Giordino nodded, then waited until Pitt climbed aboard and wrapped an arm around Lazlo before accelerating. The two men were tossed and splashed as the Bullet charged quickly ahead, bounding over the harbor waters. Giordino turned and sped toward the Galata Bridge, determining that it would provide the closest cover.
The Bullet was a hundred yards shy of the bridge when a deep thump sounded across the channel. Though a portion of the explosive material had fallen to the seabed when the Dayan capsized, nearly half of the fuel oil and most of the HMX remained lodged in the two forward storage tanks. But with the ship sinking by the bow, the flooded tanks were almost entirely underwater, greatly diluting the blast’s impact.
A quick series of successive thumps sounded as the timed fuzes detonated, and then a huge explosion ripped open the tanker’s hull. The concussion echoed across the hills and streets of Istanbul like a sonic boom. A fountain of white water blew from the tanker’s underside, spraying chunks of steel and debris a hundred feet into the air. The jagged chunks fell to earth across a quarter-mile swath, raining down in a deadly hail from the heavens.
Yet the terrifying blast proved mostly benign. Due to the angle of the sinking tanker, the main force of the blast was centered ahead of it and toward the Bosphorus. Pitt’s last-second course adjustment had diverted the impact away from shore and toward a wide patch of empty water.
As the steel and debris splashed into the bay, a loud creak echoed from the tanker as the perforated section of hull gave way. The decimated bow broke free and promptly sank quickly to the channel bottom while the remaining hull lingered on the surface a few moments before foundering.
Bobbing beneath a span of the Galata Bridge, Giordino climbed out of the Bullet ’s cabin to check on his passengers.
“Thanks for the lift,” Pitt said as he attended to Lazlo.
“You boys were cutting it a bit close there,” Giordino replied.
“We got lucky. Maria Celik wanted to use us for target practice on the starboard rail, so we hiked up the deck. Happened to find a pair of lines that had been lowered over the port side, and we were scrambling down them as the ship turned turtle. We managed to make it over the keel, then slid down the other side to avoid the yacht.”
“You needn’t have worried,” Giordino said with a grin. “It got flattened like a pancake.”
“Any survivors?”
Giordino shook his head.
“Lazlo needs medical attention,” Pitt said. “We better get him to shore.”
He and Giordino helped him inside the submersible, then they motored toward the southern shoreline.
“That was some blast,” Giordino said to Pitt. “Could have been a lot worse.”
Pitt simply nodded quietly, staring out the cockpit window.
Ahead of them, the massive remains of the Israeli tanker rose up high by its stern. The vessel stood near vertical in an almost defiant manner before plunging beneath the waves with a rush. Somewhere not far across the strait, the twisted dreams of a renewed Ottoman dynasty sank with it.
83
THE TANKER EXPLOSION RATTLED ISTANBUL MORE POlitically than physically. The confirmed loss of the police boat and Coast Guard vessel in conjunction with the attack put the country’s military forces on high alert. When the tanker was identified as the Dayan, a flurry of high-level accusations between Turkey and Israel went fl
ying across diplomatic channels. Protests by panic-stricken residents of the city nearly led to a military response. But fears of a Turkish/Israeli conflict were assuaged when the authorities found the Dayan’s rescued crewmen.
Interviewed publicly, the crewmen detailed their hijacking and captivity at the hands of the unknown gunmen. Turkish sentiment quickly turned when the men described loading the explosives at gunpoint and almost dying aboard the ship but for their last-minute rescue. Privately, after checking Lazlo into a hospital, Pitt and Giordino had informed Turkish authorities of their role in sinking the tanker.
When U.S. intelligence secretly provided evidence that the same HMX explosives were used in the mosque attacks in Bursa, Cairo, and Jerusalem, the Turkish forces were quick to act. Secret raids were immediately carried out against Celik’s home, office, and port facilities, while the Ottoman Star was located in Greek waters and seized. As public pressure mounted to identify who committed the attack and why, the official investigation wasn’t kept quiet for long.
With the release of their names, Ozden and Maria Celik became public pariahs and a source of national embarrassment. When it was later discovered that they had orchestrated the break-in at Topkapi, the national embarrassment and anger turned to outright rage. Investigators and journalists alike dove into the pair’s concealed pasts, revealing their ties to the last Ottoman ruling family, as well as to underworld mobsters and drug runners who had kick-started Celik business holdings.
Inevitably, the Celiks’ financial dealings with Arab royalty were uncovered, leading to the revelation that millions of dollars had been funneled to Mufti Battal. The objective of the Celiks’ attacks became readily apparent, and public furor was directed to the Mufti and his Felicity Party. Although no evidence was found that the Mufti was involved or even aware of the terrorist attacks, the damage was done.
The final confirmation of the Celiks’ guilt was confirmed when divers were sent to the bottom of the Golden Horn. The mangled remains of the Sultana were located not far from the shattered hull of the tanker. A salvage team brought the wreck to the surface, where it was left to a police forensics team to remove the crushed body of Maria Celik from the flattened deck of the yacht.
His name in ruin, his assets seized, and his dead sister’s body held in the Istanbul city morgue, there was nothing left of Ozden Celik’s empire but the man himself.
Yet he had apparently vanished into nothingness.
84
THE FRIDAY NOON PRAYER, CALLED KHUTBAH, WAS TYPICALLY the highest-attended Muslim service of the week. It was the time when the resident mosque Imam would offer a separate, faith-inspiring sermon before leading the assemblage in prayer.
At Istanbul’s Fatih Mosque, the prayer hall remained oddly empty, despite the muezzin’s recent call to prayer. The khutbah was normally packed to the gills, with dozens of people spilling out of the prayer hall and into the courtyard, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mufti Battal while listening to his words of hope. But that was not the case today.