Chasing the Storm (24 page)

Chapter 21

Cyprus

May 14

The morning sun
dried their clothes and by noon, they could see several low blue humps of land on the horizon to the north and east. Girgis pointed to the western ones. “
Turkiya
,” he said. Then he pointed to the most distant hump on the northern horizon. “
Kubrus
,” he told them, grinning his scabrous grin, and Lena clapped.

An hour later, they were passing Cypriot fishing boats. A huge cruise ship sauntered by, sending their little craft bobbing like flotsam in its wake. Cyprus loomed ahead of them. The center of the island was dark indigo, and rose to a peak that was swaddled in clouds. They could see Larnaca ahead of them along the waterline, a smattering of glitter and white walls, smeared up into the land. But now Girgis turned the boat westward, moving past the city. He angled in toward a section that was darker green. As they got nearer, they saw that it was a grove of olive trees fronting the water.

Girgis cut the motor before they reached the trees, and poled the boat in under some of the thicker branches. Green olives jostled in the water. Rygg jumped out and caught the painter. He secured it to the bole of a tree and then helped Lena and Sasha from the boat. Sasha looked shaky. Marin reached up to an overhanging branch and swung himself onto the land. Rygg turned and offered Girgis a hand, but Girgis just shook his head and jerked a thumb back south.

“You’re joking,” said Rygg.

But Girgis had already pulled the rope back into the boat. He poled the boat around, and Rygg said, “
Estenna
!” He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and took the wad of Egyptian cash. Girgis looked up at him. “You might as well have this,” Rygg said. Leaning out with one hand on the olive branch, he tossed the notes into the bottom of the boat. Then, with a wave and a final hideous grin, Girgis yanked the chain and the motor put-putted into life.

“I’ll be delighted if I never have to hear that sound again,” Rygg said.

“Come,” Marin told him. “It is afternoon, and we have to get into the city. We have very little time.”

“You know what, though, Marin?”

“What?”

“The first thing we’re doing there is getting some coffee.”

Marin turned to him. He was gaunt and his eyes were rimmed with shadow. “Actually, Torgrim,” he said. “I think I may use your suggestion.”

They stumbled through the olive grove and moved out onto a narrow winding road that led into the city. Sasha was having a hard time keeping up with Marin, and finally Rygg put his hand around Sasha’s shoulders, helping him along.

After a while, they came across a little collection of red-tiled houses. All had grape arbors over verandas that faced the sea. Lena pointed to a house that clung to the edge of a stone-buttressed precipice and they made their way down to it. A wizened woman in a kerchief answered Lena’s knock and without question, ushered them out to the veranda. A cigarette fumed in the corner of her mouth. Using gestures, Marin begged a cigarette from her – his were soaked. The coffee she brought them was the thick, sweet, Turkish variety that went straight to the brain. Rygg steadied himself with his elbows and sipped the coffee slowly. He was very tired and was having a hard time focusing his eyes.

Marin drank his coffee down in two gulps, then placed his hands flat on the wooden table and looked around at them. The salt had crusted in his hair, making it stand up like dry grass. His eyes were bloodshot. Strangely, though Lena, Sasha, and Rygg were sunburned, Marin’s skin was as pallid as ever. “Okay, here is our plan,” he said.

“Sleep,” Lena told him.

Marin shook his head. “We will sleep later,” he said. “I know you are tired. But we have little time.”

Lena just stared at him. She looked as if she was going to cry.

“One more day, Lena,” Marin told her. “This is the most important time. All of our work will be for nothing if we do not continue.”

She nodded mechanically, and he went on.

“We will divide into three. Sasha is with me. Lena, you will go down to the port – I will show you the way. You must get in somehow – bribe, or acting. Something. I will give you a badge that may help. You are looking for berth 42C. When you find it, wait there until the
Alpensturm
arrives. It should be this evening. Watch it, that is all. Watch who meets it, who comes off, who goes on, if anything is unloaded. Okay?”

She nodded again.

“Which berth?” Marin asked.

“42C”

“Good. Torgrim.”

Rygg looked blearily at him, wondering how his energy could grow when everyone else was so drained.

“You are going to the airport. You will pretend that you are waiting for someone in arrivals. But you are looking for the landing of a certain airplane. Sasha will show you a picture. It is scheduled to arrive at seven p.m. When it lands, you will see who goes on, who comes off. You will photograph them and follow them.”

