Chapter Forty-eight

I READ BRADLEY’S first. He said that as soon as he had left the nanny’s house she had phoned the local cops and told them what had happened.

Because she worked for Cumali, she had no difficulty convincing them that the story was true, despite its extraordinary nature. A black American wasn’t exactly hard to locate and, alerted by an all-points bulletin, a prowl car picked him up before he had even reached the hotel. They slammed him over the hood, disarmed him and took him down to the precinct house. He was fearing the worst – some Turkish form of enhanced interrogation – but by then all hell was breaking loose at the Theatre of Death.

American choppers from the Mediterranean Fleet had already been dispatched at the president’s order – not to pick me up but to secure the Saracen and collect evidence. Grosvenor phoned the president of Turkey, alerted him to their approach and told him that they had located the man attempting to buy the nuclear trigger. As a result, MIT operatives and the Turkish military all converged on the ruins. With two Turkish Navy destroyers standing offshore, half a dozen US helicopters on the beach and two hundred military personnel and intelligence agents in the ruins, the order went out to put Bradley on ice until the situation became clearer.

After five days in a cell – and following a direct request from Grosvenor to his Turkish counterpart – Bradley was released and had his passport returned. He went back to the hotel and had a tearful telephone reunion with Marcie, who, once she had recovered, asked him when he would be home.

‘A few days, ’ he said.

‘What?! ’ she cried.

A cop to the very end, he wasn’t leaving without organizing the extradition of Cameron and Ingrid for the murder of Dodge and the woman at the Eastside Inn. The next morning, less than twelve hours after his release, he returned to the precinct house and went to Cumali’s office. Hayrunnisa told him in hushed tones that her boss was still being ‘debriefed’ – and sticking steadfastly to the story that I had recommended to her, it seemed – so he asked to see whoever was in charge of the murder investigation. After a flurry of phone calls, the kid in the shiny boots escorted him to the luxurious office of the Bodrum police chief.

I recalled the man – I had seen him when half of his force were pursuing me through the boat-repair facility, the night that I pancaked SpongeBob. The chief was in his fifties, big and florid with pampered skin and a neat moustache, the gold buttons of his impressive uniform threatening to burst at any moment. Despite the eau de Cologne he was wearing, he had a smell about him, and I couldn’t say I was surprised by what Ben reported.

He wrote that the chief said he had received extensive legal submissions from lawyers acting on behalf of both Cameron and Ingrid: as I had anticipated, the moment the two women had left their interview with me they had immediately gone and lawyered up. The chief said that the submissions led him personally to review all the evidence.

‘Naturally, I had to discount everything supposedly discovered by the man calling himself Brodie David Wilson. He wasn’t even a member of the FBI and had entered the country under false pretences. As we know, he had his own agenda in complicating and prolonging the case.

‘My own review showed that the work of the Turkish detectives was outstanding, as usual. It was clear that their initial finding was correct – Mr Dodge had died by misadventure. His fall was a tragic accident. ’

Ben stared at him in disbelief, but the big Turk didn’t seem to notice. He smiled, lit another cigarette and spread his hands wide.

‘Of course, I didn’t want to make that judgement on my own, so I presented the evidence and the legal submissions to one of our most esteemed local judges. He too could see no reason for holding the two women and the other material witnesses in Bodrum any longer.

‘He suggested – and I agreed – that we return the passports and release them on bond, pending any further inquiries. ’

‘Release them?! ’ Ben asked, taking it hard, again acting as the champion of the dead. ‘How much was the bond? ’

The Turkish cop tried to blow him off. ‘There were ten of them … I’m not sure … There’s a file, I’d have to—’

‘How much? ’ Ben insisted, not bothering to hide his anger.

The chief dropped all pretence of civility. ‘Two hundred thousand dollars each, ’ he snarled.

Ten people – two million dollars! It was a fortune – but not to Cameron. Ben didn’t need to ask what she had done – of course, she would have paid the bribe and bought their way out.

‘When did they leave? ’ he asked in despair.

‘Three days ago. They got on board the huge cruiser and an hour later were sailing out. ’

‘What if your “further inquiries” turn up something? ’ Ben asked bitterly. ‘What do you do then? ’

‘We write and ask them to come back. But, as I told you, I’m sure that won’t be necessary. ’ Ben said the guy was almost smiling.

As I mentioned, I wasn’t surprised. With the FBI out of the picture, armed with all of the work which I had done, the Bodrum police chief and a corrupt judge had seen that they had Cameron cornered and did what generations of their Ottoman predecessors had done. They put their hand out.

Ben wrote that there was little he could do – the two perps had left Bodrum, and Cameron’s payment had guaranteed that all the material witnesses had scattered too. He thought perhaps he could pick the case up in New York, but he was realistic enough to know that, with limited resources, and one killer officially listed among the dead at the World Trade Center, unless the two women returned to America, he had little hope. With that much money, they certainly didn’t need to go back – they could travel the world for the rest of their lives.

I sat in silence for a few minutes, thinking about the two women and their crimes, but even then I didn’t recall it. No, the comment Ingrid had made to me about not understanding the half of it never even entered my head.