The clerk politely left the room, pretending to be dealing with some business matter.
“It’s Dean. We need you.”
“Yes, yes. Okay. I’ll be right there.”
Dean returned the phone to its cradle, then walked up the stairs to Ramil’s room. When he knocked on the door, he heard Ramil rushing over, muttering to himself. He was dressed only in his pants and undershirt.
“Let’s go, doc,” Dean told him. “Asad’s complaining about bleeding from the wounds.”
“Bleeding? All right. Nothing to worry about — it’ll be seepage. Nothing.”
“He also has a headache and feels faint, short of breath. He’s meeting us at the clinic in forty-five minutes. You need some coffee?”
“Coffee, all right.”
“I’ll find some. Come on.”
The “clinic” was located in a suite of offices two blocks from the hospital where Asad had been bugged. Lia dropped them off around the block so they could go in the back way without being seen. The doctor coughed loudly as they walked up the dimly lit staircase; he was wheezing by the second floor, nearly hyperventilating.
“I’m okay,” he said between breaths. “I’m really okay.”
“What’s wrong with Ramil?” asked Chafetz, the runner on duty in the Art Room. She could see and hear them through a surveillance system installed by Desk Three when they rented the clinic.
“He just needs some water,” Dean told her.
Dean left Ramil to catch his breath in the examining room while he made his way to the water cooler in the reception area. He was just filling a cup when Lia warned him that Asad had pulled up outside. A moment later the downstairs buzzer rang.
“There are two bodyguards with him,” said Chafetz. “One of them is the one who was in the hospital. Abd Katib is his name. He seems to be the chief bodyguard.”
“All right.” Dean started back with Ramil’s water.
“Charlie, you have to let them in when they ring,” added the runner. “You have to buzz from the front room there.”
“I’m going to, Sandy. Once I get Ramil ready.”
“Charlie — they’re forcing the downstairs door open.”
CHAPTER 53
Tommy Karr told the BND agents that Dabir must have figured out he was being shadowed and arranged to trade places with a double; the al-Qaeda organizer almost certainly had planned to take advantage of the jurisdictional hassles that routinely made the police change surveillance teams at the state borders.
He could be anywhere, but the most logical place to look for him was in the Karlsruhe area. Still forbidden to mention the IMs, which might contain useful information, Karr had to settle for reminding his host that he could help in numerous ways, especially by supplying decryption services. The offer was met with a cold stare.
He went back to BND headquarters with Hess, trying not to eavesdrop as she dissed the state police to her boss over her cell phone, using the most colorful German Karr had ever heard. Inside, he hung around just long enough to see that he wasn’t wanted, then asked to be driven to the hotel where his bags had been sent when he arrived earlier in the day.
“Call my satphone if you need me,” he told Hess as he left. “And don’t forget—”
“Yes, you can help in many ways. We’ll keep that in mind, Herr Karr.”
Karr checked into the hotel, determined that he wasn’t being trailed — a nice gesture of trust, he thought — then, without going up to his room, had the front desk call him a taxi. He made the train station just in time for the last train to Karlsruhe.
CHAPTER 54
Dr. Ramil’s chest felt as if it were being poked by a thousand sharp pins. He bent over in the chair, trying to slow his galloping lungs.
The stress was just too much. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t. He was losing his mind and all control over his body.
“Come on, doc. Asad’s downstairs,” said Charles Dean, looming above him.
Ramil forced himself to look at Dean. His head seemed to weigh fifty pounds. “I–I don’t know,” he stuttered.
“You all right?”
“I—”
Ramil grabbed at his chest, trying to make Dean understand. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t do it.
“Come on, doc. Up,” said Dean, taking hold of him. “With me. Come on.”
Ramil’s legs refused to move. Suddenly he felt himself being lifted.
God has taken pity on me by striking me dead, Ramil thought. But it was just Dean lifting him up, chair and all. He carried him to the back door and slid him into the hallway.
“What’s going on, Charlie?” asked Chafetz.
“Ramil’s having some sort of freak-out. He’s hyperventilating and paralyzed.”
Dean went to the closet and grabbed a white coat.
“Get out of there, Charlie,” warned the runner. “They’re almost at the door.”
“No, it’s all right. I’ll do it.”
“Charlie—”
“Get the translator and a doctor ready. We’ll start by talking Turkish.”
A stethoscope and a thermal thermometer sat on the desk. Dean grabbed them, stuffing them both in his pocket. He could hear Asad’s men pounding on the door.
“Charlie, this is Telli Kabak,” said one of the translators. “How do you want to handle this?”
“I’m Ramil’s assistant, same deal as the other day. He called me and sent me over here. These guys don’t speak Turkish or Spanish. I don’t speak Arabic. We use English, like everybody else in Istanbul.”
“Okay.”
Dean pushed through the door to the reception area without waiting for an answer. A large man stood behind the glass entrance to the clinic, slapping a meaty hand against the door frame.
The man pushed the door open, snapping it out of his hands. Dean hesitated. He didn’t want to seem meek, but he also needed to come off like a doctor rather than a fighter. He took one step back, then held his ground as the bodyguard shoved his face into his.
“You are the doctor?” demanded the man in Arabic.
The man said in Syrian-accented Arabic that he had an important patient with him, and that, with God as his witness, if Dean made the slightest move to harm him, his skin would be slit open and his organs turned inside out. Once again Dean protested that he did not understand, this time adding a stutter to his Turkish.
“You’ve frightened the doctor,” said Asad in Arabic from behind the bodyguard. “Stand away.”
Dean held the bodyguard’s stare a few moments longer, then turned to Asad. The terror leader looked older than he had the other day. His head was bent slightly; he seemed to be in some pain.
The translator caught on, and gave Dean the Turkish phrases to explain that he had treated him yesterday at
