by Graham Marks
“You know completely everywhere your esteemed father has been to?”
“No, sir, but I do know he’s not a liar! He told me this was going to be some trip because he’d never been out of the country before, just like me.”
“Well...” Baba Duan stuck his lower lip out, raised his eyebrows and nodded to himself; then he got up. “Come with me. I have something you really should must see...”
Baba Duan led the way downstairs, through his main office and into the room with the telephones in it (they sat on a long table, with pieces of card that had the details and particulars of all the different newspapers thumb-tacked to the wall behind). At the rear of the room Trey noticed there was a door with a bare light bulb over it, which was glowing red; as he was about to ask what it meant the light went out and the door opened, revealing Evren, his sleeves rolled up and wearing a green eyeshade, like the ones Trey had seen newsmen wear in the movies.
“I have develop, Baba...” he said, wiping his hands on a grubby cloth. “Just wait the negative to dry.”
Behind Evren Trey could see a room full of equipment and what he could now see were photographic prints strung from wires like washing on a line.
“This boy! Such talent – he take the picture, he make the picture!” Baba Duan beamed, his arms outstretched. “Where is the one from before, Evren, the one I think we should now show to our very good visitor and guest?”
“In the file, Baba...the Almanya file.”
“Germany, of course, of course...” Baba Duan turned on his heels and went back into his office, waving a finger in the air. “One moment, Trey, or maybe two...”
“You take pictures?” Trey asked; Evren nodded. “Is this your darkroom – can I see?”
“Yes, please,” Evren smiled, standing aside to let Trey in. “You have camera?”
Trey shook his head as he went into the small room. “I was planning on asking for one this next Christmas.”
“Christmas?”
“You know...” Trey gazed around at what seemed more like a laboratory, and certainly smelled like one. “Santa Claus and stuff?”
“We not have.”
“Oh...really?” Trey’s attention was drawn to a by-no-means brand-new camera; its leatherette covering peeling and scuffed, the creases in its bellows worn from use, it sat on a bench ready to take pictures. “That yours?”
Evren nodded. “Kodak Series III, version No. 2C.” The boy shrugged. “One day I will have Leica, maybe Zeiss, but I am good with this.”
“He most genuinely is!” Baba Duan appeared at the door. “A small fragment of your time, Trey...I have something you should see, a very truly anomalous event, I think you will find yourself agreeing. Maybe there is some explanation, who can tell?”
Baba Duan led Trey back to his office and pointed to his desk, which Trey saw had been cleared somewhat. In the empty space there were two ten-by-eight inch, black and white photographs.
“See if you recognize,” Baba Duan said, waving Trey forward.
He walked over to the desk and looked at the grainy images that had been printed onto the glossy paper; they were of the same smartly-dressed man. In the one on the left he was alone, dressed in a dark pinstripe suit and what looked to be brogues, standing in a street, a newspaper tucked under one arm as he lit a cigarette; he had been looking towards the photographer when that picture had been taken. In the second the man was in a plain suit and getting out of a car, the door being held open by a man who couldn’t be anyone else but their driver, Ahmet.
In both of the pictures Trey found himself staring at his father. He blinked, glanced over at Baba Duan and Evren, who were observing him quizzically and with interest, and then back at the picture. “So?”
“Evren took this very picture, the one with the car, yesterday.” Baba Duan smiled. “And he took the one other one about nearly four weeks ago. Here in Constantinople, on the Grand Rue de Pera.”
“But...” Trey shot a glance at the pictures. “But that’s not possible...”
“I very much assure that this is what did happen.”
“You say! But we were still in London four weeks ago.” Trey looked at the pictures again, and it was still his father looking back at him.
Or was it...?
Trey picked up the pinstriped shot, examined it closely and then held it at a distance. He got a feeling there was something not quite right about it, but he couldn’t, for the life of him, put a finger on what that was. Then he realized it wasn’t what his father looked like, so much as what he was wearing...as far as he knew his father didn’t own a pinstripe suit, and, come to think of it, wouldn’t ever wear brogues! And his hair looked shiny, as if it might have been brilliantined. His mother did not approve of brilliantine.
