The Ghosts of Anatolia

by Steven E. Wilson

  June 6, 1967, Jerusalem

  The door outside the surgery control desk burst open and a doctor dressed in blue surgical scrubs and cap rushed through the door.

  Sirak glanced up from his paperwork. “Hello, Joseph,” he said tiredly.

  Doctor Levin stared back sorrowfully.

  “What’s wrong?” Sirak asked.

  “It’s your family.”

  Sirak dropped his pen. “My family? What about my family?”

  “My dear friend, something horrible happened. An artillery shell hit your house.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “Your neighbor, Adam Bluestone. He’s waiting downstairs. I’m so sorry.”

  Sirak rushed past Doctor Levin, and running to the stairwell, took the stairs two at a time down to the ground floor. He burst through the door into the lobby and spotted Bluestone standing at the main entrance. “Adam!” he called out.

  Tears in Bluestone’s red eyes were daggers to his heart.

  Sirak collapsed to his knees. “Oh, my God, no! Please, God, no!”

  “Your sons are alive,” Bluestone whispered compassionately. “I’ll take you to them.”

  Sirak followed the old man out to the curb and climbed into his dusty old Renault sedan. The boom of artillery and crackle of gunfire echoed from the distance. Too numb to speak, Sirak slumped into the front passenger’s seat and slammed the door. Bluestone made a U-turn in front of the hospital and accelerated up a nearly-deserted access road that wound to the east toward the Old City walls.

  They came across a dozen dead Arab fighters sprawled across the road half a mile from the hospital.

  “Dear, God, the fighting is everywhere,” Bluestone muttered. “Should we stop?”

  “No, they’re dead. Keep going.”

  Bluestone wove through the grisly scene and raced toward the Katamon neighborhood. The rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire and the boom of artillery and mortars grew louder as they got closer. Finally, they reached the main Katamon road and the old Jew turned into their residential neighborhood.

  Bam, bam, bam, resounded three shots to the rear passenger’s door and window.

  “Keep going!” Sirak shouted. “Don’t stop!”

  Bluestone accelerated down the street and swerved around a pickup truck sitting cockeyed in the middle of the street. Sirak glanced out Bluestone’s window at a body slumped against the steering wheel of the vehicle. He spotted two Arabs firing on the car from atop a wall surrounding the neighborhood.

  “Bastards!” Bluestone bellowed angrily. “They fire at anything that moves.”

  Two more shots hit the rear of the car before Bluestone turned the next corner. He eased the car to the curb halfway down the street and pulled to a stop in front of a one-story house.

  Sirak gaped at the collapsed wall on one side of his house. “Oh, my God.” He leapt from the car and bounded up the walkway and through the open door. The entry side of the house hadn’t been touched, but it smelled of explosives and was blanketed in eerie silence.

  Sirak rushed into the shattered kitchen. Looking up, he peered at the sky through a gaping hole in the roof. He darted through the open door into the back yard.

  Three sheet-draped bodies were arranged side-by-side in the middle of the sandy, weed-choked yard. Ara and Keri were huddled beside two neighborhood women.

  Sirak felt he would vomit. He stumbled down from the porch and spread his arms. “My sons.”

  Both boys whirled around and lunged into their father’s embrace.

  Ara peered up at Sirak. “Papa, they’re dead. Mama, Mina and Aunt Izabella—they’re all dead.”

  Sirak hugged the boys to his chest. After a moment, he knelt beside the first body. He pulled the sheet back and bit down on his lip in horror. Mina’s pale countenance was framed by her dark, curly hair. Her expression was peaceful, with a hint of surprise.

  “My precious baby,” Sirak cried. “Oh, my darling, please forgive me.” He buried his face against his little girl’s chest and sobbed.

  Sirak crawled on his knees to the next shrouded body and pulled back the sheet. Yasmin’s pasty-white face was heavily pocked with shrapnel. “Habibi! Habibi, I failed you!” Cupping the back of her head in his trembling hands, he kissed her tenderly on the forehead. “How can I live without you?” Sobbing, he beat his fists on the ground.

