by Rik Stone
Beyrek cut into his thoughts. “Now that was just fucking silly.”
Levent answered with a trembling voice, as the two thugs held him in a vice-like grip. “How…? Why are you back so soon?”
“If you must know, my new Russian business partner had everything sorted out by the time I got there. I signed a few documents and here I am.” Beyrek laughed again.
Levent’s body slumped. “Beyrek, please don’t let the police take me from Mehmet, please… Beyrek, you and I grew up together.”
“Levent, for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been stupid, but this time you’ve gone too far. Oh, and that brings me to introductions,” Beyrek said, opening his hand towards the policeman. “This is Captain Ahmet and he works for me.”
Levent noticed Gizem, Beyrek’s wife. She was opening the suitcase and taking out the document he’d taken for Yuri.
“Beyrek,” she said. “Look, he’s stolen more than money.” She held up the papers. “The cash wasn’t enough. He intended blackmailing you.”
“No, that was…” Levent stopped. He’d promised Yuri he wouldn’t tell. “I put it in the case accidentally.”
“Beyrek, you must take the appropriate action or your peers” – Gizem looked at the men in the room – “and your underlings will think you can be taken for a fool.”
Beyrek agreed. “Yes, Gizem, you’re right, but what–?”
“Take him to the Bosporus,” she told him.
Beyrek pondered, at first looking uncertain, but then nodded. “Okay, you’re right,” he said and turned to one of the henchmen. “Tunc, you know little Zeki. Go and find him. Bring him back here and then we’ll all go down and see Yuri Aleksii. He lives on his boat down at the quayside. He can ferry us across the Golden Horn.”
Across the Golden Horn, Levent thought. His spirit lifted. Did that mean he’d get a beating and be allowed to go home to Mehmet?
*
Levent was pushed and dragged through alleyways and streets, as Captain Ahmet walked ahead, nodding to those who might stop and stare. Tunc and Tolga had frogmarched him from the apartment down to the jetty. But even if they hadn’t, Levent had known there would have been little point in him struggling, and even less in trying to find a chance to run. If he escaped, Beyrek would catch up with him sometime. No, he had to just accept the punishment and walk away.
They came down onto the jetty as Yuri was climbing off his boat.
“Yuri,” Beyrek said softly, but smiled with a clenched jaw. “I have work for you and it must be done tonight.”
“And what work is so urgent it needs doing at this time?” Yuri complained.
Beyrek sniggered. “I need you to take us to the other side of the bridge.”
“But why is Levent handcuffed?” Yuri asked and Levent could tell he was nervous about it.
“He’s been up to his mischief. But don’t you worry about that.”
Yuri was clearly uneasy. “I was going for a few vodkas. Do I have a choice?”
Tunc and Tolga stepped forward and Beyrek said, “No!”
“Then you’d better climb on board.”
*
Captain Ahmet tucked his crumpled blue shirt under his overhung belly and into the waistband of a pair of trousers he seemed to have trouble keeping up. “Do you need me for anything else?” he asked Beyrek, as he pushed back a mop of salt and pepper hair under his cap.
“No, getting our friend here so smoothly from the apartment has earned you the rest of the evening off. You can go for now, but I’ll be in touch soon.”
Levent watched Captain Ahmet wipe his podgy hands on his trousers and shake with Beyrek. He then struggled to get from the boat and up onto the jetty. By the time he’d made it, he was breathing heavily and took a moment to recover before he waved and left.
Tolga jumped onto the deck, waited for the boat to stop rocking and turned to help Tunc, who was having trouble with an awkward-looking bag. Levent waited on the jetty, unmoving. When the bag was boarded safely, Tolga got up onto the gunwale and dragged Levent onto a thirty-foot fishing boat that had been converted to carry cargo and passengers.
A boy, maybe sixteen years old, then jumped onto the boat. Levent hadn’t noticed him till now, but guessed he’d be ‘little Zeki’. To contradict the name, he was a tall boy who looked like an ageing street urchin: scruffy, matted hair, shining blue-black, haunted black eyes and a pencil-thin body covered by a tatty, oversized suit. Neither he nor the clothing looked like they had ever been washed.
