Deadline istanbul, p.1
Deadline Istanbul, page 1
DEADLINE ISTANBUL
by Peggy Hanson
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2013 by Peggy Hanson.
All rights reserved.
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
www.wildsidebooks.com
THE ELIZABETH DARCY SERIES
Deadline Istanbul
Deadline Yemen
FOREWORD
Deadline Istanbul is a blend of reality and of dream-like memories, of fact and fiction, of people I may have met with those purely made-up. My love affair with Turkey goes far, far back, to Peace Corps days in the 1960’s and has been renewed with more years of living there and innumerable visits to virtually every corner of that wondrous land.
In all those years of living in and visiting Turkey, I never came across the dead bodies and mysterious crimes my protagonist Elizabeth Darcy can’t seem to avoid. Even as a correspondent for Voice of America, I didn’t encounter much murder—first-hand, at least.
In this book, I’ve taken liberties with Turkey and its people, as well as with expatriates who live or work there. I hope I have managed to present them both with the richness they deserve. There are good people, bad people, kind and cruel people. In short, exotic surroundings do not change human nature.
CHAPTER 1
Dear friends, listen to me now,
Love’s like the shining sun,
A heart without love
Is nothing more than a stone.
What rises up in a stony heart?
No matter how softly it begins,
The tongue’s soft words
Soon turn to war when poison spews.
Yunus Emre, 13th Century Turkish poet
1996
Lights flickered along the dark sides of the Bosphorus. Happy lights, he thought. He pictured romantic dinners in restaurants with lights down low. Parties of well-dressed guests from all nations nibbling on meze and drinking rakı. Making sophisticated jokes about politics. Gossiping. Good stuff for backgrounders, if not news. Grist for the reporter’s mill.
Peter Franklin was dressed for one of those parties—that one up there. From here he could see the gleaming crystal glasses, held by coiffed women and well-tailored men who had stepped out on the veranda for some Bosphorus night air.
If his mysterious contact arrived, he’d go, as planned. Parties always offered interesting contacts and possible networking. But opportunities to meet major players, like the one he awaited now, were far more rare and could not be ignored. The party would have to wait.
If his contact came. He was almost sure he knew who that would be.
Water lapped at the bottom of the boat and a ferry leaving Beşiktaş landing gave off a mournful toot.
The first bridge, strung like a necklace across the water, framed the distant domes and minarets of Süleymaniye, the greatest creation of the sixteenth-century architect Sinan. On a nearer point lay Topkapı Palace, eerie and quiet. Its lighted walls hid the secrets of centuries, of long-dead Sultans and their harems of women from all over the Empire.
Peter loved Istanbul. He loved its mosques, its alleys, its history. He loved its women and its cosmopolitan food. He soaked up its magic.
This story had become Peter’s baby. He’d taken months to weave the threads together. He would have his confirmation soon.
His small boat rocked on the wake of the Russian cargo ship passing in the night. The boatman kept the light off, as requested.
The other caique came slowly, silently, beside his boat, floating on the current.
Peter never had a chance.
The last sound he heard was the plaintive call to prayer from the historic mosque along the wharf.
Peter missed the party.
CHAPTER 2
I like to walk in cities; to ask the way; to find what I want to find by getting lost in the back streets, across the wastelands where the gardens are, and the shops and the bazaar stalls; to flow with a throng of people at lunch hour, then find an empty street and go slowly.
Mary Lee Settle, Turkish Reflections
Afternoon sunlight glinted pale-gold across the Bosphorus. Sea gulls followed the ferry in raucous competition, trying to catch a piece of sesame-covered simit thrown by a passenger. The smell of fresh-salt water permeated the air. I pulled my raincoat around me.
Damn, damn, damn.
Everyone in the Trib newsroom had been shocked. Popular, gregarious Peter. Aggressive reporter. Much-respected at the Trib. I took it personally. He was my friend, colleague, and partner on some prize-winning investigative stories. We both loved digging out the truth.
Now here I was, alone in Istanbul. To do Peter’s job. Not an assignment I’d ever thought to have, or wanted to have.
The Embassy dispatch said Turkish police had completed an investigation and thought Peter had died of an accidental overdose of an illegal drug.
Easy for the police to say, but I didn’t buy it. Peter was a professional. I had to clear his name of this posthumous insult.
My editor Mac had read my mind. “Not your job to investigate this. Don’t do it! I don’t need two correspondents dead.”
Mac knew perfectly well I’d follow my own advice, not his. I assured him I’d be careful. He punched my arm playfully, a worried frown on his face. We understood each other.
Plaintive Turkish wails of love gone wrong swirled around the few of us riding outside along the ferry’s railing. The sad tunes fitted my mood. Where had the music come from?
Two people down from me along the railing, a man with dark, olive-shaped eyes, wearing a black leather jacket, seemed to be the source. The radio must be in his pocket. His thick mustache matched his dark hair. He smoked a cigarette and looked away from me. Macho in the extreme. A Turk’s Turk, right from an old Camel ad.
The wooden ferry made a clean swath through the dark water. Bubbles of white wake stretched out and widened behind us, untraceable footprints on our liquid path.