  Keri knelt beside his father and comforted him. Sirak crumbled face-down to the ground beside his wife. Howling with grief, he clutched Yasmin’s dress, as mortar blasts and rifle fire echoed in the distance.

  After a long while, Sirak crawled to the last body. He pulled down the sheet and Izabella’s half-opened eyes stared up at him. He traced his fingertips across two deep puncture wounds on her left cheek and a gash across her chin. “My precious sister,” he sobbed, “you’ve finally found peace. I pray you’re with Jesus now, with Mama, Papa and our brothers and sister.” He closed her eyes and kissed her forehead before replacing the shroud.

  Struggling to his feet, Sirak hugged Ara and Keri to his chest. “Thank God you boys are safe. Why didn’t I heed old man Jeremiah’s warnings? How many times did he tell me this city would break my heart?” Sirak gasped despondently. “And your mama told me, too. My sons, forgive me.”

  “What should we do now, Papa?” Ara asked.

  Sirak turned and looked over the rooftops at the distant, pink-tinged walls of Jerusalem and the great golden Dome of the Rock shrouded in smoky haze. “We’ll bury them properly, and then we’ll leave this place forever. We’ll leave for America as soon as possible.”

  Ara nodded and wrapped his arm around Keri’s shoulders.

  Adam Bluestone stepped around the bodies. “I’m deeply sorry, my friend. Come with me and I’ll help you make funeral arrangements.”

  Sirak nodded. He glanced down once more at the shrouded bodies and led his sons into the house.

  “For years after that, I saw your mother’s sunken, lifeless eyes everywhere I went. I saw them at the market, in the church and at the hospital. I thought nothing could ever be worse than losing her—until we lost your brother.”

  Keri looked up at a sailboat easing out of a slip. “What did you do with our house in Jerusalem?”

  “I sold it for a pittance. The Israeli Army secured all of Jerusalem and we buried your mama, Mira and Izabella in the Armenian Cemetery just outside the Old City walls.”

  “I remember that, Papa. Did you ever feel like you wanted to go back to Jerusalem—you know, to visit their graves?”

  Sirak sighed deeply and looked up at Keri. “Only once, when your brother died. But I knew no good would come of it.”

  Both men sat staring at the rippling water beyond the breakwater. Each was lost in his own thoughts—transported to another place and another time.

  CHAPTER 53

  November 11, 1996

  Agent Jim Butler leaned back from his desk and stared out the window. He watched yellow, orange and red leaves flutter across the grass at the front of the building. He stood up, stretched his frame to its full height, and stepped over to the window to watch a pretty young woman secure a package on the back of her motor scooter. A brisk knock at the door snapped him out of his trance. “Come in!” Butler called out.

  The door opened and a young, clean-cut Asian in a dark blue suit stepped through the door. “Good morning, Jim.”

  “Welcome back, Leo. How was your vacation?”

  “Awesome. Have you ever been to Colombia?”

  “No, never.”

  “It’s incredible, man. I’ve never seen such amazing fishing, wonderful beaches and awesome women.”

  Listen, do you have time to go over the analysis performed on the explosives from the Bedford storage locker case?”

  “Sure,” Butler replied. “I just reviewed my notes yesterday. What’ve you got?”

  The young agent handed Butler several sheets of paper. “Take a look at this. The composition of the dynamite from Bedford matches the 1976 theft at a Michig
an drilling site.”

  Butler perused the first page and turned to the next. “So what’s the numerical correlation?”

  “Ninety-nine point eight percent. It doesn’t get much better than that, buddy.”

  “It sure doesn’t.”

  “It also matches the dynamite the FBI found at an Armenian youth camp in Massachusetts back in the eighties. Did you get the traces back on the firearms?”

  “All the guns were untraceable, except for that Winchester rifle with carving on the stock. It belonged to a woman from West Virginia, but she lived in Cleveland until ten years ago. I interviewed her last Friday. Her son sold the gun to his boss at an Open Pantry convenience store in Euclid.”

