Chapter 5

Her cab driver pulled to the side of the curb, and Ada exited, giving him a handful of Liras for the trip. The complex that rose above her was enormous. It was a bank, consisting of three separate high rises of steel and russet colored metal, joined into one large building. After doing a little bit of homework, she found that it was easily the largest and most prominent bank in downtown Istanbul, and it handled the accounts and money of some very important people.

Well, it certainly looks like I'm getting somewhere. Whoever paid Irving for that last deal has some very deep pockets.

She held her PDA up to scan her information one last time before she entered. The only solid piece of evidence she had was the bank account number TR34 0003 1013 1913 4443 7687 54, taken from a tablet of papers she grabbed in the bridge of the sinking freighter a few days ago. It was a wonder she was able to salvage anything after her less-than dry escape.

The account number itself didn't mean a thing to her, but a few shady characters were willing to help figure it out when she dished out enough cash. The letters TR were an ISO country identifier, which was Turkey, and a little more digging placed the account in Istanbul, one of the world's banking hubs.

What she had wasn't much, but she had pinged one of Irving's clients, or at least somewhere that cleared their funds, and that was at least a start. They could tell her how to find him, and possibly have more information about the weapons he was selling and where he was obtaining them. The only task left was to actually find out who held the account, and then find them.

She waded through the throngs of people that constantly entered and re-entered the building's revolving doors, dressed in a slick, black striped business suit from Armani and toting a slim leather briefcase. Her Storm was tucked inside her jacket underneath her arm in its holster, her grapple gun on her ankle, hidden by the wide cuffs of her slacks. Coming in armed was risky, but she had half a dozen excuses ready if questions (or worse) arose. She was playing the personal accountant of a person who had dealings with a black market weapon distributor; why wouldn't she be armed? On a more public note, she was just a high profile accountant with sensitive information.

The plan was simple: charm and force her way in to whoever handled the account and try to find something about the account holder. They were confirming shady purchases on a regular basis, so it probably meant they were in the loop with whoever was doing the deals.

If her initial infiltration plan failed, she would have to settle for breaking in at night, and as she crossed the busy lobby, it looked like that would be difficult, if not outright impossible. Cameras hung from the walls, and there were about half a dozen armed guards in the lobby, one of which had an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder.

She got into a line at the row of tellers on the other side of the lobby, continuing to discreetly scan her surroundings from behind her sunglasses. If I'm going to break in, it's not going to be through the front door, that's for sure. About twenty minutes later, the last person in front of her completed their business, and she stepped to the counter. The teller looked up, greeting her with a smile. It was an international bank, so he was probably waiting to hear what language she spoke.

"I have a problem with my client's account, and I need to speak with someone about it immediately," Ada said in her best business tone as she removed her shades.

"Certainly, hanım," the teller replied, his voice laced with a heavy accent. "Perhaps it is something I can help you with?"

She gave an airy laugh. "Not likely. If it was, I wouldn't have wasted the trip to come here myself." The ever bitchy, yet professional attitude seemed to work the most, especially when dealing with the upper echelon of society. She fished out her PDA, showing him the account number. "This is the account. If you could direct me to the person who has access to the records, I would appreciate it."

The teller peered at the screen, then typed some information into his computer. He scrolled through some pages, and then hit a few more keys. "It appears that Samet bey is the accountant in charge."

"May I speak with him please?"

The teller frowned. "I apologize, but we cannot divulge information about accounts without first confirming who has access to them. If you could please provide some proof?"

She replaced her PDA back in the inner pocket of her blazer with an irritated sigh. "You said that only Mr. Samet has access to the account? Well, I don't make it a habit about sharing information about my clients. Now if you would, please let Mr. Samet know that I would very much like to speak with him on a very private and important matter concerning my client's account. I'm sure he'll understand."

This time, the teller sighed, and then decided that she was far too much trouble to contest again, not to mention he would be ruining the bank's reputation on politeness and efficient service that had been plastered on their website. He left his counter, moving to a phone on the back wall. Ada glanced over her shoulder. Two customers had filed in behind her a few minutes ago, and now there was a third waiting. She tried to not look suspicious glancing back.

