Hard Rain

Twenty

Snow and ice at Incirlik Air Base lay a couple of feet thick by the roadside. Falls like that here were usual, but it had turned into that kind of a winter all over the northern hemisphere. The snow that had come down through the night and into the morning was still being cleared by heavy equipment from the last of the ramps, but the business of war was continuing unimpeded.

Masters and I were waiting out in the parking lot for the liaison, who was signalling at us through the building’s window that he’d be out in a minute. Masters stayed in the vehicle, an Air Force-blue Ford Explorer. I chose to wait outside in the ice and snow where the air was less frigid. I leaned against the front fender and massaged my fingers, the ones in the cast. That didn’t seem to help their circulation much so I breathed on them. The heat from my breath steamed and felt like a blowtorch.

We hadn’t spoken much since leaving Istanbul. Or at all, come to think of it. I was aware that she wanted to chew a piece out of me over my evening with Doc Merkit, but she had no right to and she knew it.

I watched a C-5 skim the main runway and then settle, its four engines screaming in full reverse. Blizzards of loose snow enveloped its drooping wings as it barrelled along. Lined up behind it on final, I counted three sets of landing lights in the pale blue midday sky, those furthest away quivering like stars observed through desert haze.

The door swung open and our liaison, a civilian contractor in coveralls, bounced down the stairs and trotted towards the Explorer. ‘Johnny Oh,’ he said, offering his hand through the driver’s window. ‘Sorry to keep you. Had to push some paperwork around. You know how it is. Shall we get a move on?’

‘Let’s,’ said Masters, from inside the vehicle.

‘Either of you speak Turkish?’

‘No, that’s why we’ve got you,’ I replied.

‘You’re an American with Korean parents,’ Masters said.

‘How’d you guess?’ Oh asked in reply.

‘She’s a detective,’ I said, answering for her.

‘My point was going to be,’ Masters continued, ‘why Turkish? Seems like an unusual language choice for someone of your background.’

He shrugged. ‘I saw Sinbad the Sailor as a kid — you know, the one where Sinbad battles with skeletons. I was hooked.’

‘I thought Sinbad was an Arab,’ said Masters.

‘Don’t tell me I got it wrong!’ Johnny Oh grinned. ‘So, where do you good people want to go first?’ he asked as he opened the rear passenger door and climbed in. I’d seen bigger hood ornaments than this guy. His body was concave, barely filling his clothes. He had a broad flat face and so many teeth packed into his small mouth that he didn’t appear able to close it. His lips seemed large — stretched — and cracked, probably because he kept licking them. The specialty badges he wore told me he had been in Air Force munitions.

‘We want to go see someone at TEI,’ I told him as I belted in.

‘They know you’re coming?’

‘Damn well hope not,’ I said.

‘You want to keep it that way?’

‘Habit,’ explained Masters. ‘The special agent hates dropping in invited, because people mostly don’t want to see him.’ She threw me a fake smile.

Johnny Oh regarded Masters from the back seat. From the look on his face, and being a fellow male of the species, I could tell he approved of the package.

‘Well, it’s coming up on a quarter to one,’ he said. ‘People here tend to be at lunch in Adana about now. They’ve got a Burger King there, better than the one we’ve got here.’

‘Okay,’ Masters said. ‘We’ll leave it an hour.’

‘Anywhere else you want to go in the meantime, Special Agents?’

There was one person we were here to see who wasn’t going anywhere.

Staff Sergeant Morton Gallagher was a handsome guy: green eyes, olive skin, sandy hair, average height and weight. His record said he was a farm kid from outside of Muskogee, Oklahoma. The nervous kind, his fingernails were down to bleeding quicks and his knee jiggled like it was plugged into a wall socket. Gallagher wasn’t behind bars. He’d been confined to base for his own safety, but that hadn’t stopped him looking over his shoulder.

He sat forward in the chair, his leg vibrating. His attorney, a JAG captain, had briefed him and was now leaning against the wall, out of the sergeant’s line of sight.

‘Just a few questions about the charge against you, Sergeant,’ Masters began. We’d both read the report in the kid’s file. Burnbaum had more or less said it was an open-and-shut case. The local police had a DNA sample — Gallagher’s semen. Young Mort here already had one foot in Leavenworth.

‘I’m innocent. I never raped her, ma’am.’

‘Like we said to your attorney, we’re not involved in the court martial. We’re here to establish whether or not a murder we’re investigating is in any way related to your situation.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘So, you want to tell us about the woman who filed the charge against you?’

‘Ma’am, I believe she’s scared — maybe more scared than I am. Durhab Kalim Ali is her name, and she’s the most beautiful woman I ever saw.’

