“How far – ” Kelly started to say as the coupe twisted again with the road and a ten-foot chain link fence webbed the road in the beam of their headlight. The red-lettered sign on the vehicle gate was again in Turkish, stating that this was the Palace Gravel Quarry, with no admittance to unauthorized personnel. There was a gatehouse within, unlighted, and no response at all to Gisela’s blip on the horn.
Kelly got out, closing the door quickly behind him to shut off the courtesy light. He walked a few steps sideways, knowing that the galvanized fencing still reflected well enough to make him a target in silhouette to a marksman behind him. Dust from the road drifted around him, swirling before the car as it settled, and the only sound in the night was a fast idle of the 280 SL’s warm engine.
“It’s chained,” he said loudly enough to be heard within the car, through the window he had left open. He held the P-38 muzzle-down along his pants leg, as inconspicuous and nonthreatening as it could be and still remain instantly available.
Gisela switched off the headlights and called, “There should be someone. Take this key and be very careful.”
Her hand was white and warm when Kelly took the circular-warded key from her. A high overcast hid the stars and the lights of a jet making an internal hop to Ankara, but the sound of its turbines rumbled down regardless. If there was a gun in Gisela’s purse, she had left it there.
At the loop-chained gate, Kelly loosed the heavy padlock and swung inward the well-balanced portal. There was still no sound but that of the car and of the plane diminishing with distance and altitude. He walked into a graveled courtyard, sidling to the right enough to take him out of the path of the coupe. He waved Gisela in with his free hand, the one which was not gripping the big Walther.
Subconsciously, Kelly had thought that the grunt of the Mercedes’ engine and the crunch of stones beneath its tires would cause something to happen. Gisela circled the car in a broad sweep in front of the building which the fence enclosed, a metal prefab painted beige where it was not washed with rusty speckles from rivet heads and the eaves. The headlight and the willing little motor shut off when Gisela faced the car out the open gateway again, and the night returned to its own sounds.
Gisela’s door closing and her footsteps were muted, not so much cautious as precise applications of muscular effort by a woman whose physical self-control was as nearly complete as was possible for a human being.
“Who are we looking for?” Kelly asked softly as the woman paused at arm’s length.
“I’ll try the building,” she responded, with enough tremor in her voice to indicate that she was as taut and puzzled as the American – which, perversely, was a comfort to him.
They walked toward the warehouse door, Kelly a pace behind and to the side. The weight of the pistol aligned with his pants leg made him feel silly, but he was willing neither to point the weapon without a real target nor to pocket it when the next moment might bring instant need. It would have been nice if he had known what the hell was happening, but as usual he didn’t – it wasn’t a line of work in which you could expect to understand ‘the big picture.’
Unless you wore a suit, in which case you probably didn’t understand anything, whatever you might think.
The warehouse had a vehicular door, made to slide sideways on top and bottom rails, and next to it a door for people. There was also a four-panel window, covered on the outside by a steel grating and on the inside by something that blacked out the interior.
Kelly expected the warehouse to be pitch dark. He stepped close to the hinge side of the door as Gisela opened it, so that he would not be silhouetted against the sky glow to anyone waiting within.
The big square interior was as well-illuminated as the courtyard, and as open to sky; what appeared from the ground to be a flat-roofed warehouse was four walls with no roof, only bracing posts along the hundred-foot sides. It held a vehicle backed against one corner of the structure, a van like the one which Gisela’s attendants had been entering when the shooting started. Apart from that, the interior seemed as empty as the courtyard.