Spoils of war, p.34
Spoils of War, page 34
‘That’s right.’
‘There is a ship that arrived unladen four days ago at Iskenderun and is still there, waiting for a cargo. A small freighter, registered in Panama, that sails frequently between the eastern Mediterranean and Bombay. It may have no connection with this business, and its captain and its agent would probably not be involved in any case. We have not questioned them for fear of scaring off the conspirators, but we have kept the vessel under observation. It may have been chartered by Malik and his friends as soon as it became clear that the rebellion of the Kurds was going to be crushed. The idea presumably would be to smuggle the gold into Turkey, perhaps already broken down into smaller quantities, and transport it by road to Iskenderun: a journey of twelve hours or so. At that time nobody could have foreseen the situation that you witnessed along the frontier this morning. If you were Malik, what would you do in these circumstances?’
‘Keep lying low, I suppose,’ Jack said. ‘Wait until things on the border quietened down.’
‘And cancel the charter of the ship? It can’t stay in Iskenderun indefinitely. And it might be weeks, or months, before another one could be arranged.’
‘Presumably Malik has plenty of time.’
‘Not necessarily. Remember that his ultimate purpose is to disappear. Presumably in due course he intends to resurface in Switzerland, still using the name of Ghani to claim his wealth from the bank and add to it whatever the sale of the gold has brought him. Nobody in Zurich knows or cares that someone called Ghani has been executed in Iraq. Then Malik vanishes again, perhaps emerging elsewhere under yet another name. His fellow-crooks follow a similar course. But in the meantime this operation is too important for them not to want to be in charge of it themselves. That means they are in Iraq now. And in view of what has happened over the past few days, they are vulnerable to exposure. Which means, perhaps, that we can panic them.’
‘We?’ said Jack.
‘This time I mean just you, Mr Rushton. But I gathered from what you said after your arrest that you weren’t likely to co-operate unless Miss Griggs was a party to the arrangement.’ Delkin smiled and poured more whisky into their cups. ‘That’s why I brought you here. These Iraqis know of your involvement, but they’ve got a distorted picture of it. One phone call from you, Mr Rushton, could bring them across the border. With the gold. Into a trap.’
Jack still wasn’t sure if the soldier was serious. ‘Who am I supposed to call?’
‘There is one person among all those you have met who actually has a means of making contact with Malik himself. I refer to Dr Zunckel, the lawyer in Zurich. Remember what you told Captain Yekta about the phone number Zunckel had in Baghdad? The one he could use in an emergency to reach his client Ghani? I want you to provide him with a reason for calling that number.’
‘I don’t know that that arrangement still exists. Zunckel said he hadn’t used it for months.’
‘What you said was that he hadn’t tried to use it. With good reason. His last conversation with the man he knew as Ghani had been soon after the invasion of Kuwait, and Ghani had been talking about a mysterious deal involving a lot of gold. It frightened Zunckel off. But think about it. Even if he can no longer reach that number, a man like Zunckel will have other resources. He’s had good connections in Iraq for twenty years or more. He will find a way of contacting Malik if you can convince him that it’s in his interests to do so.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘By frightening him again,’ Delkin said easily. ‘With certain significant omissions, you can tell him the truth. Then it will be for him to decide which of his clients he is more afraid of.’
The general glanced at his watch. ‘His office will be open in four hours’ time. In the meantime I suggest you get some rest.’
31
They were given a room to share in the officers’ quarters in the main barracks building. It was just as austere as General Delkin’s office but it was blessed with central heating. The warmth made them feel drowsy, and as soon as they lay down on the hard twin beds they fell asleep.
Just before ten o’clock they were roused by Delkin’s aide-de-camp, reviving them with more coffee and then leading them back through the crisp mountain air to the prefab. Alone with them in his office, the general dialled the Zurich number Jack gave him and then silently handed over the receiver.
The secretary answered, sounding a long way off and nervous at the sound of his voice. She asked him to wait, and a good minute went by before Zunckel came on the line.
