Action: Pulse Pounding Tales Volume 2

97 WAYS TO DIE IN ISTANBUL By Paul Grzegorzek

Steam from the tea on the table in front of me curled upward in lazy spirals, joining the swirling cigarette smoke that hung, haze-like below the awning that shielded us from the merciless midday sun.

The other tables outside the café were crowded with men sheltering from the heat, drinking tea, smoking, playing draughts and backgammon while the noise of their conversation punctuated the gloom like the buzzing of angry wasps.

Raising the glass to my lips, I took a sip of the hot tea, the bitterness eased with a hint of cinnamon.

I said nothing as I studied the man opposite me. It appeared that he had woken up that morning and decided to adhere as closely as he could to the stereotype of a traditional middle-aged Turkish man.

One of the first things that had surprised me about Turkey was the sheer number of different skin tones and hair colours of its native peoples. I'd always thought of the Turks as dark haired and wiry with naturally tanned skin, but it was just as common to see red or blonde hair, blue and green eyes, and skin so fair that it burned just looking at the sun.

Not so Erkhan Cosar. He was in his mid-forties, his thick dark hair greased back and speckled with gray. Several days worth of stubble surrounded a black moustache so thick that it seemed to take on a life of its own.

He wore a dark blue shirt with alternating bands of colour shot through it, red, yellow, orange and green, the shirt trying and failing to cover the dirty white vest from behind which sprouted a forest of chest hair.

Taking a long drag of his cigarette, he breathed out a plume of smoke that hit my face like a slap.

"So, Mr Price," he said in horrifically accented English, his R's rolling the words to the edge of understanding, "you wish to make a purchase, eh?"

I nodded, the small movement enough to send fresh rivers of sweat down my already soaked back.

"That's correct. I believe my colleague has already detailed to you exactly what I need?"

Erkhan raised his hands, palms up and shrugged.

"He was not exactly clear, no. And we did not discuss price."

I held back a smile. Every piece of business I'd ever done in Turkey was vague and slightly confusing until a price was agreed. Once that was done, the vagueness would disappear with startling speed and you'd find yourself on the sharp end of proper Turkish efficiency.

I took another sip of tea, and glanced around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear our conversation.

"I need a pistol, 9mm. Minimum of fifteen rounds per clip, seventeen would be better. Also a silencer, new. I don't want to find it getting loud on me after a few shots. Three extra magazines and one hundred rounds."

Erkhan leaned back and looked at me appraisingly. I knew that he would be desperate to find out why I needed the weapon. If there's one thing Turkish men love more than drinking tea and playing backgammon, it's gossip.

"That won't be cheap," he said with a feral smile, testing the water.

I shrugged. "Money isn't the problem, so long as the price is fair. Time is. I've been assured that you're the man to see if I need exotic goods quickly. If that isn't the case…"

I let the sentence hang and pulled out my wallet to pay for the tea, making sure that he could see the fat wodge of Turkish Lira and US dollars within.

Erkhan sighed and stubbed his cigarette out, the rickety wooden table wobbling as he stabbed the butt into the ashtray several times.

"You English," he said mournfully, "are pitifully bad when it comes to the formalities of haggling. I can get what you need right away. It will cost you," he paused while he worked out how much he could overcharge me by, "two thousand Lira."

I did a quick calculation in my head. Two thousand Lira was about £700. Cheap for the UK but horrendously expensive for Istanbul, where you could buy an AK47 for less than a thousand pounds.

"I'll give you the equivalent of fifteen hundred in US dollars," I offered.

He squinted up at the awning while his lips moved silently, then he grinned and nodded, leaning forward to shake my hand before I could change my mind.

"Done. Come with me." He dropped a five Lira note to pay for the tea, then led me out into the narrow, brick paved street. The sun hit me like a napalm strike, every inch of me too hot in the space of one burning breath.

Fishing my shades out of my shirt pocket I followed my guide through a maze of twisting streets, stepping around men with carts, shouting out the eclectic items they had for sale, from televisions to fresh fruit, and one man even selling fish from a rapidly melting pile of ice in the centre of his cart.

Women in full Burkas rubbed shoulders with teenage girls in miniskirts and crop tops, while young men with carefully styled hair and designer clothes swaggered past, silver and gold flashing at throat and wrist.

We'd only gone two streets when I picked up the tail. Two men, one in his forties with a tweed jacket over a pale yellow shirt, the other a young man with a thin fake-leather jacket, skinny jeans and a pair of oversize shades that made him easy to spot in the reflection from shop windows and cars.

