Blood From A Shadow (2012) Read online

  “The police will come here, sooner or later, Con. You know Joannes won’t be able to lie to them. I think it’s better for all concerned if we make alternative arrangements for you,” Walker said.

  I was already working on that as Walker spoke. No Kaffa to rescue me this time. Any US authority I contacted here might be the very guys working Ferdy’s strings. The Catholic Church connection was a millstone in Islamic Turkey. The void projected by Artie’s eyes confirmed as much.

  “Any ideas, Reverend Walker?” I said.

  “You don’t have many options, son, but Artie wants to contact this Duffin man. You need help from professionals, Con, from the United States, who else is there?” Walker said.

  I didn’t like Duffin any more now than the first time I met him, but none of us figured he could be part of Ferdy’s crew, or he wouldn’t have sent me in there in the first place. Still, my instinct had kept me alive this far, and it bridled at asking the smarmy fucker for help now.

  “There was another man, at the start,” I said. “Name of Lutterall. He’s no friend of Duffin’s, wanted me sent back to the US straight away, told the cop in Ireland to put me on a plane, the cop that was shot in front of me. Ever hear of him, Reverend, a CIA guy called Lutterall, I think he was in Berlin when the wall came down? You were in the Agency back then, in ‘89, weren’t you?’

  “I was in Honduras in 1989, bringing a different wall down next door in Nicaragua,” Walker said. “I was there until we had Chamorro secure in 1990. We had the Sandinistas screwed then, so I was back on Fidel’s case. But the Iron Curtain was never my thing, never came across anybody called Lutterall. I only got involved in Europe in ‘95, when we started to hit back at the Bosnian Serbs. That was the writing on the wall for me, gentlemen, time for Walker to get out of that game. Never heard of a Lutterall, though.’

  The dead Brit had taken Conroy’s Berlin lighter off me. No way she was there in “89, she was still in school in Gainesville. No need to tell these two everything.

  “What about Conroy, Artie, has Duffin asked about her?” I said.

  “No, he just told me to let him know straight away if you surfaced, that’s all,” Artie said. “And I don’t think we have much choice, Con. You can’t stay here, you’re in too bad a shape to get anywhere on your own. I think we should call Duffin, make him get you out of here. Reverend Walker and I will insist you come to no harm. Even if he is involved in this other thing, there’s no way he could risk myself and George speaking out, telling the press what we know.”

  Walker’s eyebrows stood to attention. Artie wasn’t even fooling himself. I laughed, my ribs stabbed.

  “Well, what the fuck else are we going to do? You got any better ideas, Walker?” Artie snapped, he didn’t like being mocked.

  Walker scratched the back of his big dome head, shrugged his bulky shoulders, puffed out his cheeks.

  “He’s probably right, Con, I’m afraid,” Walker said. “Spymaster McCooey is right on this one. But we can’t wait until Duffin gets his ass in gear, I expect the police to get here tonight or tomorrow. We need to move you somewhere safe like now, you know?”

  “Where like, smartass?” Artie said.

  “How do you rate this guy Punka, Con, the Roma guy?” Walker said.

  * * *

  Two hours later I was stretched out in back of an old works van, Punka chugging it along the freeway into Turkish Asia, with painters dust sheets piled on top of me. Punka was heavily strapped, the bandages criss-crossed his torso like a Mexican bandit’s bandoliers. He used his right arm as much as he could, winced when his left was unavoidable.

  Walker had brought Punka back from the funeral. The only snag was that he wanted paid $10,000 up front. Artie disappeared and came back 45 minutes later with $5,000 in new notes, he would get the rest after I was out of the country. After Walker paid him the 1,000 Turkish Lira Punka said the van would cost him, they lifted me onto a padded platform in the back of the van. This was supposed to protect my ribs, but the heap rattled and bounced like a washing machine. I downed two days’ supply of Dr Silay’s painkillers and half a bottle of Walker’s Raki. The cocktail worked, I lost consciousness sometime after we crossed the Bosphorus. That suited both of us, we wouldn’t talk about Didar.

  I woke up with a crunching headache and the need to spew. Punka pulled up and hauled me out in time. I heaved up at the side of the road, but the agony that erupted through my ribs nearly choked me. I controlled my breathing, as best I could, leant against the van, looked up at the stars. We were far from Istanbul, clusters of light dotted the plain below, no other traffic on this road. He pulled me back in, kept driving, still no need to speak.

