by Sue Star
Fran burst out laughing. “You really believe all that? I think you underestimate your powers of imagination, and you’ve been reading too many spy novels.”
“Actually, that’s not my type of reading,” Anna said. She chuckled along with Fran, although her heart felt heavy. Fran’s lack of denial told Anna she was right. She wondered if she’d blundered into things she shouldn’t know, things that made young, healthy photographers die of so-called natural causes. She changed the subject, hoping to steer them into safer waters. “I know I’m right, even though I realize you can’t admit it. For now, at least tell me why you gave me the letters last night at the party?”
“I guess I felt sorry for you, but anyway, they’re yours, aren’t they? What do the police need them for?”
“What if Paul Wingate finds out that you didn’t do what he asked you to do?”
Fran shrugged. “Those letters won’t tell the police anything they don’t already know. Odd, that they surfaced after all these years.”
“Umit’s death must’ve made his sister want to get rid of them.”
“But how did Umit get them in the first place? That’s the real question.”
From Rainer, Anna thought, but she still wasn’t sure she could trust Fran enough to tell her the truth about Rainer and what he’d told her—how the Alekcis nursed him back to health. And that he was here today in Ankara. Maybe Fran already knew that, as Yaziz did. Probably. Still, it was safer to change the subject. “Last night you assumed at first that I was looking for opium. In Cora’s bedroom. Are you implying that Cora has an addiction problem, too?”
“Cora and Mitzi are in the same bridge group, and they meet several times per week.”
“Maybe they just play cards?”
“Maybe. Their latest venture is into belly dancing with their private instructor, Tonya Baliko.”
“Belly dancing!” Anna clenched her jaw, whether at the reminder of Rainer’s supposed wife or having found the belly dancing costume in Mitzi’s hatbox, she couldn’t be sure. “But why were you so certain that I wouldn’t find any...opium...among Cora’s things?”
“Paul already searched.”
All these years, they’d lied to her. Henry had lied as well as Rainer... It was too much for her to absorb.
“Don’t be so hard on Henry,” Fran said, reaching from the steering wheel with one hand to pat Anna’s arm. “What you’ve got to understand is that everything changes with war. War causes people to make mistakes that can fester inside them for years. Maybe Henry was only trying to make amends.”
Anna wasn’t sure she could ever forgive Henry for the lies, or Rainer for his betrayal, but maybe it was true what Fran suggested. War was the pollutant that modified history beyond repair.
They drove the rest of the way across town in silence. The feeling of intimacy that had blossomed between them, smothered.
At the Burkhardts’ house, Anna thanked Fran again and climbed out. She watched her new friend drive away, then turned to the house.
She thought it odd when she noticed the side door standing open to Priscilla’s playrooms. This door, which she had never seen used, now stood wide open. Priscilla must have come home from Gulsen’s house.
Anna would have to speak with Priscilla about leaving doors open like this. She hurried inside. “Priscilla?” she called.
But all that answered her was a stack of old newspapers, ruffling in the breeze.
Chapter Forty-Three
Steam wrapped around Yaziz like a wet cloth and filled his nostrils and lungs. Clogging carefully in his wooden sandals across wet tile, he entered the hot room of the Turkish Bath and scanned through clouds of vapor for Bulayir. He hated disturbing the chief at the hamam, but Bulayir himself had instructed him to keep him informed.
He spotted the chief, his vast, hairy belly spilling over his loin cloth, seated on a bench in one marble corner. An attendant was scrubbing one of Bulayir’s arms, coating him with a soapy lather.
Yaziz clumped over to the chief’s corner, then stopped short, not daring to continue without an acknowledgement first.
Bulayir glanced up and snickered. “No glasses, Veli Bey?”
Yaziz gave a soft tick of his tongue. “No, efendim. They’re no good here.”
“You have something to say that cannot wait?”
“That’s right.”
Bulayir waved the attendant away. “That’s enough for now. Let me sweat a while.”