Their wearing jackets in the heat wasn't particularly unusual, plenty of men here did. What gave them away was the way the older man kept his left arm stiffly pressed against his side to secure something beneath his jacket, and the way the younger man's right hand kept drifting into his jacket so that his fingers could brush something reassuringly.

Another five streets later I realised we were travelling in a wide circle. I wasn't particularly concerned. I had no doubt the men were Erkhan's, his occasional casual glances in their direction was enough to prove that, and they were most likely there to make sure I had no one following as well, in case I decided to rob them.

A call to prayer rang out from a nearby mosque, the plaintive sound echoing through the streets as I stepped aside to let a sleek black BMW pass as it navigated the tiny, pedestrian filled road.

"Just one more street," Erkhan said over his shoulder, turning to the right and leading me into a shaded road, the buildings to either side tenement blocks that blotted out the sun.

The buildings here were in poor repair, the paint peeling around cracks that ran through the outer walls from top to bottom. Halfway down the street, two men lounged against the wall on either side of the dim entrance to an alleyway. They glanced up as we approached and the nearest one came lazily to something that resembled attention.

He nodded at Erkhan and gave me a long look from behind his shades. Both he and his colleague wore light jackets, the bulky outlines of their weapons easy to see underneath.

The standing man leaned over and whispered something to Erkhan, who whispered back furiously, then shrugged. The conversation went on for perhaps thirty seconds, then abruptly Erkhan waved at me to follow and turned into the alleyway. It was wide enough for four men to walk in a line, with several doors on either side and a short flight of stairs at the far end that led up to a black metal gate.

It was to this that he led us, and it was only when I waited while he unlocked the gate that the skin between my shoulder blades began to prickle.

There was almost no sound in the alley, the cries of the hawkers in the next street muted by the thick stone walls, and the screeching of metal as the gate drew back was shockingly loud.

Behind the gate was a door, which Erkhan opened with a key, leading me into a hallway where we both stooped to remove our shoes. Once that was done, he showed me to the salon and waved towards one of the three plush red sofas that sat in three sides of a square around a small black coffee table.

"Please, wait while I get your goods," he said with a smile, and I sat back and waited, the itchy feeling now gone but a bubble of worry in my gut taking its place. Everything had seemed fine until we'd reached the alleyway, what had changed?

Could the man on the gate have said something to concern him? That was the only thing I could think of, and breaking all protocol I went back into the hallway and put my shoes back on before returning to the sofa and sitting once more.

If things went south I didn't want to be running through the streets of Istanbul in my socks, particularly not with armed men chasing me.

After five long minutes, Erkhan returned with a large box, which he placed on the table in front of me. Opening it, he gestured to the contents and stepped back with a smile on his face.

"Please, have a look and tell me if you are happy," he said as I leaned forwards and began to take out the items within.

First came a Sig P226. A fantastically reliable pistol, if a little tricky to master. Then came three magazines, a box of one hundred 9mm rounds and a silencer. Best of all, there was a shoulder holster cut so that it would fit a silenced weapon, tooled leather with two spare clip holders that sat under the right arm with the pistol worn on the left side.

I fed rounds into one of the clips and slapped it into the weapon. Pulling the slide back, I saw that the serial numbers had been filed flat. A round fed into the chamber and I screwed the silencer on before slipping the whole thing into the holster and sliding the leather on over my shirt to check the fit.

"Perfect," I said with a smile, pulling out my wallet and counting out the dollars as promised. Erkhan scooped them up with an answering smile.

"Thank you Mr Price." He held out a thin jacket, white cotton that was only a little stained. "I suggest you wear this to hide your purchase."

I nodded my thanks and put it on. It was a little baggy but that's no bad thing when you're trying to conceal a weapon. His eyes flicked down to my feet as I stood and I knew he's seen the shoes. He said nothing, instead waving me out of the front door and closing the door to leave me alone in the alley.

Well, almost alone.

The two men who had been following us stepped out of a doorway on my left as I passed, halfway to the alley's mouth. I nodded at them but they said nothing, just watched.

I'd almost reached the entrance when the men outside swung in, a wall of muscle and moustache that looked impossible to breach.

Turning back, I saw Erkhan walking down his steps, a large revolver clenched in his right hand. Even from this distance I could see that his hands were shaking and I realised that for whatever reason this was happening, he'd been too scared to try it without backup.