  It was almost dawn when he turned off the tarmac and started to climb a rough track, every bump punching breath from my torn ribcage. We passed a string of shack houses, patched together with corrugated iron, plastic sheets and rough concrete blocks. No people, just wild looking dogs to bark and chase our tires. He pulled off this track and the van almost surrendered under the steep gradient, but clung on long enough to reach my new hideout. Security grilles on the windows, a heavy dog straining its rope, no surprise. But the house was neat. A stone cottage with a red tile roof sweeping into a low timber porch, fruit trees catching the winter sun, a tidy vegetable patch to the side, a herb garden to the front. Not the Mafya hole in the wall I had expected, after all.

  My new warder was a middle-aged woman with country dark skin and blond hair. She didn’t catch my eye, gave directions through Punka, started fixing breakfast in the kitchen. The two of them chattered as if I wasn’t there, but there was a slight stiffness in their conversation that said they weren’t relatives or friends.

  She yanked the dog in by his collar, some sort of Turkish mountain mastiff, and it sounded like his name was “Brad”. She told him all about me, gave him his orders. Brad was ready, ears pointed, tail up, taking my scent, slobbering and growling. She slapped his muzzle, looked me in the eye now, yapped a command. Brad lay down, head on his paws, kept his eyes on me, still sniffing.

  “He likes you, Uncle,” Punka laughed. “He will guard you well. Police will not come here, you wait. Someone will come, she will feed you.”

  He said something to the woman, he was leaving, making for the door. I stood up and took his hand.

  “Thank you Punka. I am sorry for the trouble I caused. I am sorry about Didar,” I said.

  “No problem, Uncle, I have money now. I go to Paris soon, take my wife, we have good life now,” he said.

  “I’m sorry about Didar. It was an accident, it should never have happened,” I repeated.

  He shrugged, “I told her, I went to her before she is buried. I told her you are sorry, she knows this. But there are no accidents, Uncle, these things must be, how could they happen if there is no purpose?”

  He rattled down the mountain, the woman set watery soup and bread on the table, Brad watched me eat.

  * * *

  That’s how I passed the next few days. She fed me, I waited for my ankle to deflate and my ribs to allow me to breathe. We watched her TV in the evenings, Turkish soap operas and comedy, she critiqued each show with Brad. I was a shadow in the corner, she had no need to communicate, just put the food on the table and keep out of the way when I was in the bathroom. Joannes had donated some clothes, tight on me, I noticed a Sacramento shop tag on a shirt he hadn’t worn. She washed the old ones, must have recognised the bloodstains. A new bottle of painkillers arrived before Dr Silay’s supply was exhausted. I waited, played out a sequence in my head, how I would get out of here, get hold of Ferdy before he did anything stupid, use Artie and Walker to corroborate my story. That got me through the days, but the nights weren’t easy. My dreams would wake Brad, his howls would wake me. She shouted at both of us from her bed.

  Brad looked at me differently now, maybe he sensed the spirits too, caught my dreams on the rebound. He started to lick around me, rub his coarse sable coat against my legs, wag his tail when he hear
d me. Maybe he liked having a man about the house. That photograph that sat beside the TV, of the handsome man in a suit, couldn’t have been less than 10 years old. Where was he now, dead, prison, another woman? At least he still existed in some form in her life. Rose had already exorcised the apartment of my existence, I guessed that would make it easier, I didn’t have to feel guilty.

  * * *

  After nearly three weeks, my ankle could support my weight and my ribs only hurt sporadically. I was getting stronger every day, but so was the cabin fever. It was cold up here, ice gripped the stone cottage, Brad shadowed me as I brought firewood in from the shed. She gave me a thick woollen jumper, she must have knitted it years ago for the guy in the photograph, and I know that was a tear in her eye when I wore it the first time. Brad knew it too, she slapped his head, he wasn’t offended, licked the hand that hit him.

