Dancing for the General

by Sue Star

  As she rounded the last lion’s ass, she saw him waiting for her already, crouching near the eşek. “Umit!” she whispered.

  The man rose from his crouch, and she realized her mistake. This man was not her brother.

  He was too tall, too well-fed, and too poorly dressed. The brim of a peasant’s cap pulled down low, dividing his face into shadow and light, like the slash of a wounded soul. But he was no peasant. She could smell the earth on a peasant, even from this far away, but this man did not carry any dirt on him. The lit lower half of his face was clean and shaven free of any hair.

  Most of all, there was the gun.

  He held the weapon in one hand, and he pointed it straight at her heart. The slash of his face was a gaze like that of the evil eye. Her blood ran cold.

  Meryem had faced a living, breathing evil eye once before. Long ago. The Nazi bastard. She sucked in her breath and let her scarf slip.

  Before she could bargain her flesh and her gold for her life, the eşek lashed out with a hind leg kick and snorted. The man grunted and dropped onto his knees. The gun gave off a dull pop as it fell to the ground. Cursing, the man writhed, digging into the dirt with the toes of his patent leather shoes, shoes that did not match his baggy peasant’s shirt and trousers.

  By the time his hand left his groin to grope for the gun, she’d already beat him to it. Her foot pinned down the cold metal, the addition on the end that had muffled its sound. She lifted her sing-song voice to cry out, loud enough for the MPs to hear, “Over here!”

  The gunman’s gaze darted to the hillside where a solitary MP was already running toward her summons. “Whore!” the man whispered, his Turkish as thickly accented as hers. “You’ll pay for this!” He cupped his groin and limped away, swishing bushes.

  * * * * *

  On her knees in the shadow of the tomb’s portico, Anna clutched the letter to her breast. Why did the dead man have it? A torrent of Turkish words peppered the air above her head. She looked up. The guard, Priscilla’s friend Oscar, stood over her, pointing the bayonet end of his rifle at her.

  She drew in a gulping, gasping breath and shifted from her awkward crouch on the floor next to the man’s body. The guard shouted again, and the gleaming tip of his bayonet jerked closer to her face.

  “He says to drop what you took,” Priscilla explained from behind her. “And back away slowly. Don’t touch anything.”

  “But...” It was hers.

  Anna’s chest felt as if it would explode from her bottled-up air. Her heartbeat felt like a runaway train. Here at one of the four corners of the mausoleum, a cool draft swept over her, as if the dead man’s spirit touched her, passing from life to death. She shivered.

  Another shout. Another impatient flicker of the bayonet. Its razor-sharp point glistened before her eyes.

  She dropped the letter and tumbled backwards, scrambled to her feet and wrapped her arms around Priscilla. “Are you okay?” A bullet had killed the man in the western business suit instantly, she realized. And it had missed Priscilla only by inches. A violent shudder took hold of Anna, and she felt her strength flow out of her, the steel strength that she’d needed to carry her from her safe world to this new and strange place. “They must call for help,” she added. “Tell him, honey.”

  Turkish voices snapped a response, and Anna stiffened from the sound of anger.

  “He says don’t talk,” Priscilla said.

  Anna sputtered. “But...this man...and—”

  More Turkish words cut her off, and she fell silent, biting her tongue. There’s a sniper out there, she wanted to add. Maybe even the same person who had been following Anna. How likely was it that it could have been the Turkish peasant she’d seen? She wasn’t sure. She blinked at the blinding light where she’d seen him beyond the cool shade of the portico and squeezed Priscilla tighter to her side.

  They waited.

  Time blurred around them.

  Sirens whined a two-toned wail. Voices echoed, bouncing off the stone columns. Men in uniforms ushered them from one waiting spot to another. Others whisked past them, coming and going, clicking their heels on cement. Her mind, numb. Urgent voices spoke at her, and all she could do was shake her head and crush her fingers around Priscilla’s hand.

  No sounds of a scuffle indicated that they’d caught the sniper.

