The Eighth Day (24 page)

It took Danny a while to figure it out, but two possibilities suggested themselves. The first was Star-69. Someone monitoring Barzan’s phone. Did they even
have
that in Turkey? Could you just dial a number to identify the last number that called the phone you were on? Then look up the number in a reverse directory? Did they have reverse directories for Istanbul? Danny had no idea. It was possible, at least. The country was obsessed with modernization.

And there was another possibility. That was the registration card that Danny had filled out at the hotel. The cards were collected each morning by the local police, who checked them against some kind of lookout list. It was the same everywhere. London. Paris. New York. You had to register.

But was Zebek that well connected? And were the police that efficient? Maybe, Danny decided.
Apparently.

A rusting containership—the
Kodama Maru
—glided into his field of vision, obliterating the Istanbul skyline.

Then again,
Danny thought, how had Zebek even known that he was in Istanbul?

It didn’t take a minute to answer that one.
He probably guessed,
Danny decided. It wouldn’t have been hard to figure out where he was going. Zebek had the same names Danny did. Because Danny had given them to him. They were names on Chris Terio’s phone bill. Barzan in Istanbul and what’s-his-name in Oslo. Rolvaag. So maybe Zebek sent one team of knuckledraggers to Turkey and another one to Norway. And just in case Danny went home? A third team there.

That would make sense.

Except . . . it didn’t explain how they’d tracked him to the street outside the cistern. Even Danny didn’t know where he was going when he left the hotel. So how did the Brow know? Was it luck?
Not really,
he decided. There weren’t a lot of ways out of the Cankurtaran neighborhood. It sat on a spit of land, overlooking the Sea of Marmara. Unless you had a canoe, you had to go past the Aya Sofia or the Blue Mosque. Uphill or downhill. And now that he thought about it, who had the Brow been talking to on his cell phone? Zebek? Maybe. Or maybe the Brow and his friend had colleagues. If so, it wouldn’t have been hard to find him on the way out of Cankurtaran.

A gaggle of schoolgirls squeezed past, giggling, throwing shy glances Danny’s way. He realized he’d been talking to himself, and he could see that the kids had picked up on it. He didn’t need to speak Turkish to know what they were thinking:
Look at that guy! He’s wet! He’s crazy!

Danny shook his head and laughed to himself.
It’s a nightmare,
he decided.
And why is Zebek going to so much trouble, anyway?
Danny didn’t know that much—not really—and what he did know he couldn’t prove.

Of course, there was no way for Zebek to know that. All Zebek knew was that Danny had copied the files from Terio’s computer and that he’d given them to Inzaghi. Whether Danny had bothered to
read
the files was itself an open question. By now, Zebek would have found the floppy in the duffle bag, but even that wouldn’t change anything. For the billionaire, hunting down Danny Cray was just a kind of “due diligence.” He had the resources. Why not use them?

The vast bulk of the containership slid from Danny’s field of vision, and Istanbul reappeared, as if a curtain had been drawn aside. On the far shore, skyscrapers slalomed downhill to the water’s edge, their broad white shoulders brilliant in the sunshine.

But what if it wasn’t any of that?
Danny wondered.
What if it wasn’t the answering machine or the registration card? What if it was something else?

A horrible thought dawned on him.
What if . . . what if I’m wearing a transponder?
A little radio button sewn into the collar of his shirt or hidden in the heel of one of his shoes.

But no, it couldn’t be the shirt. The shirt was new. All his clothes were new—he’d bought them in Rome. Except the shoes. The shoes were the same ones he’d been wearing when he went to meet Zebek the day of the Palio. His “good” shoes, his Cole-Haan loafers.

He stared at his feet, feeling like a baby elephant with a tag stapled to his ear. Then he reached down and, one by one, removed his shoes. He tried to waggle the heels back and forth, but they didn’t move. They seemed normal. But then, of course, they
would.
Zebek’s guys were professionals. Top-of-the-line thugs. They’d probably learned shoemaking in prison.

The bottom line was: There wasn’t any way to know how they’d found him. There were too many possibilities. The truth was, there was nowhere to hide, not in the twenty-first century. Between voice mail and Star-69, registration cards and transponders, hackers and enhanced 911, the right to disappear was a thing of the past.

