The Sixth Station(58)

Burqa clerk studied my face and grimaced. I couldn’t tell if she thought I was full of it or was just disgusted by my marital state. She called over one of the other clerks, and both compared my license to my passport.

“Ah, like I said, ‘divorced.’”

Eventually she handed me a set of keys and the paperwork with the parking-spot location of my car and said, in impeccable English, “Thank you, Miss Zaluckyj,” she said, pronouncing it correctly. “We have the credit card on record already. There is a GPS in the car. Drive safely.” She immediately leaned over and whispered something to one of the other women, who all stared at my hair and started giggling—but hardly discreetly.

Whose credit card was on record?

I forgave Dona or Donald for the ridiculous Italian messages and was amazed anyone could have gotten some bogus credit card numbers preapproved.

If it was Dona, perhaps she used her own credit card to secure the car. Or better yet, a family member back in merry olde England. Angel.

I found the car in no time—nice, an Alfa Romeo!—and hopped in. But the car was automatic. Not a stick shift after all.

I was desperate to get out of there (where I was headed, I had no idea), but the message had been so adamant, so surely it was for a good reason. Was it a warning that if the car was anything other than a stick shift that someone had played around with it?

I went over the message in my mind again. Or tried to. When I couldn’t retrieve it in my brain, I knew there was no choice but to open Sadowski’s phone and get up an Italian translation site.

I typed in “Informazioni importanti dentro l’automobile manuale” and it translated not to “Information on how to drive a manual car,” but “Important information inside the car manual.”

Of course!

I opened the glove box, took out the manual, and took out the thick envelope tucked inside. Holy good God!

A French passport in the name of Alazais Roussel, but with my photo—albeit with a long blond curly ’do that made me look like I belonged on an old Fleetwood Mac album cover.

How in hell had she done that? Or was it Donald’s work? It had to be Donald. He was the one who knew how to pay off anyone anywhere anytime.

No time to worry about it. I’d simply ask them when I was somewhere safe enough to use the Internet again. Anyway, unsure of where to go next, I realized that Sadowski’s phone must be filled with contacts. If I turned off the 4G and simply scoured his contacts list, perhaps I could scare up some names.

The people the “simple” parish priest had (supposedly) known was astounding. There were phone numbers for everyone from movie stars to the pope. Sadowski has the private numbers of Pope Benedict, Prince Charles, Justin Bieber—and are you kidding me?—Maureen Wright-Lewis?

He had never indicated to me that he knew her. What there wasn’t, however, was a contact for the only person I wanted to find in Turkey, Father Paulo Jacobi.

Maybe you should call Maureen and ask why Father Sadowski had her phone number. It’s an old one, though. It’s a 212 exchange. What the hell?

There were too many names and numbers to study at that point, and I was nervous about any kind of satellite trace, even though he’d said it was untraceable, so I turned it off, tucked it into my bag, and started up the car—no explosion—and set the GPS to English.

I hit the display for “lodging” and booked a room at the Arena Hotel near the Blue Mosque. I plugged in the address and headed toward the signs that read ISTANBUL.

If you’ve never been to Istanbul, or worse, driven through it, just know there are more one-way streets there than there are in Manhattan, and more crazy drivers than on Queens Boulevard (aka Boulevard of Death!).

I checked in under the name of Alazais Roussel, went up to my sparkling clean room, and stood under the hot shower until I thought my skin would peel off. Unfortunately, I seemed to not have done the dye job all that well and red color was still running off and lining the tiny shower stall.

I got out, dried myself off with a genuine Turkish towel, plopped down on the comfy single bed, turned on the TV, and flipped to CNN International. Marietta Tomasina was in front of the United Nations doing her stand-up. The din of the crazed crowd nearly drowned out her report, which had been filmed earlier in the day.

“The fourth day of the trial of Demiel ben Yusef has been nothing short of shocking, with the prosecution presenting survivors of the so-called ‘Unholy Day bombings,’” she said.

“The Reverend Bill Teddy Smythe riveted the entire courtroom when he testified. Because this is a tribunal and not a trial per se, he was allowed to be both a spectator and a witness for the prosecution.