Chapter 17

A noise had me fully awake with my gun in my hand looking to where the sound had come from. It sounded like footsteps so rolling from the bed I had my gun aimed at the door. The sound of knocking and my name being called out had me relax and I watched as Ethan and CJ walked into the room. Santos must have turned on the small light between us, but I could see his gun in his hand so knew that he'd been aware of the sounds as well.

"I've found him and you're not gonna believe who he is"

I raised an eyebrow at that stupid comment before pulling my T-shirt back on.

"Miro Savic. It came through quickly because I was running programs to discover who worked with Markovic"

So it was one of his work colleagues who possibly knew Markovic's secret hiding place.

"What do we know about him Ethan?"

Hoping that maybe there would be some connection that might give us a clue as to who he had shown where the detonator was.

"Aged 57. He did work at the institute until six months ago"

"Financials?"

I asked hoping that maybe he'd been paid by someone, and we could trace where the money had come from.

"No. I can't seem to get anything up to date, not after he finished work"

That to me seemed strange because I had a suspicion that maybe he was trying to sell the detonator. Could he also have been the one to find the warhead, maybe.

"Address?"

I asked hopefully, because somehow we needed to know more about this man and what he'd been up to for the last six months.

"Got it, 24 Blagoja Marjanovića Moše. Hold on a minute. He bought it two months ago, interesting. It's in the north of the town, what looks like fairly new apartments. There's nothing in his financials that refer to buying or renting the place"

"Where did he live before then?"

I asked, curious why he would have moved.

"74 Bulevar Arsenija Carnojevica. Closer to the city but it's one of those concrete blocks that were built years ago. Maybe he decided that being retired he needed somewhere better"

Or maybe he got hold of enough money to improve where he lived.

"Let's go take a look around the place, maybe we'll find something to tie him into what he was doing. He could be one of those people who leaves things laying around"

15 minutes later we were back in the car with Savic's address in the sat nav. As I drove, I was sure that we were alone with no one following us. It gave me an opportunity to see the type of place where Savic had lived before. Ethan was right, there seemed to be road after road of the same concrete apartment blocks with little space between them and lots of traffic travelling on the roads. Certainly not a place that I would ever envisage living in.

The new address was certainly different. The area had roads that were narrow with trees planted on the sidewalk and areas for people to park. The properties varied from single dwelling places to ones split up into apartments. I drove past the address that Ethan had found to the end of the road, dropping CJ and Santos off so that they could walk back toward the apartment and find out if anyone was there. I then drove the car back, past Savic's place, and parked on the opposite side of the road. Ethan and I waited quietly in the car, watching the street for anything unusual. As Santos and CJ walked past us, I saw Santos shake his head, so we left the car and made for Savic's front door. I immediately used my lock pick set and we were soon inside. The other two would be watching from the street in case we were disturbed. It looked to be an apartment on the ground floor so taking out our guns we carefully went inside.

"Front room clear"

Came from Ethan as I cleared the bedroom before we met up in a large room that was at the back of the building. Being on the ground floor I could see a small back yard that was accessed by a door but was more interested in what we could find inside. The room we were in served as a living space having a lounge area, dining area and kitchen and was a well furnished area with what seemed like new carpets, and furniture. In fact, it was quite modern compared to the normal standards usually found here in Serbia. As Ethan began to go through a side cabinet I went back through to the bedroom and started my search.

There was very little furniture besides the bed, so I assumed that Savic kept his things in the closet. Inside there was an old metal filing cabinet that contained a lot of scientific magazines and the legal papers relating to his work. The usual NDA, along with the formal finish of his employment. Another section held old bank statements, but as Ethan had found before there was no movement of money going into the account after he had finished work, other than what he might have as some form of pension.

I was surprised not to find anything for this property, then again if he had bought it from illicit funding then he'd want to keep those hidden. Deciding that the filing cabinet was probably too obvious I started to look further inside the closet. Hell, I had a vault hidden inside of mine. I removed neatly stacked linens from a top shelf and hit the jackpot. The back of the shelf sounded hollow so standing on a chair from next to the bed I started to look more carefully. All it took was a gentle push on one side for a door to open. I removed an old looking laptop and took it through to Ethan, noting that he had moved to the kitchen area.

