A Most Wanted Man Read online

  Which, in less refined language, was what Bachmann was cursing the world for as he and Erna Frey made their way across the courtyard to be greeted by Arni Mohr with his schoolboy forelock bouncing as he waddled towards them, fleshy hands outstretched and slippy eyes searching beyond them lest someone more important should be coming through the door after them.

  “Günther, my dear friend! So good of you to sacrifice your precious Sunday! Frau Frey, what a pleasant surprise! And dressed so finely! We shall have another set of papers run off for you immediately”—lowering his voice for security reasons—“returnable after our little meeting, please. Each set numbered. Nothing goes outside the building. No, no, after you, Günther, please! I am at home here!”

  Dr. Otto Keller sat alone at the long mahogany conference table, crouched over a box file, fastidiously exploring its contents with the tips of his long white fingers. Seeing the three of them enter, he lifted his head, noted the addition of Erna Frey in her wedding outfit and resumed his reading. A second box file had been set in front of the chair ordained for Bachmann. The code word FELIX was stamped on the cover in black, informing him that, whatever might have been previously agreed, Issa Karpov was Mohr’s baby, and this was how Mohr had christened him—and classified him top-secret-and-beyond while he was about it. From a side door a woman in a black skirt flitted in with a third file for Erna Frey, and vanished. Shoulder to shoulder, Bachmann and Erna Frey dutifully embarked on their homework while Mohr and Keller invigilated.

  URGENT RECOMMENDATION:

  That the internationally wanted Islamist fugitive FELIX and those connected with him be the object of an immediate and comprehensive investigation by state and federal police and protection agencies with a view to public prosecution. Mohr.

  REPORT NUMBER ONE

  Respectfully submitted by field agent [name deleted] of the Hamburg Office of Protection:

  Source is a Turkish doctor recently arrived in Hamburg and attached to a medical practice serving Muslim patients. On arrival in Germany, source reached an understanding with this agent that he would be vigilant on behalf of this office. Motivation: the favorable opinion of the state authorities. Payment: on results only. Source’s statement:

  “Last Friday I attended midday prayer at the Othman Mosque, well known to you for its moderate stance. I was about to leave the mosque when I was approached by a Turkish woman who was not familiar to me. She desired to speak to me confidentially regarding a matter of urgency, but not in my surgery or in the street. I would describe her as aged fifty-five, stout, dressed in a full gray scarf, suspected blond, volatile.

  “Halfway up the staircase leading to the mosque there is an office set aside for the convenience of imams and visiting dignitaries. It was unoccupied. Once inside, she began talking volubly but not in my opinion honestly. By her voice, she was of peasant stock, from the northeastern part of Turkey. I would say that her statement contained factual contradictions. Also she wept a lot, I believe in order to arouse my sympathy. My impression was of a cunning woman with an agenda.

  “Her story, which I do not believe, was as follows: She is a legal resident in Hamburg but not a citizen. She has a nephew staying with her, a devout Muslim like herself. He is an excitable boy, turned twenty-one, who suffers from attacks of hysteria, high fever and vomiting, also mental stress. Many of his problems derive from his childhood, when he was frequently beaten by the police for being a disturbing element, also confined to a special hospital for delinquents where he was abused. Though he consumes large quantities of food at any hour of the day or night he remains emaciated and highly stressed, pacing his room at night and talking to himself. During fits of nervous excitement he shows signs of anger and makes menacing gestures but she is not afraid of him, since she has a son who is a champion heavyweight boxer. Nobody ever got the better of her son in a physical fight. However, she would be grateful if I would prescribe a sedative that would enable him to sleep and recover his psychological stability. He is a good boy, and determined to become a doctor like myself.

  “I suggested that she bring the boy to surgery, but she said he would never come: first because he was too ill, then because it would be impossible to persuade him, and then because it would be too dangerous for all of them and she would not allow it. These three separate excuses did not seem tome compatible, and reinforced my belief that she was lying.

  “When I asked why it would be dangerous, she became even more agitated. Her nephew was completely illegal, she said, although by now she no longer called him her nephew but her guest. He could not go out into the street without risking arrest, also the deportation of herself and her son, now that her late husband was not around to bribe the police.

  “When I offered to come and visit the boy in her home, she refused me on the grounds that it would-be too dangerous for me professionally, also that she did not wish to endanger herself by giving me her address.

  “When I asked where the boy’s parents were, she replied that so far as she could understand him, both were dead. First the father had killed the mother, then the father had been buried in his military uniform. This accounted for the boy’s distress. When I asked why she had difficulty understanding her nephew, she replied that in his dementia he spoke only Russian. She then offered me two hundred euros from her handbag for a prescription. When I declined to accept her money or write the prescription, she emitted an exasperated shout and ran down the stairs.

  “I have inquired in the mosque. Nobody appears to know this strange woman. As a believer in inclusiveness and an opponent of all acts of terror, I feel it my duty to make these facts known to the authorities, since I suspect that she is deliberately harboring an undesirable and possibly radical individual.”

  “Happy so far, Günther?” Mohr asked, his too-small eyes greedily upon him. “You get the idea?”

