it?’
The old man awoke, with a start.
‘You, old man! Who are you?’
‘I’m… I’m…’
‘Go on, man! Ali, take the case.’
‘Sir.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am a Kurd.’
‘It’s heavy, sir.’
‘Just put it on the table. I know you’re a Kurd – or, at least, you might be. You might be from Afghanistan, for all I know. Perhaps the Americans are looking—’
The old man tried to seize the case from Ali’s grip.
‘Important to you, old man, is it? The case? Is it important? What’s your name?’
‘Don’t tell him!’
Aslan nodded to the guard, who slapped the younger man hard.
‘It’s rattling, sir. Some kind of mechanism inside.’
‘Özdagan! Take the case to the car. Give it the onceover for booby traps.’
‘Sir.’
There was a knock on the door to the back room. ‘What is it?’