Alex Morgan tapped her foot impatiently as Shepard checked in at the hotel front desk.
The Swissôtel Grand was the best hotel in Izmir, Turkey, which was on the Aegean Sea, a couple of hundred miles southeast of Istanbul. At just over 400 rooms, the hotel was big enough for Shepard and her to move around without attracting too much attention.
“Lance, is this going to take much longer?” Alex asked, as petulantly as she could manage.
The clerk talking to Shepard gave her a tight smile and said, in lightly accented English, “Just a moment, Ma’am.”
Just a few years ago, Alex knew, customer service staff at major hotels were mostly women. But things had changed fast in the country, and now women usually worked behind the scenes.
Progress, she thought wryly.
Alex made a show of rolling her eyes at the clerk while Shepard ignored her.
Though they were running the local back office for this operation, they were technically undercover.
In her last undercover mission she had pretended to be a barely disguised version of herself. This was different. Shepard had checked them into the hotel as Alex and Lance Jackson, the spoiled kids of wealthy international businessman Daniel Jackson—now sitting in one of Izmir’s two prisons.
This required more acting on her part. She was a socialite with an impressive, if vapid, presence on social media.
The only thing about herself that she had kept was her first name. That was one of the things her father had taught her. Keeping your first name undercover meant you were less likely to blow that cover by automatically responding to your actual name—or not responding properly to the cover’s name.
Shepard had done the same, though she’d had to train herself to call him Lance, since everyone at Zeta called him Shepard, or Shep.
Shepard’s part was easier. He was playing her vaguely nerdy half brother, which was closer to his actual personality. He’d even been able to keep his trademark jeans, hoodie, and t-shirt.
That was fine, since Shepard wasn’t a field agent. Yet he’d insisted on coming along on this mission. He claimed he wanted the light undercover experience and that it would be safe because it really was only coordination, logistics, and support—along with some on-the-fly hacking of the prison or any other computer systems.
Alex would have believed him if she didn’t know for a fact that it wasn’t true.
Shepard never left his computer station or his workshops, yet he was here for her father. Shep simply didn’t trust any of his staff to handle the back office on this one. And he wasn’t going to do it remotely. That was the kind of loyalty Dan Morgan gave and inspired.
Alex had beat her dad more than once on the shooting range—at least with a rifle. In time, she knew she could match or surpass him with a pistol, but she wasn’t sure she could ever match him in inspiring that kind of loyalty. And the oddest part was that quite a few of the people who were fiercely loyal to Dan Morgan and would put their lives on the line for him didn’t even particularly like him.
Alex watched Shepard and the clerk confer for half a minute. “Lance, when you and your little friend are done with whatever it is you’re doing, call me. Better yet, don’t call me until my bags are in the suite.”
She turned and headed out of the lobby, her absurd heels clacking against the marble floor.
“I’ll be in the restaurant…one of them.”
* * * *
After the paperwork, Morgan and Conley had been issued photo I.D. cards. These were tied to their commissary accounts, which allowed them to buy everything from food, to extra blankets, to small refrigerators.
The whole process was finished by eleven and they were marched from the central hub to their cellblock with about a dozen others.
Morgan had studied the design of the prison carefully. Each cellblock held one hundred and fifty prisoners, giving the prison a capacity of 450.
It wasn’t a large prison by any standards, but it was the second and newest prison in Izmir—and one of the more than two hundred human warehouses the current president planned to build in the next few years.
But the residents were only there “temporarily.” It was a remand jail, which locked up people while they waited for trial, or waited to be charged—sometimes for as long as a year.
They walked down the hallway that had two open floors of twenty-five cells, each on their right. The prisoners they were with didn’t seem very dangerous, nor did the men occupying the cells.
“Do you see the kind of people they are locking up?” Morgan said.
“Yes,” Conley said.
“This is what they get for telling the truth, or standing up to the bullies in charge,” Morgan said.
“Not everyone here is innocent,” Conley said.
“Show me one real criminal,” Morgan said.
“There’s us, for instance,” Conley said.
“What?”
“Technically we were trying to sell illegal arms, then we shot at the police, there was that chase through…”
“Fair enough. Funny thing is I don’t feel bad about any of it,” Morgan said.
“Me either, and we’ll feel even better when we grab our guy and get out of here,” Conley said.
