Hard Rain (14 page)

I
t had stopped sleeting by the time we left Ocirik’s, the cloud cover low and grey and appearing to sink under its own weight. The lunchtime crowds were out in force now, huddling against the cold and dodging occasional sheets of water thrown across the sidewalk by vehicles driving through puddles. The cop car had gone.

Masters, I noticed, had turned a shade of green that didn’t go with anything except maybe a toilet bowl and a lie-down. ‘You okay?’ I asked.

She nodded, but I wasn’t convinced. I checked the street for Emir, but couldn’t see him or his vehicle anywhere, so we headed to the point where he’d dropped us off, a short distance down the road.

A couple of guys walking out of a shop with their heads down bumped into us. I was about to apologise when I recognised one of them – the interpreter from Ocirik’s. He gave me a clear view of the butt of a handgun, removing it partially from his jacket. This told me an apology for bumping into him was probably unnecessary.

A van pulled up beside us, the door flew open, and Masters and I were hauled inside by half-a-dozen hands. The door slid shut and we were forcibly pushed onto the floor, the muzzles of various pistols thrust into our faces as the van accelerated away with a lurch and a squeal of wheelspin.

‘Hey! What the hell –’ Masters demanded.

‘Shut up,’ came the reply, from someone out of sight behind me.

‘What are you doing?’ she said, ignoring the advice.

We’d been abducted, obviously, but by whom and for what purpose I had no idea. I counted seven faces behind the guns. All had dark Mediterranean-type complexions, were all male, and all were as relaxed as if abduction was something they did every day of the week. ‘You going to tell us what this is all about?’ I asked the interpreter.

‘Like he said,’ the interpreter whispered, gesturing at the man behind me with a flick of his weapon, ‘shut the fuck up.’

A man beside him raised his pistol, backhand, coiling for a downward strike into my face. The interpreter put his hand on the guy’s arm to stop the follow-through. Something told me I should not misconstrue this as an indication that the interpreter was in any way an ally. The something telling me this was the silencer he had begun twisting onto the end of his H&K Mk 23.

I felt a couple of hands searching my pockets. Masters was getting the same treatment. They found what they were looking for and began passing around our shields.

‘I told you they were OSI,’ said the interpreter once the wallet had gone around the van. Masters’ credentials were tossed back on her chest. Mine were kept.

‘Wimps,’ spat someone else.

‘Yafa is going to love this one,’ said someone, leering at Masters.

‘I hope she let us watch,’ added another.

Their accents were thick and varied. I wondered whether they spoke English because it was the common language between them. What did that observation tell me? That they were some kind of mercenary militia?

A few of the men began to chuckle, though none of the weapons were removed from our faces. The interpreter took out his cell phone and dialled a number. He spoke to someone in a language that didn’t sound like Turkish, but I could’ve been wrong. After a brief conversation, he ended the call and put the cell away. The van took several
violent lefts and rights, throwing all of us around. It then suddenly slowed and I felt the van sway and bump like it was going over a gutter. It sped up briefly before coming to a stop with locked wheels and a crunch of gravel and earth.

The door slid back in its rails, letting in the gloom of the day, as well as a little rain. Masters and I were pushed out of the vehicle. I recognised the Bosphorus and the smell of seawater and diesel oil that came with it, but apart from that I had no idea where we were in relation to the rest of the city. The cloud cover was now low enough to reach up and touch, and the city skyline had been consumed by it. I looked around. We’d been driven into the back of a kids’ playground, the swings and various monkey bars empty and silent in the steady drizzle. Nearby was the grey marble wall of one of the many mosques that crowd Istanbul like Starbucks do American cities.

Another vehicle was parked close by, a large black Jaguar, a man and a woman leaning on it. There was no sun and yet the guy was wearing sunglasses, which meant he was either a rock star or an asshole. My money was on the latter. He was also wearing hiking boots, black cargo pants and a Yankees-branded hoodie. He moved like a pro boxer approaching the ring – slightly stooped with ropey shoulders that rolled as he walked. A silver matchstick protruded from his tight lips.

