Dancing for the General

by Sue Star

  “Wait!” she cried, panting. Gasping. “Okay. I’ll tell you where it is. I...I hid it. Somewhere safe.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere that no one would find.” Where could she tell him? She had to think of a place far away from here, a place that traveling there would buy her enough time.

  But then he would kill her.

  Because he was worse than corrupt. Anna realized with a wave of terror engulfing her... This man had already killed at least once before. He aimed a gun at her now. What would stop him from killing again?

  She sprang to her feet, lurching first to one side and then to the other. If he was going to shoot her, then let him try. Running, she had a chance. A bad one, but still a chance. Maybe she could dodge his aim.

  She screamed again. Where was that help who should be on its way? He slammed into her, knocking the wind out of her and cutting off her cry in mid-scream. He wrapped his arms about her, quickly immobilizing her struggles, and pinched off her breath with a foul-smelling hand. He threw her to the floor and sat atop her.

  * * * * *

  She couldn’t breathe. Please, she tried to say, but she had no breath left. Her ribs felt crushed from his weight. Dead weight on top of her. She felt on the verge of passing out.

  A door squeaked open.

  “Aunt Anna!”

  Priscilla’s voice sounded far away. Her voice was like music filling Anna’s heart, flowing strength back into her. She shuddered for air as the man rolled off of her.

  “Efendim,” he said.

  “You idiot.” It was Rainer. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Priscilla sobbed. “Let me go. I want Aunt Anna!”

  Anna sucked in a deep breath of air. Pain fired through her ribs. Blood streamed from her nose.

  “You weren’t supposed to hurt her,” Rainer said.

  The secret police mumbled something in a language she did not understand. She assumed it was Turkish, but she didn’t think Rainer understood Turkish any better than she. Rainer...

  “You!” Anna gasped and managed to spit out some words. She pushed herself up onto one elbow. “It’s been...you! All along. Hasn’t it?”

  “Annie...you don’t know what it was like. I had to survive. Everything I did, it was all for us. For you.”

  “Don’t put your blame on me,” she said, struggling to stand. “You’re responsible for your choices, not me. It was you, wasn’t it? You killed Umit. You hired the boy to hit me over the head. How can you say you didn’t want me to be hurt? And now this! Kidnapping Priscilla.”

  “I borrowed her, that’s all, and it worked, didn’t it? I knew you’d come looking for her. You think I didn’t know you were standing outside in my hall a few moments ago? Tonya and I, we staged that little disagreement, all for your benefit.”

  Something broke inside her. His lack of denial concerning Umit’s death was as good as a confession. How had it come to this? The man she had once loved...a murderer.

  And now he had her darling niece, the only one who mattered anymore. “Let her go, Rainer. If there’s anything left inside of the person you once were, you’ll let her go.”

  His arms sagged in an apparent moment of hesitation. Priscilla squirmed, pushing away from him. She ran to Anna’s side and hugged her tightly. “You said he’s a good guy, remember? That’s why I went with him. He said you needed my help.”

  “And she still does,” Rainer said, tossing her a handkerchief. “Don’t you see? Umit was going to reveal my identity, and we can’t have that, not if we are to succeed.”

  “We already won the war,” Anna said. “You didn’t have to do it. None of it.”

  “Your war, perhaps. Not mine. I had to survive, Annie. For us. You’ve got to believe me.”

  “Don’t include me in your scheme. What about people’s lives? And Emin. You killed him, too, didn’t you? Did you use the asker’s poison? Is that why you were visiting him the night before last?”

  Rainer ignored her and strode across the room to the secret policeman. He held out his hand, acting as if he was in charge. The Turk shrugged and handed over his gun.

  “We couldn’t allow him to record the general’s meeting,” Rainer said, as if suddenly remembering Anna now that he held a gun in his hand. “Now, be a good girl and hand over the film. No one’s going to get hurt.” He turned to face Anna, the gun aiming at her feet.

  Her heart leapt. He wouldn’t actually shoot her, would he? She clutched Priscilla tightly, nudging her around to her backside. “I...I don’t have it.”

