by The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer;His Mysterious Disappearance
Their conversation quickly turned to the stalled search for Lenz's remains. Mill affirmed that the porte had repeatedly spurned his petitions to send his dragoman (a native interpreter) to the area where Lenz was last seen, citing the need for the European commission to complete its investigation without hindrance. That highly charged and involved process had not even begun yet, on account of the fierce winter still prevailing in Armenia. And once it did, the investigation was likely to drag on for months.
Undeterred, Sachtleben vowed to hound Terrell until he had extracted the papers from the porte. In their follow-up meeting a few days later, the minister confirmed that he had made a personal appeal to the grand vizier. Although the authorities would not grant a passport that would permit direct transit to Armenia, they would allow Sachtleben to exit the country and reenter it at the Persian border, at which point he could retrace Lenz's route westward toward Erzurum.
To Terrell's great surprise, Sachtleben rejected the offer. The investigator feared a ruse. He reasoned that if he were to leave Turkey, the wily officials at the Persian border would in all probability either delay or bar his readmittance, prior assurances notwithstanding. No, thank you, he preferred to stay put in Constantinople. He asked Terrell to renew his efforts to secure a visa to the interior. The minister grudgingly consented.
In the meantime, Sachtleben vowed to make the most of his time in Constantinople, an ancient crossroad of civilizations where the East perpetually tussled with the West. He was thoroughly familiar with the cramped quarters of the old city, a peninsula defined by the Sea of Marmara to the south, the Bosporus Strait to the east, and the Golden Horn to the north.
High on his agenda was a visit to the stately American Bible House in the heart of the old city. Its busy staff managed a network of missions stretching across Turkey and a bustling press dedicated to distributing religious matter to the masses. Despite a contentious rapport with the local officials—who had originally insisted that the agency's Bibles be marked "For Protestants Only"—the operation was thriving. There Sachtleben called on his old friend, the treasurer William W. Peet, who promptly introduced the wheelman to the missionary Henry Otis Dwight.
To Sachtleben's astonishment, Dwight revealed that he had perhaps unraveled Lenz's fate. In hushed tones, the reverend described a recent exchange with an Armenian lad of fifteen. The boy recounted that he had been out riding his bicycle the previous fall when a shower forced him to seek shelter in a guardhouse. One of the soldiers there examined the wheel and revealed that he had seen his first bicycle some months earlier while visiting his hometown. The soldier stated that he was conversing with several friends when an eerie figure atop spinning wheels suddenly appeared on the horizon. The frightened men debated whether the rider was a fellow human being or a devil. One of them spouted: "Let's shoot it. If it is a man it will fall and if it is a devil we cannot hurt it." One of the bystanders complied, and the figure collapsed to the ground. The men rushed over to it and discovered that the rider was a man—fatally wounded.
Sachtleben trembled with excitement. If this was indeed a true account, and the event had taken place near the Deli Baba Pass, the victim was almost certainly Lenz, for cyclists were virtually nonexistent in that remote territory. The wheelman pressed Dwight for more details, but the missionary said that the boy had refused to reveal anything more about the incident.
Determined to follow up on this clue, Sachtleben again called on Terrell. The minister patiently listened to the tale and agreed that it might represent a true breakthrough. He suggested that Sachtleben "put the clue in the hands of Constantinople's chief of detectives." If necessary, the minister suggested, Sachtleben could hire a Christian investigator to pursue the matter with authorities.
The wheelman promptly called on the chief of police to explain the matter and enlist his help. "Although he treated me with polished politeness," Sachtleben lamented, "I could get no aid from him. 'If there is a soldier in the case,' he told me, 'we can do nothing.' I was forced, reluctantly, to relinquish this clue. I began to learn how impregnably the Turkish soldier was guarded from the clutches of the law."
A frustrated Sachtleben concluded that he would get nowhere with the Lenz case until he managed to get to the interior, where the wheelman was presumably buried in a shallow grave. He resumed his campaign to secure travel papers, visiting Terrell on a daily basis. But the minister offered only bland assurances that the porte was still reviewing his petition.