“This one is not my father.” Trey put the picture back on the desk and folded his arms.
“If you say that is so...but I am very strongly interested in why you seem so quite positive it is not your much-admired father.”
“It sure looks like him...had me fooled there for a moment...but it isn’t, Baba Duan, honest. The clothes are all wrong, and my mother wouldn’t let him in the house if he put oil on his hair, believe me. And like I say, we hadn’t even left for Constantinople when it was taken.” Trey shrugged apologetically at Evren, hoping the boy didn’t think he was accusing him of lying. “Maybe it’s just a trick of the light, right?”
Baba Duan held out his hand and Evren gave him a sheaf of photos. “A trickiness of light every time?” he asked, handing the photos to Trey.
Slowly leafing through the half-dozen pictures, there was no way Trey could deny that in every single one of them the man did look just like his father. Except for the clothes. “I don’t understand...”
“This is also true for myself. It is what the French call une énigme, a great puzzlement – how can this person be in two place at actually the identical time? There are no possibilities!”
“Well I’m not lying!”
“And neither, Evren says to me, does his camera.” Baba Duan looked at his son for confirmation.
“If you are honest with it, Baba, the camera give you back what is real.”
“But why were you following this man? What’s with all the pictures?”
“Sit down, I will explain...”
Before he did, Baba Duan sent Evren off to arrange for the provision of fresh coffee, pastries, and his cigarettes; then he turned to Trey, his ever-present smile replaced by an expression somewhere between stern and thoughtful. Trey didn’t know what he was going to say, but he had a very definite feeling that he wasn’t going to like it much.
“You first and most foremostly should understand that rumour is the air in this city’s lungs, and intrigue is very correctly said to be its lifeblood. I can tell you this with my eye on heaven –” Baba Duan looked upwards, a comically pious expression on his face to emphasize his point – “knowing it to be completely the truth. Possibly the only truth. You must comprehend this because, in Constantinople, deciding which ‘facts’ are indeed not facts, but fiction, and quite how much of the ‘truth’ you are being told has been bent to suit the teller, it is a way of life. Do you see?”
“Yeah, I suppose...” Trey frowned, unable to work out why he was being told any of this.
“Do you play poker, young Drummond MacIntyre Three?”
“Me? No.”
“A pity. Then you would understand most terrifically. I will ‘cut to the chase’, as I have read they say in the motion pictures business. The rumours concerning this man –” Baba Duan picked up one of the pictures – “are that he is a spy...”
“You think my father’s a spy?”
At that moment Evren came back into the room carrying a brass coffee tray with cups and small glasses of water on it, followed by his mother, Hatijeh, with a tray of pastries, and one of his brothers who had the cigarettes and matches.
“Excuse...no, the wrong picture altogether – you see how confusing this two people ar
e?” Baba Duan put the photo of Trey’s father down and picked up one of the man who looked just like him. “But I know that this man, the name he uses is Gessler...” Baba Duan took something with a lot of pistachios on it off the tray as Hatijeh went past him. “He is a spy. I am pretty much darn sure of that.”
“Gessler?” Trey took the cup and saucer that Evren gave him without paying much attention to what he was doing.
“I think probably for Almanya, or maybe Rusya – for the Germany or the Russia...” The pastry disappeared from view. “...Maybe both. Sip your coffee s-l-o-w-l-y, my young United States friend. Take your time.”
“What?” Trey looked down, surprised to see what he was holding; he’d had coffee before and wasn’t all that sure he wanted to repeat the experience, but on the other hand did not want to appear rude. “Oh...right...”
“But now I have a confusion about this man.” Baba Duan took his own advice and sipped his coffee. “And be sure to drink only the top half of it all...the rest even a goat might not eat.”
