Hard Rain

Thirty-seven

The early evening was still and quiet. Somewhere close by, folks were crying. The Istanbul police had set up floodlights, getting down to business, taking statements, earning their pay. Istanbul police forensic teams were already on the scene. They’d been getting a hell of a workout, it seemed to me. Anti-terror guys picked and poked their way through the scene.

Just about everyone I knew in Istanbul was in attendance. Iyaz and Karli were taking a statement from a witness, the same old lady I’d pegged as the grandmother of the kids playing in the gutter earlier. I couldn’t see the kids anywhere. The old woman was sponging her eyes with a hanky, pressing into them hard. I feared the worst.

Goddard and Mallet stood around, hands on hips, shaking their heads, discussing something with Stringer. Masters had her arms around Nasor, Doc Merkit’s nephew and sometime receptionist. Rodney Cain stood by himself in shock, staring into nothingness.

Ambulances and cop cars were everywhere, their flashing blue, red and orange lights bouncing and shearing off hundreds of shattered windowpanes that now lay across the sidewalks, the road, over the parked vehicles — over everything — lending a jagged kaleidoscope effect to the scene. There was the gagging, sweet smell of burnt human flesh in the air, the smell you never forget once you’ve experienced it.

The epicentre of the explosion was a car-sized crater in the asphalt, twenty yards down from Doc Merkit’s place. Opposite, Emir’s Renault, now a twisted, scorched half-ton of metal, had come to rest upside down on the sidewalk against a tree trunk. A paramedic had climbed into the upper branches and was in the process of recovering blackened body parts caught up in them. The bomb must have detonated with pinpoint accuracy, which to me indicated an observer somewhere with a cell phone. Something glinting in the gutter, reflecting a bank of floodlights, caught my attention. I bent down and picked it up: the silver head and torso of a miniature human skeleton.

‘Vin, I’m so sorry.’ It was Anna. I felt the warmth of her arms around me, but it couldn’t chase that smell out of the back of my throat.

We stood there not moving for some time. Over Masters’ shoulder, I watched the scene playing out around us with a detached emptiness. We have forty minutes left. How do you wish to spend them?

‘I just spoke with Detective Iyaz,’ Masters said, leaning against the side of an ambulance. ‘The old lady saw Emir drive past. There were two other people in the car with him at the time of the explosion. Um… only one of those has yet to be positively identified.’

I appreciated that Masters was doing her best not to say the hands and feet found up in the tree belonged to Doc Merkit. ‘Emir had an uncle who lived nearby,’ I told her. ‘His name was Kemel. He owned a rug shop. He came along for the ride.’ I sipped the sweet, thick black Turkish coffee Masters had bought from a vendor a couple of blocks over. It helped.

‘I’ll pass that on,’ said Masters. ‘They’re talking about this being the work of the KKK.’

‘I didn’t know the Klan operated this far north.’

‘Vin, hereabouts “KKK” stands for the Kurdistan Democratic Confederation. A local terrorist group. It’s also called the PKK, if you’d rather. They blow people up in Turkey every other day.’

‘This KKK claimed responsibility?’ I asked.

Masters shook her head. ‘No.’

‘I’d just as soon believe it was the Klan. You and I both know who did this. Forensics are going to find traces of the same explosives made in the US, shipped to Israel and supposedly fired off at Hezbollah.’

One of the many ambulances present backed away from the scene and drove off quiet, in no hurry.

‘I pressed Karli and Iyaz about Yafa and her entourage,’ Masters said. ‘I think they want to believe she’s a figment of our imagination.’

‘Some figment,’ I replied. ‘She’d have had Doc Merkit’s home staked out. They would have known Emir was our driver. The two people in the car with him were mistaken for you and me.’ I remembered circling the block with Emir, looking for what, I wasn’t sure, but obviously my gut had picked something up… ‘Where’s Harvey Stringer?’ I asked suddenly.

‘Took off half an hour ago.’

I gave a grunt.

‘You think he’s the inside man?’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘His hall monitors, Goddard and Mallet, have been running about on his behalf, keeping an eye on us. He has full access to the day-to-day on this case. And he knows more than he’s prepared to share about Yafa. Stringer would have known about Emmet Portman’s trips to southern Iraq, but has chosen not to come clean about them. Someone ran Portman’s emails through a filter — Stringer has access.’

‘We should go to Burnbaum.’

‘When we’ve got something solid.’

I caught a glimpse of the granny I’d seen earlier. She was helping a much younger woman herd the three young boys into a doorway. Here was some good news at least.

‘So what did you dig up at Portman’s place?’ Masters enquired.

‘Ays— Doc Merkit found me a Geiger counter. That’s why she was in the vehicle with Emir and his uncle.’ I knew I was wandering from the point. I felt Masters’ hand on my shoulder.

‘Don’t blame yourself, Vin. This was just… bad luck.’

‘Yeah, bad luck.’ I watched Karli and Iyaz in conversation with a couple of guys wearing paper shoes — forensics. ‘Portman’s wall safe was hot,’ I added.

‘Radioactive?’

‘Seems like it wasn’t the perfect crime after all. I figure Yafa went too heavy on the explosives and accidentally burst the radioactive water sample. That would explain why the safe was cleaned out so thoroughly — had nothing to do with wiping away prints. If forensics had found fluid in the safe, they’d have tested it. And that was the last thing Yafa and her people wanted.’

‘So when Yafa found out about the existence of the secret floor safe, they must have come to the same conclusion you did about the existence of a duplicate water sample and report. Which would explain why they were after Fedai and seems to confirm your theory that an inside source must have debriefed them.’

Being right didn’t carry a lot of satisfaction, not today.

‘Vin, I can tell you a little about uranyl fluoride now if you’re interested. But it can wait till tomorrow.’

What I wanted, needed, was to keep busy. ‘I’m okay. What is it?’

‘You get uranyl fluoride when you dissolve uranium hexafluoride in water. You also get hydrogen fluoride. Both are highly toxic, and I mean highly. Breathe too much hydrogen fluoride and it’ll kill you.’

‘And what’s uranium hexa-whatever?’

‘Uranium hexafluoride is part of the cycle that ends in either fuel for nuclear reactors or thermonuclear bombs.’

‘Well, I guess if Karli and Iyaz’s forensics people had found that in the residue left in Portman’s wall safe, it would’ve shifted the murder investigation to different ground. We need to get out of here.’

‘And go where?’

‘To different ground.’