Читать книгу State Of Attack - Gary Haynes - Страница 16

Chapter 7

Six Days Later

A heat haze rose above Ankara’s melting tarmac, the capital of Turkey experiencing its hottest summer in twenty years. Western tourists strolling around the historical centre of the city, situated upon a rock-strewn hill, stayed in the shade, their reddened skin pressed close to the battlements of the ancient citadel. If a breeze could have been bought with hard cash, there would’ve been a lot of takers. Even the fine-boned Angora cats hid in alleys under concrete overhangs, their feral nature drained by the fierce midday sun.

A little under a mile away in an inconspicuous office building with a bare concrete facade, the general, Tom’s father, was sitting on a padded chair in front of a chipped mahogany desk. He was wearing dark blue slacks and a white, open-necked shirt. His hair was turning from sandy to grey, but his waistline remained lean due to a mixture of jogging and a healthy diet. Although the room had functioning AC, beads of sweat formed on his furrowed forehead and rolled down his back. He thought it was just bad luck that it was so damned hot.

The Turk behind the desk was called Hassam Habib. He appeared to be too young to be taken seriously in intelligence circles. Mid-thirties at most, the general thought, his crow-black hair and eyebrows so immaculate that he looked as if he’d just had a makeover. He was a handsome man, with prominent cheekbones, a thin high-ridged nose and eyes as unblemished as shellfish flesh. He was an analyst in MIT, the Turkish National Intelligence Organization. And he was looking as if he’d found himself in the wrong job.

The general knew the Turks had their problems, as every independent state did. The country was desperate to join the EU, for economic reasons, but they just couldn’t get to grips with the necessity for human rights and political expediency. And just as the threat of terrorism from the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, was abating, they had to deal with the fallout from the Sunni-Shia conflict.

It was no longer confined to the Middle East and was taking hold in Turkey, too, fuelled by disgruntled Shia refugees from Syria, people who didn’t take too kindly to the Sunni Turkish president’s call for the downfall of the Assad regime. Then there were the Alevi, followers of a Muslim sect that made up twenty-five per cent of Turkey’s population. As a result of increasing sectarian violence against them, they were rioting on the streets and calling for independence. Habib had a right to look a little stressed, the general thought.

After they’d finished some small talk, the wooden office door creaked opened and a rotund middle-aged woman in a stained white dress, that seemed two sizes too small, walked in carrying a tray inlaid with brass. She didn’t speak, but served coffee and a glass of water to each of them before leaving, placing the general’s cup on a lace doily that was already positioned on a small half-moon table tucked into the side of the chair. On the other side of the chair the general had placed his brown leather briefcase.

“Do you like our coffee, general?” Habib asked after finishing two short slurps.

“I like it just fine,” the general said, although like most things in Turkey he found it too harsh.

“Not too bitter for you?”

“I said I like it just fine.”

Habib’s mouth became a closed-mouthed smile. “Now, general,” he said. “How may I be of assistance to you?”

“There’s a man we are particularly interested in,” the general replied, picking up the cup off the doily. “He’s come up on our radar. He’s known only as Ibrahim. The Sunni jihadists call him the Sword of Allah. You heard of him?”

Habib pouted his generous lips before rubbing his angular face.

“I said, you heard of this Ibrahim?”

The general had found Habib’s actions too contrived. The guy wasn’t looking to buy time. He was looking to sell intel.

“It’s a common Muslim name, is it not?” Habib replied, taking a sip of water. “But a modern-day Khālid ibn al-Walīd, I think not,” he went on, referring to the original so-called Sword of Allah, a companion of the Prophet and his greatest military tactician.

“Look, we can dance around this all afternoon, if you like, but why don’t we just cut the bullshit and get right to it? Whatcha say, huh?”

“You Americans. So loud. So aggressive,” Habib said, his tone half serious.

“I apologize if I’ve offended your sensitive side.”

“I can see you don’t want to be, how you say, subtle about this.”

“Subtlety’s a luxury we can’t afford right now.”

“All right, general. No more dancing around, as you put it. I presume I don’t have to spell out the rules?”

“You don’t,” the general said.

He replaced the cup and leaned forwards, legs splayed, fingers interlocked between them, paraphrasing in his own mind what Habib would have said: I will deny all knowledge of what takes place in this office and when I have a chance for revenge I will take it.

Habib nodded. “There’s a rumour that he is protected by the Turkish mafia, and by the militant arm of Hamas in the Palestinian territories,” he said, referring to the Sunni terrorist group. “There are also rumours that he has strong links with Al-Shabaab in East Africa.” He puckered his lips. “Rumours, general, are very dangerous things, are they not?”

The general eyed the younger man. That was a helluva statement, he thought. He made sure his face didn’t show any emotion. “What are my chances of finding him?”

Habib snickered. “Zero, my friend,” he said. “You will never find him. He is a shadow, they say, a puff of grey smoke in the great conflagration that is the warring Middle East. But he has eyes and ears all over, by all accounts. Why do you want to find this man? I mean, apart from the fact he is a terrorist?”

Good question, the general thought.