Back in the closet I found a folder with the apartment purchase surprised that it only cost €75,000. He'd bought this place nearly four months ago which had me concerned with what exactly he'd done to obtain so much money. Searching further was when I found a black leather bag with a large amount of cash inside, all €500 notes. I counted out 39 bundles of notes, each containing €10,000. It looked as though the man had been paid at least €500,000. A lot of money for someone like Savic. I walked through to where Ethan was now sat on the couch and watched as he worked on a small pad connected to the laptop. It was busy downloading information at a very fast rate.

"Anything?"

I asked hoping that Ethan had found something of interest on there.

"Yeah. He had one site that seemed strange hidden in his favorites, a company calling itself Dünya Antikaları. He was clever but not clever enough to stop me from me getting in. I've transferred everything from his laptop"

It was time for us to move because to be honest we'd already spent too much time here.

I slipped the latch that would lock the door behind us, and we walked down the street in the opposite direction to the car. Once we were sure that we hadn't attracted any attention we doubled back along a parallel street and back to the car. Getting into the car I started the engine and started to drive away from the apartment and down the street. Santos and CJ were walking ahead of us, knowing that we'd left the house, so I slowed down to pick them up.

"Anything?"

"A lot of cash. I'd say that he received about half a million euros about four months ago"

A low whistle came from CJ, but it was Santos that was curious as to what else we had found.

"Any clues where he got it from?"

I looked to Ethan for him to answer that. Ethan was busy on his pad, probably looking at the information that he'd downloaded.

"Dünya Antikaları. He did a lot of research on that company but it's all in Serbian, so I have no idea who they are"

"World antiques. It's Turkish"

Came from CJ. I knew I was right in choosing that man for this team. The next question had to be where they were based and who was in charge, but it seemed that Ethan was already ahead of me with that.

"Istanbul. But whilst it seems kosher, I can't see it. I wouldn't have thought that Savic could have found and sold an antique for €500,000"

"When, when was he paid?"

"He bought that apartment just over four months ago"

That didn't make sense to me, no one was going to make an upfront payment that far in advance for the detonator. Unless it wasn't the detonator that he'd sold. What if he'd sold the warhead to this company? As it stood the warhead wouldn't work without the detonator but maybe the radioactive source and housing might be worth something.

"Maybe we found who sold and bought the warhead"

I suggested and as I said that I knew that we had to follow the money. If this company now had the detonator as well, then we had to try and find it or at least find the location of it or even maybe the location of the warhead.

"I take it we're going to Istanbul?"

Looking in the rearview mirror at Santos I was surprised that he even needed to ask.

"Ethan get us on a flight to Istanbul"

We boarded the flight at 12:15 from Belgrade for the 1 hour 40-minute flight. At least it was short enough not be too uncomfortable but long enough to try and decide what to do when we got there. Again, we travelled separately, Santos with me who for some reason was sat quietly. I had a bottle of pills in my pocket that Ethan had handed to me when we got in the car and remembering about them, I took them out of my pocket. I recognized Savic's name on them but nothing else so decided that maybe CJ could read what they were and might know what they were for. I stood up and headed for the back of the plane where the toilets were, dropping the bottle onto Ethan's lap as I passed him. I knew that he'd understand what I expected from him.

Once back in my seat it seemed that Santos had thought through what he wanted to ask me, and I had to admit that I hadn't really given many details.

"You never did say what you found in that mausoleum"

I suppose other than saying that we'd found a dead body I'd ignored any of the details.

"When we got there the door had already been opened, the seal was broken. There was nothing inside, but I recognized a foul stench, so we opened up the stone casket. Savic was just laid there with no obvious cause of death so we removed the body so I could check inside the casket"

That had me suddenly remembering the piece of paper that I'd seen once the body had been removed.

"No detonator but this was there"

I passed the card, still in the plastic bag, over to Santos, realizing that I hadn't really taken a good look at it before now and had only glanced at the writing in the dim light.

"Weird. Was this underneath the body?"

"Yes, why?"

Wondering what Santos was thinking.