CHAPTER 3
“I have seen the terrible punishments meted out in hell to tie-wearing atheists and arrogant colonialist positivists who make fun of the common people and their faith…”
Orhan Pamuk, Snow
Erol Metin walked from the Silver Wolves’ meeting to the bus stop in Üsküdar. From there he would catch a ferry to the European side of the Bosphorus.
Nizam, the leader of the Silver Wolves, had been right in his monologue tonight to the brothers Turkey was headed the wrong direction. One could never say so publicly, but Atatürk himself had started that, in the eyes of the Silver Wolves. After all his heroism in defining and protecting the nation at the end of World War I, Atatürk—or at least his successors—had veered off course.
Yes, there never would have been a Turkey without Atatürk. One had to admit that. Even Nizam admitted that. But why did the Father of the Turks have to wipe out Islam to save Turkey? Why did he have to embrace the West? Pushing the Greeks into the sea made sense to Erol and his group. Banning the fez and veil did not.
Erol’s purpose in life was to right that wrong, among others. Turkey was not the West; it belonged to the East. It was a magnificent leader in the East. The home of the Caliph. A bulwark for Islam.
Whatever means it took to help Turkey regain its rightful place, he would do it.
Erol was young and idealistic. He did not separate goals from methods.
CHAPTER 4
Already I was being handed from arkadash to arkadash, that word for friendship, one of the most important words in the Turkish language.
Mary Lee Settle, Turkish Reflections
The ferry passed Rumeli Hisar, that great fortress built by Mehmet the Conqueror in 1452. Its stone walls formed an asymetric pattern on the hill. Grass inside the walls was turning yellow for the winter.
When I thought of Peter, my insides felt both asymmetric and yellow. I hoped this ferry ride would clear my jet-lagged brain on where to start. .
Peter’s body must have stayed near the water’s surface or it never would have been found under that veranda in Ortaköy. And it must have entered the Bosphorus near the restaurant. From the north, the Black Sea side.
The currents of the Bosphorus run deep. On top they flow north to south, from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. Far below the surface, the water goes the other way—a self-cleansing cycle. Except things kept going into it.
Like Peter’s body. A shudder started at the back of my neck and ran down my spine.
I hardly looked at Macho-Man-with-the-music as I made my way into one of the ferry’s comfortable sitting rooms. But I had to pass him, and I could swear he leaned out to make sure I’d bump him as I tried to slip past.
Whether he was trying to attract or repel me, it was un-Turkish to invade my space like that. Accosting foreigners is looked down on, too. “Ayıp,” they say. Shameful.
As I passed him, I looked straight at the man. His eyes were singularly opaque. I couldn’t read them. He was looking at me but not interested in me. As a person, I was erased.
Feeling as though I’d brushed against evil, I sat beside a fresh-faced young woman wearing the traditional Islamic head scarf, the jilbab. She was one of the few women on the boat wearing one, but seemed as self-possessed as the others.
Since this was Turkey rather than the Arabian Peninsula, the pink jilbab was color-coordinated with the girl’s long-sleeved khamis worn over modest slacks. Not an inch of skin appeared between bottom hem and shoes, but her attractive femininity showed through. I felt a sisterly kinship and we gave each other
I savored a tulip-shaped glass of sweet mahogany-colored Turkish tea bought from a man carrying a swinging tray shouting, “chai, chai!” My new-found friend in the jilbab had one, too. I viewed her as an ally against the big rude guy outside. Turkish women have devastating put-downs for men who get out of line. They turn them into little boys with a flick of the apron string.
Just before we docked, I thought perhaps she’d be called on to defend me. I saw a leather jacket in the opposite row. The dramatic profile. The man in the leather jacket was no longer looking away from me.
He had me in the crosshairs of his eyes.
Past the exiting crowd, the charming scene of Galata Tower from the ferry disappeared in a cloud of dark smoke belched out by our engines. Through that black haze, Istanbul no longer felt like the safe haven I’d always viewed it.
Somewhere behind me, haunting music followed. Too afraid to turn around, I got the message. My tracker wanted me to know he was there.
CHAPTER 5
A nail will come out but its hole remains.
Turkish proverb
Bayram Çengel sat at Peter Franklin’s desk in the Washington Tribune office on the hill stretching up from the Golden Horn, that dagger-shaped inlet of water that once separated the Ottoman government from the foreign envoys on Pera Hill. His knees went weak when he thought of Peter’s sudden death. Peter was big. Not big like Atatürk, of course, no one could be that big, but someone respected by all. A role model for any aspiring journalist. Peter Franklin, the Washington Correspondent. The man who knew everything. How could he have died?
Bayram felt lucky to have gotten this job at the tender age of twenty-two. He’d done a course in journalism at a private university on the Asian side. But it was only a two year course. Everything he knew about news, real news, had come from Peter.
The Turkish newspaper Bayram had worked for was often well-written but it, like others of its kind, expressed a certain political view. Objectivity did not come into it, though investigation did, at times. Peter had combined the two. Pure luck that Peter chose Bayram from other applicants. Or was it? Peter may have seen how eager the young man was to pull himself out of the poverty he’d grown up in. Peter understood.
