CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
3.00am. Shatila, 10/28/02.
Jim sank into his cover and quickly deployed his hessian and rubbish camouflage. He was a little too quick in his movements and there was an audible rustle as he settled into the corner. An armed man, wearing a ragged red and white keffiyeh, his rifle carried at the ready, detached himself from the shadowy gateway where he had been on watch, and moved across the road to investigate. A guard for another terrorist faction, he moved slowly and deliberately towards Jim’s position.
From beneath the hessian Jim watched his approach. He slid his FS knife from the sheath sewn inside his carryall waistcoat his legs bunched underneath him. The man stopped, leaned forwards for a close look, and began to raise the muzzle of his weapon. He had heard something suspicious but didn’t know what. His thumb flicked off the safety catch, his finger curled around the trigger.
The heap of rubbish in front of him suddenly erupted upwards. The muzzle of his old rifle was grabbed, pulled down and to one side. The man’s eyes widened in shock, his mouth opened to shout. They were the last voluntary moves his body made. The wicked matt black blade of Jim Savage’s razor sharp FS knife slashed up under his chin, through his tongue, through his palate, through the thin bone sheet at the bottom of his skull and into his brain. He died without a sound, still on his feet. Jim slowly lowered him and his weapon quietly to the ground, and jerked his knife free from the contracting flesh. He waited and watched. All was still, nothing moved.
After a few moments Jim put his grouped fingers on top of his head, the signal for Willy to join him. They carried the body over to the gateway where the man had been on guard. The gateway was barred with a heavy wooden double door. The doors were set into a ten-foot high wall of mud brick. Jim put his mouth close to Willy’s ear. ‘Him or me,’ he said grimly, ‘he had his finger on the trigger and the safety off. He must have been guarding something; we’ll make it look as though our interest was inside there.’
Willy nodded his understanding. ‘Lucky he didn’t get a shot off,’ he whispered back. ‘Cover me.’ He went to the far side of the street. Slinging his machine pistol across his back, he ran at full tilt at the ten-foot wall. He lifted his left leg as high as he could reach and slammed his foot into the mud brickwork, keeping his leg straight. His momentum carried him up and over, his outstretched leg acting as a pivot. His hands grabbed the top of the wall and, using his arms to continue his body momentum, he hoisted himself up so that his stomach lay across the top of the wall. Throwing up his right leg, he swiveled his position so that he was lying flat, face down along the top of the wall. The whole maneuver took just five seconds. He lay still, looking down into an empty courtyard. Nothing moved. Quietly he dropped down into the courtyard and examined the inside of the doors. A heavy wooden bar was in place across the centre, and iron bolts at top and bottom went into sockets in the top of the gateway and into the paving below. In the right hand side was a small wicket gate. Carefully Willy slid up the locking lever, turned the knob and eased the latch from its socket. The small wicket door opened silently and he stepped through to help Jim with the corpse.
They carried it in and propped it in a dark corner in a sitting position, the rifle cradled in its arms. A thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of the mouth, but apart from that the man could have been asleep. Willy wiped away the blood, using a corner of the man’s keffiyeh, to further the appearance of sleep.
Jim went out cautiously into the street, and made sure the way was clear. Willy followed through the wicket door in the main gate and carefully pulled it until the latch softly clicked. He checked his watch. The two encounters had delayed them by forty minutes. They had to move quickly to make up some of the time, but they still moved alternately, giving each other cover. Rapidly they made their way through the deserted streets into more open ground beyond. Without incident they crossed this area in the darkness and reached a wall topped with barbed wire. Jim turned south and they followed the wall to a set of high gates. One hundred meters away a truck turned a corner forcing them both to go to ground under their rubbish covered capes. Shielding their eyes from the headlights to protect their night vision, they waited for it to pass. Then one at a time they rose like shadows, jumped for the top of the gates, pivoted across the top of the gates on their stomach muscles and dropped lightly to the ground. They were inside the Beirut football stadium.
Under the stands of the football stadium many heaps of rubbish had accumulated over the months. Now there were two more. Beneath one of the heaps, shielded by black polythene, working by the light of a Maglite torch, Jim got busy encoding a burst transmission message.
Willy watched warily, his heap strategically placed to guard the entrance to the space below the stands.
Their hiding place was well chosen. Few people ever came under the stands even in daylight, but Jim and Willy were taking no chances. They were in hostile territory, and if they were seen the recce would be wasted and the strike would have to be aborted.
