Hard Rain (15 page)

H
arvey Stringer, CIA station chief, Turkey, filled his chair like the breasts in a fat girl’s bra. His huge stomach, a continuation of chins that hung like hammocks under his ears, rolled over the edge of his desk and advanced and retreated with each breath. He glanced up from his laptop as Masters and I appeared at the door, and beckoned us in with one enormous hand while he continued tapping away with the other, a large index finger stabbing the keys one at a time.

The office was devoid of any touches of a personal nature. Not a single photograph, desk ornament, plaque – nothing – was on display. It was the office of a guy who wanted his private life to remain that way. Maybe he didn’t have one to display.

‘And . . . send,’ he said aloud for our benefit, clicking the mouse on an email. Job done, he leaned back in his chair. It groaned, presumably in pain. ‘Afternoon, y’all,’ he greeted us. ‘Sit, sit. How’s the investigation going?’

‘We’re making some progress,’ I replied, sitting.

‘Yes, I heard they pulled some potential evidence from the Bosphorus. Blast blankets. Everyone’s coming on board with your two-killer theory, by the way. That’s good police work, Special Agents.’

‘We met some folks just now staking out Adem Fedai’s house,’ I said, pushing aside the pleasantries.

‘Fedai?’

‘Portman’s manservant.’

‘Yes, yes – Fedai,’ he said, the name clicking.

‘Do we have any people out there working freelance on this?’ I asked.

Stringer didn’t ask for elaboration. He knew exactly what I meant. ‘No, what did they look like?’ he asked in reply.

‘Generally Middle Eastern. We’ve passed the descriptions on to the Turkish police.’

‘Well, I guess you have to tick that box,’ he said dismissively. He then sat forward, his elbows on the table, hands clasped in front of his chin, considering us like he might ponder the next move in a game of chess.

‘These people claimed Fedai was ex-Mossad,’ Masters added. ‘Were background checks performed on Fedai?’

Stringer now leaned back in his chair, the evaluation continuing. I couldn’t read him. Finally he said, ‘Of course we checked him out. And Fedai was definitely not ex-Mossad. Fedai was a Kurd who belonged to a sect known as the Yezidi. You know who they are?’

‘No, sir,’ said Masters.

‘The Yezidi is a sect that worships the devil – Satan.’

Masters and I shared a glance.

‘Yeah, you heard right – Beelzebub. Last I heard, Mossad was basically a Jewish organisation and they worship the big guy
upstairs
. Though, from my experience with Mossad, I doubt many of its agents believe in anything other than doing whatever it takes to stomp on threats to the Jewish homeland.’

‘Would it be possible to see your file on Fedai?’ Masters asked, pushing it.

‘I will make it available,’ Stringer replied, surprising us.

‘Also, sir,’ I said, ‘we’re being tailed by a couple of US Army CID types. Has the Company got anything to do with that?’

Stringer smiled with half his mouth. ‘If we had an eye on y’all, you really think you’d know about it?’

I took the path of least resistance. ‘No, sir.’

‘Well, then, you’ve just answered your own question, son. Can
you
think of any reason CID would put a tail on you?’ he asked.

‘To learn how it’s done?’ I suggested.

Stringer smirked. ‘You put the question to them?’

‘Politely, sir.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure you did, Cooper.’ Stringer scratched an earlobe. ‘Sorry, can’t help you with that one either. Anything else?’

I considered the wisdom of revisiting the subject of the assholes in the park. I wasn’t so much perturbed about being abducted or having pistols waved in my face. What did concern me was that the folks doing the waving were hot for what was most probably the last person to have seen the Attaché alive, the only person who might be able to give us some kind of lead or insight into what happened on the night of his murder. It seemed to me that Masters and I were now under the gun to reach Adem Fedai first – assuming he was still alive.

The more I thought about it, the more I decided to change the subject, maybe bring up the weather. I didn’t want to show Stringer my cards. I figured he was keeping his hand under the table, too. But then, he was CIA.

We stood. I said, ‘Well, sir, thanks –’

‘Oh, and before you go . . .’ Stringer opened his desk drawer. ‘I got this for you. I’ll also forward you a soft copy.’ He dropped a stapled wad of laser printouts on the desk in front of me.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘I was thinking about your request for satellite imaging of the Bosphorus on the night of Portman’s murder. That there’s the next best thing: the shipping schedule for the night in question. Every boat coming up and down that stretch of water is logged – the time, its flag, last port of call, cargo, and so forth. It covers the night of the murder from midnight to 5:30 am. Perhaps you’ll find what you’re looking for in there.’