His partner was a woman, a brunette, and better dressed. She carried a small black umbrella to keep the rain off her layered, shoulder-length dark hair. She wore a fitted black leather jacket zipped to the neck, expensive jeans and black leather boots. Her fingernails were painted to match her Ferrari-red lipstick, her eyes were large and black with no discernible pupil. I could imagine her hanging out in a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. For a reason I couldn’t put my finger on, she also looked by far the more dangerous of the two.

‘What have we here?’ asked the man as he and his companion circled us like a couple of hungry sharks.

‘You’ve got trouble,’ I said, as calmly as I could manage.

Beside my ear I heard the double
click-click
of a pistol’s slide being
pulled back and released. ‘Shh,’ said a voice close enough for me to sense warm breath against my neck, smell the garlic on it.

One of the men passed my ID over to the guy with the toothpick.

‘So, you are American. OSI. You are air force.’

I said nothing.

‘You may answer.’

‘This guy wants me to shut up, and you want me to answer. I wish to hell you people would make up your damn minds,’ I said.

Someone slapped the side of my head – hard. Once the marbles between my ears stopped rattling, I turned to the guy who did the slapping. ‘Do that again, Mac, and I’ll stop your heart.’

A couple of his buddies responded to my apparent foolhardy attempt at machismo with an appreciative smile and a nod.

‘What is your interest in Adem Fedai?’ asked the man with the toothpick.

I noticed his woman taking a special interest in Masters. She buried her nose in Anna’s hair, inhaled deeply and then raised her head, eyes closed like she’d breathed in the intoxicating scent of heaven itself.

‘I told you Yafa would like her,’ said one of the men to a buddy.

‘Who the fuck are you people?’ I demanded.

Another slap came from my blind side, this one nearly taking my head off. I turned. The guy smirked, daring me. I opened and closed my mouth to clear the ringing and lifted my shoulders up and down – keeping the motion slow and painful. Then I whipped back around and snapped out a short, sharp punch, aiming for the soft flesh an inch below the man’s ear. I drove a cocked knuckle into it. The asshole immediately fell to the ground and began to convulse, the whites of his eyes showing in their sockets. A cold steel muzzle jammed into my nose, pushing my head back.

The guy on the ground began frothing at the mouth as a couple of his buddies dropped to their knees to attend him. They were swearing and speaking in a mixture of languages, wondering what the hell had happened to their pal.

‘What have you done to him?’ asked the interpreter.

‘Kept my word.’

‘You have stopped his heart?’

If they wanted to save the guy’s life, I knew what they had to do. I also knew that they’d better hurry up and do it. I heard one of them say the magic words ‘heart attack’.

‘You might try CPR,’ I suggested.

‘Shut you face,’ said the toothpick guy.

One of the men took my advice anyway and began pushing down on the patient’s sternum and then administering mouth-to-mouth. The patient responded pretty quickly. He groaned and moved his arms and legs slowly. The guy must have been fit. Within a minute, he was sitting up, tears pouring down his cheeks. Except for the two guys covering us with pistols and the woman with the lips, everyone else was attending to their comrade back from the dead.

‘Not bad for a wimp,’ Masters said under her breath.

‘So, you are a tough guy, eh?’ the woman whispered in my ear.

I said nothing, mainly because I happened to note a formidable set of brass knuckles now gracing her right fist. One of the men covering us laid a steel barrel across my ear so that I could feel the cold metal. Satisfied I’d received the message to do nothing other than flinch, the woman swung a punch into my ribs that sent a white ball of pain exploding into the space behind my eyes. I doubled over and gasped for breath that refused to come.

She bent down and hissed, ‘If you will behave, I will become playful, yes?’ The woman gave my ear a lick. ‘Now, Adem Fedai . . . tell us why you are interested in this former Mossad agent.’

The coughing I had to do to get my lungs working again hid my surprise.
Adem Fedai – an ex-Mossad agent?
I felt the warm comfort of Masters’ hand on my shoulder and heard her ask our captors, ‘How do you know he’s ex-Mossad?’

‘Only we will ask the questions,’ the woman replied.

‘Not if you want answers,’ I said, slowly getting to my feet, trying hard not to show the pain.

‘Be careful, my friend,’ cautioned the guy with the toothpick. ‘Yafa
does not like men, and you have annoyed her. I would not like to be you.’