Taking his shoes in hand, he padded to the railing of the ferry and, one by one, dropped the loafers into the green water sliding past the hull.
From now on,
he told himself,
I’ll wear flip-flops
.

Behind him, the schoolgirls cackled with glee.

THIRTEEN

Üsküdar turned out to be a graceful suburb that sat at a remove from the city’s more hectic neighborhoods. Leaving the ferry, Danny wandered along a leafy boulevard that ran beside the Bosphorus. Uncertain what to do or where to go, he bought a pair of tennis shoes at the first shoe store that he saw. Soon afterward, he found himself standing outside a barbershop, looking in the window at a signed photograph of a young Turkish soccer star. The kid’s head had been shaved so closely that it looked as if a shadow was lying upon it.

Entering the shop, Danny pointed enthusiastically to the picture and then to himself. The barber was only too happy to oblige and, using an electric razor, accomplished the deed in about three minutes. While the barber’s assistant swept the American’s blond-tipped locks from the floor, Danny stared at himself in the mirror—at once aghast and pleased.

He looked nothing like himself.

Leaving the barbershop, he returned to the port and bought a ticket to Besiktas, which lay across the Bosphorus from Üsküdar. The crossing was spectacular, with the ferry plowing through the waves toward a sort of Versailles, a seaside castle, backed by a forest of condominiums and office buildings. He would have liked to have known the name of the castle, but there was no one to ask, and besides . . .

Debarking, he went in search of a travel agency and soon found one—though no one seemed to speak English. Eventually a young man put a finger into the air and Danny understood that he was to wait. This he did until a much older fellow appeared. Peering at Danny through wire-rimmed glasses, the old Turk said, “And you would like to go to?”

“Uzelyurt,” Danny replied.

The man blinked and ran a hand through his gunmetal-gray hair. Then he leaned closer as if to hear better. “Excuse?”

“I’m told it’s near Diyarbakir,” Danny explained.

Frowning, the man chewed on Danny’s pronunciation for a while, and then he understood. “Deeyarbakeer!” he exclaimed. “What an interesting place to visit!”

“Is it?”

“Absolutely! From airport to city—one knife fight guaranteed. In the city, who knows?”

If he had to wait in the Istanbul airport, he’d have preferred the nonsmoking restaurant. But he saw at a glance that if he waited there, he’d be the only one doing so, and the last thing he wanted to do was stick out like a sore thumb. Better to disappear in the occluded atmosphere of the restaurant’s counterpart, where smoking was not only permitted but enthusiastically embraced.

Finding a booth, he sat with his back to the wall and his eyes on the entrance. Dressed as he was, bald as he was, he might have passed for a Turk, an impression he encouraged by spreading a copy of an Istanbul daily,
Cumhuriet,
on the table before him.

Unlike those around him, time did not fly. A cup of soup. A cup of coffee. A glass of apple tea. Then a woman’s voice came over the public-address system, announcing that the flight to Diyarbakir was delayed until nine forty-five.

It was pitch-dark outside when his flight was finally called. He let another ten minutes pass, hoping to avoid the crowd, then hurried toward the gate indicated on his boarding pass.

He half expected to find Gaetano and the Brow waiting for him, but they were nowhere to be seen. This was a relief, but the fact remained that they kept finding him and he was just guessing about how they were doing it. He didn’t
know
that it was a transponder in his shoes. Or someone hacking answering machines. Or tracing hotel registrations. He told himself that unless you believed in the supernatural, it had to be some combination of those factors.

Did Zebek’s thugs know that he’d gone to the AFP looking for Remy Barzan? Did they know he was on his way to Uzelyurt? Maybe so.
Probably
. It wouldn’t be a big intuitive leap.

The sounds of people speaking Turkish washed around him, making Danny feel isolated. He shuffled forward in line, thinking that even if his moves could be anticipated, what else could he do? It seemed to him that there was still something at stake, that Zebek had something to hide—because people kept getting whacked. Danny had to find out what that something was, and as far as he knew, there were only two paths to that knowledge. One went through Barzan, the other by way of Rolvaag. And while his moves might be predictable, they were the only moves he had.