Masters didn’t blink. She continued the questioning and established that Durhab worked in that Burger King in Adana, the nearby town, where Gallagher had met her one day while he was having lunch. The woman was serving at the counter. Morton started going there for lunch and dinner. Eventually, the ice was broken and they struck up a friendship that turned into several secret dates. One thing led to another and, being healthy adults, Durhab and Gallagher ended up where these things usually do. Stupidly, they hadn’t used a condom and Durhab had become pregnant. ‘It was the will of God,’ said Gallagher.

According to the sergeant, the family found out about it, as they were always going to. Then, in an attempt to reposition the pregnancy, they forced the girl to bring a charge of rape against Gallagher. The young woman’s father, brothers and uncles had also vowed to kill him for dishonouring their family. Of course.

I had to admit, Mort Gallagher’s version fit the facts every bit as snuggly as Ambassador Burnbaum’s reading of them. But I hoped for the sergeant’s sake that the sex was incredible, because he was sure paying for it. Whether or not he was guilty or innocent of the crime wasn’t for us to say, but he must’ve had big bowls of stupid with his fries at Burger King. Forces coming into Iraq were fully briefed on the customs of this place, after all, and messing with the local women was potentially a one-way street to the land of Six Feet Under.

‘Did you ever get a visit from a Colonel Emmet Portman, Sergeant?’

‘Yes, ma’am, I did.’

So, Portman was quicker off the mark than Burnbaum believed.

‘Is that what you’re investigating?’ he said. ‘It’s true, then — I heard on the grapevine the colonel was murdered.’

Masters nodded. ‘We want to know whether he might have gone on to talk with Durhab or her family.’

Gallagher shook his head. ‘You think Durhab’s brothers could have somehow done it? No, not a chance. I only saw the colonel for twenty minutes, max. He apologised that he wasn’t able to spend more time reviewing my case — said he was flying down to Ali. Talking to various witnesses or Durhab’s family were a ways down on his list. I never saw him again. And then, like I said, I heard he’d been murdered.’

‘Ali?’ I asked.

‘Ali Air Base — formerly Tallil Air Base, in southern Iraq. The new name hasn’t caught on, not with us. The rag-heads call it Ali, we call it Tallil. That’s where he said he was going.’

‘So, to your knowledge, after Colonel Portman paid you a brief visit, he flew to southern Iraq,’ Masters said, compressing Gallagher’s story.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘You know whether he was flying with the 493rd?’

‘He didn’t say, but heading down there with the Reapers? I don’t think so. Far as I know, we don’t have assets like F-15s flying around Iraqi skies. There’s nothing there for them to shoot down.’

The interview went backwards and forwards for another twenty minutes, but Gallagher was already cleaned out of anything useful. Ali Air Base — Tallil. I hadn’t seen anything about either name in Portman’s emails. I’d already written notes to self to again chase Andrews Flight Records over Portman’s file, as well as to put in a call to the squadron commander of the 493rd, Lieutenant Colonel ‘Block’ Woodward. I opened my notebook and underlined the two reminders.

‘We’ve murdered that hour,’ announced Johnny Oh, grinning, as we took our seats in the Explorer. ‘You wanna go call on your TEI person now?’

I told him we did.

‘TEI. Okay, so turn left out of the parking lot,’ our guide instructed.

Around five minutes later, Masters and I walked into a building heated hot enough for the civilian folks within to be wearing T-shirts. We approached a Turkish Air Force guy sitting behind the reception desk.

‘Artie Farquar,’ I said, using my polite voice.

The sergeant looked like he was going to discuss the request until he saw the shields. ‘Yes, wait for a moment, please. There is a seat there to take.’ He pointed a chewed pencil at a cluster of chairs.

Masters and I both passed on the seating arrangements. We stood.

Farquar arrived within a couple of minutes, power-walking into the area. He was short, American, and black. ‘Artie Farquar,’ he announced coming to a stop, hands on hips. ‘You’re OSI.’

Smart cookie. We showed him our shields anyway. ‘Mr Farquar,’ I began, ‘we’re investigating the deaths of Colonel Emmet Portman and Dutch Bremmel. We have some questions we’d like to ask you.’

‘We need privacy?’ he asked.

Masters shrugged. ‘Up to you, sir,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’ Farquar didn’t seem to like wasting breath on unnecessary words.

He led us to his office in the building’s south-facing corner. Immediately, three small glasses of tea arrived on the usual swinging tray, delivered by a young guy immaculately dressed in civilian clothes. I took a glass and had a sip. Apple tea. This was a custom I could adopt.

‘Now, how can I help you?’ Farquar asked, lowering himself into an Ames chair behind an expansive designer desk.