Trey did as he was advised, surprised by the rich, aromatic smell of the dark, slightly bitter (but then again quite sweet) liquid, which tasted nothing like the coffee he’d had back home in Chicago. Which is when he remembered he hadn’t asked his second question, about checking the hotel...
“Your baba,” said Evren, before Trey could open his mouth, “he have brother?”
“One hundred per cent!” Baba Duan lit himself a congratulatory cigarette, as if celebrating his son’s genius. “On the button of the nose, fruit of my loins! Do you have an uncle, Trey?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“There!”
“He’s my mother’s brother. Six inches shorter than my father, and with fair hair.”
“Ah...”
“Look, whether you believe me or not, I’m telling you that that guy in the pinstripe suit is not my dad, or my uncle, or anything to do with my family!”
“I am prepared to say that I possibly believe you are very much precisely right...” Baba Duan leaned back in his chair and spent a moment watching the curling, grey silk snake flowing from the tip of his oval-shaped cigarette as it poured upwards, seemingly in defiance of gravity. “But the problem is, young Trey, just how will your acclaimed father convince those who have taken him that they do not possess the right person – the spy I think they think they have taken – when, here in this city, a man is hardly ever who he says he is?” In the other room one of the phones started to ring. “Indeed, just like my good self...”
Trey watched him walk out of the room, his second question still unasked and unanswered.
17 ON THE MOVE
As Trey waited for Baba Duan and Evren to deal with whatever business the phone call was all about, Hatijeh came bustling back into the outer office, drying her hands on a dishcloth and bringing with her the smell of something good she must have been cooking upstairs. As she began collecting the coffee cups she reached out to pick up Trey’s and instead put the saucer on top of the cup and turned it over; head on one side, she smiled gently at him and nodded, putting a small coin on top of the cup before busying herself with the rest of the clearing up. Trey knew that she didn’t speak any English, so he smiled back at her, wondering why on Earth she’d made more mess by upending his cup. And exactly what was with the coin?
Just then Baba Duan came out of what Trey now thought of as the phone room and there was a flurry of conversation and hand-waving with his wife, which it didn’t take Trey long to figure out had something to do with him, and, oddly, his coffee cup.
In mid-sentence Baba Duan switched from Turkish to English and turned to Trey. “You are in luckiness!”
“I am? Why?”
“Because my illustrious wife very much desires to tell the story of your coffee!” Baba Duan gestured rather grandly at Trey’s upturned cup as if it was truly an object to be marvelled at. “She feel you have, how shall I say...sadness and desolation, and it might tell you something.”
“What might tell me something – I drank my coffee.”
“But...” Baba Duan bent down and picked Trey’s cup up to reveal the intricate, lacy pattern the grounds had left behind as they’d drained out, “...this receptacle is a book, and my Hatijeh a magnificent reader of its pages!”
Hatijeh had claimed she could see fireworks, a black cat and a rat in the bottom left-hand side of the cup, which, she had said through Baba Duan, meant Trey’s recent past had included him having problems with a dark and unpredictable thief. Considering what he assumed she must know about his present circumstances, this, Trey considered, was not what he would call hot news.
Hatijeh continued the reading with what the future would hold and according to the signs in the top half of the cup, it was a lot brighter. An open window pointed to a streak of fortune, a man on a horse was good news and strong lines denoted a successful journey. Baba Duan was delighted with the results, expressing his undying respect for his wife’s clairvoyant talents, and although Trey was less than amazed by the quality of the fortune telling, he thanked Hatijeh anyway. Like his gramps said, it didn’t cost a dime to be polite, and it might earn you a dollar.
“And now I very much am of the opinion, Trey, that the time has come to do as I said...” Baba Duan straightened his tie.
“What was that?”
“The journey you must take – at the first available opportunity – is to the premises of your inestimable American Consulate!”
“I never went there with my dad. Where is it?”