There were the usual security checks on the way to the gate. He stepped through the metal detector, expecting to be patted down on the other side, but found instead that it was the women, and especially the ones in traditional dress, who were searched by the glum-faced guards.

At the gate itself, each of the passengers was made to walk past the baggage carts and identify his or her suitcases. As they did, the security guards made a chalk mark on each one. This led to an awkward moment, with Danny pantomiming that he had no suitcases to identify while the guard glared at him as if he was wasting his time. Finally, a woman in a head scarf laughed: “He doesn’t know what you are saying. He thinks you’re making fun of him.” With a chuckle, she turned to the guard and said something in Turkish. With a scowl, he waved Danny along.

The plane was packed—every seat taken. No first class. No business class. Just folks. Danny found a window seat next to an olive-skinned man with a brace of gold teeth. The man smiled at Danny and offered him a handful of pistachio nuts. It was the second act of kindness that he had been shown by a Turk—the first was Hasan’s decision to take it on the chin for his guest—and it made Danny feel good about the people around him.

Half an hour into the flight, dinner was served. The container showed a red silhouette of a pig imprinted with a circle, bisected by a diagonal line.

No pork was used

to prepare this meal.

A vegetarian, Danny would have preferred a meatless dinner, but this was Turkey and vegetarians were about as common as storks. Popping the little plastic bag that contained an array of ice-cold utensils, he patiently separated the vegetables and rice from the meat, leaving a little mound of chicken in yogurt sauce at the side of his tray.

As he ate the rice and veggies, he thought about what he’d learned from Mamadou’s e-mail—which wasn’t much. He didn’t believe Jason Patel’s death was “a gay thing.” Not for a second. But the suggestion about industrial espionage had been interesting. Maybe that
was
at the heart of it all.

Zebek had gone to a lot of trouble to locate Terio’s computer—so he could destroy the files that were on it. The only reason anyone would do that would be if the files were incriminating. So maybe that was it. Maybe Terio’s files consisted of blueprints and plans, or correspondence and reports between Zebek or his agents and scientists at another firm.

Terio hadn’t been a scientist, but he’d certainly gotten interested in some very esoteric technology. That was obvious from the books on his shelves. Not the ones on religion—religion was his field. But the other ones, the ones about “protein computers” and stuff.

Danny had no idea what a protein computer was—the term was an oxymoron, like
cold heat.
When he thought about it, the only thing that came to mind was a T-bone steak with a little pick and a tiny banner that read:
INTEL INSIDE
. Still, it had to be about something way high-tech, because Terio was talking with Jason Patel and Patel was the tech-meister at Very Small Systems.
So . . .

Danny looked out the window at the reddening sky.
So what?
he thought. It had something to do with technology—but what didn’t? He was sitting in a plastic seat at thirty-five thousand feet, eating genetically modified rice that had been cooked in a microwave by a flight attendant who probably had been cloned.
Everything
had to do with technology.

The only thing that was certain, really, was that Zebek was killing people. Inzaghi had been killed because the priest had seen the computer files. That was a fact to which Danny could attest. It seemed reasonable to suppose that Terio had been murdered because of what was on those files, that they reflected knowledge in Terio’s possession, knowledge damaging to Zebek. As for Jason Patel, he’d been caught up in the same tar baby. Until Danny told Zebek about Terio’s phone calls to Patel, the scientist had been fine. Then he became an obit.

As for Danny himself, his own circumstances were as bleak as the dead men’s. He’d had the files in his possession and so might have read them—reason enough, it would seem, to whack him. And then there was the revenge thing: he’d tricked Zebek by copying the files for Inzaghi, which gave the billionaire a second reason for wanting to kill him.

So it was all about information and technology—but
which
information and
what
technology?
You can’t imagine what he’s up to, this Zebek!
Danny sank back in his seat, frustrated. That was the trouble: Inzaghi was right. He
couldn’t
imagine what Zebek was up to because—

The plane dropped like a rock. The dinner service rose up on the seat table in front of him, then slapped down again as the Airbus bottomed out and shuddered.
Air pocket,
Danny thought as the pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom, first in Turkish, then in English. Danny didn’t understand a word that was said in either language, but no one put his head on his knees or started screaming, so it must be okay. The seat-belt sign popped on as the plane took a second jolt, then shuddered into a wall of clouds in a way that reminded Danny of his father’s Volvo surfing over the washboarded road in Maine. Across the aisle, a woman’s tray clattered to the floor, and the man beside him cracked a nervous smile and bounced his eyebrows.

