Jihad

CHAPTER 69

“Charlie, this is getting to be a bad habit with you.”

“What’s that, Marie?”

“You were supposed to go to the airport.”

“I’ m on my way.”

Dean scanned the square. Taksim was a major hub for local bus routes through the Beyoglu area, traditionally Istanbul’s international business district. It was also the end point of a long pedestrian mall extending several blocks that gave the area the character of London’s SoHo or New York’s East Village. On Saturdays, it was flooded with people, and Dean found himself gazing at a sea of pedestrians walking up from the Galata area. A half dozen large dump trucks had blocked off access to the square from the road; three police buses were parked beyond it.

“Charlie, you’re beginning to act a lot like Lia and Tommy, you know that?”

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t mean that as a compliment. You came to Desk Three as a mature, level-headed op.”

Dean smiled to himself. He walked toward the fountain at the center of the square. Two policemen, one handling a German shepherd, walked along the tram tracks. Dean guessed that the dog was a bomb sniffer. Other policemen were stopping pedestrians, asking for identification and looking in bags and backpacks.

The Turks had taken the information seriously; there were plenty of policemen here, and undoubtedly more on the side streets just beyond the square. In truth, precautions couldn’t have been more thorough in an American city.

It was an inviting area for an attack. Not only were there plenty of people, but there was a multitude of Western symbols, American especially — a huge Levi’s billboard flanked one end of the square. Nearby there was a Burger King and a McDonald’s, even a Starbucks a small distance down the block.

So if he was going to blow the place up, what would he do? A truck bomb would do the most damage, but there was no way one was running the gamut the police had erected.

Maybe the show of force had already done its job.

Dean started back toward the cab, which he’d left a block away. As he did, he spotted a man in a long gray raincoat — odd on a day when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

Dean started for him, all instinct, not thinking.

The policemen with the dog got there first. Dean stopped, frozen, sure he that in the next second the young man would explode.

“Charlie, what’s going on?” asked Telach.

The boy threw his hands away from his body, holding them out at the policemen’s order. Dean stepped back. As he did, he bumped against a short, stout woman in a long, brightly colored dress. He turned quickly to try to grab her but missed; she tottered down to the sidewalk.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, bending down.

“I’m all right,” insisted the woman with a pronounced British accent. “I can manage on my own.”

She refused Dean’s outstretched arm, righting herself and walking toward the paved cobblestones of Istikal Caddesi. Dean turned back toward the man in the raincoat; as he did, he spotted a bearded man being chased by two policemen. He was wearing a sweater, and looked like he had a bulletproof vest under it.

His face — it was the bodyguard, Katib.

Dean yelled to the woman to get down. As he did, the man exploded.