Hot Streak

CHAPTER 22

T he following morning in Rome, Shakin Rifat was seated at his desk an hour earlier than usual. Even for a man trained to give away nothing in his expression, the fire of triumph couldn't be disguised. He was leafing through a dozen black-and-white photos taken with a telephoto lens, developed in a private jet that flew across the Atlantic the previous night and landed at the secluded airstrip thirty miles north of Rome an hour after daybreak.

The photos were of a blond man talking to a young girl with shoulder-length hair. The sequence of shots showed her placing her bicycle in an elaborate stand, then handing the man a package, only to take it back in the next two frames. Both subjects had the same color hair; both subjects had winged black brows; the similarities had been definitively cataloged by Shakin Rafit, his gratification heightened with each enumerated resemblance. Nose, eyes, chin, the same subtle curve of upper lip. The child was a girl, of course, so the strength of form was modified, but in a way, a girl was much better for his purpose. A father would do anything to save his helpless young daughter from harm.

Shakin pushed the photos into a neat pile, a gold signet ring on his left hand catching the light, then leaned back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his dark, aquiline face, a quality of animal assurance in his relaxed posture.

At last he had a way to put pressure on Egon.

Leisurely reaching out, he rang for his secretary. When the young man walked in and noted Shakin's satisfied smile he said, “The photos were pleasing?”

“Very. Mete told you?”

“Only that the young girl appears to be-”

“Is, Ceci… no question about it. How soon can you get the team ready?” Ceci Kiray had been aide-de-camp to Rifat in Turkey's First Air Corps prior to General Evren's takeover in 1980. With inbred military custom and a deferential nod of his head, Ceci silently asked permission to sit. Less punctilious than his young subaltern, Rifat casually waved him into the chair facing his desk. “I'd like to move on this as soon as possible, Ceci. A large shipment of gum base is coming out of Turkey next week, as you know, and our operating capital will be nicely maximized after the sale to the French chemists. You also know how desperately Brazil wants the prototypes for the new weapon. Seсor Jorge has been calling daily. It's an opportune time with our war chest in good order to step into the arms manufacturing business.”

“Jorge is amenable to a percentage cut?”

“He'd prefer buying the technical data outright, but I'm not so inclined. Everyone wants this prototype. All the third-world nations currently producing arms under license will pay for it. But Brazil will pay the most. Have you ever been to Rio?” Rifat leaned back in his chair and looked at his secretary who still bore the stamp of a hardened officer beneath his tailored suit and custom-made shoes. “You'll like it,” Rifat continued with a smile, answering his own question, aware of Ceci's postings over the last ten years.

“What sort of timetable will you give to Colonel Jorge?”

“That depends on how soon you can kidnap the girl.”

Ceci shrugged dismissively. Mete had filled him in on the disposition of the apartment and inhabitants. “Two days at the most once we arrive,” he said casually, “but I'll need a week to ten days to round up my team. Reha's in Marseilles arranging for the delivery of the gum base, Husameddin's in Athens finishing the arms transfers out of Bulgaria, and Timur's back in Kemer burning away the days and nights in a state of seminudity at the Club Mйditerranйe.”

“Austerity has never been Timur's strong suit.”

“But since he flies anything that lifts off the ground…”

Rifat smiled. “We indulge his vices…”

“Or do without him.” Ceci smiled back, a younger version of Rifat, perhaps a trifle more elegant in his double-breasted banker's stripe suit, the twenty years difference in their ages distancing Ceci as well from the more brutal circumstances of Turkish military life.

Rifat nodded in agreement. Although Rifat's Turkish father's military background had bred an austerity in him that looked askance at hedonists like Timur, he recognized talent when he saw it. Timur had been a genius with aircraft from the first day of flight training. Under Rifat's expanded aeronautics program during his command, Timur had risen swiftly through the ranks and come to Rifat's attention not only for his flawless performance but for his imaginative maneuvering in all the NATO wargames.

In September, 1980, when Evren won the scramble for power among the generals, when Rifat's faction lost their bid for control and found it prudent to depart Turkey, Timur had chosen to align himself with Rifat even in defeat. “My mother is Armenian, too,” he'd said before offering his services to Rifat, but he had had other more practical reasons, as well. Evren's military coup meant a return to reactionary principles and a suspension of all political activity. And while his mother's Armenian heritage was a consideration in a conservative military regime that traditionally treated Armenians as dйclassй, Timur's reputation as Turkey's best pilot would have overridden the deficiencies in his background. At base though, Timur was interested in a grander lifestyle than that afforded by a colonel's pay. He had a taste for casinos, beautiful women, and fast cars-vices that required the kind of money Rifat paid. And danger had always exhilarated him. While supersonic aircraft and wargames sharpened that sensational flare of excitement he thrived on, they couldn't compare with the life and death reality of Rifat's outlaw world.