‘Yes?’ The tone still aggrieved, but also wary.
‘Dr Zunckel, I’m calling you from Turkey. I want you to know that I’ve found proof that your client Jalloul is dead. I assume this means that the contract with Dr Hamadi can now be cancelled and the account at the Handelsbank closed.’
‘If your proof is satisfactory, then of course.’ Even Zunckel couldn’t resist being curious. ‘How did you find it? And what’s taken you to Turkey?’
‘It’s too complicated to explain in any detail. Briefly, it involves those other clients of yours, Ghani and the rest. I don’t know that I owe you any favours, Doctor, but I thought I should give you a friendly warning that I’m going to have to tell the whole story to Dr Hamadi. I’ve established that Ghani is really an Iraqi secret police officer named General Omar Hassan Malik. He and the five others were responsible for murdering Jalloul. They have also tried to kill me.’
There was a long pause. ‘Tried to kill you? How? Why?’
‘They seemed to think I was getting too close to them. Apparently they believe I know more than I do. I’ve had a hard time convincing the Turkish police that I’m not somehow involved with them myself. They held me for questioning for a time.’
‘And you say Hamadi doesn’t know about this yet?’
‘No. But I’ll have to explain it to him.’
‘You did give me an undertaking of confidentiality.’
‘I know. But there’s more involved now than a simple financial transaction. And you and I both have a duty to Dr Hamadi. Malik’s criminal activities are the whole reason for Hamadi’s problems. I imagine he’ll find some way of getting his own back. You know what resources he has. His wasta extends all over the Middle East. He’ll find a way of letting the authorities in Baghdad know what Malik has been up to.’
Another pause. ‘Mr Rushton . . . I’ve no doubt that Dr Hamadi will be happy to have this matter cleared up. You know that my role in it has been entirely incidental. Does your report have to mention my connection with this Malik and the others?’
‘I’m not sure it can be avoided. I assume you’re still representing them, which means you do have a certain responsibility for what’s happened.’
Jack could almost hear Zunckel sweating. ‘I am grateful for your warning, Mr Rushton. If I were able to terminate my relationship with these clients within twenty-four hours, say, do you suppose it could be overlooked? And if there’s anything I can do by way of compensating you for the difficulties you’ve been through, you need only say so.’
‘I’m not looking for a bribe, Dr Zunckel. But let me think it over.’
‘You’ll give me twenty-four hours? Where can I reach you?’
‘You can’t at the moment. I’m on my way back to London. But I’ll call you again at this time tomorrow.’
Jack put down the phone. Delkin gave him a satisfied look and said: ‘Very good. Zunckel now gets in touch with Malik, repeats what you have said and tells him they are no longer in business together. Malik realizes his cover is blown and that he has to leave Iraq. But since you didn’t mention the gold he thinks his plans for that are still safe. The trap is baited; it remains to be seen if it will be sprung. You are free to go now if you wish. But perhaps you would like to stay and see the outcome?’
Jack glanced at Dale again. What he saw in her eyes answered the question for him.
The rest of the day stretched emptily before them. Dale went for a run around the perimeter of the base, and later Delkin’s aide took them for lunch at a restaurant in Hakkari. The place was swarming with soldiers, a garrison town in what had come to feel like occupied territory. Afterwards the gendarme took them out to see what few local sights there were. He was in civilian clothes and he drove his own car, explaining casually that the Turkish army wasn’t exactly popular among the local Kurdish population and he didn’t want to risk making a target for a sniper. He showed them the spectacular gorge of the Zab, where bare cliffs tumbled for nearly a thousand metres down to the rushing river, and he took them to see an ancient Nestorian monastery and an encampment of nomads. There were military checkpoints on every road.
Back in Hakkari, they killed more time over a few drinks in a bar crowded with foreign journalists and television crews. English, American and French voices were raised in complaints to each other about the Turkish authorities’ slowness in allowing them to get to the frontier.
