by Boston Teran
“Is it because of what happened on the quay?” whispered John Lourdes.
“The Turk is hunting the Armenian. Writers . . . teachers . . . churchman . . . The Turk means to kill them all. Some are being hidden in this quarter.”
John Lourdes followed this shadow figure up through passageways of cobber stone and caryatids, scurrying from any lights that would suddenly flare across the gray walls in the hunt for alcoves and alleyways where the Armenian might hide.
“In these times,” whispered the man, “it is better to be a Jew.”
They turned into a street no wider than a handcart. Faceless two-story rowhouses up stepped cobblestone. Bare, but for a few rosettes of window light. A child’s voice here, a man’s there. And the smells, each its own intense and unknown island to John Lourdes’ senses.
They came to a heavy wooden door and the man with John Lourdes knocked. After a time the eyelatch opened, a momentary set of eyes appeared, silhouetted by a gas lamp on the wall. The eyelatch closed. The door eased in on its bracings.
A woman, backlit in the entry. Tall, Arabic. A red kaftan fell loose to her bare feet. The man spoke to her and all John Lourdes understood was: “Mr. Baptiste . . .”
When the women stepped back into the entry, John Lourdes saw her face was marked with blue ink on her chin and cheeks and brow. The man did not enter with John Lourdes.
“This is as far as I go,” he said. “May your god watch over you.”
His new guide led him down a corridor of beaded doorways where women served men their pipes and sat with them naked in the opaque luxury of pillows piled deep as clouds. Women from Africa, Arab women, Caucasian women, women of unidentifiable origin, all with the same blue markings.
He followed the woman up a stairway to where the walls were lined with tapestries. The story of Ali Baba woven from centuries of silk. With scimitars and white steeds and a slave girl dancing with a dagger, all gleaming in gaslight. A horde of thieves on horseback trampling under the world ran the length of one corridor to a final beaded doorway where the flickery light of a projector cast its smoky mark upon the eyes.
She stood by a stairway to the roof and pointed. That was where John Lourdes was to go.
Mr. Baptiste was sitting on the roof wall. He rose as John Lourdes approached. “From the ruins of the old palace, I saw you coming,” he said.
Mr. Baptiste wore a European suit and tie, there was even the perfunctory handkerchief in the upper coat pocket. He had a long wide face that appeared flat and lineless, and the eyes too were set wide. It looked to John Lourdes to be a face easily frightened.
They shook hands.
“I hope I didn’t insult by bringing you to this place. It was a matter of safety. My own, primarily. I’m Armenian, you see.”
“Opium smells the same everywhere.”
“Have you ever been to this part of the world before?”
“No.”
“What do you think? So far?”
John Lourdes paused, then smiled. “It ain’t Texas,” he said.
Mr. Baptiste grinned. “I felt the same when I first went to England. College. It was so gray. So formal. And the way people looked and spoke at me. I wrote my father. Begged he let me come home. You could imagine what a father would say to that.”
“I could imagine what mine would say . . . As long as you’re there, Mr. Lourdes, find a way to rob the Queen.”
John Lourdes sat. He looked out over a kingdom of rooftops and minarets that fell away to the black of the Black Sea.
“It’s quite beautiful, until you realize what it means.”
John Lourdes did not understand.
“The lights.” He pointed.
Mr. Baptiste hadn’t meant the long rivery lines of the street lamps, but those small cadres of the gendarmerie searching the Beyoglu.
“The murder on the quay.”
“You heard?”
“I was there.”
Mr. Baptiste sat close to John Lourdes.
“Is that what all this is for?” said John Lourdes.
“No. Today was just an excuse.”
“How do you mean?”
“You’re Mexican I was told, but of the United States.”
“That’s right. Mexican and American.”
“Is it as hard to be a Mexican in the United States as it is to be African?”
“We were never put in chains. So, no.”
