A Place Far Away

by Vahan Zanoyan

  “It does,” he replied dryly. “The telephone reception from here to Armenia is very poor and often entirely dysfunctional. A lot depends on the area code. Yerevan sometimes works, but cell phones and the rural regions can be very problematic. We can spend hours dialing a number repeatedly until we get through.”

  “I see,” said Lara, not convinced by this story. For the first time since she landed in Istanbul she had the eerie feeling that her plans for the second leg of her trip to Armenia were in jeopardy.

  “Come,” said Apo, “and give me the number you want to reach. We will try, and as soon as we get through, I’ll transfer the call to your room.” Then, as if preempting a temptation that Lara might have been facing, he added, “The phone in your room is internal, which means you cannot get an outside line. But if I make the connection from this office, I can transfer it to you. Is that fine with you?”

  “We can forget it, then,” said Lara. “I do not want to put you through the trouble of spending hours on the phone for me. You’ve been very kind already. Thanks anyway.” It was obvious to Apo that Lara did not want to give him the phone number.

  “As you wish, Lara Khanum,” he said politely, and held the door open for her.

  They took the elevator down one floor, and Apo led her through the hallway to an apartment, opened the door, and let her in. Inside, he took her to a suite within the apartment. It had a large bedroom, bathroom and a small sitting area, where there was a refrigerator stocked with soft drinks and juices and a coffee and tea set.

  “I believe you’ll be comfortable here,” he told her. “We use this suite for our most important guests. You can lock the door of the suite for privacy. No one will disturb you. If you need anything, just dial 11 on the phone next to the bed, and I’ll respond. I will let you know as soon as we hear about your flight.”

  As Lara sat in a chair pondering what had gone wrong with her plan, Apo managed to track down Ayvazian. He was in Martashen.

  “Sergey effendi,” he said, using his most cordial Istanbul style, “this is Apo Arslan disturbing you from Istanbul.”

  “What a nice surprise, Abo jan,” said Ayvazian. “I hope all is well with you; how can I be of help?”

  “Sergey jan,” said Apo, dropping the title effendi, “I am calling to see if I can be of help to you in a very delicate matter.”

  “Is that so?” said Ayvazian. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

  “I believe one of your ladies in Dubai has made an unauthorized excursion, and is currently in my custody.”

  “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Ayvazian, beginning to lose his patience. “Come to the point, Abo jan, so we don’t waste time.”

  “Her name is Lara Galian. Also known as Leila, and also as Lara Galianova. She ran away from Dubai, fell into my hands, and believes that she is heading back home.”

  Ayvazian’s hands were shaking with anger. Apo’s calm and composed tone simply added to his mounting fury. A million scenarios flashed before his eyes as to what could have happened.

  “I believe the big effendi in Dubai will be very upset when he returns home and finds that his little love has flown the coop,” continued Apo in his exaggerated calm and polite style, “so I thought I’d save you the trouble and the embarrassment of having to go looking for her.”

  “How did she end up in your custody, Abo?” asked Ayvazian, making an enormous effort to control his urge to yell and curse.

  “That is a very long story and not one to be told over the telephone,” said Apo. “But as you may remember, I have always believed that you and I should cooperate, not compete. We can both do better by cooperating. So I offer you this assistance in that spirit, hoping that you will appreciate my gesture.”

  Ayvazian could barely control his anger. Hearing Apo start negotiations so soon, with such a haughty attitude, infuriated him.

  “Abo, all I can say is that you better not be involved in this,” he said rudely, but keeping his voice calm.

  “Now why would you say that, Sergey?” asked Apo. “I am already involved since I have custody of the girl, right? But if you are asking whether I was involved in her escape from Dubai, I can assure you most absolutely that I was not. I have no idea whatsoever how she managed that. But you should be happy, not angry, that she is now in my care and I am willing to return her to you. Imagine how bad it would have been if you had no idea where she was. So, I am offering you a helping hand in this difficult and embarrassing situation. Please do not respond to me with threats.”

