Byzantine Gold (4 page)

“I’ve already sketched out a possible plan. I’ll prearrange for a private boat provided by the buyer for our goods to be in the area. We hide a small boat in a cove or some similar place close to the site. We use it to transport our payload to the buyer’s boat. The Turkish Navy cannot search every pleasure craft in the area.”

“I think this is a mad scheme.”

“Mad yes; but highly profitable if we succeed.”

More than profit motivated Darav. If his plan worked, they’d be fat with cash. The funds would buy rockets, plastic explosives, new Kalashnikov rifles and an endless supply of ammunition. Full bellies, good coats, new boots, radios, and satellite phones would boost the sagging morale of his fighters.

With better weapons, he’d orchestrate an intense reign of terror across Turkey. He’d target government facilities, the military and police, and their families, not just in the southeastern provinces, but all over the country. Then he’d strike the Ankara government where it hurt the most, financially. He’d attack historical sites and resorts. A bomb in Topkapi Palace or Ephesus would kill or injure hundreds and terrify tourists. Once Ankara was forced to bend to their demands, he’d be a hero to his people, to the cause.  

“How do we know when to make this raid?” The wind kicked up again. Omar stuck his hands under his armpits for warmth.

“I only need to get myself on the team to discover the information necessary.”

“Simple as that, eh?” Omar mocked with a skeptical smirk.

“The Maritime Institute of Archaeology and Research is responsible for the project. Their newsletter with personnel assigned is posted on the Internet. Tomorrow I’ll go to a
cyber cafe in Mosul, check their backgrounds, choose a suitable member and replace him.”

“Watch out. Mosul is crawling with Iraqi police and suspicious American military. You never know who’s looking over your shoulder while you surf the web. If they don’t like what they see or what they think they’re seeing, you’ll be interrogated or worse.”

“One Kurd is the same as another to the Americans.”

“To a regular soldier perhaps. But not if one of them contacts Military Intelligence.”

“A small risk. The Iraqi police are the worry, depending on who stops you. There’s a
friendly
cyber café upstairs from a coffee house on the eastern edge of the city.”

“Irbil is safer.”

“Too far.” Darav had another reason for Mosul over Irbil. He’d secretly siphoned off some of their precious funds for personal use. The owner of the café also kept cheap whores from Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. Darav preferred the Azerbaijani girls. They had nicer teeth, not so crooked or yellow. 

Omar shrugged. “Your choice. This MIAR team you’re researching, aren’t they all divers?”

“I suppose.”

“Do you dive?”

“The excavation doesn’t start for a few weeks, by then, I will,” Darav said. “I need only to apply myself.”

“I wonder who’ll replace you here.”

“Why would we need another leader?”

“This insane adventure is your death warrant.”

Chapter Seven

Istanbul

“The authorities are still searching, right?” Charlotte asked.

“Interpol has a man reviewing the security camera footage from the airports, train stations, and ports. The Paris police pulled the metro footage. They show Tischenko boarding the subway a few blocks from our hotel and exiting at the Etoile stop. Unfortunately, the camera lost sight of him when he disappeared in the large crowd of tourists,” Atakan said.

“They had to have missed him leaving the country. He didn’t vanish into thin air.” She wanted to hear he’d turned up somewhere. She wanted to hear the authorities had some clue where the killer was.

“No, I think he hid out in Paris or the suburbs. He probably waited until the Easter holiday when the search for him grew less intense, rented a car, and drove out of the country. It’s what I’d do,” Atakan said.

“Will Interpol review the digital images from the border crossings of surrounding non Eurozone countries?”

“I don’t know,” he said with a single shrug of his good shoulder.

His wound forced him to wear a sling on his other arm, which he hated. The inability to do little things without help, like tying his tie, or driving himself places because he couldn’t steer and shift, made him crazy. Iskender had to pick him up on his way to the office. He refused to go to restaurants, embarrassed that Charlotte or someone else at the table would have to cut his food for him.

There was the occasional pleasant upside to his infirmity. She timed her morning showers and fast towel-off to coincide with the point in his dressing when he needed help with his tie. A steamy room and her warm, naked body standing close sometimes led to a fun quickie against the sink counter. 

