Dancing for the General

by Sue Star

  The heat had never abated during the night. Electric fans cooled the shade and marble interior of the reception hall. Anna wondered if she was doing the right thing. Rainer was dead. Let him go.

  Voices echoed across the stone chamber as the receptionist greeted Priscilla by name. Then she turned to Anna. “You must be Miss Riddle. Welcome to Turkey. Sorry you had to go through that dreadful incident yesterday, so soon after your arrival.”

  Anna shifted on her feet, uneasy that strangers were talking about her behind her back. She squeezed Priscilla’s hand. “Thanks. I’d like to speak to the person who handled those events. Mr. Wingate, I believe?”

  The receptionist nodded and led them down a hall to a small office, similar in size to the Turkish detective’s office but softer with colorful cushions propped against vinyl guest chairs. A brass vase held yellow and red zinnias. Framed photos of laughing faces lined the top of a credenza, and a Turkish rug warmed the floor. The cheery touches contrasted to the stark chill of marble, and Anna thought it strange that a man like Paul Wingate, all business, would be attentive to such detail.

  The receptionist brought them tea, then left them alone to sip the sweet taste of apple. Moments later, the efficient-looking woman who’d received Paul’s sheaf of papers the day before appeared in the open doorway and leaned against its frame to study Anna.

  “So you’re Anna Riddle,” she said, sweeping into the room with her hand outstretched. Heavy charms on her gold bracelet jingled. Tiny and slim in a tight-fitting suit snug against her curves, she managed to fill the room with her energy. “Welcome. I’m Fran Lafferty. What can I do for you?”

  “We were waiting to see Paul Wingate.”

  Fran laughed, a throaty, tired sound. The gentle sag at the corners of her eyes suggested an overworked woman, around forty, only a few years older than Anna. “Then you’ll have a long wait. He’s in meetings. But never mind him. I’m his assistant. I do most of his legwork for him behind the scenes. Maybe I can help you.”

  “I hope so,” Anna said, encouraged by the sincerity that radiated from Fran. “I need an update on what the police are doing about it. Mr. Orhon said the embassy is handling the matter.”

  Fran coughed on her laughter and leaned against one corner of her desk. “Why on earth do you want to know? You don’t need to get involved. That’s why we’re here, to take care of problems for you.”

  “I want to extend my condolences to Umit Alekci’s family, and I was hoping you’d give me their address.”

  Fran shook her head. “Uh-uh. No can do.”

  The direct approach hadn’t worked, Anna thought, disappointed. Then a flicker of irritation rose within her. “Very well, I shall have to find them without your help. Come along, Priscilla. Our taxi is waiting.”

  Fran sighed and smiled. “Look, I can’t help you not because I won’t but because I don’t have their address. They live in a place of no addresses, okay? Sit down, and let’s start over. I have an idea there’s more on your mind than merely extending condolences. Now, how may I help you?”

  Anna sank back into her chair and stifled her irritation. Fran was right about having more on her mind. “I also need to make some inquiries. About a person who may be missing. I’m not sure where to start.”

  One of Fran’s eyebrows arched. “You don’t know if this person is actually missing?”

  Priscilla piped in, “Mama says—”

  Anna raised her voice over Priscilla’s. “You see, I thought all along that this...missing person...died in the war, but now I wonder if... I don’t know. Maybe there’s a file about him or about any unusual incidents that might’ve involved him. Any records, perhaps leftover from the war?”

  Fran’s lip drooped. Either her facial muscles didn’t work properly or she smirked with indifference. “I see. Have you thought of going to the police?”

  “No, I can’t do that.” Anna stiffened, confused by Fran’s mixed reactions, first of welcome, then of withdrawal. “Don’t you have access to some records? I mean...I’ve tried before, in the States, and got nowhere. But a request coming from the embassy...”

  “Would have more clout? Maybe. But the police specialize in that sort of thing, you know.”

  “They don’t believe he ever existed in the first place.”

  Fran reached across her desk for a cigarette case, leather with intricate carvings, and held it out as an offer to Anna.

