Another encrypted message from Ranger came in, and Caspian’s phone hummed again in his hand. But this time, the elderly couple to his left had heard the faint buzz of his phone, and the older man’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the glowing screen half shielded beneath Caspian’s jacket.
“Work,” Caspian said in English, giving the couple a tired, apologetic smile. “I work at the Canadian embassy, and I’m supposed to be on vacation, but ... you know how this goes, right?”
He offered an exaggerated shrug and tilted the phone so that the couple could see the blurred interface of what looked like a secure diplomatic app. The woman gave a small shake of her head, but there was a sympathetic smirk tugging at her lips. The man just shrugged and resumed his conversation with his wife.
Caspian read the message, then stared at his phone for a moment.
“What did it say?” Liesel asked.
“As far as Ranger can tell, the warrant didn’t originate from anywhere in Spain. The request came from inside the Istanbul police and is about to be pushed out to all the divisions.”
“That ... that makes no sense,” Liesel said.
They had arrived in Turkey less than two hours ago, and they hadn’t even left the airport. The implications of the content of Ranger’s message were enormous, because it meant that someone—someone who had somehow managed to track them to Istanbul—had access to Turkish law enforcement or judicial systems.
“You might be right,” he said finally. “Could be the same people.”
At the opposite side of the hangar, two members of a cleaning crew had just entered the hangar through a side access door, pushing a supply cart toward the rear corridor leading to the bathrooms. They wore matching blue coveralls and baseball caps and orange reflective vests. As the outline of a plan began to form in his mind, Caspian watched two passengers return to their seats, escorted by a police officer. Caspian had seen the pattern repeat itself over the past half hour, with one officer shepherding one or two passengers at a time. But never more than two.
“You saw the cleaners?” Liesel asked.
“Hard not to with their reflective vests,” he said. “You think they might be our way out of here?”
Liesel nodded slowly. “We need a pretext to get to them,” she said.
“If we do this, we’re committing ourselves,” he said. “There’ll be no going back.”
“I know, but if Ranger’s right, every officer here is minutes away from learning about our warrants. Heck, maybe they already know.”
“They’d be on us if they did,” Caspian said, his eyes moving to a cluster of officers hanging together close to a makeshift table on which were several opened laptops. “No one is looking specifically at us. So far.”
“I hope Ranger’s wrong, but we don’t have time to play wait and see, do we?” Liesel asked.
“I love you. You know that, right?” he said, surprising himself. Not that he hadn’t told her many times before, but he was confused as to why he had felt the urge to profess his love to her at this very moment. And, from the way Liesel was staring at him, she hadn’t expected it either.
“Yeah ... I do,” she replied without the hint of a smile and somewhat cooler than he’d wished. “But we’ll need to figure a lot of stuff out, Casp. Once we’re out of this mess.”
Caspian swallowed hard. “Right. Follow me.”
He rose from his seat, and they made their way toward a patrolling officer. The man was stocky, with a thin mustache and a heavy brow.
“Excuse me,” Caspian said in Turkish. “My partner and I need to use the bathroom.”
The officer gave Caspian a surprised look, as if he hadn’t expected him to speak Turkish. Caspian had once worked as a translator for the United Nations, a cover identity during his time as Elias. Prior to joining the Department of Homeland Security, he had completed a bachelor’s degree in applied languages. He was fluent in five languages and conversational in several more, including Turkish.
The officer gestured for them to follow him. “This way. And stay close.”
They trailed the officer as they walked the length of the hangar toward the bathrooms. As they neared the restrooms, Caspian caught a glimpse of the two-man cleaning crew. To his dismay, the men had already changed out of their blue coveralls and into their regular clothes and were on their way to the side door from which Caspian had seen them enter the hangar.
Damn it.Thinking the janitors had been on their way to clean the restrooms, Caspian’s plan had been to subdue the officer and then do the same to the two janitors. From there, he and Liesel would have “borrowed” the men’s uniforms and access passes. With the janitors now out of reach, Caspian would have to rethink his escape plan.
Unless ...the janitors ... they had stripped out of their uniforms, hadn’t they? Maybe he wouldn’t have to reconsider his strategy too much after all.
With the bathrooms straight ahead, he could see three doors, one labeledWomen, the otherMen. The third was unmarked but appeared to be a supply locker. Where else could the cleaning crew have stashed their cart and uniforms? He glanced at Liesel, to make sure she was tracking his thoughts.
She gave him an almost imperceptible nod.
The police officer slowed as they neared the bathroom, and he stepped to the side, leaving plenty of space for Caspian and Liesel to walk past him.
