I Am Pilgrim (80 page)

A woman identified herself as being a secretary at the New York homicide bureau, but I figured it

was bullshit – she was almost certainly one of Whisperer ’s back-office staff.

‘The flight you are expecting is Turkish Airlines 349 from Rome, arriving at Milas International at

15.28,’ she said.

I wasn’t expecting any flight from Rome, but I guessed what had happened: Whisperer had figured

a government jet would attract too many questions and had booked Bradley on a commercial flight.

I glanced at my watch: I had ten minutes if I was going to get to Milas in time. I finished checking the emails but didn’t delete any computer files – the material which was genuinely confidential was

protected by unbreakable 128-bit encryption, and its presence would lend credibility to the subterfuge.

The computer itself was password-protected and there was some low-level code, but I was confident –

as Whisperer had told me when he first gave it to me – that it could be busted quickly if somebody

wanted to.

I put the laptop in the safe alongside the other material, turned the Bulgarian phone on, re-glued the fabric and went out the door fast.

The bellhop, the young guy behind the reception desk and the woman at the switchboard watched as

I exited the elevator. I slid the room key along the desk and called to the phone operator, loud enough for them all to hear. ‘I’m going to the airport. Any calls, I’ll be back at five thirty.’

I knew that if Cumali was going to have my room turned over, the first thing she would do was try

to discover my movements. Hopefully, I had just saved her and the scum-boys some trouble.

As I ran for my car I figured that, by the time I returned, they would have entered the loading dock at the rear, gone up the service elevator, picked the lock on my door and – to make it look like a plain vanilla hotel robbery – my room would be in chaos.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Chapter Fifteen

I GOT TO the airport just in time: two minutes after I arrived, Bradley walked out of the customs zone.

I guided him past the men with massive urns on their backs selling apple tea, endless crowds of hustlers and beggars and an attractive Slavic couple who were almost certainly pickpockets and out

towards the parking lot.

On the street, the wind was coming straight out of Asia, delivering a host of exotic scents, and loudspeakers were broadcasting a muezzin, telling Muslims that it was time for prayer. I saw Bradley looking at the chaotic traffic, the distant pine-clad hills, the minarets of a nearby mosque, and I knew it was setting him back on his heels.

‘We’re close to the borders of Iraq and Syria,’ I said. ‘A bit different from Paris, huh?’

He nodded.

‘People in my line of work get used to alien places,’ I continued, ‘but you never get used to the loneliness. It’s good to see you.’

‘You too,’ he replied. ‘You gonna tell me why we’re here?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘but I’ll tell you as much as necessary.’

We had arrived at the Fiat and, while I performed the usual deadly dance with the Turkish traffic, I asked Bradley to remove the batteries from both our cellphones. By the time I had explained why, we

were on the freeway.

‘We – that means the US government – are hunting a man,’ I explained. ‘We’ve been hunting him

for weeks—’

‘The guy everyone’s talking about?’ he asked. ‘The one with the nuclear trigger?’

‘There is no guy with a nuclear trigger,’ I replied. ‘That was a cover story.’

I saw the surprise on Bradley’s face, and I knew what he was thinking – he had seen the president

talking about it numerous times on TV. I didn’t have time to explain the reason for that, and I kept going.

‘A couple of days ago we thought we had him nailed, but we were wrong. We don’t have a name, a

nationality or his whereabouts. The only link we have is his sister—’

‘Leyla Cumali,’ he said, his eyes flashing in a moment of realization.

‘Yes. In the last twelve hours she has been told that I am not here investigating a murder – that I am a CIA agent.’

‘Are you?’

‘No, I’m far beyond that. When we get to Bodrum, I believe we’ll find she has organized to have

my hotel room robbed. The thieves will have taken a number of items, including my laptop.

‘It has several security features, but she will be able to access it without much trouble. Inside are two emails that she will find significant. The first will tell her that we intercepted coded phone calls between her and a man in the Hindu Kush—’

‘The where?’ Bradley asked.

