Turkish Tangle, Evelyn Chambers Cozy Mysteries: Book 10

Sample Chapter

CHAPTER ONE

The office park sat off Route 7, a low-slung complex with identical beige buildings and too much parking for the number of tenants. Out front, the only markings were small suite numbers beside the doors, and nothing to tell one business from another. The landscaping was trimmed but generic, with boxwood hedges, bark mulch, and concrete benches with no one sitting at them. Evelyn Chambers had driven past places like this hundreds of times without a second thought.

Roger Reed, Evelyn’s fiancé and a retired veterinarian, pulled his silver Mercedes into a spot near the back of the lot, away from the handful of other parked cars. He turned off the engine and looked at her, quiet concern in his slate-blue eyes.

“Ready?” he asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Evelyn replied.

They got out and walked toward Building C, where a landscaping crew worked on the strip of grass near the entrance, the whine of a leaf blower rising through the stillness. Even at nine in the morning, the August heat was already oppressive. Northern Virginia in late summer often felt like that. Evelyn reached into her purse for a handkerchief and blotted the dampness from her brow.

Her CIA handler, Anthony Torres, had sent the address and suite number by text the previous evening. There was no explanation with it, just a time and a place. Evelyn had been to Langley enough to know this choice meant something. Torres had picked a place with no checkpoints, no visitor processing, and no fuss. She suspected it had as much to do with Roger’s presence as anything else. No one at Langley needed to know her fiancé might be part of the conversation.

She and Roger had talked briefly on the phone after she’d received the message. Neither of them had heard from Torres in weeks—not since Venice, after the Monteluce affair had wrapped up. Evelyn had come home to Brookton and had returned to her ordinary routine. She’d started to wonder, as she often did during the lulls between missions, whether Torres would call again.

“You don’t think he wants me along for moral support,” Roger had said, dry as ever.

Evelyn had told him she doubted it. He’d agreed to come along, and now here they were.

They followed the suite numbers down the exterior walkway until they reached one near the end of the building. The door was unlocked. Inside was a small front office with a desk, two vinyl chairs, and a short hallway leading to the back. The space was exactly what Evelyn would have expected for a meeting like this: functional, forgettable, and bare. Blinds covered the windows, and the gray carpet and empty surfaces made it clear no one truly occupied the suite. It was a place people used for clandestine meetings and nothing more.

Before Evelyn could call out, Torres appeared from the hallway.

“Evelyn. Roger.” He crossed the front office and shook both their hands, his grip firm. He wore a dark suit with no tie, his salt-and-pepper hair trimmed close, his gray eyes taking them both in with the quick assessment of a man who never fully stopped evaluating the people around him. “Come on back.”

He led them down a short hall to a conference room. A table took up most of the space, surrounded by rolling chairs, with blinds drawn over the windows. Torres sat in a chair at the head of the table, and they took seats next to him. He opened a thin manila folder. No laptop or tablet. Just paper.

“I’ll get right to it,” he said. “We have an American citizen in Turkey who needs to come home. His name is Chris Weldon.”

Evelyn folded her hands on the table. Roger sat quietly and listened.

“He’s forty-one, a mechanical engineer from Ohio,” Torres went on. “About twenty years ago he moved to Istanbul for a job with a Turkish-American firm that builds components for energy infrastructure.”

“Meaning what?” Evelyn asked.

“Pipelines. Refineries. Projects like that.” Torres flipped a page. “He married a Turkish woman, and they have a daughter. He built a life there. Over the years, his work expanded into site assessments and compliance inspections. About two months ago,” Torres continued, “Weldon was assigned to inspect a warehouse project outside Istanbul. It’s a commercial storage facility, nothing unusual on paper. He got the job because the original inspector dropped out at the last minute.”

“Dropped out how?” Evelyn asked.

“We don’t know yet. But we know the original inspector had a relationship with the developer. Weldon did not.” Torres paused. “He walked the site once and came back with questions. The building had ventilation systems, sealed rooms, and chemical containment features that had no business being in a storage warehouse. He wrote it all up and submitted his report to his firm.”

Evelyn eyed him. “And?”

“The firm buried it. But Weldon noticed. He pushed back internally, and when that went nowhere, he started asking questions elsewhere. We believe he reached someone at the US consulate in Istanbul, which is how his name got to us.” Torres closed the folder. “It also got him noticed by the people behind the project. Within weeks, Turkish authorities received a complaint alleging that Weldon had spent years falsifying inspections and accepting payments from developers. They opened an investigation, and he’s now under a judicial travel ban. He cannot leave the country until the investigation is resolved.”