  Every time she closed her eyes, it flashed through her mind: the image of the man in the western business suit, spread out on the floor before her, blood pooling beneath his face. For her niece, it must be far worse. Priscilla had watched him fall. She must’ve stood only inches away when it happened. Tiny spatters of blood flecked her pretty sundress. Color drained from her cheeks. What exactly had she seen? The killer?

  “I just want to know if you’re okay,” Anna whispered in a shaky voice to her niece.

  Unintelligible words snapped at her, freezing her. Priscilla continued to stare dully ahead, ignoring Anna.

  Anna’s palms grew clammier. She recognized the old, familiar tightening in her chest and throat that signaled rising hysteria. But she’d grown past those nervous attacks. She hadn’t felt such uncontrollable anxiety since... Rainer. His death. Twelve years ago.

  That was over. She was well now. She’d finally recovered and moved on.

  But there was still the matter of the letter.

  The letter belonged to her. She’d written it. Someone had slit open the envelope. Someone had read her words of love. Private words. Not meant for anyone’s eyes but Rainer’s. Each time, he’d mailed the letters she’d written back to her for safekeeping. Almost as fast as he received them, he returned them, along with his own letters to her.

  Except for the last batch. She’d assumed her last letters had been lost, circling the globe, caught in some backwater bin. Somewhere.

  She’d assumed Rainer had never received them. That he’d died first, on whatever secret mission he’d been up to. Somewhere in the Balkans, that’s all the government’s representative had finally told her. Presumed dead. They’d never found his body.

  But now...

  Had the man in the western business suit died because of her letter? Maybe he’d known how Rainer had died.

  Turkish police busied themselves, trying unsuccessfully to get their flash cameras to flash, and for a moment, Anna and Priscilla were left unattended. Seizing the moment, Anna leaned closer to her niece and whispered, in case any of the officers might be near enough to hear. “What did he say to you?”

  But Priscilla responded by assessing her with a dull look glazed to her face. She blinked those green eyes of hers as if English were the foreign tongue.

  “I wonder who he was?” A chill rippled down Anna’s spine. He’d followed them, she thought more likely. Not his killer. But why?

  To give Anna the letter she’d written Rainer. Because the dead man must’ve known Rainer. He’d known what had happened to Rainer. He’d wanted to tell Anna about it, but his killer had shot him first.

  Before Anna could persuade Priscilla to answer, a pair of officers appeared at their side. They led them away from the tomb, down the steps, back across the concourse, filled now with several groups of gesticulating people, buzzing with gossip. Walking rapidly, their escorts pulled them along, skirting the groups. Anna and Priscilla had to run to keep from tripping.

  On the perimeter of the grounds, they reached a waiting van, and Anna felt her heart skip a beat when she saw the word “polis” painted on its side. Were they being arrested?

  What was it Henry—Mitzi’s husband—had said about the little red book? Her mind tumbled with incoherence.

  “But we have diplomatic immunity!” she said, balking as one of their escorts opened the side door.

  He waved away her protest and spoke rapidly in Turkish. Priscilla broke away from Anna’s grip and climbed into the vehicle, as if eager to go for a ride. Now, Anna had to follow. She stepped inside and claimed a firm position next to the child on a hard vinyl bench seat.

  The interio
r smelled of baked dust. A chain of blue beads dangled from the driver’s rear-view mirror.

  The van lurched, or was it her heart? Snapshots of passing scenery flicked by her window. City streets whizzed past, a flash of gray blocks and red flags, ox carts and donkeys and storks.

  Oh, God! She’d heard stories about Turkish prisons, stories that chilled her blood. That must be where they were taking her now.

  Chapter Three

  Questions swirled through Anna’s mind like a broken record. Who was he? Did he die...because of me?

  “Who was he?” said the Turkish detective’s voice in a thick accent. They were the same questions, again and again.

  The rumbling sound of Priscilla’s stomach was like an alarm that detonated around Anna, finally breaking through the surreal fog blanketing her mind up until now. She didn’t know how long they’d been at the police station, although she vaguely remembered having been ushered into this office, along with the hammering of questions, in the same muddled way she would remember a dream. No, a nightmare.

