Dancing for the General

by Sue Star

  She didn’t care where she was, because she had Rainer’s medal again. She closed her fingers around the silver piece, gripping it tightly. Her heart raced. Breathing slowly, she tried on a smile of reassurance, more for herself than for the curious Turks who paused nearby.

  “Everything’s all right,” she said, backing away, but not knowing exactly where to go. She slipped her hand into her pocket, dropping the medal inside, clinking it against her house key. “Thanks very much. Teşekkür ederim.”

  She pretended to be a tourist, studying the ruined wall that followed the contours of the hilltop. Eventually, the curious onlookers gave up, muttering under their breath. Crazy American, she imagined was what they mumbled.

  Soon, the flow of people resumed as they went about their business. The boy was gone by now. Or else hiding from her, watching her. He hadn’t been Mustafa, Umit’s son. She wasn’t sure why that information pleased her.

  Exactly where in Ulus had her chase taken her? She evaluated her position on the hillside overlooking Ankara. The panorama of the city spread out below like a crust where none should exist, across dusty, rolling terrain, a sandy brown. The faint sound of hammers floated across the gap from the new part of the city away in the distance to the old city, up here on the hill. Ruins crumbled around her.

  She’d read about some of these ruins in her guidebook. There was a fortress crowning the hill, and it had been used by the Byzantine, Roman, Hittite and many other cultures to defend against their enemies. Here was the center of their old power, and she absorbed some of that radiating strength now.

  Her pulse rate evened, and time slowed around her. Yes, she did feel something. Maybe not power, but timelessness. Nearby, Turkish women balanced pitchers, presumably of water, atop their heads as they glided silently past her, never missing a step over the rough cobbles. For how many centuries had this same scene of activity gone on, without change? Anna could almost hear echoes of the voices of lives long past. History breathed in the air, as alive as she was. For an instant, she had to remind herself that this was 1957—A.D., not B.C. She was living in the midst of live history.

  Under other circumstances she would want to explore further, but now she shook herself out of the spell that the reminders of history always cast about her. What was she going to do? She needed to find her way back to Priscilla, and she had no means to do so other than her own two feet.

  If she headed downhill, she would eventually intersect Atatürk Boulevard, and if she just followed that main artery of the city, she’d eventually get home again.

  Home! Had she called it that?

  She picked her way carefully down the steep slope of the cobbled lane, no wider than a donkey’s path. Choosing a route that appeared to follow the general direction she needed to go, she soon dropped from the exposed crown of the hill into cool shadows, where the winding lane tunneled through dilapidated buildings that tilted this way and that. Narrow porches hung out over the street on their supports of long poles and looked as if they could come crashing down atop her head at any minute. She hoped there were enough hours of daylight left to find her way, as she had no idea how far she would have to trek or how long the journey would take her.

  Damn that Ahmet!

  Descending deeper into the canyon of buildings that framed both sides of the narrow alley, she remembered that the Alekci family lived in an apartment on a lane like this one. Anna wondered if she could find them again in this maze. Mustafa wasn’t the boy who’d hurt her, and she wished she could make amends for having believed he was.

  As long as she was already here, in the neighborhood, she searched for the leaning building with the stork’s nest atop. She called into her mind the butcher’s hastily sketched map and oriented herself to the slope of the hill.

  She surprised herself when she actually found the stone portal leading off the street. She stepped into its cool shade and gazed up the wooden steps into the darkness of the upper floor, where the Alekcis lived. No wailing floated down the steps today. Instead, a slice of light from an open doorway up there let out the sound of soft voices. She wished she could understand what they were saying.

  She thought she recognized one of the voices as Mrs. Alekci’s. And a man’s voice. What man? There were no other men in the family, now that Umit was gone. There was a visitor today.

  Curious, Anna crept up a few steps. Then a child’s voice spoke to her from behind, stopping her in mid-step. She whirled around and saw the boy standing in a puddle of light at the edge of the courtyard, watching her. She felt her cheeks flame, and she was grateful for the dark interior of the stairwell.

