When he returned to his room from his session with Clancy and informed her he would be leaving for Istanbul that evening, their first full day in Paris, Joy was furious. The atmosphere in their third-floor Hotel Verones suite went from second honeymoon to instant ice.
Joy’s initial volley included throwing anything she could get her hands on, a critical appraisal of his heritage, and a pronouncement about where she thought he should go straight to. It wasn’t until an hour later that she had cooled off sufficiently for him to understand what she was saying. At that point he would have described her emotional state as cooling off to controlled rage.
“The trouble with you in this relationship, Tobias, is you always let the goddamn ISA come first.
You could have told Packer hell, no, you weren’t going. But no, not you, you always have to be the good old agency-first kind.”
Now, thinking back about it, that was actually the last thing Joy said until he was ready to walk out the door. Then she fired her final salvo.
“And when you get back, if you get back, don’t even bother to call.” There was pure, unadulterated ice in her voice when she said it.
His second problem was that Packer had thrown him into a volatile situation where he didn’t have a great deal of background and not much time to prepare. All of this was compounded by the fact he had never actually been to either Turkey or Iraq and he was working with an agent that Packer had euphemistically assessed as “not the man for the job.”
An ancient Flat taxi driven by a man who had a total disregard for the safety of his passengers and spoke no English dropped him off in front of a hotel in Taksim. Bogner registered, went to his room, and waited for Banks’s call. The call came through on schedule, the two men agreed to meet in the bar, and at eleven-thirty, a time when he would doubtless have been enjoying the second night of what Joy had called “the trip we had always planned as a honeymoon,” he was watching Banks push his way through the congestion in the lobby.
“So you’re the famous T. C. Bogner,” Banks said. Bogner knew immediately Packer had talked to the man he was replacing. It was equally obvious Banks was having difficulty hiding his animosity.
The two men finally shook hands and Bogner guided them to an area of the lobby where they could talk.
“I understand I’m being relegated to second seat on this one,” Banks said as he sat down.
Bogner avoided the issue. He knew better than to provide Banks with an opening to do a little complaining. Instead he said, “How long and how well have you known this guy, Ozal?”
Banks pursed his lips, cupped his hands around an ashtray, and stared at the table.
“How long?
Two, maybe three weeks. How well? Hard to say.
How well do you know anyone in this damn town?
There’s more cloak-and-dagger activities going on here than there are people. Istanbul thrives on it.”
“Let me put it another way. Do you trust him?”
“No more than I do anyone else in Istanbul. People around here would steal flowers from a graveyard.”
“What makes you think Ozal can get us into Nasrat and the rest of Baddour’s compound in Ammash?”
Banks took his glasses off, held them up to the light, and polished away the smudges before he put them back on.
“I have no doubt that he can get us through the gates at Nasrat. And I likewise have no doubt that he is well connected. In a rather casual conversation less than a week ago, he was able to confirm many of my suspicions about not only what is going on at Nasrat but some of Baddour’s ambitions as well.”
Bogner liked the answers he was getting. Banks wasn’t dodging the tough ones.
“Did he ask you why you wanted to get into Nasrat?”
Banks shook his head and took the time to light a cigarette.
“I would not have expected him to.
Let’s just say it’s the nature of the beast. Appar.ently our friend Ozal does quite well selling information.
As near as I can determine he has no other visible means of income.” Banks paused and took a drag before he continued.
“Furthermore, I would imagine that he does not feel it is in his best interest to know too much about such matters as where the money comes from, or what the people do with the information he sells them.”
“Any idea who else he does business with?” Bogner pressed.
Banks laughed.
“Do you honestly think he would give me a list of his clients if I asked him?”
“Think back, Concho. Has he ever mentioned any cause, political affiliation, or interest in any group?”
“None,” Banks said.
“Are you satisfied?”
Bogner was frowning.
“On the contrary, I’m even more suspicious about this guy than I was.
One of the first things you learn in this racket is that everyone has an agenda or a soft underbelly.
Where’s Ozal’s?”
Banks took one final drag on his cigarette and snuffed it out in the ashtray.
“You sound like a man who’s ready to back out on the deal.”
Bogner shook his head.
“Not at all. We go through with everything just as you planned.
There’s too much to be gained to let the opportunity slip through our fingers. What we do is make damn certain one of us is covering our collective tail any time this guy Ozal makes a move.”
“You’ve got a plan?”
“You’ve led Ozal to believe you’re somehow tied in with an arms merchant, right?”
“I’ve implied as much,” Banks admitted, “without ever actually mentioning any names. If not, he would have wondered about my interest in the persistent rumors that certain types of chemical weapons are being produced at Nasrat in Ammash.”
“Good,” Bogner said, “we’ll build on that. Now we begin to fill in the blanks for Mr. Ozal. Someone like Ozal is bound to be curious about the source of the million lira. He may even be thinking about how to get you out of the way so he can work directly with the source.
“If he is, we’ll squelch that by revealing who we are working for. We’ll tell him the name of the firm we represent is Jade Limited, main offices located in Toronto. If Ozal is the information merchant he claims to be, he’ll recognize the name of Jade as one of the biggest arms dealers in the world. You’ll introduce me to Ozal as an American expatriate who handles matters in the Middle East from Jade’s office in Bucharest. His ears will perk up when he hears I have a few items in my inventory that may interest General Baddour. If you’ve got him pegged right, he’ll be trying to figure out how he can get a piece of the action.”
Banks was smiling.
“And you would be willing to do a little swapping, right?”
“Exactly. I’ll show him an inventory that includes some Russian-built Sukhoi Su-20 Fitter C’s, some MiG-29 Fulcrum A’s, and even a MiG-31 Foxhound. If that doesn’t interest him, I can provide him with a brace of Tupolev Tu-22M/26 Backfires or damn near any kind of combat chopper, French, American, or Russian built; anything Baddour’s little old heart desires. Big inventory for a man with big ambitions. “Baddour is bound to ask what we want in t return. That’s real simple, we want to be able to sell other countries the formula for
GG-2.”
Banks’s initial animosity had all but disappeared.
He was smiling.
“So when do we meet Ozal?” Bogner pressed.
“I’ll try to arrange it for tomorrow morning.”
Taj Ozal turned out to be pretty much what Bogner had expected. At six feet two and somewhere in the vicinity of two hundred pounds plus, he was approximately the same size and weight as Bogner.