‘Afghanistan. She will read that we don’t know the content of those calls – because they were in code – but given that she was born in Saudi Arabia, her father was publicly executed and her phone

friend has been involved in the abduction of three missing foreigners, we think that she is part of a terrorist undertaking.’

‘Is she?’

‘I don’t believe so, but the document gives details of her impending rendition to Bright Light.’

‘What’s Bright Light?’

‘She’ll search the Web and find a number of newspaper articles which claim that it’s in Thailand,

part of a system of CIA secret prisons.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happens at Bright Light?’

‘People are tortured.’

‘Our country does that to women?’

‘Our country does that to anybody.’

Ben had only been in-country for thirty minutes but already he was getting quite an education. I let him sit in sombre silence for a moment as I overtook a convoy of Turkish military heading to the Syrian border.

‘Cumali is the sole carer for a six-year-old boy,’ I went on, once the tank transporters were vanishing in my rear-view mirror. ‘Obviously, the child can’t be abandoned – so the document lays

out the arrangements for his welfare.’

I pulled out my phone, replaced the battery, opened its photo file and gave it to Ben. On the screen was one of the shots of the little guy I had taken in Cumali’s kitchen.

‘He’s Down’s syndrome,’ said Bradley, looking up at me.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘The document says he will be picked up by our people and transported to an orphanage in Bulgaria, one of the poorest nations in Europe. Due to poverty and the fact that he is an alien, nothing will be done to cater for his special needs.’

Bradley didn’t take his eyes off me; sickened, I think. ‘The purpose of the document is to panic her,’ I went on.

‘I think you just might succeed,’ he replied. ‘Why?’

‘We know she’s able to contact our target. The problem has always been that, if we try to force her, she’ll do it in a way that will warn him – he’ll go to ground and we’ll lose him completely.

‘If, however, she thinks she’s reading secret information and it panics her, she will contact the target voluntarily. No deliberate mistakes, and no clever warnings.

‘He’s the only person who can help her, the only person who can tell her what is going on. Even if

he wanted to ignore her, he can’t – he’s an Arab, he’s her brother and that makes him the head of the family.’

Bradley thought about it, then looked again at the photo he was still holding. The little guy was laughing – a child, just a pawn in the great game.

‘You think this up all by yourself?’ he asked. It wasn’t admiration I heard in his voice.

‘Pretty much,’ I said.

‘Is it always like this – your work?’

‘No,’ I replied, thinking about two little girls in Moscow. ‘Sometimes it’s worse.’

Bradley took a breath. ‘Okay. So Cumali contacts her brother – what then?’

‘She tells him about the second email.’

Chapter Sixteen

I DRIFTED OVER into the slow lane and scanned the traffic behind in the mirror. When I was satisfied that we hadn’t picked up a tail, I walked Ben deeper into the shadow world.

‘The second email claims to be from the deputy director of the CIA. It was dated two days ago and

it reports that we have had a breakthrough concerning the abduction of the three foreigners in the Hindu Kush.’

‘But you haven’t, have you?’ Ben asked.

‘No. The man and the events are a mystery. He’s a lone wolf, an organization of one. There hasn’t

been any gossip and no chance of betrayal. We’ve been looking for a ghost.’

I swung down an off-ramp, heading for Bodrum. ‘But we have glimpsed him,’ I continued. ‘We know that he’s been to Afghanistan twice. First as a teenage
mujahideen
to fight the Soviets and then a few months back to abduct the three foreigners—’

‘Why were those people taken?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’ Ben was offended, but I couldn’t help it – there was no need for him to know, and that was the golden rule in the world he had entered.

‘One aspect of the event, however, has been critical to our plan. Dave McKinley realized it – you

can’t abduct three people by yourself. Not in Afghanistan, not from different locations, not from fortified compounds. In that regard, our ghost must have had help. It has given us a way in.