“They’re taking the incident very seriously, but you’re talking a lot of man hours,” he added.

Charlotte understood resources were always limited even in agencies as big as Interpol.   

“Nick’s offered to take vacation time and lend support here if you need a second set of eyes before we leave for Cyprus.”

Atakan stopped his bad, one-handed job of cubing eggplant for the
patlicanli pilav
and shot Charlotte a sour look. “He’ll do no such thing. My unit and I need no outside assistance. It was to my everlasting humiliation you hired that Moroccan private security man to watch over me in the hospital.”

“The French investigators thought it was a good idea. They’d considered suggesting additional security themselves and steered me to him. After all, he was a professional fighter.”

“And no doubt told his boxer friends what a hot dog I am.”

“Hot dog? You mean weenie.”

“Same-same.”

He cut another round off of the eggplant. The slice stuck to the blade. Atakan shook the knife hard, trying to shake it free, which he did, straight into the sink and down the disposal.

“Kahretsin!”

Charlotte had good conversational skills in Turkish. Her ability to write in the language remained a difficulty. Conjugation continued to stymie her. Kahretsin was Atakan’s “go to” curse word. She searched but never found the word or one similar in any English-Turkish dictionary. He said it had no literal translation. She guessed it was a combination of
damn it
and
shit

“Why don’t you let me finish chopping those? I’m almost done with the onions.”

“No, I can do it.”

“I’m sure you can, but I was hoping to eat sometime tonight.”

“I may be slow, but I will finish.” He attacked the eggplant with renewed determination. “Ah-hah, you see?” he said minutes later, as a thick, but cleanly cut slice fell from the body.

She gave up. Once Atakan dug his heels in on a point, it was almost impossible to move him.

A year earlier Atakan had introduced her brother, to Canan, a pretty friend of his sister’s. They saw each other every day for two weeks before Nick had to return to Chicago. Charlotte knew the couple stayed in touch by email and spoke over the phone often.

“Frankly, I think Nick’s offer has less to do with you than with finding an excuse to see Canan again,” she said, changing the subject as Atakan continued to whack at the poor eggplant like an apprentice Samurai. She’d never felt sympathy for a vegetable until now. 

“There...” He pointed to the slices and began to dice them. “I told you I didn’t need help,” he said, tossing the uneven pieces into a colander and sprinkling salt over the cubes.

Never far from her thoughts, she rehashed the attack again and again, trying to make sense of what Tischenko intended, other than the obvious murder of Atakan.

“Tischenko didn’t care we knew he was the shooter. He was already wanted for murder so what’s one more charge? I’m stuck on Paris. Why choose there to execute you?”

“I’ve given a great deal of thought to the question too. I think it was his way of letting us, you specifically, know he is watching and has been for some time.”

“Makes sense.” She grudgingly had to give him credit for the psychological game he played. He wanted to ramp up the fear factor and it worked. The implication of his watching terrified her. If true, they weren’t safe anywhere. “I wonder how he tracked us?”

“I suspect he paid a techie to hack into one of our computers with the trip details.”

“That’s creepy.”

“He’s a creepy guy, as you well know. I suggested the possibility to the Director. He felt it had merit. I turned over our computers today. A forensic expert is conducting a deep diagnostic on them while I’m gone. The Ministry is loaning me a laptop to take on the project. We’ll buy you a new one.”

“Mine was most vulnerable.”

“Yes. The IT staff at the Ministry installs the same powerful firewall system in our personal computers used by all our government agencies.” Atakan began sautéing the eggplant and onions. “An unauthorized breech of my computer is difficult.”

“Why not start the diagnostics immediately? Why the delay? Every day they wait, Tischenko knows our moves.”

“There’s no point in hurrying now. If either computer is compromised, he already knows our plans. The project information was documented prior to the Paris trip.”

A different assignment might keep Atakan safer. “I hate to say this, but since he knows about the Cyprus excavation, maybe you shouldn’t go.”

“The Director and my unit discussed the pros and cons of the situation. Any field job I am sent on involves risk to civilians.”

