Hard Rain

One

They weren’t fooling anyone. The place was called the Hotel Charisma because it had none. I sat in the foyer and passed the time with a pencil, using it to reach down into the fibreglass cast on my left hand and scratch an itch on my wrist. The bellhop at the front door clustered together a few curled brochures for a cheap local belly-dancing joint while he chain-smoked something that smelt like horse blanket. I wasn’t sure which one of us was more excited. I watched this spectacle as I waited for Special Agent Masters. She was upstairs, doing whatever she was doing — washing the flight out of her skin, I supposed. There was no hurry; even if he was important, the victim had been dead three days already and wouldn’t be drumming his fingers, impatient for us to get on with it.

Some guy wearing baggy MC Hammer pants, a waistcoat that would have been small on a ten-year-old and a red hat the shape of an ice bucket, wandered in off the street past the bellhop. He saw me sitting on my own and came in to sell me a glass of something out of a polished metal urn strapped to his back. He insisted. I resisted harder. He eventually gave up and wandered off to pester a couple of tourists standing around outside with their snouts buried in a guidebook. I went back to scratching with the pencil and staring absently out the window at the parade of stragglers coming and going. It was a new day in Istanbul, Turkey, and outside, things were starting to liven up.

While I waited I recalled the victim’s particulars. His name was Colonel Emmet Portman and he was six foot two, eyes of blue and just a little too perfect to be true. Well, maybe not perfect. According to his medical records, his sperm count was down to a handful of stalwarts. Basically, the guy went to his grave shooting blanks. I was surprised to find that bit of information in his file. I wondered what interesting details my file might contain, but then I reminded myself that I didn’t have to wonder. I knew what was in there: several hand grenades that would ensure I retired as the Air Force’s oldest major, if I chose to stay on to the bitter end.

Where was I? Yeah, Colonel Portman, US Air Attaché to Turkey, who these days better resembled a human being in kit form prior to assembly. The colonel was divorced and childless, his ex living in Van Nuys. Aside from that, Portman was so well groomed he could have stepped straight off the production line, or maybe out of the shop for hand-builts. He’d come third in his class at the Air Force Academy in ’79; completed the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base in ’81; there was a stint in West Berlin during the height of the Cold War; he’d helped put together Reagan’s bombing raid into Libya in ’86; a conversion to A-10 Thunderbolts came next, just in time to bust Iraqi tanks in Gulf War I; then it was on to a posting to Lakenheath, England, where he commanded the 493rd Fighter Squadron — ‘the Grim Reapers’. The job of US Air Attaché to Turkey followed. Along the way, he’d collected a number of medals including the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross: valour, achievement and flying ability. No doubt about it, the colonel already had a gold star on his forehead. General’s stars on his epaulettes were just a matter of time. Only he got himself murdered, and pretty emphatically judging by the snapshots doing the rounds.

‘Let’s go,’ said Special Agent Anna Masters as she walked past. She was wearing a pair of faded jeans and leather jacket, a New York Fire Department cap and Ray-Ban Aviators. The Ray-Bans weren’t necessary — it was cloudy with a low grey sky and the sun was a long way from clearing the buildings. Most likely, Masters just didn’t feel comfortable with eye contact. Eye contact with me, at least. I stood and followed her out onto the narrow, hillside street.

Okay, perhaps I should bring you up to speed.

My name is Vin Cooper, aged thirty-four. If you guessed from the name that I’m male, congratulations. Maybe you’re in the wrong job. I’m also Caucasian, currently around 215 pounds, and closing in on six foot one inch. My hair is brown, eyes a murky kind of green. No distinguishing marks on my face, though, as I already mentioned, I’m currently wearing a fibreglass cast on my left arm, from elbow to knuckle. I hold the rank of major in the AFOSI, which is the acronym for the following mouthful: the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations. I’m a ‘special agent’, which is a fancy title for an internal affairs cop. There are roughly 310,000 personnel in the USAF, give or take, and some of them need weeding out, particularly the murderers, deserters, extortionists and rapists. We transfer those guys to the Army.

We’ve got all kinds of criminals in today’s Air Force, committing all the crimes that make it worthwhile getting out of bed, seizing the day and locking it up. At least if you’re a cop.

Anyhow, somewhere along the way I seem to have earned a reputation for solving the more serious of these crimes. At the moment, what the people back in DC are hoping is that I’ll — or, should I say, we’ll — figure out who murdered our Air Attaché. We know someone broke into said Attaché’s house and cut him up into bite-size pieces with a battery-powered saw and laid him out on the carpet in all his sectioned, jointed glory. But we’re hoping for a few more details.

