Appointment with ISIL

By Joe Giordano

Provati’s libido threatens his life. He flirts with Russian mob boss, Gorgon Malakhov's mistress. The Russian deals in death. ISIL, the Islamic State in the Levant, wants the product. Russian Intelligence supplies the means, and an art theft funds the scheme. ISIL's targets are chilling. The chase across the Mediterranean is on. Can Anthony thwart ISIL? Will he survive?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rogue Phoenix Press
• Release date: Apr 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781624206955

Joe Giordano

Joe Giordano’s stories have appeared in more than ninety magazines including Bartleby Snopes, The Saturday Evening Post, decomP, and Shenandoah. His novel, Birds of Passage, An Italian Immigrant Coming of Age Story, was published by Harvard Square Editions October 2015. His second novel, Appointment with ISIL, an Anthony Provati Thriller will be published by HSE in June 2017. Read the first chapters and sign up for his blog.Joe Giordano was born in Brooklyn. He and his wife, Jane, have lived in Greece, Brazil, Belgium and the Netherlands. They now live in Texas with their shih tzu, Sophia.

Book preview

Chapter One

When her son Billy was sent to Iraq, Angie Dekker purchased fifty-two pairs of athletic socks. She sent him one every week. Like an hourglass, the pile shrunk marking the year until her son returned home. Pair thirty-two was in her hand when the two marine officers appeared at her door. She heard, Fallujah, Killed in action, and Deepest sympathies. The funeral at Arlington National Cemetery was mostly a blur. She remembered Taps and the folded flag clutched to her breast.

At home, a female friend tried to console her. You’re an attractive woman with plenty of life ahead of you.

She might as well have spoken to a corpse. Angie’s depression was as deep as a canyon. When everyone left, she cried alone. She anguished over Billy’s last moments like a stuck record in her brain.

Her grief evolved into a singular desire to see where Billy died. The U.S. State Department blocked her visa applications. Iraq was dangerous even before the Islamic State in the Levant, ISIL, ate its cities. Frustrated, she flew to Istanbul and approached her hotel concierge for a guide recommendation. He called an ex-colonel in Turkish intelligence.

Erol Dogan had gray cropped hair and a mustache. He lost a son in a military helicopter accident and was sympathetic to Angie. Nonetheless, he recoiled at the danger of her requested destination.

Dogan said, Ms. Dekker, may I call you Angie? Please accept my condolences for your loss. Going to Fallujah won’t accomplish anything.

Angie’s eyes wandered to the horizon.

He continued. Why don’t you allow me to show you the real Istanbul? The Bosporus is beautiful, especially at night. I know an excellent seafood restaurant.

Erol Bey, you’re very gracious. I’ll go to dinner if you agree to take me to Fallujah.

He said, I understand your need for closure, but there’s nothing for you there. Trust me.

I have money for expenses. She reached for her purse.

He raised his palm to stop her. I don’t want payment. It’s a matter of safety.

She took his hand in both of hers. I beg you.

I’m sorry.

She spoke firmly. I’ll go on my own.

A woman shouldn’t travel alone. Men will take advantage.

Then guide me.

He said, Give me the chance to dissuade you over dinner.

She released his hand, saying coldly. I’m not hungry.

Please.

Excuse me, she said. I need to get ready. I’m starting out tomorrow.

The next day, Angie was at the Istanbul Atatürk Airport waiting for the Turkish Air flight to Diyarbakir. Dogan’s shadow fell across her.

She said, You followed me.

Please don’t leave Istanbul.

I’ve decided.

He crossed his arms. Perhaps I’ll have you arrested and sent home.

That won’t stop me. I’ll fly to Amman and enter Iraq through Jordan.

He puffed out a frustrated breath. You’re being stubborn.

Her eyes held his. I will go to Fallujah. Erol Bey, have you gotten over your son’s death?

He broke eye contact. No.

Then you should understand. Will you help me?

He sighed and sat next to her. You can’t go alone. He rubbed his forehead. If I agree, you must follow my instructions.