“But you’re not considered white?” Mr. Baptiste took an envelope from his coat pocket. “An Armenian is the African of this country. Between us and the Turk there are differences. Social, political, historical, religious. The Turk is fundamentally Muslim, the Armenian Christian. That is why the Turk has so much resentment of the missionary. To him they are the servant of Europe and America and allies of the Armenian. And the Turk means to have the Armenian dead.”
Mr. Baptiste ran the edge of the envelope between his fingers. “These are your . . . orders. Before I hand them over to you . . . does the name Calouste Gulbenkian mean anything to you?”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t.”
“He is an architect of business and a financial broker. Born Armenian, he is also a British citizen. And a patriot. He put the merger together that became Royal Dutch-Shell . . . That merger helped fuel the British Navy. He’s been the voice and soul of the Baku. Do you know the Baku?”
“The oil fields on the Caspian Sea.”
“Your record, I am told, indicates you spent time in the Mexican oil fields for the BOI.”
“Tampico.”
“The Baku dwarfs Tampico. Half the oil that comes out of the ground is from the Baku. The Baku will fuel the future. And the German, through the Turk can not—”
John Lourdes rose abruptly. “Over there!”
He had been looking out across the rooftops while Mr. Baptiste spoke. Threads of illumination were closing in on the near end of the block.
f o u r
E MUST LEAVE HERE.”
Mr. Baptiste did not start toward the stairwell, but rather set off across the roof at a run, keeping low. He scuttled up onto the ledge that connected buildings then dropped down to the next roof. He moved silently with John Lourdes following, from building to building. Suddenly at their end of the street, cutting through the blind dark, was another squad of gendarmes. The narrow cobble walkway flaring up before their lights. Realizing they might have to make a stand right there, John Lourdes reached for his automatic in its shoulder holster. Mr. Baptiste put a hand out to refrain him.
“No,” he said. “Come.”
Mr. Baptiste, near crawling now, made his way to a roof hatch. He struggled to lift the heavy wooden cover. It opened onto a black space that descended into the building.
“A ladder,” said Mr. Baptiste. “I first, you follow. Be careful. The wood is old.”
The ladder creaked gravely under John Lourdes’ boots. He had to feel his way with a foot to know when he reached the floor. It was dark, the air rank with must. The faint echo of their movements told him the building was empty. Mr. Baptiste took him by the arm and guided him to a landing and down a flight of faulty stairs.
They proceeded along a passage that ended at thin bands of light. It was a door where the moon slipped through its loose and battered slat. Enough moon for each man to make out the barest details of the other.
Mr. Baptiste took a pocket revolver from his coat. “Beyond this door . . . I’m sorry. I will do my best. I promise.”
The gendarmes were close, there was fire in their voices.
Mr. Baptiste held out the envelope. “By taking this . . . You must understand. You are being entrusted with our faith.”
John Lourdes saw fragments of the man’s face through the shadows. He had been wrong about Mr. Baptiste. His was not a face easily frightened, quite the contrary. It was a face calmly prepared for all eventualities.
John Lourdes accepted the letter. “You will not find me wanting . . . efendi.”
Mr. Baptiste nodded.
“There is an alley straight across the walkway. It is where we . . . you . . . will go. If you end up alone—”
Mr. Baptiste took hold of the door handle. He hesitated, “My wife,” he said, “as I left tonight . . . she said she would wait up for me.”
He pulled the door open and both men sprinted across the walkway. A shot registered shortly thereafter and its echo rolled up that long and lightless alley where they fled. John Lourdes could feel the walls on both sides of him, and when he reached the far boulevard Mr. Baptiste was nowhere to be found. Out of breath, he looked back. There was an assault of gunfire from far down that dark passway between dwellings.
At the harbor that morning John Lourdes had observed the gendarmes carried not only short sabers for crowd control but Mauser sidearms. They were big and clunky pieces of craftsmanship, but they delivered on firepower. He couldn’t make out shadows or any sign of barrel flashes. He just heard a staccato run of shots, and they weren’t courtesy of a pocket revolver.
