The Turkish Trap: A tense and intriguing action thriller.

by Jack Dylan

  This wasn't just a matter of clinging to half-remembered historical dates and facts. In England people could read or watch programmes about the Norman Invasion without feeling any emotional involvement. It was ancient history that required a real effort to make it relevant to the 21st century. For Katharos, the enmity was visceral. Hearing the stories of the butchery, burning and destruction aroused a fury and a sense of injustice similar to the outrage felt by the western world to the Rwanda slaughter. The driving out of the Orthodox families from virtually the whole Eastern Aegean coastal region left him angry, aroused, and righteously certain that there were crimes that had gone unpunished, and criminals who had inflicted barbarous evil on his fellow Greeks. He was impervious to the arguments from his son who had read more balanced accounts of the events, and who knew that the atrocities were not all one-sided. His son tried to convince him that the politicians of the time on both sides had gone along with the process for their own reasons. Iannis Junior thought of himself as more enlightened, more broadminded and obviously more modern than his father. He was happy to let bygones be bygones, and for him the rights and wrongs had little more impact than the stories in ill-remembered and boring history lessons.

  When opportunities to make money came along Iannis Junior had no compunction about collaboration with Turkish partners. He found them pretty much like himself - perhaps just exploring their role in the modern Europe, but confident of their ability to take advantage of the new face of Europe and their geographical jackpot in bridging the East with the West; the Muslim world with the supposedly Christian; and the suddenly fashionable Turkey with its European neighbours who were hungry for something "different".

  Iannis Junior had followed his father easily into the family business. The restaurant still operated in one of the bustling side-streets near Marylebone High Street. It provided a sound business basis for all of their other money-making schemes. The family was content to be regarded as the proprietors of a solid if unexciting Greek restaurant, and the financial accounts of the family business fitted with the solid but unexceptional profitability of their kind.

  It was an excellent cover for the real money-making activities that they enjoyed. Iannis Junior set foot in the restaurant only to eat and to keep a finger firmly on the finances. He had a long-serving chef who dealt with all the practicalities of the kitchen, and a manager who ran the restaurant with the old-fashioned style that customers came for. The fundamentals were stable even if there was a constant turnover of the poorly paid waiting staff and kitchen porters. The family were content to stay in the background, but the chef and manager knew that Iannis scrutinised every receipt and every invoice, as well as quietly observing what went on in the restaurant, so the usual skimming and dodgy accounting were not even a temptation. It wasn't that they were by nature immune to temptation, just that they knew how closely everything was monitored and how quick their exit would be if anything were found to be amiss. The cautious employment practices of big companies just didn't apply in this world. They knew the rules and stuck to them. But Iannis knew that if he relaxed his scrutiny the story would be very different.

  All this meant that Iannis was able to pursue occasional money-making ventures from a solid and respectable base. His father had taught him well. The old man had avoided legal problems by keeping his ambition in check. He saw other dealers grow rich and become increasingly greedy. Simple mathematics didn't work. If it was possible to make £100,000 by importing a small quantity of cocaine, it did not follow that importing ten times the amount would lead to ten times the profit. Drawing attention to oneself was a bad idea whether it was the police or competing criminals whose attention was drawn. The Katharos business was not big enough to worry competing importers, and their unobtrusive and even self-effacing approach kept them out of the mainstream.

  Iannis senior had started making some extra money almost by accident. He had come to London after the war when Greece was in turmoil and escape from the civil war was attractive to someone without strong political convictions other than his enmity towards the Turks. He reached London as a teenager in 1948, with minimal resources other than two names and addresses. Ethnic ties and loyalties ensured he found a job, and he patiently built his earnings in London into a solid chunk of savings. His insight into the prevention of fraud in his own restaurant had a foundation in the loose practices that turned out to be so lucrative for him. Watered bottles of spirits, meals that didn't go through the till, modest ripping off of inebriated diners - all had contributed to the accumulating wealth of the immigrant Iannis. His life was a testament to the success of patient and unobserved criminality. He didn't think of it in those terms. He thought of it as a general outwitting of the rest of the world, but all the factors that led him to be able to buy his own restaurant by the age of 40 were based on activities that he preferred to keep secret.

  By the 1970s he was making good money from the business and was able to travel back and forth from London to Greece at least once a year. An off-hand comment from a contemporary in Thessaloniki opened his eyes to the money that was to be made from some illicit trade. A small parcel of cannabis resin which easily made its way from Afganistan to Thessaloniki was phenomenally profitable once it reached London. Just as he had applied subtle and carefully moderated criminality to his restaurant business, so he developed his profitable sideline. Careful always to be virtually invisible, and never to be too greedy.