Back to Special Agent Anna Masters. You could say we’ve met. In fact, until recently, Masters and I were an item. That is until she told me she was swinging from the chandelier for some attorney from the JAG corps. A little less than twenty-four hours have gone under the bridge since she delivered this news flash. She gave it to me a couple of hours before we boarded the flight to Istanbul together. With timing like that she could do stand-up.

‘Did you say something?’ Masters enquired, turning those piercing Ray-Bans of hers on me.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Oh. I could have sworn you said something.’

‘You imagined it,’ I informed her.

‘Are you going to say something?’

‘No.’

‘Are you giving me the silent treatment here?’ she asked.

‘Major, I don’t talk to keep my mouth limber. When I’ve got something to say, you’ll hear it with your ears.’

‘Hmph.’

A cab mooched by slow, the driver hustling for a fare. We took it.

‘You are Americans?’ asked the driver after Masters gave him the destination. He was looking in the rear-view mirror and lighting up a cigarette.

Not a bad guess, given that we were headed for the US Consulate-General.

‘Yes,’ said Masters.

‘I like Americans.’

Masters nodded.

‘I like Americans. And Japanese.’

‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

‘Because you are rich.’

‘No…’ Masters said, shaking her head. She leaned forward to check the meter was running, concerned this guy might also be taking us to the cleaners. Relieved to see the glowing numbers tick over, she sat back and stared out the window.

The rear seat of the cab was uncomfortable, but nowhere near as uncomfortable as the flight over, and not because we were seated down in economy. The problem arose because the flight was packed, and that forced us to sit together. Shoulder to shoulder. For more than twelve hours.

‘Do you think this guy knows where he’s going?’ she asked suddenly as the cab turned down a narrow cobbled street.

‘Beats me. Why don’t you ask him?’

Masters leaned forward again. ‘Excuse me, sir. Is it much further?’

‘No. We are here,’ he said, pulling over.

I glanced out the window. Where were the security cameras and the bulletproof glass? This didn’t look much like a US Consulate-General — type building, unless it was running a little tourist souvenir business on the side.

‘You come and see Turkish rug,’ said the driver, turning around. ‘They are the best — double knotted.’ A guy trotted out from the shop with a smile that reminded me of a Chrysler’s grille and opened Masters’ door.

‘What? No! We don’t have time,’ Masters replied, angry, not moving from her seat.

‘But my cousin has beautiful rug. You must see,’ the driver pleaded.

‘No!’ said Masters, emphatic, grabbing the front seat with both hands. ‘We want the US Consulate-General and we want you to take us there now. Should we take another cab?’

‘No, no. It’s okay. Please… we go now. Maybe you come back after.’

The driver snapped out a few words at the guy holding Masters’ door open. He nodded, confused, and then closed the door.

‘Can we get going, please?’ Masters requested. She then turned her anger on me. ‘Feel free to step in any time, Vin.’

I shrugged. She was going just fine.

The driver mumbled something that sounded vaguely like ‘US Consulate’ said backwards, followed by a bunch of sounds that could have been words or could equally have been him clearing a nasty knot of mucus from the back of his throat. He wound down his window and spat, which solved that particular puzzle.

Masters read the address off a printed sheet of paper. ‘Kaplicalar… Mevkii… So-kak, number two.’

The driver suddenly roared with laughter.

‘I think you just told him that his camel’s toenails needed clipping,’ I said.

Masters pursed her lips and handed the driver the sheet of paper with the address on it. He scanned it, nodded in a way that implied he had in fact misunderstood her, passed it back and returned to that knot in his throat for a second helping.

I went back to the view out the window. We’d get to where we were going eventually. I caught a glimpse of a building way off in the distance. Lots of domes and minarets. A voice boomed from nearby speakers, punching through the cab’s windows with a squeal of feedback: ‘Allah-u-Akbar. Allah-u-Akbar. Allah-u-Akbar. Allah-u-Akbar. Ash’hadu an laa ilaaha illallaah. Ash’hadu an laa ilaaha illallaah…’

I’d heard the refrain enough times in Afghanistan to know what was being sung: ‘Allah is most great’ a bunch of times run together, followed by, ‘I bear witness that there is no god but Allah…’ and so on.

It still made the hair on my arms stand on end. The faithful were being called to prayer, the dawn prayer, or Fajr. It was the first of five occasions they’d be called on to profess their faith during the day. Just in case they were inclined to forget who was boss.

We flashed past a shop and inside I saw men rolling out their prayer rugs. It was Friday, the holy day. A little further on down the street were several young women wearing hip-hugging jeans that barely cleared their pubic line, showing off flat stomachs and pierced belly buttons. Accompanying them were two males around the same age. I didn’t see them hurrying to lay out their rugs. They were all on their cell phones, texting — maybe they were texting the Big Guy their prayer. I’d heard the cliché about Istanbul often enough not to want to think about it, but the whole East-meets-West thing really was everywhere you cared to look. Over on the other side of the street lumbered a couple of ample old women whose headscarves covered their hair in such a way that not a single lock would escape and, presumably, drive men to the heights of sexual frenzy.