*

‘What do you think?’ Masters asked as we walked down the hall.

‘That he needs to make friends with Jenny Craig,’ I said.

‘You know what I mean.’

I was thinking about the fact that there hadn’t been a lot of trust doing the rounds. But maybe that was changing. ‘Stringer didn’t give us a copy of this log just so we’d drop it in the recycling trash,’ I noted.

‘What about this Satanist angle? What are they called – the Yezidi? We’ve got a guy cut up into little pieces, blood everywhere. Could all this have something to do with some kind of weird ritual?’

‘I don’t think so. That piece of information is out on its own. No, there’s something else at work here,’ I said. ‘But, like Stringer said, it does eliminate the ex-Mossad claim.’

‘What about Mallet and Goddard?’

‘What about them?’

‘We are looking for two killers . . .’

I’d had the same thought, briefly. Those guys kept arriving on the scene and, as Masters had correctly summed it up, there were two of them. ‘Our killers are smart,’ I reminded her.

‘Perhaps Mallet and Goddard are just playing dumb.’

‘No one can act
that
good,’ I said. But could we really discount them?

‘Ah! There you are. Just in time,’ said Colonel Wadding, catching us off guard as we walked into our office.

‘Richard,’ exclaimed Masters, almost bursting with excitement.

I took my eyeballs for a run around their sockets.

‘I was just admiring your painting here,’ said Wadding.

He was standing back from the horror I’d renamed ‘Conquest. With Body Parts’, tilting his head one way and then the other as he regarded Mehmet II and his army trampling over all those corpses like they were grapes in a wine press. ‘They don’t paint ’em like this anymore, do they? I find it quite uplifting. How about you, Vin?’

‘Uplifting?’ I replied. ‘How do you get that, Colonel?’ Maybe I was missing something. All I got from the painting, aside from concern that it might leak, was the confirmation from another age that the human
thirst for other people’s blood and misery was something embedded in our genetic code.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Wadding, doing that head-tilting thing again. ‘I’m hardly an art critic, but to me it says . . . it says . . . winners are grinners.’

‘Okay . . .’ Winners are grinners. Hmm. I wondered if this guy had ever done any of those Rorschach ink-blot things. Maybe he had. Maybe some law faculty had tested him and found deficiencies in certain fundamental areas of humanity and streamed him straight into litigation. The Wad was made for it.

I happened to catch sight of Masters. Her head was on a tilt too, but looking at her fiancé rather than at the painting, perhaps seeing him in some new light. Perhaps it was something admirable she saw: maybe, like me, she saw a man insulated from other people’s dreams and hopes by an upbringing that had instilled in him an isolating class superiority. Or perhaps that’s what I
hoped
she saw. I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that I couldn’t read Masters at all. But then, what the hell – it was just a goddamn painting and I was tired. Outside, it was already dark.

There was a tap on the door. ‘Come on in, Rodney,’ I called out. It was Cain.

‘Richard, this is Captain Rodney Cain,’ said Masters, playing hostess. The Wad and Rod shook on it.

‘You’re JAG,’ Cain observed. ‘Here on a case, Colonel?’

‘No,’ Wadding replied. ‘Just paying a social.’

‘The captain’s our local liaison, working on the Portman murder with us,’ Masters explained.

‘Great. Well, Anna, ready to go?’

‘Um . . . well, it’s pretty early,’ Masters answered, glancing sheepishly at me and then Cain, and then back at me.

‘I’m sure Vin won’t mind. Vin, you don’t mind if I steal the special agent for the rest of the day?’

In fact, I did mind. We had work to do. But I wasn’t Masters’ boss, so I said, ‘Sure. Captain Cain and I were only going to sit around here flipping cards into a hat. You go, Anna. We’ll see you tomorrow.’

Masters gave me a wan smile. ‘You sure?’ she asked.

‘Sure I’m sure. Don’t forget we’re headed to Incirlik tomorrow,’ I reminded her.

‘What time?’

‘See you downstairs at seven.’

As I turned away, I could see her indecision out of the corner of my eye. She wanted to stay. And go. I asked Cain, ‘You got those cards handy?’

