Austin got into the backseat with two other passengers who made space between them. A heavyset man sat on a jump seat and a fifth passenger occupied the front seat next to the meter. Austin told the driver to take him to the Taksim Square. He had visited Istanbul several times on NUMA assignments and knew the city fairly well. When the cab went a roundabout route, Austin thought it was simply to accommodate the other passengers. But nobody got off. The cab started to head away from Taksim Square and, suspecting the driver was trying to jack up the fare, Austin leaned forward and asked him where he was going.

The driver stared silently ahead, but the man in the front seat turned around. He had a wide, brutish face that even a mother couldn't love. Austin's eyes lingered on the passenger's features for only a second before shifting to the gun in the man's hand.

“Silence!” the man growled. The men sitting next to Austin pulled him back by the shoulders. A long-bladed knife pointed at his right eye. The cab accelerated at neck-snapping speed, exited from the traffic stream and plunged into a dark maze of narrow cobblestone lanes.

They headed away from the waterfront, skirting Karakoy and the police squads who monitored the official red-light district. Austin glanced longingly at the restaurant lights at the top of Galata Tower. Then the taxi was moving along the Istikal Caddesi, weaving in and out of traffic, past the nightclubs, movie theaters and unregulated brothels that lined the gaudy strip. The cab spun off the main drag and climbed a hill into Bozoglu, where all the old European embassies were housed during the Ottoman Empire, and executed a series of squealing turns.

The car stayed upright despite the protesting tires, which told Austin that the driver was a professional who knew the limits of his vehicle. There had been no attempt to blindfold Austin, and he wondered if this meant he had a one-way ticket to oblivion. As the car continued to hook left and right through the urban warren, he concluded that a blindfold was unnecessary; he didn't have a clue where he was.