  “Merhaba,” she said, a little too forcefully. “You’re Mustafa, aren’t you?” She could tell that he was. Although his head was nearly bald from his close haircut, he was shorter than the boy she’d tackled, the coffee-carrying boy who’d hit her over the head and run off with her purse the day before.

  “I was about to visit your mother,” she continued. “An-ne.” She remembered the word that Ahmet had taught her and pronounced it slowly.

  Ahmet! He was responsible for her predicament now, and she cursed him again under her breath.

  Mustafa curled his finger, motioning for her to follow him. He was the one Alekci who might know the boy thief. Perhaps he knew who had hired him. She tiptoed down the stairs and followed him through the open portal. A dusty yard squeezed between the jumble of buildings, and in its center, a donkey grazed on dried weeds. Mustafa ran to the donkey and rummaged through a basket strapped across its back. When she caught up to him, she spoke in English, even though she knew he couldn’t understand. She illustrated her words with pantomimes of being hit over the head.

  “Who was he?” she asked, shrugging her question and rubbing her fingers in the gesture for money. “Who paid that boy to steal my purse?”

  Her efforts appeared to be in vain, though, as Mustafa wasn’t paying her any attention. He kept glancing over his shoulder as he dug farther into the donkey’s basket. He spoke rapidly, breathlessly, but she didn’t understand his words any more than he’d understood hers. He must want money, she decided. He wouldn’t give her any information until he saw her money.

  She had no money with her, and she doubted that he would understand her promise of money. But she did have something of value: Rainer’s Saint Christopher’s medal. How fitting to use the medal as payment for the information she wanted. Information, she realized, was actually more valuable to her than Rainer’s medal. She pulled the medal out of her pocket and dangled it on its chain before Mustafa.

  “Who was he?” she repeated.

  Mustafa’s wandering attention focused on the dangly piece, and he licked his lips, withdrawing his hand from the donkey’s basket and reaching out for the medal. But Anna pulled it back, out of his grasp. “No, you tell me first who he was, and then I’ll give this to you.”

  But then she realized the coffee boy had ended up not handing over the medal to whoever had hired him to be a purse thief. Maybe there’d been no such person. Perhaps she’d been wrong all along. It had just been a random act of thievery. Hayati had been right.

  “Never mind,” she said, dropping the necklace into Mustafa’s outreached palm. “You keep it, anyway. I don’t want it anymore.”

  Just then, a door slammed. A woman’s voice screeched from the second floor, and footsteps pounded downstairs. Mustafa clenched the medal between his fingers and darted away, back across the yard, and into the passageway. He nearly bowled over a man in sunglasses, standing in the shadows at the edge of the portal.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Relief swept over Anna. She charged through the weeds of the courtyard, toward the newcomer. “Ah, Mr. Yaziz! Fancy meeting you here.”

  “I could say the same for you, Miss Riddle.” He leaned against the wall of the arch and scanned the yard, as if looking for someone other than Anna or the donkey behind her.

  “You’re just the person I hoped to see,” she said, breathless as she reach
ed the detective’s side. “Do you have any information for me?”

  “I think perhaps it is you,” Yaziz said, “who has information for me, instead. What is your interest in the girl who did not return home after her brother’s death? Does she have more letters for you from your Lieutenant Rainer Akers?”

  The gypsy girl, he meant. Anna understood. “No, of course not.” A flush from the lie crept up to her cheeks. She wasn’t supposed to have her own letters, which Umit’s sister had sold to Cora. They now rested safely in her desk drawer at home, thanks to Fran. Anna took a deep breath, inhaling the pungent odor of animal sweat. “But she’s still not home? Do you know yet who might’ve killed her brother?”

  “Have no fear. We in the police are asking our questions. You need not concern yourself with our matters. You can go about your own business. Did you come to Ulus to shop? I see you have no purse. Have you lost it already?”

  “I didn’t bring it with me this time.”