  “Is this the whole statement?” Bachmann demanded.

  “Abridged. The whole statement is longer.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Source protection, Günther, source protection.”

  Dr. Otto Keller appeared not to be listening. Perhaps he felt he oughtn’t to be. Like so many of his kind, he was by philosophy and training a lawyer. His life’s priority, far from encouraging his subordinates, was to throw the law book at them, the only weapon he knew.

  REPORT NUMBER TWO

  Extract of report compiled by field agent [name deleted] of the Federal Criminal Office at the request of the Office for the Protection:

  “Orders were to identify a legally resident heavyweight champion Turkish boxer, who was not a citizen, whose father was dead and whose mother answered source’s description. Searches revealed Melik Oktay, aged twenty, known as Big Melik, as possible trace. Melik Oktay is reigning heavyweight champion and this year’s captain of the Turkish Tigers Sports Association. Photographs displayed in the gymnasium of the Altona Muslim Sports Center show Big Melik with a black ribbon of mourning stitched to his boxing shorts. Melik Oktay is the son of Turkish legal residents Gül and Leyla. Gül Oktay died in 2007 and was buried according to custom in the Muslim cemetery in Hamburg-Bergedorf. Melik and his widowed mother Leyla continue to occupy a freehold family residence at no. 26 Heidering, Hamburg.

  APPENDIX:

  Summary of Personal Record of OKTAY Melik born Hamburg, 1987.

  Aged thirteen, subject reported to be ringleader of a gang of non-German adolescents calling themselves the Genghis Kids. Involved in violent street clashes with anti-foreign street elements of same age. Twice detained and placed under warning order. Father offers caution money against son’s future behavior. Offer refused.

  At school debate subject, aged fourteen, advocates expulsion of American troops from all Muslim lands, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

  Aged fifteen, subject enters period of not shaving and favoring Islamic-style dress.

  Aged sixteen, subject gains titles of under-18 all-Islamic boxing and swimming champion. Elected captain of his Muslim spor
ts club. Subject shaves, reverts to Western dress. Enters Muslim rock group as drummer.

  Mosque attendance: Subject reportedly came under the influence of the Sunni imam at the Abu Bakr Mosque in the Viereckstrasse. After the imam’s deportation to Syria, and closure of mosque in December 2006, no known further adherence to radical Islamic beliefs.

  “They go under,” Mohr explained, as Bachmann set aside the report and made to take up the next one.

  “Under what?” Bachmann replied, genuinely mystified.

  “Like the communists used to. They get the indoctrination at a cadre meeting, they become fanatics. Then they go under, and pretend they’re not fanatic anymore. They are sleepers,” he said, as if he had invented the term all alone. “That sports club—we have it from a top reliable informant who has infiltrated himself as a member and supplies us with first-class material, no exaggerations—that sports club where this Oktay is so admired, in my informant’s opinion, it is a cover organization. They box and wrestle and train and get fit and talk about girls. And maybe they don’t compromise themselves with fanatical statements when they are in large groups because they always know we will be listening. But in secret—in twos and threes—over coffee together and at the Oktays’ house—they are Islamists. Militants. And now and then—we have this from the same excellent informant—this or that member of the group—a selected one—slips away. And where has he gone? To Afghanistan! To Pakistan! To the madrassas. To the training camps! And when he comes back—he’s trained. Trained, but a sleeper. Read the rest, Frau Frey. Don’t judge prematurely until you’ve read the rest, please. We must remain objective. We must not be prejudiced.”

  “I thought we agreed this was my case, Arni,” Bachmann said.

  “It is, Günther! We did! It’s your case! That’s why you’re here, my friend! Your case doesn’t mean we have to blind ourselves and put our hands over our ears. We watch, we listen—but we don’t disturb your case, okay? We run parallel to you. We don’t cross your lines, you don’t cross ours. We pool what we know. This Melik Oktay will soon be going to Turkey for a wedding—theoretically. With the mother too, naturally. And of course we checked. Such a wedding will take place. His sister’s. No question. But after the wedding—or before—where will he vanish to? Maybe only for a few days, but he goes. And the mother, what does she do? Find more boys that she can bring together, maybe. All right. I agree. It’s circumstantial. It’s hypothetical. But we are paid to think hypothetically. So we do. Hypothetically and objectively. No prejudices.”

  REPORT NUMBER THREE

  Operation FELIX. Report of the Hamburg Street Surveillance Team of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

  Bachmann had passed through his anger threshold and entered a state of operational calm. Whether he liked it or not, this was information. It had been obtained in defiance of their agreement, and sprung on him too late for him to do anything about it. Well, in his time he’d done that to a few people himself. There was substance here, and he wanted it.

  Possible retrospective sighting date: seventeen days ago: A man answering FELIX’s description was observed loitering outside Hamburg’s largest mosque. Security video images unclear. Subject inspecting worshipers entering and leaving mosque. Subject elects middle-aged couple as they walk towards their car, follows them at ten-meter distance. When asked in Farsi what he wants, subject turns and flees. Couple has since identified FELIX from wanted photograph.

  Agent’s note: Wrong mosque? Mosque is Shiite. Is FELIX Sunni?

