Dancing for the General

by Sue Star

  “Oh, we are. Half-sisters, actually. Our fathers are different.”

  “It’s okay,” Fran said. “You don’t have to pretend with me. I know all about it.”

  “You do?” Anna took another step back. “That is, what do you know?”

  “I know what you’re looking for. And I know why you don’t want me to tell anyone.”

  Great. Anna had been caught, and she couldn’t deny it. As bad as her position appeared, however, Fran’s was worse. She steeled herself and pressed on. “What you think you know...is that also why you think I’m in the middle of some coup that may be brewing?”

  Fran tipped her head sideways. “Where on earth did you come up with that?”

  “I heard you and Paul talking. I was waiting for my phone call, and you two came in and—”

  “Forget it,” Fran said. “It’s nothing.”

  Anna didn’t believe her. The scrapes and bruises on her knees and wrists still stung, as a result of Rainer’s tackling her. He certainly hadn’t thought the conversation they’d overheard was nothing. It was important enough that he hadn’t wanted to be caught.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” Fran said. “I won’t say anything. Why should I? I’d lose my job if I told.”

  “Is that why you want to bury whatever information you have on Rainer?”

  “Rainer? Ah, yes. Your ‘friend.’ Look, you and Henry are going to great lengths to cover up Mitzi’s addiction, and if I blew the whistle, he’d have me fired. But you don’t have to hide it from me.”

  Anna’s heart skipped a beat. Addiction? What was this woman talking about? She opened her mouth to say something, anything to deny Fran’s outrageous suggestion, but only a choking sound came out.

  Fran continued. “What we don’t know is where the opium came from. You think Cora supplied her, but you won’t find it here. That’s what you’re looking for. I know. I’m sorry. Look, it didn’t come from Cora, that much we know.”

  Opium? Anna swayed on her feet, feeling the same waves of pain she’d felt earlier from the brass blow to her head. “W-what do you mean ‘we’?”

  “Paul’s the one who found the treatment center in Switzerland. Maybe you didn’t realize that.”

  “Uh...no, I didn’t.” They’d gone to Switzerland, instead. That’s why Yaziz couldn’t find Mitzi and Henry in Nairobi. There would be no call from there. Rainer was right. But how had he known?

  The call could still come from Switzerland.

  Fran sighed. “It’s always a danger in places like this for the wives. They have nothing to do but get into trouble.”

  The initial shock slowly eased its chokehold on Anna. She lifted her chin, steeling herself against this woman’s preposterous claims. “I wouldn’t say they have nothing to do. There are the children to raise.”

  She shuddered. Priscilla knew. That would explain her difficult behavior.

  Fran went on. “They have enough help from the servants and the entire community that the children don’t notice their mothers’ absence from time to time. Mitzi was clever, I’ll give her that much credit.”

  “She’ll be back!”

  “I hope so. For Henry’s sake.”

  Anna collapsed onto the velvet cushion of the stool before Cora’s dressing table. The ghost of her face reflected back at her in the mirror, where photos of family and everyday life tucked into the frame.

  “In that way,” Fran said, “being clever, I suppose she was like you.”

  Anna didn’t care for the reference to her sister in the past.

  “But as for you,” Fran said, “you’re too clever for your own good. You can forget about that little conversation you thought you overheard between Paul and me. We’re not here to interfere. We let underlying sentiments run their course. You understand?”

  Anna stared into the mirror, understanding one thing too well. The woman who stared back at her was not the woman Anna thought she was.

  Several heartbeats later, Fran broke the silence. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her deep voice broke through the fog that clouded Anna’s mind. “This is clearly a difficult subject for you. Has Mitzi suffered...other addictions in the past?”

  It took all of Anna’s strength to turn her head, to lift her focus from Cora’s mirror to Fran Lafferty, who’d moved from the doorway to stand by Anna’s side. Anna felt as if a lead blanket weighed her down and strapped her to the dressing table’s stool. The cry for help from Henry about Mitzi...