Finally, after having languished in the capital city for nearly a month, Sachtleben decided to take matters in hand. He knew the authorities would gladly issue him a teskere, or visa, to visit the ancient capital of Broussa (now Bursa), just south of Constantinople, across the Sea of Marmara. Although he would still be far from his destination, he reckoned that he would be better off having at least one official paper in hand rather than nothing at all. Perhaps, upon his return to Constantinople, he could slyly have his passport extended so that it authorized transit deeper into the Turkish interior.
In mid-April, Sachtleben toured Broussa and found it one of the most captivating places he had ever seen. One evening he returned to his cozy hotel to find a letter from Terrell awaiting him. "In a few days I will procure a teskere for you," the minister wrote, "allowing travel to Erzeroum and Bayazid via Trebizond [Trabzon]." Sachtleben was ecstatic. The next morning he boarded a boat back to Constantinople to claim his prize.
"Good morning, Mr. Terrell," chirped the investigator as he strolled into the minister's office. "What's the good word?" The minister sat up, but did not return the cheer. On the contrary, he frowned, before muttering: "I'm afraid the good word's not very good, after all." He then confessed that the promised papers had not materialized after all. In a somber voice, he declared: "I think I can do nothing for you."
Sachtleben was crestfallen. After a moment of silence, the wheelman began to protest. Terrell cut him off. "I do not demand a pass," he explained. "I merely request it, if the Turkish government has no objections. I have no war ships at my command to sway their decision." His temper at the boiling point, Sachtleben fumed: "I must go. I will not have anyone say that I am neglecting my duty." As he stormed out of the office, Luther Short, the consul general who had been silently witnessing the exchange, blurted out: "You'd better take care, young man, or your bones, too, will find a resting place in some Armenian grave."
The next day, to calm his nerves, Sachtleben took a contemplative stroll up one of the highest cliffs overlooking the Bosporus. "I have seen many beautiful things," he wrote a friend afterward, "but the panorama before me was the most exquisite view I ever saw. What an enchanting picture; the large city with its thousands of houses rising from the water's edge, the huge mosques with their dazzling white minarets, the blue waters of the Bosporus, the distant sea of Marmara, and the snow clad mountains of Asia Minor lost in the clouds."
Sachtleben had timed his visit to coincide with the sultan's prayer ceremony (selamlik) held every Friday, his only regular public appearance. The wheelman described the distant spectacle:
Six thousand Turkish soldiers, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and marines marched into position for the ceremony. Countless musical bands played sweetly. Promptly at noon the salute of cannons began, and the Sultan appeared in a carriage attended by several hundred officers. He disappeared into the mosque for half an hour of prayer. When he came out the army passed in columns of four. After the revue, an hour later, the Sultan returned to his palace.
Returning to sea level, Sachtleben plotted his next move. Meanwhile, he vented his frustration in a letter home, denouncing Terrell in no uncertain terms. "He is thoroughly incapacitated to discharge the duties of the office. It is a mystery to me why the U.S. ever appointed such an ignorant fellow." The cyclist also hinted darkly that he had the goods on Terrell and was prepared to use them. Reported the Telegraph: "Sachtleben says he is in possession of facts that would lead to the minister's recall."
Vengeance aside, Sacht
leben was in a terrible fix. Owing to Terrell's ineptitude and the sultan's intransigence, the wheelman found himself stranded in Constantinople, hundreds of miles from Lenz's grave. "Had I possessed no other resources my difficult mission would have ended right there," he would later confess, "and I would have been forced to return to America entirely discomfited, the laughing stock of my friends."
Fortunately, the resourceful investigator had a trump card up his sleeve. He discreetly cornered Mr. Dernetriades, a Greek employee of the American consulate, whom the wheelman had met four years earlier during his first visit to Constantinople. Slipping him $50 in cash, Sachtleben implored the clerk to procure the elusive papers through his private channels at the porte. The next day the Greek greeted the cyclist with a "knowing grin" and handed over a passport permitting travel as far as Trebizond on the Black Sea.
Although he would still be a good two hundred miles north of Erzurum, Sachtleben reasoned that, once in Trebizond, he could seek permission to travel along the caravan road to Erzurum. Once he had reached that destination, he planned to meet up with Chambers and Graves, the missionary and the diplomat who had been investigating the Lenz case for some time. They could brief him on their latest findings and help him travel the remaining one hundred miles to the approximate location where Lenz had disappeared.
