The Turkish Trap: A tense and intriguing action thriller.

by Jack Dylan

  They were all rather stunned by the simplicity of it. It seemed too easy. However without comment they did as requested, and made their way back to the yacht. They found it still under guard, but with no-one aboard. In their cabins they found evidence of every item having been moved and every storage place emptied. However nothing seemed to be missing or damaged, so they gratefully set about their packing with minimal fuss. They found themselves still whispering to each other in their respective cabins.

  “What on earth is going on?” Patricia hissed to Jack.

  “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. I just know that they are happy to let us go, so I’m going to get on with it before they change their minds. Where did you put my razor?”

  “What about Maggie and Alex?”

  “I don’t think we can do anything to help them, and I don’t want to get mixed up in whatever this is all about, so let’s just keep our heads down and do exactly what they say.”

  Patricia reluctantly complied. As her own anxiety had receded, she had found herself worrying more about her new friends, who had seemed so normal, so straightforward, and, well, so English.

  “I really think we should do something,” she persisted.

  “Let’s get to the hotel and think about it,” Jack insisted.

  In the other cabin a similar anxiety and matching reluctance were evident. The upshot was that they emerged onto the dock with their bags packed and no mention was made to the guards about Alex or Maggie. As Jack struggled up the steps with the bag, Patricia guiltily scribbled a note to Maggie and Alex on the open logbook on the chart table.

  “Hope you are OK. They are sending us home. Ring when you can. Patricia.”

  She salved her conscience with the gesture, and didn’t consult Jack, who was intent on self-preservation and not entertaining any comradely ideas at all.

  The bags were loaded into the back of what appeared to be a staff car, and they were driven by a young, silent cadet into the main street of Gocek, where the early morning sunshine revealed the humdrum daily activities. Shopkeepers were unlocking their shutters; the racks of souvenirs and clothes were being wheeled out onto the clean-swept street. Locals shouted morning greetings to one another. Another routine day in a quiet little town where nothing ever happened.

  The four dragged their bags into the only real hotel in the centre, a small family-run establishment with twelve rooms and a tiny swimming pool. A feeling of disorientation was hard to shake from their consciousness. The horrors and anxieties of the night were still chronologically recent but felt disconnected and unreal in the context of the normality of the wakening town. They rang the tinkling bell on the counter and wondered how they were going to pass the long hours till their evening flight.

  Chapter 37

  Mugla Jail, October 2006

  Alex summarising the story so far.

  He thought back over Maggie’s perception of the messy sequence of events that had led to their arrest. She could piece together the narrative from the fateful day when he searched out the previous owner of the old Mercedes SLC. He had described to Maggie the first visit to Katharos in London; the preparation for the Grand Tour with Liz; and the strained oddity of the visit to Katharos’ supposed cousins in Thessaloniki. How did he fail to suspect that all was not as it seemed? In fact “as it seemed” was a strange term to use. With the benefit of hindsight he realised that it had “seemed” downright suspicious at the time. It was now annoyingly obvious, and it had been blindly stupid of him not to have paid attention to the clues that he was being manipulated.

  The examination of the car by Iannis Junior in London, and the subsequent subtle messages between father and son had been obvious enough for him to notice. He had registered them at the time, but without real thought had decided to ignore them. The similar process in Greece, when he was obliged to hand over the car keys while he and Liz were kept out of the way for a day – it was blindingly obvious in retrospect. He could only excuse himself on the grounds that he was preoccupied with making the Grand Tour a success, and with the constant attention to the relationship with Liz. What a waste of time that had been. A swan-song. A deceptive spell of harmony which didn’t survive the return to humdrum routine, and the intrusion of the years of hurt and deception. Maggie had not dwelt on that bit of the history. Perhaps she didn’t like to pay conscious attention to her predecessor in his life, so hadn’t analysed the sequence of events, nor chastised him for his early blindness to the steps in setting him up.

  She concentrated instead on the time since her involvement. It surprised Alex that she hadn’t been more resentful of the extent to which he had tried to keep her in the dark. It was another “if only”. Perhaps she would have been able to persuade him to confront the issue rather than step by step, concession by concession, becoming more entrapped by each favour he was forced into carrying out for Katharos. By the time he had told her the whole story in Kapi Creek last year, he had built up such a history of misdeeds that he could not conceive of the possibility of going to the police or the Customs to admit his complicity.

  Maggie had kept up a constant pressure on him to confront Katharos, and to say “no more”. But each time he failed to do that she had loyally and forgivingly stuck by him. She had continued to give him the support he needed. He felt stupid for having deceived her at the outset, and now even stupider for allowing himself to wade back into the mire of deception following the warning ramming of his car. He now found the failure to come clean about the Dublin adventure was almost pathologically bizarre. It had driven him further into the dark double-thinking world of secrecy and half-truths, where every statement had to be checked before it was made to ensure that it fitted with the authorised version of the truth.