Willy heard a faint rustle behind him. There were plenty of rats, but it was Jim at his side. ‘Okay, nearly time to transmit,’ Jim whispered. He moved off, and made his way cautiously to the top of the stands while Willy covered him. He set the aerial to the correct orientation and checked his watch. Thirty seconds to go. They dragged by as Jim felt the exposure of his position. He lay flat and kept perfectly still watching the sweep second hand creep towards six. As it passed the prearranged time he pressed the send button down sharply. A burst of radio waves lasting a fraction of a second shot out at the speed of light to the orbiting communications satellite and was picked up and relayed on. Moments later it was received in Tel Aviv. As soon as he had depressed the send button, Jim grabbed the set and dropped back under cover of the stands. As he did so he heard the sound of a two stroke motor starting up. Carefully he peered from his hiding place and saw a groundskeeper steering a motor mower onto the pitch. Behind that another man was preparing a white line marker machine.
Mike beckoned Willy to join him. ‘What day d’you make it?’ he whispered.
Willy calculated quickly and whispered back, ‘Ah mek ut Saturday.’
‘Me too; shit! There’s gonna be a game!’
‘Magic, tha’ll help pass ra time.’
‘We’re not sodding supporters, keep your head down, and no bloody cheering when they score!’
Willy grinned at him. ‘Whut, no even ifn they’re playin ‘n ra green hoops strip?’
07.00am. Istanbul.
Rested, showered and breakfasted Mike felt a new man. The agent from Turkish Security came looking for him in the hotel breakfast room, a huge smile preceding his good news. He had clearance and could take Mike to the stake out now. Draining the last of his breakfast coffee, Mike left the breakfast room with his Turkish colleague. Crossing the foyer, he noticed that the woman in the black chador was there again. Before he could react, he was astonished to see Anna getting out of a taxi at the main entrance. He dashed outside. ‘Anna, what the hell...’
‘Mike, didn’t you get my message?’
‘Yeah, I’ve been trying to ring you.’
‘Well I’ve been on a flight getting here; my mobile’s been switched off.’
‘Oh. So..?’
‘It’s Dawn, she’s here. I saw her boarding a plane for Istanbul.’
‘What? How...? Wait a minute.’ Mike’s brain made an odd connection. He dashed back into the foyer. The woman in the black chador was not there.
The Turkish agent was looking perplexed. ‘What happen?’
Mike patted him on the shoulder. ‘It’s okay; a colleague has turned up with new information.’
‘Ah, colleague.’ The Turk looked at Anna appreciatively. He wouldn’t mind a colleague like that.
‘She can come with me in my car, yeah?’
The Turk looked doubtful. ‘She stay in car?’
‘Sure. Anna, get in,’ Mike indicated the hire car, ‘you can fill me in on the way.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘To try to find Liani.’
The Turkish officer led the way in his unmarked car, Mike followed and Anna explained about the announcement at Athens airport and how she had seen Dawn going through for the Istanbul flight. ‘I couldn’t contact you, so I decided to come on the next available flight. I don’t understand how she could know to come here.’
‘Mike, intent on keeping the Turkish officer’s car in view, made no comment, but thought some more. The Turkish officer indicated and pulled over to the side of the road. Mike pulled in behind him. They were at the end of a quiet side street just before it joined a busy main road. The Turk got out and came to the window.
‘You come, she stay, okay?’
‘Okay,’ He turned to Anna. ‘Just wait here, I won’t be long.’
Anna watched as the two men walked over to a large block of apartments.
11.00am. Üsküdar, Turkey.
George Liani’s face showed no pleasure, even though the first installment of the moneys for his new contract had been paid into his account. But at least now he could start things moving. First he would relocate the underground press and get new premises; then the work of his cause could continue inside Turkey in his absence; the true faith would continue to be proclaimed.
He set off to look at suitable premises, and by midday he had rented a vacant unit on a large industrial estate. Here his converts would not need to work so covertly but could work like a normal small printing business, the only difference being that they would do no advertising and would encourage no outside interest. Visitors would be discouraged on the grounds that they were doing confidential government work.
He decided that he would move the equipment from the condo during the hours of darkness. He would need a van for the move, and he could also use it to do some preliminary checks of the area. He went to a different van hire company, but hired the same type of anonymous unmarked van as before, using Suleiman’s credit card again. He approached the road that the apartment was in, merging with the normal daytime traffic and moving no slower or faster than the vehicles around him. There was nothing suspicious that he could see on first sight, nothing that could have been a stakeout vehicle, only a couple of cars stopped at the intersection, no individuals loitering and trying to look unobtrusive. He flicked his eyes upwards and quickly scanned the windows opposite the apartment he was using as a store. One open window stuck out like a sore thumb, the only one in the whole block. On this busy thoroughfare usually all the windows were closed to keep out the traffic noise and fumes and to allow the air-conditioning to work efficiently against the stifling heat. He cast his mind back to his previous checks on the area; he didn’t ever remember a window being open in that block before. It struck a slightly odd note. His instinct was troubled, was it anything or was it nothing? He had to stop at the traffic lights, and used the few moments of time to peer intently up at the open window. He did not notice the girl in a car in the street to his left. The girl gave an involuntary start of recognition.