“Photograph them with what? Follow them with what?”

“I will organize for you, Torgrim. Sasha and I will be monitoring from a base that we will show you. In the center of the town.”

“Why aren’t you meeting the
Alpensturm
?” Rygg asked.

“My face is too well known. Now, here is the most important thing. By tomorrow morning, six o’clock, we must all meet at the base. No matter what you have discovered. Okay? And we will also have a fallback location, if for any reason the base is compromised. Can you remember this name: Platres?”

They all repeated it.

“It is a small town high in the mountain. Fallback is Platres. The Chapel of Saint Nikolaiou. Okay? Saint Nikolaiou. Remember the name. But I hope there will be no need for this. All will go well and we will meet tomorrow morning at six.”

In the center of Larnaca, Marin stopped at a store and bought two cell phones and gave them to Lena and Torgrim. “You will use them only as cameras,” he said. “Never try to make a call. I want all the people, the faces. As close as you can.” Then he led them down winding, cobbled back streets to a tiny hotel called Ianakis Inn. It was on the top two floors of a tall building overlooking the harbor. The receptionist, a skinny woman with a cat on her lap, held up a key as soon as Marin entered.

“Marko,” she said. “So good to see you again. You look tired.”

“I am.” He leaned across the counter and kissed her on each cheek.

“But there is no sleep for the wicked.” She smiled and he nodded.

The room was on the top floor and had an excellent view of the harbor. “So how do you know the receptionist?” Lena asked, suspiciously.

“She was helpful many years ago,” Marin said. “But at that time she was a waitress, not a hotel manager. I contacted her from Alexandria. Now, Sasha. The airplane for Torgrim.”

Sasha walked over to a laptop that just happened to be in the room, apparently compliments of the hotel manager, and opened it up.

Rygg looked at Marin. “Your friends really do take care of you, don’t they?”

Lena grunted, rolling her eyes.

Marin said, “Just as your friends take care of you, Rygg.”

All eyes went to Sasha then. He did the usual routine of going deeper and deeper into various layers of the Internet and started to go through some images. Eventually he came upon a picture of a snub-nosed whale of a plane. “This is the An-124,” Marin told him. “It is one of the largest planes in the world, as you can see. The second largest, actually, after the An-225 is another Russian plane. You cannot miss seeing it. You are interested in the passengers and in who meets the airplane. If you can, take pictures of people in the waiting area of the airport. And anyone else who seems interesting.”

“Sounds good,” Rygg said. Every time he blinked, he could feel sleep snagging his eyelids. The coffee had worked for a minute or two, but now its effects seemed to have faded. “But first, I need to rinse off.”

Marin looked at him. “Yes, it would not be good to have you arrested as a homeless,” he said.

Rygg went into the bathroom and peered, aghast, at his reflection in the mirror. His hair was a wild wreath of brambles, his nose was a cherry, and his lips were chapped and peeling. He looked like one of those castaways who had been rescued after a month on a raft, having survived on raw fish and rainwater. He turned on the cold water and dunked his head under it.

When he came out, Marin and Lena were embracing by the door. She kissed him gently on the lips, twice, and then they stood apart, though she kept a finger hooked in his belt loop. Sasha appeared to have passed out on a bed. Marin looked over at Rygg.

“Well, Torgrim,” he said, with a small smile. “This is it. What we have been chasing for the last month. It all comes down to this night.”

“And then …”

“If all goes well, I will publish tomorrow.”

Rygg nodded. He was having a hard time taking it in, and, after just a month with these people, he couldn’t imagine a future without them.

“All right then,” he said. “I’m off to snap a few pictures.”

“Here.” Marin took out his wallet and handed Rygg a wad of euros. “You’ll find many young boys with motorcycles around, especially along the coastline. Choose one that has a bike that isn’t too fancy and pay him well for it, telling them it was a favorite from your childhood. They’ll have money to purchase a better one in exchange. Less chance of questions too.” Rygg nodded and Marin continued. “After you have the motorcycle, follow the coastline to the west and you will see the planes landing.”

“All right.”

“And where do we meet?”

“Back here. Six in the a.m.”

“And fallback?”

“Oh, shit. Uh … Plattas? Sankt Nico? Sorry, my brain’s a bit …”

“Platres. Saint Nikolaiou. Repeat.”