I hoped the bitch hadn’t added another broken bone to my growing collection.

‘We have been search for this Adem Fedai for six months,’ said the toothpick guy. ‘We trace him to the water-pipe shop and have been watching his home. We were about to move on him when he disappear. Then Turkish police watch his home. We did not know why. Then you came along asking questions. You are military police. What is your interest in Fedai?’

The police had managed to keep the Portman and Bremmel murders out of the press, so maybe these people didn’t know shit. Or maybe they did know and were just spinning us a bunch of crap. The woman who slugged me because she didn’t like men had now pulled out a compact and was touching up those lips of hers like she’d just ordered a drink.

‘We are investigating the murder of a colonel in the United States Air Force,’ I informed her. ‘Fedai worked at the scene of the crime. But he has disappeared, as you said. We just thought we’d see where he lived and smoke a little coffee-flavoured tobacco while we were at it.’

The Yafa woman and the toothpick guy exchanged glances – I guessed, wondering whether or not to believe me. ‘Where else will you look for him?’ asked the woman.

‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘And if I knew, I wouldn’t say.’

‘We could make you talk.’

I shrugged. ‘Lady, making me talk is easy. It’s making me shut up that’s the hard part.’

‘True,’ said Masters.

‘You will be quiet.’

Toothpick and Yafa went into a huddle with the guy who’d been our interpreter back at Ocirik’s. I used the opportunity to eyeball the rest of these guys. They were all confident and cool, with the certain swagger that comes from killing enough people that you no longer think too much about it.

‘We wish to offer our apologies for these methods,’ said the interpreter, suddenly all sweetness and light. ‘We will return you to the place we took you from.’

I was about to tell them not to worry about it, that we’d catch a cab, when the Yafa woman walked up to Masters, took her in her arms and kissed her hard and full on the lips.

W
e watched the van move away from us and merge into traffic. ‘I think she liked you,’ I said.

Masters was as angry as I’d ever seen her. ‘Thanks for your understanding.’

I went to put my hand on her shoulder but the move was a little too sudden for my rib, and it let me know in no uncertain terms. I winced.

‘You okay?’ Masters asked.

‘No, as a matter of fact.’

‘Good.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘How about you?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it . . . Jesus, I feel like taking a shower. One day I’m going to even the score with that bitch.’

‘A little tit for tat?’

‘What did you say?’

‘Forget it,’ I replied. I pressed the bruise on my side to see how bad it was. The rib wasn’t broken, but maybe it was cracked.

‘That punch of yours, how’d you do it?’

‘There’s a thing right here,’ I said, touching the skin on her neck below the ear, ‘called the vagus nerve. Runs from the brain stem all the way to the heart. Hit it just right, or squeeze it with a certain wrestling
hold, and the heart stops. Dead, if you’re not careful.’

I could see the pulse in her neck and, despite the cold, her skin was smooth and warm. A couple of fine hairs waving in the breeze curled around my finger.

‘It was a lucky punch. I’ve tried it a few times in the past and it’s never worked.’

‘Well, it worked this time. Nice bit of theatre, too,’ she said with a smile.

A vehicle honked its horn close by and spoiled the moment. I looked up and saw Emir’s Renault weaving towards us through the traffic. He pulled to a stop beside the kerb, tyres locked up in the wet road grit. I opened the door for Masters.

‘Where have you been, Emir?’ I asked as I went in behind her.

‘Looking for you, sir,’ he said, instantly on the defensive.

‘You didn’t see us get muscled into a van?’

‘What is “muscled”? Sir, I cannot stop here. I have been driving round and round. But I could not see you.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Emir,’ Masters said. To me, she added, ‘What could he have done about it anyway?’

True, we couldn’t exactly expect Emir to be the cavalry.

‘So what do you think those assholes wanted?’ she asked.

‘You mean aside from Fedai?’

‘Did you buy the whole, we’re-after-an-ex-Mossad-agent shit?’

‘No,’ I replied.

‘If Fedai were ex-Mossad, you’d think the CIA would’ve picked that up when they ran the guy’s background. They’d have put him through the wringer for sure before they let him butler for Portman.’