  “You’ve always lied poorly, Annie. Truth is, you told Erkmen you have it. He told me so. Where is it? Don’t make me make you. Just hand it over. You’ve got the kid now. That film doesn’t belong to you.”

  “It’s my mommy’s film,” Priscilla shouted, twisting around the side of Anna’s skirt, “and I took it! It’s not yours, and you can’t have it. Don’t tell him where it is, Aunt Anna.”

  Rainer laughed, sounding amused. The aim of the gun crept up her thigh, zeroing in on the pocket of Anna’s skirt. Her arm tingled, as if wanting with a will of its own to move toward her pocket where the film hid, but her mental strength overruled and forced her arm to still.

  Priscilla went on shouting. “I don’t care if you don’t believe me! Mommy was taking pictures of the general, and some bad man gave her candy for her film. It was making her sick, I could tell, so I hid the film, so she couldn’t get any more. You can’t have it. I don’t want you to give her more candy when she comes home again.” Sobbing, Priscilla burrowed into the gathers of Anna’s skirt.

  Anna bent down to cradle her. “Oh, honey,” she whispered. Opium. That was Mitzi’s “candy.”

  “Erkmen started this badly,” Rainer said, waving the gun in the direction of the secret police. “He could not even handle a simple tape recording for the minister. Now I must finish it. I will tell you once more to hand over the film to me, and then we will say nothing more about it. The minister will allow you to quietly leave the country, never to return.”

  “The minister?” Anna said. “Ahmet, is that who you mean? Is he one of your spies, too?”

  Rainer grimmaced. “We couldn’t operate without his, shall we say, facilitation.”

  A shadow danced into the room behind Rainer. Anna’s hope soared, and she tried not to look over there. Someone must’ve heard her screams. Help had finally arrived.

  Then she saw the heavy gun, swinging up and pointing at Rainer. It wasn’t police, come to her aid. It was Meryem, with a gleam of fire in her eyes. Both hands wrapped around the handle of her gun, too big and clumsy for her delicate fingers.

  “No!” Anna shouted, dragging Priscilla down to the floor. Pain shattered through her damaged ribs, but nonetheless, she would die protecting her niece.

  “Leylek,” Meryem said calmly, the instant before the gunshot exploded over Anna’s head.

  The sound reverberated through every cell of her body. She continued to breathe, with only the sharp pain from her ribs stabbing her with each breath. She opened her eyes and dared to lift her head from Priscilla, who shuddered and sobbed beneath her. Nearby, Rainer lay on the floor. Erkmen bent over him. Blood trailed across the floor. And Meryem...

  Where was Meryem?

  The front door burst open just then, letting in blinding light. Two men rushed in against the backdrop of light. Their footsteps scuffled, and voices shouted. Yaziz, wearing a new pair of tinted glasses, limped to Anna’s side. His partner aimed a gun at Erkmen.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Even in death, the pretense continued. A simple service was held several days later in the JUSMMAT auditorium for Viktor Baliko. Rainer had vanished once again, but Anna preferred to think he had never come back. She attended the service along with a dozen or so others from the American community, sprinkling across the first three rows of folding chairs. Anna sat in the second row with her new friends, Hayati and Fran, at either side. Priscilla was at school.

  Words of
the sermon echoed through the cavernous chamber, nearly empty. She only heard the rhythm, reverberating like a scolding harangue against the evil forces that had taken the life of one weary journeyer whose escape from the Iron Curtain had been cut prematurely short.

  Hardly.

  Anna wondered if Rainer’s luck had run out when he’d lost his Saint Christopher’s medal. The Alekcis somehow had recovered it, she wasn’t sure how, but it seemed to have brought them luck in the form of passage to their future here in Turkey. She could only hope it would promise a bright future for the boy to whom she had given the necklace.

  Gossip raged around her on the downbeats of the sermon’s echo. Whispers speculated on the whereabouts of “Mrs. Baliko.” The pregnant widow wasn’t here.

  In the hospital, the whisperers assumed. The stork was coming early.

  But Anna knew the truth.

