DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [105]
Mustafa’s family came from Antalya, which also gave Mert an excuse to get out of Istanbul where he felt insecure. He stayed in the south for more than a month, back in his favourite part of the country.
Mustafa worked on DarkMarket using the nickname MYD, and he developed a good working relationship with Cha0. What Mert did not know, however, was that Mustafa had warned Cha0 that Mert appeared to be stalking him.
Mustafa arranged to meet Cha0 up in Istanbul, and so he and Mert headed back north. Mert had kept Lucy Hoover informed of his movements and alerted her that he was preparing to meet Cha0. The Americans needed to get a sighting of Cha0 and to establish both his coordinates and his communications infrastructure. Mert, for once, was keeping a promise – leading the Americans to their quarry. Cha0 had instructed Mustafa to meet his people outside a Burger King not far from Göztepe suburban rail station, which is on the Asian side of Istanbul, a couple of miles from Fenerbahçe’s stadium.
When they reached Göztepe, they found Hakan Öztan, a big bull of man who had acted as Çagatay’s minder when the two were in prison together and now offered the same services to Sahin as well. The bodyguard took them both to a house named Sözdener Apartments in the wealthy middle-class district of Suadiye, some two miles away. The rooms were sparsely furnished and not especially welcoming. Hakan told the two men to stay put and that somebody would be in touch with them.
No longer under the protection of open spaces, still less of National Intelligence, Mert was now worried that Çagatay was on his way to sort him out. Unbeknownst to him, Mustafa had placed a trojan virus on Mert’s laptop on the instructions of Cha0, and that infection was now revealing to Cha0 all of Mert’s secrets, a dense jungle of duplicity. Cha0 was not only a master criminal; he was also an unforgiving one. He now had solid evidence that Mert was working for the police. Mert assumed (and certainly hoped) that Lucy Hoover had somehow organised surveillance of the apartment, but he could not see any signs of it. So if Çagatay, Sahin, Hakan or any combination of the three turned up, he was in serious trouble.
At ten o’clock on Sunday morning, 18th May 2008, Mert was alone when the doorbell rang at Sözdener Apartments. He opened up to find Hakan standing in front of him. His visitor didn’t speak, but strode brusquely past Mert, closing the door behind him. Mert said cheerfully that he had been expecting him. Hakan glared at him. ‘One minute,’ he said. Then he opened the door and in walked Çagatay. Mert’s colour changed from red to purple to white.
Çagatay pushed Mert into a chair and started slowly pacing up and down in front of him, ritually intoning, ‘Mert … Namert … Mert … Namert’ – a play on words in Turkish in which the antonym of the word mert (courageous) is namert (cowardly).
Then Mert found himself on the floor being kicked in his stomach, chest and legs. Two more heavies walked in, threw a blanket over his head so that he could not recognise them and joined in the beating. Occasionally Mert caught a glimpse of a gun being pointed at his head.
He blacked out. When he came to, he was still on the floor, but he noticed a video camera filming everything that was going on. By placing the trojan on Mert’s laptop, Cha0 had not only been able to access information about the relationship with Lucy Hoover, but would also have discovered that National Intelligence had been running Mert (albeit with only partial success).
‘Right,’ said Çagatay, who, acting as master of ceremonies, switched on the record button. ‘Now you are going to tell us the whole story from beginning to end.’ And so Mert went through his Looking Glass tale,