‘You’d think so, only you’re assuming the CIA wasn’t busy someplace else, shooting itself in the foot,’ I said.

‘So let’s say they are Mossad.’

‘Then the whole hunt-for-a-rogue-ex-agent thing might explain them stomping around with guns in a foreign country, abducting and smooching beautiful military policemen . . .’

‘Vin – shut up,’ said Masters.

‘Sorry. Okay, whether Fedai is ex-Mossad or not, the fact remains that those people – whoever they are – obviously want to get their hands on him.’

‘Could it be that he has something they want?’ Masters wondered.

‘Such as?’

‘Well, take your initial hunch, the one about Fedai returning to find Portman murdered, seeing the wall safe blown, opening the floor safe and taking off with whatever he found inside it.’

‘Right, that hunch.’

‘Which brings me back to wondering who those people were,’ she said.

Whoever they were, they were interested in Fedai, interested enough to push us around. And that made me interested in them.

‘Excuse, please,’ Emir interrupted. ‘But I think someone behind follow us.’

‘What . . . ? Where . . . ?’ Masters said as we both turned to check our six.

‘A white Hyundai,’ said Emir. ‘Can you see it?’

‘I can see about thirty of them,’ I replied.

‘This one is clean. I turn here, you will see.’

Emir swung into a narrow side street. Several vehicles followed, and one of them was a late-model white Hyundai. And it was dirt- and dust-free – something I had to admit was unusual on the streets of Istanbul.

‘You got it?’ I asked Masters.

‘Yep.’

The vehicle was too far away for us to see who was behind the wheel.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Emir asked.

‘You want to lose them, Vin?’ Masters said.

‘No, let’s talk to them. Emir?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Turn into the next main street. Don’t drive fast. Take it nice and easy.’

‘Nice and easy. Yes, sir.’

Emir did as I asked and turned into the next main street, coming off the gas.

‘Did the Hyundai take the turn?’ I asked him, not wanting to look around and, potentially, give the game away.

‘Yes, he turn,’ Emir replied, squinting into the rear-view mirror.

Up ahead, a streetlight turned red, bringing a block and a half of the traffic behind us to a stop.

‘Let’s go,’ I said.

Masters and I jumped out and ran through the crowd of stationary vehicles. The Hyundai was maybe thirty yards back. As we approached it, I saw two silhouettes in its windscreen. I took the driver’s door, Masters the passenger’s.

‘Hey, look. It’s my favourite crime-fighting duo,’ I said as the window came down.

‘You think you’re so goddamn smart,’ drawled Special Agent Arlow Mallet.

‘And you need to be smart when Howdy
and
Doody are on your tail,’ said Masters through the other window.

Goddard and Mallet looked angry and self-conscious.

‘You want to tell us why you’re following us?’ I asked.

‘We weren’t following you, Cooper,’ said Mallet.

‘C’mon, fellas. You were either following or blundering – take your pick.’

‘We don’t have to explain anything to you, Cooper,’ Mallet replied.

‘We think you do,’ I said. ‘You keep showing up just a little after the fact. We want to know why.’

‘Blow me, Cooper.’

‘Say, Special Agent Masters. That was quite a show you put on in the park,’ said Goddard with a leer, switching to the offensive.

Mallet took the cue to join in. ‘Yeah, who’d have thought you swung both ways?’

‘So you
have
been following us,’ I said.

‘Just happened along, Cooper.’ Mallet smiled, which had the effect
of further sinking his cheekbones, so that his face reminded me of a deflated football.

Masters was incensed. ‘You saw all that going on in the park, but you did nothing about it?’

‘Next time you’re thinking of putting on a show like that, lady,’ sniggered Goddard, ‘give us a little advance warning and we’ll try and get a webcam on it.’

Masters put her hands on the Hyundai’s roof and balled them into fists.

Mallet inched the Hyundai forward. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, step back from the vehicle,’ he said.

The blaring of horns suddenly entered my consciousness. I hadn’t noticed the traffic snarl we’d caused. Up ahead, the traffic light was green and Emir was parked in the middle of the road gesticulating at the motorists hurling abuse at him for refusing to move.