  She was inside a police station in a foreign country! Her hand flew to her neck. Her throat tightened, and she could hardly breathe.

  Keep calm. For Priscilla’s sake.

  She’d done nothing wrong. The police had nothing against her. They were merely after something, information she didn’t have. Well, so was she.

  Anna blinked at her surroundings, seeing them through clear eyes as if for the first time. They sat rigidly on metal folding chairs on the visitor’s side of a steel gray desk. The furniture suggested that this could’ve been any office in the States.

  Except it clearly wasn’t.

  A portrait of a balding Atatürk solemnly watched over them from his central position on the cracked plaster wall. A framed diploma from Indiana University hung beside the Father of Turkey. On the desk, a round, copper tray held three demitasse cups, lined with the dregs of Turkish coffee.

  Anna didn’t remember drinking hers, although the bitter aftertaste lingered on her tongue. She remembered telling what little she knew to Veli Yaziz, the detective with the National Police who now sat across the desk from them.

  She sucked air into her lungs and coughed. “I-I’ve told you all I know,” Anna said, forcing her tight, squeaky voice down into a lower, calmer register. “I really must take my niece home immediately. Give her supper.” If she couldn’t control the events surrounding her, then she could at least return Priscilla to a sense of normalcy. A police station was no place for a child. Above all else, Anna’s mission was to protect Priscilla. She reached across the narrow space between their metal chairs to rub her niece’s arm.

  “Of course, Meess Reeddle. A man from dee embassy will be here soon for you.” The detective’s English seemed fluent, except for his inability to pronounce “th’s” and short “i’s.”

  “And...you’ll put a guard on our house?” Anna continued. “Since you haven’t found...whoever shot him?” She’d told him about the person in balloon-style peasant pants that she’d glimpsed behind the lion statues, but Yaziz didn’t seem too concerned. He didn’t seem to think that the peasant could be the same person who’d shot the man holding her letter. Or that she and Priscilla were in any danger from whoever had killed him. What was wrong with this detective? Why couldn’t he see that the shooter would come after her and Priscilla next? He had to think they could identify him. And maybe Priscilla could.

  Yaziz steepled his fingers beneath a day’s growth of salt and pepper whiskers, as if he mentally toyed with her request. A tired sag pulled at the area hidden behind horn-rimmed frames, their lenses tinted gold. “You are certain,” he said, “that you do not know who was the dead man?”

  She shook her head and dug her nails into the flesh of her palms to stop her trembling. “I’ve already told you. I’ve never seen him before.” She wished he wouldn’t use that word—dead—in front of Priscilla. “But you must know by now who he is. Was. Surely you’ve gone through his pockets and found his identity yourself. Who was he?”

  “There is a name sewn into the label inside his suit jacket,” Yaziz said, instead of answering.

  “Well? What’s it say?”

  “Perhaps you will tell us.”

  “How would I know?” The detective infuriated her, which chased away the fading remnants of her anxiety attack. She took a deep breath.

  Yaziz picked up her letter, sealed in plastic, and waved it in front of her. “Perhaps you will explain this?”

  Her eyes followed its swaying motion. She wanted to snatch it from him. It was hers, after all. Or rather, Rainer’s. She remembered writing it to him. Seated on a boulder in the cottonwood grove on her mother’s ranch. She tried to remember what else she might’ve written in the letter besides her words of love. What had she written that would make someone want to kill in order to keep him from giving it to her?

  “It is personal, Mr. Yaziz.”

  “Efendim,” Priscilla said, reaching over to shake Anna’s arm. “You’ve got to call him efendim.”

  Anna startled from the little girl’s insistent shake. “Oh! All right, honey.”

  Yaziz dropped the letter onto the desk and leaned back in his chair to laugh. He had a soft chuckle that made his thin, shaggy head bob. “I see that young Miss Burkhardt will take good care of you while her parents are away.”

