How to rule the world, p.18
How to Rule the World, page 18
You examine anything and the divisions go on and on, North England, South England, North London, South London, the divisions go on till it’s you and your neighbour arguing over the fence. You just can’t win. My friend who made it in LA had a house in Beverley Hills, next to a world famous rock star, though the rock star’s property was obviously much larger.
As we were drinking on the terrace, my friend handed me a pair of binoculars. I could see the rock star smoking a cigar by the fence. It wasn’t easy as there were half a dozen portable toilets lined up there too (he must have valued his own dumping facilities on tour). The star had an ashtray. How bizarrely tidy, I thought. He finished his cigar and then emptied the butt-full ashtray over the fence. And it was no accident. He had to walk a quarter of a mile to get to the fence. ‘He always does that,’ my friend commented. He’d retaliate by getting his gardener to hop over and shit wildly in the portables.
I pass a couple of hours in town, and when I get back to the hotel I find Semtex has arrived and is in the restaurant. We order manti, Turkish ravioli or dumplings, things in pasta. Who invented it? What exactly is the difference between pasta and noodles? Is ravioli really Italian manti?
‘How was the research?’ Semtex asks. I came out two days earlier. In my younger days I would have gone everywhere, I would have gone down the road to Göbekli Tepe, I would have gone clubbing. That’s how you know you’re getting old; I would now pay good money to be refused admission to any club. I went clubbing in places where you wouldn’t have thought they had nightclubs. Tirana. Pyongyang. It’s a testament to the human spirit that they have clubs everywhere. They may be small. They may be terrible, with one fatigued prostitute. They may overcharge. They may play music you can’t believe. They may cause you enormous regret, but they’re there.
‘Nothing. Nothing at all,’ I say. I’m meant to be investigating the smuggling of plundered antiquities from Syria that are shipped off to the art dealers in New York and London. I had a look at one local dealer this morning who had an incredible sarcophagus in his showroom. For some reason I suddenly wanted to have this sarcophagus as an over-the-top bathtub in a huge (also imagined) bathroom. Stone is so appealing, so very much there, and there is something about something that old. It’s important to have the shopping list ready in case things change. If I became Jack-rich I reckon I’d just spend a lot of time in the bath, laughing.
‘It’s not looted from Syria?’ I asked, since the dealer had no minders and was small and old and not likely to attack me. He saw it as a legitimate provenance enquiry.
‘Not at all. I can assure you it was stolen from a Turkish museum.’ He politely offered me the catalogue. The dealer spoke excellent English; it’s a pity he had nothing to say about treasures from Syria.
I know there are dealers selling stolen artworks from Syria and smuggling them out through Turkey. I know this because I’m smuggling some priceless bowl back to London in my luggage to some bloodsucker in Mayfair, but clearly it wouldn’t be a good idea to interview my own dealer. I may have to arrange a faux dealer. Egemen will have to do. Blacked out.
Semtex stares sullenly at his salgam, with the eternal suspicion of the vegan, worried that this locally produced turnip juice, despite repeated assurances, might have been contaminated by some quadruped walking past and firing off a hair into the vat. Neither of us wants to be in this dining room.
Liliane swans in to the restaurant. ‘What is this, a reunion?’ Semtex asks.
‘Ah, Bax and Tex, are you actually working, or are you on the run?’ As we’re sitting Liliane is just tall enough to look down on us. ‘Either way, I have no doubt someone will arrive presently to arrest and strip search you.’
No question, Liliane is genuinely pleased to see us. Since she doesn’t have to work with us, she’s in a free-fire zone where she can insult us to her heart’s content. The way she underlines strip search I wonder whether she’s tipping off the local police about us as payback.
Her renunciation of the Vizz lasted six months. Just long enough to torpedo the Apocalypse. Just long enough to pat down the soil on the grave of my career.
She did actually go to a convent for several weeks, although one with excellent spa facilities and catering in the South of France. But you can imagine the chatter. My tongue-lashings about her pieces to camera were so severe she was batted out of the business. My threats to kill her were so ferocious she had to have plastic surgery, change her name and hide in a utility-free shack in the most inaccessible part of the Urals, etc.