He looked at me funny.

‘See you at seven,’ Masters repeated, dragging it out. Wadding waited impatiently for her at the door, drumming his fingers against it.

‘Yeah, tomorrow,’ I replied, giving her a wave without looking up.

After another few moments of second thoughts, Masters finally picked up her jacket and walked out.

‘What’s going on between Masters and the colonel?’ Cain asked.

‘Marriage,’ I said.

‘Oh.’

‘What you got for me?’

‘I don’t have any cards.’

‘Forget the cards.’

Cain opened his briefcase. ‘Local forensics pulled one out for us and got stuck into the items found in the Bosphorus. Worked through the night. Unfortunately, everything had been in the water too long and Portman’s blood drove the fish and the crabs crazy. There wasn’t much left.’

‘Which leaves us with?’

‘Well, three blast blankets and two coveralls. I think that means we can say two people really did carve up Colonel Portman.’

‘Can we? I’m not so sure.’ Doubts about my own theory rushed back at me. I hit command-print on an email from Istanbul homicide on their Bosphorus discoveries, and a box popped up on-screen to inform me that my new old printer was low on toner.

‘What? You don’t think that firms things up at all?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, shaking my head, preoccupied. The damn
printer. Couldn’t they have checked the thing before they brought it over? I shot IT a note to come and replace the cartridge. ‘Maybe, maybe not. We’ve got two murder victims. There’s the assertion that two killers were caught on camera in the Hilton parking lot, but it’s hardly conclusive. And the blast-blanket theory at the Portman scene only
suggests
more than one killer.’

‘And now we have proof of that.’

Something wasn’t making sense to me. Maybe they wanted us to find those blankets. Maybe the killers were just stringing us along. ‘No we don’t,’ I said. ‘All we have
proof
of is that blast blankets were used on the Portman job and that two coveralls were dropped in the drink along with them. What size were they, by the way?’

‘The coveralls?’ Cain flipped through the findings to check. ‘Two size L for large.’

‘Could have been one person wearing both suits, couldn’t it?’

‘I guess so,’ Cain admitted, ‘but I doubt it.’ He threw me a raised eyebrow.

I let it go. ‘Anything come back on the two suspects caught on camera down at the Hilton?’

‘Just heard before coming over. Istanbul police found the stolen Fiat. Burnt to its axles. Forensics have told us to expect nothing of value from it.’

‘Why am I not surprised?’ I said. The killers were maintaining their unblemished record for thoroughness. ‘Anything from the surveillance tapes?’

‘No, not much there either, I’m afraid. The clothes they wore were loose fitting and black, which apparently made it impossible to be certain of anything other than that the killers were a couple of adult males.’

‘At least we know not to be on the lookout for a couple of female chimps. Can I read the forensics report?’

‘I’ll send you a JPEG.’

‘A hard copy would be better. My printer has decided it would like to be thrown out.’

‘Take mine,’ he said, getting up and putting the printout on my desk. ‘I’ve had it translated.’

I flipped through the pages. The Istanbul forensics team again seemed pretty thorough. ‘Have Karli and Iyaz received this too?’ I asked after a while.

‘I believe so,’ Cain replied.

I nodded. I wanted the local folks to keep some focus on these crimes. Maybe the killers were Turkish. There was always the chance that Istanbul homicide would come up with something useful if they stayed on the case.

Resting my head in my hands and staring at the forensics report, I tried to concentrate on putting the pieces together, taking them apart and then reassembling them in a different way. But I kept coming back to the same point, which was that I didn’t like Wadding, all the more because the guy was distracting me. ‘Cain. Got a joke for you,’ I said.

The captain looked up from the laptop he was restarting.

‘So an attorney says to a judge, “Your honour, I must appeal my client’s case, on the basis that I have discovered important new evidence.”

‘To which the judge says, “And what is the nature of the new evidence?”

‘“Your honour,” says the attorney, “I have discovered that my client still has five hundred dollars left in his wallet.”’

Cain gave me a smirk. ‘Don’t like Special Agent Masters’ fiancé much, do you?’

‘What’s not to like?’ I said.

‘Rumour has it he’s the infamous Colonel Wad.’

I nodded. ‘You know much about him?’

‘He’s supposed to be a legendary asshole. I heard about him through an ex-girlfriend of mine. She’s suing the government over DU.’