Spoils of War, page 29
‘Please tell them –’
But the Turk had lost what little enthusiasm he had had for this enterprise. ‘No more, no more!’ he muttered, shaking his head, and turned away to head back for the road. Jack stood where he was for a moment, tempted to go nearer and try to reason with the guards himself, but Dale sensed his thoughts and said: ‘Forget it. You stand too good a chance of getting shot. We’ll find another way.’
Despondently they retreated from the compound for a second time. As they began to follow the taxi man a car swept around the bend ahead of them, catching them in its headlights. It slowed down as it approached the gates and stopped when it drew level with Jack and Dale.
The car was one of the smaller BMWs. The driver’s window was wound down and a woman’s face was framed in the opening, attractive Turkish features fringed by thick black hair. She looked about forty. She gave them a friendly smile and, surprisingly, spoke to them in perfect English.
‘Are you lost?’
‘Well, not exactly,’ Jack said. ‘We’re visitors here, and . . .’
‘I can see that. I thought I should warn you that you’ve wandered into a military area. The sentries can get a bit agitated if –’
She was interrupted by footfalls from the direction of the gates. One of those excitable soldiers had come out and was running up to the car, clumsily wielding his carbine but at least not pointing it at anyone. He addressed the woman respectfully but then began to jabber at her, making gestures at the two foreigners. She looked at them in some wonder and finally dismissed the guard with a few brusque words.
She said to them: ‘You wanted to see my husband?’
They were reduced to silence for a moment. Dale, the first to recover, said: ‘You’re Mrs Delkin?’
‘That’s right. Is this something I can deal with?’
They both began talking at once and she silenced them with a wave. ‘Before you go into details, I can tell you he’s not here. He went back to Hakkari today, near the Iraqi border. I don’t expect to hear from him for a while.’
‘But do you have some way of contacting him?’ Dale asked.
‘He’s on the border most of the time at the moment. There is a crisis down there and as you can imagine he’s a busy man. In an emergency I can get a message to him through the army. But is this an emergency?’
‘It’s a professional matter, not a personal one, but we can’t pretend it’s a case of life or death,’ Jack admitted uneasily. He hesitated about even trying to explain. Nadine Schuster had said she and Jalloul had stayed here with Delkin and his wife, so obviously that was no secret, but was Mrs Delkin aware of anything beyond that? Might she be frightened of helping them if she was told too much? ‘Your husband already knows who we are,’ he said, ‘and if he’s told that we’re in Turkey he’ll guess what we’re doing here. I know it’s an odd request, but all we need is a few minutes of his time, even if it’s only on the phone. We may be able to give him information that’s important to his work.’
‘Won’t somebody else do?’
‘Not really. And we have come a long way to see him.’
Mrs Delkin considered for a few moments but seemed satisfied not to probe any further, accustomed no doubt to the confidential nature of her husband’s job. ‘I’ll see if I can help,’ she said. ‘I can do nothing now, but I’ll try and reach him in the morning.’
She wrote down their names in an address book she took from her handbag. When Jack remarked on how good her English was she gave him a look of amusement that was also a warning not to patronize her. ‘It ought to be,’ she said. ‘My father was a diplomat in London for many years. I was at Benenden School with Princess Anne. Phone me tomorrow,’ she added crisply, ‘let’s say at twelve o’clock, and perhaps I’ll have some news for you.’
Suitably chastened, they left the fort and found their driver sulking in his Pontiac down the road. He got them back to the hotel in time for dinner.
Issa and Ali Shakir reached Istanbul on one of the last planes to arrive that evening. It was the only one on which they’d been able to find seats at short notice, a charter flight from Frankfurt filled with Turkish gastarbeiters going home on holiday. The two Iraqis felt uncomfortably exposed among them, but the Turks were in a noisy, celebratory mood, drinking heavily and taking hardly any notice of them.
