There was a small pile of cash in the middle of the table and everyone there was holding playing cards.
All sound had ceased in the room and five pairs of eyes were now on him. Morgan holstered his gun and said, “Sorry, I heard some noise outside and thought there might be a problem in here.”
“There is, these women are robbing me blind,” Conley said.
The girls laughed as Morgan looked on, still baffled by what he was seeing. Peter Conley was in a room full of professional models and was playing cards…
“Sorry ladies, that is all of my money that you will get for today,” Conley said. There were disappointed sighs from the women. “I’m afraid my partner and I have got to get to work. It will be time to go in a few minutes anyway; our clients will be arriving soon.”
The women got up and headed to the other room to get themselves ready to leave.
As Morgan and Conley moved the table and chairs back against the wall, Morgan said, “Who are you and what have you done with my partner?”
“Run of bad luck. And one of those women is a graduate student in math. She was unstoppable. But give me another hour and I could have won it all back.”
“Right,” Morgan said.
Morgan hadn’t been referring to the card game and Conley knew it. Something had been different about Conley since he’d met a former Chinese agent named Danhong Guo—or Dani—who was now part of Zeta. They’d had some sort of vacation romance and now there was something complicated going on between them.
And whatever it was had stopped Conley from calling the three women he knew and occasionally saw in Istanbul. That was not only interesting, it was unprecedented.
If they’d had more time, Morgan would have ribbed his friend a bit more. But Conley was right, they did have a meeting.
They neatened the room, making sure that it wasn’t too neat. After all, the penthouse “Sultan” suite, the beautiful women, and the expensive suits they were wearing were all designed to paint a picture—a picture that would attract the right kind of attention.
They had also spent money like rich idiots for the last two weeks in Istanbul. Their cover had been good enough to get them their first client meeting, which was now minutes away.
Right on time there was a call from Nadim, the concierge, telling them that their guests had arrived. Nadim added that the men looked like good businessmen. That was a code that meant they didn’t look dangerous.
That was as close to security as Morgan and Conley would get on this mission. No guards, no pat downs. The lax atmosphere would fit their cover as dilettante arms dealers.
The men arrived at the door and Morgan let them in. He recognized them from their photographs and ushered them into the suite.
The two Kurds wore Western suits. The senior partner was middle-aged and bald with a greying beard. He introduced himself as Barnas. He was with a thin, nervous-looking young man named Hilmi.
“We spoke on the phone, I’m Dan and this is my partner Peter,” Morgan said as they all exchanged handshakes.
“Can I offer you a drink?” Conley asked pleasantly.
Just then, the four women came bursting out of the other room. The two Kurds nearly jumped out of their skin and then looked in shock at the women.
“Excuse me,” Conley said. “Ladies, thank you for coming. I regret that we have to do some business now.”
Conley led them to the door and the women made a show of kissing him good-bye. Morgan saw two of them press slips of paper into Conley’s hand.
That would be their private phone numbers, Morgan thought, shaking his head.
Whatever was going on with Dani, Conley had not lost his touch. Maintaining a cover was as much stagecraft as it was spycraft.
And Peter Conley excelled at both.
He returned to the men and said, “Where were we? Can I get you a drink?”
The two men didn’t respond, watching as the last of the women left the room.
“A drink?” Conley repeated.
“No thank you,” Barnas said. “We would like to begin.”
“Business first, that’s fine.” Conley said. “If you can come to the computer we’ll show you—”
“With all due respect, we’d like to see the actual merchandise,” Hilmi said.
“We can take you to our warehouse now. Will that be soon enough?” Morgan said.
“That would be ideal,” Barnas said apologetically. “We have pressing concerns. We are from Diyarbakir, which is close to both Syria and Iraq. The new leadership in Ankara insists on intervening in Syria. We have no doubt this is a pretext for the new president to—”
“Let me stop you right there,” Conley said. “We’re sure your cause is just but please understand that this is just a business for us. And if you have cash, we can do business.”
“So you would just as soon sell weapons to our enemies?” Barnas asked.
“The only thing you need to concern yourself with is that we are willing to sell you the weapons you need to defend yourselves, or fight for your cause, whatever it is.” Morgan said.
Ten minutes later, the four men were in the hotel limousine. Morgan was not sorry to leave the hotel. It was expensive and depressing. When he had a choice, he always stayed in the Old City, much of which dated back to the Roman Empire.
Their hotel was in the aptly named New City section, and when you went outside it could have been any modern city in the world. Why anyone would come to this ancient place and stay there was beyond him.
They headed south for the town of Zeytinburnu, where they had rented a warehouse near the waterfront industrial section of the city. They were only a few blocks away from the hotel when Morgan saw that they were being followed. The tail car was a nondescript sedan. Though the vehicle was unmarked, Morgan recognized it as Turkish police issue.
Like most drivers in Istanbul, the hotel limo driver seemed to think the gas pedal had two options: off and to the floor. What made the driver good at his job was that he was even more aggressive than the drivers around him who all seemed to view traffic rules as mere suggestions.
Remarkably, the police car managed to stay on their tail. After a few minutes Morgan turned to his partner.
“Do you see it?” Morgan asked.
“Yes, I admire their professionalism.”