  A wrinkle lifted his brow, and she went on to explain. She told him about Ahmet and how he’d brought her here and suddenly left. An emergency had taken him away, she thought. Yaziz’s chin tilted up, showing more interest, and she finished her story. She’d taken a walk and gotten lost. Carefully, she avoided any mention of Rainer’s Saint Christopher’s medal. And the boy, Mustafa.

  “How convenient that you found your way here,” Yaziz said.

  “Yes, and how convenient that you happened by, again. Look, are you following me?”

  The ends of Yaziz’s mouth turned down. “You are not wise to take matters into your own hands. Leave it to us.”

  As if she had a choice. She’d had enough of this. “Will you take me home? I have no money for a taxi, and I must get home.” Besides, she had to get back to Priscilla, the sooner the better.

  “You have no more questions?” Yaziz said, grinning.

  “No, detective. I want to go home. I have a terrible headache.”

  “Very well, Miss Riddle. But first I have one more visit to make. Perhaps you would like to assist with my interrogation of Ozturk Bey?” He chuckled. He was laughing at her.

  She swept past him, leading the way through the tunneled passage to the street, such as it was. It was more like a winding donkey lane. “Interrogation, Detective? I mustn’t keep you.” She waited for him to catch up, although by now she knew the way to the copper and trinket shops. “Is he a suspect, then? What did you learn last night to make you suspect Ozturk Bey?”

  “Ah, your English words are all the same. Perhaps ‘interview’ is a better choice of words.”

  “I think you knew exactly what word to use.” He was still teasing her, she thought. “See here, I didn’t choose to become...I don’t know, some sort of junior detective. It’s not my fault that I’ve become embroiled in your police matter. I wasn’t the one who gave my letter to Umit Alekci, and I didn’t ask for any of this trouble.”

  “Then, why?” Yaziz said, limping along the slippery cobbles. “Why do you continue to invite trouble? Why do you not leave the investigation to the police?”

  “Perhaps I would, if you were making some sort of progress in your investigation, rather than sending your goon out to spy on me instead of tracking down the guilty party.”

  “You, Miss Riddle?” He tipped his head sideways, but she thought he understood her perfectly well. “Ah, but you see, we have to make certain our American guests remain safe while they visit our country.”

  “I only want to know the truth.” She chose her words carefully. All this trouble was because of Rainer. “Why can’t we be honest with each other? Why must we keep so many secrets? If we could only share more truth and honesty, there’d be far more trust in the world.”

  She realized she wasn’t referring merely to the two deaths in the last two days but about a world of injustice, rampant throughout history. Somehow Rainer had become a party to that injustice, when he’d set out at the beginning of the war to combat injustice. Where had his sense of justice changed along the way? Or had she been wrong about him all along?

  “You ask for truth,” Yaziz said, “but you do not give truth yourself.”

  She opened her mouth to protest. Protest had long been her automatic response. But she realized he was right. She thought of all the years she’d spent building walls around her, protecting the privacy of her emotion, her personal history, when what she’d really been doing was suppressing truth. The truth about Rainer. She was doing it still.

  She let out a long breath and said, “All right. You’re right. I can tell you now what I did not wish to speak of before.” She glanced over her shoulder, first in one direction, then another, but she did not know what she was looking for. The scene of the crowded street, teeming with its daily business, appeared...well, normal, she supposed. If life in Ulus was normal.

  “It’s about my ex-fiancé,” she continued, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Rainer Akers. He didn’t die in the war. He’s here. Here in Ankara.”

  “Yes, Miss Riddle, I know.”

  “You...know?”

  “We are not as stupid as you seem to think we are.”

  “No! That’s not true. I don’t think that.”

  The sunglasses stared at her silently.

  Finally, she couldn’t wait any longer. “Well?” she spit out. “Are you going to tell me how you know that? What’s Rainer doing here?”

  “Exactly our question. We hoped you might be able to answer that for us.”

  “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Then you have seen him?”

  She nodded. “Last night. Before Emin died. And then again, after.” She shivered. Rainer was involved in that matter.

