I Am Pilgrim (79 page)

‘And he still didn’t get it?’

‘You didn’t let me finish. He said he doesn’t believe in it – but he believes in you. You’ve got thirty-six hours.’

The relief flooded in. One more chance for salvation, one more chance for redemption. ‘Thanks,’ I

said sheepishly.

‘Phone us, good or bad. If it starts falling apart, he wants to know immediately. He’s got the address to the nation written. He said no false hope, no letting wishing overwhelm logic. If it’s a turd, don’t try to polish it.’

‘Okay,’ I replied.

‘You’ve got my number; here’s another one in case there’s a problem. It’s Grosvenor ’s.’

As good as my memory was, I didn’t want to trust it so I pulled out my cellphone and entered it on

speed-dial under 911. I was still keying it in as Whisperer plunged on.

‘Okay, so we’ve got thirty-six hours and we’ve got the outline of a plan. Now we work it. What’s

the first step?’

‘A phone call,’ I replied. ‘We can’t make it ourselves – it has to sound like the real deal. What’s the highest-level asset we have inside Turkish intelligence?’

Given the country’s strategic importance, I knew that the CIA – like every other major intelligence

agency – would have spent years cultivating turncoats inside MIT.

Whisperer said nothing – I was asking him to discuss one of our nation’s most closely held secrets.

‘Dave?’ I prompted him.

‘There’s somebody we could use,’ he said reluctantly.

‘Who?’ I knew that I was pushing too hard, but I had to know if it would fly.

‘For shit’s sake – don’t ask me that,’ he replied.

‘Who?’

‘There are two deputy directors of MIT,’ he said finally. ‘One of ’em grew up Wal-Mart but prefers

Gucci, okay?’

‘Shit … a deputy director?’ I said, taken aback. Despite my years in The Division, I could still be

shocked at the scale of betrayal inside the secret world. ‘He’s not going to like doing this,’ I said.

‘He won’t have a choice – he’ll be scared I’ll turn him into his government. Maybe they still hang

traitors in Turkey. What are the details?’ I heard the rustle of paper as he grabbed a pen to take notes.

When I had finished, he read the bullet points back to me, but he had done more than record them –

he had improved and massaged them on the move and, once again, I thanked God for a great case officer.

‘What now?’ he asked. ‘Call him and get him to do it?’

‘Yeah, it’s warp-speed if we’re gonna have a chance.’

I rang off and, while Whisperer was dropping a bomb on a deputy director of MIT, I hammered on

the cockpit door. I heard the voice of the ex-US Air Force pilot through the intercom.

‘What is it?’

‘Change of plan. Ditch Gaza, we’re going to Bodrum.’

The door flew open. ‘Where’s Bodrum?’

I yelled the answer, but I was already turning back to the closet. I had another urgent call to make.

Chapter Twelve

WHEN HIS PHONE rang, bradley was in a bar on the Lower East Side. It wasn’t some hipster joint with

tapas and a ‘tasting menu’ but a real place with nicotine ingrained in the walls and drinks strong enough to curl your toes. A last vestige of old New York – a cops’ bar, in other words.

Ben was attending a farewell for some old warhorse and, thanks to the popularity of the retiree and

the design of the speakeasy, the only place he could escape the crowd and noise was out in the street.

As a result, he was holding a long-neck beer in drizzling rain when he got drafted into the front line of the secret world.

‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘In a CIA jet over Jordan,’ I said. There was no point in masking it, I needed him shaken, to hear the clarion call.

‘As soon as you hang up,’ I continued, ‘I want you to call the man you’ve been passing messages to.

His name is David McKinley, he’s the director of United States intelligence.’

I heard Bradley’s intake of breath. ‘Shit, I thought—’

‘Forget whatever you thought. This is the real deal. Tell Dave I need a wingman fast. He’ll organize a chopper to take you to an airport and get you on a government jet.’

‘Where am I going?’ he asked.

‘Bodrum. McKinley will arrange the documentation – you’re an NYPD detective investigating the

murder of Ingrid Kohl.’