  “No, thanks, I don’t smoke.”

  Fran shrugged and shook out a cigarette. “Does this person have a name?”

  “Yes, of course,” Anna said, irritated again. “Rainer Akers. Although he might be using an alias now.”

  Fran winked. “An old flame?”

  Priscilla swung her feet that didn’t quite reach the floor and started to speak. “He—”

  Anna cut her off. “He was just a friend of the family’s.”

  Fran narrowed her eyes as she lit her cigarette. “Why don’t you tell me the whole story? From the beginning? I assure you, you can trust me.”

  Anna glanced first at Priscilla. Then back to Fran. It wasn’t a question of trust. She’d always repressed her true feelings, always been a prisoner to society’s dictum of proper decorum. If she and Priscilla were going to get along over the next few months, however, Anna would have to be more forthright.

  “You’re right.” Anna let out a long sigh. “We were engaged to be married.” Selected pieces of the story tumbled out, and she told Fran how she’d met Rainer at the university, had helped persuade him of the need to stamp out the oppression running rampant through Europe. Anna despised persecution of any kind, and no one was standing up to Hitler’s perverse form of it. Rainer was graced—or cursed—with German fluency, thanks to his immigrant grandparents, and so Anna had convinced him in those days before Pearl Harbor that he was in a special position to contribute to the cause. She hadn’t meant that he should actually go in the field and become a spy. He knew nothing of being a spy.

  Anna kept her guilt to herself. If not for her, things would’ve turned out differently for Rainer. She’d never seen him again, and after the war, when she followed up with a visit to Ohio to speak to his family, she found that the last of the Akers had died the year before she’d gotten there.

  “I thought he died in the war,” Anna said, summing up. “I hadn’t thought of him again for a long time, not until yesterday...er, afternoon.”

  “The incident at Atatürk’s Tomb,” Fran murmured, eyeing a smoke ring that drifted above their heads. “You took up a rather sizable chunk of our afternoon yesterday, getting you through all the paperwork generated by the local police.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. That’s what we’re here for. Okay, I’ll check with our military attachés and see if they have anything on Akers.”

  Priscilla remained quietly attentive throughout the story. Thank goodness, Anna thought, that Priscilla didn’t interject anything embarrassing she might’ve overheard from Mitzi. Not that Anna had anything illicit to hide. She simply didn’t welcome Mitzi’s pity over her single status. Didn’t want to become the object of a matchmaker. Anna had the right to keep some things private, for heaven’s sake.

  Fran rose from her desk and glanced at the papers stacked in her in-basket. “Anything else I can do for you?” Apparently, their time was up.

  “Yes, actually. I want to phone my sister in Nairobi before she leaves on safari, but when I tried this morning...” Anna broke off, overwhelmed by her failure to place a simple telephone call.

  Fran chuckled. “Nothing to be embarrassed about. I can start that process for you, too. It usually takes a long time, sometimes all day, to get through long-distance. Make sure you’re home tonight, and I’ll have it put through to that number.”

  “Okay, we will.”

  Priscilla kicked the metal legs of her chair with an anxious thump. “But we’re going to Tommy’s house tonight! You promised!”

  “No, this is more important, ho
ney. We’ll have to cancel.”

  “She’s right,” Fran said, smiling at Priscilla. “We’ll all be there tonight. There’s no reason why we can’t have the call ring through to the Wingates’ house instead.”

  Anna felt as if she’d swallowed something disagreeable. She didn’t want the entire American community to listen in to her conversation with her sister, but she felt boxed in between Fran’s offer and Priscilla’s anticipation. She nodded glumly and dug into her purse for her backup copy of telephone numbers she’d hastily scribbled. “Did Henry leave a copy of his itinerary with someone here at the embassy? When Mr. Yaziz visited me last night, he took mine.”

  “He came to your house? Why’d he do that? He shouldn’t have bothered you.”

  “It’s okay. He had to show me some beads he’d found. He thought they might’ve belonged to us.”