Sachtleben decided, however, that he would not leave Constantinople until he had engaged the services of an able interpreter—someone who was prepared to accompany him throughout the dangerous journey ahead. At the recommendation of his friends at the Bible House, he interviewed an elderly Christian Arab from Mosul named Khadouri. "His visage was a study in wrinkles," Sachtleben related. "He sported a fierce looking pure white mustache, and his snow-white locks were covered by a bright red fez, decorated with an Arab turban. His costume was exceedingly picturesque. Bright red shoes were followed by gray checked cloth leggings which he had inherited from some English pastor who had long since joined his forefathers in some quiet churchyard."
Despite his age, Khadouri seemed remarkably vigorous. And being a citizen, he was relatively free to travel in Turkey even without special papers. Most importantly, he spoke "every language and dialect of Turkey," with one glaring exception: Armenian. Still, Sachtleben reasoned that it would be some time before he would have to face that language. In the meantime, Khadouri's lack of Armenian might actually help persuade Turkish authorities that the two of them had no intention of traveling to that troubled region.
During his long career, Khadouri had worked for numerous diplomats, missionaries, writers, and travelers of all stripes. Recalled Sachtleben: "He came with a valise full of letters and recommendations in many languages. He treasured them greatly and was fond of looking them over. He was very happy when I added mine to the list, saying I was the youngest master he had ever had. He took it upon himself to write letters to my sisters in beautiful but unintelligible Arabic, telling them how much he loved me. That was before I settled with him."
Anticipating that Turkish officials might balk at his debarking in Trebizond, despite his papers, Sachtleben sent his flamboyant dragoman ahead to alert Mr. Longworth, the local British consul, of his imminent arrival. That way, should he encounter any trouble at the port, the consul could come at once to the American's aid. At last, on April 27, the day after the Arab's departure, Sachtleben boarded the Tebe, an Austrian steamer bound for the same destination. "My friends who saw me off wished me all sorts of good luck," Sachtleben recalled, "but they prophesized lots of trouble."
As the ship pulled out on the Bosporus, Sachtleben was in a pensive mood. From the deck he watched as "the domes and minarets of Constantinople gradually faded from view." He took one last look at Dolmabatchi, the sultan's magnificent palace along the waterfront. Some distance beyond, he detected the sultan's favorite hideout, Yildiz (meaning "star"). Farther on, perched on a hill, was Robert College, a prestigious institute of higher learning founded a generation earlier by American Unitarians. After a brief stop on the Asian side to collect Turkish officials, the ship "ploughed her way into the dark night and the darker waters of the Black Sea, bearing me to an unknown fate."
Over the next two days, Sachtleben was a fixture on deck, gazing at the picturesque and heavily forested Turkish coastline. "The farther eastward the vessel proceeds," Sachtleben noted, "the loftier the mountains become, until their summits are so high as to be covered with perpetual snow." On occasion, the Tebe would stop in the open sea to allow the approach of fleets of small rowboats manned by "wild looking natives representing various stages of the nude, jabbering in their barbarous tongue."
Finally, the ship reached the harbor of Trebizond. Since the port lacked wharves, the captain had to drop anchor two miles from the shore. Once again, the vessel was instantly surrounded by rowboats. Sachtleben engaged a boatman to take him and his baggage ashore. Meanwhile, he braced himself for a rude reception.
"Being very doubtful of the Turkish officials' willingness to let me land from the rowboat, I stationed myself at its prow as it slowly approached the customs house," Sachtleben recalled.
This landing spot consisted of a flight of stone steps, the lowest one being in the water. Right there stood a Turkish official in a great blue coat armed with the traditional long sword and revolver. He raised his hand and shouted "yassok," which means "forbidden." I jumped right into his arms and held on. He was taken totally unaware and nearly fell over with my weight. But I was safe on Turkish soil.
