Chapter 35
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
THE Grand Bazaar was one of the most frequented tourist sites in Istanbul.
To Rapp, it felt like a waking nightmare.
For starters, unlike traditional Middle Eastern markets, the Grand Bazaar existed inside a structure that spanned thousands of shops and sixty-one streets.
This alone would have been enough to set Rapp’s sixth sense to sparking.
He equated closed-in spaces with ambushes.
Unfortunately, the cramped nature of the souk was only the icing on the cake.
The four thousand shops and sixty-one covered streets were crowded.
Extremely crowded.
Somewhere north of a quarter of a million visitors wandered through the market on a slow day.
Today, Rapp was betting that number was closer to the half a million mark.
Men, women, and children strolled down the brightly lit corridors, frequenting countless shops.
His tourist guidebook claimed that if an item could be legally purchased in Turkey, it was probably available at the bazaar.
From what he’d seen so far, Rapp didn’t think this was an exaggeration.
Kiosks with conventional items like rugs, jewelry, and spices competed with stalls selling sunglasses, ball caps, and a hundred flavors of Turkish Delight candies.
High-end pottery battled for primacy with leather goods and traditional Turkish clothing.
Tea boys threaded through the crowd, carrying platters laden with apple chai and sugarcubes, with the fearlessness and speed of Manhattan bicycle messengers.
The bright colors and gaudy wares assaulted Rapp’s eyes, while the constant background hum from countless conversations made picking out individual sounds almost impossible.
It was chaos.
Which was precisely the point.
Rapp made way for a teenager carrying a tray laden with glass Turkish teacups filled to the brim.
He was rewarded for his kindness by almost being run down by a second boy sprinting in the opposite direction with a tray full of empties.
Turkish custom dictated that customers should be afforded the chance to sip tea as they bargained with store owners, and the tea boys were in constant motion trying to keep up with the huge demand.
Rapp had been wandering around the bazaar for the better part of an hour and had assumed that his senses would eventually filter out the chaos in the same manner in which a whirring fan retreated to background noise over time.
They hadn’t.
If anything, the constant stimulus was becoming more draining the longer he browsed stands, dodged tea boys, and ignored the shouts of vendors imploring him to take another look. As was his habit, he’d conducted an SDR prior to arriving at the bazaar and was satisfied that he was clean.
Or at least he had been clean.
Whether that was still the case was anyone’s guess.
While he hadn’t detected any familiar faces as he’d trekked through the marketplace, the surging crowd and myriad stalls provided ample spots for a surveillance team to roost. On the positive side of the ledger, the chaos would also provide perfect camouflage for well-trained countersurveillance operatives, which was why Rapp imagined he was here.
Rapp pretended not to hear the shouted questions from vendors, even though he was pleased they’d been uttered in Turkish and Arabic.
In accordance with the instructions Ridley had relayed from Irene, he’d spent the last day disappearing.
After renting a car with a throwaway legend, he’d driven northeast along Highway E70 before turning north on E55 and passing through the Dolomites, as the Italian Alps were known, and into Austria.
Once he’d crossed the border, he’d pulled into a long-term parking lot in the quaint town of Gleisdorf, where he’d exchanged his old identity for a new legend.
From Gleisdorf, he’d continued east on A2 before turning north as the highway became E59 and then A23, which led him to his journey’s end—Vienna.
Or at least the end of the driving portion of his trip.
This leg took about ten hours with stops, and he was grateful to check into a hotel for the night, after he ditched the car in another long-term parking lot and retrieved a third legend.
He awoke the next morning and enjoyed a light breakfast before taking the U-Bahn to the airport, where he boarded a plane for Istanbul.
The two-hour flight passed without event.
After landing, Rapp had detoured to a series of coin-operated lockers just outside the airport.
Here, he retrieved his current, and hopefully final, identity.
While he enjoyed the autonomy that came with working as a solo assassin, he couldn’t have managed such a rapid transformation in such a short time on his own.
