The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(68)

“There’s another one.” Alekseyov pointed to another taxi pulling into the bus terminal and parking at the back of the line. He picked up the picture from the dashboard and crossed the parking lot to the taxi stand. Moments after showing the driver Jenkins’s photo, Alekseyov turned his head and waved his arm for Federov to come quickly. Federov stepped from the car, took a final drag on his cigarette, and flicked the butt across the lot as he walked toward them.

Alekseyov stepped to Federov as he approached. “He recalls him.”

Federov felt a jolt of nervous energy. “Does he speak Russian?”

“Little,” Alekseyov said.

Federov took the photograph and showed it to the driver, speaking Russian. “Vy pomnite etogo cheloveka?” You recall this man?

“Evet,” the man said, nodding. “Ono bu sabah Bursa ?ehir merkezindeki biro tele g?türdüm.” I drove him to a hotel in downtown Bursa this morning.

Federov looked to Alekseyov for help. “He said something about driving him to a hotel in Bursa.” Alekseyov looked to the driver. “Kogda?” he asked, then caught himself, struggling with the translation. “Ne zaman?” When?

“Bu sabah,” the man said.

“This morning,” Alekseyov said to Federov.

“Ask him where he took him,” Federov said. “To what hotel?”

“Otel neydi?”

The driver looked at Alekseyov, then at Federov, and held out his hand, rubbing his thumb and index finger together, a universal sign. Federov nodded. Alekseyov pulled out forty lira from his pocket and handed it to the man.

“Central Hotel,” the man said.

Federov turned without another word and walked back to their rental car. As Alekseyov caught up, Federov pulled open the driver’s door and spoke across the roof. “Get me the directions,” he said, “but first let everyone in the area know to keep an eye out for him. Tell them not to go near the hotel until I arrive.”

Twenty minutes later, Federov drove past the Central Hotel on a busy street in downtown Bursa. The street fed into a roundabout littered with honking city buses, vans, scooters, and other vehicles seemingly paying no attention to lanes. On the sidewalk, vendors hawked their wares, adding to the cacophony of sounds. Federov took the roundabout, then backtracked until he found parking one hundred yards past the hotel, in front of a bank ATM.

“Tell the others we will meet them here,” Federov said. He lowered his window and shook free another cigarette. Before he could light it, a bank employee came out of the front door of the bank, gesturing and telling Federov to move his car. The employee pointed to a sign Federov could not read and did not care to. Federov nodded to Alekseyov, who got out of the car and intercepted the man, speaking to him in animated Turkish before handing him a few lira. The man considered the notes, shrugged his shoulders, and left without further complaint.

Eventually, four other agents met Federov and Alekseyov. Federov sent one of the men to scout the exterior of the hotel for exits Jenkins might use to escape. He returned ten minutes later.

“On the far side of the hotel there is a glass door leading to an alley with restaurants and outdoor tables and shops. It is crowded at the moment. The near side abuts a hardware store. There are no exits. There is a third exit at the rear of the hotel, but it also leads to the same alley.”

Federov instructed two men to position themselves at a table where they could see the door at the back of the hotel, and the other two to sit somewhere with a view of the door on the far side of the hotel. He and Alekseyov would enter the hotel through the front door. When the men were in place, Federov and Alekseyov approached the reception desk. The hotel looked to be a traveler’s rest stop, clean but nothing fancy, a place to sleep for the night for a modest price. Brochures stuffed in a rack just to the right of the counter advertised local activities, from the zoo to sightseeing bus tours. The tours perhaps explained the innumerable small white buses cluttering the street outside the hotel. The interior smelled of Turkish cigarettes, and Turkish music played from ceiling speakers.

At the counter, a man in an open-collared white dress shirt looked up and greeted them. Alekseyov slid Jenkins’s photograph across the counter and said, “We are looking for this man and understand he rented a room here this morning.”

The man removed a brochure from one of several slots on the counter and placed it over the photograph. Then his eyes shifted to his right, and Federov saw a camera bolted to the ceiling, the lens directed at the front desk. The clerk looked at Alekseyov and Federov in much the same manner as the taxi driver. He recognized Jenkins, but to breach hotel policy would come at a price.

Alekseyov picked up the brochure as if contemplating it, turned his back to the camera, and subtly placed twenty lira and the photograph inside the fold. He set it back on the counter. The man opened the brochure but his look conveyed he was not impressed. He did not pick up the lira. “I do not know,” he said. “We get many guests. He may be familiar.”

Federov nodded and Alekseyov pulled back the brochure and repeated the process. This time, the man did not hesitate. He picked up the brochure and casually slid the lira into his pants pocket while considering the photograph inside the brochure. “Yes,” he said looking up at them and keeping his voice low. “He came in this morning, spoke English, and rented a room for two nights. He paid cash.”