"Just one more street," Erkhan said over his shoulder, turning to the right and leading me into a shaded road, the buildings to either side tenement blocks that blotted out the sun.
The buildings here were in poor repair, the paint peeling around cracks that ran through the outer walls from top to bottom. Halfway down the street, two men lounged against the wall on either side of the dim entrance to an alleyway. They glanced up as we approached and the nearest one came lazily to something that resembled attention.
He nodded at Erkhan and gave me a long look from behind his shades. Both he and his colleague wore light jackets, the bulky outlines of their weapons easy to see underneath.
The standing man leaned over and whispered something to Erkhan, who whispered back furiously, then shrugged. The conversation went on for perhaps thirty seconds, then abruptly Erkhan waved at me to follow and turned into the alleyway. It was wide enough for four men to walk in a line, with several doors on either side and a short flight of stairs at the far end that led up to a black metal gate.
It was to this that he led us, and it was only when I waited while he unlocked the gate that the skin between my shoulder blades began to prickle.
There was almost no sound in the alley, the cries of the hawkers in the next street muted by the thick stone walls, and the screeching of metal as the gate drew back was shockingly loud.
Behind the gate was a door, which Erkhan opened with a key, leading me into a hallway where we both stooped to remove our shoes. Once that was done, he showed me to the salon and waved towards one of the three plush red sofas that sat in three sides of a square around a small black coffee table.
"Please, wait while I get your goods," he said with a smile, and I sat back and waited, the itchy feeling now gone but a bubble of worry in my gut taking its place. Everything had seemed fine until we'd reached the alleyway, what had changed?
Could the man on the gate have said something to concern him? That was the only thing I could think of, and breaking all protocol I went back into the hallway and put my shoes back on before returning to the sofa and sitting once more.
If things went south I didn't want to be running through the streets of Istanbul in my socks, particularly not with armed men chasing me.
After five long minutes, Erkhan returned with a large box, which he placed on the table in front of me. Opening it, he gestured to the contents and stepped back with a smile on his face.
"Please, have a look and tell me if you are happy," he said as I leaned forwards and began to take out the items within.
First came a Sig P226. A fantastically reliable pistol, if a little tricky to master. Then came three magazines, a box of one hundred 9mm rounds and a silencer. Best of all, there was a shoulder holster cut so that it would fit a silenced weapon, tooled leather with two spare clip holders that sat under the right arm with the pistol worn on the left side.
I fed rounds into one of the clips and slapped it into the weapon. Pulling the slide back, I saw that the serial numbers had been filed flat. A round fed into the chamber and I screwed the silencer on before slipping the whole thing into the holster and sliding the leather on over my shirt to check the fit.
"Perfect," I said with a smile, pulling out my wallet and counting out the dollars as promised. Erkhan scooped them up with an answering smile.
"Thank you Mr Price." He held out a thin jacket, white cotton that was only a little stained. "I suggest you wear this to hide your purchase."
I nodded my thanks and put it on. It was a little baggy but that's no bad thing when you're trying to conceal a weapon. His eyes flicked down to my feet as I stood and I knew he's seen the shoes. He said nothing, instead waving me out of the front door and closing the door to leave me alone in the alley.
Well, almost alone.
The two men who had been following us stepped out of a doorway on my left as I passed, halfway to the alley's mouth. I nodded at them but they said nothing, just watched.
I'd almost reached the entrance when the men outside swung in, a wall of muscle and moustache that looked impossible to breach.
Turning back, I saw Erkhan walking down his steps, a large revolver clenched in his right hand. Even from this distance I could see that his hands were shaking and I realised that for whatever reason this was happening, he'd been too scared to try it without backup.
"OK, Erkhan, what is this?" I asked, head cocked slightly to one side as I listened for movement behind me.
He shrugged and smiled apologetically. "This is what you would call an ambush, I think," he said, then snapped out a command in Turkish. I spun around at a sound behind me and saw the two guards from the entrance had stepped into the alleyway itself, one pulling a 9mm pistol, the other drawing an MP5K submachine gun on a short sling from under his jacket.
Turning back, I saw Erkhan stop about twenty feet away, his other two men about ten feet closer and sporting the pistols they'd tried so hard to hide on the streets.
"Why Erkhan?" I said, my heart in my throat. I'd been in worse situations, but not many and not often. Five men in a small space versus myself with a weapon I'd never fired before. I was surprised that it had even gotten that far, why not just kill me before we'd reached the house?
Erkhan shrugged and walked closer, still careful to keep his men positioned between us.
"Nihat told me when we arrived that he'd found out something interesting about you, Mr Price. You see, I never enter into a business deal with anyone unless I know a little about them. You, I found out plenty about and it all seemed, uh, tiptop, do you say? But then one of Nihat's friends called him and said that you are in Istanbul to kill some people who are very important to my business, and I'm afraid I can't have that. Now, you and I are both businessmen, of a sort. Do you think we can come to some arrangement, or do I have to tell my men to pull the trigger?"
I shook my head slowly. Someone, somewhere had talked, and if I ever got out of this alive then I would find out who if it took me the rest of my life. Only half a dozen people knew why I was here, and I trusted all of them implicitly. Should one of them have sold me out, I was in very hot water indeed.
"Look, Erkhan, if you'd said something before, we wouldn't have needed to let it come to this," I said, stalling for time. No, because I would have snapped your neck like a twig the second you told me your suspicions.
Erkhan shook his head. "I'm sorry Mr Price, but actions speak louder than words. Had we but spoken, how could I have guaranteed my own safety? And besides, those same people have offered me a lot of money if I deliver your body to them."
I wondered why he was still talking. If he was going to jump me then he should have done it by now. It wasn't until I saw his eyes flicker over my shoulder that it made sense. A gunshot, even in this part of Istanbul, would draw the police like flies to a corpse.
I spun, my right arm flashing up to block the knife that Nihat was plunging towards my back. He grunted in surprise but recovered quickly enough to throw an elbow into my temple, sending me reeling as the others closed in.
I slammed into the wall, my vision blurring as all four of Erkhan's toughs approached me, guns now hidden in favour of knives and in one case a particularly nasty looking butcher's hook.
"There are 97 ways to die in Istanbul, Mr Price," Erkhan called over their shoulders, "as the saying goes, and 95 of them are stupidity. I'm truly sorry, I hate to spoil a business deal by killing the customer, but as I'll get the goods back when this is over then technically, I suppose, this wasn't business at all, so I'm OK."
I saw his smile as the thought occurred to him, and had a second to shake my head in wonder that Erkhan could be so concerned with the morality of business while watching a man get stabbed to death on his orders.