‘Who’s Ingrid Kohl?’

‘It’s the name of the dead woman you found at the Eastside Inn.’

‘How do you—?’

‘Later,’ I said, as I thanked providence for Cameron and whoever Ingrid really was: their crimes had got me into Turkey and had at least given us a chance.

‘I’ll pick you up at the airport,’ I said. ‘And Ben – make sure you bring your side arm.’

Six miles high, turning hard for Bodrum, the turbulence finally abating, I figured he wouldn’t need

it if everything went to plan. Then again, when had that ever happened?

Chapter Thirteen

DESPITE HIS VEHEMENT objections, the Deputy Director of the Turkish MIT made the phone call twenty

minutes after I had spoken to Whisperer. It was to Leyla Cumali.

I never heard the conversation, of course, but some time later I read a transcript of it translated into English. Even from that document, devoid of all inflection and emotion, it was easy to tell that the MIT guy was a master of his craft. He had one of his assistants phone and schedule a time for Cumali to call him. She was given the number of MIT’s switchboard and, by the time she had made it through

various assistants, she would have been in no doubt that she was talking to a very powerful man.

Very politely, he said that he needed her help in a highly confidential matter concerning a foreign

visitor. God, the relief she must have felt when she realized he wasn’t investigating her.

‘How well do you know Brodie David Wilson?’ he asked.

The transcript records a pause – it would have been Cumali overcoming her surprise – but the spook encouraged her.

‘Just your impressions, Detective – you’re not giving evidence here,’ he said, with a laugh. Damn,

he was good.

He listened quietly to her account of me, interrupting now and again to make her think that he cared.

‘Thank you, very good,’ he said, when she had trailed to a stop. ‘Have you felt at any time that perhaps he wasn’t a member of the FBI?’ he asked, starting to lay the pipe.

‘No … no,’ said Cumali, but then hesitated while she thought about it more deeply. ‘There was one

thing: he was clever – I mean, outstandingly clever – at what he did. I remember wondering if all FBI agents were that good.’

‘Yes, that would make sense … him being very good,’ the deputy director said obscurely. ‘Tell me,

did he ever make phone calls in your presence that led you to be suspicious or confused about their

content?’

‘No … He had a strange habit, though – I never noticed it, but my secretary did. Except when he was making a call, he always had the battery removed from his cellphone.’

Well, I thought, despite the make-up and the stilettos, Hayrunnisa was smarter than I had given her

credit for.

‘Why would he take the battery out?’ the spook asked.

‘I have no idea.’

‘Then let me help. If somebody has a cellphone in their pocket, it can be turned on remotely without them knowing.

‘Once it is powered up, the inbuilt microphone can be activated. Somebody who is tapping into the

phone can then hear everything that is being said in a room. If the battery has been taken out, there is no risk.’

‘I had no idea,’ Cumali replied.

‘So you’re not aware that intelligence agents always do that?’

‘Intelligence agents? Can you tell me what this is about?’

Working to Whisperer ’s instructions, that was exactly the question the deputy director wanted Cumali to ask. He played it like the expert he was.

‘You are a sworn officer of the law – a highly regarded one, I might add. All this is highly confidential.’

‘Of course.’

‘We have cameras at the Bulgarian border which record all crossings. We also know the licence tag

of Brodie Wilson’s rent-a-car so, thanks to certain software we use, we learned that he entered Bulgaria. Do you know why?’

The licence-tag recognition system was bullshit – sure it existed, but Turkey wasn’t even close to

using it. Cumali, however, had no way of knowing that.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Two of our men who operate over the border located him in a town called Svilengrad, where he

bought a cheap cellphone, a SIM card and made one phone call. Have you ever heard him mention that town?’

‘Never.’

‘As a consequence of this, we became very interested in Agent Wilson. For reasons I can’t discuss,

we now believe that may not be his real identity. We think his name is Michael John Spitz. Do you have any response to that name, Detective?’

‘None at all,’ Cumali replied.