Of course, she said excitedly.

We must cover your blonde hair, or you’ll be recognized as foreign. We’ll buy you Arabic dress.

She offered him money in a pink pouch.

He refused. "You’ll need that when we’re back in Istanbul. Insha’Allah."

She gave him a tight smile.

He made a couple of phone calls.

The two-hour flight was bumpy. Dogan had prearranged a taxi for the six-hour, two-hundred-mile trip to Silopi at the Iraqi border. He cautioned Angie not to say Kurdistan as a Turkish inspector in fatigues reviewed her passport and kept a copy. He showed the inspector his credentials, and the man saluted.

A huge yellow sun pictured in a red, white, and green Kurdish flag flew over the customs building when they crossed the Habur River into Iraq. Dogan negotiated a ten-day visa, lying about Angie’s purpose and paying the Iraqi stamp tax.

The south is aboil, the uniformed officer said.

Dogan grimaced. Angie smelled the sour sweat that rose on his back. In Zahko, they procured another taxi, a gray Renault with the e lost from the Magane hatchback logo. Dogan told the driver Erbil was their destination.

As the car passed brown hills with patches of green, Dogan turned to Angie. Don’t be alarmed. He showed her the Luger pistol he carried in his shoulder bag.

Her eyes widened with anxiety.

He said, It’s necessary.

He leaned forward and put the barrel of the gun to the Kurdish driver’s head.

The man’s cigarette dropped from his mouth. His hands flew off the wheel of the car. I have no money.

Dogan said, Drive. South.

Where?

Fallujah. You’ll be well paid.

"Al-ama. Give the money to my widow."

The taxi smelled of rose water and rattled like a box of wrenches on the three-hundred miles to Fallujah. They traveled at night. Angie dozed on and off. Dogan was alert.

They arrived in Fallujah at dawn. Broken palm trees gave the city the look of an ancient ruin. Atop spiked mosques, Morning Prayer had begun. Minarets boomed the melodic chant of the muezzin’s voice. "Allah Akbar…"

Dogan’s face glistened. He turned to Angie. Fifteen minutes, then we go.

The taxi driver’s head swiveled as he searched the street and nearby buildings. He left the engine running.

Angie wore a black niqāb and burga covering her from head to toe. She trembled as she opened the taxi door and stepped onto the dusty street. Billy died here, she thought, what a filthy desolate place. Her tears welled.

The driver’s neck craned from the car window. Let’s go.

Dogan spoke urgently. Angie, we must leave.

She sighed. She nodded and slipped back into the vehicle.

The taxi had only moved thirty yards when two stolen U.S. military jeeps with camouflage paint appeared on either side of the street and sped toward them, blocking their path back and front. A brace of dark-haired men in black flak jackets, carrying rifles with scopes and large magazines emerged from doorways on both sides of the street and surrounded the taxi.

Dogan’s fist slammed down. "Bok."

Angie stiffened. Her stomach turned to acid. She put a hand to her mouth.

A tall, well-built man in a black skull-fitting takiyah and full beard strode to the car with rifle pointed. He said in Arabic, Get out.

The driver stepped into the street with hands raised. Two men grabbed him. He struggled, then burst into tears. Dogan grabbed the pistol. Angie touched his forearm. He nodded and left the gun when they stepped from the car.

The tall man turned to Dogan. He’s a Kurd. You look to be a Turk. His rifle pointed at Angie. What nationality are you? Remove the veil.

Angie didn’t understand.

The tall man’s voice rose. Woman, remove the scarf.

Dogan spoke English in a low voice. He wants you to uncover your face.

The tall man became excited. English. Turk, what have you brought me?

Angie peeled off her mask. She wanted to be defiant, but she had the urge to urinate.

Dogan said in English, She’s Swedish. A tourist. We meant no harm.

The tall man stroked his beard. He spoke English with a British accent. You didn’t pray. That was a mistake. Lying to me is another.

The tall man turned to Angie. I’m called Al-Nasir li-Din Allah. What’s your name and country?