The teller returned. "Samet bey is currently busy at the moment, but he would be more than happy to arrange a meeting with you. If I could get your name and the reason why you are visiting today visit today, in addition to your phone number, I will relay the message at once so that we may arrange an appointment at a better time."

It was another subtle nudge to push the ball back into her court. Fortunately, she had one last card to play, one that would probably scare them into letting her through.

She smirked and tapped her fingers on the smooth marble counter. "Listen to me very closely, because you clearly didn't tell him who I was. He knows who this account belongs to, and I said I needed to speak with him now. My client just realized that millions of US dollars were 'misplaced' from his account." She was sure to articulate that amount very carefully. "As his personal accountant, who manages everything perfectly on my end, I took the time to fly a considerable distance to clear the matter up at the source. He wouldn't want it any other way." She leaned forward on the counter still smiling. "If I don't get a chance to speak with Samet, never mind what my client will do, I will personally make sure this bank is ruined, starting by taking your job."

Customers threatening a business usually never worked, but the fact that she both looked and played the part and knew enough about the account made her threat seem very real. The teller stuttered when he reassured her that there was no need to get upset or make a scene, and that there was no need to bring in any legal action of any kind. He once again left the counter to make a call, but came back very quickly this time.

"Samet bey would be more than happy to speak with you," he said brightly, motioning to the elevators at the far end of the lobby. "His office is on floor thirty-seven. I shall guide you there-"

"No need," she interrupted crispy, already walking towards the elevators. "Floor thirty-seven. I can find it myself."

"Ah, yes of course. May I please send him your name so that he may greet you upon your arrival?"

"Liz Fan."

She set her teeth when she approached the security checkpoint before the elevators. Unsurprisingly, the metal detector's claxons went off as soon as she stepped through. One of the uniformed guards stepped forward, holding up a hand and letting out a stream of Turkish that she couldn't understand, but probably requesting her to step back.

Ada raised her own hand. "Ah, I don't think so," she said with a laugh, not halting her stride. The guard almost stepped in front to block her, but the teller at the counter was waving his arms furiously, motioning for the guard to just let her pass. Security backed off, and she let out a hidden sigh of relief, feeling a little better that she was able to stay armed for what was going to happen.

Light, jazzy music was there to greet her as the elevator opened with a ding, and continued up to the thirty-seventh floor. She was feeling pretty optimistic, though she was trying to stay realistic. Getting into the lions den was pretty simple, so to speak, but grabbing a slab of meat and getting out was another story.

Upon exiting the elevator, a sign on the floor greeted her and indicated this was the second level of personal accounting, and a directory pointed down the hall to Emin Samet.

This floor of the bank didn't hold the same exquisite look of the lobby; it looked more like a typical office building. Everything was spotless and maintained, and lit with the neutral white of fluorescent lighting. The hall opened up to a larger room as she progressed, filled with a cubicle maze and some side offices behind glass walls. Samet's office was tucked away at the end of the hall, just past the larger room.

She knocked firmly on the heavy oak door bearing a plate with his name, and it opened nearly immediately, as if he'd been waiting for her. A middle-aged Turkish man in a white dress shirt and tie greeted her with a smile. "Fan hanım, it is good to meet you!"

Ada stuck out her hand, which he took. "Liz Fan. A pleasure, Mr. Samet."

He let her into his office, a spacious room with a desk, a couch, a small table, a bookcase, and even a small fridge in the corner. He was all but groveling at her presence in the way he moved and talked, offering her refreshments, which she declined.

Play it cool. Answer his questions, and he'll probably buy whatever you give him if you act mysterious and aggressive.

"If I may say so, I am curious as to why we have not met before," he said, gesturing to the chairs in front of the desk. "Mr. Spencer never mentioned having a personal accountant."

Not five minutes in, and she had a name. "That's because he usually doesn't need my services. As we both know, he likes to handle things himself. I'm more of…an advisor, of sorts."