“As you wish,” said the attendant, backing away with his soapy mitt.
Yaziz remained standing, as Bulayir did not invite him to sit. His bad leg ached, either from too many hours on his feet, or the moist air hanging thick under the domed ceiling, a shock on his body after the dry air of Ankara’s high plateau.
“I have found the ringleader,” Yaziz said. Then he described the comings and goings at the general’s house the night before, a gathering of military men, all of whom had reason to feel dissatisfaction with the current regime. Although he would not go so far as to mention the presence of his old friend, Murat. Loyalty counted for more than that. And he was careful to avoid the problem of the gypsy woman, who’d luckily led him there for surveillance, once Yaziz had finally found her.
“And the evidence?” Bulayir asked, interrupting his report.
“A roll of film. I am on my way now to collect it. But first I must stop off at the lab.” He would find the film somewhere in the Wingates’ yard, he knew he would. Perhaps it had rolled to the Burkhardts’.
Bulayir nodded. “Good. And the reason for your haste that required you to interrupt my bath?”
“Sir, it’s a matter of great urgency. I believe their plans are to be put into effect tomorrow, which is the date that is coded on the envelope we collected. On the other hand, I am at a loss of how to warn you.”
“You? Veli Yaziz, the koreli?”
“I fear that one of your own men has the potential to...betray you.”
Bulayir straightened from his slouch and snatched the towel from beside him. “Me? Who would dare?”
“Erkmen was one of the general’s guests last night.”
Bulayir took a deep breath. As his chest rose and fell, soap suds glistened on his skin under the thin light that streamed through star shapes cut out of the domed roof. “Anything else?”
“Efendim?” Did his boss not care that his own lieutenant conspired to bring down their lawfully elected government? No, that was not possible.
Bulayir, then, must be holding something back. Either he knew of Erkmen’s association with the plotters, and therefore approved it, or he’d sent Erkmen there to infiltrate. Yes, an undercover agent. That made better sense, especially considering that Erkmen had crossed the street to the assistant minister’s house after leaving the gathering at the general’s house the night before.
Erkmen was reporting to Bulayir’s boss, his boss, too.
But why had Bulayir brought Yaziz into this? Why insist that Yaziz break up the plot if he already had Erkmen working on the case?
“There is more,” said Yaziz, and he told him of the ill-fated photographer and the damning photographs he had taken. Yaziz waited now for the lab to confirm his suspicion that Emin’s death was due to a fast-acting poison. There were many possibilities—ricin, wolf’s bane, strychnine. They would find that, too.
He left it unsaid, but obvious, that he suspected Erkmen responsible. That would bring the golden boy down.
And there, Bulayir had it. Yaziz would arrange for the old opium smuggler to be brought in yet this afternoon, while Yaziz attended to collecting the damning film. By that evening, or as late as tomorrow, interrogations would bring out the old merchant’s part as well in the murder of Umit Alekci, and—
“No!” Bulayir sprang to his feet. Yaziz thought his boss was going to charge out of the hamam, wrapped only in his loin cloth and towel.
“Did I not tell you to drop the matter of the gypsy? Tshinghiane, Veli Bey. That’s all they are. Do not waste our
resources on this matter. That is final. Understand?”
“Yes, efendim.” But what Yaziz understood now was that Bulayir’s order sounded very much like the note that had accompanied the raw opium inside his locked apartment. Yes, there was a hushed-up plot, all right. But now Yaziz feared that it involved more than just a coup against the government.
* * * * *
“Priscilla?” Anna called, a feeling of dread creeping into her from the empty house. “Where are you?”
She hurried through Priscilla’s playrooms, up the half flight of steps into the kitchen, and out to the dining room. No one was here. The French doors stood open to the verandah, and Anna stepped outside and surveyed the empty backyard.
The asker moved in the general’s yard next door. The gate to the Wingates’ yard swung, creaking on a broken hinge.