“Platres, Platres. Nikolaiou. All right. See you people.”

Just as promised, by a meeting spot along the coastline there were many young guys with motorcycles. When Rygg offered one money for his dirty old Yamaha XT they all decided that they’d like to sell theirs. He nodded his head no, using the excuse that Marin had given him, paid him ten hundred euro notes, and saw his jaw drop. With that, he took off, happy to see he had a full tank of gas.

He moseyed along on the roads that were closest to the coast, making his way toward the airport, and through the town for a bit, looking at the little churches. It was time to stop being such a tourist though and eventually he struck out to the east on the wide road, passing several tour buses, one of which gave him a friendly honk.

Chapter 22

Arrivals

The airport, despite
Marin’s assertion, didn’t seem that large. Rygg parked the motorcycle and went into the arrivals lounge, from which he had a decent view of the landing area. The planes dropped in every five or ten minutes, mostly European carriers, and he could see them in holding patterns over the sea, like a flock of huge swallows. He scanned the tarmac, but couldn’t see anything resembling the plane Marin had showed him. From the snippets of conversation he heard, most of the passengers seemed to be English and German. Those coming in were pallid as bread dough, but those heading out were brown or pink or scarlet.
This place is like an oven
, he thought. Slide them in, bake them for a week or two, and slide them out.

He went over to a bookstore, intending to buy a magazine, but spotted on a shelf the same Penguin paperback of
Anna Karenina
he’d started reading in Croatia. He decided to purchase it again, hoping to eventually finish it. In all of the sudden departures it had been impossible to take anything with him for the entire duration. The cashier looked at him peculiarly for his literary choice and he just smiled. “It’s a great book. Have you read it?”

She nodded her head no, handed him his change, and turned to the next customer in line.

He bought some coffee and a pastry and found a corner seat that allowed him a view of the landing area as well as the arrivals lounge. He settled back to read and sip his coffee, looking up at the end of every spread.

For two hours nothing happened at all. The sunset turned the horizon gold and green, and then the first veil of twilight fell across the sky. Once he fell asleep inadvertently, and the book clattered to the floor, waking him up with a jerk. He drank some more coffee and walked around, trying to stay alert, but he was so weary he was almost ready to give up, just lay down the book for an hour and snooze. It would feel so good, so good …

Then he saw, out of the corner of his eye, something that jerked him upright. He leaned forward, peering out the window. Down on the tarmac, to the left, a gray van had pulled up beside one of the buildings along it. Two passengers got out. Even from this height, Rygg could see that the eyebrows of one formed a solid bar, and there was a dark shading on his hands. And he remembered that smooth, measured walk. “
Din Jævel
!” Rygg shouted angrily, startling the middle-aged woman beside him. “Sorry,” he told her.

He pulled out his phone, stood, and moved away from her, toward the window. He pretended to click on the buttons, holding the phone up so Sokolov and his companion appeared in the screen. And obligingly, just as he was about to take the picture, they turned toward the window and Sokolov pointed something out in the sky above the airport, so he got a clear snap of their faces. Then they walked off the tarmac, keeping close to the edge of the terminal. Rygg watched them, moving almost unconsciously along the pane, until he reached the far wall. They stood looking up into the southern sky. Scanning the dusky air, he watched the circling planes, their lights visible now. And all at once he saw it, the An-124, sweeping into the vortex of aircraft. It was huge, like a hawk among the swallows, its lights spaced farther apart.

He took a step back, and felt hands on his biceps. “Whoops!” he said, but the hands did not release their grip.

“Turn around slowly. I have a gun,” a man’s voice said. He had an American accent.

Rygg did as he was told, and looked into the face of a mustached pilot. Realizing he still had the phone at chest height, he pressed the button. “What’s going on?” he said.

“Look down.”

Rygg did so. The pilot’s jacket was draped over his forearm. Poking from the folds of blue cloth, he could see the round metal snout.

“All right. You have my attention. Now, what do you want?”

“You’re going to walk slowly past me, keeping to the wall. Turn right. Go into the men’s room that you’ll see straight ahead of you.”

Rygg followed the directions, still holding the phone up. There was another pilot standing beside the men’s room door. Rygg nodded to him and took his picture as well. The second pilot opened the door for him. The bathroom was empty. Rygg stepped inside and turned around. The first pilot joined him and let the door close. “Now,” he said. “Put your phone in the sink. Then place your hands flat on the mirror.”