“Not so terrifically far away, in fact entirely near to the Pera Palas, where you were staying! Evren and Neyla will take you – Evren!” Baba Duan snapped his fingers, making a sound like a cracker being pulled. “Neyla!”
Trey was used to pretty cut and dried farewells, which required of you no more than a firm handshake and some courteous, well-mannered small talk about how marvellous it had all been. Getting out of Evren’s house was nothing like that. It took what seemed like hours, necessitating him being hugged more than once by every member of the household, as well as a couple of people he’d never seen before.
“It has been our most sublime pleasure to be the recipients of your company, young Master Drummond MacIntyre Three!” Baba Duan held the door open to let Trey, Evren and Neyla out. “I would of course myself escort your good self to the Consulate, but I have an engagement of some great importance that I must attend to with immediacy. Business is business, as I’m sure your father would ultimately understand.”
Trey nodded, thinking that Baba Duan and his father more than likely had completely different ideas about what the word “business” meant, and was then completely taken aback when Hatijeh looked at him, burst into tears and had to be taken off to be calmed down by a neighbour. Watching her go he did wonder if she’d been completely truthful about what she’d seen in his coffee grounds. But he had no time to think about that as, finally, the front door closed behind him and he was on his way.
Moments after Evren, Trey and Neyla had disappeared down the street on their way to the Consulate, a mud-spattered, travel-strained Opel roadster, its top down, pulled up outside the house. A bearded man got out and stretched very slowly, as if he’d been sitting in the same position for rather longer than was comfortable; he was dressed in dark brown corduroy trousers and a tweed jacket, dark glasses and a broad-brimmed hat which, bending down to look in the wing mirror, he carefully adjusted. The man reached back into the car for a gabardine coat and a leather briefcase, which he tucked under one arm; he then walked round the car and went up the steps to the front door, rapping imperiously on it with a leather-gloved knuckle.
The door opened, the space completely filled by Baba Duan’s impressive bulk. “A very fine and good morning?” Baba Duan said, staring inquiringly at the man, looking him up and down.
“Nicht unbedingt...not, I think, necessarily,” the man replied curtly, his accent guttural and clipped. “I would like to come in. Sofort! Now!”
&nb
sp; “I am so very much afraid that I was myself just on my way out – an errand of some small importance. I will naturally of course be back...” Baba Duan caught sight of the gun barrel pointing out from under the raincoat the man had over his right arm. “Ah, yes...I can now see that I am about to be somewhat unavoidably delayed...”
“Correct.”
Baba Duan stood to one side and waved the man into the house. “Kommen Sie herein, as I recall that you say it in Berlin.”
“You have a good memory, Herr Hendek.” The man followed Baba Duan as he backed down the corridor towards his office. “I hope it is good enough.”
“Good enough for what, could I possibly ask?”
“You will find out, soon enough.” The man closed the office door behind them; putting down his briefcase and raincoat he locked the door and then waved the Luger automatic pistol at Baba Duan. “Sit down.”
Doing as he’d been instructed, Baba Duan leaned back in his chair and, his eyes never leaving the man’s face, reached into a pocket of his capacious jacket. “Cigarettes...” he explained, bringing out a packet. “For my nerves.”
“You are nervous, Herr Hendek?”
“Not precisely at the moment...” Baba Duan struck a match, his hand shaking slightly. “...But I very much believe quite firmly that prevention is better than needing a cure.”
“A wise principle, to be sure.”
“Indeed,” echoed Baba Duan, failing, for the first time in a long time, to blow the perfect smoke ring. “What can I do for you, Mr. Herr Reinhardt Gessler?”
“Ah...” Gessler smiled thinly, touching his bearded chin. “You have seen through this, how shall I say, this theatrical disguise.”
Baba Duan raised his eyebrows. “You are, how shall I say, very close up to me.”
“And yet, as far as I know, we have never met.”
“True. But it is my job to have knowledge.”
“We are more the same than we are different, you and I...how did you get this knowledge – or was it a shot in the dark?” Gessler swung the Luger to and fro.