All aboard, Yuri fired up the engine and left the boat idling until the exhaust cleared. He cast off and the boat crabbed sideways from the quayside, turned to take a line parallel with the Galata Bridge and veered slightly to avoid the floating pontoons near the centre. A few minutes later, they tied up against the opposite jetty and Levent’s thoughts of simply getting a thrashing before going home faded. Zeki stepped onto the boardwalk – alone.
“What about Levent?” Yuri asked.
Beyrek merely looked at Yuri and ordered him, “Cast off.” He then turned to Zeki. “You know what to do, so do it right.”
Zeki nodded and walked off.
“I don’t understand,” Levent said. “Gizem said to take me across to Galata…”
Beyrek nodded at his henchman and Tolga responded with a heavy punch to Levent’s ribs, the impact drove violently into his left side, buckling him towards the force.
They were motoring out to the middle of the strait when Beyrek said, “Stop here, and turn off the navigation lights.”
“Why?” Yuri asked, worry lines crinkling his skin. “Don’t do anything here you might regret, Beyrek.”
Beyrek gave another nod and Tolga stuck a pistol under Yuri’s chin.
“Yuri,” Beyrek said, “just let things take their course or you just might join him.”
Levent became rigid with fear on realising they were going to kill him. But surely Beyrek couldn’t do that; they’d once been like brothers. He couldn’t. “Beyrek, please, give me one more chance,” he begged.
“Your big mistake, Levent, was letting Emel die.” Pain and hatred fought for control in Beyrek’s eyes. “She could have lived like a queen, but instead she let herself be treated like dirt by you. No, no more chances.”
Levent’s spirits collapsed. His legs folded. “I beg…” he began.
“Enough!” Beyrek shouted then took out a pistol and stood behind Yuri. “Tolga, I’ll watch Yuri. You help Tunc… Yuri, you can feel the pistol. If you make a move for any reason, I will blow away the base of your spine.”
Levent listened, legs turning to jelly, as Tolga struggled to take out what looked like a sack of sand from the bag. He was powerless as Tunc pulled his knees apart, took a rope and tied his ankles and legs to either side of the sack.
“No, please,” Levent croaked.
“He’s ready, Mister Ozel,” Tunc said.
“Then do it,” Beyrek commanded.
Levent looked about in desperation and saw a full moon casting a glow over liquid shimmering with a dreamy beauty and a clear, navy-blue sky teeming with stars.
The vastness filled him with more anguish.
“Please, Beyrek,” he pleaded, “please, don’t do this.”
Beyrek’s cold eyes looked through him as if, already, he didn’t exist and Levent’s spirit caved in. Tolga lifted the sack and Levent’s legs and Tunc took the upper half of his body. Together, they threw him over the stern.
Levent looked up to the sky and too quickly, he fell backward into the sea. He tried to take a deep breath but the icy-cold water had engulfed him. With the shock came a sharp sense of awareness and in an instant, he saw everything he’d ever done wrong and everything he might have done right. If only he had another chance. But even if Beyrek had a last-minute change of heart, it was too late. He’d hit the sea horizontally, but the weight of the sack pulled him upright and he plummeted down.
He kept his eyes open, desperate for that last glimpse of life, held his
breath, but his lungs were set to burst. Resistance faltered and air bubbles escaped, brushing his face on their journey to freedom. Yielding to the seduction, he let more air escape and then he sucked in. He wanted to gag, to cough, but the pressure of the water was too much and the cascade filled his lungs.
Discomfort lessened and stillness filled him; he had drowned and in a moment, life would leave his body. But for now, illusion comforted him; through a watery blur, he saw a wavering figure. Emel beckoned. Anxiety left Levent, but then the darkness became absolute, for he was dead.
