A case in which the killer had followed exactly the same procedure was featured in my book.
Chapter Thirty
I HAD FINALLY located a cab, when I heard the bad news.
Having finished the phone call with Cumali, I had seen a vacant cab and dashed into the traffic to grab it. It was a miracle that any pedestrian could survive a horde of Italian drivers but somehow I scrambled inside, and asked the driver to take me to the airport.
I was returning to Bodrum as fast as possible and as soon as I had tightened my seatbelt – wishing it was a full racing harness given the way the guy was driving – I made the second phone call. It was to Ben Bradley.
When he picked up, I told him I was in Florence. ‘We’re back in business,’ I said, elated. ‘It’s a murder – let the other parties know.’
‘I’ve been trying to call you for two hours,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ I replied. ‘I had the battery out of my phone.’ There was only one reason he would have been calling – a message from Whisperer – and I knew that couldn’t be good.
He rattled on about the murder at the Eastside Inn – but that was just camouflage – then mentioned that some colleagues of ours had run a series of tests, computer modelling, in fact, that I needed to know about.
Ben didn’t understand what he was saying – he was relaying a message – so there was no point in asking him questions. All I could do was listen with a sinking heart.
He said that the guys had come up with an interesting date – they were saying 30 September.
‘But you know what computer geeks are like,’ he continued, and I got the feeling he was reading from a script. ‘It’s hard to tie ’em down; they say you have to allow a two-week contingency for any unforeseen problems – so they’re saying the second week of October.’
I hung up and sat very still, lost in thought for a long time. I knew from Ben’s message that Whisperer had ordered a team to model – probably under the auspices of some war-game – how long it would take a civilian to churn out a significant amount of smallpox virus using publicly available equipment. Working from that, they had calculated that it could be done by the end of September and then added a couple of weeks leeway.
We had a date now – all time, all events, all hope, was running to one point in time. Call it 12 October, I told myself – Columbus Day. The anniversary of my mother’s death.
Chapter Thirty-one
WHEN THE CUSTOMS officers opened the Saracen’s well-worn luggage they found neatly folded slacks, two dress shirts, a doctor’s kit of a stethoscope and thermometer, a copy of the Holy Qur’an and an English magazine. It wasn’t the Economist or the British Medical Journal. It was called Bra-Busters and offered at least a D-cup on every page.
The two customs officers didn’t say anything but exchanged a look that spoke volumes. ‘Typical Muslim,’ they appeared to say, ‘devout on the outside and, like everybody else, a dog on the inside.’
Had the men been a little more observant, they would have noticed that the holy book was zipped into a completely separate pocket of the carry-on, as if it had been quarantined from the filth with which it had been forced to travel. The Saracen had bought the magazine at the airport in Beirut in case German immigration had directed him to one of their interview rooms and put him through the hoops. The last thing he wanted was to look like a devout Muslim – the way the world had developed, if you had to cross a border, it was safer to be a hypocrite than a man of God.
In the event, though, the magazine wasn’t necessary. He had arrived at Frankfurt airport – Europe’s largest and busiest – at the height of the morning rush, just as he had planned. He knew from experience that a visitor was far less likely to be scrutinized when the lines were long and the immigration officers tired and overworked.
After an hour in a queue he presented himself to a young officer in a drab brown uniform. The man glanced at the photo in the Lebanese passport then at the person smiling in front of him: nice suit, beard trimmed to little more than a stubble, handsome face. A doctor, according to the arrival card he had filled in.
‘The purpose of your visit?’ the young officer asked, first in German and, when that received a blank stare, in English.
‘A medical conference,’ the Saracen replied. Apart from banking, Frankfurt’s major commercial activity was hosting huge conventions and trade fairs – all at a specially constructed showground called the Messe. The Saracen produced the tickets and pass that he had purchased online and laid them on the desk. The officer barely looked at them, but the Saracen knew that it was the details – things like the girlie magazine and, in Damascus, the dirt under the fingernails – which turned a legend into reality.