To Danny’s amazement, none of this bothered him, though he was ordinarily a nervous flier. Somehow, he knew that whatever turbulence they encountered, whatever wind shear might find them, the plane would be safe. Because Zebek was trying to kill him, Danny continued to feel the way he had during that crazy taxi ride into Istanbul. He was immune to the everyday disasters that might befall other people. Their deaths were up for grabs, while his—well, his had been
reserved
.

The airport at Diyarbakir wasn’t quite “an armed camp,” but it was close. Soldiers were everywhere, walking in pairs with submachine guns cradled in their arms. And what was even more alarming, they didn’t have the bored attitude of patrols on routine duty. These guys seemed to be very
alert
and their wary unease contributed a definite tension to the usually tedious process of arrival.

Only passengers were allowed in the Baggage Claim area, causing many to peer through the glass of the automatic doors and wave excitedly at those outside. Danny stood for a moment, waiting out of habit for his bags to tumble onto the carousel, then remembered that he didn’t have a suitcase. That made him the first one through the doors, pressing his way through the waiting crowd. At the Turkish Air counter, he asked the clerk if he spoke English.

“Of course.”

“I need to get to Uzelyurt,” Danny told him. “Is there—”

The man frowned. “What is ‘Uzelyurt’?”

Danny wrote the name on a scrap of paper and handed it to the clerk. “It’s a city,” he said. “Or a town. Small town.”

The clerk frowned. Raising his head, he caught the attention of a uniformed young woman, who came to his side with a shy smile. With a glance at the paper, she gave Danny an appraising look and said, “It’s near Sivas. You could take a
dolmus
to the bus station and then a bus. Or . . .” She looked him up and down, as if to decide whether or not he could afford it. “You could take a taxi.”

“What’s a
dolmus
?”

“It’s like a van—a minibus. They go everywhere from the airport. One goes to the
otogar
—that’s the bus station. Here in Diyarbakir the bus station is all the way on the other side of the city.” She hesitated. “Once you get there, you might have to wait some hours for a bus.”

“How much would a taxi cost?”

She considered the question, then seesawed her head. “To Uzelyurt? Maybe fifty, sixty dollars.”

He was tempted. But he didn’t know how much longer his money would last, so . . . no. He’d take his chances with the
otogar
. “I think . . . the bus,” he said.

The clerk wrote down the words
Diyarbakir Otogar
on a slip of paper. “Show this to one of the van drivers,” she told him. “He’ll see that you get where you’re going.”

Leaving the brightly lit terminal, he found a parade of buses and vans coming and going outside. The night was warm. He showed his slip of paper to a man with an exuberant mustache and was directed to a white minivan that already held a number of travelers. He took his place in the middle seat and, when a man spoke to him, shrugged an apology and said, “American.” This actually earned him many smiles.

Those around him, having just arrived from a trip, talked excitedly. He found their enthusiasm engaging—so unlike the frequent fliers he usually saw, glazed, bored, and worn-out, muttering into their cell phones on the Dulles shuttle. Everyone here was friendly—although maybe this was because he didn’t speak their language. They treated him with a kindness usually reserved for children. Still, their smiles and encouraging looks made him feel upbeat. And there was another positive thing: no sign of Gaetano or the Bulky Boys.

Five minutes from the airport, the
dolmus
was made to stop at an army checkpoint. The soldiers who came to the van were humorless teenagers in camouflage, carrying what Danny guessed were Uzis or maybe Kalashnikovs. He wasn’t up on his automatic weapons, but he did know enough to pay attention to people holding them. Ordering everyone out, the soldiers stood at the side of the road, checking IDs and poking at the baggage. Danny’s passport, still damp from the cistern, provoked a certain amount of grumbling and questions he didn’t understand.

“Washing machine,” he said, and made a gesture with his hands—a gesture that, he had to admit, looked nothing like anything any washing machine had ever done. The guards stared, frowned.