  “No, it’s not okay.” Fran reached around to her telephone and spoke into it. “I need Mr. Orhon in here on the double.” Then, to Anna she said, “You were right to tell me this. Only, you should’ve phoned up Paul last night, the minute Yaziz showed up on your doorstep.”

  The air chilled between them as they waited for Hayati Orhon to arrive. Anna wondered why the people in the embassy were so intent on buffering her from Yaziz.

  Fran drummed her fingernails against the metal surface of her desk, smiled at Anna, glanced at her watch, then at the door. Finally, she sprang to her feet. “What’s keeping him?”

  “Why do you need Hayati?” Anna asked. “Do you think he knows something about that detective?”

  Instead of answering, Fran muttered her displeasure in general about the difficulties of getting work done. She stubbed out her cigarette in a brass ashtray and said, “I’ll go find him. Wait here. I’ll be back in a jiff.”

  Anna shifted in her seat, uneasy, as Fran left the room. Her clicking footsteps faded away into the distance. One thing was sure: Anna didn’t want to risk having her thoughts and fears exposed to Hayati, who seemed able to read the discomfort on her mind.

  “Come on,” Anna said to Priscilla, taking her by the hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Yaziz waited on the street outside the offices for the Republic News as roosters greeted the day. A dolmuş rolled to a stop, screeching its brakes. A few passengers spilled from the sides of the bus, where they’d hung on for the ride to the city center. A few more squeezed out from the stuffed interior.

  Yaziz scanned the faces of the new arrivals while they lingered on the street, either dazed or reluctant to start a day of business. This was the day of the week that used to be set aside for prayers. Before Atatürk forced Turks to join the west.

  Not spotting Murat’s son among them, Yaziz dug his fists into his pockets and waited some more.

  Murat had been useless the night before, and now Yaziz had to forge his own way. Not only had Murat given him no leads but he’d also insulted him. What was wrong with his old friend?

  It was true that in the years since he’d first traveled abroad, Yaziz had found his country smaller than he’d once thought, and at times embarrassingly backward. Those observations, however, hadn’t really changed him. Not so much, anyway, that he deserved insults from a loyal friend. Loyalty counted for more than that.

  Murat’s son tumbled off the next dolmuş that arrived.

  “Excuse me, Nizamettin?” Yaziz said, hardly recognizing the young man whose light brown hair had grown a bit too shaggy. He hurried his pace, which only pronounced his limp.

  Nizamettin turned and squinted, chewing gum with an air of insolence. “Do I know you?” Away from his father’s house, he was a boy who thought he was a man.

  Yaziz sighed and reached for the inner pocket of his western suit jacket. For field work, he preferred a suit to his official uniform of blue and grey. As koreli, he’d earned the freedom to choose the way he worked on an assignment. Of course he had to answer to Bulayir for those assignments, but as long as he solved the case, no one cared how he did it.

  He’d only met Nizamettin a couple of times at family feasts, where boys were less interested in remembering their father’s friends than the friends were curious about the sons. Yaziz pulled out his badge from the inside of his jacket pocket. Nizamettin’s eyes widened, and his jaw stilled. He stepped back, into the shade of the office building, and loosened the stiff collar of his white shirt.

  “I have done nothing wrong,” Nizamettin said.

  It should be enough that Yaziz was Murat’s friend. Yaziz shouldn’t have to show his official identity. But Nizamettin was a modern Turk, which was both a good thing and a bad thing. “I am a friend of your father’s, and I bring you his greetings. Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  Nizamettin frowned, a scowl that only looked petulant on a face still plump with baby fat. He glanced at his wristwatch, then placed his hands defiantly on his hips. “I can give you a moment or two. Here, or nowhere.”

  Yaziz shrugged. “Suit yourself. What I want to know is what you have learned on the streets about a possible revolution.” He was not happy about being so direct, but he knew how to summon western directness when necessary.

  Nizamettin tipped his head back and laughed. Yaziz shifted his weight from one foot to the other, but he couldn’t find a comfortable position while he waited for the laughter to subside. Finally, Nizamettin led Yaziz around the corner, into a side street. The roar of traffic fell away behind them.