  Leo’s mouth dropped open. “You’re full of shit. Open Pantry?”

  Butler nodded. “The same one on the storage locker rental agreement.”

  “Bingo! Who was the boss at Open Pantry?”

  “He was an Armenian guy in his thirties named Moose. I pulled up the tax records on the store. An outfit named Zakian Enterprises owned it.”

  Leo clapped his hands. “So it was owned by Armenians, too?”

  “Yeah, then I really got lucky. On a hunch, I had Donna run ‘Zakian’ and all the last names the woman, Louise, used when she rented the Bedford storage locker—Corona, Buschel and Cazian. She found a couple named Gevork Zakian and Michelle Cazian who lived in a house in Mayfield Heights. They live in Florida now. We pulled up Michelle Cazian’s driver’s license photo. Unfortunately, she doesn’t look anything like the composite drawing of the woman who rented the locker.”

  “When are you going to talk to them?”

  “Maybe next week. I’m driving out this afternoon to visit another Zakian who lives in Euclid—a Lucy Zakian.”

  Leo smirked. “You’re kidding. Louise Zakian?”

  “No, Lucy—but that’s pretty close. She doesn’t have a driver’s license, but she’s forty-nine years old according to tax records.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Do you want to drive over with me? We can grab some lunch on the way.”

  “Just give me fifteen minutes to sort through my mail.” Leo glanced at his watch. “How about if I meet you downstairs at eleven-thirty?”

  “See you then.”

  Butler merged onto I-71 headed north and, squinting through the bright afternoon sun, eased into the left lane. He popped on his sunglasses. “What’s up with your love life? Are you and Suzie still dating?”

  “Nope,” Leo said emphatically. “She dumped me for some weasel music producer with a Mercedes.”

  “That figures. Didn’t I tell you she was a gold-digger?”

  “Yeah, you did. I was getting tired of her bitching and moaning anyway. She did me a favor doing it just before my vacation. That Colombian girl, Caro, was unbelievable. Too bad you weren’t there to meet her sister. What a hottie she was.” Leo pounded out a drum roll on the dash with his fingertips. “Are you gettin’ any?”

  Jim shook his head. “Ha! Teri and I go out every once in a while, but she’s busy most of the time with her kids. I had a blind date last weekend. She was nice, but there was no chemistry.”

  “Have you visited FBI headquarters lately?” Leo asked.

  “Last week.”

  “Did you meet the new receptionist?”

  “You mean the one with the long curly hair?”

  “Yeah, that’s her. Now that’s what I mean by chemistry.”

  “She’s hot, but too tall for me. Besides, she’s married.”

  “She’s not married, dumbass. She wears that ring to ward off lowlife.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “That’s what she told me. She broke off her engagement to a fireman a couple of months ago when he decided he didn’t want children.”

  “Really?”

  “I asked her out myself, but she said I wasn’t her type. She was nice about it though. She seems like an old-fashioned girl—a real sweetheart. You’d better hurry before those vultures at the Bureau start circling.”

  Butler rolled his eyes. “What’s her name?”

  “Hailey—Hailey Stevens.”

  “Hailey,” Butler muttered. “I’ve always loved that name. Let’s drive by there this afternoon. There’re a couple of details related to this case I need to pull up on their computer.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  The two agents sped along in silence for a few minutes.

  “Did you ever hear about the Armenian Holocaust during World War I?” Butler finally asked.

  The young agent nodded his head. “A little, but history wasn’t my strongest subject.”

  “My dad was a history professor, so I got interested in it early on. This past week, I did some research on the Internet. From 1915 to 1919 more than a million Armenians died in the Ottoman Empire, mostly in the area of Turkey called Anatolia and in Syria. There’s a huge controversy about what really happened, but books and documents written during that time by American missionaries and German Army officers documented the outright slaughter of thousands of Armenian men. After that, hundreds of caravans of women, children and old people were driven into the Syrian desert. Most of them either starved to death or were pillaged by local tribes. The accounts I read were shocking.”

