Читать книгу The Mephisto Threat - E.V. Seymour - Страница 10

TALLIS came round feeling muzzy. Half-naked, feet bare, handcuffed, he was lying flat on his back on a piece of thin cardboard. His mouth was dry, as if it were laminated, and his temple throbbed with a viciousness he’d only experienced once before in his life after getting legless, at the age of seventeen, on a bottle of rum. He gingerly ran his cuffed fingers over his body. No broken bones, only bruises.

He looked around. Low-wattage light swinging from the ceiling throwing a nicotine glow on walls the colour of British cement. A hole in the ground signalling a convenience, the malodorous smell and dark cloud of flies buzzing round the entrance further confirmation. A dodgy-looking stain, the colour of dried pig’s blood, on the floor to his right. A steel door, with a slot in it for those outside to see in, remained resolutely shut. So much for Turkish hospitality, he thought dryly. There was no sound of faraway traffic, no human voice, no birdsong, so he guessed he was deep in the bowels of a building. The size of the cell, for that’s what it was, was the human equivalent of a battery hen’s coop. And, Christ, it was hot. His lungs felt as if they were sticking to his ribs. Might as well shove him in an oven, turn it to 200 degrees and roast him.

He staggered to his feet, tried to get his bearings, tried to focus. His watch was missing from his wrist so he had no idea of time. Without natural light he couldn’t even make an estimate. Wherever he’d been taken, he doubted that it was a police station. That worried him.

He retreated to the corner of his cell. Best he could do was conserve his energy, stay upbeat. There was absolutely nothing to connect him to the dead man so it was pointless to speculate about the reason he’d been brought and banged up there—wherever there was. Fear of the unknown was his greatest enemy. He refused to entertain the notion of detention centres and secret police, of places where men were detained without charge or trial, or of ghost prisoners held in legal limbo. He had a high pain threshold, but even seasoned soldiers knew that the mental anticipation and anguish was often worse than the horror itself. As soon as his captors came for him, he decided to play the role of outraged tourist. No heroics. No trying to beat the system. But plain old browned-off from Britain. Oh, and act frightened, he thought. Remember, he repeated to himself, you’re David Miller, boring, lowly IT consultant.

At last, he heard some movement and the scraping sound of metal against metal. The slot in the door drew back. A face with midnight eyes peered in, expressionless, followed by another face, which Tallis immediately recognised. On seeing Ertas, he got up. ‘Captain,’ he began, hope briefly rising. ‘So glad—’ Before he could complete his sentence, the slot slammed shut. Irritated, Tallis hunkered back down on the cardboard. At least he wouldn’t freeze to death.

Hours seemed to pass. He was getting seriously dehydrated, his thinking lacking clarity, becoming muddled. Who was Ertas? Was he part of the administrative police keeping track of foreigners, the judicial police investigating crimes or the dreaded political police who combatted subversives of any denomination? Bound to be crossovers, Tallis thought foggily, or maybe Ertas belonged to none of these groups.

He must have fallen asleep. He woke up with a yell. A guard standing over him had thrown a bucket of ice-cold water over his head. Tallis stuck his tongue out, eager to catch a few precious drops. Two other guards were pulling him up, banging his knees along the concrete, dragging him towards the open door. God, he thought, what next? He’d heard about enhanced interrogation techniques. He’d heard they weren’t very nice.

He managed to get up onto his feet. They were taking him at a fast trot down a dingy corridor. He could hear voices now. Men shouting. A gut-wrenching cry of pain tore through the fetid air. Barked orders.

Stairs ahead. One of the guards led the way, the other behind threatening him with a Taser stun gun should he try anything clever. Not that Tallis had any intention of risking 50,000 volts and total muscle paralysis. The noise was growing louder now. More desperate. The unmistakable clamour of violence. In spite of the heat, Tallis felt a chill as cold as a desert night creep deep into his soul.

