“Excuse me,” Pitt said. “Can you tell me who’s buried in Atatürk’s tomb?”
The man at first avoided Pitt’s gaze, peering instead toward the prayer hall exit where Sunglasses now stood. Spotting a shake of the head, he turned and faced Pitt with a look of contempt.
“I wouldn’t know where that dog lies,” he spat, his eyes glistening with an arrogant intimidation born of a hardened life in the streets. An undercover police agent he was clearly not. When Pitt noticed the telltale bulge of a holstered handgun under the man’s loose shirt, he decided not to press the issue. He gave the man a cold, knowing look, then turned and stepped away. Walking back to Loren, he half expected a bullet in the back and silently hoped the crowds and mosque security were sufficient deterrents to spare an immediate attack.
“What was that about?” Loren asked as he returned.
“Just checking the time. Come on, let’s see if we can catch a cab.”
The German tour group was slowly moving toward the courtyard exit, but Pitt grabbed Loren’s hand and dragged her past them, slipping out before they converged on the doorway. Pitt didn’t bother looking back, knowing full well that Sunglasses and the Persian would be in pursuit. Prodding Loren to the street, he got lucky and commandeered a cab that was off-loading an elderly pair of tourists out front.
“To the Eminönü ferry docks, as fast as you can,” he directed the cabdriver.
“Why all the rush?” Loren asked, slightly agitated at being hustled into the car.
“I think we are being tailed.”
“That man you spoke to inside the mosque?”
Pitt nodded. “And another fellow wearing sunglasses who I saw earlier outside our hotel.”
As the cab pulled into traffic, Pitt looked out the back window. A small orange sedan screeched up to the curb with a lone driver inside. Pitt looked across the mosque grounds to see the German tourist group still congregated around the mosque exit. He smiled as he spotted the Persian clumsily fighting his way through the thick crowd.
“Why don’t we go to the police?” Loren asked, a rising note of alarm in her voice.
Pitt flashed a reassuring grin. “What, and ruin our one and only relaxing day in Istanbul?”
11
THE YELLOW TAXI QUICKLY MELTED INTO TRAFFIC, LEAVing the domed mosque and its minarets in the rearview mirror. Had the driver turned north and wound through the crowded maze of the historic old city, he would have easily lost the orange sedan to thick traffic. But the judicious cabdriver, thoughtful to make good time, instead turned south and headed toward a divided motorway called the Kennedy Caddesi.
The pursuers desperately attempted to catch up. The orange sedan sped away from the mosque after picking up its two passengers, nearly getting sideswiped by a tourist bus as it wove through traffic.
“I think they turned right,” the driver said in a hesitant voice.
“Go,” Sunglasses directed from the front passenger seat while nodding at the driver to follow his instincts.
The car turned south, bolting through a red light, before slowing behind a procession of crawling vehicles. Seated in the backseat, the Persian suddenly pointed down the road, spotting a yellow cab two blocks ahead turning onto the Caddesi.
“I think that is their cab,” he shouted.
The driver nodded, his knuckles tightening around the steering wheel. There was little he could do to prod his way through the clogged traffic, and he anxiously cursed the surrounding vehicles while the seconds ticked by. Finally spotting a break in oncoming traffic, he burst down the left lane for a block, then nosed back into the right lane. The traffic moved forward, and he quickly entered the Caddesi, flooring the accelerator and weaving down the highway like a Formula 1 racer.
The highway looped around the eastern boundary of Topkapi, hugging the Bosphorus shoreline. Traffic moved briskly as the road turned north then west along the Golden Horn, a natural wat
er inlet that divided the European sector of Istanbul. Pitt looked down at the waterway, admiring a large green dredge ship that was churning the waters off the shoreline. As the cab approached the Galata Bridge, which stretched north over the Golden Horn into the district of Beyoglu, a throng of cars and buses suddenly materialized, impeding movement to a crawl. The cab exited the Caddesi at the first opportunity, snaking down to a ferry dock near the base of the bridge.
“Bogaz Hatti dock at Eminönü,” the cabdriver announced. “The next ferry departure will be right over there,” he added with a wave of his arm. “If you hurry, you can just catch it.”
Pitt paid the driver, adding a healthy tip, then surveyed the road behind them as he exited the cab. Seeing no sign of the orange sedan, he casually escorted Loren to the ticket window.
“You just can’t stay away from the water, can you?” Loren said, eyeing several large ferryboats on the waterfront.
“I thought a relaxing cruise on the Bosphorus was just what the doctor ordered.”
“Actually, that does sound enticing,” she admitted, relishing some fresh-air sightseeing. “Just so long as we’re alone and there’s lunch involved.”
Pitt grinned. “Lunch is guaranteed. And I think we’ve lost our friends.”