  Please come stop we need you

  Anna’s instincts had been correct to drop her own life and come to their aid, to be here with Priscilla while Henry found the proper care for Mitzi. Teaching history to Boulder teenagers was not as important as her own family’s needs.

  It wasn’t just Priscilla and Henry who needed her help.

  Anna wished that her sister had felt she could confide in her. What were sisters for, but to help one another in times of need?

  “No,” Anna said, her voice a whisper. She closed her eyes, squeezing back moisture that she would not allow to form into tears.

  Anna felt an arm slip around her shoulders, and her eyes flew open. Fran knelt beside her. “She’ll be okay,” Fran said. “She’s stubborn. Like you.”

  “Don’t I know it. And trouble, too.” Anna made a choking sound, a failed laugh. “I remember one of our more serious arguments, back on the ranch, during the war. Mitzi was in such a rush one morning that she wouldn’t do her chores, and she had the nerve to beg me for a ride to town. Not to school, where she was supposed to go. I wouldn’t give her a simple ride, even though...”

  Heat rose to Anna’s cheeks as she realized with a shock what was happening. She was confiding personal information to a stranger. And not just to any stranger, but to this hard-edged woman whose temperament changed from moment to moment. Fran knew more than she let on, and Anna wasn’t certain she could even trust her. This was what the threat of tears could do. This inappropriate confessional must be the result of receiving the shocking news of Mitzi’s addiction to opium, of all things. She’d always known Mitzi was at risk for serious trouble one day, but she’d assumed that Henry would protect her from it, not lead her into the opium den, so to speak.

  “Even though what?” Fran asked.

  Anna shrugged. “Oh, nothing. We argued some, and then it was all over.”

  “Well, did Mitzi end up getting her ride?”

  “She ran to the neighbors and got a ride with one of them.”

  “Did you ever find out where Mitzi was going that was so important to skip school that day?”

  “She was auditioning as a dancer somewhere, and that eventually led her to performing with USO. If she’d only told me how important that day was, I would’ve driven her. But I thought I knew what was best for her. I ended up letting her down.” Anna lowered her chin, embarrassed that she’d confessed the long-held guilt.

  “She found her own way, didn’t she?” Fran squeezed her shoulder and rose.

  “She sure did. That job got her out of Boulder. And led to her meeting Henry. He came to one of her performances. Somewhere in Europe.”

  “I knew she’d been a dancer,” Fran said, “but I never realized it was anything professional. She gave up her career to become a diplomat’s wife. Funny how things work out. As if it was orchestrated from the beginning.”

  “What do you mean?” Anna watched Fran pull a fresh cigarette from a silver case on Cora’s dressing table.

  “Probably nothing.” Fran moved restlessly across the room to an open window, where she fixed the cigarette in her holder and lit it. “I heard a different story, that’s all. I heard that Henry and Mitzi were introduced through an old boyfriend of yours.”

  “Mine?” Anna felt the erratic beat of her heart. “Who told you that?”

  “Henry. Maybe I misunderstood.”

  Anna stood up so fast that she knocked over the stool.

  Fran’s eyebrow arched again. “Rain
er Akers, right?”

  Anna tried to keep her voice even, but it cracked anyway. “What’d Henry say? About Rainer?”

  “You knew they worked together during the war, didn’t you? Some sort of secret mission, although he wouldn’t say.”

  Anna wanted to scream her protests. Henry and Rainer? It wasn’t true! Her mind swirled with contradictions. She’d known Rainer before the war. Her sister hadn’t met Henry until after the war. After Rainer was gone. Rainer and Henry couldn’t have known each other. Unless...

  They’d known each other first.

  On a secret mission.

  Which was apparently still secret.

  Anna managed to push back her distress and compose herself. She was good at hiding her feelings.

  “Why, yes, of course,” she said, flushing. She wasn’t good at lying. “What else did Henry tell you?”

  It was a mistake. It must be. What right did any of them have to keep such a secret from her?

  Fran shrugged and flicked ash out the window. “Nothing.”