  Through the 70s and 80s he prospered. He had married late, and brought his bride from Greece to London. Steadily and unobtrusively Katharos continued to build up his formal and his informal businesses. If other drug smugglers knew of him they didn't take him to be a threat. His contacts were well-tried and trusted. They knew that from time to time Katharos would be able to sell them some "goods", but it was strictly wholesale, and he was never foolish enough to dabble in street-level selling. Had he attempted to elbow into someone else's territory, the quiet and unobtrusive days would have been over. He outlasted all the more ambitious and briefly more successful importers, who allowed their belief in their own invulnerability to lead them sooner or later to their undoing. Some fell foul of their competitors and rivals, others were tracked down by the drug squad, but Iannis quietly lurked in the shadows, known only to the few essential contacts he cultivated, and never sufficiently high profile to come to the attention of the law.

  In time his only son was easily assimilated into the business. Iannis Junior showed a fine appreciation of the methodology and style his father had perfected, but gradually became more adventurous. He was more able than his father to dissipate the carefully accumulated wealth, but he did pay attention to the key lesson about staying under the radar of both the authorities and potentially jealous competitors. A quiet life was better than no life. Iannis Junior found it hard at first to resist boasting to friends about the money he could spend, but he was well taught and well warned by his father. As a result, his excesses were discrete and of a very personal nature. The almost puritanical ethos of the old Orthodox religion had mingled with the insecurities of the immigrant to produce a mindset where conspicuous flaunting of wealth could only be followed by disaster. Iannis Junior tried and immediately forswore hard drugs. A brief period of experimentation before the age of twenty clashed with his inherited need for control and self-contained-ness. The idea of being at the mercy of others due to self-inflicted indulgence struck him as stupidly asking for trouble. He had no intention of doing anything to endanger the fundamental nature of his father's success. He just wanted him to be a little more adventurous, a little more modern, a little more profitable.

  Old man Katharos was feeling his age. He had insisted on travelling through Greece. They had flown to Athens, and then to Thessaloniki. Although the flights were relatively short, he had found it all tiring. The long night of animated conversation in the family taverna near Thessaloniki left him with what he refused to acknowledge was a hangover. However his thumping head and sluggish brain were a liabili
ty as they travelled again on the next day’s 55 minute flight from Thessaloniki to Rhodes.

  In Rhodes they boarded the Rodos – appropriately named for the location and looking sufficiently luxurious to enable him to overcome the dyspepsia resulting from his overindulgence. The Rodos was owned by an associate of Arif’s. He didn’t even know the name of the company that appeared as legal owner in the ship’s papers. His son had told him that everything was organised according to the wishes of Arif’s foreign associates, who were insisting that the usual route for transporting the packages was not to be followed. This last venture was to be especially careful, especially secure. So instead of letting Alex take the risk of transporting the goods through customs and delivering them safely to Hampstead, they were for the first time participating in the actual supply chain. He was not happy with the idea, but the stakes were higher than usual and Arif’s associates were not willing to let the package take its chances with the unprofessional Alex as he took his chances through customs in Gatwick. In any case, England was not the final destination this time.

  The Rodos looked big to him. Iannis had no experience of estimating the size of these private yachts. A more experienced man would have quickly established that it was a 45ft Cranchi motor yacht. Big enough to accommodate the four key people involved in the trip, but small enough to avoid too much attention from customs and coastguards. There were four guest cabins, with crew quarters hidden somewhere as cramped as they were unobtrusive.

  Iannis senior threw himself on the bed in his cabin and cursed himself again. He didn’t like all this travelling. He resented being required to change a well-proven formula. The uneasy feeling in his belly might be partly explained by the excesses of his cousins’ hospitality, but it might also represent a nagging unease that he was failing to address. Perhaps it was fear of appearing weak to his son. Perhaps he was for the first time stepping outside the league he normally played in. Whatever the reason, he was agitated, tired, and uncharacteristically vulnerable.

  The captain of the Rodos was reassuring.

  “Do not worry my friend. This is all very routine. Tomorrow I take all the papers and passports to the harbour police, the customs and the immigration, and by midday we will be ready to go. Today it is too late to do any of that, so relax, rest, and enjoy the city here.”

  Katharos had no choice but to submit to the timetable, and in fact he quite relished the opportunity to wander the streets of the old town. He and Iannis Junior walked through the cobbled history and ate modestly in the least touristy taverna they could find.

  Chapter 41

  Rodos October 2006

  In transit to Fethiye

  The Rodos inched its way out of the old Mandraki harbour in Rhodes. The captain had completed the formalities in the Immigration, Customs, and Harbour offices, so they were free to leave Greek waters, and were due to log into a Turkish port within a few days. As they left the harbour, the rolling swells coming across the open sea gave the boat an uncomfortable squirming motion. Old Iannis Katharos did not like it at all. The motor yacht relied on speed through the water to smooth the motion, as it had no heavy keel beneath it, so it was less comfortable than a sailing yacht when it travelled slowly through the water.

  As they cleared the north-eastern tip of the island, the captain opened up the throttles and the motion steadied. The boat was still far from comfortable, as it slammed from one wave to the next, but at least it was a definite solid feeling rather than the nausea-inducing wallow at slow speed.

