Kurtzman brought up another image on the plasma. This time a young female. She was strikingly attractive. Her fall of thick black hair framed an oval, mobile face. She had large brown eyes and a full mouth, light brown skin and dark brows.
“Now, she is interesting,” Encizo said. “And she’s on the side of the good guys?”
“Agent Berna Kartal,” Brognola said. “And, yes, she is. Kartal is an agent with the NIO—the Turkish National Intelligence Organization, aka secret service. Early thirties. Did a couple of years in active military service when she was eligible. Her current assignment is investigating Özgürlük. She had the local contact with Makerson and his partner until they disappeared. The next time she saw them was in the morgue. Dead agents push this a step up the ladder.”
“So what’s the bottom line here?” Lyons said.
“Polat is suspected of having a desire to push his group further along the dissent road. Behind the outer charm he’s funded rallies expressing dissatisfaction with American presence on Turkish soil. He has the ear of powerful Turkish groups who also have big money behind them. Industrialists. Old-time Turkish families, like his own, who would prefer nothing better than for the country to be free from foreign influence. And there are groups within the Turkish government who have the same feelings. Kartal believes there may also be some military backing coming via General Demir Marangol.”
The next photo showed a thickset man in a Turkish military uniform bedecked with ribbons. The man’s broad face stared out of the picture with a belligerent scowl. His dark eyes and thick mustache gave him a powerful expression.
“Marangol. Old family friend of the Polat dynasty. Also extremely pro–Turkish independence. Makes no bones about his feelings. Wants his country independent of foreign influence. Has a lot of power behind him in the military.”
“So no solid evidence of anything except hot air?” Lyons growled.
As always the Able Team leader was not shy about expressing his opinion. Carl “Ironman” Lyons saw everything in black and white; there was good and there was bad. It was advisable to remain in the good guys’ camp if Lyons was on your case; he tended to subscribe to the school of “shoot first, worry about the questions later.”
Lyons had little concern over criminals’ rights. He was fair, but had no time for tolerating bad behavior. He’d undergone paramilitary training in preparation for antiterrorist missions. Though he had not had any military service, Lyons had worked in the LAPD as a detective sergeant. Since becoming the leader of Able Team, Lyons had gained on-the-job experience in the fight against terrorism.
“No. Speculation by the carload, but no positive proof. Until recently,” Brognola said. “Kartal’s report backs up what the dead agent, Makerson, sent to his home laptop. The first time there’s been anything except a great deal of hearsay.”
“Enough to move on?” Encizo inquired.
“When an investigation ends up with two agents dead, it becomes a possible threat we can’t afford to ignore. Enough that the President has called in Stony Man and sanctioned a mission to follow through on what he’s been made privy to. His advisers have given him background on the Turkish unrest. The President has taken it on board and told his people to keep an eye on the situation. But behind closed doors he felt there was enough to give Stony Man a mandate to investigate further without the State Department blocking his way. He considered all the options and there was enough to cause him concern. It seems that at one point his advisory briefings postulated at the hint of some actual physical strike against U.S. interests in Turkey.”
Brognola looked around the table. “And a veiled hint that a similar incident could take place here, on U.S. soil, to back up what Özgürlük is threatening. Now, this may be nothing more than some Turkish half-assed bullying. But when U.S. agents are murdered—agents investigating Turkish agitators advocating the removal of our base at Incirlik—it all starts to take on a shadow of reality. The deaths have been kept out of the spotlight. No point in allowing press hype to muddy the waters.”
“With the background of NATO and the American presence in Turkey,” James said, “I have to say we do need to follow through.”
“The President doesn’t want to be caught on the back foot if something does happen,” Brognola said. “Turkish stability needs to be maintained. There’s a lot at stake with our base at Incirlik and the NATO alliance. Anything that might upset it at all needs to be eliminated. These days there are too many groups wrangling for position. And U.S. influence is constantly under fire from various involved parties.”
“These alleged strikes…” McCarter said. “Do we have any idea how they might be formulated?”
“At this point we’re guessing in the dark. That’s why we need Phoenix Force presence on two fronts. Turkey and London.”
“What’s in London?” McCarter asked.
Brognola slid a sheet of paper across for him to read.
“Kartal picked up on some mention of Özgürlük’s banker in London. The guy who collects money. Passes it out when the organization needs funds. Makerson had the NSA run some phone intercepts and he liaised with Kartal. Between them they got a location for this guy, Aziz Makar. And phone transmissions from another London address. Could be a safehouse. It’s a starting point for a look-see while the Turkish end is being checked out at the same time.”
“We ran the address. Tracked it down through local admin for property tax they pay in the UK. House is owned by a guy called Stanley Rimmer. His bio has him down as a landlord on a few properties. Tracking back through his transactions, we came to a dead stop with the real owner of the house.”
“The Polat group?” McCarter said.
“Way down the chain,” Kurtzman said. “A long chain, but if you’re in there, the truth will come out.”
“More to it, though?” McCarter said.
Brognola smiled at the Briton’s grasp of the detail.
“Money in the deal was paid via Aziz Makar. Our Özgürlük paymaster.”
Brognola waited to see if anyone registered the word and was not disappointed when Hawkins tapped the file in front of him.
“It’s in the file,” he said. “The organization fronting the opposition to the U.S. in Turkey and the hinted-at American strike—Özgürlük—keeps showing.”
“Based on intel from Makerson and Berna Kartal’s own file, I had my people run a deep trawl across the internet,” Kurtzman said, joining the ongoing conversation again.
Deep trawling was Kurtzman’s way of saying his team had dug their way into sites both open and secret. In Kurtzman’s eyes, if information was available, whether he got it by fair means or foul, the need was there. It was seldom the Stony Man cyber team failed to come up with the goods. When Stony Man got caught up in missions where lives and security were the main factors, Kurtzman threw rule books out the window. He hated protocols that might deter weaker individuals. They were knocked aside by Kurtzman and his people. To him the protection of America, the SOG teams and that often sneered-at word justice were more important. Aaron Kurtzman dedicated every waking hour to maintaining the integrity of his department and his people.
“The NSA has picked up recent phone chatter involving Özgürlük. This group might have money behind them,” Kurtzman said, “but they don’t have a monopoly on staying totally undercover. They are not very sophisticated when it comes to covering their tracks. We picked up traces of communication between various individuals. Once we located cell phones from the numbers Kartal and Makerson identified, it wasn’t all that difficult to expand our lists and start tracking messages.”
He put the text messages on-screen—most of the originals had been in Turkish, so Kurtzman had pulled in Erika Dukas, one of the translators Stony Man occasionally consulted. She had taken