Chapter 1
Mehmet was tall for an eight-year-old, slender with sinewy muscles too near to the bone. His father always said he looked like he needed a good meal in him, but would rather go out drinking than provide one. And it wasn’t just drinking; during the many arguments he’d heard between him and his mother, it seemed he couldn’t keep his hands off other women. In fact, before his mother had died, his father had almost been a stranger to him. Mehmet had thick, black hair, small, pretty features and the nearest he got to having any kind of camaraderie with his father was when he was jibed about looking like a girl. But his mother hadn’t liked that and came back saying that Mehmet had inherited those looks from him – how he missed his mother.
They lived at the end of a blind alley in the heart of Galata. There was a large iron gate at the entrance from the main road and a multitude of doors and gridded windows within. Everyone knew it as the jail passageway, but the Iron Gate was never locked. They had a basement room in a four-storey tenement, an illegal squat. Day and night, Mehmet shared the space with his parents. This could be embarrassing when his father returned home drunk – which had been more often than not – when he came home at all.
But for now Mehmet sat outside on a cold sandstone step in an alleyway so narrow the local boys would compete by shimmying between the walls to see how high they could get before falling. He’d sat there for hours and began wondering where his father could possibly be – and everyone else come to that; he hadn’t seen a soul all day. He’d been told to wait patiently, but that was so long ago. He should have been back by now. That thought brought a horrible notion to mind. What if he wasn’t coming back?
A tram clattered by in the main street and Mehmet’s inners jumped as its backdraught whistled up the alley. His bones rattled. The afternoon had darkened and was the darker for him being in the passageway. He began feeling nervous. But his father had made promises to him. And he had changed since Mehmet’s mother died. What had he said? “From now on, Mehmet, I’ll always be there for you. I haven’t been the father I should’ve been, but things are about to get better, you’ll see,” but then he’d broken down, started weeping.
Mehmet pondered the words and noted it had taken no time for his father to disappear back into a world of his own. Maybe looking after a child hadn’t appealed after all, but he’d told him to wait and that was what he’d do. Too many thoughts brought a lump to his throat, his eyes burned – and a tear escaped. But then a noise at the entrance jolted him and it wasn’t traffic; the hinges on the gate had creaked. Relief heaved in his chest as he wiped his face. His father had returned.
“Father,” he cried out. But it was an older boy who sneaked out of the shadows, a scruff with greasy black hair hanging too long over his collar and clothes more fitting of a bigger man. The closer he got, the dirtier he looked.
“You Mehmet?” he asked, using a sleeve to take a long swipe across his face.
In an instant, he was next to Mehmet and the smell of the docks, and the added odour of onion, turned Mehmet’s empty stomach. The boy grinned with a frightening sneer and Mehmet was staring at moss-covered teeth and snot that had smeared the boy’s cheek from him cuffing his nose earlier.
Fear flowed through Mehmet. He wanted to run, but there was only one way out of the alley and the boy blocked it, so instead he answered, “Err, yes.”
“Good. I’ve come to take you to your father.”
His heart leapt. “My father … but who are you? Where is he?”
“My name is Zeki,” the boy said. “Don’t worry, your father sent me to bring you to a safe place… Come, hurry, we don’t have a lot of time.”
Blindly, Mehmet followed Zeki from the alley and onto the open avenue. Zeki frightened him, true, and he didn’t trust him one little bit, but what else could he do? He was taking him to his father.
On the way, Zeki stopped and bought a Yufka unleavened flatbread from a late-night vendor. He tore off the bigger half and handed it to Mehmet. “You must be hungry,” he said.
“Yes, thank you, this is the first I’ve eaten today,” he replied and bit greedily into the stale food.
“Come on then, no time to hang about,” Zeki said and was off again.
Mehmet followed. Sometimes Zeki veered from a main street into an alley, only to make his way back to that same avenue further down. It all seemed very strange to Mehmet. He tried asking questions, but Zeki just forged ahead and when Mehmet stumbled, Zeki cursed under his breath. But it was him moving too fast and Mehmet having to run a half-step behind him that had caused him to stumble in the first place. More than once Zeki cut through a bar, or restaurant kitchen, strutting past the workers, almost daring them to say something – no one did.