“And if he tries to talk about what he found,” Evelyn said, “he looks like a corrupt inspector trying to save himself.”

Torres nodded. “The developer behind the warehouse project is a front. They aren’t building a commercial warehouse. We think it’s a chemical handling and containment facility, and the warehouse is the cover for it. Weldon has no idea what he actually stumbled across.”

“A front for who?” Evelyn asked.

“The same organization you’ve dealt with before,” Torres said.

Evelyn was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Go on.”

“Weldon can’t leave Turkey through any legal channel,” Torres went on. “His Turkish attorney has been trying to get the charges dismissed, but the judicial process is slow, and the people behind this have influence. As far as Weldon knows, the developer didn’t like his report and retaliated. He still thinks this is about a developer with a grudge.” Torres rubbed his forehead. “But our intelligence suggests the criminal case is a holding action. They don’t want him convicted. They want him contained. As long as Weldon’s stuck in Turkey, he can’t share what he documented with anyone who matters. There’s another dimension to this as well. Weldon is a mechanical engineer. He didn’t just glance at that facility and get a bad feeling. He walked it with professional eyes and documented details that our analysts would need months of surveillance to piece together, if they could get access at all. Which they can’t.” Torres tapped the folder. “What Weldon has in his notes, and in his head, could tell us what that organization is building and what they intend to use it for. That makes him more than a citizen in trouble. It makes him an intelligence asset, whether he knows it or not.”

Evelyn raised an eyebrow. “What about his wife?”

Torres’s expression didn’t change, but something in his voice did. “His wife died four months ago. Cancer. She was diagnosed shortly after the charges were filed.”

The room was quiet. Evelyn’s husband, Henry, had been gone six years now, and grief no longer rose up and blindsided her the way it once had. Roger had a hand in changing that, bringing warmth and companionship back into parts of her life she’d assumed were closed for good. But some things reached the old ache. Hearing about a man losing his wife touched the part of Evelyn that never fully stopped missing Henry.

Roger spoke first. “That was fast.”

He didn’t say anything else. Roger had told Evelyn about his wife’s illness and how quickly the end had come. He rarely said more when the subject surfaced, but he didn’t have to. She could hear the weight of it in those three words alone.

“Weldon has a daughter,” Torres said. “Azra. She’s twelve. After his wife’s death, her family took the girl. They want to raise her. The relationship between Weldon and the wife’s family is . . . strained.”

“How so?” Evelyn asked.

“They blame him,” Torres said. “Not for the death itself, but for the circumstances. The stress, the upheaval, the investigation. They believe all of it contributed to the wife’s decline. He has limited contact with his daughter.”

Torres paused, and he chose his next words with care.

“Here’s the plan,” he said. “I have a document specialist in Istanbul who can produce travel papers for Weldon. Not to get him through a border crossing—that’s off the table with the travel ban. But if he gets stopped on the road, at a checkpoint, during a routine police interaction, he needs to be someone else on paper. I have a contact on the Aegean coast near Ayvalık who will arrange a boat crossing to Lesbos.” He gave her the details of where she’d find that man, and she committed it to memory. “Once Weldon is on Greek soil, he’s in EU territory and we can move him from there. You’ll go to Mytilene, where a team will meet you.”

“And the daughter?” Evelyn asked.

Torres stared at her. “The daughter will be extracted separately by a second team. A different route and timeline.”

Evelyn held his gaze. “She’s twelve years old.”

“I’m aware of her age,” he replied.

“You’re asking a man to leave his country without his daughter,” she said. “A man who’s already lost his wife.”

Torres leaned forward. “I’m asking a man to trust us. The operational window is closing. The organization is tightening its grip. There’s intelligence suggesting they may find another way to ensure Weldon doesn’t talk. Every day he stays in Turkey is a day closer to that happening. We can’t complicate a time-sensitive extraction with a child. The logistics change entirely. Custody issues, visibility, risk to the girl herself.”

“He won’t go without her,” Evelyn said.

“He agreed to the plan.”

She studied Torres. His face gave away nothing, as usual. He was a man who’d spent decades making calculations like this one, balancing acceptable losses against operational objectives. She understood the math. She didn’t have to like it, though.

