No Safe Heaven, the Delhi Connection

[Jay]

The MIT officers came across the apron before the rotors had finished winding down. Four of them, civilian clothes, no markings. One had a phone to his ear and pocketed it as he reached the hangar doors without breaking stride.

They went to Tessaphon first. The hood went on before he was fully standing. Two of the men had him by the arms and walked him out through the side door and across the concrete toward the vehicles. Two Chevrolets, black, windows tinted past, hummed silently with their engines idling. The rear door of the lead car was already open. They put him inside, one man on each side, and the door shut, and the vehicle moved before the second had completed its turn.

Çağlar watched until the taillights cleared the perimeter gate. Then he turned back to the hangar. The exchange took place at the folding table near the east wall. Çağlar's team laid the duffels in the order they'd been packed on the mountain, and the remaining MIT officer worked through the first bag with practiced hands, separating material into loose categories without looking up.

Çağlar set two items apart from the rest. A small notebook, dark cover, worn at the spine. Beside it, a manila folder with a sheaf of printed documents inside.

"Personal effects," Çağlar said. "The diary was on him. The documents were in a case near the terminal." He waited a moment. "The guy is Indian."

The MIT man stopped sorting. He looked up. "He's Indian?"

Çağlar shook his head slightly. "The documents and diary say so.”

The MIT man looked at him, trying not to laugh. “He doesn't look it. He looks British. Scottish, maybe. Definitely not Indian." The MIT man picked up the folder and opened it. He looked at the photograph clipped to the top page, at the documents beneath, then back at the photograph. His expression held, but the pause ran longer than the question had called for.

"Did the British leave someone behind in India?" he said, mostly to himself. He set the folder with the priority stack and returned to the bags.

Çağlar placed the drive on the table separately. "The computer files are on there. We pulled what we could. Your people will get the rest." The MIT man took it without comment as Çağlar and his team left.

The Chevys brought Tessaphon to a remote black site. When they arrived, the two men held him by the arms and walked him out through the side door and across the concrete toward the building. The facility was an unremarkable mine that had long since been abandoned. They put him inside one of the interrogation rooms. He sat there without any communication from the handlers, who simply left him.

Hakan Ağçay came into the intelligence room. The analysts stood. He waved a hand, and they sat back down, his eyes already on the glass.

The room on the other side of the glass was standard. Metal chair, bare table, one overhead lamp angled to light the face and leave the walls dark. Tessaphon sat straight, his wrapped hand resting in his lap, the other flat on the table. He had not moved in the time the camera had been running.

Hakan stood there a moment. Long enough to take in the posture, the stillness, the careful way the man on the other side was keeping himself contained. Then he turned.

Demir and Fahriye were at the central table. The material from the mountain was spread across it in organised sections, shipping manifests, financial printouts, the diary, two folders of photographs, and the processed laptop files. They had been at it for some time. The coffee near Fahriye's elbow had gone cold.

Hakan walked over. They began to rise. He shook his head and looked at them both for a moment, then looked down at the table. He picked up one of the folders and turned through the first few pages. Set it down. Picked up another. Found the personal documents near the centre of the stack and looked at them without sitting.

"The 25th did a great job, it seems," he said.

Demir nodded. "Better than we expected. The site was largely intact. They caught them just as they prepared to relocate and they caught a bunch of intelligence. Those guys actually took the time to figure stuff of value"

Hakan set the folder down and looked at the diary. "So who is our man. Does he work for the Greeks...Americans...Russians?"

Demir shook his head, causing Hakan to raise an eyebrow. "He is an Indian."

Hakan didn't know if Demir was joking or not. Just then Fahriye spoke.

"His history in the Honourable Company goes back years," Fahriye said, following his eyes. "Operational decisions, contact references, personal correspondence. There is more material here than we have seen from a single source."

"A goldmine," Demir said.

Hakan said nothing. He stood looking at the table for a moment, then looked back toward the glass. "Is he working for those Englishmen or?," he asked.

Fahriya looked at him. "We don't know. The good thing is we caught him."

"It should have come earlier," Hakan said with a huff. Neither of them answered. "Izmir. Ankara." Hakan continued flatly. "A hundred and twelve people. On buses. On a metro platform." A pause. "Going to work." He paused again. "The Başbakanlık wants answers." Hakan looked at Demir. "Make sure he talks."

Demir met his eyes. "He will."

Hakan looked at the table once more, at all the information spread under the fluorescent light, and then turned back to the glass before he left to take the room.

 

[Jay]

Demir came through first. Fahriye behind him, pulling it closed without sound. They crossed to the table and sat, and for a moment no one spoke.

Tessaphon looked at them both. Then he smiled.

"Which one of you is the good cop?" he said in English. His accent was educated, clearly, he was raised within the upper-class, yet something else felt hidden underneath it. He looked at Demir. "You look like a good cop. Honest face." He tilted his head toward Fahriye. "And you…" He clicked his tongue. "If I'm going to be tortured, at least God had the decency to send someone worth looking at."