She glanced at Dogan before speaking. My name is Angie Dekker. I’m Swedish.

Al-Nasir tilted his head looking dubious. He pressed the barrel of his rifle into Dogan’s chin. Lie to me again and you’ll watch his head explode.

Dogan said, Don’t…

Al-Nasir cracked Dogan’s skull with his rifle butt, and he fell to the ground bleeding and unconscious.

Angie gasped. She bent to Dogan.

Al-Nasir said, Tell me, woman. Now.

She gulped. She didn’t look up. I’m an American.

Al-Nasir’s grin revealed white teeth. And why have you come to Fallujah?

Her eyes rose to his. My son was killed here. I wanted to see what he fought for.

Now that you’re here, what do you think?

He died for nothing.

Al-Nasir roared in amusement. The men around him didn’t understand, but they smiled.

She asked, her voice quavering, What will you do with me?

Al-Nasir caressed his beard. Something Shakespearean.

~*~

The building where Angie was kept smelled like an outhouse pit. Bugs in her lumpy bed bit her left eye and it swelled. Fly bites itched and festered. Weeks passed. She was grimy from unwashed sweat. Her hair was filthy and matted. An old woman, clothed in black, brought food and water and emptied her latrine bucket. Angie feared she’d be raped, but no man touched her. She worried about Dogan. The old woman wouldn’t say what had become of him. She regretted involving the Kurdish driver. She had plenty of time to think.

When the old woman brought the orange tunic, Angie gulped. She didn’t want to die. She prayed for the first time since she was told of Billy’s death. The thought of an afterlife comforted her. She’d see Billy again. What if it all was a myth? There’d be nothing. They said Billy died instantly, without pain, without contemplation of his fate. That was better, she thought.

The morning Angie was taken to the desert, the water tasted bitter. She became unsteady and her mind dreamy. The old woman helped her put on the orange tunic. She was loaded into a military jeep that bumped along a sandy road, then swerved onto the dunes for about a mile. In her sleepy state, Angie saw a line of men dressed completely in black, all but their brown eyes covered. The tallest man in the middle she guessed was Al-Nasir. Angie’s hands were bound. She was half-carried from the jeep across the sand to Al-Nasir by two men on either side of her. She thought, I must fight, run, scream, but her spacey head damped down action. They pushed her to kneel at Al-Nasir’s feet facing a camera on a tripod.

Al-Nasir spoke to the lens in Arabic. To Angie, it seemed a long speech. Dogan came into her mind. She said a silent prayer. Her vision blurred.

Al-Nasir’s last line was in English, America, you can’t protect your women.

Angie caught the glint of the steel knife in his hand.

Al-Nasir brought his lips close to her ear and said in a soft voice. I’ll be quick.

She gasped, and a black curtain fell.

Chapter Two

I’m Anthony Provati. Please don’t call me Tony. That was my father’s name, and I’d rather not be reminded. My old man was everybody’s friend as long as he paid for the drinks. Drunk or sober, he required no excuse to strike at me like a rattler. The tinkle of ice was ominous. With a snoot full, he’d use his fists. Maybe it was because my mother so obviously favored me, or maybe he suspected I wasn’t his. My mother was his other option for abuse. She stuck it out for me, a realization I anguish over.

As a kid in Brooklyn, I hung around with older guys. On a dare, I stole four loaves of Italian bread from the bakery. The cops grabbed me and called my mother to the police station. My father was at a bar. I can still remember the pain in her eyes. She looked so small. The bull-like sergeant took pity on her pleas and released me into her custody.

She battled my predilection for bad company by plowing her hairdresser tips into alternate activities for me. She paid for piano lessons from a retired teacher. Thick glasses gave his eyes the look of an owl, but he mentored my potential by allowing me to use his upright Baldwin anytime without charge. I didn’t tell the guys I was leaving to practice piano. I just slipped away.