  “Very good,” said Ayvazian. “I need to find out what happened. Give me an hour and I’ll call you back. In the meantime, I’ll send my nephew Viktor to Istanbul on the next available flight. Where can I reach you?”

  Apo gave him a phone number and hung up, smiling ear to ear.

  XIX

  Sumaya was in a panic, and with good reason. Natalia’s uncle’s man had waited at the Moscow airport with a sign announcing “Mr. Timur K.” but no one had approached him. All the passengers had disembarked and left. They had checked the passenger list, and had found neither the name Timur nor Lara Galianova. Sumaya had then asked Farah to contact Apo, but Apo was not answering the phone. This was clearly the nightmare scenario that Sumaya had feared. Lara had disappeared in Istanbul.

  They tried calling Apo all night with no success. Then Sumaya decided she’d have to let Al Barmaka know that Leila had escaped. There was no point in postponing telling him. It was already midnight in Dubai, which meant around 3:00 in the morning in Beijing. She had to wait until morning. And she had to have a plausible story, not only of the escape, but also of how she came to discover that Lara was missing.

  Earlier that afternoon, while they were still trying to get in touch with Apo, Sumaya received a call that shocked and dismayed her. It was from Madame Ano.

  “Where is Lara?” Ano asked, skipping all the traditional pleasantries.

  “I was about to call you to ask the same question,” said Sumaya, doing her best to act much calmer than she actually was. How could Ano know anything was amiss so early?

  “Why should I know more than you, Sumaya?” asked Ano rudely. “Lara has been your responsibility since she moved there. Then suddenly we find out that she is in Istanbul. Does His Excellency know about this? Do you know where she is? And I’d like to remind you that her safety is his responsibility while she is under contract with him. We will hold him personally responsible.”

  “And I’d like to remind you that you are in Dubai,” said Sumaya, allowing her utter distaste for the woman to show in her voice. “So you better stop making threats. Your girl, for whom we paid so dearly, has escaped. You and your boss will be held responsible and can very easily be thrown in jail! Do you understand that?”

  Madame Ano realized that her offensive strategy had backfired. It was time to back off.

  “Sumaya, we cannot be responsible for her escape from your premises. We have not been in contact with her since she joined you. But let’s put that aside for now; we’re in this together. We face a problem. We know she is in Istanbul, but we don’t how she could have reached there.”

  “How do you know she’s in Istanbul?” asked Sumaya, trying to extract as much information as she could while Ano was in retreat.

  “Mr. Ayvazian received a call from someone in Istanbul, saying he had Lara. That is all I know, I swear.”

  “You don’t know who called Ayvazian?” asked Sumaya even though she had already started putting the puzzle together.

  “I really don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. He was so furious when he called that he did not make much sense. Your boss may do the same, Sumaya, when he finds out, and I won’t blame him. Now you and I are stuck with the mess. Ayvazian wants to confirm that Lara is missing. That was his first concern, and I assume that we have the answer.”

  “She is missing,” said Sumaya dispassionately. “I just discovered it myself. So now I am thinking about how to break th
e news to His Excellency, who is on a business trip to Asia.”

  “But how could she have escaped from there?” asked Ano, genuinely bewildered. “Don’t you have the most elaborate security measures?”

  “She must have had some help from outside,” said Sumaya, remembering Lara’s own story about her friend who could have helped her. “She had to have a driver pick her up with some alibi, and she had to have help arranging her ticket. But what I don’t understand is how all of a sudden your boss got a call from Istanbul. Her plans must have gone wrong somewhere along the way.”

  “And thank God for that,” said Ano. “The only good news in this whole story is that we have a good chance of getting hold of her and returning her to His Excellency. So when you talk to him, please mention that.”

  “I will,” said Sumaya, feeling entirely defeated and stupid for having started the operation.