After recovering from the shock, the humiliated officer marched Sachtleben into the customhouse, where he was "roughly" searched and questioned. All his belongings were confiscated, including his gun and cartridge belt. Khadouri, who had witnessed the entire scene, raced up the hill to enlist Longworth. The British consul immediately dispatched two guards on black horses, who managed to free the American, albeit sans baggage. Sachtleben was relieved nonetheless as he chatted with the minister over a hearty meal.
The next day, thanks to Longworth's timely intervention, Sachtleben recovered all his belongings—with the exception of his pocket book of Byron's poetry, which the local authorities had deemed seditious literature. On Sachtleben's behalf, Longworth also asked the local vali for permission to proceed to Erzurum. To the American's astonishment, the vali furnished the papers and even bade his guest a safe and successful transit.
Before embarking on the weeklong journey, Sachtleben retired to his hotel room to dash off a round of letters. At the same time, he sent Khadouri out to buy supplies. The Arab returned with a plethora of provisions, ranging from dried fruit to canned salmon, as well as a wealth of accessories, including "a little charcoal stove, an alcohol lamp, and a patent cork mattress." Groused Sachtleben: "Khadouri thought I was made of money, and I thought he would bankrupt me. So I had to call a halt to his extravagance."
For transportation, Sachtleben engaged two Armenians with three horses. The heavily loaded party left Trebizond on May 6, in gorgeous spring weather. As they headed into the pristine countryside, Sachtleben took in the "beautiful trees and foliage, full of birds twittering in the branches." He admired the large flocks of sheep as they peacefully grazed by the lush mountainsides and riverbeds. He watched with detached amusement as a host of industrious men and women tilled the fields with crude implements.
Suddenly, Sachtleben envisioned poor Frank Lenz, who had entered this beautiful but tragic country exactly a year earlier. He thought of its oppressed citizens who suffered so under the sultan's cruel tyranny. "I wondered how these poor people could respect an authority that ruled them with a rod of iron and left them with nothing," Sachtleben recalled. "They had little to eat, no beds, and scarcely any clothes."
At one village, where the party had stopped for lunch, Sachtleben met an innkeeper's son, "a very bright and obedient little fellow.... I asked the father what he would make of his son. The man replied, 'First, he'll learn to be a soldier. Then I don't know what.' I thought to myself that if the little fellow remains in that village
he must of necessity become an innkeeper, a farmer, or a loafer."
A few days later, halfway through their journey, the party reached Bayburt, a city of about eight thousand residents. "I never saw a city of such size look so poor," Sachtleben lamented. "The place was full of beggars, and the houses were wretched shanties of squalor and destitution." Even the cattle "looked as if they were in the last stages of starvation." That night Sachtleben stayed at the same decrepit inn he and Allen had patronized four years earlier. He found everything "exactly the same," except for the "burning incense of myrrh," introduced to "neutralize the dreadful odor."
For the next several days, the party trudged over snow-capped mountains. Occasionally they encountered large caravans of camels passing between Trebizond and Tabriz. A few of the creatures were so cold and exhausted that they simply drifted away from the pack and curled up to die on a bed of snow. Mercifully, the men soon emerged in a lush valley alongside a stream. From time to time, they paused to enjoy a hot sulfur bath. Finally, the party entered Erzurum. At long last, Sachtleben's search for Lenz was about to begin in earnest.
12. ERZURUM, TURKEY
May 13, 1895
SACHTLEBEN WASTED NO TIME calling on the missionary William Nesbitt Chambers. When the good reverend kindly offered a "light and airy room" in the mission house, Sachtleben accepted without hesitation. He knew well that the next-best alternative, Erzurum's premier hotel, was nothing more than "a ramshackle three story structure, the first story of which was devoted to beasts and filth, and the upper ones to men and filth."
The investigator could hardly have asked for a better host or ally than the forty-two-year-old Canadian national. Chambers was thoroughly versed in the local languages and culture, having already served sixteen years at his post. A graduate of Princeton Theological School, he had come to Erzurum in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War. He promptly founded a Protestant church and school for girls, catering primarily to Armenian Christians. A widower at the time, having lost his first wife and child in childbirth, he soon met and married Cornelia Williams, the daughter of American missionaries. The couple had two children, Kate and Talcott.