Crescent Dawn (Dirk Pitt 21)

Barely fifty ardent followers stood in the open hall as Mufti Battal entered and stepped to a raised platform near the mihrab. The once-mighty Mufti looked like he had aged twenty years in the past week. His eyes were sunken and cold, his skin pale and lifeless. The swagger and conceit that had fueled his rise to power was completely absent. Gazing at the sparse crowd, he trembled slightly, suppressing the single emotion of rage.

Speaking in a subdued voice, he began his homily railing against the dangerous, unchecked powers of the establishment. In uncharacteristic fashion, he was soon rambling incoherently, targeting a litany of perceived ills and threats. The somber faces staring back at him in disillusionment finally checked his diatribe. Ending his sermon abruptly, he recited a short passage from the Qur’an dealing with redemption, then led the small audience in prayer.

Not wishing to mingle with his brethren, Battal quickly stepped to the side of the prayer hall and entered an anteroom where he kept a small office. He was surprised to find a bearded man in the room seated in front of his desk. He was dressed in the faded white shirt and trousers of a laborer, and wore a wide-brimmed hat that partially covered his face.

“Who let you in here?” Battal thundered at the man.

The stranger stood and raised his head to look Battal in the eye, then tugged on his fake beard.

“I let myself in, Altan,” replied the haggard voice of Ozden Celik.

Beneath his commoner’s disguise, his appearance was not far removed from that of Battal’s. He had the same drawn, gaunt face and pasty skin. Only his eyes burned with a greater, somewhat crazed intensity.

“You have endangered me by coming here,” Battal hissed. He quickly stepped to the back door and opened it cautiously, sticking his head out in surveillance.

“Come, follow me,” he said to Celik, then slipped out the door.

He led him down a corridor, then entered a seldom-used storage room at the rear of the mosque. A washing machine was wedged into one corner, fronted by a cluster of old towels left to dry on a wire clothesline. As Celik followed him in, Battal closed the door behind him and locked it.

“Why have you come here?” he asked impatiently.

“I need your help to get out of the country.”

“Yes, your life is finished in Turkey. As nearly is mine.”

“I have sacrificed everything for you, Altan. My wealth, my property. Even my sister,” he added, his voice quivering. “It was all done for the aim of making you President.”

Battal stared at Celik with nothing but contempt.

“You have destroyed me, Ozden,” he said, his face flush with anger. “I was crushed in the election. My benefactors have disappeared. My congregation has abandoned me. All because you have tainted my reputation. And now this.”

He pulled a letter out of his pocket and winged it at Celik. The Turk ignored it, simply shaking his head as it fell to the floor.

“It is from the Diyanet. I have been relieved as Mufti of Istanbul.” Battal’s eyes flared as he sneered at Celik. “You have utterly destroyed me.”

“It was all done to achieve our destiny,” Celik replied quietly.

Battal could control his emotions no longer. He grabbed Celik by his shirt and flung him across the room. Celik fell against the hanging laundry, snapping the line as he dropped to the ground covered in towels. He struggled to get to his feet, but Battal was already on him. Grabbing a loose end of the clothesline, Battal quickly wrapped it around Celik’s throat and drew it tight. Celik fought back fiercely, punching and flailing at the Mufti. But Battal was too big and powerful, and too bent on vengeance. Surging with pent-up rage, he ignored Celik’s blows and yanked the line tighter.

The horror of being strangled was not lost on Celik. Struggling to breathe, he saw a parade of his own garroted victims flash before his eyes as the life was slowly choked from his body. Failing in a last desperate attempt to break free, he stared at the Mufti with a combination of fear and defiance before his eyes rolled back and his body fell limp. Battal kept his death grip on Celik for another five minutes, less out of assurance than psychotic fury. Finally letting go, he stepped slowly from the dead man, staggering out of the storage room with trembling hands and a permanently disabled mind.

It was late the next morning when Celik’s body was discovered by a Bosphorus fisherman. Surreptitiously dumped into the harbor, it had floated about the Golden Horn for most of the night before drifting ashore at Seraglio Point.

The expired body of Ozden Celik, the world’s last Ottoman, was found just a few steps from the walls of Topkapi, in the shadow of the glory of his legendary ancestors.

85

PITT AND GIORDINO FOUND LAZLO ON THE THIRD FLOOR of the Istanbul Hospital, situated in a pleasant but heavily guarded room overlooking the Bosphorus. The commando was lying in bed, reading a three-day-old copy of Haaretz , an Israeli daily newspaper, when the two men were allowed to enter.

“Don’t tell me you are still front-page news back home?” Pitt asked as he entered and shook hands.

“It is good to see you, my friends,” Lazlo replied, sheepishly putting the paper aside. “Yes, we are still big news in Israel. However, I am sad to report that I seem to be getting all of the credit. It was you who disabled the tanker,” he said to Pitt. “And none of it would have been possible without the Bullet,” he added to Giordino.

“I think it’s safe to say it was a team effort,” Pitt replied.

“Among other things, the three of us have improved my country’s relationship with Turkey tenfold,” Lazlo boasted.

“Not to mention helping keep Atatürk’s vision of a secular Turkish government in play for a few more years,” Pitt noted.