A shiver tickled the back of Anna’s neck. She turned and raced up the wooden steps to Priscilla’s bedroom. Clothes, toys, and books—what looked like all of Priscilla’s possessions—lay strewn across the floor. Drawers were pulled open. The top of the dresser had been cleared bare. The mattress twisted askew, half off the box springs.
Anna gasped. Priscilla hadn’t come home and done this. Someone else had been in the house. A burglar. He’d broken into the house and torn apart Priscilla’s room while Priscilla, thankfully, played at Gulsen’s house. He must’ve left the playroom door standing wide open when he fled.
She hoped he was gone, but what if he wasn’t? He would’ve heard her pounding steps up the stairs. He could be hiding somewhere, waiting for... What? The police to arrive? Logically, he should be gone by now. If he’d heard her, then he would’ve run out. Maybe by way of the balcony. Its door stood open, too. Or was that how he’d gotten in?
Moving more cautiously now, she crept out onto the balcony. No one was there, except for the asker looking up at her from the general’s garden. Looking up, expectantly.
“Did you see anything?” she whispered to him.
He said nothing. Turning on her heels, she ran back through Priscilla’s room, into the hall, and up the half flight of stairs to her room.
Night stands and the dresser and her desk had been turned over, drawers pulled out, their contents spilled across the floor. She pawed through her piles of garments, her papers, her fountain pen and bottle of ink. She could not find her bundle of letters. The ones she’d written to Rainer years ago, and Fran had returned to her last night. She’d put them in the desk drawer after Rainer left.
Rainer.
He’d been searching for something in her bedroom the night before. Had Rainer come back today to do this?
Rainer, the man whom Priscilla thought was chasing her daddy... And maybe he really was. Was there unfinished business left over from the closing days of the war? Rainer and Henry and the Alekcis had all become mixed up together, and now Umit and Emin were dead.
A knot twisted in Anna’s stomach. If she phoned the police, would that undermine whatever secret had made Rainer go undercover? He’d made her swear to keep his presence secret, although she did not know why. She did not trust him anymore.
She would phone the police, but what if Yaziz was still out of the office? She’d need Priscilla to explain for her.
She needed Priscilla. She needed her here with her, at her side, within sight. In case... What? She didn’t know.
Or maybe she should phone up Paul first. Let him handle the police. He’d told her to call anytime, after all. Yes, that’s what she would do. But first, Priscilla.
She hurried back down the stairs, out through the front door this time, past Henry’s car, and up the hill, around the corner.
At the Aydenlis’ house, the driveway remained empty. Ahmet’s white Mercedes was still gone. The reminder of his having abandoned her at his shop wrenched her again.
She knocked on the door. No one answered. She knocked again, louder.
Finally, Bahar opened the door.
“Merhaba,” Anna said. “I’ve come for Priscilla.”
Bahar frowned at her, evidently not understanding. A look of compassion filled her plump face, pooled in liquid, brown eyes, and she responded in Turkish.
“I’m sure the girls have had a wonderful time together,” Anna said, “but I must take Priscilla home now. I’m very sorry.”
Then Gulsen appeared behind Bahar, and the two of them conversed.
“Honey, would you tell Priscilla that I’m here?” Anna stepped across the threshold and bent down to Gulsen’s level.
Gulsen shied away, said “hayir,” and some other things Anna didn’t understand.
“What do you mean? Isn’t she here?” Anna’s heart skipped a beat. “Where is she, then? Nerede?”
Gulsen pointed at the street. Bahar smiled warmly at Anna, clearly not understanding her.
Anna spoke louder, more slowly, as if she could will them to understand her language. “She left already? When?”
Bahar and Gulsen returned blank stares, and Anna tried again. “How about your dad, honey? Where’s he? Ahmet Aydenli.”
Gulsen and Bahar exchanged looks and spoke again in Turkish. Their rapid dialogue carried a hint of anxiety.
For Ahmet? For Priscilla?