When I discovered Liliane was here I was terrified she’d be doing Göbekli Tepe. I still want to do something about it and since it’s just down the road I was going to get a taxi and have a butcher’s. I would have done it yesterday but, what can I say? I’m too fat and lazy. I popped back to the hotel for a snooze. The Garden of Eden can wait. Liliane is lazy too, but she’s clever and lucky. If she did something on Göbekli Tepe, it would probably be hard to beat. But Liliane’s doing some big doc about the mosaics of the ancient world and the mosaic museum in Gaziantep.
She does have this hot chick, Nazli, working for her. She’s the fixer everyone wants and everyone recommended. She’s an astrophysicist in her main job. I was asking her what she did and she explained that she hunted supervoids.
‘A lot of the universe is missing,’ she elaborated.
‘But isn’t the deal with space that it’s full of space?’
‘You don’t understand. These are big, huge gaps. Five thousand galaxies of gaps.’
‘Maybe they moved to another universe?’ I suggest. ‘The quarks are always better in the other dimension.’
Nazli chuckles. I wasn’t trying to be funny, but it’s usually the case I get my biggest laughs when I’m serious, and making a beautiful woman laugh is always a triumph. I do love it when the experts, the rule-clutchers, are discomforted and the Allower makes them understand they barely know what goes on beyond their toes. Nazli is a shining example of how a doctorate is a vow of poverty, but knowing how to ask where the toilet is is always an earner. Since Nazli speaks every one of the five languages knocking around here, she freelances for all the big crews, fixing for extra cash.
Egemen is the fixer I got. Egemen seems to be the last fixer in the drawer. He’s a student at what I’ve been told is an agricultural college, although that might just be a polite term for a farm. He’s only worked for the Vizz a couple of times, so I persuade him that it’ll be an education for him to work with me and that I won’t pay him, I’ll just cover some of his expenses.
As I watch Liliane tuck into her pide, the Turkish pizza, I consider whether I should denounce her to the police before she does it to us, but it seems weak playing the same gag twice.
What are the irritating people there for, I ask myself, as Liliane stashes it away. For introductions. It was Liliane who first mention Gilles de Rais to me way back in Greece. ‘In England you have tea towels with the Queen. In France, we have had the coronation of thought. Should history be a matter of polemic games or reducing it to crude spectacle?’ I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, but since she seemed to be against it, I had to be for.
‘History should be spectacular.’
‘Gilles de Rais is innocent,’ she had said. She was joking, but it was what got me going, although it took me a while to ascertain the name wasn’t Zil The Ray.
Considered by many experts as the most evil man who ever lived, what’s attractive about his story is that all interpretations fit. Companion-in-arms to Joan of Arc, a homicidal maniac with his own beautifully dressed private army, in 1440 Gilles de Rais was found guilty, twice, of mass murder, paedophilia, sodomy, necrophilia, summoning demons and being a fashion victim, and was hanged.
Later referred to as Bluebeard for reasons no one knows, the evidence suggests The Ray was a devious, bad-to-the-bone paedo, who kept it under wraps by storming castles and doing a lot of charity work; or that he was a holy warrior, deeply disillusioned by the burning of Joan of Arc, who got into Satan because he felt let down by the other side; or that he was fitted up by his relatives after he blew his wad on good times, expensive manuscripts and pointy shoes (never mess with the money).
It should also be remembered that the French only won at Orleans because the English army drank itself to death and The Ray’s household legion consisted of hardened Scots and German mercenaries.
Then, of course, there was the most important introduction of all. Many, many years ago an irritating nutter sat down on the train opposite to me, dressed in shorts that were too small. It was December. He had a Tyrolean hat with a broken feather. It was not a winning look in South London in the eighties. He was mumbling and twitching. This was the start of care in the community when the shrinks got tired of treating the nutters and released them into the wild.
We all understand that mental illness is an illness, but it’s still irksome as fuck to have gibberers and jolters sitting opposite you, who might pull a knife on you, and I suspect there are some nutters who make the most of it, but I don’t have the training or time to prove it.