Jack and Dale had dinner with Delkin in his quarters. He had spent most of the day on the border, and he told them he had spread a number of his own men about among the troops guarding the crossing points, with orders to report directly to him if they observed anything unusual.
‘Even if we have succeeded in panicking these Iraqis,’ he said, ‘they’re unlikely to come across without making some preparations beforehand. Somebody will surely meet them on this side. For us, the important thing is to let them think they are safe. Let them get firmly on to Turkish soil, on the road to Iskenderun, and we will have them in our grasp. On charges of smuggling gold in that quantity, they should go to jail for twenty years at least. I only wish we could try them as well for the murder of Jalloul.’
‘Can you really be sure they’ll come within twenty-four hours?’ Dale asked.
‘I can’t be sure of anything. But that is the time limit that Zunckel should have conveyed to Malik. He in turn will have to weigh the risks of coming out against those of staying in Iraq and having his crimes exposed. There is always a chance that he will simply abandon the gold, but after the time and trouble he has invested in it, I think that is unlikely.’
Delkin plied them with more whisky, before and after dinner. On top of what they had drunk that afternoon, and the exhausting journey of the night before, it made them both slightly plastered. At ten o’clock they lurched back to their room and fell into bed.
Jack felt himself being shaken awake in the dark and was aware that he had a dry mouth and a headache. Delkin’s aide-de-camp was in the room, whispering apologetically but urgently.
‘Sorry sir. The general asks for you to come at once.’
Jack groaned and heaved himself out of bed. The luminous dial of his watch told him it was half-past three. While the aide went to wait outside, Jack woke Dale up and they both scrambled into the warmest clothes they had.
Even at this hour the base wasn’t at rest. Sentries were on patrol, vehicles were coming and going through the gates and soldiers were moving about among the lines of tents. Delkin had just ended a meeting with a group of officers who were filing out of his room, and Jack wondered when the man ever slept.
‘Some news at last!’ he said triumphantly. ‘Come. We must not waste time.’
Instead of asking them into the office he led them straight back out of the building, round a corner towards the helicopter pad. The same Agusta gunship that had brought Dale and Jack in the morning before was waiting for them again, and they climbed in after the general and strapped themselves into their seats. Delkin sat opposite them, grinning and rubbing his hands in anticipation.
‘It seems that your call to Zurich has got things moving in just the way we hoped,’ he said. ‘Did you see a village close to the frontier yesterday? Some of the guards are billeted in houses there. Last night a group of strangers arrived in two cars and moved into rooms in the local pansiyon. They contrived to meet some off-duty soldiers, bought them a great many drinks and eventually offered them a large bribe to let a certain truck across the river unhindered when the border opens this morning. Some of my own men were among the soldiers and they reported the matter straight to me. I gave instructions that the bribe should be accepted. So now we go there and watch the trap being sprung!
‘These people are certainly gangsters of the Grey Wolves,’ he bawled at them as the chopper’s engines started up. ‘I could have ordered their arrest, of course, but we don’t want to scare off the big fish by netting the little ones.’
The noise drowned out further conversation as the helicopter rose, hovered and banked towards the mountains, and the familiar cold wind came howling through the gun door. They gained height steadily until they were among the peaks of the Taurus again, the snowfields gleaming dimly below them in the starlight.
They followed the course of the river valley and landed in a rectangle of lights that marked the perimeter of a small, well-guarded Jandarma station. Its commander was waiting to meet them, and he gave Delkin a report that he relayed to Jack and Dale. The nearby pansiyon had been kept discreetly under observation, and within the past half-hour the party of strangers had driven off along the road that skirted the border to the west. They had not been followed for fear of alerting them. In any case, the truck they were expected to meet could cross the river at only one point, the bridge that Jack and Dale had seen from the air.
