Empire of Lies

15

In the windowless basement of one of the old castle’s modern extensions, Kamal was finding it hard to dodge the aftershocks of his encounter with Nisreen.

He and Taymoor were with the analyst who’d been going over the CCTV footage of the riverbank.

The huge space was one of several data-analysis chambers that were collectively known as the Caves. Each station in the video-surveillance chamber was the same: a desk of controls under a big flat screen and an array of four smaller ones around it. The entire place hummed with an ominous silence. The walls and ceiling were bare and clad with a sound-absorbing, matte charcoal-gray finish, and the air-conditioning was cranked up high. The analysts wore special glasses to protect their eyes from the glare of the screens. Their identical dark-gray uniforms sapped what little humanity there seemed to be in the austere, oppressive space.

“Here, look at this couple,” the analyst told them as he hit the play button and pointed at the big screen with his other hand.

The surveillance-camera footage showed the quay that ran alongside the Seine. And although it was night, the image was surprisingly well lit, courtesy of ever-evolving filters that made snooping at night almost as effective as it was during the day.

It showed a man and a woman coming down the stairs from the bridge. Upon landing on the quay, they’re visibly surprised by something—then the surprise quickly turns to shock. The woman starts pointing and screaming. Then the man edges closer to the water, doing the same, his stance confrontational. It doesn’t last long before the man gives up on whatever he was shouting at and turns to comfort his companion. They seem to argue about something, but it also doesn’t last long. They then go back up the stairs and disappear from view, clearly moving with purpose.

The analyst paused the frame. “That’s it. Nothing noteworthy before or after.”

“They saw something,” Taymoor said.

Kamal glanced at the time stamp. It showed 5:34 A.M. Predawn. “Do we have a camera on the opposite quay?”

“We’ve got one on either side of the bridge, but there’s nothing on them.”

“Is there a dead spot?”

“Yes, right under the bridge. The coverage isn’t one hundred percent.”

Kamal frowned.

“We need to find them,” Taymoor said. “Find out what they saw.”

“We’ll track them down,” the analyst said.

“What do we have up on ground level?” Kamal asked. “At the entrance of the bridge. The top of the stairs.”

“Hang on.” The analyst worked the controls and pulled up the relevant footage. He put in the matching time stamp and hit PLAY.

The screen showed cars and buses driving past, early-morning traffic. Then a man appears from the stairwell.

“There.” Kamal pointed.

They watched as the man staggers onto the sidewalk and heads away from the bridge. His movement is visibly strained.

“Is he drunk?” the analyst asked.

“Drunk, or injured,” Kamal replied. “Maybe in a fight.”

The man stops at a crossing by the entrance to the bridge. He waits, slightly hunched over as he glances left and right. Then he crosses the road without waiting for the lights to change before disappearing down a dark side street that leads away from the river.

“I need you to track him,” Kamal said. “We need to know where he went.”

“And we need his face,” Taymoor added.

The analyst worked the controls to reel back the footage, then played it again in slow motion.

The man seems to keep his head down, but there’s one moment when he’s scanning for a clear path across the road and his face is partially exposed.

The analyst froze it, then enlarged it.

It wasn’t perfect, since the camera was mounted high above the street level. But it was something. It showed a man somewhere in his sixties with a full head of hair and a clean-shaven face.

“Let’s see where he went,” Taymoor said as the analyst used his controls to track their target across the surveillance net.

Kamal was itching to leave.

Just then, Taymoor’s phone rang. As he checked its screen, Kamal said, “Do you mind doing this alone? I need to take care of something.”

Taymoor didn’t question him—not here, not in front of the surveillance analyst. He just gave him a nod of “okay” and took the call, as Kamal headed out.

Taymoor watched his partner walk away as he took the call.

The caller ID just showed A—Taymoor’s phone held a lot of contacts that were only listed by an initial, ostensibly for discretion purposes. But A was not what Kamal, or anyone else who happened to see it flash up, would naturally assume. It was Ali Huseyin, a fellow agent. Only Huseyin wasn’t part of the antiterrorist directorate. He was Z Directorate.