With their Egyptian passports they got through the immigration and customs controls quite easily and then, ignoring the solicitations of hotel touts and taxi drivers, they left the terminal building. Following the instructions relayed through the Mudeer, they crossed the road and entered a poorly lit car park. They turned to the right between the first and second rows of vehicles and had almost reached the end before they heard the sound of a car door opening just to their left.
They stopped walking. The car was a big American model. A man was standing beside the driver’s door, dimly outlined against the distant lights. He called softly to them: ‘Merhaba.’
Ali and Issa remained silent. The man said in English: ‘Can I help you?’
‘We’re looking for a friend,’ Ali said.
‘I am your friend,’ the man replied. He stepped forward and studied them more closely. He was no older than Ali was, with a slight build and the shifty look of a fugitive. ‘You are the brothers from London and I am your guide.’
‘What can you show us?’
‘Everything.’
With these coded preliminaries out of the way they relaxed a little. The Turk gave them a brief hug of greeting and led them to the car. Another man was sitting in the front passenger seat, and he merely nodded to them as they climbed into the back. The first man started the car and headed it carefully out of the parking area. They were well clear of the airport before he spoke again.
‘We will not introduce ourselves,’ he said. ‘It’s safer if we do not know each other’s names. Trust us. We are your friends here. You will choose the time and place for your operation, but we will guide you and supply you. Everything you want will be ready first thing tomorrow.’
‘Weapons?’ Ali asked.
‘A choice from many. Also transport, intelligence and a safe house afterwards, until we can arrange for you to leave the country.’
‘You’ve been told why we are here?’ Ali asked with slight misgiving.
‘Trust us,’ the man repeated. ‘We had to know; otherwise how could we help you? Already we have saved you the trouble of locating your targets. They are staying at a hotel called the Pera Palace.’
27
It was warm enough the next morning for Dale and Jack to sit out on the balcony of their room for the breakfast of brown bread, figs, white cheese and strong, milkless tea that was brought up to them. After that, they had nothing much to do before phoning Delkin’s wife at midday. Dale went for a run along the Golden Horn, returning at ten-thirty. She was planning to spend the rest of the morning washing her hair and arranging for the hotel to do some laundry, so Jack went out for a while on his own.
He strolled up Istiklâl Cadessi to the huge open square at Taksim, the hub of the modern city, and called in at a travel agency. It had occurred to him that if General Delkin proved willing to talk to them in person they had better have some plans in hand for getting to Hakkari. He remembered it vaguely as a place on the map that Zakarios had shown them the night before, but it turned out to be much more remote than he had imagined, in the far south-east of Turkey and high in the Taurus mountains. The woman in the agency was amused when he asked about flying there; the nearest airport was at Van, nearly two hundred kilometres to the north, a four-hour drive away. There were five flights a week to Van; all of this week’s were fully booked, the woman said, and there were long standby lists of foreign journalists trying to reach the Iraqi border and report on the exodus of the Kurds.
Somewhat deflated by this news, he returned to the hotel. Dale had changed into narrow black trousers, low-heeled boots, a white shirt and a black blazer, with a coloured scarf loosely knotted round her neck. He sat on the bed and watched her inspecting herself in the wardrobe mirror, fluffing out the newly-washed hair that curled softly around her face. It struck him that with everything they’d done over the past three days, with the travelling and the endless analytical discussions, they had hardly talked about themselves. Although they had made love many times since that first night in Zurich, passion hadn’t led to introspection. What they felt about each other seemed to go without saying, as though a sense of deep contentment had grown up between them without either of them realizing it.
Suddenly he said: ‘I think you’re the grown woman I need.’
‘What?’ She turned to him in puzzlement.
‘Sylvia Patley, Eric’s wife, told me I ought to cut my losses with Alison. Said she was . . . still partly a child, too emotionally dependent on me, and that what I needed was a grown-up woman who could really share things with me. I suppose what I’m saying is that I’m in love with you, Dale.’
