Gregg Loomis - The Coptic Secret

A lot of guesswork rather than police work but interesting. The man he had assigned to keep watch on Reilly and the woman had reported nothing unusual other than the fact they had spotted him, thereby rendering his surveillance useless and he had therefore gone home to dinner. Aziz would make sure the next assignment for that fool would be chasing pickpockets in the narrow confines of the Spice Bazaar.

He smiled. Disturbing the peace as well as disrupting a religious assembly were petty crimes but crimes nonetheless. Just cause for investigation and interrogation. He ran a finger across his mustache. There was no doubt in Aziz's mind who the couple were. As was so often the case, the female would appear to be deadlier than the male. But Interpol had no record of her. The very fact a woman of such capabilities had left no paper trail suggested a number of interesting possibilities. One did not naturally come by the ability to turn an opponent's size and weight against him. Such things were taught, taught by the military, police and intelligence services.

The latter raised some very interesting questions. Turkey's borders with Syria, Iran, Iraq and Russia had made the country a center for espionage for the last three decades. Could it be that Aziz was about to uncover something of international significance? He had no idea what. But did it matter as long as he received the credit?

He had every right to have Reilly and the woman detained and questioned about the affair at the mosque. Perhaps he would discover exactly what their business in Turkey might be. Possibly he would uncover something that would finally get him back across the Sea of Marmara. Besides, a pair of sore balls and a bloody nose were the least of the problems they might cause. Turkey, like other countries wedged between conflicting political structures, had learned spies had a genetic disregard of the laws of their host country.

He reached across the desk and began to shuffle papers. He had written down the name and address of the hotel that had called about admitting them without passports.

Side Hotel and Pension

Thirty Minutes Later

Gurt and Lang had returned to their hotel to leave their weapons. The security level at American embassies and consulates in this part of the world would surely have detected firearms and neither wanted to have to explain why they were armed.

Gurt was gazing out of the window. "We will not make it to the consulate, I think."

Lang was emerging from the bathroom where he had taped one gun under the sink. The other he had stuck to the bottom of a drawer. The popularity of The Godfather had made underneath the toilet tank top the first place anyone looked.

"Why not?"

"There are two police cars outside."

With perfect timing, there was a frame-rattling knock on the door.

Lang opened up and looked into the faces of two officers. The flaps on their holsters were undone as if they expected trouble.

Lang bowed deeply, gesturing. "Do come in, gentlemen. It was so very kind of Inspector Aziz to send two men to return our passports."

Neither seemed amused.

"Come with us," one said gruffly, peering past Lang into the room.

Lang continued the charade, giving Gurt time to make sure there was no scrap of tape, no clue something had recently been concealed. "Oh, that won't be necessary. He doesn't have to return them in person. Just drop them off at the front desk."

Cops are not known for their sense of humor and these two were no exception. The one who had spoken grabbed the front of Lang's shirt. "I said, come with us."

As close as the two stood to each other, it would have been relatively easy to disable and disarm both. That, however, wasn't going to get the passports back or make the inspector any more cooperative.

Lang held up his hands, a gesture of submission. "OK, OK! I'm coming."

They drew the attention of the three or four people lounging in the lobby/reception area as they were herded through and stuffed into the backseats of different police cars, separated from the front by the wire mesh common to law enforcement vehicles. One behind the other, they descended to the Golden Horn, crossed the Galata Bridge and entered Istanbul's commercial center, Beyoglu. Dominated by the Galata Tower at its highest point, it had been first settled by Genoese traders and merchants in the thirteenth century, soon to be followed by Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, Arabs, Greeks and Armenians. It was also here that the European powers established embassies to further trade with the Ottoman Empire. Except for the fourteenth-century tower, the area could have been the center of any modern city.

None of this interested Lang as much as their possible destination.

Both police cars stopped in front of a building distinguished only by the white star and crescent on a field of red, the Turkish flag. Inside, they were subjected to inspection by a metal-detecting wand. It chirped merrily at Lang's watch, belt buckle and the change in his pocket. The offending items removed, it beeped again, at what Lang could not guess. The attendant seemed satisfied. They were marched up a staircase carpeted with a runner showing more thread than weave. At the end of a hall, the two policeman stopped and knocked on a door. Inside, Inspector Aziz sat behind a scarred and dented metal desk whose twins could be found in any police station Lang had ever visited. On its surface was a thin manila folder. On top were the passports. At his elbow, a cracked cup was filled with cigarette butts next to a rotary phone. There was no other furniture in the room other than the chair the inspector occupied. From the total absence of personal effects, Lang gathered the inspector only had temporary use of this office.

Aziz nodded and the two policemen stepped outside, closing the door behind them.

The Turkish policeman said nothing, staring first at Gurt, then Lang. It was a basic interrogation technique, one intended to unnerve the subject. Lang made a conscious effort not to shift his weight as he stood there, looking out of the single window behind the desk. The view was of a brick wall.

Realizing his ploy wasn't working, Aziz moved to another. He opened the file and pretended to read.

"You have an interesting record, Mr. Reilly. Suspicion of a couple of homicides in London… Definitely killed a man there a few months ago."

Lang was not surprised. The price of the information age was the death of privacy. He was sure the inspector had entered his name into any number of crime-reporting systems. "The English haven't seen fit to detain me."

The Turk's brown eyes flicked up from the paper. "Presumption of innocence, fair play and all that, I suppose." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desktop. "Here in Turkey, our laws are quite different. You may be detained with or without such suspicions."

"I'll bear that in mind before I commit any crime in Turkey."

Aziz turned his attention to Gurt. "And you, Ms. Fuchs, how is it you have an American passport, but your primary language is not English? Surely you must be able to speak English to be an American."

"Try calling customer service at any public utility," Lang said.

Aziz gave him a glare that could have burned the wallpaper had there been any. "Well?"

"I was born in Germany," Gurt said, leaning forward and resting her hands on the desk.

It was a natural gesture but one that showed monumental cleavage. Aziz was clearly fighting to keep his eyes on her face.

"East Germany," she continued, appearing oblivious to the conflict between the policeman's eyes and his professionalism. "I fled to West Germany a few years before the wall came down. I got a job with an American company…"

This could be shaky ground, Lang thought. They had no way to know how much the inspector had learned. It was a safe bet that Gurt's employment with the agency wasn't to be found by browsing international police sites. Still, some long-ago cover story, some forgotten identity might jump up, alerting this detective to some perceived inconsistency in her story.