The corridor opened out. Overhead strip lighting flickered with enough of a strobe effect to induce a fit in an epileptic. Doors off on either side, some of the metal grilles open, sounds of excessive use of force crashing around his ears. He hoped it was staged. If it wasn’t, poor sods, he thought.

They were walking three abreast, Tallis stumbling slightly, not used to walking in bare feet, and feeling off balance with his hands tied together. Finally they came to the end and to what looked like the type of lift you saw in a car park. One of the guards pressed a security keypad and the metal doors drew apart. Tallis was butted through into another corridor, more stairs, more fancy codes and security panels, more shouts of protest. For a brief moment, he thought he heard the strains of classical music and the sound of dripping water. Must be the product of a vivid imagination. Either that, or he was hallucinating. And then all his birthdays came at once. He was standing in an open space, like an atrium, natural light flooding through the barred windows in the ceiling. So delighted by the sight of the sun crashing down on blue, he hardly noticed Ertas, but he did clock the man standing next to him. Deeply tanned, strong-jawed, and sturdy with eyes that were too close together so that it was impossible to detect who or what he was looking at. The man dismissed the two guards with a short command. At once, Tallis could tell that, fluent though the man’s Turkish was, it wasn’t his first language.

‘This way, please,’ Ertas said, coldly remote, indicating that Tallis follow.

Despite feeling a twat, standing there in his underwear, Tallis stood his ground. ‘This how you normally treat visitors to your country?’ he fumed. ‘I demand to know where you are holding me and why. I also insist that I have full legal representation. I want to see Mr Cardew at once.’

‘You make many demands, Mr Miller,’ Ertas said quietly, with disdain.

Thank God for that, Tallis thought. At least his true identity hadn’t been revealed. Could only make things complicated. A quick visual of the building told him that escape was probably out of the question. The atrium appeared to be the highest point of the structure. There were no other windows, only doors off with a staircase leading down at the opposite end. A man in boxer shorts, even in these soaring temperatures, wasn’t exactly likely to go far. ‘Who’s your friend?’ he said, bolshie.

Ertas answered. ‘You may call him Koroglu.’

Strange, why can’t he speak for himself? Tallis thought, eyeing the man suspiciously.

‘Come,’ Ertas said, pivoting on his heel.

Tallis let out a belligerent sigh. He felt less fear now, his outrage building and genuine. Shown into a room not too dissimilar to the one at the police station, he asked first for water then to be untied. Both requests were ignored.

Ertas pulled up a chair for himself. Koroglu took a position behind Tallis. Ertas asked Tallis to sit down.

‘I pro—’ Two firm hands grabbed his shoulders, fingers digging deep into his nerves. Tallis gasped with shock and slumped down, arms half paralysed. He wondered what rank Koroglu held, from which department he hailed. Bastard division, he concluded.

Ertas, who was sitting opposite, showed no emotion. ‘After you left the station, what did you do?’ His voice was soft, coaxing.

Fucking predictable, Tallis thought, straight out of the hard-guy, soft-guy school of police interrogation. Ertas had probably picked that up in the States, too.

‘Not sure exactly when that was,’ Tallis said, leaning forward slightly, wishing he could rub his arms and get the circulation going. A stolen glance at Ertas’s watch told him it was four in the afternoon.

‘Two days ago.’

Right, Tallis thought so now he knew exactly how long he’d been held, which wasn’t very long at all. Just felt that way. ‘I went back to the hotel. I can tell you what I had to eat if you insis—’

The blow came from the left, flat-handed, mediumstrength, precision-aimed. Tallis’s ear rang. He felt temporarily deafened.

‘I will ask the questions,’ Ertas said softly. ‘You will answer.’

Tallis nodded, raised his tied hands, rubbed at his ear and did his best to look stricken. Inside he boiled with rage. In two fluid movements, he could throw his head back against the goon standing behind him, swing his hands round and punch Ertas in the throat, smashing the hyoid bone.

