His lips barely moving, he said, “Copy that. I’m two minutes from Taksim Square.”
He passed a shop window and caught his reflection. Nothing about him stood out. His posture, his clothes, even the way he walked. Everything he did was calculated to avoid drawing the eye. His decade of operating solo had drilled it into him.
He turned right onto the southern edge of Taksim Square, merging with a cluster of about thirty tourists gathered near the Cumhuriyet Aniti, the eleven-meter-high Republic Monument that honored the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The tourists were led by a guide holding a laminated paddle labeled with the logo of a popular cruise line. Being this early in the morning, Caspian assumed it was a predeparture tour. Their chatter was cheerful and oblivious, but even better, most of them were Caucasian. He fit right in.
He stayed near the rear of the group, using their collective bulk as a screen while he scanned the plaza. He spotted six police officers scattered across the square. Two stood near a taxi stand. One of them, just like the cop he’d spotted earlier, held a tablet. Two more officers leaned against a police van near the park entrance, scanning the crowd with a relaxed but alert expression. Another pair stood near the edge of the monument, speaking with a city sanitation worker. Caspian, still with the group of tourists, walked past them. They glanced his way, but only briefly, before continuing their conversation with the city employee.
A minute later, he split from the group of tourists, who seemed to be heading back toward a waiting bus. He followed the curve of Mete Caddesi, his eyes constantly moving.
“Liesel, update,” he said.
She came back immediately. “I think I’m good,” she replied. “I’m about to head north. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
“Understood. Approaching the Hyatt now.”
As he neared the Hyatt, he took a hard right into a side alley that ran parallel to the hotel’s delivery entrance. Caspian walked toward the entrance, carrying himself like someone on the payroll. He stepped inside, nodded to a hotel employee who was pushing a laundry cart, and moved deeper into the corridor, heading toward the elevator bay.
“I’m at the Hyatt. Give me an update,” he said.
No reply. He tried again.
“Liesel? Everything okay?”
Still nothing. Then he heard someone take a sharp breath, and it took him a second to realize the noise had come via his earbud.
Then someone yelled, and Caspian froze in place, his heart pounding.Liesel.
Everything around him seemed to mute as he concentrated on the sounds and voices coming through his earbud. He didn’t call out her name, didn’t ask if she was okay, because he knew that if she could talk, she would.
A faint sound bled through his earbud. A grunt? Then he heard something else. It was the unmistakable thud of something solid striking flesh.
Caspian’s gut clenched, and he knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that Liesel had just been taken.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Istanbul, Turkey
Liesel Bergmann had spotted the man a few turns ago, about seven minutes after she’d split with Caspian. The man was short and wore a pair of blue jeans, a dark jacket, and a beige ball cap. Both times she’d glanced at him, his hands had been in his pockets and his head was just low enough that she hadn’t been able to see his face.
She updated Caspian, letting him know she might have picked up a tail. As expected, he offered to come to her assistance, but she refused. There was no point in him exposing himself further. And to be honest, she wasn’t sure she was being followed. Yet.
The man with the beige ball cap hadn’t been looking directly at her, but something had seemed familiar about him. Had she first seen him while she was still with Caspian? She didn’t know. Istanbul was full of men who looked like him. But something inside her was triggered when she’d noticed the man again. As a deep cover operative who had worked in the United States for years, Liesel had learned a long time ago that the moment you think someone might be following you, that’s the moment everyone suddenly starts to look suspicious. Her BND instructors had warned her about this, and they’d taught her to keep her cool and to keep an unflustered, critical eye on the world around her.
Don’t get tunnel vision, Liesel,she reminded herself.
Still, right now, everyonedidlook suspicious. Fifty feet in front of her, a woman was talking on her phone, gazing Liesel’s way. Across the street, a city worker was sipping his coffee, and Liesel could feel his eyes on her.
Liesel tensed as her mind began working the situation. Had she been compromised? And what about Caspian? Had he picked up a tail too?
She forced herself to calm down and to concentrate on her breathing for a few seconds.
While she didn’t take the possibility of being tailed lightly, did it really make sense that someone would be following her? Either the authorities had pegged them, or they hadn’t. And if they had, why play cat and mouse? Why not just pounce on her? Subtlety wasn’t part of the Istanbul Police tool kit, not when one of their own had been hurt.
She and Caspian had left a trail of unconscious bodies in their wake. Three police officers and one security guard. They hadn’t killed anyone, and they had used the least amount of violence possible to neutralize them, but she didn’t think their “restraint” would count for much in the eyes of the Turkish authorities. She and Caspian had embarrassed them. Big time.
Liesel knew what the unwritten rules were ... they were the same across police departments all over the world. Take one officer out, and the entire department will hunt you, looking to get their own kind of justice on the perpetrator. She didn’t blame them. She’d do the same. But that didn’t mean she was going to let them catch her and drag her into a van.
Liesel moved through the winding streets with calm, her eyes constantly moving. She performed a quick series of turns and double-backs, but without making it obvious that she was running a quick surveillance detection route. As tired as she was—though the few hours of sleep she’d managed to get the previous night had taken the edge off—all her senses were on alert. Her SDR wasn’t perfect—it was way too short—but she hoped it would be enough to flush out a poorly trained plainclothes officer.