"And may I ask why I was not contacted directly? I apologize for the inconvenience upon your arrival, but usually these things are handled by me directly."

"Mr. Spencer isn't the type to coddle me," she said, feigning amusement as she sat down and crossed her legs. "When he says something needs fixing, he tells me where, and I go. His personal business isn't my business, so the fewer names I know the better. Besides, I'm a big girl. I can figure these things out by myself."

He was subtly trying to test her. Her con at the front desk might have worked, but Samet was a little smarter. If she really was his client's personal accountant, then he was right: she would have contacted him directly. However, she played to his fears. Maybe she wasn't an accountant at all, and this was just a cover to shake him down in person for screwing up.

"From what I am able to gather, this is quite an alarming situation," he said. Ada noted that he looked calm, but he seemed fidgety while trying to act nonchalant. He may have always been like that, but she got the distinct impression that he was nervous about her. "I assure you, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary when I cleared the transaction. Mr. Spencer contacted me through the usual channels, and I merely did as I was requested."

"Well, clearly, Mr. Spencer didn't," she said. "Otherwise, I wouldn't be here." She cocked her head, giving him a cold stare. "How long have we been doing business, Mr. Samet?"

"Mr. Spencer has had banks within this country since well before I chose my profession." He offered a weak smile. "Never before has a mix up like this occurred, and I assure you-"

"You don't have to assure me that it won't happen again, because it won't," she interrupted. "You didn't think a transaction like this was a little odd?"

"Well, yes, a little. Normally, Mr. Spencer is quite selective on what he purchases, so I was very surprised when he requested a money transfer like this. He did not say what it was for, but only that it was very important, and that the recipient receive notice of it quickly. I transferred the money, and had no indication that something was wrong."

"Why don't you let me see who the money was transferred to?" Ada suggested. "I'm sure Mr. Spencer would love to know who tried to screw him over. I would too, actually. I don't like it when I have to clear my schedule and take a red-eye flight."

"That would be no problem, Miss Fan," he agreed, beginning to work on his computer. "I can bring it up right here on my terminal." He worked in silence for a few minutes, while Ada drummed her fingers in an impatient manner on her leg. "May I have the new routing number Mr. Spencer issued?"

"Ah…I thought you already had it." She felt like wincing as the cold accountant exterior wavered noticeably. A silence stretched over the office as he stopped typing. They both eyed each other, and Ada knew her cover was blown.

Samet reached for the phone in a flash, but she was already out of her seat, clapping her hand on top of his then driving her fist into his temple. He crumpled and fell off his chair, knocking the phone out of the cradle. She vaulted the desk just as he was getting back up, then grabbed him by the collar and gave him a quick knee to the ribs before shoving his head onto the desk.

Once he was properly stunned and writhing on the ground, she snatched her case off the ground and opened it up, reaching past a few decoy folders for a small roll of duct tape. She once again hauled him up by the collar and tossed in his office chair, and in a few minutes, she had his wrists secured to its arms with a few layers of the silver tape.

"Sit and be quiet," she ordered, wrapping a few bands of the silver tape around his torso to keep his wriggling down, then slapped a rectangle over his mouth and left him to feel his welts begin to rise. She might have broken his nose when she slammed his head; blood was pouring from both nostrils over the band of tape and dripping onto his shirt.

His keyboard and mouse was knocked askew, but they still functioned as she started to rifle through his computer. The operating system was fairly user friendly, and Samet had already queued up the right area of the system. After a little more digging and some tapping on the keyboard, she got into a folder marked for private. A screen prompted her for a password.

She ripped the tape off of Samet's mouth. "What's the password?"

"Sürtük!" he yelled, prompting her to replace the tape, not exactly sure what he just said. It probably wasn't nice. She was just concerned about the noise attracting people.

To further prove just who was in control, she backhanded him across the face, then drew her gun and pressed it to his jaw. "What's the password?" she demanded again.