‘And after dinner, what did you do then?’ Ertas continued elegantly.

‘I went for a stroll.’

‘Where?’

‘Not sure I re—’

Another clout on the other side ensured that he did. He told Ertas what he wanted to hear. No point in denying it. These guys already knew where he’d been.

Ertas leant forward with a tight smile. ‘You were observed, Mr Miller, following a man who is of interest to us.’

‘I don’t know wha—’ Tallis flinched, expecting another blow. But it was Ertas who raised his hand in a restraining gesture. Tallis heard Koroglu grunt with frustration at being denied another chance to use him like a punchbag.

‘You deny it?’ Ertas’s expression was hard.

Tallis smiled. ‘Since when was following someone a criminal offence?’

‘So you were following him.’

Checkmate, Tallis thought. Those blows to his head must have addled his thinking.

‘The man in question,’ Ertas continued smoothly, ‘is a Moroccan known to have links with al-Qaeda.’ A Moroccan? Tallis thought, surprised. According to his victim’s passport, he had been a Turk—unless it was false, like his own. ‘He was deported by your own government two years ago,’ Ertas continued, ‘and is of interest to the United States.’

Shit. Tallis baulked. Who the hell did they think he was? More to the point, who were they? In his mind, the USA was synonymous with extraordinary rendition and secret detention centres. Could this be one of them? From what he’d heard, they were more likely to be found in Poland and Romania, but the closed prisons there were reputed to be full and so the States had outsourced and turned their attention to the Horn of Africa. What all this definitely pointed to: Garry Morello had been onto something, and he was deep in the shit. He remained stubborn. ‘I don’t see what this has to do with me.’

‘Because you were the last person to see him alive,’ Ertas said, down-turned eyes meeting Tallis’s.

‘You mean he’s dead,’ Tallis said, sounding aghast.

Ertas picked up the phone, ordered a jug of water and two glasses. Nobody said a word. Tallis was trying to work out what they wanted from him, confession or revelation? The water arrived. Ertas poured out, unlocked Tallis’s cuffs and handed the glass to Tallis who drank it down in one. ‘Thank you.’

‘So, Mr Miller,’ Ertas said. ‘Would you like to explain exactly what you were doing?’

‘All right,’ Tallis said with a heavy sigh. ‘I admit I followed him. I recognised him from when I was in the café with Mr Morello.’

‘Our Moroccan friend was at the Byzantium?’ Something in Ertas’s expression led Tallis to believe that he already knew the answer to the question.

‘Yes.’

‘Then why didn’t you mention this when we spoke at the station? Why was this not in your statement?’

‘Because I didn’t think it relevant.’

‘But you thought it relevant later.’ There was a cynical note in Ertas’s tone.

‘No, you don’t understand.’ Tallis allowed his voice to notch up a register to simulate frustration. ‘It was only because I saw the guy there in the evening.’

‘When you went back to the café,’ Ertas said, scratching his head.

‘Foolish, I know, but I was hoping to find something important that might help with your inquiry.’

Ertas flashed another tight, disbelieving smile. ‘And then what?’

‘I followed him.’

‘Where?’

‘To the gardens at Topkapi. Then I lost him.’

Ertas glanced up at Koroglu. ‘Ask him what he was planning to do,’ Koroglu ordered in Turkish. Ertas nodded. Obedient, he put the question.

‘I don’t know.’ Tallis shrugged. ‘Talk.’

‘To a stranger, in the middle of the night, in a foreign land? Wasn’t that reckless of you?’

‘I suppose it was. I wasn’t thinking.’ But he was now; he was thinking that the guy standing behind him wasn’t what he seemed at all. He’d assumed Ertas was calling the shots. He was wrong.

‘Did you know he was armed?’ Ertas said, watching Tallis like a crow observed carrion.

‘Certainly not.’