  There was no stork, neither the baby-delivering kind nor the turncoat spy. Leylek—Stork—had been Rainer’s code name. Tonya, the Stork’s partner, was probably back on Soviet soil by now.

  Meryem had known him as leylek.

  Survival, he’d claimed, had made him switch sides, but something much deeper must have turned his mind to make him resort to such crimes. Had it been the war and its atrocities?

  Lost in her thoughts, Anna let her friends cue her through the service and steer her outside afterwards. Afternoon sunlight reflecting off the stone buildings and the street made her blink, bringing her out of her somnolent state that the sermon had induced in her.

  Its cadence kept echoing in her mind long after the words had ceased. New sounds—their clicking heels on pavement—hammered away the last of the rhythm. She was done with the pretense. It was time to move on.

  Hayati was squeezing her elbow and telling her something about a museum.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, squinting into the sun, “what did you say?”

  He winked at her. “You’ll like it, when I show it to you tomorrow.”

  “But...” Interest fired in her, but she didn’t remember agreeing to the plans. “I have to be home by the time school is out.” Kidnappers didn’t lurk behind every bush for Priscilla, but it was too soon for Anna’s piece of mind to allow her niece to walk home alone from the bus stop.

  “Don’t worry,” said Fran, “he can’t take all day for his lunch break.”

  They walked on in silent camaraderie. The warmth of anticipation spread through Anna.

  Yaziz waited for them on the street, beside Fran’s parked car. He pulled his hands from his pockets as they approached, and all of them eyed each other in somber contemplation. After allowing them several minutes of drinking in a newfound gratitude for the simple pleasure of enjoying another day, he passed an envelope to Anna.

  “What’s this, Detective?” she said, pulling her hand back, wary now of taking just anything offered to her.

  “It’s yours, Miss Riddle. We have recovered it from Erkmen. You may have it now.”

  She recognized her own handwriting on the envelope. It was the letter she’d written to Rainer so long ago, the one that Umit had offered her in death. She glanced past Yaziz’s shoulder up the street, but there was no shooter out there now, no one to shoot him for offering the letter to Anna. Rainer was dead. She snatched the envelope from Yaziz and stuffed it into her purse along with the rest of them.

  “Thank you, Mr. Yaziz. Do you have news about Meryem? Have you found her yet?”

  His head tilted back, although not quite a gesture of “no,” as his new sunglasses appraised her. He was a blend, this man, between east and west. “I regret that she has not yet turned up.”

  “Gypsies have a way of disappearing,” Fran said with a laugh.

  “What about Ozturk Bey?” Anna said. “Have you asked him? What does he have to say about where she might’ve gone?”

  Yaziz sighed. “Miss Riddle, are you in competition for my job?”

  The heat of a flush rose up her throat. “Of course not. I just thought that since Ozturk Bey was their patron, he might know where she’s hiding.”

  “Not exactly.” A small grin showed beneath his frames. “Ozturk Bey was willing to act as patron for a price. He only followed the instructions your Henry Burkhardt gave him.”

  Of course, Anna thought. It had been Henry all along. The Alekcis had healed Henry—not Rainer—all those years ago. Ever since, Henry had been trying to return their kindness. While Rainer had gone on to betray those closest to him.

  But all that was behind them now. Anna smiled. “I’m having a little barbecue party later this evening at my house. It’s the least I can do to show my thanks.” She glanced left to right, from Fran to Hayati. Her new friends were her community now. “Will you join us?”

  Yaziz dipped his head, and his new sunglasses shifted against the bridge of his nose. She supposed that was an acceptance, but she couldn’t be sure. He was an enigmatic man to her.

  So unlike Hayati, who held open the car door for her and beamed with pleasure.

  Fran gave her a lift home, but when they arrived at the yellow stucco house, she declined an invitation to come inside for a lemonade. It was still a workday for Fran and Hayati. They would see Anna later that evening at the barbecue, Fran promised, and then drove away.

  Inside the house, Anna found Fededa and Bahar in the kitchen, with preparations for the feast well under control. Anna tried out the few new words she’d learned in Turkish from Hayati. Whatever they were preparing, it smelled delicious, savory with spices from the bazaar. Spices wrapped in newspaper bundles...