He only glared at her, but she took his silence for cooperation and peeled the tape back again. Slowly. He grimaced as the bloody, sticky tape was cleared from his mouth. "Go ahead and shoot, sürtük. It won't get you into my files, and will only serve to get yourself killed! I don't think you're stupid enough to kill me."

Ada considered his response. She once again did not have a silencer, so any shot would cause someone to investigate. Maybe not security right away, but soon, once an armed person was discovered in the building. That left out putting a bullet in this thigh. Samet had to have the answers she needed, but she didn't have the time to interrogate him, nor was it the place to do it, and she couldn't kill him.

That left two options. Beat it out of him, which may not work, and would be loud and messy, or intimidation. She grinned.

"I'm not stupid enough to kill you, you're right. But who said I was going to?" She dropped the gun from his chin, instead burying it into his crotch. "So let's replay that situation. How about instead of killing you, I give you a sex change, free of charge?"

Samet's darker skin paled. "You…you wouldn't dare!"

Her only response was pulling the hammer of her gun back. Samet's eyes went wide.

"Okay, okay! I'll tell you!"

"Good boy," she cooed with a grin, easing the hammer back.

It was an alpha numeric password, consisting of a word in Turkish that she had to get twice from him because she couldn't spell it out. When she got access, she replaced the tape over his mouth and continued in silence. There were dozens upon dozens of records within the folder, and she didn't have time to go through them all at the moment, so instead she connected her PDA to the modem and began to download.

Her device chirped pleasantly a minute later, indicating that a few gigabytes of information were now hers. Just as she broke the connection with the computer, something tackled her from behind, slamming her over the desk. Samet had quietly broken free, and she had been too focused on the download to notice.

In the scuffle, the computer monitor was knocked to the floor, along with the keyboard, her PDA, and her gun. He was in no way an overly fit man, but he wasn't wiry either, and had gotten the drop on her. Both of his arms were wrapped around her body, pinning her arms to her side as his weight pressed her body onto the oak top of the desk.

He wasn't a very smart combatant, however, and he tried to restrain her instead of following up by striking her from behind. Ada managed to wrench an arm free from his bear hug after a hard struggle and thrust it behind her, feeling it connect with the side of his head. It was just enough to loosen his grip for her to tear free, catching his arm into a hold as she spun away.

After another quick elbow strike, she wrenched his arm forward, smashing his nose onto the edge of the desk, putting him out for good. Only then did she notice why he was trying to hold her down. A small red light was blinking on his phone, and though she couldn't read Turkish, the button it was set next to was also lettered in red, like an emergency number.

Shit.

She scooped up her PDA and her gun off the floor, concealed her weapon, then bolted for the door and cracked it open. The way was clear, and she moved into the hall, trying to act casual and hoping no one heard the tussle. Before she rounded the corner to go for the elevator, a pair of uniformed guards stepped into view.

They called to her and approached. She tensed, not sure if she should draw and shoot, but they were just innocents doing their job. Black market mercenaries were one thing, but she wasn't going to shoot a legitimate security guard until they shot first. On the other hand, if they found Samet while she was in their custody, she would be screwed, so at any rate, she was going to have to do something.

One reached out and grabbed her arm; she reacted quickly, sweeping his arm up and delivering a painful jab to his kidney. The other guard was a lot faster, drawing a baton from his belt and swiping for her head. She managed to block his arm before he cracked her skull open, then punched him across the face. She spun, chopping the first in the throat as she grabbed the wrist of the second and pulled forward, flipping him off his feet and painfully onto his back.

Both guards were down, but a third came around the corner, just in time to see the first one crumple. He drew his handgun, and she dove to the side, behind a cubicle wall as the shots rang out. Bank workers yelled and screamed, the ones closest to the exits running, others simply hitting the floor. More shots ripped through the cubicle wall, and she realized that a fabric and plastic wall wasn't good cover. She scooted to the side as more shots rang out, passing where she was just crouched.

She popped up and returned fire, managing to suppress the remaining guard behind a wall. Three more filed out the stairwell, one of which, to her dismay, was carrying a similar automatic weapon as she saw in the lobby. She managed to get off a few rounds, dropping one of them as they opened fire. The opposing return fire shredded her cover, forcing her to follow the cubicle wall deeper into the room.

