Kadikoy, Istanbul
Three Days Before
Zeb Carter was breaking into a hotel room rented by two Mossad kidon. Mossad was his closest ally, but on this particular mission, he wasn’t sure.
It had started a month ago, in New York.
He had been on the trail of one Uzair Hussain, a Pakistani nuclear scientist. Hussain’s international travel had been flagged by his team’s supercomputer. Werner.
The scientist traveled often to Europe, which in itself wasn’t a big deal. What was interesting was that, once on the continent, he seemed to drop off the radar and surfaced only when returning.
Beth and Meghan looked into it. The twins oversaw the Agency’s intel gathering and analysis, along with Broker. Cracking into airline databases and Pakistani networks wasn’t hard for them.
‘Six visits to the Middle East in two years,’ Beth had told Zeb, a month earlier.
‘Middle East? I thought he went to Europe.’
‘That was the entry point,’ she explained patiently. A lot of it was needed when dealing with Zeb. ‘He flew into Paris or Amsterdam or any one of the large hubs. From there he took trains. Used fake IDs. Good trade craft. But not good enough to escape all the security cameras in Europe.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Turkey. Istanbul.’
‘All six times?’
‘Yeah. Fewer cameras in that country, but we ran facial recognition on the CCTV feeds in their train and bus terminals and got these.’
She dumped a bunch of photographs on his desk. Zeb flicked through them rapidly. Blurred images in several of them, but clear enough to make out Hussain’s profile.
He looked up when Meghan joined her sister. Something in their faces…
‘What’s up?’
‘There’s a café in Kadikoy, which is in—’
‘Istanbul. What about it?’
‘There’s a security camera across the street. A bank. We hacked into it and got this.’
Meghan’s right hand came from behind her back, holding another photograph.
Hussain seated at a table outside the café. Another man facing him. Both of them drinking what seemed to be tea.
It was the second man that got Zeb’s attention.
‘That’s—’
‘Kamran Shahi.’ Meghan brushed a stray curl of hair back. ‘Iran’s nuclear guy. He’s responsible for their weapons program.’
Zeb studied the photograph again. Both men were in suits. Neatly trimmed beards. The Iranian seemed older, with grey flecks in his hair.
Iran had stopped its uranium enrichment program after it had struck a deal with the United States and Europe.
‘It could be innocuous,’ he said half-heartedly.
‘Could be,’ Beth agreed. ‘But you know what happened with another Pakistani nuclear scientist.’
Zeb nodded. The whole world knew.
A.Q. Khan, the ‘father’ of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, had sold nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya. He had played a major role in nuclear proliferation in some of the worst regimes in the world.
He tossed the image on the desk and stretched his arms. Caught himself when he sensed something. The sisters seemed to be buzzing with excitement.
‘There’s more?’
‘Heck, yeah!’ Beth’s eyes flashed. ‘He’s planning another trip. To Europe. In a month’s time.’
And that led to Zeb flying to Istanbul a week before the Pakistani’s arrival, checking in to a decrepit hotel in Kadikoy as a local businessman.
His plan was to shadow the scientist and place a bug on him.
That plan changed when he spotted the couple who frequented the café each day. Mediterranean looks. Seemingly in love.
Zeb wore a different disguise each day: an elderly man one day, a woman returning from shopping the next.
He was in his third older-man disguise when he got close to the couple and overheard their conversation. They had their heads close together and were almost whispering.
Zeb caught snatches of their conversation. How long they would be staying. When it would happen. How it would go down.
The it aroused his suspicions. Just that word, nothing else describing whatever the event was.
Then it was their language. They spoke Turkish with the servers, occasionally Arabic with other patrons. But when together, when whispering, they spoke Hebrew.
He followed them and found they practiced exceptional tradecraft. They paused several times, appearing to be window-shopping, but Zeb knew they were checking out their six. They used the mirrors of parked vehicles, detoured elaborately.
He could think of only one agency whose operators were this good and who spoke Hebrew.
Mossad.
Of course, they would be interested in a Pakistani nuclear scientist’s movements.
Zeb tailed them to their hotel. A shabby, rundown one like his. Their room was on the ground floor, just as his was. Good operatives chose the lower floors. They enabled quicker exits.
He broke into their room on the fourth day, when they were away, and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t find much, initially.
His bag. Her bag. No brightly lettered identification cards that said they were Mossad agents.
No surveillance equipment. No weapons.
He stood in the center of the room and surveyed it. Walked toward the bathroom. A loose floorboard moved under his weight.
He looked down.
Carpeted floor.
But an almost invisible crack in the fabric.
He bent down, pried it open, tested the board beneath it and discovered the treasure trove.
Two Glock 17s, several magazines, knives, surveillance gear.
He laid back the board, adjusted the carpet and waited behind the door.
It was confrontation time.