Demir said nothing. He set a folder on the table, opened it and began reading.

Fahriye looked at the man across the table. "Your name," she said.

"Which one would you like? I have several." Tessaphon said in jest.

"The one on your documents."

"My documents were…"

"Your name," Fehriye said again.

He smiled again. It didn't reach his eyes. "You can call me whatever you like."

"What were you doing at the camp?"

"Hiking. I got terribly…"

"Who do you work for?"

"Myself, mostly. I find institutions…"

"What were you…" Fehriye began to be annoyed with his constant deviations.

"Is there coffee?" he said. "I've been in this room since before sunrise, and no one has offered so much as a glass of water. That seems like a Geneva violation of some kind. I'd look it up but my phone was taken."

Fahriye set her pen down. "I'll be right back," she said to Demir. She stood and walked to the door and went through it. The lock clicked.

Tessaphon watched the door. Then he looked at Demir, who had not looked up from the folder.

"Where's she going?" He waited. Demir turned a page. "I was just getting started. Don't tell me I've upset her already." He leaned back as far as the cuffs would allow. "Tell her I'd like that coffee. And that I apologize. And that she has very…"

The door opened. Fahriye came back through it carrying a hammer. She crossed the floor without slowing and brought it down onto his right hand.

The sound slammed across the room. The scream that followed filled the room and bounced off the bare walls and came back.

Fahriye grabbed him by the collar before he could fold forward.

"Who are you?" she said.

"I…" He was still screaming, or trying to. His breath came in ragged pulls. "You…you…"

"Who are you?" She screamed, not giving him a moment to think.

"I won't…" He forced it through clenched teeth, face white, sweat already standing on his forehead. "I won't say a…"

She pulled him out of the chair by the front of his shirt and drove a fist into his abdomen. He doubled. She hit him again. He went to his knees and she hit him a third time across the side of the head and he went sideways onto the concrete and lay there, both hands pulled to his midsection, the damaged one pressed flat against his stomach.

She stood over him and hit him once more. Then again. The sound of it is flat and even in the room.

"Aya." Demir said softly. She stopped. She stepped back and set the hammer on the table.

Tessaphon was on the floor. His shoulders moved unevenly and his breath came in short, irregular pulls, and after a moment it became clear that he was crying, the sound of it muffled by his own chest.

Demir got up from his chair. He walked to where the man lay and crouched and took him by the hair and lifted. Not quickly. He brought him up off the floor and walked him back to the chair and sat him down, and the man sat because there was nothing left in him that could resist.

Demir pulled his own chair around and sat directly across. Close. Their knees almost touching. He looked at the man for a moment.

"Edward Murphy," he said. The man's eyes opened fully.

Demir held his gaze. "We know who you are. We have known for some time." He let it settle. "We know about the HIC. We know how you were betrayed. What it costed your family." He looked at him without expression. "Everything."

Murphy said nothing. His breathing had slowed. He was listening.

"What a capitalist pig is doing with a bunch of socialist cunts," Demir said, "is what I don't understand." He turned and looked at Fahriye, who had moved back toward the table. Murphy tracked her with his eyes and flinched when she stepped forward. Demir looked back at him. "What I do know, Edward, is that you are not a fighter. Anyone can see that." He held his gaze. "You'll talk. They always end up talking. It is simply a question of when. I am a patient man. You will come to learn this soon."

He stood. He walked to the door without looking back.

Fahriye crossed the room and took Murphy by the arm and pulled him off the chair. He didn't have much energy left as he weeped slowly. She dragged him to the center of the room where two metal cables hung suspended in the air. She forced him down between the gap, arms and ankles pulled diagonally until he was stretched between them, face toward the floor, hanging over the gap like a carcass at a butcher shop.

Murphy hung there. The room was quiet except for the ventilation and the sound of his breathing, which was still shallow and had not fully steadied. Small clouds of white air formed outside his mouth as the temperature got colder.

Fahriye pulled a chair to the side of Edward as he laid suspended upside down. She did not wait as she pulled out her kit. Picking up a pair of pliers. The door closed behind Demir as Edward’s screams rang out. Cut off abruptly by the sound of the door closing.

 

[Jay]

Demir was in the chair nearest the glass, a glass of tea in one hand, the saucer balanced on his knee. He didn't stand when Hakan entered. He looked at the glass.

Inside, Fahriye held Murphy's right hand flat. She had the pliers in the other hand and was working with a patience that was difficult to watch and difficult to look away from. Murphy was screaming, or trying to, the sound of it compressed by the glass into something thin and distant. His fingers were dark. Blood had run along the back of his hand and down his wrist and was dripping from the edge of his body onto the concrete below. He was saying something. Pleading, by the movement of his mouth, his head shaking left and right in long, desperate arcs. Fahriye did not stop.