  Anna marched across the room to Fran’s side. She wanted to shake the woman, the “gal from the embassy” who’d worked with Henry and probably knew more than she had any business knowing. She wanted to take her by the arms and shake the information out of her.

  Henry and Rainer had known each other. Worked together.

  Quivering inside with disbelief, she lowered her voice to a soft level of innocence. “How long have you known Henry?”

  “We go back to India, where we were stationed together before this assignment. Priscilla was just a baby. So you see, we share history.”

  History. As if that gave Fran the right to private information.

  “That’s why I’m concerned about Mitzi,” Fran said, “and I wanted to make sure you were the answer to her needs. I think you are.”

  “I don’t feel like much of an answer to anything.” Damn! She hadn’t wanted to voice her self-doubt. It had just slipped out before she could control it. Anna sighed. She might as well see it through, now. “If I could face the truth, I would’ve been more forthright about my fiancé from the beginning. I wouldn’t have to be up here, searching, behind Cora’s back.”

  Fran puffed thoughtfully on her cigarette, narrowing her eyes. Finally, she stubbed it out in a brass ashtray in the windowsill. “Ah. I think I see the picture now.” From her pocket she withdrew a paper bundle, tied with a crushed ribbon. “This is what you were looking for, isn’t it?”

  Anna gasped. Then nodded. “What are you doing with my...that is, with those letters?”

  “Paul beat you to them. He got them from Cora and asked me to hand them over to the police, since they seem to go along with some evidence they already have. Maybe that’s the right thing to do, but I don’t think this is evidence, do you? Well? Are you going to take them or not?”

  Anna hesitated only a moment, then snatched the letters and stuffed them into her own pocket.

  “You see?” Fran said, smiling. “We have to trust each other. I have no intention of saying anything about any of this.”

  “Thanks. Although, I don’t know why you’ve—”

  Just then, a scream pierced the night air. A woman’s shrill scream rose above the hum of voices from the party in the backyard below.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Meryem’s heart thudded as the asker sang. He surely knew where she hid, inside the children’s shack. Even so, he finally turned away. His voice and footsteps faded into the distance. Now was her chance. Or was it a trick?

  She slid the piece of wood aside that served as a door, stared out into the night, then turned to hand the flashlight back to the little girl. She said goodbye to the children and escaped through the hole, out onto cool grass of the Americans’ yard. She darted from tree to tree, headed for the fence on the opposite side of the yard, and had barely made it there when she heard the scream.

  The scream, a woman’s piercing voice, curdled Meryem’s blood. What had the asker done now? Killed one of his American neighbors? He’d practiced on kittens, after all.

  What’s done was done. She picked up her skirts and sped faster, no longer taking care to cross in the shadows of trees that filled the Americans’ yard.

  It was a waist-high wrought-iron fence on the far side of this yard, separating it from the vacant lot on the downhill side. Umit’s eşek had balked, pulling her into this very same vacant lot only the day before. Where Meryem had first put herself into this mess. Only yesterday. When she’d noticed the asker spying on the cackling, American women.

  Bah! She had better things to do now than to become embroiled in their affairs.

  She swung first one leg then the other over the top of the fence and dropped into the empty lot. She ran, slipping and snaring her tsharchaf on prickly weeds. She had to cross this open terrain as quickly as possible. No one had cultivated trees or shrubs here that would protect her from watching eyes. Not that anyone should be watching her, anyway, not after that blood-curdling scream from the American party she’d left behind.

  By now, she was probably safe from the watching man on the street, but she wouldn’t take that chance. She posed too great of a risk for the general and his men. She could trust no one.

  The conversation she’d overheard among the general’s men... They were plotting revolution while outside eyes thought they were merely old men, partying. Did the asker know what his pasha was really up to? Was that why he’d attacked the American woman to make her scream just now? He’d taken out his wrath on the foreign gadje because he hadn’t been able to lure Meryem out of the children’s shack.