I moved to the next carriage and sat down next to some scruffy, paunchy guy who reeked of dope: Herbie. Got chatting and I was launched into the Vizz.
So far all I’ve achieved is to talk about partridges and fail to get to Göbekli Tepe. But we have our fixer, Egemen. You can be very dependent on your fixer, and the only way you can find out whether they’re any good is to use them. Like a pair of shoes. There’s the problem that just because someone is local doesn’t mean they know the locality. And even if you have someone fundamentally good, they can still let you down because they’re getting divorced or are moving house or their brother has cancer, and you get killed.
I ask Egemen if he knows anyone in the antiquities business. He doesn’t. I ask if he has any contacts with local archaeologists. He doesn’t. I ask if he has any contacts with the local police. He doesn’t. I ask if he has any contacts with the local underworld. He doesn’t. I ask if he knows of a place where we might find some shady characters. His face lights up.
‘I can take you to a bar where there are many not-law-abiding people. But it is dangerous for you.’
‘Let me worry about that.’
We all go to a bar called The Soldier of Fortune. The exter ior couldn’t be more drab and distressed, brickwork pock-marked as if by bullets. A large painting of a happy skeleton with a bandana, wielding a rocket launcher, looms over the battered door. Semtex grabs me by the arm.
‘Do you think this is a good idea?’
‘What else can we do?’
‘Okay. We’re going in. We’re having one drink. One drink. You’re paying. You’re paying and if there’s any trouble, any trouble at all, you’re on your own, star. I’m not backing you up.’
Inside, far from the scarred, one-legged veterans of countless wars staring bitterly into their beer, we find a well-lit, well-furnished club with well-dressed teenagers gazing into their phones. Some webbing and camouflage are strewn about, with pictures of tanks and helicopters, to give some credence to the military theme. They have an impressive cocktail list, with apt names: Bayonet Charge, Ataturk’s Machine Gun. If any of this clientele are scoffing at the law, it’s down to poor bookkeeping for tax.
‘Where are the bad people?’ I ask Egemen.
‘They are not here.’
Almost as a joke, we ask a couple of drinkers if they could sell us some hot artefacts. They actually call the police, who actually question us.
You can’t claim to be a real docker, a hardcore current affairist, unless you’ve been deported. And getting deported from, say, North Korea doesn’t count. Or Saudi Arabia. Anyone can get deported from North Korea; in fact, it’s hard not to get deported. Getting deported from Finland, for example, now that’s something. Edison managed that.
I wonder whether this trip will be cut short or whether I have to bribe someone, but the police are very friendly. I predict the result of the Fenerbahçe–Galatasaray match, which is being shown live, and I receive an admiring slap on the back for forecasting the injury-time goal. The top cop says, as he leaves, that he shouldn’t be doing this, but there is one dealer he can tell us about, off the record, hush-hush, as we’re now mates.
Egemen looks more perplexed than he normally does. ‘He says this man is . . . It’s hard to translate.’
It’s true, interpreting is hard, even if everyone is speaking the same language. One evening I had the rare experience of getting the beautiful girl in the club to dance with me. She had fantastic legs and was laughing at my jokes. It looked like it was going to be a long night, but then she walked off with a curt goodbye. Weak, who had piled into her stubby friend, told me later: ‘Her friend said you were onto a sure thing there until you told her she had legs like a sweaty East German shot-putter. You never get it right, do you?’
I was puzzled because I hadn’t said anything like that. Why would I? Then it occurred to me I had praised her legs as athletic, in my dictionary: shapely, healthy, desirable. I say ‘good’, you hear ‘bad’.
Egemen is looking around the bar as if hoping someone will hold up a sign with the answer. ‘He says . . . he says this man makes the devil wear funny trousers.’
‘What, he’s a comedian?’
‘No, he is more devil than the devil.’
‘I don’t see how that’s devilish.’
‘He is more clever than the devil.’
‘I don’t want cunning devils, I want devils who are evil.’
The cop adds something.