Morgan smiled at the thought and relaxed a bit. Conley had a knack for lightening the mood when he was getting himself worked up. He knew he wouldn’t be able to solve all the problems he saw around him on this trip, but he could hurt the people in charge a bit.
And he intended to. More than a bit if he could manage it.
The guards stopped them in front of a cell at the end of the hallway, nearest to the secure doors to the outside. That was Shepard’s doing. Morgan knew the young man had complete access to the prison’s computer systems.
Though Shepard could have hacked the system easily, it hadn’t been necessary for this mission. Ever since the last president had gone on the first prison-building spree, companies owned by Mr. Smith and the other international businessmen who made up the Aegis Initiative had made sure they undercut the competition for construction and I.T. contracts.
The Trojan horses built into the computer network were the simplest of the surprises Zeta had helped place in prisons across the country. It wasn’t the first time Morgan had been impressed by Mr. Smith’s long game.
In some ways, breaking out of this place was going to be too easy.
Inside the cell, a very thin, balding, and scared-looking man sat on a concrete stool in front of the concrete desk that jutted from the wall. He appraised Morgan, Conley, and the guard nervously.
The guard barked something to him in Turkish and the man backed up against the far wall.
The guard spoke into a walkie-talkie and the door slid open. Before the agents could step inside, the second guard grabbed Morgan by the arm. It took all of Morgan’s mission focus and discipline not to deck the man.
The guard said something and stuck out his hand, which held two hearing aids. Morgan immediately recognized them as “his”—at least the ones he had been wearing when he and Conley had been arrested.
The man shouted at him and then pulled away the devices when Morgan reached for them.
“He says, they are generously returning them to you, but reminds you that they can be taken away just as easily if your behavior is not good,” Conley said.
Morgan gritted his teeth and said, “Tell him that I understand.”
Then the guard—who Morgan noted had a nearly shaved head, a dark five-o’clock shadow and a scar on one cheek—held out the hearing aids and Morgan took them. He made a show of putting them in his ears. They were the old-style behind the ear aids and Morgan didn’t bother to turn them on, since he didn’t actually need them for their intended purpose.
They would come in handy later, of course, but for now it was only important that the guards see him wearing them.
Inside their cell, Conley greeted their new cellmate in Turkish. The man tentatively returned the greeting.
“His name is Tunca Guler,” Conley said.
“I’m Dan,” Morgan said, pointing to himself.
Conley and Tunca exchanged a few words and then Conley said, “He apologizes for not speaking any English.”
The prison was over capacity, with three in a cell. Shepard had manipulated the computer system to make sure that their inevitable third roommate spoke no English. It would simplify things when he and Conley made plans.
“Tell him not to worry, it’s not like I speak any Turkish.”
Conley and Tunca conferred and his partner said, “Tunca is a journalist.”
“I’m guessing a good one if he’s in here,” Morgan said.
“I told him we were businessmen,” Conley said.
“Ask him if there are any other Americans in the cell block,” Morgan said, knowing for a fact that there was one.
“He says none right now.”
“What?” Morgan exclaimed. This would all be for nothing if their objective wasn’t in the prison.
“There was one, but he’s being punished. He’s now in a…sponge cell.”
Morgan knew what that meant from the mission brief. The sponge cells got their name from the yellow foam mattresses that lined their walls. They were in the sub-basement of the central hub that housed the offices, medical, and common areas.
“How long has he been in solitary?” Morgan asked.
“Two weeks.”
That was bad. It was a long time for anyone.
“What’s he being punished for?” Morgan asked.
After Conley relayed the question, Tunca simply shrugged.
“Ask him the fastest way to get sent to one of these sponge cells,” Morgan said.
“No need to be hasty Dan,” Conley said. “They can’t keep him there forever. He’ll be back on the cellblock before long. They want a scientist, not a babbling fool.”
That was true.
On the other hand, it wouldn’t hurt to have a plan to get to their man in a hurry, if for no other reason than to make sure the scientist didn’t lose hope. Conley understood the man’s work better than Morgan did, but he knew it was important.
Dr. Erdem was working on nuclear power systems for satellites, and deep space probes. They could also be used for habitats on the moon or, eventually, Mars. He had the kind of skills that would give President Shakir a giant leg up on nuclear power and nuclear weapons programs.
If they kept him in solitary much longer, he might just start to cooperate. And if they kept him there too long, he might not be a nuclear scientist when he got out.
In any case, he was an American citizen and an innocent man. That was enough for Morgan.