  I was going out for more firewood when Brad warned me. Ears up, a low growl pointed down the mountainside. I started to run up above to the rocks I had chosen before. I didn’t get far before my ankle succumbed, painful again, but I kept going. I had planted some bread and tashreeb up here, and her man’s sheepskin jacket. I was out of sight before the car appeared. Not a marked police car, but that didn’t mean anything. Whoever was in there wasn’t getting out while Brad was in that frenzy. She took her time to come out, the driver lowered his window an inch, spoke to her, she collared Brad and dragged him back to the house. The passenger waited until she tied Brad to the porch, then got out, but stayed on his side of the car in case the fucking hound could get free.

  Archer Duffin had found me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  The driver smoked on the porch, Duffin slouched in the passenger seat, I sat in the back, Brad slobbered over my window.

  “You’re my last throw of the dice, Maknazpy, man, you don’t know how much of a jerk it makes me feel to admit it,” Duffin said.

  He was still an arrogant prick, this was no apology to me.

  “I knew you were a loser, right from the start, but you’re all there is left,” he said. “Who would have thought it would all end like this, huh?”

  I didn’t tell him I had almost daily visions of choking his life out of him, this wasn’t the time.

  “How is it going to end, Duffin, happy ever after?” I said.

  He sneered at me in the rear view mirror.

  “Neither of us has done enough to earn that right, pal, but you have considerably more chance of making it than me. At least you might get to disappear to a hole in the ground like this afterwards,” he said.

  Afterwards, he said.

  “After what?” I said.

  “After we get back to the United States and blow this cracked scheme out of the water. After we do our duty, like I told you before, that’s all there is for Americans like you and me,” he said.

  He didn’t even mean that as a compliment, in his world being a “Good American” was the least that was expected of us, it wouldn’t earn any kudos or merit any decoration, it just “was”.

  “What about those other good Americans, Lutterall and Conroy?” I said.

  “Yeah, well, you know, they are still good Americans, I suppose, just lost sight of what their duty is, that’s all. I always knew Lutterall was a pain in the ass, though, never liked that son of a bitch,” he said.

  “So what happened with Conroy?” I said.

  He sneered his twisted laugh at me again.

  “Nothing happened. She was never there with Kaffa. It didn’t happen. You’re the only one says it did, and you’re wanted for the murders of Kaffa, that fucking Irish cop and those two dopeheads you did plug. You think anybody is going to believe you?” he said.

  “Yeah, I know it,” I said. “I’m emotionally and mentally unstable, right? But what about you, Duffin, don’t you carry any weight?”

  He looked in the mirror, but there was no sneer, only the haggard expression of a proud man that was resigned to disgrace.

  “You’ll never understand the weight I did carry once, boy. But that night you say Conroy was with Kaffa? Turns out they can prove I was raping her in my apartment in Arlington, had her drugged and captive all night long. They can prove things like that, see? And the young boys, too. They can prove I raped three teenage boys last fall. You wouldn’t believe what they can prove when they want to,” he said.

  I didn’t ask about the boys.

  “So we’re on our own, Maknazpy, just you and me. Maybe just you. You think anybody will be surprised when I’m found dead now that news has broken? ‘Took the coward’s way out, couldn’t face the shame’. Yeah, they’re good Americans, ok, they’ll go where their duty takes them, all of them,” he said.

  I disliked him too much to feel sorry for him.

  “So get that fucking hound out of my face and call the driver back,” he said. “I have enough favors left to get us back to the US. After that, all bets on me are off, so you might have to finish this on your own, Maknazpy. Let’s all hope you aren’t the loser I have you marked down as.”

  Another drive through the Turkish night. Duffin’s waning influence just enough to get us on a flight from Incerlik, an airbase of the United States Air Forces in Europe. I was going home.

  * * *

  Duffin’s influence was a 30 minute recording made in a Berlin gay brothel, starring, undeniably, a USAF Colonel proud of his hotshot Red Flag patch. The taciturn man that met us in a parking lot outside the base didn’t want to know what we were, his orders were to get us to Baltimore-Washington International without any questions. His badge, Special Agent, Air Force Office of Special Investigations, was our collective passport, it marched us past queues of high and tight haircuts and straight onto our transport. First stop, Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Then the badge had us on the Patriot Express to BWI within the hour, he sat two rows behind us, even made sure we were served our burger and fries first. Duffin waited until we were above the clouds before picking out the seats he wanted the two of us to be moved to. The two homebound Marines weren’t inclined to accommodate us and the badge had to call upon all his authority, but Duffin and I were soon served our coffee in our new seats.