Hakan stood beside Demir and watched for a moment. Then he shook his head and moved to the next chair. Demir stood.

On the other side of the glass, Fahriye set the pliers down and picked up the hammer. Murphy saw it and made a sound that pierced through the glass. He was weeping before she raised it.

"Does it not distract you?" Hakan said.

Demir looked at the glass. "No."

Hakan looked at him, then back at the room. "The Prime Minister's office called this morning. Again. They want answers for these attacks" He paused. "Murat’s team got eight names from Jalalabad. The MIT is moving on the Ministry arrests inside the week. They want to know what we have from this one before they do."

Demir set the saucer on the table beside his chair. "Edward Murphy," he said. "Younger son of Scott Murphy. His father was a shareholder in the HIC. A significant one. The family was divested during the 2003 Crisis and cast out. Scott Murphy died four years later destitute, impoverished, and alone. Edward was nineteen."

Hakan looked at him.

"He was educated in London before the divestment. Private schools, then a year at King's College before the money ran out." Demir paused. "He converted to Orthodox Christianity sometime in the past few years. He is deeply passionate about the Byzantines. It's where the aliases come from. Tessaphon and Christopher. It appears he has had fantasies about Byzantine royals and his diary is full of that content." He glanced at the glass. "A man looking for an empire that no longer exists."

On the other side, Murphy was still hanging from the suspended cables where Fahriye had left him the previous session. He was weeping, his damaged hands hanging at angles that were wrong.

Hakan rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"My theory," Demir continued, "is that the PKK connection runs through India. Through the Maoist factions. There have been at least six attempts on the life of the current Governor-Chairman of the HIC. One successful operation against his predecessor."

He reached to the table and turned a printed sheet toward Hakan.

"De Almeida e Sousa. Private jet, Uttar Pradesh, 2000. Deliberate sabotage. Claimed by Maoist successor factions." He turned another page. "Llewellyn, the current Governor-Chairman, has survived six attempts since taking office. A car bombing in Delhi in 2004. A poisoning in Calcutta in 2005. An infiltration of his security detail the same year, linked to the United Jihad Council in Kashmir. An RPG attack north of Delhi in 2006. A sniper in Bombay in 2007, a shot that only grazed him before his security put the man down."

Hakan looked at the pages without picking them up.

"The Delhi car bombing and the Bombay shooting." Demir set his finger on the table between them. "Those two we believe were materially assisted by the PKK. Weapons. Explosives. Technical instruction. Passed through an intermediary in Birmingham." He waited. "Murphy's brother. Older. He has a machine shop there. Has had it for twelve years. I think they have been working with exiled shareholders to retake the HIC"

Hakan looked at him.

"Edward was building the devices. His notes go into considerable depth about the construction. He understood what he was making and for whom." Demir folded his hands. "He has been working inside the PKK's bomb-making apparatus for at least eighteen months that we can confirm. Possibly longer. The Ankara metro station. The bus lines in İzmir. All of it runs through him. But…it is all just a side quest for him"

Behind the glass, Murphy had gone quiet. He simply hung, head down, the only motion the slow rise and fall of his shoulders.

Then it changed. A long sound, rising, and then shorter ones after it. Hakan looked at the glass. His jaw tightened slightly. He turned to Demir.

"Cut it off."

Demir stood and knocked twice on the glass.

Inside, Fahriye looked up. She looked at the glass for a moment, then set down what she was holding and wiped her hands on a cloth and walked to the door without looking at Murphy again. The door closed.

Murphy hung where she had left him. His shoulders moved slowly. The room was quiet through the glass.

“It looks like he’s been stealing from the PKK. Using their resources to funnel supplies to exiled shareholders who are trying to retake the Board. The bomb he was building was modeled off of the one that took out the U.S. Capitol building.”

Hakan looked at the table. "Murat," he said. "He got the cross-border route out of Jalaabad. The 25th's material has given us enough to build a strike package. We're sending it up the chain." He looked at Demir. "Before that move I need more from him.” He said looking at Murphy. “That intel is the HIC’s problem. “What I want to know is his communication chain inside the PKK. Who he was reporting to, who was directing him. Where was he sending the bombs. How many were produced. And what this has to do with India." He paused. "And I need to understand why. What a man like this ends up doing in a place like that. A Christian. From a wealthy family now living in the UK to now building bombs for atheist communists living in muddy caves."

He stood and straightened his jacket. "The Iranians are in Ankara," he said. "They are very exercised about the PKK-PJAK alliance, and they are making that felt at every level. After that, I need to deal with the Prime Minister." He looked at Demir. "Get me what I need from him. She wants answers Demir."

Demir nodded.

"He will talk," he said.

Hakan looked through the glass at the empty room, at Murphy hanging between the tables in the flat white light, and then walked to the door.