“How long would you say,” Rifat inquired with a chilling smile that often appeared when he oversaw the “interrogation” of the assassins General Evren periodically sent out to kill him, “after the kidnapping before Charles Fersten appears at Egon's demanding he cooperate with us?”

Ceci's smile appeared again. There was gratification in a well-conceived assignment. “Since he flies his own plane at times…” his strong hands slowly aligned themselves across his trim stomach, satisfaction audible in his voice, “a matter of hours I'd say.”

“At which point we no longer have to deal with the erratic Count von Mansfeld. Directives will be given to Egon so he understands once he orders the weapons and blueprints released from his munitions factory, Mr. Fersten will be conveying them to us.”

“Until then, Egon is the weak link.” Ceci grimaced, insensitive to the forms of paranoia motivating Egon's drug use.

“Unfortunately. But once von Mansfeld has the prototypes ordered from his research facility, Mr. Fersten will better suit our purposes. He's seen more than the calibrations on a hypodermic syringe and the inside of Regine's. He's a seasoned athlete and an intelligent, practical man who served in America's war in Asia and survived. Unlike Egon, who's apt to disintegrate at the first sign of stress, we can depend on Charles Fersten to pick up the weapons and deliver them to us… for his daughter's sake.”

“How necessary is Egon?” Ceci's voice was low and muted.

Rafit answered in an unhurried tone, as if he were describing an ordinary protocol in an ordinary businessman's schedule. “Only he or his sister the countess are able to order the weapons released. Von Mansfeld Works is, after all, a family-owned business, appearances notwithstanding.” Before his secretary could articulate the obvious question, Shakin straightened from his lounging posture, placed both hands palm down on his malachite desktop, and deliberately said, “She is more unstable than her brother. At least with Egon the only emotion we have to deal with is fear. He's considerably more tractable. So we need him… at least temporarily.”

“Very well,” Ceci quietly replied, the matter settled. “I'll leave tomorrow to arrange the safe house while the men come in from the field.”

“Once the girl is abducted, send me a message and I'll see that Egon receives his instructions.”

“While I relay the necessary directions to Mr. Fersten.”

“Precisely.” They could have been discussing the weather, for all the emotion displayed.

Rising abruptly, Ceci stood with his natural military correctness and asked, “Will you be accepting Colonel Jorge's call today, then?”

General Rifat implicitly trusted Ceci's competence. He'd never failed him and, while normally not optimistic, normally a very prudent man who anticipated each possibility of reversal in advance, he uncharacteristically fell in with Ceci's prompting. Glancing briefly at the photos spread before him on the desk, he thought: How convenient. “Yes, today I'm in to the colonel. We're about to add a new legitimacy to our entrepreneurship.”

“Indeed,” Ceci said with a faint curve of his mouth. “Less tainted than the business of paying back other people's debts of vengeance.” Rifat's men were for hire… and to those in the world wishing to remain aloof from terrorism, for an appropriately large gratuity, their conspiracies could be executed, quickly and quietly.

“More respectable,” Rifat pronounced the words with a fastidious inflection, “than brokering the arms passing between belligerents. Although,” he went on with the merest of sighs, “I ask myself occasionally, Ceci, when a rare philosophical mood strikes me, why it's acceptable for some to sell arms and not others?”

“You mean the deceit of defining arms sales as ‘maintaining national security'?”

“That wonderful, benign phrase was what forced the third-world nations into the arms business in self-defense; they were being held hostage to powerful nations' whims of diplomacy. Although the small nations' inroads into arms manufacturing is tolerated, because they don't put enough product on the market to matter.”

“While the large nations maintain the fiction of ‘national security' as a motive because they're selling to everyone, and even a five-year-old knows that's unethical,” Ceci said.

“But if you're an independent broker, you're cutting into some country's profits, so you're criminal.”

“When in fact it's simply an interpretation of whose bottom line is losing money to people like us. And all the noisy rhetoric and byzantine definitions are simply so many words-a smoke screen to hide all the profitable transactions and deceit.”

“Ah, yes, deceit… life's basic ingredient, along with the profit motive.” The general began stacking the photos with swift precision, impatient suddenly with the false righteousness so prevalent in arms sales. “Luckily my brief fits of piety are rare,” he briskly said, looking back up at Ceci. “I look forward, then,” his eyes were devoid of any trace of sentiment, “to confirmation-say in ten days-that the girl is in your hands.”

“Perhaps two weeks. But Minneapolis is a quiet city, insulated by its geography, untouched by terrorist alarm.” Ceci's tone was lazily confident. “The assignment will be without obstruction.”