  Yaziz said nothing for several heartbeats. Then he touched her arm. “I am sorry. This will not take long with Ozturk Bey, and then I will take you home.”

  “Why did Emin die, detective? Do you know yet?”

  Yaziz frowned. “Our Doctor Vardarli has not prepared his report yet.”

  “But you don’t think it was a heart attack, do you? That’s what people at the party were saying. But they didn’t get to see his body, as I did. Emin died after having some sort of convulsion. Poison would cause that.” The asker knew about poisons. He’d poisoned Priscilla’s kitten.

  “And many other conditions, too.”

  Rainer had been about to visit the asker in his shed when Anna first saw him the night before last. And then he had been present at the Wingates’ party when Emin died. Goosebumps ran along Anna’s arms, where Rainer had touched her.

  Rainer, the connector in two deaths in two days.

  Yaziz shrugged, apparently taking Anna’s silence as a conclusion to their conversation, when in fact, she felt too stunned for more words. He turned and continued along the way, but Anna hung back, searching for her words, staring at the street scene but seeing nothing.

  Finally, she found them, and she ran after him. “Detective!”

  Yaziz stopped at the threshold of the shop and waited for her.

  “You still haven’t told me how you knew that Rainer is here in Ankara. I didn’t know it myself. I swear I didn’t know that at Atatürk’s Tomb, when Umit was shot holding my letter to Rainer.”

  Yaziz shifted, looking as if a great weight rode his shoulders. “Miss Riddle, it is my duty to do my job and to uphold the laws of our supreme leader. Sometimes they are not always one and the same.” Color flamed to his cheeks, and he ducked inside the shop, calling out to Ozturk Bey.

  Anna watched him go, wondering what on earth he’d meant. It seemed that she could never get a direct answer from the man. He appeared embarrassed, as if he regretted having said too much. But about what? Perhaps his boss had told him one thing, but the laws of his country directed another course of action. Paul Wingate had mentioned the name of Yaziz’s boss as Bulayir, who was apparently the police chief who answered to Ahmet. Perhaps the conflict was between them, and Yaziz was caught in the middle.

  Or... Ahmet lived in the neighb
orhood where Rainer assumed his Hungarian identity. Maybe Ahmet knew Rainer aka Viktor. Ahmet always seemed to know more than he let on. Then, Yaziz would have found out about Rainer through his work. Through Ahmet.

  Not that it mattered, really. Yaziz was a detective. It was his job—his duty—to find things out. Maybe he would solve this crime after all.

  Still, Anna couldn’t leave the questions alone. They haunted her now, along with the knowledge that Rainer had been alive all these years, running for his life, hiding, while Anna had lived in relative comfort. Anna’s troubles were no more serious than what her eleventh graders could give her.

  All that had changed now. She stared glumly at the street scene around her. It had appeared so colorful only the day before. Today it was appearing...slightly less foreign. She could never go back to the comfortable way things used to be.

  * * * * *

  Yaziz carefully lifted the copper lid of the brazier. He’d seen Ozturk Bey withdraw a hidden package for the Burkhardt child from this very place.

  Nothing.

  Not that he expected to find anything. The old merchant was no fool.

  Still, where there had been one, there could easily be another. A similar package could be tucked away anywhere among this copper and brass clutter where Emin Kirpat and Umit Alekci had worked, more or less together, before their deaths.

  “The boys who work for you,” Yaziz called out to Ozturk Bey who puttered at the back of the shop, “do they get along?”

  “My nephews do what they are told.”

  “And the others...they do not?”

  “There are no others. We are all family.”

  “You have many nephews?”

  There was no response, which meant no denial. Yaziz pictured a shrug of affirmation. He wandered through the shop, picking up a pot here, leaning over a pan there. He glanced behind the crates that displayed the wares. He ducked through the beads at the back and stole a glance at Ozturk Bey’s wife, minding the sister store, the one that sold beads and jewelry and evil eyes. “Are there more boys to fill the places of those who go missing?”