  The children. She might be able to trust Priscilla and Tommy. The girl had seen Meryem’s tussle with the secret police the day before. What else had she seen?

  Meryem slid the last few feet in the dust. At the bottom of the slope, a cement retaining wall stopped her. She jumped down onto a narrow strip of ground behind the neighboring apartment building and crept along its wall to the far end. She glanced around the corner of the building at the street, Yeşilyurt Sokak. Nothing moved.

  Now, a tomb-like quiet fell over the place, and she wondered if she’d imagined the scream. People should be running, alerted to trouble. Windows should be thrown open and lights should blaze.

  But nothing happened. Meryem felt a cool shiver, a premonition of disaster.

  Avoiding the street, she followed a path behind this building, and then behind the next one. Finally, Güven Evler lay directly ahead. She came out from behind the buildings even with the ditch that streamed through the vacant lot where she and Umit liked to rest by their water hole. Where a hollow tree surrounded by a thicket of brush made a good hiding place for valuable things.

  She darted across the street and dove into the brush. A pulsing siren wailed in the distance. It hammered its route along the boulevard and whined around sweeping curves. Grew louder as it screeched closer to Kavaklidere.

  Perhaps she hadn’t imagined the scream after all, she thought, falling to a crouch. Thick brush swallowed her.

  She crept along, low in the brush, listening to the sirens gaining on her.

  The sound of sirens always caused her heart to flutter.

  Not now, she told herself, feeling as good as blind. Panic filled her breast, and the wailing siren echoed in her head. She felt dizzy and in danger of being physically ill.

  Just a few more feet. The siren bleated through the air, sailing closer. Ever closer to her.

  She followed the ditch through this empty field. Staying clear of the trickle of water. Then up a small rise, climbing away from the ditch. She was making far too much noise, that’s what panic did to her. She crashed through the dried stems and branches, stumbling the last of the way to the hollow stump.

  She didn’t know how to handle a gun. No. She didn’t. But she did have experience. With a gun like the one she’d hidden in the hollow stump. A gun like the Luger. Or maybe that one had been a Luger, too.

  She didn’t know anym
ore.

  Hadn’t seen the other one slip up on her before.

  Didn’t see this one slip up on her now. As she hunkered down to the hole in the stump. Groped around inside. Felt nothing.

  Disappointment raged through her. Kept her from seeing the shadows move in the night. As they did that time before. She’d never thought it could happen again.

  It did.

  The stink of his body hit her first. Then one arm grappled round her breasts. His other hand pulled her head back at an angle that made her bones ache and her scalp tear. His breath tinted with licorice breathed hot and damp on her neck.

  “Gypsy filth,” the asker snarled in her ear.

  * * * * *

  Silence descended in the aftermath of the scream, as if the party’s plug had been pulled, draining its bubble of merry voices.

  “Oh, my God,” Anna mumbled, lunging to the window of Cora’s bedroom where she scanned the backyard below. Guests surged from the central lawn, strung with lanterns, to the dark perimeter of the yard. To the area where the children played in their clubhouse.

  “Priscilla!” Anna turned and ran. She didn’t know if Fran followed or not.

  The woman’s scream outside echoed the tumult of Anna’s mind. Danger had followed her everywhere, stalking her from Atatürk’s Tomb to Ozturk Bey’s shop to here.

  Danger had finally caught up to Priscilla. Why ever had Anna left her precious niece unattended, even for a moment, even in the company of her friend? This was a strange land, she reminded herself. Where anything could happen.

  Coups.

  Anna raced through the hall. Clattered down the steps. Flung open the back door.

  A lull had fallen over the party. Some guests, women mostly, milled under the lanterns and stared into the dark beyond the periphery of the tree-lit glow. Anna had stood with them only a short while ago, listening to their innocent gossip.

  Nothing was innocent anymore.

  Farther away, a cluster of men huddled in the shadows of the untamed areas beyond the edge of grass. Somewhere in that tangled mess of weeds and wild brush was where Anna had found the tripod, and Rainer had found her.