  Lara left her suite and surveyed the rest of the apartment and discovered, as she had suspected, that the front door was locked and she could not open it from the inside. She knew that her plan had been ruined, but did not know how. Sumaya couldn’t possibly have an interest in causing this. Why help her escape only to trap her in Istanbul? Apo was a contact of Farah’s, but what was her role in all this? For that matter, what was Apo’s role? Clearly, Apo was not following the plan that Sumaya had told her he would, namely, to put her on a plane to Tbilisi. So he was betraying Sumaya, but to what end? Once again, Lara felt that her life was at the mercy of others. This was no longer her plan and her doing, as she had thought it was. She felt trapped and helpless, just as she had felt since the first night in Ayvazian’s house.

  She dialed 11. “No news yet, Lara khanum,” said Apo. “They have not fixed whatever problem they’re having. I think you’ll end up spending the night here. I am very sorry for your delay.”

  Apo offered her food again, and this time she accepted. She ate, showered, and changed into a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. She put on a light brown jacket, which she had brought in her carry-on bag, and packed her Abaya.

  After a night of terror and a taste of freedom, I am back to living the fear of captivity, she wrote in her book. I’ll never get used to the latter. My next escape will be final.

  “Catch the next flight to Dubai,” Ayvazian told Viktor. “Try to go see this Sumaya woman. Find out as much as you can about what happened; try to get some details, like who helped her manage something like this, how she left the compound, how she booked her tickets. From there, catch a flight straight to Istanbul. By then I’ll have things sorted out with Abo.”

  “You think Sumaya’s hiding something?” asked Viktor.

  “We can’t rule out anything at this stage. Lara couldn’t have managed this alone. Someone helped her, either from outside, as Sumaya claims, or from inside.”

  “Does Al Barmaka know?”

  “Not yet, but he’ll know soon enough. Maybe Sumaya has called him already, I’m not sure. It is very important that you reassure them that we know where the girl is and we’ll return her immediately.”

  “Understood,” said Viktor, but he did not like this mission. Cleaning up after someone else’s mess was not something he liked to do.

  “You need to be very careful, Viktor,” advised Ayvazian, knowing the impulsiveness of his nephew. “We are in their territory. They are claiming Lara escaped with outside help. The most likely outside help, they’ll assume, is someone from our organization. That makes no sense to us, but it may make sense to them. We have to dispel all such suspicions. But not by yelling and threats.”

  “I understand,” said Viktor, and when he saw the worried look on Ayvazian’s face, “really, I do,” he added.

  “Okay. There is a flight to Dubai tomorrow. Try to finish everything there tomorrow and fly to Istanbul either the same night or the next day. Let me know the schedules. Call as soon as you know something.”

  Sumaya couldn’t wait until mid morning as she had planned. It was a little before nine a.m. when she called Manoj.

  “I need to get in touch with Al Barmaka urgently,” she said, “and his cell phone is turned off. Is he staying at the usual hotel in Beijing?”

  “Yes, he’s at the Ritz Carlton,” said Manoj. “But Ms. Sumaya, dear, it is around noon in Beijing now. He could be in a meeting. That’s probably why his cell phone is turned off.”

  “This cannot wait,” said Sumaya. “I need to find him. Please give me the number.”

  “Is there any way I can help?” asked Manoj, as he read off the hotel phone number and his suite number. “Please don’t hesitate to tell me.”

  “Thanks, Manoj, but I need to handle this myself.”

  On the third ring Al Barmaka answered the phone. He sounded like he was still asleep.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” said Sumaya. “But it is important.”

  Al Barmaka sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. The Chinese woman next to him was sound asleep, with her back to him, her naked shoulders looking very inviting outside of the covers.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Leila has escaped.”

  “What do you mean ‘escaped’?” asked Al Barmaka, with nothing but sleep coming through in his voice.

  “It must have happened last night. I called her to invite her for breakfast this morning, but there was no answer. Then I sent the maid to check. She said the bed was not slept in. She’s not here.”

  “Where is she?” asked Al Barmaka, sounding like the full impact of the news had not hit him yet.

  Could it be that he doesn’t care? thought Sumaya. More likely, he is still sleepy.

