Sohlberg and the White Death Read Online Free PDF

phones she listed. . . . No one would’ve thought twice about checking up on her family. I’m glad that you thought of Ziedan and had him call Istanbul and stay on the phone until someone answered.”
    “Ziedan also wanted to talk to Azra’s family . . . give them his condolences.”
    “Nice. . . . Anyway . . . I passed the information that you got from Ziedan on to my friends at the D.G.S.E.”
    “Excellent.”
    The waiter served the two bowls of bouillabaisse and disappeared.
    Laprade shoveled a heaping spoonful of octopus into his mouth. “I asked the D.G.S.E. to take a look at Azra Korbal since it’s very strange that the people at the phone numbers she listed insist that they’ve owned those phones for years and have never heard of her.”
    “Thank you.” Sohlberg smiled. He couldn’t have been happier with Laprade using his old military contacts to call in a favor at the General Directorate for External Security. Sohlberg had no doubts that France’s intelligence agency would come through with good information on Azra Korbal. The agency had a sterling reputation for the high quality information that it gathered on foreign countries and citizens. In fact, the D.G.S.E. had turned over information to the CIA about al-Qaeda plans for the 9/11 attacks one year before Osama bin Laden actually brought death and terror to the USA. “So . . . what did your spy pals find out?”
    “Are you ready for a couple of surprises?”
    “No,” said Sohlberg. “But go ahead.”
    “Azra Korbal’s parents live in Frankfurt Germany. They teach at a Montessori school.”
    “What?”
    “It gets better. Your Azra Korbal is a fiction. Interpol’s Azra Korbal does not exist.”
    A nauseating dizziness flashed through Sohlberg. “What? What did you say?”
    “Interpol’s translator is not Azra Korbal.”
    “So who was she . . . what’s her real name?” said Sohlberg. His own voice sounded distant if not alien to him. He simply could not believe how easily the young woman had duped him and his wife and Interpol—the world’s largest international law enforcement agency.
    “D.G.S.E. doesn’t know her real name . . . all they know is that the real Azra Korbal died five years ago in a car crash . . . a head-on collision in Ireland . . . near Dublin.”
    Sohlberg gaped open-mouthed for a few seconds. “But what about her fingerprints? . . . Interpol sent her fingerprint card to the prosecutor here in Lyon who’s in charge of her murder investigation.”
    “The card is worthless. No one shows up for those fingerprints in any database. Nothing. We haven’t been able to trace the fingerprints to any country . . . which means that some government isn’t telling us the truth . . . or some criminal has a lot of connections and pull.”
    Sohlberg shook his head. “So . . . for all we know she could’ve been a plant from one of the criminal cartels that we’re investigating in Operation Locust. . . .”
    “Yes. Or she could just as easily be an agent for British or Russian or Israeli or American intelligence.”
    “How did she ever get past the Interpol background check?”
    “Sohlberg . . . that’s going to be the million dollar question at Interpol. You know how it’ll go down . . . Human Resources will blame Internal Affairs and vice versa. Interpol’s President and the Executive Committee will be out for blood but the Secretary General will blame Turkey.”
    “I’m sick of this whole thing.”
    “Likewise my friend,” said a sympathetic Laprade.
    The men finished the main course and moved on to a dessert of Nougat de Montélimar . The two detectives never tired of eating Lyon’s famous delicacy—chewy white squares made of honey and roasted pistachios and almonds.
    Laprade devoured a second serving of dessert and said:
    “At least there’s a silver lining in all of this.”
    “There is? . . . What?”
    “We’re not to blame.”
    Sohlberg coughed a dry cough as a substitute for laughter. “True. They