  He had that backwards, Anna thought, but she was grateful for her niece’s apparent understanding of the language. Priscilla could bridge the gaps in Anna’s knowledge. If only her niece would let Anna love her.

  “You admit that you wrote it,” Yaziz said. “How do you suppose the dead man came into possession of your letter to Lieutenant Akers?”

  “I don’t know,” Anna said, barely above a whisper. “I was hoping you could tell me that. Do you think he stole it?”

  “In London?” Yaziz snatched up the envelope again, and his stained fingernail tapped at the address. “Then he brought it here? To return to you?”

  “I told you I don’t know,” she snapped. “The APO address was supposed to direct the letters to London, where Rainer was headquartered. At least, that was my understanding. I don’t know where it went after that.” Somewhere in the Balkans, she guessed.

  Yaziz tossed the letter onto his desk, then leaned back with a squeak of his chair and aimed his tinted glasses at her. He studied her as if probing her thoughts. She would have to think things through carefully before she revealed too much.

  “The Burkhardts left yesterday, is that correct?” he asked, surprising her with his abrupt change of subject. “Is it not unusual for them to leave their daughter here?”

  Anna glanced back and forth between Yaziz, whose head tilted to a pensive angle, and Priscilla, whose eyes flew open to wide, green pools of inquiry. Her lower lip protruded again. Both of them leaned forward, anticipating her answer. Careful, she told herself.

  She cleared her throat and explained. “My sister and her husband believed it would be too disruptive to pull Priscilla out of school since most of their home leave this time falls during the first quarter of the school year.”

  Priscilla turned sharply away, bouncing her red curls about her shoulders.

  Although, who knew what Mitzi really thought? She’d been so remote. So unreachable... Anna was doing it again, protecting her baby sister.

  Anna continued, more for her niece’s benefit than the detective’s. “They have a fine, American school here, you see, and it’s growing all the time. This year the American military is taking it over and opening a new facility that will rival any States-side school.”

  Still, Priscilla aimed her back at Anna.

  “Most of our American guests are anxious to return to the U.S. for their home leave,” Yaziz said.

  Anxious. Yes, Anna thought. That described Henry’s state of nerves quite well during the few days between Anna’s arrival last week and the Burkhardts’ departure yesterday. Henry had brushed off Mitzi’s fractured, almost dazed behavior to a desperate n
eed for a vacation.

  It was none of the detective’s business about her sister’s fragile condition.

  “My sister and her husband have no home base to return to in the States. Well, there’s my folks’ ranch, of course. Henry is one of those career diplomats, who moves from country to country. Priscilla was born in West Germany. She knows no home in the States.”

  Yaziz drummed his long fingers on the metal surface of his desk, and with his other hand, he rubbed his chin, as if it itched. Or else he didn’t believe her rambling tale.

  She, too, found Henry’s story troubling, which was part of the reason why Anna had agreed to come to Turkey in the first place. “Mitzi and Henry would not have left their child behind if I was unable to be here with her,” Anna said. “Fortunately I could take a leave of absence from my job during the fall semester. Coming here gives me an opportunity to become better acquainted with my niece.”

  “How nice. What are they doing that takes them away from their daughter for so long?”

  She bristled at the hint of sarcasm to his voice. Perhaps it was only her imagination. Today’s extraordinary events had left her emotions raw, and she felt unable to make proper judgments. “See here, are you going to tell me who the fellow was? And why he had my property? I’m afraid I can’t be much help to you until I know more about his identity.”

  “We are investigating that now, Miss Riddle.”

  “But you said you’ve got his name. Stitched inside the suit, you said.”

  “A name, not his name. Now. You were telling me the whereabouts of your sister and why you are here to care for her child?”

  Anna shifted impatiently in her seat. “They’re traveling to places that are inappropriate to take a child, that’s why I’m here. Their first stop is Kenya, where they’ll go on safari. After that, they have not decided yet.”

  It might sound extreme to average, stateside Americans, but it wasn’t so unusual for that adventuring pair. What made Anna uneasy was how inaccessible Mitzi and Henry would be. Should a problem arise. Not that one would, of course. But after today...