Shadows of Falling Night (40 page)

The man had been sporting a scowl to match the New Mexican’s; that faded as he looked down at the bills. He didn’t smile—the sensible man wouldn’t, when a foreigner waved that sort of cash under his face. Danger and gold went together a lot more certainly than love and marriage ever had, and this looked to be the sort of neighborhood where people were acutely aware of the fact.

He did look as if he were thinking things over, though, unconsciously chewing for a second on his substantial mustache. Then he gave a jerk
of his head, motioning them through into the foyer. That was a fairly fancy name for a dark dingy little expanse with a staircase leading upward, and a slight whiff of either human or cat urine under a reek of cheap disinfectant. It made a good place to do business, though. Under all the differences of detail—the building was basically stone, and might be a thousand years old—it made him sort of nostalgic for some of the things he’d done as a homicide roach. Even little Santa Fe had plenty of places like this, and Albuquerque still more.

“Bingo,” he said softly, as the man took the tablet.

The Turk grunted, and surprised him by expertly manipulating the touchscreen to enlarge the faces. Then he surprised Eric again by speaking in comprehensible if thickly accented English, the type that got meaning across without necessarily being able to master the tense structure:

“Yes, I see him, and him, and her, the dark woman. She is wearing scarf on head and long coat, but she look from like a hawk and everyone else dog, bad woman I think. Think she have gun. Man with yellow hair too; bad man, cruel man. Old man meet them on dock, truck with—”

The man’s English failed him, but not his command of information technology. The fingers of his right hand danced on the screen; Peter sighed, and Eric swore fluently in Ladino Spanish. Even more surprisingly, the Turk chuckled appreciatively at one of the riper phrases. The screen he showed was of a big flatbed with an integral crane…Perfectly suited for lifting a heavy load, and with modern controls one operator could use it; there were video pickups on the business end.

“Old man hires six to make fast on gulet,” he said. Then with a slight frown: “He speaks very good Turkish. Not like Turk, but good for foreigner.”

“A gulet is a type of local sailing craft,” Peter said. “It would have a
diesel, too. Small enough for three people to operate, if they knew what they were doing and didn’t mind taking risks.”

“Joy to the fucking world,” Eric snarled sotto voce. Then, to the other man:

“When?”

The Turk plucked the money out of his hand, then rubbed his thumb over his fingers in a meaningful gesture. Eric produced more, but before the man could reach for it he leaned close and whispered with their noses almost touching:

“When?”

He wasn’t trying to scare the guy; from his own instant appraisal he judged that that would take a lot more than getting in his face. He did want to make sure that he wasn’t dismissed as some foreign pansy who could be dicked around with impunity.

“Just now,” the man said with a smile, and added street directions.

Eric tossed the money over his shoulder as they turned and dashed out of the building. It was a petty gesture, but satisfying. One glance at the man had told him that he wouldn’t grovel for the money metaphorically, but at least he’d have to do it
literally
.

Adrian stopped. Eric was standing and glaring out to sea as if he was looking through the sights of a missile launcher across the crowded docks of Karaköy.

Peter slumped expressionless against a bollard, staring at a gulet already small in the distance towards the east, its hull and masts white against the blue of the Asian shore. Adrian stood and panted with his hands on his hips, long practice forcing him to take slow deep breaths and keep his shoulders back to let his lungs expand. Ellen was not far
behind, carefully guarding his path; the Brotherhood operatives were gone, having been lent grudgingly for a single operation. The quayside was crowded with a simulacrum of maritime life, little in the way of freight or fish, but plenty of big ferries and some cruise ships as well as pleasure craft of all shapes and sizes.

Adrian turned to a young dockworker who was coiling rope.

“So, brother,” he said in perfect idiomatic Turkish. “Did a gulet just cast off from here?”

“Yes, the
Çobanoğlu.
Bodrum built, mostly teak, thirty meters. Strange though, no real crew, just three foreigners and a container in the hold that they hired some men to help stow. That is a waste. This is the prime cruising season down along the coast, and that is too much ship for two men and a woman.”

He shrugged, evidently not overly disturbed at the perils of some foreigners, or their obvious lack of good sense. “If I were still living in Hamburg, I would want to go for a cruise this time of year as well. Winter there is not as cold as Erzurum, but you can go for months without seeing the sun. No wonder Germans are all mad.”

“That is very helpful, brother.” Adrian shook hands with him, and slipped across a discreet wad of bills as he did. “Now, if you could help me find a gulet of my own…No, no crew is necessary…Also, no formalities, I am in a hurry…May God witness what I say, that would be a help to me, and I would be thankful. Grateful, to anyone who helped me.”

“By God, it is good to find a man who knows what he wants without filling in forms,” the local said, covertly glancing down to see the denominations in his palm and trying to hide his surprise. “My father’s brother’s paternal cousin—”

Turkish used separate, specific words for kin terms like that, much more precise than English.

“—has a good one. But it has just been refitted for the season.…A substantial deposit will be necessary with no, ummm,
formalities
, you understand.”

Which meant no papers, permits or licenses.

“And something will be necessary for the officials, to explain the need for haste and help them be reasonable.”

