ISTANBUL >> Saudi agents were waiting when Jamal Khashoggi walked into their country’s consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago. Khashoggi was dead within minutes, beheaded, dismembered, his fingers severed, and within two hours the killers were gone, according to details from audio recordings described by a senior Turkish official on Wednesday.

The government of Turkey let out these and other leaks about the recordings on Wednesday, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Ankara, in an escalation of pressure on both Saudi Arabia and the United States for answers about Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi dissident journalist who lived in Virginia and wrote for The Washington Post.

The new leaks, which were also splashed in lurid detail across a pro-government newspaper, came a day after Pompeo and the Trump administration had appeared to accept at face value the promises of the Saudi rulers to conduct their own investigation into Khashoggi’s disappearance — regardless of Turkish assertions that senior figures in the royal court had ordered his killing.

Trump, for his part, pushed back by questioning the Turkish claims, telling reporters on Wednesday that the United States had asked for copies of any audio or video evidence of Khashoggi’s killing that Turkish authorities may possess — “if it exists.”

“I’m not sure yet that it exists, probably does, possibly does,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, adding: “I’ll have a full report on that” when Pompeo returned. “That’s going to be the first question I ask.”

More than two weeks after Khashoggi entered the consulate in Istanbul to obtain a document for his coming wedding, the Saudis have yet to explain his failure to emerge. Top Saudi officials have repeatedly denied any involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance — denials that they repeated to Pompeo when he visited Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

But Turkish officials on Wednesday reiterated their conclusion that a team of 15 Saudi agents, some with ties to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was waiting for Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate the moment he arrived on Oct. 2.

After he was shown into the office of the Saudi consul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, the agents seized Mr. Khashoggi almost immediately and began to beat and torture him, eventually cutting off his fingers, a senior Turkish official said, describing the audio recordings.

Whether Mr. Khashoggi was killed before his fingers were removed and his body dismembered could not be determined.

But the consul was present and objected, the official said. “Do this outside. You will put me in trouble,” Mr. Otaibi told the agents, according to the Turkish official and a report in the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak. Both cited audio recordings said to have been obtained by Turkish intelligence.

“If you want to live when you come back to Arabia, shut up,” one of the agents replied, according to both the official and the newspaper.

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