01.00pm. Galata District, Istanbul.
Anna almost missed him. The image in her mind’s eye, which she had used to sketch the likeness of George Liani, suddenly matched. It was him she instinctively knew it, the man in the white unmarked van. He was staring with intensity at the apartment block opposite the block that Mike had gone into with the Turkish security man. She quickly tried to read the number plate at the rear of the van but the car behind the van pulled out too quickly and blocked her view.
‘Shit!’ Then the questions flashed through her mind. What the hell should I do? Where is Mike? Should I follow the van? It was too late; the van had gone, swallowed in the choking Istanbul traffic. Anna sat agonizing over what she should do next. For ages there was nothing she could do. Then she saw Mike approaching the car. He reached down to open the door, and Anna opened her mouth, about to tell him what she had seen, when he suddenly straightened and ran across the road behind the car.
Anna turned in time to see him wrench open the rear door of a taxi stopped there. She jumped out of the car and ran to see what on earth he was doing.
In the back of the cab was a woman in a black chador.
The cab driver was out of his cab now and shouting angrily at Mike in broken English. Mike was yelling at the woman in the back of the cab. He saw Anna and opened the cab door wider.
‘Get in, that’s Dawn in there; get that damn’ hood off her!’
Anna looked at him in shocked surprise; reacting quickly she got into the back of the cab and slowly pulled back the hood of the chador; the black clad figure in the cab began to sob. Anna put her arms round a very upset Dawn Saint-Pierre, and Dawn clung to her.
The cab driver stopped shouting and stepped back scratching his head. All this was beyond him.
Anna began to comfort the distraught Dawn, and then remembered her important news. ‘I’ve just seen him,’ she blurted to Mike.
‘Who? What are you saying?’
‘The man you’re after, Liani, he just drove past here in a plain white van!’
‘Hell’s teeth, are you sure it was him?’
‘It was him all right, the likeness was exact, and he was staring at the block opposite; the block you were in, like an animal intent on its prey. It was him, I know it was.’ Anna put every ounce of conviction she could muster into her statement.
‘Where was he staring?’
‘Up there, at the side of the building, about half-way up, I should think.’ Anna pointed.
Mike looked up at the area she described ‘The open window,’ he said quietly, ‘that’s the stakeout, it scared him off.’ Mike knew that the best place from which to aim a telescopic sight or a telephoto lens was from well back in an unlit room with a window open. George Liani would know that too.
‘Did you manage to get the van number?’
‘No, another vehicle blocked the number plate. I didn’t have a chance to read it, let alone remember it,’ Anna said angrily.
‘Don’t worry about it; you did well to spot him at all. He won’t be sure, the existence of an open window will increase his caution, not scare him off. My guess is he’ll be back for a closer look. We need to be able to run a multiple tail on him.’ Mike paused and thought for a few moments, involving the Turkish authorities might cause problems. He needed help from John or Ben, but for now he was on his own. He tapped the taxi driver on the shoulder and spoke to him. The driver’s English was tourist derived and so a bit limited. A bunch of money was produced and after a little negotiation, the young cab driver reached for his radio microphone and spoke in Turkish.
Mike turned to the girls. ‘Dawn you wanted to help, now’s your chance, Anna help her get sorted out. I’ve asked the cabbie to tell a pal that he’s got a good “drive as directed” job for him, with a bonus if he gets here quickly. He’s going to park up and wait for his mate to arrive. When he does, you take a cab each and I’ll flash the two of them some more cash and tell them what to do.’ He turned and questioned Dawn’s driver, then continued to explain his intentions. ‘The cabs are different makes and different colors, which will help us. Dawn have you got a mobile phone?’
Dawn sniffed and nodded, producing her mobile.
‘Right, Dawn, get that hood back on. Anna set up a conference call on all our mobiles; I’ll get one of Anna’s likenesses for each cab.’ He sprinted to his hire car and took Anna’s sketches from the file in his brief case, then dashed back.
After a few minutes the other taxi arrived. Mike got into each taxi in turn and gave the drivers a wad of cash together with a cover story and a set of instructions. Anna went round the corner in the second cab and parked up, while Dawn’s cab remained where it was.
Mike took stock; he had a makeshift shadowing team at the intersection in unobtrusive local vehicles. Not an ideal solution but he had five pairs of eyes looking out for the white van. John would not be back in his office yet. He rang Ben fervently hoping that he would be back in his ow
n office by now.
3.00pm. Galata District, Istanbul.