The Turk shrugged one shoulder and made an expressive gesture with thumb and fingers, the
for bribes
as plain as speech and much more discreet. Adrian nodded. He might not be able to bribe the local bureaucrats himself without a time-consuming dance or using the Power; he didn’t know which ones were susceptible, and like any transaction corruption required some degree of trust.

“Your uncle would not lose if he chartered it to me,” he said.

Which, as they both knew, meant
sold under the table
. Nobody in their right mind was going to assume they’d get their valuable property back under the circumstances. Adrian reminded himself not to try and bury the problem under money. Too much would excite suspicion. Just enough to be very tempting…The men would assume something illegal was going on, which would explain the cash and the haste.

He mentioned a figure with a percentage bonus for haste. The man nodded, turned and walked quickly away with a pleased and eager step. Adrian began to laugh, staring out to where the waters of the Golden Horn reflected the lights of towers and bridges. The cold brackish water had the stale harbor smell, unattractive in itself but hinting at voyages and adventures. A probe with the Power revealed absolutely nothing, which was significant in itself.

I must be very careful here,
Adrian thought.
I will do nothing but waste energy if I seek the impact of the bomb itself on the world lines, even my own. Perhaps if I focus entirely on certain other things—

“What exactly is so funny?” Eric growled, unconsciously rubbing a belly still bruised by the shot in the sewers of Vienna.

Adrian slapped him on the shoulder. “That all my life, or at least all my life since he took me from my parents, Harvey has been advising that it is a very good idea to be careful about deciding what you want before you set out to get it.”

“¿Qué?”
Eric said in frustration.

“One of the things I wanted to do after I married Ellen was take her on a sea voyage. We have no time for a real honeymoon, you understand. It was more the nature of convalescence combined with the commando school. Come, we need a gulet of our own for this pleasure cruise in the footsteps of Jason seeking the plutonium fleece.”

“I’d prefer a missile boat with some heat seekers and a couple of autocannon,” the New Mexican said flatly.

Adrian shook his head regretfully. “Not with my sister in the mix. An aircraft would be extremely unwise, even more so.” A full-throated laugh. “It is ironic. She actually loves modern technology, and I am glad to use it. But together…contending together…We dare not rely upon it.”

“Except for Harvey and his fucking bomb, and that thing shielding it.”

Adrian sobered and nodded. “Yes. Except for that.”

“And I just accomplished
zip
,” Eric snarled; Adrian could feel the self-reproach radiating off him.

“On the contrary. We now know for sure that Guha and Farmer are helping him. Bad news, but good intelligence.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Black Sea

E
llen was a little nervous about the gulet, and the more so as preparations for departure went on through the night until the very slightest paling appeared in the east and the city lights lost some of their harsh brilliance.

“They’re asleep,” she said, climbing back up the steep staircase to the chilly darkness of the deck, somehow emphasized rather than relieved by the lights of the city. “At last, at long last. Over-excited. It happens at their age.”

Adrian nodded, abstracted. “And their blood doesn’t help. This is the middle of the day, for them.”

“Afternoon nap, then. Is the ship okay?”

“Our
Tulip
is a sweet little thing and should serve us well. We’re about ready to cast off.”

She wasn’t nervous of the ship itself. It was a pretty enough craft, essentially a biggish schooner with two masts, a sharp bow, a cruiser stern and a low deckhouse that was the only break in its long smooth lines. She was no expert on boats, but the slim sleek shape of the
Lale
—the word meant “tulip”—appealed to her aesthetic sense in a way that made her confident Adrian was right about her being a
sweet little thing
.

In her experience objects that looked perfectly suited to their purpose usually were, and she could tell how something
looked
at a glance. It was one of those cases where aesthetics were extremely practical.

What bothered her was that Adrian was the only one aboard who really knew what he was doing. Sometimes his omnicompetence was irritating, sometimes reassuring, and sometimes both at once; and sometimes it was a bit disturbing because it reminded her of how much older he was than he looked, since not even his abilities would have enabled him to learn all that by his mid-twenties. This time it was a little of all of those. It was reassuring that he was an expert sailor, but the only thing she’d ever done in boats was ride in them, and she had about as much seamanship as she did skill at polo. The others…

“Eric?” Adrian said, when the owner’s scratch crew had finished carrying bundles and boxes below and departed pocketing sums big enough to be satisfying but just short of being large enough to excite suspicion. “Do you have any experience with oceangoing vessels?”

“I’m from New Mexico. Lots of beach, no ocean.”

“You were a marine.…”

The dark stocky man shrugged. “Mostly I was a marine in fucking Afghanistan. I used to see kids in the villages make little boats out of wood chips and straw and float ’em down the irrigation canals sometimes, and that’s my nautical experience. But hey, I’ve got the training, so you ram this sucker on a beach and I can land and set up a perimeter.
If I had a squad to do it with. Getting us there is the squids’ business.”

He and Adrian shared a smile, leaving Ellen baffled.

“The engine?” asked Adrian.

The ex-policeman gave a slight quick nod. “Now you’re talking, diesel engines I can handle. Trucks, generators, armored vehicles, and my dad ran a garage and I helped him all through high school. This one can’t be all that different from what I’ve worked on.”

“I hereby appoint you chief engineer. Go take a look.”