  “I think I read somewhere that the Turks deny it even happened.”

  “They do. The Turkish government claims anyone who died during that time was swept away in the fighting and starvation brought on by the First World War. They say millions of Turks died, too. Anyway, the ongoing Turkish denials, and the failure to return lost land and other belongings, really pissed off some of the surviving descendants. Beginning in 1973, several militant Armenian groups carried out bombings and assassinations all around the world, including in some major U.S. cities. A lot of the hostility was aimed at Turkish diplomats—like Kemal Arikan, the Turkish consul general in LA. He was assassinated in 1982 by a nineteen-year-old Armenian youth who was caught and sentenced to twenty-some years in prison.”

  “I’ll be damned. Why haven’t I heard more about this?”

  Jim changed lanes and accelerated around a dump truck. “Probably because the attacks suddenly ended in 1986, when you and I were in grade school.”

  “What was the name of the terrorist group that carried out the attacks?”

  “There were several. The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, or ASALA, is the best known, but there were several other mysterious groups who took responsibility for one or more attacks, including the Justice Commandos for the Armenian Genocide, or JCAG, the Commandos of Armenian Militants Against Genocide and the Armenian Revolutionary Army. They called themselves the ARA.”

  “Why did the attacks stop?”

  “I’m not sure. There was infighting between the groups and some of their leaders were killed, but it’s not clear what really happened. Maybe the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of Armenia had something to do with it.”

  Leo shook his head. “You sure get all the winners, Butler,” he wise-cracked. “Talk about a cold case.”

  “You know I like history—it’s damned fascinating, if you ask me. All these years and dozens of unsolved crimes around the world, and suddenly the big break may come from a storage locker in Bedford, Ohio.”

  “So you believe the guns and dynamite belonged to the terrorists?”

  “It’s possible.” Butler fished a paper from his briefcase. “Take a good look at this drawing. It’s a composite of the woman who paid for the storage locker all those years.”

  Leo studied the sketch for a few moments. “How old did the witness say she was?”

  “In her forties.”

  “She looks a lot older than that.”

  “Just memorize it, knucklehead.”

  Butler took I-90 east and got off the highway in Euclid. Weaving through a neighborhood just off the freeway, he pulled to a stop across the street from a small sixties-vintage stucco house with an overgrown yard. “That’
s the one,” he muttered.

  The two agents got out of the car and crossed the street. Ambling up the sidewalk to the porch, Butler knocked briskly on the screen door. After a few moments, a peephole in the door opened.

  “Who is it?” a weary-sounding female voice called out.

  Butler held up his identification. “Good morning, ma’am; I’m Federal Agent Jim Butler and this is Agent Leo Wang from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. We’re here to speak with Lucy Zakian.”

  The front door creaked open and a middle-aged woman with gray-streaked brown hair peeked out through the screen. “I’m Lucy. Is something wrong?”

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions. May we come inside?”

  The woman stared at the two men for several moments.

  “Ma’am?” Butler finally asked.

  “Okay,” she replied, with a tremor in her voice, “just let me put my dog in the bedroom.”

  Wang glanced at Butler. “It’s her,” he whispered.

  Butler nodded and signaled for silence.

  Lucy reappeared a moment later. Visibly shaken, she opened the screen door. The front room was neat but crowded with shabby furniture and a heap of woven carpets. The musty odor of old books wafted through the air. She motioned the visitors toward the couch. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” Butler replied.

  “No, thank you.” Wang opened up his notebook and fished a pen out of his coat pocket.

  The woman sat facing them and anxiously clasped her hands in her lap. “How can I help you, officers?”

  “Mrs. Zakian,” Butler began, “have you ever heard of Louise Corona?”

  The woman shifted nervously in her chair. “Louise Corona? No, I’ve never heard of her.”

  “That name doesn’t ring a bell? How about Louise Buschel?”