  Desk officer’s note: Sources report similar figure lurking outside two other mosques, both Sunni, later in day. Sources unable to identify FELIX positively.

  “Who the hell’s the boy looking for?” Bachmann muttered aloud, to Erna Frey, who by now was a good couple of pages ahead of him. No answer.

  REPORT NUMBER THREE (CONTINUED):

  Melik Oktay is temporarily employed in his cousin’s wholesale greengrocery business. He also works part-time at the candle factory of his uncle. Discreet inquiries under a pretext reveal that for the last two weeks his attendance has been unsatisfactory on the following grounds:

  He is ill with a cold.

  He needs to train for an upcoming boxing event.

  He has an unexpected houseguest whom he must honor.

  His mother is in depression.

  Leyla Oktay is reported by neighbors to have displayed excitable behavior over the same period, telling them that Allah has made her a precious gift but refusing to explain what it is. She shops extravagantly but does not allow anyone to enter her house on the grounds that she is nursing a sick relative. Though politically naive, she is described as “deep,” “secretive” and, by one neighbor, as “radical, manipulative and harboring concealed resentments against the West.”

  “But now look here what happened,” Mohr urged Bachmann.

  Bachmann was still trying to adjust to the situation. Mohr, without so much as a by-your-leave from him, had put a full-scale watch on the Oktays’ house.

  Mohr had invited the Hamburg police public relations department to make a so-called goodwill visit on the off chance of getting a sight of the mysterious houseguest. Mohr was an offense against every known tenet of intelligence good housekeeping, but Mohr also had loot from his rampage.

  OPERATION FELIX

  Report Number Four, relating to the night of Friday, 18 April.

  “At approximately 20.40 hours the subject Melik Oktay left his house at no. 26 Heidering…At 21.10 subject returned, followed at a distance of fifteen meters by a small, fair-headed woman aged approx. twenty-five carrying a large rucksack, contents unknown.”

  Of course they bloody well were, thought Bachmann…

  “Accompanying her was a large-built man aged between fifty-five and sixty-five, dark-haired, could be ethnic German, could be Turkish or Arab of light skin. While Melik unlocked the front door of his house, the fair-headed woman put on a headscarf in the Muslim manner. Accompanied by the older man, she crossed the street. Both were then admitted to the house by Leyla, mother of Melik, wearing a smart dress.”

  “Any pictures?” Bachmann snapped.

  “The team weren’t prepared, Günther! Why should they be? It was a windfall! Two tired women, their second shift, pedestrians, nine o’clock, it’s dark. Nobody told them this was their big night.”

  “So no pictures.”

  Bachmann read on:

  “At five minutes past midnight large-built man emerged alone from no. 26 and proceeded down the street and out of sight.”

  “Anyone house him?” Bachmann demanded, glancing ahead at the next page.

  “This fellow was a trained operator, Günther, the best!” Mohr explained excitedly. “Used the little alleys, doubled back on his tracks, how do you follow a man like that through empty streets at one in the morning? We had six cars on drive-by. We could have had twenty. He gave us all the slip!” he ended proudly. “Also we did not wish to flush him, you understand. When a man is trained and surveillance-conscious, one must be circumspect. Tactful.”

  REPORT NUMBER FOUR (CONTINUED):

  “02.30. Animated vocal exchange occurring inside no. 26. Leyla Oktay’s voice the most penetrating. Precise words could not be distinguished by our operatives. Languages spoken were Turkish, German and one other, believed Slavonic. Unknown female voice intervening at intervals, possibly translating.”

  “They actually heard this?” Bachmann asked still reading.

  “A fresh team in a van,” Mohr said with satisfaction. “I ordered them in personally. No time to apply directional mikes, but they heard it all.”

  “At 4 A.M., unknown young female previously described emerged from house wearing headscarf and carrying rucksack. Accompanied by man not previously seen by our agents, description as follows: nearly two meters tall, skullcap and long dark overcoat, early twenties, long-striding, agitated in manner, light-colored bag over shoulder. Front door closed after them by Melik Oktay. Couple disappeared, walking
at high speed down small streets.”

  “So you lost them,” Bachmann said.

  “Only temporarily, Günther! Just for an hour, maybe. But we quickly pieced it together. They did some fast walking, a bit of metro, a taxi, walked again. Typical countersurveillance methods. Like the big fellow before them.”

  “What about their phones?”

  “Your next page, Günther. All laid out for you. Cell phones on the left, landlines on the right. Melik Oktay to Annabel Richter. Annabel Richter to Melik Oktay. Nine calls in all. Annabel Richter to Thomas Brue. Thomas Brue to Annabel Richter. Three calls in one day. The Friday. At this stage we can only give calls made, no conversations. Maybe retrospectively we can recover some of the conversations. Tomorrow, if Dr. Keller permits, we shall put in a bid with signals intelligence. Everything must proceed legally, that goes without saying. But what was in those bags, tell me? What was in those bags, Frau Frey? What had those two suspect individuals collected from the Oktay safe house, and where were they taking it in the middle of the night, and for what purpose?”

  “Richter?” Bachmann asked, glancing up from his reading.