A jeep was ready to take them to the spot. It bumped along a rough track for a couple of kilometres before meeting the paved road beside the river at the point where it turned to the east, giving them a sudden night view of the scene they had witnessed the day before.
The Turks had set up floodlights on this side of the river to discourage any attempt to cross it under cover of darkness. Beyond the reach of their harsh beams, the mountainside above the far bank was an eerie sight. A thousand small fires flickered against the dark mass of rock and mud, the light they created merging into a vast but subdued glow, as though the mountain itself were luminous. Against this dim light, figures and shadows constantly moved, making the mass of refugees seem like some huge colony of restless insects. Thick smoke and a fetid smell hung in the cold, windless air over the valley.
The jeep halted opposite the bridge, beside the road junction that was turning into a mess of mud-filled potholes under the volume of heavy traffic. Soldiers were everywhere, and half a dozen tents had been pitched behind the crossing to serve as a headquarters for this sector of the border operation. Delkin took Jack and Dale into the largest tent, where he was greeted by salutes from half a dozen officers gathered round a map spread out on a trestle table. Gas pressure lamps hissed and kerosene heaters gave out a stifling warmth, and there was another table to one side where an orderly was in charge of tea and coffee urns and trays of food.
Delkin immediately got involved in a conversation with his subordinates, leaving Jack and Dale to themselves. They accepted cups of coffee, and after a few minutes Jack wandered outside to stare once again at the scene across the river. There was just the barest hint of daylight above the mountain ridges to the east now, slightly dimming the glow from the fires. Without the roar of the jeep’s engine to smother them there were noises from across there as well, a fusion of thousands of small rustling sounds overlaid by the murmur of voices, punctuated occasionally, incongruously, by a burst of laughter. The comparison with an insect colony no longer seemed apt; this was what an army camped in the field might have looked and sounded like a long time ago, nervous and sleepless in the hours before a dawn attack. He wondered idly what could stop them if they simply marched en masse across the border, wading the river, cutting the wire.
As the light strengthened he could make out the road that led south from the bridge, disappearing between the folds of the mountains on the Iraqi side. A line of vehicles that had arrived during the night stretched into the distance, waiting for the border post to open at six o’clock. Perhaps the truck they were looking for was already there, if it was coming at all.
It was a blue Chevrolet three-tonner, according to what Delkin’s informants had been told, ostensibly another hired vehicle carrying Kurds of Turkish nationality fleeing with their belongings from the fighting further south. Unlike the people on the hillsides they would be in possession of precious bits of paper entitling them to enter Turkey, but were supposedly sensitive about having those belongings searched. Hence the bribe, presented as a cash alternative to surrendering television sets, valuable carpets or jewellery. It was something quite common along this border, Delkin said, where the regular traffic in refugees encouraged desperation on their part and corruption among the low-paid soldiery. As long as Malik and his men did not expect to be singled out for attention, they could be confident of getting through; and once inside Turkey they would no doubt be escorted to their next destination by the Grey Wolves.
And yet to Jack’s mind it seemed a little too easy. Even if frightened into hasty action, with forty million dollars at stake would the Iraqis really want to depend on such a patched-together arrangement? A maxim that Colonel Thorpe had quoted popped suddenly into Jack’s head. When capable, pretend to be incapable. When far away, seem near. Or had it been the other way around?
Delkin seemed sure of what he was doing, anyway, and when Jack returned to the tent he found the general sloshing whisky into Dale’s second cup of coffee as well as his own.
‘I want both of you to stay in here now,’ he said. ‘I can’t afford to expose you to danger. And when the truck arrives, or if the gangster friends of the Iraqis return, the sight of Westerners will certainly arouse suspicion. The border opens in an hour’s time. We facilitate their arrival, we let them get on the road, and we pounce!’
After a while he went off to attend to something else, followed by his retinue of officers, leaving the two of them alone in the tent. Settling down in a camp chair in the warmth, Jack imagined he might catch up on his sleep but soon gave up the idea, knowing he was far too tense.