‘Spitz is a member of an elite CIA group,’ the deputy director continued. ‘That would explain why

you thought he was an outstanding investigator. Their job is to hunt terrorists.’

I could imagine the fear that must have struck Cumali’s heart, sitting in her whitewashed house at

the old port, suddenly jolted into thinking about the coded calls between her and the Hindu Kush.

Their job is to hunt terrorists
.

In the name of Allah, she must have thought, who were the CIA after – her? Her brother? She knew

that he was a wanted man, but what the hell had he dragged her into?

‘We believe the homicide investigation is a cover,’ the deputy director said. ‘Something has brought him to Bodrum. Do you have any idea what he could be investigating?’

‘No,’ she lied. The transcript recorded that she said it ‘forcefully’.

‘Thank you, anyway, you’ve been very helpful,’ the spook said. ‘At the moment, we’re not going to

do anything. We’ll listen to Spitz’s phone calls and wait and see. But I’ll give you a number, a direct line. If you hear anything, you are to call me immediately. Understood?’ he said, before recounting

the number and hanging up.

Whisperer and I had broken all the rules: we had arranged for the target to learn the truth of the mission. But in doing so we had baited a trap – Cumali was a detective and I was gambling everything that her instinct would be to investigate. She would want to know more – fear would make sure of that

– and I believed there was only one place she could look: in my hotel room.

She wouldn’t do it herself but, given her work, she would know plenty of criminals who could. It

was now my job to make sure that everything was ready when they arrived.

Chapter Fourteen

FOR THE FIRST time in my professional life, I was out in the cold – I was on a mission without a legend or cover.

The small jet had crossed Jordan and landed at Milas late in the morning. I passed through Turkish

immigration without delay, grabbed my car and, instead of driving to Bodrum, headed fast into Milas.

Just behind City Hall, I found a camera store and watched as a young woman took my phone and printed out a hard copy of the photo I had taken of Cumali’s childhood home in Jeddah. The store also sold phone accessories and I bought another battery for the piece of junk I had purchased in Bulgaria.

I found a store catering to tradesmen nearby and picked up a hand drill, a small soldering iron, a

bottle of all-purpose glue and half a dozen other items. I threw them in the car and drove hard to Bodrum. I arrived back at the hotel while it was still lunchtime, which meant the manager was out and I made it to my room without delay.

I pulled the battered Samsonite suitcase off the top of the wardrobe and carefully cut open the fabric lining that concealed the inside of the two locks. I drilled out the tiny keyhole of one of them then turned my attention to the Bulgarian phone. With the soldering iron I managed to connect the new battery in sequence – doubling the time the phone could operate – then opened up the menu. I spent a frustrating twenty minutes manipulating the software so that the camera would take a photo every two seconds.

I taped the jury-rigged phone inside the Samsonite so that its camera lens was hard against the drilled-out lock, giving it a clear view of the room. Before I went out, I only had to turn the phone on, glue the fabric back and return the suitcase to the top of the closet. I figured that the camera would be perfectly hidden, but the location had one other great advantage – people searching for something will look inside a box or suitcase but hardly ever examine the object itself.

I now had my own surveillance system, admittedly held together by wire and rope, but workable: I

had to know for certain that the burglars had found what I was about to plant. Everything else depended on it.

I took the freshly printed photo of Cumali’s old home and added a computer disk which included a

copy of her Bahrain driver ’s licence, details of the scuba-diving blog and the precis of her college course in Istanbul. I put everything in a plastic file and placed it inside the in-room safe – a piece of crap with a battery-operated electronic keypad which any burglar worthy of the name would know how to power down, clear the code and open.

The photograph and documents were to convince Leyla Cumali that Michael Spitz was hunting her.

In addition, because they were genuine items, the so-called halo effect would wash over whatever

else she found – I was counting on the scum-boys also to steal my laptop. Inside, Cumali would find

two emails – totally fake – which I had drafted on the flight across Jordan. I was checking them, inserting them in my inbox at the appropriate dates, when the hotel phone rang.