  He spent a lot of the flight giving me tips like that on how to avoid surveillance, how to spot them first, how to keep one step ahead. He lapsed into silence when he thought he had all bases covered, then he would remember something else and pour it out before he forgot, as if everything had to be hurried because our time was running out. And it was. He knew his time was gone. I still resented something about the prick, but couldn’t deny my budding respect for him. He was a herd animal, and only conformity had ensured his survival so far, but he had abandoned that shelter because he had decided the herd had gone off course.

  “They’re right, you know, Maknazpy,” he said. “Unless we engineer regime change, Iran will eventually secure nuclear capability. No amount of limited strikes or sanctions is going to stop them.”

  His patronising tone still managed to irritate me.

  “Then how come you aren’t with them?” I said.

  “Because it’s a line no American can cross,” he said. “Like, your friend Kaffa was a good man, a good Turk, but he couldn’t get beyond that ‘Deep State’ thing they have. He thought only the military could be trusted to keep his country safe. That’s not what we mean by freedom in America, pal.”

  “Told me the military was keeping Islamic extremists out of power,” I said. “Sounded like the Turkish army was on our side.”

  “Yeah, well sometimes you have to know when to let go, it’s like being a father, you know?” he said. “You think assholes like Lutterall would know when to let go?”

  I gazed at the silver Atlantic, far below, it was guiding me home, to Rose and young Con. Could I really let them go? I admired Duffin’s sense of purpose but didn’t know if I could summon the same strength, it was all I could do to get through each new day. But he believed in something, that helped. Like Kaffa, like Artie. I believed in my own
power, ok, and I was hard to beat, but that wasn’t enough. I knew I should let them go, stop this thing and then let everyone go, that’s the only way I would stop being the loser they all thought I was.

  By the time we landed at BWI, Duffin had me primed. I couldn’t rely on him to be around. His old friends would soon locate him, either lock him down or let his body be found. He would go down fighting of course, but he couldn’t trust anyone, and nobody would trust the child rapist they said he was. No, I should assume he wouldn’t be there for me.

  “Find McErlane before they find you,” he said. “You’ve got about a week. They’ll be watching your wife and Gallogly, so keep away. That dumbass Artie McCooey is back at Fordham, he might be some use, but be careful, the asshole still doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.”

  The badge had two cars waiting. Duffin shook my hand and stepped in to the first one.

  “Like I said the first time we met, it doesn’t really matter who I’m working for. Good luck, loser,” he said.

  I took the second, and was soon on the I-95, the JFK Memorial Highway, heading for Wilmington. Duffin didn’t say where he was going, maybe he had decided to let go, after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  The driver dropped me at Wilmington station, I walked up and down the street, checked no-one was interested in me. I caught the next Amtrak and was in Penn Station at 3.45 pm. It felt good to be back, my nerves were a little jangled and my injuries wouldn’t be ignored, but it was good. I stood in a coffee shop doorway, just the usual hustle of crowds sweeping in and out, no-one picking me up. Duffin had slipped me an envelope with $6,250 inside, his own money I think, that would keep me free long enough.

  Came out the side exit on West 33rd Street, walking against the traffic, Empire State ahead, 7th Avenue, Madison Square Garden to the right. Across the lights, Hotel Pennsylvania, yeah, why not? Duffin said they probably wouldn’t have the manpower to search me out, just an inner circle involved that wouldn’t want the attention. Probably thought I would never make it out of Turkey. Into the brown marble lobby, a corner suite on the 12th floor. I sat on the bed beside the phone, Rose wouldn’t be home yet. But Duffin had told me not to, they didn’t need any manpower to keep a trace on her phone. Ok, Gallogly wasn’t far away, I would get him later. Got the number for the Fordham campus in the Bronx, left a message for Monsignor Arthur McCooey, please meet the Bishop of Davan’s son outside The Garden on 7th Avenue, yes, tonight, 8.30pm. It was 4.30pm, dark outside now, my body clock was haywire, it was 11.30pm in Turkey. I needed to sleep for a couple of hours, then I would be ready.