  At 8:00 o’clock Alex became aware of an increase in noise as the jail’s daily routine ground into action. He heard the scraping slide of the barred hatches on the old metal doors, followed by the tinny clatter of breakfast mug and bowl being handed to each inmate. His own door-hatch opened noisily and a guard looked in from a safe distance before wordlessly proffering the unappetising bowl of bread and sour-tasting cheese, and the tin mug of lukewarm black Turkish chai.

  He accepted the breakfast because there didn’t seem to be any sensible alternative, and gingerly tried the bread and cheese. The cheese he decided was inedible unless he was absolutely starving, but the bread served a purpose in giving him something to chew and to keep his churning stomach a little quieter.

  He paced about the cell, which allowed him only three unambitious steps in one direction and two across. He sat down again on the edge of the filthy bed. He paced again. His agitation was coming in waves, and increasing. The impatience to get his world in order and get out of this cell was becoming overwhelming. The rising panic over Maggie was threatening to drive him to irrational shouting and ranting at the guards, or more probably at the bare unhearing walls.

  Chapter 38

  Arif

  Iannis and Arif: summer 2000

  Iannis Junior met Arif when he was on holiday on the Turkish coast. His father disapproved of this holiday visiting the historically hostile shores, but Iannis Junior ignored his father’s annoyance and took off with some friends from the other restaurants in Marylebone. They stayed in a hotel by the beach in Olu Deniz – an area so picturesque that it featured in many of the colour supplement advertisements for Turkish holidays. They rose late in the morning and spent the afternoons sunbathing and swimming, watching the uninhibited girls from non-Turkish backgrounds, and preparing the way for later nightclub encounters.

  Each evening the three friends showered and after-shaved themselves for the evening assault on the village night-life. The invasion of the inland part of the village, some way back from the beach, began at about 8:00 pm. The friends made their way noisily to a cafe on the main street that sold Turkish food almost indistinguishable from the Greek food that Iannis was used to. They ordered beers and gyro pitas that came with onions and fresh garlic-
laced yoghurt dressing. They laughed and teased one-another as the low-cost food and more expensive beers were swallowed and re-ordered.

  By 9:00 o’clock the main street was beginning to buzz with the expectant holidaymakers as they moved from shop to shop and bar to bar. Groups of males and females tried to study one another surreptitiously. This ritual involved exaggerated laughter, whispers, pauses to examine irrelevant shop windows, and a general frisson of expectant excitement when eye met eye and glances were noticed and exchanged.

  Between eleven and midnight the reconnaissance was largely over and people were settling on the nightclub that was to be their choice for the night. The decision involved a cautious checking of where most other people were going, as the trade washed unevenly around the available clubs. The Golden Shore might have a lucky week when a disproportionate number of good-looking English girls happened to choose it on their first night. The other clubs would suffer while the short-term holiday-makers continued to favour the club that had looked most promising the previous night. It was hard to break the pattern once established, so the night-spots all competed on arrival nights to tempt the best looking females into their seedy and noisy interiors.

  Iannis was excited by the freedom and the easygoing availability of the girls he met in the clubs. It was so much simpler than in London, where he was as likely to be rebuffed as to find an encouraging welcome. His dark skinned good looks were an advantage here, while they were of questionable worth back home. English girls on holiday were much more likely to take a risk with a foreign-looking stranger than they were in Manchester or Leeds. The excitement of someone from a different background added spice to the encounter, and the certainty of being back home the following week meant that the risk of long term complications was minimal.

  Iannis met Arif at the bar in his nightclub. Arif was serving some drinks, but mostly keeping an eye on the waiters and constantly scanning the dancers and drinkers. He was wearing the fake Breitling watch that peeped out from the partially rolled sleeve of his genuine Ralph Lauren shirt. He was making significant money from the nightclub for six months every year. The older locals regarded him with some suspicion, and choked on the prices he charged for drinks in his club. No-one over 40 ever ventured inside, nor could they see the sense of paying double the normal price for their bottle of Efes. The younger locals paid the price because it was such a good place for finding their short-term love-affairs.

  Iannis sat at the bar casting a professional eye over the operation. He could see how Arif monitored the waiters, just as he himself did in London. He could almost see the brain working as Arif watched the trays of drinks, calculated the prices and watched the till. He saw the slight smile flicker across Arif’s face every time a large order of house cocktails was dispatched. Iannis could imagine the staggering profit margin on the unbranded spirits that went into the fruity mix. He also saw Arif’s eyes constantly roving round the club, watching the new arrivals, checking for potential trouble, and occasionally lingering over a particularly beautiful visitor. Iannis had watched when some noisy English youths started disrupting the jovial atmosphere. The belligerent exchanges with people who bumped into them, the excessive swearing, and the aggressive body language all indicated a potential problem. It seemed as if it took only a raised eyebrow on Arif’s impassive face to bring the club’s heavy-duty security men into action. The potential problems were out on the street minus their beer bottles before most people noticed the disturbance. Iannis was impressed.

  The two recognised in each other some sort of kindred spirit. They shared an air of quiet, well-groomed, wealthy confidence. They were casually dressed naturally, but expensively. Just as Iannis had noticed Arif’s professional eye monitoring every transaction, his own quietly professional observation hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  “You in the business then?” Arif asked him in a lull in the music.