In Manhattan, I played a few evenings per week at local clubs. Leroy’s Bar and Restaurant in the West Village was cool darkness that smelled like an empty beer keg until the cooking started. Glossy photos of the owner posing with New York celebrities, politicians, and Leroy’s semi-crook cronies hung along the wall across from the rough-hewn wooden bar with stools and a large mirror that reflected shelves of bottled booze. In the back, the restaurant had an ivory baby grand piano surrounded by a thicket of small tables and chairs where patrons could order cocktails, Wagyu burgers, or munch porchetta sandwiches.

As I walked past the bar’s LCD television, CBS broadcast the arrest in Times Square of a New Yorker on conspiracy to build a dirty bomb. The former Towsend Gang member had taken the Islamic name of Khalid Osman. Inside his Bronx, Prospect Avenue apartment, the FBI found discarded thickness gauges containing cesium-137 and plans to assemble a radioactive dispersal device. They traced Osman’s travel to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Syria reportedly to train with the ISIL terrorist leader named Al-Nasir.

Leroy slapped the bar. Son of a Bitch. Wasn’t Al-Nasir the bastard in that horrible Angie Dekker video?

Nodding in agreement, I said a bit ominously, Not the guy you want to run across traveling in the Middle East.

At least, this time the Feds stopped him.

I sighed. Failure makes the heart grow fonder.

What do you mean?

The cockroach theory. If you nab one terrorist, there are dozens you’ve missed. ISIL is everywhere. 9/11 attacks somewhere in the world aren’t an ‘if’ but ‘when.’

I shrugged and Leroy grimaced agreement.

The priority of the moment was my gig, so I continued to the piano. The first song I played was, Take the A Train.

When Gorgon Malakhov walked in with Sophia on his arm, I almost hit a sour chord. Sophia had an exotic face, curvy figure, and black hair down to her waist. She wore a plunging red dress that stopped at her thighs. I would’ve spotted her in a Yankee Stadium sized crowd. Malakhov was a hairless Buddha with oriental eyes, but he was no laughing Hotei. One of Leroy’s wall glossies pictured Malakhov with his shirt off displaying a blue star tattoo on each shoulder astride his albino chest. The Russian mob notoriously killed anyone who sported marks they hadn’t earned, so these were real. The stars denoted Malakhov was a vory v zakone gang leader, someone to be feared and respected. Rank in the Red Mafia was purchased with blood. Unlike my paisani in the Italian Mafia who tossed bocce balls for amusement, Russian mobsters played chess. Many an afternoon I walked past Malakhov in Washington Square Park at a chess table with a hulk standing guard. Competitors sat, caught on who they were dealing with, and quickly erred into defeat. Malakhov was no patzer. He achieved Grand Master rank before he was twenty-five.

Malakhov ignored me, but I locked eyes with Sophia as she walked to the table. The wide-shouldered gorilla I saw with him in Washington Square trailed the couple. Malakhov ordered a bottle of Kauffman vodka, and the ape threw ten dollars at a brown girl for a bunch of white flowers Malakhov gave Sophia. She smelled the flowers and brought her eyes up to meet mine.

I’ve always had more hormones than brains. I played Sophisticated Lady in Sophia’s direction, and Malakhov poked the bodyguard. The guy was well over six feet with fingers like sausages and a scar around his neck like someone had garroted him. Ape man came to the piano.

He said, "Zalupa, stop flirting with Mr. Malakhov’s girl. He doesn’t like dick heads hitting on Sophia."

The gorilla’s insult indicated he thought I had piano-soft hands and wasn’t a threat. The heat of anger rose up my neck. I responded by playing, You’d be So Nice to Come Home To, and smiled at Sophia. She smiled back. Malakhov caught her reaction, and he exploded like Chernobyl. He whispered something into the gorilla’s ear. Malakhov glared at me – the look was as effective as him drawing a forefinger across his throat. He rose and pulled Sophia out of Leroy’s. The bodyguard smirked at me while he finished the bottle of vodka. He sat through most of my final set, then left the bar.