  An outdoor café offered a wooden table, alone and untended beside an ox cart. Thin, dusty leaflets of a locust tree draped overhead. Nizamettin claimed the table, and Yaziz ordered breakfast—crusty bread, olives, goat’s cheese, and coffee. Once they were served and alone again, Nizamettin leaned low across his plate. “What’s this about a revolution?”

  “That’s what I hoped you could tell me. The people are unhappy with the way the prime minister is undoing all of Atatürk’s good work, clamping down on them, and making a mess of our economy. You, a journalist, of all people, should know about unrest.”

  “I know nothing.” Nizamettin’s glance lifted over Yaziz’s shoulder. “My father is a dangerous fool to have sent you here to me.”

  “Don’t lie to me. You can either tell me what you know, or you can let the secret police persuade you to talk to them. Your choice.”

  “You, a friend of my father’s, would turn me over to them? Of course. You must be the one who set them onto my father in the first place. And you call yourself a friend.”

  Yaziz, grateful for the cover of his tinted lenses, returned the hard stare. He would never confess to not knowing what the young man referred to.

  Then he remembered Erkmen, lounging below the nargile salon the day before. Erkmen was a young lieutenant who made himself available at the office for a wide range of duties. He’d had ties to the secret police before Bulayir recruited him with a promotion almost as big as Yaziz’s last promotion. And all along, Yaziz thought Erkmen had been trailing him. Erkmen had been following Murat, instead.

  “No, that is not my doing,” Yaziz said. “Tell me, why are they interested in your father? Is there something more of interest than merely his sympathies for your colleagues in journalism?”

  Nizamettin sucked on an olive, then paused to turn down the ends of his mouth. “I suppose it has to do with the marriage my father is arranging for my sister. I have told her not to go along with the old ways, but she won’t listen.”

  “Ah, yes, your father mentioned such an arrangement. The assistant minister of the Interior, I believe he said, will be the happy groom.”

  “Your boss.”

  “Well, not directly, but he is one of those in charge of my department.”

  Nizamettin licked his fingers. “Very well. You call off your secret police, and then I might talk to you. Not before.”

  Yaziz shrugged. “You give me more power than I actually have.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Nizamettin scraped his chair back against the cement of
the sidewalk.

  “Believe what you will. But believe this: I am a paid servant of our lawfully elected government, and I will do what I have to do in order to protect the Republic. A lesson you could well learn.”

  “Even if I had the information you seek, I would not betray my friends as you are betraying yours.”

  Beneath the table Yaziz clenched one fist so tightly that a knuckle popped. Better that than Nizamettin’s nose, he thought. “Not even for your country?”

  Again Nizamettin laughed. “A revolution would be the best thing that could happen to this country right now. If I knew of such plans, I would not betray them, either.”

  “Then you would be a traitor.”

  “Not if I chose to do nothing.”

  “Doing nothing, while knowing of something, is the same as doing something.”

  “Then I am a hero for my country.” Nizamettin stood and grinned down at Yaziz with triumph while he stuffed his pockets with bread.

  “If you won’t give me a name,” Yaziz said, “then at least give me a time and date. How long do we have before the plans are carried out?”

  The young journalist jerked his head back, disgracing his father. “You are clever, as wise as a hoça. I’m sure you already know more than I know.” He stormed away, disappearing into the morning crowds as he rounded the corner.

  Deep in thought, Yaziz wondered if that was true. But what did he know? The order to investigate the threat of revolution had come from the minister’s office itself. Yaziz slowly sipped his coffee, turning over in his mind the connections among the various divisions of the National Police, all of them branching from the office of the Minister of the Interior.

  That’s where Bulayir’s directive had come from. Yaziz wondered, as the rich brew warmed him, lubricating his thought processes, if Aydenli—one of the assistant ministers of the Interior and groom of Murat’s daughter—was the reason behind Bulayir’s preoccupation and Murat’s silence.