Countless officers from several CIA bases and stations had worked minor miracles by fabricating four new legends and seeding his route of travel with the appropriate documents and changes of clothing, and the necessary logistical conveyances.
The agency had gotten him here with a clean tail and new, backstopped identity.
The rest was up to him.
After a final glance in the mirror framing the jewelry shop on the opposite side of the pedestrian walkway, Rapp made two left turns and a right.
Fifty additional feet of walking brought him to his intended destination—a rug store.
As with the majority of the stalls, the rug store was well lit and stocked with wares.
Rugs of all sizes and decorative schemes lined the walls, with still more stacked in neat rolls within arm’s reach of the proprietor, a smiling man of around fifty.
“Selamün aleyküm,” the man said, coming to meet Rapp.
“Wa alaykum as-salam,” Rapp said. Though he didn’t speak Turkish, he recognized the derivative of the Arabic greeting peace be upon you and he replied in kind with and upon you be peace.
The man’s smile dimmed, but he asked his next question in perfect Arabic. “How can I help you?”
“I’m looking for a gift for my wife’s father. Maybe something from Bijar?”
The man swallowed. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything from that region. Could I interest you in a handwoven specimen from Nain?”
Rapp made a show of considering the man’s response. “Perhaps. Do you have any medallion patterns?”
The man nodded. “Several runners just came in today. They’re still in our storeroom. Would you like to take a look?”
“If you can get to them quickly. I have other business.”
“Of course, of course.” The man directed a rapid stream of Turkish at the other sales associate, no doubt telling him to mind the store, and then pulled back a carpet hanging across a walkway that led deeper inside. “This way, please.”
Rapp didn’t love the idea of preceding the man into the dimly lit storeroom, but he did as he was told.
Their conversation had been seeded with carefully chosen phrases and words meant to authenticate Rapp to the proprietor and vice versa.
If the asset had been so far penetrated as to give up all the challenges and passwords, whether Rapp walked into the trap second or first wouldn’t make much of a difference.
Probably.
The area beyond the hanging curtain was much as he would have expected a storeroom to look with one exception.
In the far left corner, among rug-lined shelves and stacks of rolled carpets, sat a peculiar metallic structure.
It reminded him of a small shipping container.
For someone in his line of work, it looked like a death trap.
“In there,” the man said, gesturing toward the metallic door. “I store the most valuable things in my standing safe.”
Of course he did.
Rapp let his left hand drift toward his front pocket as he walked toward the structure.
He supposed that it could be some sort of storage device.
It was too big to move, and the door’s handle featured a prominent metal loop through which a padlock could be threaded.
Still, it seemed odd to have something so big in a space so small.
His questing fingers found the hasp for the folding blade secreted in his pants.
Palming the knife, he withdrew it from his pocket.
The case officers who’d filled the lockers with changes of clothes, passports, pocket litter, and the other items he’d need for his new legend had also been kind enough to leave a few goodies.
The Spyderco one-handed-opening blade was one of them.
Rapp paused as he drew even with the metal door.
“Go ahead,” the man said. “It’s open.”
There was accommodating and then there was just plain stupid.
“Sorry,” Rapp said, pulling on the metal handle, “it’s stuck.”
“Strange,” the man said, joining him. “Let me see.”
The man wrapped his hands around the length of metal and prepared to pull.
“Silly me,” Rapp said, removing his toe from where he’d wedged it under the door, “I had my foot in the way.”
The man frowned. Judging by his pinched features, he’d been about to say something short. Angry even. But one tiny sound seemed to change his mind.
The whisk the knife made as Rapp thumbed it open.
“Why don’t you go in first?” Rapp said.
He held the blade away from his body, tip pointing toward the floor. It wasn’t threatening per se, in the same manner in which a viper slithering across the floor wasn’t overtly threatening.
Unless you did something to attract the snake’s attention.
The man looked from the matte-black blade to Rapp and swallowed. “Of course, of course. Just let me…”
He pulled on the door handle.
It swung open.
And then Rapp hip-checked him.