In the envelope was a letter. Following its instructions, the next day John Lourdes boarded, Le Minotaur, a coal paddlewheeler heading for the port city of Trebizond on the far eastern shore of the Black Sea. He was to be met by a scout, a guide of sorts, to take him on into the vilayets—the frontier provinces. The reason for his journey was to be held in the strictest of confidence.
The mission was to reach a priest by the name of Malek. The Turkish War Department under Enver Pasha had put a bounty on his head. Once captured, he was to become the property of the Teskilat-I-Mahsusa, the Special Organization, for Malek was much more than a holy man. John Lourdes was to serve as envoy, helping to organize and insure the priest’s safe passage to the city of Van.
Van was a centerpiece of the resistance. Many of the Freedom Party and the National Liberation Movement were there. Fighting was intense in and around Van. The Armenians controled part of the city, but were trapped there, and under daily siege by the Turkish Army and militia and their German advisors.
The State Department also had men there who wanted to meet with Malek and others of the resistance to determine and coordinate a course of action to support the Entente and defeat the Central Powers.
The letter, written by Mr. Baptiste and containing these instructions, also had a terse postscript: Luke 10, 25–37.
John Lourdes was on shaky ground when it came to his Bible passages, so he copied chapter and verse in his pocket notebook for a later time. He then took the letter, and as instructed, tore it up. He threw the remains into the foamy wake left by the sidewheeler’s paddle.
He took to watching the sea, and it wasn’t long before a small gray craft became visible, pressing through the ropy waters and running parallel to the steamer about a half mile off the port side. He cupped a hand over his eyes to better see what she was.
“It’s German . . . A patrol boat.”
He turned in the direction of the voice. She was about a dozen paces up the deck railing. It was the woman from the night before on the hotel steps, the one with the torch and bloody kaftan.
“How can you tell?” said John Lourdes.
She approached him, still looking out to sea. “I saw one once just off the coast near Sinope attack a trawler, then set it and everyone on board on fire.”
She was younger looking than what he thought the night before. One might even suggest more innocent. Her skin was quite swarthy, yet her nose was aquiline. She now gave him her full attention.
“Your speech,” she said. “American?”
“Texas. Though I’m a citizen of Mexico.”
“Texas is a very large state, is it not?”
“Larger than that.”
She smiled appreciatively.
“I haven’t seen very much of America. I was in Boston recently, on a fundraising tour for the Relief Agency.”
“You have a touch of a British accent,” he said.
“My father was British, my mother Turkish. I was born in Baku.”
From the deck above came shouting. German officers traveling to Trebizond called and waved to their own on the patrol boat.
“They think they’ve already won the war,” said the young woman.
One of the German officers on board shot up a flare. The sky above hissed and streamered red. Moments later the patrol boat answered and the sky there streaked with phosphor.
“I saw you last night,” said John Lourdes, “at the hotel.”
“Were you one of those offended by my display, or—?”
“I was on the quay when the murder took place.”
“You saw—”
“Yes. As close as we were when you first spoke to me.”
Friends of the young woman now called to her from up near the prow. She signaled with a wave she would be with them momentarily.
“I work for the International Relief Agency.” She put out a hand. “My name is Alev Temple.” She spelled Alev for him. “It is a Turkish name.”
He shook her hand. “John Lourdes.”
“What is taking you to Trebizond, John Lourdes?”
Offhandedly, he remarked, “A religious matter.”
She accepted that. But as she started off to her friends said, “I assume that explains the weapons you were carrying in those scabbards, when you boarded.”
A bitter argument arose that evening in the lounge, pitting the young relief worker against the German officer in charge. It was he who had sent up the flare that morning to his brothers in arms in the patrol boat. Since John Lourdes had been aft smoking, he did not know how or when the argument began.