Rygg followed the man’s instructions. The man’s hand snaked around his waist and plucked up the phone. Then, one-handed, he swiftly patted Rygg up and down, reaching under his arms and between his legs. Rygg could see him in the mirror. As the man straightened up, he smashed an elbow backward into the man’s nose, and as part of the same movement turned and yanked on the hand holding the gun, driving it into the side of the sink. He heard the bone crack and the gun clatter to the tiles. The man groaned and Rygg stomped on his mouth, smashing his head into the floor. Gathering the gun, he held it to the man’s head and knelt beside him. “One sound, and your brains are coming out,” he whispered. He went through the man’s pockets. He found his cell phone, and pocketed it. He also took the man’s wallet. Then he took off the pilot’s jacket and put it on. It was a little tight, but he managed to squeeze in. In one of the pockets he found a dozen plastic cuffs. Using two of these, he bound the man’s wrists and ankles. He fetched the hat from where it had rolled against a wall. Checking himself in a mirror, he was quite pleased with the look. He emptied the magazine and pocketed the bullets, then dropped the pistol in the wastebasket and gave the man a final kick, but elicited no sound. Maybe he’d lost consciousness.

Rygg strode out of the bathroom. “Stay there!” he called to the second pilot, who was still loitering beside the door. He took off at a trot around the corner, careful not to turn his head. Angling toward the entrance, he suddenly changed his mind and headed to one of the gates. There were four gates in a row at the end of a long hallway. Three were accepting passengers. He waited until the flight attendant was dealing with a mother and her two small children, then strode swiftly along the queue, tossed his keys and the phone into the box, walked through the metal detector, retrieved them, and marched through the lounge and out the doors at the far side. No one paid him any attention.

On the tarmac, the air was soft and warm and smelled of kerosene. One plane was taking off and another was landing. He could feel the vibrations in his ribcage, and wished he had some of those yellow earmuffs the airport ground crew all seemed to sport. Completely awake now, he walked along the edge of the terminal. He’d expected to see the An-124 by now, but it wasn’t on the ground. He looked back just in time to see it land. It was much larger than it had appeared on the screen. Any of the other planes scattered around the airport might snuggle into its belly. The ground shuddered as it hit the tarmac, and Rygg covered his ears with his hands to shut out the scream as its engines reversed. It rumbled the whole length of the runway, finally howling to a halt just a couple meters from the marshy end of the track. Ponderously, it turned and lumbered back down the runway toward the terminal. Many of the ground crew had stopped what they were doing to watch its progress. It really was a gigantic beast, standing out to everyone.

Rygg moved more quickly now – all eyes would be on the huge plane. He sidled along the glassed wall of the building, to within fifty meters of where Sokolov and his companion stood. There was a movable staircase ahead of him. He got into the cab, keeping low. The huge gray plane swung around and moved past his windshield like a rolling mountain. He took a picture of it, just for fun. Then he got in position by the side window, keeping his head beside the door panel, but holding the phone up to the glass, using it as a periscope so he could see the plane. The commotion subsided as the plane’s engines were switched off, and he tracked Sokolov and his companion as they walked over to it. The door seemed very far off the ground and no steps were moving toward it. Then the entire nose of the plane slowly split vertically and gaped open, so the nose was pointed at the sky. The lower portion dropped to the tarmac. Seven people trotted down the ramp and greeted Sokolov with hugs. They ignored the companion.

Rygg clicked indiscriminately, zooming as close as he could. All the passengers were men, and all had close-trimmed hair and wore bulky jackets. From the way they held their arms, Rygg knew they had fairly substantial weapons concealed under the khaki. The nine men walked to the left and got into the gray van, which moved off around the side of the terminal. Rygg snapped a couple more pictures. Then, for good measure, he clicked a few of the interior of the plane, but it was as black as a railway tunnel and he didn’t have much hope that the images would turn up anything. The nose of the plane closed up again, like a mouth keeping a secret. Rygg guessed there was still a person or two on the plane, who would stay with it until it took off again.

Pocketing the phone, he got out of the cab of the movable stairs and moved around the side of the terminal. An armed security guard was closing and locking a gate in the chain-link fence. The van must have just gone through.