A mile from the apartment, sitting in his van in a side street, George Liani gnawed at his moustache. Everything else had looked okay, but the open window nagged at him. That was the only discordant note. It was not in his nature to take chances; better by far to be sure. His mind made up he started the van and drove to a shop he knew near the waterfront. It was a pawnshop and could be relied upon to have a good selection of second-hand binoculars for sale. Sailors were always trading-in such items for cash for a last run ashore. He selected a pair of high-powered roof prism binoculars. Small, but very powerful, they would enable him to look deep into the room with the open window, but would not be too obvious hanging round his neck under his buttoned-up jacket. Driving back across the city, he gradually worked his way to a position in a side street close to the block of apartments with the open window. Locking the van, he made his way on foot to a place where a busy street intersected the main road. It was adjacent to the block where the late Suleiman had lived and where he knew that there were telephone booths. Stepping into a booth, he went through the motions of making a call and then, slipping the binoculars from under his shirt, he turned and peered up through the open front of the booth towards the window that had worried him earlier. He raised the binoculars and focused them. Deep in the room mounted on a tripod, he saw a large camera with a telephoto lens and alongside, also on a tripod mount, a pair of powerful binoculars. A shadowy figure moved behind them. It was a stake out. His instinct had served him well. Quickly he stuffed the binoculars back under his shirt and hurried from the phone booth, his thoughts racing, he half walked, half ran, back to his van.
05.00pm. Galata, Istanbul.
It was his haste that gave him away. Mike caught the rapid movements from the corner of his eye and glanced casually round to see the cause. He drew in his breath sharply, the face was unmistakably that of the man they were after and he was going away from them. ‘Damn, I didn’t expect him back so soon,’ he muttered. His car was facing the wrong way. He grabbed his ’phone and alerted Anna and Dawn. ‘Target spotted, moving past me to the rear of my vehicle, still in sight, stand by.’ He twisted round in his seat in time to see the man turning into a side street, moments later a white van pulled out and drove past Mike’s hire car. He used the ’phone again. ‘Target now in the white van, driving past my position, stopped at the intersection, turning right away from the apartments, get moving, over.’
‘Okay,’ Dawn answered, ‘I see him.’
‘We’re right behind you,’ Anna said.
The chase was on.
05.15pm. Galata, Istanbul.
George Liani scanned his rear view mirror looking for following vehicles. He saw traffic behind him, saw a car pull out of a side street several cars back, but did not notice a taxi turn into the road two cars behind that and accelerate to keep him in view. As he passed the next intersection a second taxi pulled out and joined the tail of a queue of vehicles.
His thoughts as he drove turned to other matters. Was the stakeout on account of him and his activities? He had to assume that it was. How had they, whoever ‘they’ were, got onto him? Had he been careless? No, he was sure he had not. Were they interested in Suleiman? Perhaps a clue from the blown-up aircraft had led them to the apartment. That was possible. Well, they would have to wait a long time for Suleiman to come home. A grim smile played at the corner of his mouth. Now it would be foolish to go and try to remove the equipment he had stored there; better to forget it, better to change the plan. He had more funds, and there was work to do to secure the other half of the moneys. That would take him out of town while things cooled off a little. Maybe he should do that sooner rather than later.
The decision on a different course of action gave him food for thought, and parking his van outside his own apartment; preoccupied with his thoughts, he went inside.
06.00pm. Sishane, Istanbul.
Mike spoke to Anna and Dawn via the open conference call. They were well away from the apartment block.
‘Well, we know another address now, Mike said, ‘but that’s about all we know.’
‘What now?’ Anna asked.
‘We watch, and while we wait we need to get organized. I’ll bung the taxi drivers some more cash and see if we can get them to split into shifts, one on duty and one on standby. I’ll ’phone John and Ben and see if they can hurry up their reinforcements.’
‘Better be quick,’ Anna said, ‘we don’t want to lose this guy now we’ve found him.’ She watched the entrance to the block of flats from a position in a line of parked cars a hundred yards away.
To keep the conference call open, Mike went to find the nearest phone booth, and made a call to John Henderson, only to find that he was still not back. Next he tried Bat Yom Import and Export. Ben was not much help.
‘I’ve not got many reliable people at that location Mike, the ones I do have are at the airport. Can you contact them there?’
‘No, I don’t have time; we’re too thin on the ground here. I have the person we are interested in located, and under surveillance, but I need some help to keep tabs on him. I’m using amateurs who should not be involved. I need assistance in this location urgently.’ He gave Ben George Liani’s address.
Mike walked casually back to his car speaking into his mobile phone.
‘Any movement?’
‘No, not yet,’ Anna replied, ‘how long do you suppose we’ll have to wait?’
‘No can tell, could be minutes, could be hours. Have you got any Turkish Lira?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Go and see if you can find some food; kebabs, sandwiches or something and some coffee, in cups with lids. If we have to move we can take it with us. Do it now and hand it out as soon as you get back. If we have a long wait at least we’ll have something to keep us awake.’
‘Okay, the driver will know a place.’
‘Yeah, good, be as quick as you can, and keep your phone to your ear.’