The cab headed up a ramp to a highway heading north, and we accelerated into the traffic flow. The city of Istanbul quickly gave way to rock, scrub and high-voltage electricity towers. The cab’s wheels were out of balance, setting up a rumble that made the seat vibrate like a Las Vegas honeymoon special. The driver wound up the radio volume. As far as I could tell, it was a woman singing. She seemed to be having difficulty deciding which notes to hit, and so was hitting them all at once. I glanced at Masters.

‘Where we headed?’ I asked. ‘Bulgaria?’

‘Istinye.’

‘Istinye! Istinye!’ confirmed the driver, nodding.

I sat back and counted tenements. Twenty minutes later, we pulled off the highway and drove down through some low hills that gave way to a protected inlet. A road sign read, ‘Istinye’. The place appeared to be a weekend retreat on the water for Istanbul’s middle class.

The cab doubled back and headed inland. ‘There,’ said the driver suddenly, pointing through the windscreen. ‘US Consulate.’

He was indicating a sprawling building made from prefab slabs of concrete, perched up high on the hill like a castle and ringed by a twenty-foot-high concrete wall enclosing the entire ridge-line. It appeared that the place had been positioned for a siege. The building was painted peach — maybe they were expecting a siege of home decorators from the ’80s.

The cab driver delivered us close to the front door, which was a bunker wrapped in bulletproof glass and swept by surveillance cameras. Masters paid for the ride.

A couple of women wearing headscarves occupied the space behind the security bunker’s bulletproof glass. Masters took my passport, added it to hers, and slid them beneath the glass. ‘We have an appointment with Ambassador Burnbaum,’ she informed one of the women.

The woman checked the passports, scanned the biometrics, and consulted a computer screen. Her make-up was immaculately applied to flawless pale-olive skin. It was the only skin open for viewing, so maybe she figured it was worth the effort. She was wearing a short-sleeve shirt but flesh-coloured Lycra covered her forearms. White gloves hid her hands, black smudges on their fingertips. Her workmate was similarly sealed. The woman returned our passports with a vague smile. ‘Go through there,’ she said, indicating the metal detector and x-ray machine.

As we completed the preliminaries and walked across the open space towards the front door, the heavy steel gate to the parking lot opened and a vehicle pulled in. It looked like a cop vehicle — bottom of the range, dirty, and scuffed around some, like they all are no matter what the country. Two males got out. They wore clothes freshly pressed by a park bench. I took a guess and pegged them as homicide — the local guys. I took a further guess and assumed their boss was riding them to get the mess with the dead Attaché sorted out but fast. A US Air Force colonel murdered in your country was plain bad for the national image.

The two men eyeballed us right back, frowning. But then I realised they both had those solid mono-brows and were probably just born scowling. They walked like their shoes were lead ballast. If I read these guys right, the day was young and already it had gone bad. They got to the door before us.

I caught it before it closed behind them and held it open for Masters. ‘Judas first,’ I said.

Masters replied with a lift of her chin.

Up ahead was a window — more bulletproof glass — behind which sat a blonde in a blouse covered in big, bright menopausal flowers. The cops showed her their credentials and I overheard Ambassador Burnbaum’s name mentioned. The blonde passed them a clipboard under the glass and had them fill it out before handing them a couple of clip-on visitor’s security passes and directing them towards an elevator down an adjacent hallway.

She smiled helpfully as we stepped up. ‘How can I help you today? Visas? Passports?’ she chirped with an American accent.

Masters flashed her shield. ‘Actually, I think we might be with them,’ she replied, tilting her head in the direction of the previous enquiry. ‘Special Agents Masters and Cooper. We have an appointment with Ambassador Burnbaum.’

I pressed my shield against the glass. As I did so I caught a whiff of the blonde’s perfume, which was sweet and powerful — had to be, there was a sheet of glass half-an-inch thick between us. A bee arrived and bumped into the pane, trying to get at the source of the bouquet.

‘My, the Ambassador is busy today,’ she observed. ‘Name, agency — I’ll fill out the rest.’ She pushed the clipboard through a slot at the bottom of the glass.

Masters filled in the details for both of us.

‘There you go,’ the blonde said, as she swung us a couple of passes beneath the glass. ‘Head round the corner, go down the hallway till you get to the elevator. You want the fourth floor. Someone will meet you. Just follow those men.’

‘And try not to lose them, Special Agent,’ I added.

‘Don’t start with me, Vin,’ said Masters under her breath as she pushed away from the counter.