"OK, Erkhan, what is this?" I asked, head cocked slightly to one side as I listened for movement behind me.

He shrugged and smiled apologetically. "This is what you would call an ambush, I think," he said, then snapped out a command in Turkish. I spun around at a sound behind me and saw the two guards from the entrance had stepped into the alleyway itself, one pulling a 9mm pistol, the other drawing an MP5K submachine gun on a short sling from under his jacket.

Turning back, I saw Erkhan stop about twenty feet away, his other two men about ten feet closer and sporting the pistols they'd tried so hard to hide on the streets.

"Why Erkhan?" I said, my heart in my throat. I'd been in worse situations, but not many and not often. Five men in a small space versus myself with a weapon I'd never fired before. I was surprised that it had even gotten that far, why not just kill me before we'd reached the house?

Erkhan shrugged and walked closer, still careful to keep his men positioned between us.

"Nihat told me when we arrived that he'd found out something interesting about you, Mr Price. You see, I never enter into a business deal with anyone unless I know a little about them. You, I found out plenty about and it all seemed, uh, tiptop, do you say? But then one of Nihat's friends called him and said that you are in Istanbul to kill some people who are very important to my business, and I'm afraid I can't have that. Now, you and I are both businessmen, of a sort. Do you think we can come to some arrangement, or do I have to tell my men to pull the trigger?"

I shook my head slowly. Someone, somewhere had talked, and if I ever got out of this alive then I would find out who if it took me the rest of my life. Only half a dozen people knew why I was here, and I trusted all of them implicitly. Should one of them have sold me out, I was in very hot water indeed.

"Look, Erkhan, if you'd said something before, we wouldn't have needed to let it come to this," I said, stalling for time. No, because I would have snapped your neck like a twig the second you told me your suspicions.

Erkhan shook his head. "I'm sorry Mr Price, but actions speak louder than words. Had we but spoken, how could I have guaranteed my own safety? And besides, those same people have offered me a lot of money if I deliver your body to them."

I wondered why he was still talking. If he was going to jump me then he should have done it by now. It wasn't until I saw his eyes flicker over my shoulder that it made sense. A gunshot, even in this part of Istanbul, would draw the police like flies to a corpse.

I spun, my right arm flashing up to block the knife that Nihat was plunging towards my back. He grunted in surprise but recovered quickly enough to throw an elbow into my temple, sending me reeling as the others closed in.

I slammed into the wall, my vision blurring as all four of Erkhan's toughs approached me, guns now hidden in favour of knives and in one case a particularly nasty looking butcher's hook.

"There are 97 ways to die in Istanbul, Mr Price," Erkhan called over their shoulders, "as the saying goes, and 95 of them are stupidity. I'm truly sorry, I hate to spoil a business deal by killing the customer, but as I'll get the goods back when this is over then technically, I suppose, this wasn't business at all, so I'm OK."

I saw his smile as the thought occurred to him, and had a second to shake my head in wonder that Erkhan could be so concerned with the morality of business while watching a man get stabbed to death on his orders.

I reached for the pistol even as the first man closed in, knife flashing low in a disemboweling cut. My foot lashed out, cracking into his hand. He howled and pulled back, knocking into the man next to him.

Seeing a gap in the circle, I charged that way, ducking a vicious swing from the hook. The man I'd kicked, however, saw what I was doing and threw his knife left handed. It was a bad throw, but close enough to make me duck back to avoid the blade.

As I ducked, Nihat leapt the remaining distance between us and landed on my back, driving me to my knees. His knife flashed in reflected sunlight from one of the windows high above as he plunged it over my shoulder and towards my throat.

I threw my head backwards in a savage headbutt, catching his chin with the top of my head. I saw stars for the second time in less than a minute as pain lanced through my skull, but Nihat gave out a high pitched, bubbling scream and as I twisted to avoid the knife I saw that he had bitten through his tongue, blood spurting out as he released his grip and staggered backwards, knife dropped and forgotten.

Scooping it up I rolled forwards, coming up to my feet and spinning just in time to block another knife. Steel rang on steel as the blades met, his tiny darting lunges being stopped by my blade as I backed away, looking for a position where they could only come at me one at a time.

The man I was fighting was good, a proper knife fighter. He kept pushing at me, seeking a hole in my defenses that would allow his blade to slip through, one of the quick lunges slicing the arteries in my throat, thumb or thigh.

