I Am Pilgrim

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

  ‘A virus. Highly contagious and resistant to any known vaccine. This version is being called evasive haemorrhagic, and it is believed to have a 100 per cent kill-rate. That is what is being sent into the homeland. Smallpox.’

  Ben Bradley, a homicide cop from Manhattan, a hero of 9/11, someone taking only the second overseas trip of his life, an outsider drafted into the secret world less than twelve hours before, a guy sitting on an isolated lookout high above the Turkish coast, the bravest man I have ever met, was now the eleventh person to know.

  Chapter Eighteen

  WE WOUND OUR way down into bodrum in silence. Ben never called Marcie – faced with a choice between two evils, and unable to come up with an alternative to my plan for finding out the truth from the Saracen, he chose the lesser of them.

  ‘Take me through the arrangements again,’ he had said, once he had overcome his shock – and fear – on hearing about the unfolding catastrophe.

  When I had finished explaining the plan again and answered a host of questions – even down to the length of rope and how tight to make the noose – I put the car into gear, swept past the terrace and hit the road.

  I concentrated on the driving, slowing only when we hit Bodrum and started to weave through the backstreets. Once I got close to the house I was looking for, I pulled to the kerb and parked a good fifty yards away. I pointed it out to Ben, made him name ten significant features and then repeat them. It was a standard way of imprinting a memory, and most studies showed that, even under extreme stress, a subject would remember six of them. Satisfied that, even in the pounding whirl of a live mission, Bradley would find the correct house, I pulled out and drove to the hotel.

  While Ben went to the reception desk, I headed for my room, anxious to see how much damage Cumali’s scum-boys had done. As I stepped into the elevator I saw the manager smile and take Ben’s passport.

  ‘Ahh, Mr Benjamin Michael Bradley,’ he said. ‘I will need of the credit cards three from you to put me on the side of the safe.’

  ‘Say again?’ said Ben.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THERE WAS NOTHING. i was standing just inside my hotel room, and not a thing had been touched.

  I closed the door behind me and moved to the closet, keyed in the code to the safe and opened it. The laptop and the plastic file were exactly where I had left them.

  I swept my eyes around the room. Where the hell had I gone wrong? How had Cumali seen through it? Had the Turkish MIT guy tipped her off, either deliberately or inadvertently? I didn’t think so – he had far too much at risk to blow it for one phone call to a lowly cop. So why hadn’t she taken the bait? With my mind jumping from theory to theory, I walked around the room. I passed the unmade bed – I had put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door when I left so that the scum-boys wouldn’t be disturbed – and stepped into the bathroom.

  Everything was how I had left it. Unthinking, I bent to pick up a towel I had left on a stool and saw that the tube of toothpaste was sitting on the shelf where I had put it. Ever since I was a kid, I’d had a strange habit though– I had always laid my toothbrush along the top of the tube. Now it was sitting next to it. Somebody had moved them to open the bathroom cabinet.

  I wheeled around, entered the bedroom and hauled the suitcase off the top of the closet. I was relieved to see that, even if an intruder had looked inside, they hadn’t found the Bulgarian phone – it was still hidden inside the lining. I pulled it free of its tape, clicked on an icon, and opened the photos, which had been taken at two-second intervals.

  I quickly saw that the scum-boys had come all right – they were just way better than I had anticipated.

  The time code showed that two men had entered my room thirty-two minutes after I had departed. One photo showed them face on in perfect focus: a pair of hard-eyed hipsters in their early thirties wearing expensive leather jackets and carrying backpacks. Their quick, efficient movements and the minimum of conversation told me that they were professionals. I had turned the phone’s microphone on, and that gave me a barely audible recording of their muffled voices. While I couldn’t understand what they were saying, I recognized the language: they were Albanians. In retrospect, that should have set alarm bells ringing.

  Their nationality also explained the ease with which they had entered the room. Standing in the background of one frame, I saw the bellhop – their countryman and fellow sleaze – being handed a wad of cash. I figured that, after they paid him, he returned to slouching in an alcove in the foyer, acting as their lookout in case I returned early.

  There were thousands of photos – thank God the two batteries had held out – but by flicking through them and knowing exactly how professionals worked, I managed to build a picture of exactly what they had done.