‘He says this man is a son of wrong.’
‘Now that sounds right.’ I end with: ‘Chalky.’
Chalky is apparently the Turkish word for ‘good’. I throw it in to show how much I love other languages, and how much I appreciate Turkish culture and how deeply I’m immersed in it. We shake hands and all go our ways satisfied.
The name I’ve been given, Cenk, of course, is the dealer I’m smuggling for, so we’re back to square one. I am tempted to use him, but that would really be asking for trouble.
‘Aren’t we going to this man?’ asks Egemen.
‘That’s a beginner’s mistake, Egemen, to believe anything the police say. You should really be paying me for the training you’re getting here. It’s a trap.’
We go to a nearby bar and sit down. A guy at the next table hears us speaking English and asks us where we’re from.
‘London? I am going there,’ he says. ‘I take some treasures from Syria to sell. They are . . .?’ He performs a mime of picking something up and putting it inside his jacket. ‘Raided?’
I get Egemen to confirm that he is taking looted goods to London. He is. He is also willing to give an interview. He has two cuneiform seals on him that he shows us. I don’t think he’s aware that this activity might incur disapproval. There is of course a catch. In half an hour he is leaving town.
I beg and offer the prospect of a small fee if he stays longer. He says he’d love to but he can’t as he has an appointment at some exclusive brothel and it’s very difficult to get one these days as the British intelligence services are booking up everything. We rush to our hotel, and get our gear. On our way back, our taxi breaks down. By the time we get another and return, our smuggler has, of course, departed.
Back at our hotel, we have the traditional one-last-drink drink. The restaurant is busy.
On his own at one table sits Sir Shot-a-lot, an Irish guy whose name I can’t remember, I doubt if anyone can remember his real name. He’s a freelance who’s never managed to do any journalism as every time he turns up at a zone, he gets shot. Normally, if you see him at your hotel, you move out, because you know it’s going to happen. Then there’s one Somali guy I recognise as a failed rapper from Battersea, MC Cool Hot Shit or something. I doubt if he’s in town to check out the mosaics.
A hysterical fit is thrown by a bug-eyed weirdo when his order is delivered. The waiter explains it is a vegetarian dish. ‘But it looks like meat,’ the weirdo froths. ‘It looks like meat. I’m not eating anything that looks like meat.’ The waiter covers his real opinion by apologising. The weirdo then demands to see the manager because he feels the waiter’s apology isn’t sincere enough.
I nudge Semtex. ‘Now you can see what you look like.’ Most of the trouble in the world comes from men, and most of it comes from men who aren’t getting laid. It’s the most destabilising force on the planet. You can’t be furiously angry if you’re getting your pleasure events; dejected, sullen, peeved, irked, angry, yes, you can’t avoid rage, but not going-mad-with-an-axe furious. Instead of spree-killing you go grumbling home for some doggy action.
I don’t know much German, but I can tell the guy in the corner is reading an S&M classic, so I can safely assume he’s the man from MI6, tagging the loopy as they go over the border into Syria and the madness bonanza. MI6 and their huge rooftop dishes have completely ruined my phone reception in Vauxhall, so I can’t resist going over.
‘I’m told you can buy looted artwork dirt cheap around here. You don’t have any idea where, do you?’
He puts down his spanking handbook and gives me firm eye contact. ‘No idea at all. But do let me know if you find any.’ He returns to his reading. The right-back-atcha makes me think he’s military rather than a wire-tapper.
I return to my seat. The chair crumbles underneath me. Semtex is crying with laughter. Time to call it a night.
‘You can’t go yet,’ says Semtex.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I haven’t finished laughing at you.’ He starts waltzing around holding a chair. We’re asked to leave.
In my room, I have a trawl on the Wi-Fi before turning in. It occurs to me, rather than doing the old-fashioned thing of walking around, talking to locals here in Turkey and asking probing questions, I can just check if someone in London or New York has done the work and posted it, so I can pinch it. But all the references to plundering are woefully vague. Why are journalists so lazy? I’m going to be forced to do some work. I switch to the bitching pages and regret it.
