might have read my thoughts. “Sorry, my dear. Oh, I’m sorry!” He patted my hand. “I forgot you were his friend. Didn’t mean to offend.”
“I’m fine.” I looked at his hand resting on mine. Lawrence Andover. Kind, as well as sophisticated.
CHAPTER 22
Now I began to fear that spit would suddenly climb out of my throat and land on the ground without my even willing it. But as I knew, spitting was mostly a habit of grown-ups of the same stock as those brainless, weak-willed, insolent children who were always being punished by my teacher.
Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul
Erol Metin got off the ferry and made his way by circuitous routes to the Silver Wolves’ safe house in Üsküdar. It would be a long night. He was getting oriented to the group’s rituals. First, the meeting of five or six members. They always arrived separately, did not give their names, and kept the curtains of every room closed.
The safe house was one of many buildings clustered behind the big mosque overlooking Üsküdar wharf. When the evening call to prayer resounded from the minaret, the group performed their ablutions in separate bathrooms and then prayed together in the main room. They were protecting both Turkey and Islam from vile influences of the West.
After prayers and a quick meal, they began their lessons for that night. No announcement was made of what the topic would be. Or of what their individual assignments would consist. Assignments were handed out orally by Hamdi himself, the Wolves’ leader, and they were done in absolute privacy.
When the curtains were raised, the safe house was an excellent location for observation without being observed. Most of the time, however, it was a secret world inside. A magnet for young men like Erol.
CHAPTER 23
“Indeed you are mistaken. I have no such injuries to resent. It is not of peculiar, but of general evils, which I am now complaining.”
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“I want to see the restaurant where Peter missed the party,” I told Andover. At Beşiktaş wharf, the car slowed and nosed its way into line with other vehicles dropping off ferry commuters.
“That can be arranged.” Andover reached for the door handle on his side.
“And where did Peter live?” I grabbed my purse and my own door handle. Bayram could give me that information, but I wanted my own government to tell me.
“He lived up the Bosphorus from here, in Yeniköy.”
We were out of the car now and Andover walked around to my side to extend a gentlemanly arm. Yeniköy. I’d go soon.
The driver drove away. Saying we’d take the scenic route to his house, Andover led the way across the rain-slick road to the wooden building where he bought two coin-like jetons. We waited on hard wooden benches for the next ferry. The wait was made more interesting by a basket of multi-colored kittens in a corner of the room. The calico mother cat watched warily as I petted her offspring, but when I found a cookie in my bag and offered it, she accepted with grace, watched indulgently by other passengers.
Should I have waited a day or two before accompanying a stranger to an unknown address in the evening dark? Especially on a rainy night. I breathed that thought back.
It turned out the ferry ride made sense. Andover’s old wooden yali was across the Bosphorus from the ferry pier at Beşiktaş, in Ҫengelköy, a village on the Asian side. Ҫengelköy. I’d run across that name before.
During the twenty-minute passage, blurred lights of fellow ferries crossed our path in the dusk, sounding their combination whoops and wails to warn small boats with no lights. Once in a while came the deeper boom of a Russian tanker plying its careful way past hidden obstacles in the narrow waters that comprise the northern giant’s only all-weather escape by sea.
When I’d been here last, the Soviet Union was the big enemy of the West. Now Islamist terrorists filled that role. Turkey’d had its own share of terrorism, often aimed at intellectual, secular Turks. Most of it was rightly blamed on Kurdish separatists, but terrorists often weave spider-web networks that are hard to trace.
Inside the smoke-filled ferry cabin, Andover and I exchanged the usual small talk of the wandering expatriate: Who was posted in Dubai or Karachi in which years? Did you know the Ambassador in Tashkent? Over the years, I’ve found that almost everyone I encounter outside America knows at least one person I do. The global world of professional expatriates is small.
“Did you know Peter Franklin before Istanbul?” It was a natural question given our conversation.
Andover looked thoughtful. “Well…yes, come to think of it, I guess we overlapped a little in Cairo. Back in the ‘80s, it would be. Didn’t know him well until we both came here, though.” He had an air of sad reminiscence.
My feelings, exactly.
CHAPTER 24
Bodrum folk cut harvest early,
And Fate has cut her harvest early
Making martyr with golden scissors
Of Bodrum’s judge—a woman.
Oh, lady judge, beloved judge,
Whyever did you hang yourself?
Lyric to “Hakim Hanım” folksong (translated in A Turkish Odyssey)
Professor Oktay Fener slipped gratefully into clean clothes after his shower. Life at the archaeological dig near Iznik was delightful, though not always comfortable.
This trip was a special treat for Oktay because his daughter, Aytem, had accompanied him from their home on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. She was studying ceramics, just like her baba ciğim, as she affectionately called him. Daddy dear.
Also on the dig was Perihan Kıraz, an old friend. Oktay and Perihan had worked together for more than a quarter century, having attended university together and gone into the same field. Perihan was more of a female don than a woman who played up her attractions. Still, Oktay remembered moments of sexual tension with Perihan. Using a time-honored male approach, he had usually tried to ignore it, to pretend it didn’t exist. They’d never broken the bounds of discretion. He’d never even been tempted to do that.
Food at the tent was delicious: oval-shaped lamb köfte balls; crispy su boreği, the oven-baked pastry laced with white cheese and broad-leafed parsley. Rice pilav with bits of lamb liver and raisins.
Perihan, as always, had had a role in supervising the chef. They had found a few broken pieces of the old Iznik tiles today. Each glimpse of the vivid reds and blues and greens made his heart beat faster. It was a pleasure to wipe off the dust from each plate or vase. It was also a pleasure to work with his students on finding and preserving the nation’s treasures. Everyone knew about the jewels in Topkapı. About the great emerald in the Sultan’s belt featured in the old movie, Topkapi. Many fewer realized what intricate work the craftsmen of Iznik had wrought.
It was the usual case of foreign things being valued above the local. The Sultans had used this exquisite ceramic work for their everyday meals. The porcelain from China was for state occasions.
There
