The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(67)

Speaking English, he asked for a room for two nights. The desk clerk asked Jenkins for a credit card. Jenkins shook his head. He took out his money and said he would pay in cash. The man smiled and nodded his approval.

“Sorun De?il,” he said.

Jenkins smiled in reply.

Key in hand, Jenkins made his way to the elevators and ascended to the third floor. His room was second from the end on the left. The interior was Spartan but clean. Jenkins removed a burner phone from his coat pocket and tossed his jacket onto his bed. He called David Sloane, uncertain of the time difference between Seattle and Turkey. Sloane sounded groggy when he answered the phone.

“David.”

He heard the sound of someone getting up. “Charlie?”

“Is Alex at your house?”

“Yeah, she’s here with CJ.”

“How are they doing?”

“They’re worried about you. We all are. Are you all right?”

“I don’t have a lot of time.”

“I’ll get her.”

Jenkins heard more commotion, then a voice that made his heart soar. “Charlie?” Alex said.

“Hey. You’re okay? CJ’s okay?”

“We’re fine. Where are you? How are you?”

“I’m on my way home, but I’m going to need some help. Do you remember Uncle Frank from Mexico City?”

“Who?”

“Do you remember me telling you about my Uncle Frank in Mexico City, the man with an artistic flair for documents? You and I visited him on one of our trips back to Mexico City, maybe eight or nine years ago.”

There was a pause. Then Alex said, “Yeah. Yeah. I remember. The forger.”

“He’d be in his seventies now. He owned that antique store in Mexico City. Antigüedades y tesoros.”

“Antiquities and Treasures.”

“Yes—165 República del Salvador.”

“Hang on. Hang on. I have to get a pen. Okay, repeat that.”

Jenkins did. “I’m going to need at least one passport,” he said. “Canadian. And I’m going to need someone to bring it to me.”

“Where are you?”

“Turkey. I’ll provide more explicit instructions when I get to Greece.”

“Charlie, I can’t fly. I’m on bed rest.”

“I know. David is going to have to do it,” he said.

“David can’t do it, Charlie. If they see you we have to assume I am being watched and they know I am here. They’ll follow David.”

Jenkins sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his forehead, trying to think despite his exhaustion. Then he heard another voice through the phone.

“I’ll do it.”





38



Federov smoked a cigarette as he watched the buses arrive and depart the Bursa bus terminal, spitting black petrol smoke out their exhaust pipes. Taxi drivers shouted “Taksi” outside their worn and tired-looking cars and vans. Simon Alekseyov moved from one driver to the next, showing each Charles Jenkins’s photograph. Dressed in a suit and tie, Alekseyov stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. Most men wore jeans or slacks, untucked long-sleeve shirts, and leather coats. They looked as if they hadn’t shaved in days. The women, too, wore casual dress, though a few wore hijabs and even fewer the burka with the headdress.

Federov took a drag on his cigarette and blew smoke out the open car window. The weather had warmed to a comfortable fifteen degrees Celsius, but it had also produced a brown haze that hovered over the bus terminal.

Alekseyov pulled open the passenger door of the rental car. It gave a metallic snap. He got in, shaking his head. “Nichego,” he said. Nothing. He put the picture of Jenkins on the dash of the car, and he and Federov continued their wait for the arrival of the next round of buses and taxi drivers.

Federov knew Jenkins had taken at least one bus. The ticket agent at the bus terminal in Taksim recalled Jenkins and remembered that he had purchased a ticket first thing that morning when the booth opened. Jenkins had paid lira, and the man said he looked to have a significant amount. He also said Jenkins had to run to catch the first bus out of Istanbul.

On a whim, Federov had found a currency exchange office down the street from the bus terminal and showed the teller Jenkins’s picture. The man recalled Jenkins exchanging 10,000 Russian rubles that morning and said he had assumed Jenkins to be Russian both because of the rubles and because he spoke Russian. The man also said Jenkins asked for directions to a store to purchase a cell phone, and he had directed Jenkins down the street to a store in one of the alleys.

The store clerk also identified Jenkins from his picture, and said Jenkins purchased two burner phones, each loaded with roughly thirty minutes of call time. He said Jenkins expressed interest in making calls out of the country. Federov left the store and called his contact in the United States. Federov’s contact told him that Jenkins might be attempting to reach his wife and tell her of his plans for getting out of Turkey.

Federov then tracked down and spoke to the driver of the first bus to have left Istanbul that morning. The man specifically recalled Jenkins getting onto the bus because Jenkins had nearly missed it, and he recalled Jenkins because of his size. He said Jenkins did not request any unplanned stops, and that his bus had emptied when he reached the station in Bursa. In case Jenkins had gotten back onto the bus, or a different bus, Federov had agents in ?e?me asking the bus drivers arriving in that city if they recalled seeing him. If Jenkins hadn’t gotten back on the bus, then he’d likely taken a cab at the bus terminal, maybe to lay low in Bursa for a day or two, though with roughly 850 lira, he also could have had the cab take him all the way to ?e?me.