A strand of Anna’s hair tickled her cheek, having worked its way out of her bun. She felt as if she were coming undone, piece by piece. Frustrated, she turned away and leaned against the doorframe to ponder what to do. Across the blazing pavement of the street, Tommy Wingate rumbled down the sidewalk on roller skates. He paused to watch a car turn into the general’s driveway.
“Tommy!” she called, straightening from her slump. “Can you please come over here a minute?”
The children adapted better, Fran had said at lunch the day before. And at the party last night, someone had said how easily the children learned this language.
Tommy skated across the street and scrunched to a stop in the Aydenlis’ empty driveway. “Yeah?”
“Have you seen Priscilla?”
“We didn’t do nothing.”
She took a deep breath, wondering what the children had been up to. She would have to save that for later. “Right now it’s very important to find out where Priscilla is. You know Turkish, don’t you? Please ask them for me how long ago Priscilla left. And where is Gulsen’s father?”
She waited, biting her lower lip, while Tommy rolled up the sidewalk to the front door, then spoke in halting Turkish. He stumbled over his words a little more than Priscilla usually did.
Finally, he rolled back. “They said she left a little while ago to go home. Isn’t she at home?”
Anna’s heart hammered. She felt numb, her mind stuck on a single thought.
Priscilla had surprised whoever was breaking into the house.
Tommy carefully repositioned his skates to roll away. “You want me to go get my mom?”
“Not yet,” Anna said, shaking her head. So far, Cora only seemed capable of making matters worse. “I need to call your dad, instead. He’s at work, isn’t he?”
Tommy brightened. “I know what! I bet Prissy is hiding. Let’s go look in the clubhouse. C’mon.”
Anna, not sure which of the goodbye words in Turkish she should use, picked one of them. She nodded at Bahar and Gulsen and gave them reassuring smiles. Then she followed Tommy, who scraped and whirred his rollerskates across the street and down the sidewalk. When he reached the yard that skirted the side of their house, he whumped across the garden to the backyard.
Anna stepped more cautiously. This place had been the scene of a suspicious death, a possible crime, only hours ago. Now that the yard filled with natural light and was empty of police, party guests, and servers, Anna felt distanced from those events, as if it had all been a dream.
Anna hoped and prayed that Tommy was right and Priscilla had just run off to hide. That’s what she would’ve done if she’d surprised a burglar. Especially, if that burglar had turned out to be the man Priscilla thought was chasing her daddy. Anna felt certain. And b
esides, Rainer wouldn’t hurt her.
Tommy shouted with excitement as he rounded the corner of his clubhouse.
Anna hurried her step. She looked over to the general’s garden, but the asker was out of sight. The wheels of the wiggling boy’s skates disappeared through the opening of the shack and into its shaded interior. She ducked down low to follow him inside. Daylight trickled in through the cracks between the boards, casting an air of gloom over the pit of sand. It was enough light to reveal a woman—not Priscilla—crouching in a far corner.
Chapter Forty-Four
The woman looked more like a child, Anna thought, and a wild one at that. Her tangled hair tumbled out from under a black head scarf.
“Her name is Meryem,” Tommy said. “She left last night, but now she’s back. She’s our secret, and you have to promise not to tell!”
“Meryem?” Anna whispered. Umit’s sister. That’s what Yaziz had said was her name. “Last night? She was here? During your parents’ party?”
“Yep. She was running away from the general. He was having a party, too. Prissy and I like to spy on him, ’cause he’s someone important, and he has lots of secrets, and we’re going to find out what they are. We’re going to be detectives when we grow up, or maybe spaceship captains. But you can’t tell that, either!”
In a flash, Anna wondered if Priscilla’s absence was due to another game. Maybe she was pretending to be a detective. If she’d walked in on the burglar in the midst of his search of the house, maybe Priscilla had followed him.
Then, she should’ve returned by now.
She hoped Priscilla’s disappearance wasn’t due to the trouble that had caused Meryem to run away from the general.
“Tommy,” Anna said, “ask her if she knows where Priscilla is.”
“Tom-my!” a woman’s distant voice called. Cora.