  The photos showed the leader – the one giving the orders – shrugging off his leather jacket and getting down to work. Underneath, he was wearing a skin-tight black T-shirt – chosen, I was sure, because it accentuated how ripped he was. A lot of steroids, I thought.

  He pulled a digital camera out of one of the backpacks and, before they searched the clutter on the small desk, he photographed it so that they could replace everything in exactly the same position. I figured they followed the same procedure as they worked fast through everything else. No wonder, apart from the slightly misplaced toothbrush, I hadn’t thought anyone had been inside.

  They turned their attention to the safe and, though the photos weren’t very clear, I could tell it offered no resistance. Muscleman would have turned its cheap circular keypad counter-clockwise and popped it out, revealing the power supply and circuitry. That allowed him to remove the batteries, clearing the code, and plug in his own keypad. A bracket of ten photos showed that he had the door open in under twenty seconds.

  They took out the plastic folder and photographed the shot of Cumali’s childhood home before Muscleman produced his own laptop, slipped the disk into it and copied its contents. As soon as it was finished, they turned their attention to my computer. I didn’t need to wade through all the surveillance photos to know what they did …

  They used a tiny screwdriver to remove my hard drive and then inserted it into their own computer, bypassing most of my laptop’s security features. With the help of code-generating software, they would have broken through the remainder of the defences and been able to access all my documents and emails within minutes.

  From there, it was a simple matter to copy everything on to USB portable drives, return my hard drive to the laptop and put everything back in the safe. I flew through the rest of the covert photos and saw that the men had searched the other parts of the room, entered the bathroom and were out of the door, carrying everything they needed, twenty-six minutes after they had arrived.

  I sat on the bed and looked at a photo of them leaving. My hand was trembling with relief: it had been successful; the first stage was over. Cumali had believed the phone call from our man at MIT and acted exactly as we had hoped.

  There was no doubt that she would be able to read the stolen data, and that meant the next steps were now entirely in her hands. Would she believe what she saw in the emails? In my fatigue and anxiety, had I made some small but fatal error? Would she be sufficiently panicked – terrified of Bright Light for herself and a Bulgarian orphanage for the child – to code up a message and contact her brother?

  Perhaps if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with those questions, I would have paid more attention to the photo I was holding. I knew that there were seven major drug cartels operating in the area and that one of them, run by a lavender farmer out of Thessaloniki in Greece, had a heartfelt interest in the activities of American intelligence agents. Had I been more attentive, I would have thought about who was the most likely person Cumali would find to do her dirty work or maybe even recognized something about one of the men whose image I had captured. But I didn’t, and there was a knock on the door.
br />   I looked through the peephole and saw it was Bradley.

  ‘Did the burglars come?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied.

  He slumped down in a chair. ‘What about that manager, huh?’

  ‘The professor? What about him?’

  He turned and looked. ‘The professor! Professor of what?’

  ‘English,’ I said.

  Bradley almost smiled – much to my relief. It meant he was overcoming the disgust he had felt at the role he had been given. In the event that everything went ahead, I needed him calm and totally committed: my life would depend on it.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘WHAT HAPPENS NOW?’ Bradley asked.

  He had left my room, returned to his own, uupacked and showered. Looking less haggard and seemingly more relaxed, he was sitting with me in the hotel’s dining area. It was 9 p.m. and we were picking at plates of meze, neither of us with much appetite, the anxiety bearing down. We were alone: the season was dying fast and the hotel’s few other guests had already headed out to beachside bars and restaurants.

  ‘The next step is that Cumali reads the fake emails. Then we hope she contacts her brother,’ I replied.

  ‘How will we know if she does?’

  ‘Echelon,’ I said.

  ‘What’s Echelon?’

  ‘Something that doesn’t exist. But, if it did, it would be listening to cellphones, fixed lines, emails, every communication in this part of Turkey. In particular, it would be monitoring one phone box four miles from here.’

  ‘And if Cumali does contact him, when do you think she’ll do it?’

  The same question had been occupying my thoughts. ‘She should have received the stolen information by now,’ I replied. ‘The way the Albanians took it means she won’t have to spend time trying to unlock it – the passwords are already broken.

  ‘Assuming she believes everything she reads, it’ll scare her badly. She’ll keep rereading it, trying to find other stuff on the hard drive, wasting time. Finally, the worst of the shock, maybe even a bout of nausea, will have passed.