The lounge was full that evening, and other passengers stood in the entry or watched from the deck through the glass windows as Miss Temple and Rittmeister Bodo Franke vehemently had at each other.
“Don’t tell me I didn’t understand what you were saying. I speak Turkish.”
“And speak you do,” said Rittmeister Franke.
Miss Temple pointed to a table where two of his brother officers sat, along with three members of the Turkish military who were with the Special Organization.
“These men and yourself were discussing the extermination—”
“Deportation of the Armenian contingent within Turkish borders.”
“Why are the Germans here? To oversee—”
“To protect the sovereignty of the Turkish government from internal agitators and outside aggressors. Such as the Russian, the British, the—”
Miss Temple raised her voice. “My father and mother were murdered by men such as these in the Special Organization. They once took an English dictionary from my father and because it had words in it such as ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom,’ they burned it. And every paper, every document, every letter, newspaper article, his bible, maps, anything with the word ‘Armenia’ on it . . . they burned.” She paused, “Then one night they came and burned my father and mother.”
“How many languages do you speak, Miss Temple?”
“Excuse me?”
“How many languages?”
“Two. Turkish and English.”
Rittmeister Franke stood with his hands folded behind his back. When he spoke, his speech did not carry the usual aggressive, self-aggrandizing manner of the cavalry commander. His tone was more that of an attorney honorably prosecuting his case.
“You speak two languages. Well, let me tell you. Any fool can speak one language . . . All you have to do is be born. Two languages . . . Everyone has two parents, so there is ample opportunity. Three languages are where you start to prove how educated, intelligent, and knowledgeable you are. Miss Temple, you are a language short.”
“In Van,” said Miss Temple. “When Armenian Christians are brought before the governor, he likes to put them in small cage like cells and turn hungry, wild cats upon them. Cats meant to attack, bite, claw at the victim.”
“Propaganda begat by lies,” said Rittmeister Franke.
“Lies begat to hide the facts,” answered Miss Temple.
“The relief wor
kers have proven themselves to be nothing more than a propaganda arm of the British government.”
“The missions are filled with orphans. That is not propaganda.”
“Who finances the relief worker? British wealth, the British industrialist. Their aim. The oil fields of Baku and Basra. They want to control the fuel to feed their navy because they are a dying power without it.”
“What is the Berlin to Baghdad Railway? What is the Batum to Baku pipeline? It is the means by which the German army can fuel its run to empire.”
“The Turkish government and the German government are allies, and as such entered into an open arrangement.”
“You want the Armenian gone because he is a Christian, because he wants a free and open—”
“Why are there more British soldiers here than in Europe? Why? The oil. The Royal Dutch-Shell merger, who owns those companies? What is the power behind those companies? The British government—”
A man cried out, “Dear God!”
He was standing near the prow. “There’s a body,” he shouted, to those turning toward him.
The lounge emptied. The captain’s mate scuttled down the forecastle steps.
“It was there!” he said, pointing to the waterline.
The passengers pressed up against the railing to see. Alev Temple found herself alongside John Lourdes. There was nothing but the sound of the engines and the slopping tread of water. Then, in the long course of quiet seconds rising out of the white lappings behind the paddlewheel, a corpse all glimmery wet and naked. People along the railing yelled out, they called to the mate. The swollen torso hit against the hull with a thud then was taken by the aftertow off into the night.
Disquiet settled in along the deck. The mate called up to the forecastle that there was another body sighted. It was two ship lengths or so away from the vessel on the port side.
The passengers searched the low black waves. One pointed to where a casket of naked flesh rose and fell with the current. It was a stark imprisoning vision, and someone questioned could it be a wreck was out there in the night.
John Lourdes had Alev Temple ask the mate if the ship carried flares to search the dark, and the mate answered that the second had neglected to provide for a new supply. John Lourdes then turned to Rittmeister Franke. “Captain,” he said, “could you see your way to—”