“What’s up?”

“Are you alone or with Kamal Agha?”

Taymoor didn’t like the sound of that. “He just left. Why?”

Huseyin paused for a breath, as if to evaluate what to say. “Someone’s been flagged. I thought you should know. But you can’t share this with him. I’m telling you as a favor because I owe you, and I don’t want you to get any blowback.”

“Who?”

“Sayyid Ramazan Hekim. Kamal’s brother.”

Taymoor edged away from the surveillance agent and instinctively glanced toward the doors of the center, although he knew Kamal wasn’t coming back.

“Why?”

“Internet searches. On his home computer.”

Taymoor tensed up. “You know there’s nothing there,” he said, his tone firm and even.

“Maybe. Probably. It’s low-level at this point. But you know how it goes, brother. It’s not up to me.”

“I know. But it’s still bullshit.”

“I hope so. For his sake and yours. Anyway, I’m going out on a limb here, but I thought you should know. Level Three surveillance protocol has been initiated. Maybe it’s something; maybe it’s nothing. It’ll tell us, either way.”

Taymoor took a second to process the news. Level Three—that wasn’t good. “You’ll keep me posted. Either way.” Not a request. An instruction.

He knew he could rely on Huseyin.

“Of course.”

“Good,” Taymoor said. Then he hung up, cursing under this breath.

It didn’t take Kamal long to cut through the Citadel. Minutes after leaving Taymoor, he had reached the huge complex’s prison.

He didn’t know the desk sergeant who was on duty that morning.

After flashing his creds, Kamal said, “You’ve got someone here I need to see. Ibrahim Sinasi.”

The desk sergeant consulted his screen, and then his face turned sour.

“Is there a problem?” Kamal asked.

The desk sergeant seemed to mull his words carefully before deciding on, “You don’t have the clearance.”

“What?”

“It’s a Z Directorate case. Only they can see him, and even that list’s restricted.”

Kamal kept his anger in check, but his tone was clear. “He’s a person of interest in a case of ours, too. I need to see him.”

“I told you. I can’t allow it,” the prison officer shot back just as firmly. “You need to take it up with the Z guys.”

Kamal fumed. “We’re on the same side, aren’t we?”

“You’re not listening, Kamal Agha,” the officer insisted. “It’s not up to me. I don’t set the protocol.”

“Who are they? The agents in charge. What are their names? Or is that against protocol, too?”

The desk sergeant glanced at his screen. After a small hesitation, he said, “Jamal Banna and Onur Goskun.”

Kamal frowned. He didn’t know them. The odds were he wouldn’t. The Hafiye was a big place, with several hundred agents working out of the Citadel. They didn’t all know each other, much less what cases they were working on.

He glared at the desk sergeant. The prison officer’s gaze didn’t waver. The man just sat there, stone-cold and unmoved. Then, as if with great reluctance, he leaned in, lowered his tone, and added, “I really shouldn’t say this, but… I wouldn’t push too hard on this.”

“Why not?”

“I hear he’s White Rose,” he told Kamal with a shrug. He didn’t add anything else. He didn’t need to.

Kamal frowned. Another damned plotter. Connections lit up like fuses in Kamal’s mind—Azmi, Sinasi, White Rose—all with a connection to Nisreen.

A connection that could put her in grave danger.

“Bok,” he cursed, before nodding solemnly and walking away.

He didn’t go back to his desk. Instead, he made his way back up and across the large glazed atrium to the Z Directorate’s building, oblivious to any familiar faces he crossed in the elevators or down the long corridors.

The two agents, Banna and Goskun, weren’t in. He gave his name and number to the directorate’s desk sergeant and asked him to get them to call him as soon as possible.

He had to try to fix this. For Nisreen’s sake.

But something in the pit of his stomach told him it was already beyond his reach.