  She refused to let the reminder of Rainer pummel her recovering spirits. He’d compromised Ozturk Bey’s spice packages with opium for Mitzi.

  Bahar was looking for more work now that Gulsen had moved to her great-aunt and uncle’s horse farm while her father was away. Detained temporarily, Yaziz claimed. On the other hand, Hayati said that Ahmet had fled the country in disgrace, that he’d tried to direct Yaziz’s boss, and when that failed, he hadn’t wanted to become a Soviet puppet.

  Anna wasn’t sure whom to believe, but the fact was that Ahmet was gone. Meanwhile, she appreciated the extra help from Bahar. She’d planned the barbecue party for this evening to show all of her new friends her appreciation for their support. A community had to bind together when it found itself so far away from home.

  Besides, it would be another opportunity to see Hayati again. As well as tomorrow, during his lunch “hour” at the museum.

  Before then, Anna still had some unfinished business. She headed out the back door where the barbecue grill was already set up. One of the women had laid a fire, and a woodsy-scented cloud of smoke billowed into the air. Anna unclasped her purse and withdrew the bundle of letters she’d written to Rainer so long ago. Without a second’s hesitation, she flung them onto the smoldering bed of embers. The paper caught and flared into flames. She stared transfixed, watching as the paper blackened and curled.

  When the flames licked up the last wedge of paper and then died down again, she headed back inside. She marched up the stairs, straight for Mitzi’s room. In her sister’s closet, she found the hatbox high on the shelf, and she pulled it down. She lifted the lid and removed the veiled hats, laying them carefully on the bed. The loose rolls of film clattered around inside the box, where she had placed them after that harrowing day when she’d tried desperately not to reveal their presence in her skirt pocket. Three rolls were Mitzi’s, and the fourth had been added by Priscilla and Tommy. They’d found it in the weeds by their clubhouse the night of the Wingates’ party. Anna replaced the lid and carried the hatbox downstairs.

  Outside once again, the heat of the sun had dropped its intensity by perhaps as much as a degree. Cooler days, relief from the heat, lay ahead. Swinging the hatbox, rattling its contents, she strode out the driveway and headed up the hill.

  She pieced together the various bits of information that she’d learned in the short time here in Ankara, which wasn’t so very unlike her job ba
ck home. In the classroom, she had to thread together pieces of history in order to present the overall picture.

  So many players here. But once she understood whom she could trust, it wasn’t so difficult to see the pieces fall together. She’d even learned from those she couldn’t trust. Ahmet had taught her that not everyone was satisfied with Atatürk’s reforms. His faction wanted the current government to continue drifting away from western reforms. On the other hand, the general, who’d served under Atatürk, was trying to bring back the reforms his revered leader had started.

  With Yaziz, Anna had understood the rest.

  It had started with Ahmet, and his anti-Atatürk fervor. Through his spy, Erkmen, he found out about the gypsy and the bids the gypsy had solicited for a “valuable” piece of information.

  Evidence for the brewing coup, Ahmet thought. In reality, Umit was only trying to feed his family by selling the treasure originally belonging to Rainer—his Saint Christopher’s medal.

  And then Anna entered the picture.

  She would have plenty of time later, when Henry and Mitzi returned from Switzerland, rehabilitated. She would decide then if there was any point in confronting Henry about having kept her letters all these years. The letters were gone, so did it even matter anymore?

  Anna marched up to the general’s front door and rang the bell. Nothing happened. She tapped on the glass pane and peered through it.

  Finally, a maid, not the asker, opened the door. Anna breezed past the maid. “I came to give my regards to the general,” she said, even though the Turkish woman couldn’t understand. Anna’s lessons with Hayati hadn’t progressed far enough for her to translate any of that, but it didn’t matter. She knew where to find the general. After all, she’d seen him enough times, across the garden, from the vantage point of Priscilla’s balcony. She knew he spent his afternoons in his second-floor study.

  The maid said something that sounded like a protest, but Anna continued up the marble stairs, pausing only long enough to admire the chandelier. There must be hundreds of crystals cascading over the curve of the steps.