They reached the quayside and walked with the strait behind them, eventually coming to an old, wooden staging where Zeki climbed down a ladder at the side of the jetty.
“Down here,” he ordered in a quiet voice.
Mehmet took hold of the ladder and began his descent, but the upward posts were rotten and his hand slid on slime. The stink of seaweed, moss and who knows what else wafted up from below. It was dark by now and the water lapped eerily against the beams. Why would his father have him brought to such a place? He looked down. The black liquid at the bottom of the ladder shimmered under bright moonlight. If he fell or the rungs gave way, he would fall in, drown. Fear took a morbid grip of his chest and he froze.
“Zeki?” he called. “Zeki, I don’t think I can climb down. Is this really where my father is? Why does he want me to come here?”
Zeki’s answer came back in a loud whisper: “If you don’t come down, and now, I’ll have to come back up. And believe me you do not want me to do that.”
Why Zeki would threaten him he didn’t know, but he knew if he didn’t get moving he’d be in trouble. He lightened his grip and eased his body away from the rungs. His clothes were now covered in slime and he smelt like everything else around him.
He’d only managed one more rung when fear revisited like a wave. He pulled hard against the ladder, but if he didn’t carry on Zeki would come up and thrash him. He took a deep breath, lowered another rung and then another, until at last he reached the jump-off point. When he looked through the space between the rungs, he couldn’t see his father, but found it difficult to believe what he could see: a crowd of boys and girls lounging about on the lower staging, maybe thirty of them, even forty. Who could tell? But there were a lot.
Mehmet’s chest tightened as a new terror filled him: what did these people want with him?
Chapter 2
So many children, yet so much space to spread out in. The wooden beams across the base of the staging were mostly covered with sheeting that was buried in seaweed and gunge. The confines of the area gave the impression of being in an open-sided room and candles flickered within glass lamps, the light of which danced on slime-covered walls.
“In here,” Zeki whispered.
“Where’s my father?” Mehmet demanded as he stepped off the ladder and stared around, trying to work out what was going on. As he did, a blinding thud sent him to the floor.
“Don’t ever raise your voice in here,” Zeki said softly. “The law will find us and we’ll be finished. If that happens because of you, boy, I’ll fill your lungs with that shit water before they get to me. Understand?”
Mehmet got to his feet unsteadily. “Yes, Zeki, but … but you said you were bringing me
to my father.”
The children couldn’t contain themselves and fell about in quiet fits of laughter and as the reflection of the flames danced in Zeki’s eyes, Mehmet wondered if he’d gone to hell.
“Some people are so fucking stupid and you, you beat them all. Listen, Levent lost his money playing cards and then he bet you – and lost. Now you belong to me.” The last of Zeki’s words trailed away as he failed to suppress his own mirth.
“No!” Mehmet shouted and Zeki punched him in the jaw. When Mehmet hit the floor this time, he slid on the seaweed and only the ladder stopped him from ending up in the water. Again, the children thought it great fun and the hilarity got louder until Zeki pulled a knife and slashed it menacingly through the air.
“I won’t tell any of you again. Keep the noise down.”
Everyone quietened respectfully and Zeki turned his attention to the opposite corner. “Senturk,” he whispered. A tall, skinny boy came out from the shadows, older than Mehmet, probably around twelve.
“This is Mehmet. I want you to be his handler.”
“What’s in it for me?” Senturk asked.
“You’ll take a cut of anything he makes, so it’s up to you to train him right.”
Senturk gave Mehmet the once over, took his arm and guided him into the shadows from where he’d come. Old clothes had been gathered into a nest, close to, but not touching, the sludge on the back wall. “You’ll be safe here … for now,” Senturk told him.
Mehmet found a little solace as he stared into Senturk’s face He looked mournful, had hollow cheeks under large, haunted, brown eyes and pools of water appeared to float in them. He was scruffy like Zeki, but he had a kind face and Mehmet hoped the bigger boy might be someone to form an alliance with. He tried settling on the old clothing, but Senturk pushed him off and got comfortable there himself. However, eventually, he patted the edge of the bedding.