‘You worked with Mr Bremmel on the upgrade program,’ Masters said.

‘Yes.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘It’s going okay. The usual glitches, but better than expected. I had two of you guys here only yesterday asking the same questions. Don’t you people exchange notes or anything?’

‘A couple of guys?’ I glanced at Masters but kept talking to Farquar. ‘One tall and sallow with the bone structure of a sunken soufflé, the other like he belonged on the end of a heavy chain staked into the ground?’

‘Well, I might have been a little more generous with the descriptions but, yes, sounds like them.’

Arlow Mallet and Seb Goddard. I wasn’t sure what upset me the most: simply that our CID brethren were here, or that they were here before us. ‘Sir, if they come round again, be careful. They’re with the enemy,’ I said.

‘The enemy?’

‘The US Army.’

‘Oh, bit of inter-service rivalry — I see.’

Masters threw me a can-we-get-on-with-it? look and continued. ‘How about Mr Bremmel? Everyone get on with him?’

‘Absolutely. Dutch was a great guy. A leader type, very personable, great sense of humour. He was the kind of guy you’d follow up and over the trench wall. The way he died, the fact that he died at all… well, it’s an absolute tragedy. I still can’t believe it. He had a lot of friends and — rare in a company the size of this, where there’s a lot of competition — no enemies. We’re all in deep shock here. I keep expecting he’ll just walk in like he used to, sprawl on the sofa and shoot balls of paper into my trash.’

A picture of Bremmel as I had last seen him flashed past my eyes. That version of the guy could slam-dunk his own head. ‘Did you know he was having an affair?’ I asked.

‘Like I told the other two, that was an open secret, Special Agent. Dutch’s marriage had broken down. He was involved with his PA. You ever get to meet her, you’ll understand why.’

I’d met her, and I understood why.

‘You mind if I ask you a question?’ he said.

‘Shoot,’ Masters replied.

‘Office scuttlebutt says there’s a serial killer at work, and that the murders have something to do with our F-16 upgrade. I have to say the line of questioning I keep getting tells me that’s more than rumour…’

‘What’s your personal security like, Mr Farquar?’ Masters asked, giving him an oblique response.

‘Why? Am I at risk?’

‘To be honest with you, sir,’ she said. ‘We’re not sure what we’re dealing with. The scuttlebutt’s reasonably accurate. Both victims were US citizens and both were involved in this upgrade.’

‘And I fit the profile?’

‘We’re afraid you do, sir,’ Masters replied.

‘I appreciate your candour, Special Agent. Security here is good. But just in case, TEI has provided me with a personal bodyguard. He’s a former Turkish wrestler, a real heavyweight.’

Yeah, a wrestler would be a big help to Farquar if the killers came at him armed with headlocks. Maybe that’s how they usually settled these things in Turkey — your wrestler versus mine. Only, if these were the rules, the killers who dispatched Portman and Bremmel weren’t playing by them.

‘Can you think of anything going on between Bremmel and Emmet Portman that might have accounted for their murders?’ Masters asked.

The executive shook his head and rubbed his chin. ‘No, no, I can’t… And that’s a hell of a broad question. You people really are getting nowhere.’

Neither Masters nor I was prepared to deny the plain truth.

A thought occurred to me, linked to the Air Attaché’s useless corrupted diary. ‘How much time did Portman spend on this project?’

‘Time? As in hours?’

‘As in, how many days a week…’

‘Hmm… I’d imagine, going by the amount of time I spend on this, probably — I don’t know — around one to two days a week, max.’

I chewed that over for a couple of seconds. ‘Any other Americans working with you on the upgrade?’ I enquired, finally breaking the silence.

‘As a matter of fact, yeah. One other, a former US Navy F-18 plane captain by the name of Denzel Nogart. Everyone knows Nogart. They call him “Ten Pin.”’

‘Why Ten Pin?’ I asked.

‘When you met him, you’ll see why,’ Farquar replied. ‘You’ll find him, easy — either down at the engine shop or out on the flight line.’

‘Do you happen to know if the other two military police interviewed him?’

‘No, as far as I know, they didn’t.’

As we climbed back into the Explorer, I could tell from the look on Masters’ face that things weren’t adding up for her on this case, either. Portman was a good man, Bremmel was too. Both had plenty of friends and no enemies. The upgrade was going as smoothly as anyone expected. Black ops didn’t appear to figure, and neither did the business with the crew chief and the rape charge. There didn’t seem to be any aggrieved parties circling either victim. And sex and/or jealousy weren’t factors in their plainly gruesome deaths. We were here and we were chasing our tails. And I could just have easily been back in Istanbul, chasing Doc Merkit’s.