When my gig was finished, I retrieved a sawed-off boat hook I kept under the piano and hid it under my armpit. As I left Leroy’s, I spotted the bodyguard leaning on a Cadillac outside the entrance. He came at me with alarming speed for a man of his size. I surprised him with two sharp stabs in the gut with my stick. He went down, and I took off. I’d avoided a beating that would’ve put me into Bellevue Hospital, but the gorilla would have me gargling cement at the bottom of Sheepshead Bay at his next opportunity. This time, my libido threatened my life.

Chapter Three

That evening, sleeping in my apartment, a nightmare shocked me awake. An albino giant with a blue star on his forehead chased me. My body was sweated. I rose, went to the refrigerator and gulped water. I decided to make myself scarce for a time and hope that Malakhov’s illicit priorities distracted him from hunting me down. Maybe, I’d run to Athens. Hektor could hide me.

If my mother had the money, she sent me on Saturdays to the Paerdegat Sailing School. The Greek owner took a liking to me. When my mother learned he had a relative in Athens, she saw an opportunity to get me out of Brooklyn. She convinced the owner to write his cousin, Hektor Christos, about the possibility of summer employment. As a result of her efforts, I flew standby to Greece on Olympic Airlines at an eighty percent discount. Hektor employed me as a shipwright apprentice at his company, Hellas Marine. He entertained prospective buyers, shipping magnates, oil sheiks, and wealthy businessmen from throughout the Mediterranean. I crewed when he sailed clients around the islands of Aegina and Poros past the Temple of Poseidon with marble that turned pink at sunrise and slate at sunset. Under a dazzling sun, the Mediterranean was so blue it stuck in my throat. After the soot and grime of Brooklyn, Greece was heaven with French fries. I worked hard for Hektor to ensure he took me back every summer.

My first time with a woman was on a boat in Athens. She was thirty. I was seventeen. I guess she liked my black wavy hair and hazel eyes.

I’d seen her walk past the marina, and my gaze held the sway of her hips. She had short dark hair and wore calf-length skirts. One day, I caught her eye. We smiled but didn’t speak. That Friday, Hektor left early and asked me to close the office. The bell on the front door jingled. My eyes rose to hers and she said, "Kalispera." Talia introduced herself and requested to tour one of the newer boats. Her smoldering look ignited my pulse. Heart pounding, I gulped and agreed to take her aboard. We were on a thirty-five-foot cabin cruiser, and I was spouting off specifications. She ran her fingers through the hair on my neck. My mouth was dry when she kissed me. We made love on the deck. My hair was sweated damp. The planking was hard on my knees. Only later did I feel the soreness in my kneecaps.

Talia was divorced. She had stretch marks across her belly from three children. She sent the kids to her mother before I came over. I’d rush to her apartment after work. Her scent was musk. We’d be on the floor three steps inside the door, ripping off clothes, spending the rest of the afternoon in bed as the setting sun poured through her window. My youth and energy intrigued her through the end of summer, but I had to return to the States. I wrote her passionate letters for months until her responses went dry. I called when I arrived the next June. We met. She was cool at first, then we made love. She broke the news she’d taken up with an older man, a successful Greek business owner. Her words echoed, and my brain went numb.

I mumbled, I can’t compete with a wealthy man.

She said, He doesn’t think he can compete with youth.

Talia ended it. Betrayal was new to me. She crushed my heart, and I stormed out of her flat. Now, I wonder what she’s doing, and I only recall her with fondness.

You probably noticed my deviated septum, a souvenir from a bout in Golden Gloves. When my mother saw me, she was aghast. For years, she secretly donated dollars to a Chase Manhattan college fund. She gave me the passbook and told me to create a future. For her, I swore off the sweet science and pursued the fine arts. I majored in Art and Art History at City College. She feared I’d become my father, but I turned out more like my mother. She’s gone now. I still feel it in my chest. I keep a picture of her in my wallet and another one on my bureau. The first thing people notice in the photo are the scars, and their faces contort before they catch themselves. My mother was one of six sisters conscripted by her parents to help support the family by doing piecework at home. During a rare off-afternoon, she found a rusted bicycle abandoned in a dump