It was the first time either of them had mentioned the word love. She’d been watching him seriously and now she gave a little shrug, almost of embarrassment. ‘Are you sure about that, after three or four days?’
‘Actually it’s eight days since we first met. Some people court and get married in less than that time.’
‘Well, for what it’s worth, Jack, I feel the same about you. Only I’m more cautious about expressing it, because one thing I don’t want to do is catch you on the rebound. You’re emotionally vulnerable right now. I know you mean what you say, but I don’t think you should go too fast. I don’t want you making any declarations that you may regret later.’
‘There won’t be any regrets. I know that it’s all over with Alison. As soon as I get back home I’m going to have to move out. On the other hand, I’m not going to push you into any decisions. I just want you to think about staying with me. Since you’re out of a job, maybe it would be easier to find one in England anyway.’
‘What about your kids?’
‘That’s going to hurt. It’ll be tough on them. But it would be tougher in the long run if we stayed together just for their sakes and they had to spend the next ten years watching us maul each other to shreds.’
‘I’ll repeat my first observation about you: you’re a nice man, Jack. All right, I’ll think about it.’ She bent over and kissed him on the cheek, then glanced at her watch. ‘And hadn’t you better think about making that call? It’s just after noon.’
Mrs Delkin answered on the second ring. She was brief and businesslike. She had sent a message to her husband through the headquarters of the Jandarma, and he had sent one back: he would call her at two o’clock and would speak to the two foreigners on her phone. She would be at the compound gates just before then to see that they were allowed in.
‘Let’s celebrate,’ Jack said when he’d put down the phone. ‘We’ll have an early lunch here and then leave. A bottle of champagne to kick off with, I think.’
‘Fine by me. But do we have anything to celebrate yet?’
‘Our future.’
‘Don’t go too fast,’ she repeated, but with a smile this time. ‘Do you know something? You’ve stopped being polite with me. You don’t say I’m afraid any longer.’
Ali and Issa had watched the woman leave the hotel and come back. They had watched Rushton go out later and also return. They could easily have taken either of them anywhere in the crowded streets of Beyoglu, but they needed to take them together.
The brothers went on waiting.
They had been there since eight o’clock that morning, half an hour after setting off from the dingy apartment in the Kumkapi district where the Turks had put them up for the night. The man who had greeted them first at the airport drove them in a black Oldsmobile, and his companion followed in a Mercedes, a back-up car to be used afterwards. They could not tell where Rushton and the woman would go when they did leave the hotel, and so a prearranged plan was out of the question. They would follow, and they would seize the best opportunity to strike.
The Turks had driven across the Galata Bridge, up the hill and through the main entrance of the Pera Palace, then into the car park on its north side. From where the Oldsmobile was positioned, in the shade of a row of fan palms, Ali and Issa could observe the front door of the hotel without attracting any attention to themselves.
Ali glanced down at the floor of the car, where their weapons were hidden beneath a blanket. From the selection they’d been shown they had chosen two Hungarian AMD sub-machineguns, a type they had trained with, powerful cut-down versions of the Russian AKM assault rifle. They had also brought half a dozen hand grenades, in case they were needed, already primed and stuffed into a plastic carrier bag. The Turks had an abundant arsenal, though the quality of their personnel did not seem so impressive. They were willing and obliging, but not dedicated in the way of true militants. The man who had driven them was restless and jumpy, forever retuning the car radio in search of fresh türkü music, occasionally even getting out to stretch his legs or talk to his comrade in the Mercedes parked behind them. Ali also suspected that he didn’t know his way around Istanbul quite as well as he pretended; although he’d tried to disguise the fact, he had taken a couple of wrong turnings on the way to the hotel.
Towards half-past twelve cars began turning up with increasing frequency, taxis and limousines disgorging parties of businessmen arriving for lunch. If Rushton and the woman didn’t come out within the next few minutes, Ali estimated, they were probably eating in the hotel restaurant and wouldn’t emerge until two o’clock or after. He did not relay this thought to the Turk in the front seat, who was fidgety enough as it was.
