Charles Brokaw - The Lucifer Code

She took down a couple of big bowls from the shelves, filled them with soup, and cut the loaves into manageable chunks. She put a couple of pieces of bread into each bowl, then added slices of Havarti cheese.

After she handed Sevki his bowl, Cleena returned to the couch and peered over his shoulder at the monitors while she ate. The soup was good, just spicy enough with the red pepper, and the sourdough bread complemented the taste.

‘According to what I can find here,’ Sevki said, ‘your Professor Lourds-’

‘He’s not my Professor Lourds.’

Sevki glanced at her and smiled. ‘Struck a nerve, have I?’

‘The man is an idiot. He nearly got us both killed. Several times.’

‘Anyway, he’s here in Istanbul to deliver a series of lectures to classes a colleague teaches.’

‘What colleague?’ Cleena blew on her soup to cool it, then soaked a chunk of bread and ate it.

Sevki rattled the keyboard with his lightning fast strikes. ‘A professor at Istanbul University.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Her name, actually. Professor Olympia Adnan.’ Sevki brought up an image from the university on one of the monitors.

The woman in the picture had dark hair styled to fit the shape of her head, dark eyes and a smooth olive complexion. She wore square-rimmed glasses. Cleena put her age at late thirties, but most of that ageing was done out of spite. The woman looked too beautiful to be a university professor.

‘Hey, she’s quite the babe,’ Sevki commented.

‘If you like older women,’ Cleena retorted.

‘Uh, yeah.’ Sevki turned his attention to his soup. ‘It might help if I knew what I was looking for.’

‘I need everything you can find out about the professor, and what he’s doing here. Beyond what you see in the news.’

‘So I’m supposed to be a mind reader?’

‘Think outside the box on this one, Sevki. I need you to use those brilliant instincts of yours.’

Sevki smiled. ‘Now you seek to play on my ego.’ He nodded and tapped his forehead. ‘Very good strategy. You must really be in trouble.’

‘Yes.’ Cleena’s appetite nearly soured at that thought, but she forced herself to keep eating. That was one of the things her father had drilled into her from the beginning: when she was tired, she slept, and when there was time, she ate. Someone malnourished and overly tired couldn’t function in survival mode. And she was certainly there.

‘I’m not the only one in trouble,’ Cleena said. ‘I have a younger sister. Last night someone got to her and threatened her. The professor isn’t my job. He’s someone else’s.’

Sevki remained still, taking in everything she said and showing no emotion.

For the briefest instant, Cleena wished she could take it all back. But she couldn’t. Brigid needed Sevki at his best, and Sevki needed to know what he was up against.

‘This guy who threatened my sister, Sevki, he’s not a commonplace thug. He’s connected somehow. A major player on the international scene.’ Cleena told him about the phone call she’d had and the visit Brigid had received to her work.

‘You think he belongs to an espionage agency,’ Sevki asked when she’d finished the summation.

Cleena nodded.

‘Not my government?’

‘If it had been the Turkish government, why travel all the way to the United States to threaten my sister?’

‘What do they want you to do with Professor Lourds?’

‘Just to watch him,’ Cleena answered.

‘Why? What is he supposed to do?’

‘That’s why I came to you. I want you to dig around and see what you can find out.’

‘Without bumping into these American spies that are threatening you.’

‘They may not be spies. They could be corporate interests. Someone like Blackwater. The espionage threats aren’t just political these days. Economies are uncertain, and religious fervour ignites everywhere.’

Sevki nodded. ‘I know. The Middle East has been increasingly restless of late. The disruption of the balance of power, of the uprising in Iran and of the Americans’ insistence that the Shia followers outnumbered the Sunni followers in Iraq, still hasn’t settled. I’ve been tracking that.’

Cleena hadn’t. She didn’t care for politics. Her father had been swayed by them, and been murdered because of a man who’d waved the flag of the Irish Republic under Ryan MacKenna’s nose. Her father would have never tried to make that weapons deal if he hadn’t been chasing politics. He’d known how Cleena felt about it. That was why he hadn’t taken her with him that morning.

‘I’m telling you this because you need to be careful,’ she said. ‘For yourself. And for my sister.’

He nodded.

‘And if you choose to back away from this thing, I’ll understand.’

‘But you will still do it.’

‘I have no choice.’

Sevki licked his spoon thoughtfully. ‘What you’re asking… this is a very dangerous thing, Cleena.’

‘I know.’

‘But it’s for family. I understand family.’

Before she knew it, tears trickled down Cleena’s face. She wiped them away.

‘I will do this thing for you. Carefully, as you say. But only so far. I myself have family.’

‘Thank you. Do you know about the kidnapping at Ataturk International Airport?’

‘Of course. It was in the news. I keep up with the news.’

‘Three of those men there were killed or wounded. I need to know who they are, or at least who they worked for. If possible.’

Sevki tapped on the keyboard for a moment. Pages of archives flashed up on the screens, then one of those on the right suddenly showed the airport.

He grinned. ‘Isn’t technology marvellous?’

A chill ghosted through Cleena as she watched the scene again. She’d known she and Lourds had been close to death, but she hadn’t known the eye of the storm had been so near.

‘The camera work is sloppy,’ Sevki said. ‘Taken by a tourist.’ He froze a screen that showed her and Lourds together. ‘If I’d been looking, I might have identified you.’

Cleena stared at her own red hair and thought a change might be in order.

‘If you do anything to your hair, make sure it’s temporary,’ Sevki told her.

Cleena looked at him. ‘Maybe you do read minds.’

‘That one was easy. But if you are caught, if you are questioned, dying your hair with something permanent might be suspicious. If you punk it out…’ Sevki halted and made spraying motions with his hands.

‘Highlight it with effects.’

Sevki snapped his fingers. ‘Yes. No one would look for a redhead wearing outrageous hair. And you seem young enough to look like you’re going for that kind of style.’

‘I am young enough.’

‘Pardon me.’ Sevki pulled out a flat device and drew on it with a computer pencil. On the screen, bright yellow circles appeared around the three men. ‘These men, yes?’

‘Yes. There are also men who were killed in a car accident only minutes later.’

‘And the exploding helicopter? That was you?’ Sevki looked surprised.

‘I didn’t shoot the helicopter.’

Sevki cursed and turned his attention to his computer. ‘There are bodies all over the city.’

‘There are also some in the catacombs beneath it,’ Cleena said. ‘They’ll be connected to the men in the car accident.’

‘But not with the men at the airport?’

Cleena took a deep breath. ‘I hope not. If they are, this is getting too twisted to follow.’

‘And this is just getting started.’

‘Oh, one other thing. These other people, the ones in the catacombs, they gave Lourds a book.’

‘A book?’

‘Yes.’

‘Finding bodies, I can do. But do you know how many books there are?’