Koroglu spoke again. ‘Tell him that we know he intended to meet the Moroccan. Tell him that he had already contacted him in Britain. Stress that he has already lied and to lie further will only make things worse.’

Tallis did his best not to jump in, to shout and protest his innocence. Ertas, meanwhile, cleared his throat and repeated word for word what Koroglu had said.

‘This is ridiculous. I never met the guy before coming to Turkey. I don’t even know his name.’

‘And your name is?’

Neat move. Tallis didn’t flinch. ‘David Miller. Look, is this a case of mistaken identity or something?’ he said, twisting round. Mistake. Koroglu whipped a ringed hand across his mouth. Tallis registered the distinctive taste of metal and sand as blood dribbled down his chin.

‘Point out that we can keep him here indefinitely if we have to,’ Koroglu said savagely.

Ertas did.

‘I’m a British citizen, for God’s sake. You have no jurisdiction to keep me here.’

‘Tell him to shut up. Ask him about his business interests,’ Koroglu commanded.

Ertas again complied.

‘What? I told you, I’m an IT consultant.’

‘You work from home?’

‘No, I—’

‘Where is home?’

‘Birmingham, West Midlands, UK.’

Ertas glanced up at Koroglu with a significance that made Tallis realise he was sunk.

‘What is your religion, Mr Miller?’ Ertas said, inclining towards him.

‘My religion?’

Koroglu bent over him and with one swift movement grabbed him by the balls.

‘You understand the term?’ Ertas said, scathing.

‘I was brought up a Catholic,’ Tallis gasped, eyes watering. That was true. His Croatian grandmother had insisted on it.

‘And now?’

Once a Catholic, always a Catholic. ‘I’m lapsed,’ Tallis grunted. The pain was searing.

Ertas frowned incomprehensibly. Koroglu explained in Turkish then let Tallis go with a final squeeze of his genitals.

Ertas turned his eyes to Tallis. ‘You have not converted to Islam?’

Jesus, now Tallis knew exactly what they were driving at. After the London bombing of 7/7, many nations, the USA in particular, were critical of Britain for spawning its very own breed of homegrown suicide bombers. Originally termed ‘clean skins’ by the British security services, it had since been revealed that the culprits had already come to the attention of MI5 and were associates of those later convicted of a fertiliser plot that amongst other targets would have had the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent blown to smithereens. As much as the British Government was viewed as an important ally, its citizens were regarded with a great deal of suspicion. Tallis had just fallen under that particular cloak of distrust.

‘Look, guys, I already explained. You have this all…’ Tallis shot out of the chair, threw his head back, heard the sickening crunch as it connected with Koroglu then made a grab for Ertas. Knocking the captain to the ground, he made a dive for the door, tore it open and ran.

The level was approximately three hundred metres long with a metal staircase leading down. Tallis ran the full length, took and charged down the steps. Christ knew where he was heading. All he knew was that if he wanted to breathe air again, see the sun, he had to get out. He’d heard too much about places where only the people holding you knew you were there.

The building opened onto another level: gangway to the left; railings on the right. Below was a long row of openbarred cells with men tightly caged together. An alarm sounded, the noise triggering them into action. Immediately, they started shouting abuse, rattling against the bars of their prison, jeering as a group of armed officers speeded past. Tallis kept running, muscles in his legs knotted, bare feet pounding, oblivious to the sound of shouts and clattering feet behind him as he leapt down the next staircase. On hitting the bottom, a guard, younger than the rest, raised his weapon, but Tallis twisted away, the ensuing shot missing him by a whisker.

More men now. More shouts. Tallis zigzagged as much as he could in the confined space, eyes to the front, focused on the end set of doors, wondering how he was going to get through, how to operate the security lock, how…

The doors snapped open. Koroglu stepped out, blackeyed, mean and moody. Didn’t look like a man to bargain with. Tallis put both his hands up in a defensive gesture. ‘All right, let’s be cool about this,’ he said.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Koroglu snarled before delivering a knockout blow.