  “Yeah, but not as big as this.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Small place in London. Just here for a week to get away.”

  “What sort of place you got then?”

  “Restaurant and bar, but we have a few other business deals on the go.” For some reason Iannis felt a need to project a more dynamic image than he usually allowed himself.

  “Business good?”

  ”Yeah. Keeps us going. Always looking for something new though.”

  Iannis sensed that there was a potential ally behind the bar. An unformed impulse prompted him to indicate gently that he was interested in business, not too brashly, not too pushily, but enough to open the door a crack.

  “Always got to keep moving haven’t you. I change this place every year. New lights, new sound, new DJs – gotta keep moving.”

  “Looks as if you’re doing OK.”

  “Yeah – but there are a few other things that I’m always looking at.”

  “Same here. No such thing as standing still. You’re going backwards if you think you’re standing still. That’s what I tell my old man. He’s too comfortable, too settled. That’s when you start going down.”

  “Better go here. Catch you later. See you on the beach maybe.”

  “Yeah, buy you a beer if you get down there tomorrow.”

  “Cheers.” And with that Arif reached a fresh beer for Iannis and raised his hand to indicate no money was required. Nothing more was said that night about business or about meeting up, but as Iannis was leaving Arif nodded to him silently. They would meet on the beach no doubt.

  Next afternoon Arif indeed arrived on the beach. He didn’t trudge down from his cheap hotel like all the holidaymakers. He arrived in his speedboat, with flamboyant style. As he approached the beach, he dropped an anchor astern, and controlled the boat’s gentle approach to the shelving sand. At sensible wading depth he tied off the anchor line and stepped confidently from the bow of the boat, bringing a light bow-anchor with him to drop on the sand.

  He adjusted his RayBan sunglasses and walked up the sloping beach towards the green-shaded drinks bar that supplied the sunbathers. Iannis had guessed that this was the sensible spot to try to meet up, and had found a sun-lounger close by the bar. He was half-dozing in the shade of the large yellow umbrella when he heard the approach of the powerful speedboat and raised himself on an elbow to watch the arrival. As Arif strolled towards the bar, Iannis nonchalantly raised a hand in the air to acknowledge the arrival.

  “Hey man, how’s the head today?” greeted Arif cheerfully.

  “No problem. Fairly quiet night last night. Saving myself for a last night splash-out tonight.”

  “Last night? Have to make sure you have a good one.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m going to be in your place in time to meet the girl of my dreams. Hope you have her lined up for me.”

  “No worries. There should be plenty of chicks there tonight – their last night too so they won’t be wasting any time. Anyway, you do any water-ski?”

  “Na. Never had the chance. Nice boat though.”

  “Come on I’ll show you how to ski. Dead easy.”

  The two went easily down the beach, Iannis grabbing his t-shirt and towel as he went. Arif helped him onto the bow of the boat, then retrieved the shore anchor, and hopped on the boat himself. He started the engine but left it ticking over as he pulled the boat gently backwards away from the shore, hauling rhythmically on the stern-anchor line. He stowed the coiled anchor warp with its short length of chain and fisherman’s anchor. Then, as the boat bobbed gently on the lapping waves, he settled himself at the wheel and they accelerated ostentatiously away from the beach.

  “Wow,” shouted Iannis over the noise of the powerful outboard engine. He had planned to act really cool, as if this was nothing new to him, but it actually was a novel experience for someone who had only ever used the safe little day-boats his relatives rented out at their taverna in Thessaloniki. Those watching from the beach saw the graceful curve of the wake trace the path of the boat as it left the bay and turned west towards the h
eadland which hid Gemiler Island and Karacaoren from view. Arif treated Iannis to a fast circuit of the bay and then a slow trickle through the anchorage in Karacaoren, pointing out the Byzantine ruins on the little islands and the secluded rough taverna that served the anchorage.

  “Good business here,” he confided. “You pay three times what you pay in town for a meal here, and they are full every night.”

  “How come?” asked Iannis.

  “Yachts,” came the simple reply. “This bay will be full of yachts tonight, and they have nowhere else to eat. Besides they are used to high prices – they have no idea what you pay in the village for food.”

  “Ever thought of trying it yourself?”

  “Yeah, I will do one year. Enough on my plate with the club in the village, but if I get someone to run it I might do this. Nice life – no crowds, no trouble, just people paying whatever you ask and tipping like crazy. Different sort of people from the ones in the cheap apartments in the village.”

  They accelerated away from the anchorage and covered the short distance to Gemiler Island in a couple of minutes. Arif slowed again as they passed the end of the island and entered the channel between the island and the mainland shore. As the view opened up, Iannis could see the jumbled remains of houses and churches that seemed to cover all the available land.

  “Wow,” he exclaimed again.

  “This place was a famous old pilgrimage site,” explained Arif. “It’s covered with ancient stuff. Great sunsets from the top. You should go some day.”

  They continued the gentle circumnavigation of the island, watching the swimmers, checking the sunbathers on the anchored yachts, and enjoying the experience of being watched by the people they were watching. Iannis was enjoying himself.