Gisela Romer was standing beside the Mercedes. She had taken her purse from the coupe and was rummaging in it. Kelly heard sounds from her and thought for a moment that the woman might also be vomiting.
It sounded more like sobs, however.
Kelly rose, spat, and wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand as he walked over to the dancer. He could feel his individual injuries separately now, even the dimples left on his knees by the rough stones while he lost his dinner. The long list of pains, however, was a lot better than the total malaise which had preceded it, and his skin was no longer swollen with what had seemed to be three degrees of fever.
Gisela lifted something from her purse and cracked it down on the fender of the Mercedes.
That was the side that had crumpled in the alley. The action shocked Kelly however, since the coupe was too well cared for not to be loved by its owner. “What . . . ?” the veteran said as his free hand closed over Gisela’s when she lifted it for another blow.
The woman surrendered the object to Kelly’s grip without struggling. He’d been right about the sobs.
“He told me it was to call for help,” she said as Kelly examined the object. “He said I should be careful, that you were very dangerous. If I needed help, I should throw that switch.”
The object was a prism, three inches by two and about half an inch deep. The casing was dark resin, featureless except for a thumb slide on one of the narrow faces.
Kelly reached into the car, twisting the ignition key to the auxiliary position and then walking the radio up and down the dial. There was a loud squeal at the bottom of the FM band, near 85 megahertz. Sliding the switch back and forth did not affect the signal.
“Just a beacon,” the veteran said as he dropped the little signal generator on the ground. “The slide’s a dummy. Doesn’t look like they trusted you.”
He brought his heel down on the center of the case. He couldn’t feel anything give, but the squealing on the coupe’s radio vanished in an angry crackle of static.
“Wouldn’t help a lot in town,” Kelly added in an emotionless voice, “but once we got out on the road where the signal doesn’t get lost with all the buildings, it’d home ’em right in.” He turned off the radio and the ignition.
Gisela still said nothing.
“Do you know where your friends’ve gone?” Kelly asked, pointing at the empty, roofless structure. “Unless Doug and his boys were who you were looking for?”
“No!” the woman snapped. She shook her hair out, her visage relaxing slightly now that she had been able to let some of her anger loose. She went on, “There should be someone in Diyarbakir. But it will take us days …”
Kelly shrugged. “Not if we fly,” he said. “And I figure that’s a lot better idea than sticking around here.”
He closed his eyes and pressed the palm of his free hand against the bruise in the center of his forehead. “They deserved it, more’r less,” he said very softly. His stomach threatened him briefly when a breeze brought him a reminder of Doug Blakeley, whose sphincter muscles had relaxed to empty his bladder and bowels as he died.
“Might not’ve made any difference,” Kelly continued, speaking to something more shadowy than the blond woman beginning to frown at him. “Wasn’t going to be a clean way out, maybe. But maybe if they hadn’t knocked me half silly, I’d have tried harder. I can run on reflex, but it ain’t real pretty.”
He opened his eyes to meet Gisela’s. “Is it?” he added, putting a period to words he already regretted saying.
Gisela looked around her, at the bodies and the silent sky, before she faced Kelly again. “All right,” she said. “What do I need to do?”
“Drive us to Yesilköy Airport,” the American replied as he gathered his attaché case from the Mercedes, “and I learn whether my authorization codes are much use there at the military terminal. If you’ve got the keys to that van” – he waved toward the vehicular door in the wall – “then it might be politic to take it. Can’t guarantee we’ve cleared up all the – road hazards – with these.”