  Iannis senior resigned himself to his misery. He tried lying on his bed, but the effort of staying on the bed infuriated him. Each roll of the boat threatened to deposit his heavy body on the thick carpet. The thuds as they hit each wave made rest impossible. He levered himself off the bed and onto the floor of his cabin. He reasoned that if the boat was trying to get him off the bed he might as well save it the trouble. He wedged himself between the bed and the expensive rose-wood dressing table – both bolted firmly in place he discovered. At least there was no threat of falling further, but it was uncomfortable, and distinctly undignified. He didn’t want anyone to come in and see him lying in this pathetic position.

  He heaved himself to his feet, and carefully made his way out of his cabin and along the narrow passageway to the main saloon. No-one else was around, so he wondered if his son and the two monosyllabic Turkish associates that Arif had brought to them were suffering in their cabins just like him. He looked up the steep steps that led to the elevated bridge, from which the captain controlled the boat. He could see his son’s back, and he seemed to be talking to other people, so perhaps they were all up there.

  Iannis struggled step by step up to the bridge. He quickly worked out that if he timed his movements to match the boat he wasn’t caught mid-pace when it slammed into the next wave. It was important to have both hands and both feet firmly planted each time the hull shuddered with the impact of a wave. He emerged into the crowded space and Iannis Junior made space for him to sit in one of the sturdy seats that were again firmly bolted to the boat’s deck.

  Once established in the seat, and holding the well-placed grab-rail, the old man was able to see why everyone else was up there. Seeing the horizon and being able to anticipate the waves seemed to have a calming effect on his nausea. Looking to his left he could see right down the north-western coast of Rhodes, with the rocky headlands and olive-covered hills that stretched for miles. Ahead he could see nothing but blue water, but even he could appreciate the beauty of the white-flecked sea and the expanse of hazy blue sky. The sky was clear above them, and at the horizon the merging of blue sky with bluer sea was fudged by the greyish heat-haze that still appeared in October. He breathed easier, and decided that this was a better place for him to survive the rigours of the journey.

  “How long will this take?” he enquired of his obviously ecstatic son.

  “Only a couple of hours to Fethiye. Isn’t it fantastic? This is more like it. You should buy yourself one of these.”

  Iannis senior wondered again at his son’s ability to totally misread his thoughts, preferences and inclinations. He grunted.

  Within 10 minutes they were able to discern the shape of the coast of Turkey as the distance from Rhodes to the nearest point on Turkey is little over 10 miles. However their course was not towards the nearest land, but further east. Having gained some shelter from the Turkish coast they ignored the deep indentation in the coast where Marmaris lay waiting, and struck East across the seemingly endless blue towards Kapu Dag and then across the Gulf to the port and welcoming marina of Fethiye.

  By mid afternoon the two Katharos men and their two Turkish business partners were sitting in the garden bar at Ece Marina. Old Katharos had endured the long trudge along the unsteady pontoons of the marina, watching warily for the snaking hosepipes and electric wiring that were ready to trip him up and send him headlong into the oily water on either side. He really didn’t like it.

  But in the bar, he was at last able to extract a rich cigar from the shaped leather case. He lovingly clipped the end before installing it between his fat lips and applied his gold lighter to the waiting tobacco. He savoured the aromatic warmth of the smoke before exhaling generously in a raised stream aimed high above the table. He picked up the brandy glass and drank a first sip of the Turkish liqueur.

  “Not bad. Not at all bad. Not Metaxa of course, but not bad.”

  Iannis Junior smiled knowingly and winked at Arif’s friends.

  “So you’ll survive after all do you think?”

  “There is a big difference between surviving and enjoying my son. But this I can enjoy.”

  “Just look at that,” invited Iannis Junior, sweeping one hand in a grand gesture around the view in front of them. The sleek stainless steel flagpoles sported an international display of colour, and framed a scene of white yachts and blue sea, with green encircling hills in the background that provided both shelter and pictorial balance. “What a place! There must be
millions of pounds worth of yachts lying here.”

  The Turkish companions were more relaxed now they were back on their own territory, and were becoming less monosyllabic. They were keen that these visiting Greeks should realise that Turkey was a modern country, and was not the backward barbarian wilderness that old Iannis clearly anticipated.

  “Welcome to Turkey at last,” pronounced the senior man. “Let us drink to the success of our enterprise.”

  A warning glance shivered around the group. They did not want anyone to have the slightest knowledge of their purpose in being there. However the Turk had no intention of going beyond that and was raising his glass inviting the mutual clinking and exclamations of ‘Sherife’ that came as second nature to all but old Katharos.

  “Sherife,” he ventured, and cautiously raised his glass to the waiting three. He leaned forward on the chair, and conveyed to the others that they should lean in also so that what he said could be private.

  “I trust that everything is organised as carefully as your friend Arif has promised. Today we relax here, and tomorrow we make our way to your rendezvous bay. If we see anything out of place, or any sign that all is not well, the deal is off. Iannis and I will go our separate way back to Rhodes and you will go back to Arif. However if all goes smoothly, we will be rich men by Saturday night, and on our way to Amsterdam. I know you have made the travel arrangements,” he nodded to his son, “but I would like to be sure again that everything is in place.”