"If I wanted to leave a message, I'd leave it on top of the body so that it was easily seen"

I looked at Santos as I considered that, cursing why it hadn't occurred to me at the time. Maybe finding a body and no sign of the detonator had taken my thoughts away from where that card had been. It could change what we thought had happened.

"What if the detonator was taken before Savic's body was put inside?"

That was something to consider. Maybe Savic had gone there to retrieve the detonator and who ever was with him had killed him because the detonator wasn't there. Though from what Ethan had said he couldn't work out how he had died. To some extent that wasn't important now.

"Strange, why would someone write it like this?"

I took the card from Santos as he held it out to me and read the words more carefully. That's when I saw it, yes it read too late, but it was how the letter e had been written that was strange. Instead of a simple letter the e was more of a squiggle.

"Too late "

I dismissed it as being a quirk of whoever had written it, knowing that Santos thought that it was important, some sort of signature from whoever had left it. Having never seen anything like that before and knowing how serious some of the men were who we were dealing with my opinion was to dismiss it. For now, we needed to follow up with that company where Savic had been paid from and determine what exactly it was that he had sold to them.

The airport at Istanbul where we landed was a new one, Atatürk Airport was now used as a general aviation and cargo airport. As the only options for getting into the city was by bus or taxi, we'd decided to travel in two separate taxis for the 23 miles into the city since transport once in the city was easier than trying to drive a car around the busy streets. If we needed to travel out of the city, then could always rent a car. CJ had found a place for us to stay, a small rental apartment on the Asian side of the capitol in an area called Üsküdar.

By the time we were closing the door, having exchanged cash for keys with the owner, it was late afternoon. Hopefully not too late to get something done by the end of the day.

The apartment was clean and quiet and exactly what we needed with an entrance that was private. Free Wifi and hot water were both welcome so as Ethan went to work, Santos went out to get some supplies while CJ went out to acquire a different type of supply that we would need. Yeah, we had to abandon the weapons that we'd acquired in Belgrade. I showered quickly, hating that we had no clean clothes and swore that would be one of the things I would need to buy.

As I dried myself and dressed my mind went to Steph. I was worried as to where she was, scared that she was in trouble or even hurt, and yet there seemed to be nothing that I could do about it. I was here basically on another damn mission chasing criminals across Europe. The only hope that I had was that she was hidden away somewhere safe, though if that was the case then why hadn't she tried to get in touch with me? And that brought me right back to where I had started. I was sure that Tank would keep an eye open for her and knew that Hector was doing everything he could to locate her. Standing up from the bed I don't know who I was asking when I sighed and said, "Babe where are you?"

Back in the main room that served as a living area Santos had returned with kebabs and salad so I took my place at the table to join the other men.

"Weapons are in that bag on the couch"

Came from CJ as he pointed to a large blue hold all. I nodded my head deciding to deal with that as soon as I'd eaten.

"Ethan, anything?"

"Yeah, I found Dünya Antikaları, World Antiques. They have a warehouse over in Kadıköy. They supposedly export and import anything seen as antique but deal mainly with old statues found across sites in Turkey"

I suppose that it could be legitimate, but it would be a good front for moving weapons and if this company did have the warhead, then that would definitely be their forte.

"Owner?"

I asked wondering if it would be a name that I would recognize.

"Igor Pavkov. I'm running searches on his financials but so far all I've found out is that he's quite young, a playboy and very rich. I haven't discovered where his wealth came from, though I think from the properties that he owns maybe he inherited it"

I hadn't heard of the name but then I rarely worked in Europe to know. It was the only lead that we had and seemed a solid lead from what we had found from Savic.

"We need to take a look at the warehouse"

Seemed an obvious place to start. Ethan pulled up a map for where the warehouse was located so we decided between us on the routes that we would take and the positions we would take once there. It would be easy enough to get there using a mixture of buses and walking. Istanbul was a very busy city day or night with both locals and tourists out on the streets absorbing the atmosphere that was unique to Istanbul. Blending in wouldn't be a problem but we all knew to be on our guard for people watching or following us, especially close to the location of that warehouse. Walking through the main part of the city wouldn't be a problem but once close to the warehouse the streets would be less crowded and only locals would be around.