That was the problem with establishing yourselves as high-profile arms dealers. To attract customers you had to attract attention.
And not all of that attention was commercial.
Well, that was the job, Morgan thought. Looking behind them, he could now see that the driver and the passenger of the police car were wearing the distinctive blue uniforms and caps of the Turkish police.
“What is it?” Barnas asked.
“The good news is that we are making good time, the bad news is that we’re being followed by the police,” Morgan said evenly.
“What?” Hilmi said, nearly jumping out of his seat.
“Don’t worry, I suspect they are primarily interested in us. And since we haven’t done business yet, I don’t think they will pay much attention to you, at least not immediately. My partner and I will be getting off in a minute. Stay with the car. I will instruct the driver to take you back to the hotel. Then I recommend you leave Istanbul.”
As instructed, the driver let them off at the next light.
They were six blocks from the warehouse and the two agents walked casually on the sidewalk. Morgan could smell the salt water from the strait of Bosporus that separated the two halves of the city—and the two continents of Europe and Asia. Up ahead he could see the Roman walls that had protected the Old City for a thousand years, before it had fallen to the Ottomans in the fifteenth century.
Morgan regretted that he wouldn’t see the inside of the walls on this trip—not with the police car pacing them. They were getting br
aver and coming closer, and Morgan wondered if he and Conley would make it to their warehouse before being approached.
The agents passed an olive oil factory and were in front of the electronics warehouse next door to their building when they heard the unmarked car pull over behind them. Two doors slammed.
“Pardon, bakarmısınız?” Morgan heard behind them. Though he knew almost no Turkish, he knew that was the equivalent of excuse me in English.
Morgan and Conley ignored them and kept walking.
Now they were in front of their own building. Morgan would rather have been inside. They were far too exposed on the street.
“Dur!” he heard one of the police shout behind them.
Before they could take another step, Morgan felt a hand grab his arm from behind.
Well, it looked like they would have to do this outside, he thought as he turned around.
When they were facing the two stern-looking police officers, he glanced over at Conley. His partner was smiling broadly.
“Is there a problem, officers?” Conley asked, his tone friendly.
The policeman closest to him fired off a series of instructions in Turkish.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Do you speak English?” Conley said, though Morgan had no doubt that his friend had understood every word.
“I’ll handle this,” Morgan said and then he said one of the few phrases he knew in Turkish. It was a phrase he had made a point of learning in a number of languages. “Hoverkraftımıniçiyılanbalığıdolu,” he said as pleasantly as he could. Or, in English, my hovercraft is full of eels.
He heard Conley chuckle as the phrase had the usual effect and the two policemen looked at him dumbfounded.
Before they could say anything in response, Morgan and Conley sprang into action. Morgan punched the policeman in front of him as hard as he could, square in the nose. Disoriented, the policeman raised his hands to his face. His vision would be compromised and blood was already flowing from his nose.
Morgan relieved the man of his handgun and then clocked him two more times until he fell to the ground, unconscious. Conley’s policeman collapsed next to his partner.
Looking around, Morgan saw that though the street wasn’t exactly crowded, they had attracted the attention of several people nearby.
“Let’s get inside,” Morgan said. As soon as he’d finished speaking, they heard the first siren.
And then the second.
By the time Morgan had the key card in the lock to their building’s front door Morgan had lost count of the sirens.
Stepping inside Morgan said, “I’m not impressed by your plan so far.”
As Morgan slammed the door shut, he could see three marked police cars screech to a stop and heard even more nearby.
“What do you mean?” Conley said. “It’s working perfectly. They are taking us very seriously.”
Acknowledgments
I would first like to thank the following people for their friendship and encouragement over the years since I began writing in 2009. My closest and dearest friend Nancy K. Schneider; Dr. Rodney Jones; Alicia Schmitt; Bill Ross; Mayur Gudka; John Gilstrap; my niece, Lianne Webster Limoli; Michaela Hamilton, my editor at Kensington; Marian Lanouette, a fellow author at Kensington; Caio Camargo, Steve Hartov, Ric Meyers, and Kevin Ryan—all members of my extraordinary writing team—and Linda M. Maloney, who encouraged me to write my Dan Morgan novels.
I have been blessed to have every one of the people in my life, with each one contributing something special. Last, I want to recognize my friend, brother, and partner John, who has been gone twenty-one years already. I miss and love you and think about you many times every day. I know you are up there and still have my back.
About the Author
Leo J. Maloney is the author of the acclaimed Dan Morgan thriller series, which includes Termination Orders, Silent Assassin, Black Skies, Twelve Hours, Arch Enemy, For Duty and Honor, Rogue Commander, Dark Territory, Threat Level Alpha, and War of Shadows. He was born in Massachusetts, where he spent his childhood, and graduated from Northeastern University. He spent over thirty years in black ops, accepting highly secretive missions that would put him in the most dangerous hot spots in the world. Since leaving that career, he has had the opportunity to try his hand at acting in independent films and television commercials. He has seven movies to his credit, both as an actor and behind the camera as a producer, technical advisor, and assistant director. He is also an avid collector of classic and muscle cars. He lives in Venice, Florida.
Visit him at www.leojmaloney.com or on Facebook or Twitter.
War of Shadows Page 31