The civilian risk aspect had completely escaped her mind, she’d been so concerned over Atakan.

“Although, he hasn’t made an attempt in Istanbul yet, assuming the worst case scenario, he has contacts here who can aid him in slipping through our border security. This presents the best opportunity for a second attempt.”

“I knew you should’ve gone to your parent’s house.”

He hadn’t because of her refusal to stay with his parents. That stupid reluctance on her part brought him right back to the worst place he could be. His mother’s words, ‘you are the root of the problem,’ and ‘bad for my son,’ surged to the forefront of Charlotte’s mind.

“A moot point. To circumvent civilian risk, we reviewed maps of current project sites outside of Istanbul. Based on topography, those in Turkey offer better opportunity for Tischenko than Cyprus. We talked it over with MIAR’s administration. They are fine with my presence at the excavation.”

“You’re certain he can’t pass from the south to the north through the island’s Green Line?”

“The buffer zone is heavily guarded. Everyone is checked.”

“Still leaves boat access in the north end.”

“We’ll supply the latest information and photos of him to the local police and security personnel at the few resorts in the area.”

“Doesn’t sound like much.”

“No place is one-hundred percent secure.”

“True.”

American presidents had the best security available and there’d been successful assassinations and close call attempts on them. No point in bringing up the fact. It did nothing to help their situation. Until Tischenko was caught, she’d trust in Atakan and the Ministry’s handling of the problem. Although, talking things over with Nick didn’t hurt.
Until Tischenko was caught.
Why did it boil down to that conclusion she wondered with bitterness. Why didn’t people like him ever get hit by a bus and killed? Why didn’t they ever slip in the bathtub and split their heads open and bleed to death or get struck by lightning and fried?

“You’re very quiet. Are you obsessing about Tischenko?” Atakan asked.

“No, I’m thinking about onions.” Charlotte leaned over the skillet and inhaled slow and deep. “I love the smell of frying onions.”

Someone knocked and she went to answer it. When she opened the door, a bouquet of pink tulips wrapped in cellophane lay at her feet. She picked up the flowers and stepped onto the landing to thank the delivery person. He was nowhere in sight. She peered over the railing to see if he was on the stairs but didn’t see or hear anyone.

“Pretty flowers,” Charlotte said and lay them on the kitchen counter. For a brief moment, she flashed back to the awful afternoon she sat by the tulip bed in the hospital garden.

She cut the wrap and the ribbon around the stems.

“This is very sweet. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.”

“Aren’t they from you?”

“No,” Atakan said, shaking his head.

“Then who sent them?”

“My mother has a beautiful flower garden with pink tulips. Perhaps my parents sent them.”

“Yeah right. Like your mother is going to send me flowers.”

“Anything’s possible, although I admit highly improbable.” Chuckling, he searched the wrapping and greenery around the bouquet. “No florist’s label.”

“Weird.”

“Very.”

A muffled version of
Call Me
, the old Blondie song came from inside Charlotte’s purse. She quickly dug through her handbag to retrieve her cell phone before the call went to voice-mail. She answered on the fourth ring. Caller I.D. showed “restricted.”

“Hello.”

“They are called, Angelique tulips. You admired them in the hospital garden in Paris.”

Charlotte froze, holding her breath as she listened to the nightmare voice, remembering how his Eastern European accent rounded certain sounds and how he stressed the last syllables in his words. Called became
cawl-d.

Tischenko.

“Everything in time,” he said and hung up.

Charlotte dropped the phone on the table. She turned to Atakan.

The shock must’ve shown on her face. “What is wrong?”

“That was Tischenko,” she said, finding her voice. “The flowers are from him. He was watching me in Paris when I was at the hospital. He—”

Atakan didn’t wait for her to finish. He rushed into the living room, grabbed his gun from the bookshelf, and ran out of the apartment.

Charlotte followed as he flew down the four flights of stairs to the street.

“Stop.” Catching up to him on the sidewalk, she hooked his elbow with her hand. Fearful an armed Tischenko hid nearby, she positioned herself in front of Atakan, thinking to shield him. “We can’t stand here. He could be anywhere taking aim at you right now.”

“Go back inside.”