  “Ayvazian’s pimp here in Dubai called to say that she was in Istanbul, and that Ayvazian had found out where she was, and that he could return her to you within twenty-four hours.” Sumaya knew that what Al Barmaka said next would be critical for her future at the estate.

  But Al Barmaka was quiet for a long time. He looked again at the Chinese lady lying next to him, with her smooth, waist-long hair covering half the pillow and part of her shoulders, and gently ran his index finger down her back. She stirred, turned around, smiled sweetly, and rolled closer to him and cuddled under his arm.

  “How did they find her so easily?” asked Al Barmaka at last.

  “I have no idea,” said Sumaya. “I am so sorry about this. I have no idea how she could escape without some help from outside. She was in my place yesterday afternoon for tea, and when I went to the kitchen to take a call she must have gone to my office and taken her passport from the drawer.” Sumaya started crying. “I’m really sorry,” she repeated between sobs.

  Al Barmaka yawned. He felt the warmth of the Chinese woman’s breath on his side and looked at her again.

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” he said after another long pause. “First, tell them I don’t want her back. My house is not a prison and we don’t keep people against their will. Second, tell them I want the balance of my money back. She was with me for three months, right? So they owe me seventy-five thousand dollars. If they don’t transfer it to Manoj within twenty-four hours, they’ll be finished in Dubai. Third, I want you to find out exactly what happened. I want to know how she left the compound, how she flew out, everything. They have to fully cooperate on this also, since they already know where she is.”

  “I understand,” said Sumaya quietly. “Again, I am very sorry.”

  “That’s all,” said Al Barmaka, yawning again. He had done a good job hiding his true emotions about Leila’s escape from Sumaya. She did not need to know what a hurtful blow this was to him. “Tell Manoj everything and let him report to me on the progress.” Then the phone went dead.

  Sumaya was in a cold sweat. The fact that Leila wouldn’t return was welcome news; in a way, she had achieved her objective. But her nightmare scenario was unfolding in front of her eyes. Al Barmaka wouldn’t rest until he understood what had happened; Sumaya started making plans for her own departure from the compound.

  Ayvazi
an called Apo to say that he needed more time to decide what to do with the girl. Finally, the long expected call from Ano came.

  “He doesn’t want her back,” said Ano. “He says his house is not a prison. But he wants seventy-five thousand dollars back. By tomorrow at the latest, or we’re finished here in Dubai. And he wants you to find out exactly what happened, since you already have found the girl.”

  “Viktor will be in Dubai tomorrow,” said Ayvazian, holding back his anger. “He’ll sort things out. Tell them that.”

  If Lara had been standing there in front of him, Ayvazian would have slit her throat right then and there. And although normally Ayvazian could not usually control his angry tantrums, when the rage exceeded a certain level, he became uncharacteristically calm. He stopped yelling and shaking, but that was when he was the most dangerous.

  He called Viktor.

  “Go to Dubai and check the situation on the ground first hand,” he said. “Transfer seventy-five thousand dollars to Al Barmaka and reassure them. Ano can give you the details. Then fly straight to Istanbul. Thank Abo on my behalf. Tell him we’ll cooperate in Dubai. He can send up to twenty girls initially, and build a force of up to forty in three years. He will have our protection.”

  “Are we really going to let him bring forty girls?” asked Viktor, surprised.

  “Well, we’ll have to see about that later, won’t we?” snapped Ayvazian. “A lot can happen in three years. But I have another key demand from Abo. Aside from returning Lara, I want to know everything he knows about how she escaped and how she ended up in his possession. Everything. Tell him unless I know exactly how he got his hands on her, there is no deal. Then bring Lara and take her straight to Sevajayr. We either break her or kill her.”

  Then he called Apo.

  “Viktor will be there the day after tomorrow,” he said. “Everything is arranged. He will make you an offer that will meet with your agreement, I’m sure. Let me know if it doesn’t after you hear it. Then you hand the girl to him.”