Quickly, he went back the way he had come, walking the whole way around the airport. He hadn’t thought about how he’d get back into the terminal. He didn’t think they’d allow him to just walk in through a gate. Standing with his back to a wall, he scanned the runways.

Suddenly, he realized that the airport backed directly onto the sea. The fences ran into the water on either side, but the passage to the sea was open. Striding purposefully, he walked from jet to jet, making his way across the tarmac. When he got to the final standing airplane before the runway, he stood in its shadow for a few moments; waiting for a plane to land, then struck out fast onto the runway, making a diagonal across it, heading for the fence. It took him a good minute to reach the fence, and he could feel the eyes of the entire airport watching him. Luckily, the far end of the fence, where it entered the water, was in relative darkness. Quickly, in the shadow of a pylon, he undressed. He passed the phone through a gap in the links, setting it on a tuft of grass, and then tossed all his clothes over the top fence.

Naked, he plunged into the water. It was warm. He swam out along the fence, using breaststroke, which he thought would create the least ripples, keeping his head low in the water. The fence went out farther than he’d anticipated, and he was blown by the time he reached the end. But finally he was able to round the last pole and swim back, in thicker darkness, striking away from the airport. He looked back at the tarmac, expecting to see a phalanx of armed guards pursuing him. But unbelievably, the space between him and the landing plane was empty of people.

He got out in some spiky marsh grass and picked his way through the mud and scurf of tattered plastic bags to the fence, then moved along it until he found his heap of clothes. Shivering, he dried himself off on the jacket, wiped the mud off his feet as best he could, and dressed. He tossed the jacket and hat into the shadows. Moving away from the fence, he headed toward the lights of vehicles moving on the airport road. It was pitch dark, and he kept stumbling over tussocks of grass. Off to the left, he could see the spangled web of lights in the city.

He checked his Breitling, wiping the face free of droplets: 9:38. He might just get a few hours of sleep. He finally made it out to the road, making his way to the airport parking lot to retrieve his motorcycle. He half expected to meet the goons who’d tried to take his phone, but there were only a few taxi drivers standing around, smoking. One of them called out to him sarcastically. “Nice motorcycle.” He ignored them and got on, ready to get out of the airport as quickly as possible.

Back at the Ianakis Inn, Sasha was still crashed out on the bed, in the same position Rygg had left him. Lena wasn’t back yet. Marin had moved the desk to the window overlooking the harbor and had the computer open. There were three empty coffee cups beside the computer.

Marin looked up when he entered. “Torgrim,” he said. “You are back more quickly than I expected. What did you find?”

Rygg described his encounter with the American-accented ‘pilots’ in the airport and Marin looked grave. “Strange,” he said. “Very strange.”

“Who the fuck were they, Marko? More of Sokolov’s stooges?”

Marin shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Who else would they be?”

Marin motioned to the bed across from the one where Sasha lay sleeping. Rygg sat with a groan. His joints felt creaky. “Tell me the rest of your story,” Marin said. “Then we will see.”

So Rygg told him about getting out of the terminal and hiding in the cab of the movable stairs and the arrival of the aircraft. Marin was most interested in how many passengers came off the plane. “And did you see anyone who stayed on?” he asked.

Rygg shook his head. “It was too dark in there,” he said. “But I’m assuming they left at least a couple men on board. I took some pictures anyway.”

“We will look at those in a moment. So how did you get out of the airport?”

Rygg told him. Marin laughed. “You have been very creative, Torgrim. Okay, let me see the phone.” They peered at the images. The interior of the plane, on the tiny screen, looked completely blank. Marin stared for a long time at the pictures of the men who had attacked Rygg. “I think …” he said.

He tried for a few minutes to plug the phone into the computer, sorting through Sasha’s tangle of wires, but gave up. “I cannot understand what Sasha does,” he confessed, and went over to the bed. Tenderly as a father, he shook Sasha’s shoulder, tugged at his ear and patted his cheek. “Sasha,” he murmured. “Sasha,
pora prosypat’sya
!” Sasha didn’t even groan. It took, finally, several sharp shakes, and a poke in the ribs, to get him awake. He looked around blearily and mumbled something in Russian. Marin said, “Come, Sasha. We have work to do. You have slept more than any of us.”

Sasha fumbled around with the computer, phone, and wires, and pulled the images onto the screen. “Easy,” he said. “Now I go back to sleep.”