The others hung back, seemingly happy to let the man do his work, and he grinned from beneath his moustache as he launched a blistering series of strikes that my eye could barely follow. His blade licked out, cutting my shoulder, my wrist, my waist. I could feel hot blood trickling down my body and I knew that he was going to win, knew that I was going to die here, in an alleyway in Istanbul, because I'd been stupid enough to believe that no one would sell me out.

And then he slipped. Only for a second, but it was enough. Stepping inside his guard, I brought my blade up and buried it in his throat, staring into his eyes as understanding, then fear, then acceptance, flashed through them before they glazed.

Pushing him back towards the remaining two, I reached under my jacket and pulled out the pistol.

Without so much as a glance back, they ran, leaving me in the alleyway with Nihat, who was on his knees with both hands covering his mouth, and Erkhan, who stood, gaping like a fish while I stalked towards him, pistol in his hand forgotten.

"There are 97 ways to die in Istanbul, Erkhan," I said with a feral smile, "and number 96 is trying to kill me and failing."

Time slowed as I pulled the trigger, the empty click sounding wrong as it failed to fire.

I pulled again, the same empty click punctuating the sentence forming in my head. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he took the fucking firing pin out before he sold me the gun.

Erkhan grinned and raised his own pistol, knowing I was too far away to do anything, having dropped the knife to pull my pistol.

Left with nothing else to do as the barrel snapped up, his finger whitening on the trigger, I threw my pistol underhand, watching it desperately as it spun in lazy circles towards Erkhan.

Two things happened at the same time.

The first was a flash, a thunderclap and the hot, searing agony of a bullet tearing through the flesh of my upper arm. I staggered backwards and sideways, knocked off balance by the force of the round as it took part of my arm on its onward journey.

The second was my pistol, thrown in desperation, spinning straight into Erkhan's face, the heavy butt smashing his nose flat as he screamed with the pain.

Pushing my own pain to one side, I charged the distance between us and grabbed Erkhan's right hand as it went to his broken face, snapping his finger with a loud crack as I wrenched the pistol free and placed the muzzle against his stomach, burying the tip of the barrel in layers of fat.

I pulled the trigger twice, the rounds tearing through him as I angled them upwards, tearing through flesh, bone and organs before exiting at crazy angles.

Erkhan stumbled backwards, ending up sitting on the top step with a bemused expression on his face before he slumped sideways, the light going out of his eyes.

Dropping the pistol, I scooped up my own. A firing pin would be a lot easier to get than a new pistol, that was for sure.

I stumbled over to Nihat and grabbed him by the collar, jerking him to his feet.

"You and I," I said in flawless Turkish, "are going to have a little chat about the friend who told you about me. And if I don't like the answers I'm getting, I can assure you that you will know it. Are we clear?"

Nihat nodded as I pushed him out into the harsh sunlight. Sirens were already echoing from the walls of the tiny, twisting streets as we took turns at random, disappearing into the maze of alleyways in the city where, apparently, there were 97 ways to die.

BIO:

Despite the surname, Paul Grzegorzek hails from Sussex where he has lived all his life, having gone to school in the beautiful countryside town of Midhurst. He was born in Shoreham-by-Sea, within spitting distance of Brighton, a city he's called home since the mid 90's.
Over the last twelve years, Paul has worked as a soldier (part time only), a bouncer, a security officer and a police officer, not necessarily in that order. In a 6 year police career, Paul worked on the beat (on a mountain bike of all things), on response, then on LST, specializing in riot duties and working as a riot medic. Paul then went on to join DIU (the divisional intelligence unit) and worked on undercover drug operations as well as dealing with vehicle crime for the city and anything else that caught his eye.
During his police career Paul was twice given bravery awards in the form of divisional congratulations.
Paul eventually left the police for a high-profile security job in the US which fell through, and now uses the skills he gained in the police in the private sector in the UK.
While in the police, Paul met bestselling author Peter James and soon the two became firm friends, Paul helping Peter as an adviser on his “Roy Grace” series of novels.
Outside of work and writing, Paul has studied white crane kung fu for about a dozen years on and off, and lives in Brighton which he loves and hates with a passion. Wherever he goes in the city he is reminded of a job that he attended, a person he arrested or a crime scene he worked, which is why he writes about the place with such vigour and realism.

Paul is the author of ‘The Follow’ and ‘When Good Men Do Nothing’.

He blogs here: http://diariesofamodernmadman.blogspot.com/