“I’d like to talk to him about the daughter when I meet him,” Evelyn said. “Assess the situation.”

Torres shrugged. “You can talk to him about whatever you want. But the plan is the plan. Weldon comes out first. The daughter follows once we have him.”

Evelyn glanced at Roger. He was sitting still, his hands resting on the table, his faded blue eyes moving between her and Torres. He didn’t say anything. Roger picked his moments, and this wasn’t one of them. But she could read his face well enough after a year to know he was already with her.

She looked at Torres. “All right.”

Torres turned to Roger. “I asked Evelyn to bring you today for a reason. An older couple traveling in Istanbul will draw far less attention than a woman alone. Tourists, retirees seeing the sights. No one looks twice.” He paused. “But I need to know you’re willing. This isn’t a vacation with a small errand attached. If something goes wrong, you’re in it too.”

Roger glanced at Evelyn, and he didn’t hesitate. “I’m in.”

Torres held his gaze for a moment, then nodded once. “We don’t have a current photo of Weldon. He’s under active investigation, which means his digital footprint is being watched. Pulling an image from any Turkish database or asking him to send one risks exposure. Everything about this operation stays off networks they might be monitoring. He has brown hair and brown eyes, and he’s about six feet tall. I know that’s not a lot, but you’ll use a passphrase to identify each other.” Torres opened the folder and outlined the contact procedure. “You’ll meet Weldon at a location in Istanbul that I’ll confirm once you’re there. He’s expecting only you, Evelyn. Weldon will approach you and say, ‘Excuse me. Do you know if the ferry to Eminönü leaves from the main terminal?’ Your response will be, ‘I think you want the one farther south, near the fish market.’ If the exchange matches, you’ll proceed. If anything is off, you walk away and contact me immediately.”

“He’ll know what I look like?” Evelyn asked.

“He’ll have your description. No photo.” Torres gave them the rest. “You’ll fly Turkish Airlines out of Dulles, departing tomorrow evening. Your hotel is in Istanbul, a place in Beyoğlu. The forger’s location is in Tarlabaşı, a rough neighborhood on the edge of the tourist district. And you’ll have a safe phone, of course.”

Evelyn took a manila envelope Torres slid across the table and opened it. Inside were two airline tickets, along with a bundle of cash—Turkish lira and US dollars. There was also a phone.

“I’m programmed in as Mark Flynn,” Torres said. “Questions?”

Evelyn had several, but most of them were questions Torres either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. She settled for one. “How much does the organization know about this extraction?”

“We don’t believe they’re aware of our involvement, but we think they’re watching Weldon. If we’re correct, and they see anything that looks like an escape attempt, they’ll move on him.”

“Move how?”

“Use your imagination.” Torres closed the folder. “Don’t give them a reason to.”

Evelyn put the envelope in her purse. Roger pushed his chair back from the table. They both stood, and Torres stood as well.

“One more thing,” Torres said as they turned toward the door. “This is a quiet operation, with no agency involvement on the ground. You and Roger, the forger, the smuggler. That’s the team. I’ll expect daily briefs, and if something goes wrong, call me. But understand that my ability to help from Washington has limits.”

Evelyn nodded. She understood, like she had since the first time Torres had sent her into the field. She was useful to him precisely because she was deniable. She was a seventy-two-year-old retired nurse who didn’t appear on any organizational chart.

Torres walked them to the lobby, and they headed out of the building into the August heat. The landscaping crew had moved to the other side of the parking lot. They went to Roger’s Mercedes, and he opened the car door for her, then went around to the driver’s side. He pulled out of the lot, and neither of them spoke for a few minutes. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable—it was the particular quiet of two people processing the same information and giving each other room to think.

Finally, Roger said, “I keep thinking about the daughter.”

Evelyn looked out the window. “I know.”

“Torres made his case about her, though.”

“He always does.”

Roger was quiet again for a moment. Then he asked, “Can we leave her there?”

That was Roger, reading her the way he could, saying out loud what she hadn’t yet said to herself.

Evelyn watched the strip malls and car dealerships slide past on Route 7. “Let’s see what we find when we get there.”

Roger nodded. He didn’t push it further. He turned onto the highway and drove her home.

Once again, a great job by Renée Pawlish. Turkish Tangle is a nailbiter right up until the end. I am not going to do a spoiler, I am just going to say that there is a lot going on in this book. And it was an extremely interesting read. ~Reader review