The gunfire exchanges were quick and sloppy; half the time, it was all she could to stick her arm over the wall and squeeze off random shots after a quick peek. The wild return fire indicated the guards were doing the same, as cover was sparse. She managed to line up a better shot and graze one of the guards, then empty her clip to push the others back and give her enough time to vault one of the cubicle walls. Two more guards had joined the fray, handguns firing as soon as they stepped in.

The room was full of smoke, screaming, and debris. Everything reeked of cordite. She was outgunned, and both the stairs and elevator were cut off. In a few minutes, her last clip would go empty, and when she stopped firing, they would swarm her. The chattering of the submachine gun tore a line of holes just over her head, and the deafening boom of a shotgun removed an entire cubicle wall, sending a cloud of haze into the air next to her.

The far wall was floor to ceiling windows that lined the edge of the high-rise. She set her teeth, and then pulled the grapple gun from her ankle. As soon as there was a break in the gunfire, she popped up, firing blindly behind her as she sprinted to the windows as fast as she could.

It all happened in the course of a few seconds. Stray bullets whizzed past her. Windows cracked. The hook of the grapple shot into the wall. She lifted her arm. Impact, the sound of breaking glass, then the sensation of falling.

Thirty-seven stories above the street, she fell in an arc, and then locked the cable trailing from her gun. It snapped tight, her momentum almost yanking her from the grip, and just like that, she swung back towards the building. A very solid wall of glass shattered as she met it on the shoulder two floors down, but at least it wasn't solid concrete that would knock her senseless to her death.

The grapple gun was jerked from her hand, but she was thankfully lying on solid ground and, aside from a few scratches, unharmed. Oddly enough, it wasn't her first time pulling a trick like that, only last time she would up with a dislocated shoulder.

Glass fell from her clothes as she got to her feet with a grunt, a dozen aches vying for her attention. It was only now she noticed the woman pressed up against the wall, her eyes wide with shock. Ada had landed right next to her desk, no doubt pelting her with glass and scaring the hell out of her.

With the general well-being of an innocent civilian not too terribly pertinent to her, Ada left the room in a hurry. In the heat of the action, the security team above her might not catch on to what she did right away. They might just figure she plummeted to her death, but the more likely scenario was that they heard the second crash, saw the trailing cable, and were already moving to intercept her.

Somehow during the fall she managed to hold onto her Beretta, which had about half a clip left. She slipped it back into her holster. The accountant or cleaning lady, whoever, in the office had been so surprised at her entrance that she didn't even notice the gun.

She hit the door to the stairs and began circling the stairwell downward. It would have been a good idea to shed her outer blazer to try and change her appearance a little bit, but then she would have to toy around to get her holster off and find a new place to conceal her gun. She didn't know how organized the security force was, whether they were looking for an intruder or if the entire group knew to watch out for an Asian woman in a black suit. So instead, she made a beeline for the ground.

The lobby was still abuzz with its normal business by the time she got it, but as she stepped out onto the floor, a few security guards marched in through the doors. She lifted a hand to fix her hair, which needed it, but also to obscure her face as she walked briskly to the door. The guards began to approach people, ushering them towards the exits. Ada casually joined in with a few people, but not before someone called out to her.

"Fan hanım!" It was the teller from earlier. She wished she could have ignored him, but he came over to her. "Your business with Samet bey is finished?"

"Yes, thank you," she replied crisply, not breaking her stride. "Everything was cleared up."

Go away you annoying little man!

"I am pleased to hear it! I wanted to apologize for the inconvenience earlier, and I hope it did not tarnish our bank's reputation."

"No hard feelings, I was just a little cross after a long flight, speaking of which, I have another to catch," she said quickly all in one breath. "Good day."

The teller finally bid her farewell just as she reached the revolving doors. Once outside, her sunglasses took the job of hiding her face, and she moved down the sidewalk, grabbing the first cab she could just as she heard the sirens in the distance.