It was almost sacriligious to be sitting in Peter’s chair. Certainly, it was sad.
Earlier today he’d met the new person at the airport. Elizabeth Darcy. He’d seen her byline on Trib articles.
She had a nice smile, at least.
As a traditional Turk, Bayram doubted that a woman could take the place of a man, especially a man like Peter Franklin.
Perhaps he would give her a chance. Really, he had no choice. He’d stocked the little office refrigerator with a whole case of Kendi bottled water, allegedly taken from one of the plentiful artesian wells in the Anatolian mountains. All Westerners and all Turks who could afford it drank bottled water, never from the tap. Bayram was proud to be in the bottled water class.
CHAPTER 6
If you stared deep into a cat’s eyes, you would be able to see into the world of spirits.
English proverb
Sultana, the pure white Van cat, had her secret passages, which she only visited at night.
For a female cat, Sultana roamed a wide swath of Üsküdar. She knew and was known by the tough neighborhood tomcats, who recognized nobility and let her pass unmolested.
One of Sultana’s favorite places was the fish market down the hill near the wharf. She only visited after the fishermen had left, so she rarely got a bite of fish. Still, the smells were attractive: rodent, fish, people. She was known and admired by the ladies selling flowers at the bus stop. One of them often gave her a tasty snack.
Tonight Sultana followed a different kind of woman. She walked as a non-Turk and bought a jeton to get on the ferry to Eminönü. Businesslike as she was, the woman gave off friendly vibes. Sultana tracked her for a few minutes, slinking quiet and invisible.
When the woman started to put her jeton into the turnstile, she turned and saw Sultana. “Why, kitty! Aren’t you the beautiful one!” Language is no barrier between a cat and those who love them.
Sultana allowed herself to be petted, then slunk back into the shadows. Her judgment of people was impeccable. That didn’t mean she felt safe being visible to everyone.
CHAPTER 7
“For heaven’s sake, madam, keep your voice lower…”
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
It was getting dark on the Eminönü pier, but a myriad of lights, ranging from neon to the chestnut roaster’s dim coals, made the area glow. Feeling a little shaky, I lost sight of my woman companion and pushed along in the rush-hour crowd toward the taxi stand, slipping on the cobblestones.
I finally got a taxi, looking over my shoulder the whole time. The leather-jacketed man had faded into the crowded scene. Thank God! I breathed deeply and put him out of my mind.
Back at the Pera Palas, the desk clerk gave me a note along with my key.
I went upstairs to the haven of my room using the broad marble stairs rather than the ornate open iron elevator. I locked the door and threw the note onto the nearest chair, a heavy Victorian piece that sat like a prim old maid at a tea party. I’d have to find my glasses to read the note. Blast. Having enjoyed perfect vision throughout my youth, this annoyed me more than it should have, I suppose. At “a certain age” manifestations of age become as intolerable as they are immutable.
Rummaging through my purse, I glanced down. The rose-colored carpet had a pansy-shaped brown stain. A blood stain? Could it have inspired Agatha Christie or Ian Fleming? The Pera was proud of having entertained those authors, among others.
I bet Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming didn’t have a leather-jacketed man following them. Or maybe they did, and that also inspired them.
At last the glasses were settled on my nose and I retrieved the note. It was on hotel stationery and had my room number on the envelope, no name.
“Be careful. Lock your door.” Masculine writing, but neat, printed but sloping like italics. No signature.
I froze in place for a minute and sipped water from one of the little bottles in the mini-bar..
Tapping the note, I looked around. Not much to steal here. My travel clothes lay in a heap where I’d shed them before showering off the plane journey. I tucked the note into a nook in my black Eagle Creek travel purse, wondering what I’d do about it. No instructions. No timetable. Nothing to go on.
I re-checked the door lock. That part, at least, I could take seriously.
Then I put the dirty clothes in the laundry basket in the bathroom and got settled. Unwrap the bath soap; hang toiletry kit with its comfort supply: elderflower eye gel, skin cream, toothpaste. The familiar smells and tastes helped me shrug off my unease.
Agatha herself hadn’t had an easy time in Istanbul, one had to assume. She’d sneaked away from London to Istanbul for twelve mysterious days in 1919. Perhaps she liked being free on her own. Or she may have sought anonymity as she pondered her unfaithful husband.
The bathroom had an old-fashioned free-standing tub and a balcony overlooking the street coming up from Galata Bridge—allowing for a peek between buildings down the hill to the Golden Horn. Yes, I could even survey the view while sitting in the tub. No one could see in from outside.
Now why did the shower scene from “Psycho” come to mind? Damn that note.
Glancing into the age-pocked mirror, I gave my unruly hair a few swipes with my fingers and then reached for a brush.
I took the note out of my purse and looked at it again. The longer I looked, the more ominous it seemed.
CHAPTER 8
I had come, as we all do when we go to a city we have heard about so much, to find an Istanbul I thought I already knew—my city of presuppositions—whispers and memories of pashas and harems and sultans and girls with almond eyes, the Orient Express of Agatha Christie, the spies of Eric Ambler, the civilized letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