‘McKinley has done two tours in the ’Ghan and nobody in the Western world knows more about the

country than him. He’s certain it was old
muj
comrades, probably one of the warlords, who helped our man. Those ties run deep and would explain why, despite a thousand agents on the ground, we have heard nothing.

‘The second email says that, in two days’ time, one of those helpers – in return for a large cash reward and a new identity – will reveal the names of our ghost and all those who assisted him.’

We had reached the coast, and the setting sun was washing the azure sea with shades of pink. I doubted that Ben had seen anything as beautiful, but he barely registered it.

‘If that were true about the cash reward, what would happen to the men he betrays?’ he asked.

‘They would be interrogated, then handed over to the Afghan government.’

‘And executed.’

‘Yes. The email doesn’t reveal the traitor ’s name, but it makes it clear that I know it.’

‘So, if your target – if the ghost – wants to save himself and his comrades, he has to find out from you the name of the turncoat and pass it on to the warlord fast.’

‘That’s right,’ I replied. ‘Our target has to come to the waterhole, he has to come to Bodrum and

get me to talk. And he’ll have less than a day to do it.’

‘Then you grab him.’

‘No.’

Bradley reacted. ‘No?! What do you mean “no”? I thought—’

‘Grabbing him won’t help. The man has information we need. Let’s say he has sent a package to America – or is about to – and we have no chance of finding it. We have to get him to tell us the shipping details.’

‘Torture him.’

‘No – same problem as with his sister. By the time we discover he has told us a raft of crap, it’s too late. The package has already arrived. No, he has to tell us voluntarily.’

Bradley laughed. ‘How are you going to get him to do that?’

‘I’m not,’ I replied. ‘You are.’

Chapter Seventeen

‘NO!’ BEN WAS shouting, staring at me. I had never seen him so angry. I had just explained how we were going to force the Saracen to reveal the so-called delivery arrangements and, now that I had finished, he wasn’t bothering to hide his disgust at even being in the same car as the idea.

‘I won’t do it. Nobody fucking would. What sort of person – what sort of mind – thinks up something like that?’

‘Then give me a better idea,’ I replied, trying to keep it calm. ‘I don’t like it any more than you do.’

‘Oh, yeah? You’re forgetting – you
chose
this life.’

‘I didn’t. If you recall, I was trying to leave it – this life
chose
me.’

I was pissed off – the last thing I needed was a lesson in morality. I hit the brake and swung into the parking lot of the café with the panoramic view of Bodrum and the sea.

‘I’m not interested in a fucking view,’ Bradley said.

‘I pulled in so that you could have some privacy.’

‘Privacy for what?’

‘To talk to Marcie.’

Again, I stopped far away from the crowd on the terrace. I started to get out of the car so that he

could be alone.

‘What am I speaking to Marcie for?’ he demanded.

‘You told me once her parents had a beach house – in North Carolina or somewhere.’

‘What’s a beach house got to do with it?’

‘Have they got one or not?!’ I insisted.

‘On the Outer Banks. Why?’

‘Tell her to drive there – now, tonight.’

‘Here’s an idea – she might want to know the reason.’

I ignored it. ‘Tell her to pick up as much food and bottled water as she can. Staples – rice, flour, gas bottles. She’s got to remember gas bottles. As many as she can find.’

He stared, the anger gone. ‘You’re scaring me, Scott.’

‘
Brodie!
The name is Brodie.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be scared, you’re safe up where you are – on the moral high ground. Can she shoot?’

‘Sure. I taught her.’

‘Get long arms – rifles, shotguns. I’ll tell you the best make and model numbers in a minute. Once

she’s set up in the house I can walk her through how to convert ’em to full automatic. She’ll need ammunition. Lots of ammunition.’

Bradley tried to interrupt.

‘Shut up. Anybody approaches the house, at two hundred yards she tells them to back off. They keep coming, and she shoots to kill. No warning shots. Two hundred yards is important – at that distance there’s no chance of her inhaling aerosoled particles and becoming infected.’

I saw the fear spark in his eyes. ‘Infected with what?!’