They had got into the restaurant just in time to avoid the rush, and they had finished lunch by one o’clock. On yesterday’s reckoning it would take forty minutes to drive to Mrs Delkin’s house, so Jack sent for a taxi and they finished their champagne while they waited for it. By what seemed unlikely to be a coincidence, they were greeted in the lobby by the same man who had driven them yesterday; after the exorbitant fee he had charged, Jack suspected he had been hanging around the front of the hotel in the hope that his English-speaking fares were planning another long journey. At the mention of Yildiz Fort he made a face, but he took them out to the Pontiac and set off into the frenzied city traffic.
It was Issa who spotted them leaving. He nudged Ali urgently and pointed, and now his brother saw them too, Rushton in the same light-brown suit he had worn earlier, but carrying a briefcase this time, the woman changed into black trousers and a jacket. They were following a grey-haired man from the door of the hotel across the forecourt.
‘Drive!’ Ali said to the Turk.
The man had fallen into a stupor and it took him a couple of seconds to gather his wits and start the Oldsmobile’s sluggish old motor. By the time he was heading it out of the car park their quarry had disappeared through the front gates.
They caught up with the couple in the street outside, just as the rear door of a taxi closed on them. The car moved off and the Oldsmobile lurched after it, closely followed by the Mercedes.
Ali groped under the blanket for his gun, cocking it and then resting it across his lap, keeping it below the level of the windows. Issa did likewise and they both stared tensely forward, keeping the taxi in sight. It took a left turn a short way from the hotel, and then a right, staying in narrow streets until it reached the main post office and swung on to Istiklâl Cadessi. The traffic was heavy and slow. Half a dozen times the taxi halted, offering the brothers the opportunity of an ambush but no hope of getting clear from it. Entering Taksim Square the car gained some speed but then suddenly turned again, downhill through a cluster of little streets and on to the Bosphorus waterfront.
Ali relaxed slightly. Though he didn’t know this city it was obvious that the taxi was moving away from the centre, to where the traffic would be lighter and their getaway simpler. He glanced around to be sure the Mercedes was still following, then said: ‘Drop one car behind them. And don’t lose them.’
The Turk did as he was told. He was still jittery but seemed in control of himself. This road was as congested as any other they had been on but it was leading them towards a distant prospect of hills and open coastline. One stop in the right place, or even at the couple’s destination, was all it would take.
For twenty minutes the three cars moved in fits and starts along the waterfront. Sometimes there was a break in the traffic that allowed them to pick up speed, the Oldsmobile’s ancient speedometer needle shuddering up to forty miles an hour, but soon they would be down to a crawl again. Ali had got used to the idea that they were heading out into the hinterland, so he was alarmed when the Turk said suddenly: ‘They’re turning!’
The Pontiac was at a green traffic fight, signalling left and waiting for oncoming vehicles to pass. With the Oldsmobile stuck two cars behind it, the taxi driver spotted a gap and took the turning just as the light changed to amber.
‘Go after him!’ Ali said to the Turk.
‘But . . .’
‘Do as I say!’
The light was red now. The Turk spun the wheel and accelerated, crossing to the wrong carriageway and swerving wildly across the path of cars emerging from the junction. With horns blaring angrily around them he swung into the turning and straightened up.
Ali spotted the taxi a hundred metres ahead, moving uphill on a road almost free of traffic. Glancing behind him again, he saw that the Mercedes had somehow made it across the junction as well.
‘Where does this road lead?’ he demanded.
‘Yildiz Park, I think.’
‘You think? Can we get out of there in a hurry?’
‘Yes.’
Ali was not sure he could believe the Turk. But their only choice now was to keep following the taxi, which continued up the winding road for a minute or two. The park was there, on the right, and then the road travelled for a distance beside a high mound of stone and grass. Here, suddenly, the taxi stopped.
