by Jay Amberg
“Put the coin somewhere safe,” he says, “where not even you would look. Return to Ankara. Make the report expected of you. Do whatever else you need to do.”
“And, if I need your advice…? Or help…?” Her voice trails off.
He does not answer immediately. “Then contact me.” He pauses again. “And, Tuğçe…,” for the first time, there is emotion in his voice, “do not do anything heroic.”
13
AEGEAN SEA
As the young man passes the swimming pool on the yacht’s aft deck, he tries not to stare at the three gorgeous naked women, two blondes and a brunette, treading water. The expansive salon he enters is all white oak and plush upholstery. The Russian sitting on the sofa with his back to the evening sun glances briefly at him and then goes back to keyboarding on his tablet. Four news feeds appear simultaneously on the muted LCD television’s screen. Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony bursts from the six diminutive speakers.
The young man stands for more than a minute before the Russian looks up again and says, “I was expecting your father.” His hooded eyes are dark; his voice is low, almost a growl. He speaks English because he has never bothered to learn Turkish.
The young man nods. His father told him that the Russian would try to intimidate him and that he should show no fear and stand up to the shithead. But his father failed to mention the three beautiful distractions stepping out of the pool. “My father sends his regrets,” he says in English. He does not add a reason or excuse for his father’s absence. In the family business, there are never excuses.
“Sit.” The Russian waves his hand at the cushioned chair opposite him.
The young man takes a seat, crosses his legs away from the Russian, and looks around at the yacht’s accoutrements and then at the uniformed steward standing at attention at the salon’s portal and the guard, his back to the three women, standing at the stern cradling an AK-47 and scanning the Aegean. The thirty-eight-meter yacht, he has been told, is not the Russian’s largest. He is to show appreciation for the trappings of the Russian’s immense wealth but not be blinded by it. The young man’s great-grandfather was doing a booming business in Hellenistic antiquities, lucrative private deals with English and German aristocrats, while the Russian’s ancestors were farming potatoes.
The Russian is about his father’s age, midsixties, less refined and less fit—though, according to the stories, even more ruthless. His slip-ons are handmade Italian, the pressed slacks tailored, the collared shirt monogrammed with gilded thread. His hands, although manicured, are scarred, his fingers knotted with arthritis; the gold, seventeenth-century-BCE Minoan ring with the bull’s head figurine is certainly genuine. The young man himself wears no jewelry, but his shoes, shirt, and suit are all Italian. He’s clean-shaven with short black hair and has the family’s bright-green eyes. And he works out harder and longer, he’s sure, than either the steward or the guard.
“I have been informed that your father has antiquities that may interest me.”
In fact, the Russian made the first contact, but that is not something to quibble about here. “Yes,” he says, “we have recently made exquisite acquisitions.” He recrosses his legs. The word “acquisitions” isn’t quite correct, but he will not mention that in this negotiation.
“I need something special.”
“My family has never let you down.”
The Russian gestures to the steward. “That’s true.” He makes a steeple with his fingers. “But I am looking for a presidential gift.” His smile is unfriendly. “A gift to my countryman, the wealthiest, most powerful man in the world.”
Aware that this information may well be true, the young man nods. “So nothing,” he says, “that ISIL has looted.” ISIL plunder has flooded the private antiquities market for high-end, secret acquisitions, but those artifacts carry a political significance that makes them in this case untenable.
The Russian’s nod is dismissive. His face, tight around the eyes, has had a number of plastic surgeries. The steward places two champagne flutes on the salon’s bar and turns a bottle chilling in a silver bowl.
“No mere Mycenean gold amulets,” the young man adds. “And no hoards of gold coins. Something both singular and priceless.”
“Yes. Preferably something never seen on the market.”
“Perhaps, museum-quality sculpture?” The sun behind the Russian is setting, casting glimmering red and orange light onto the sparse clouds above the horizon.
“Museum quality is in museums,” the Russian scoffs.
“Perhaps.” The young man leans forward. He should not move beyond his father’s directives, but he must also seize the moment.
“No Roman marble. Nothing terra-cotta,” the Russian snarls.
The young man takes his cell phone from his suit jacket pocket. “And Hellenistic bronze?”
“It has all been melted down.” Though the Russian scoffs again, he is leaning forward, too. A stubby finger pats the bull’s horns on the ring.
“One would think.”
“I know.”
The young man taps his phone. “And I know that the finest Pergamene bronze ever sculpted still exists.” He slides the phone across the table.
The Russian starts when he first gazes at the photo.
The young man’s heart is racing, but he keeps his breath even and his face blank. “The perfect gift for a conquering hero.”
The Russian sits back, runs a hand over his bald head, leans forward again, and says, “It’s a fake.” His dark eyes bore into the young man’s face.
“I have myself verified its authenticity.” Again, this is not exactly true.
“You have?” Disdain creeps back into the Russian’s voice.
“As I’m sure you have been informed, I have a degree in Hellenistic Antiquities from the University of Chicago. And an MBA from Harvard University. My father does not like to brag so perhaps he didn’t mention my three years in procurement in New York for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Hellenistic department.”
“So I am to take your word for its authenticity?” The derision deepens.
“Of course not.” The young man takes the phone from the table. “We will provide you with a list of three independent evaluators whom you already know. You may select someone from the list. All in strict confidence, of course.”
“It’s a hoax.” But the Russian’s voice is no longer a growl.
“My family has never perpetrated a hoax.” It’s true. But the family has also never been willing to make the bold transactional moves that lead to spectacularly lucrative deals. Yes, his father netted six—and sometimes seven—figure earnings on particular items, but he never had an item that produced eight-digit profits. The sun flashes green as it disappears. The three women have vanished as well, but the guard remains at the yacht’s stern.
14
BERGAMA
At 2:15 a.m., Elif Boroğlu inspects the terra-cotta goddess she has been sculpting. Turning it slowly, she uses a paintbrush to clean any residual dust. The figurine is fully robed; not so much as a shoulder or ankle is bare. She is squat, not pregnant, but thick around the middle. Her face is full, her expression dour. Three snakes emerge from her long, thickly flowing hair. One hand holds a short, single-edged sword, the other the severed head of a bearded man.
Elif must still glaze and paint and fire the figurine, but it is finished. It is not a copy of any particular statue of hers or anyone else’s. Each of her figurines is always rendered anew, and each springs, like Athena from Zeus, fully grown from Elif’s head. She never follows a mold—or even a plan. When she can, as tonight, be fully present, a statue appears in her mind, flows through her fingers, and forms in the clay. She is only a flume, a sluice, a channel.
What she experiences is not exactly a trance, but she becomes awa
re of only the sculpting, nothing else. The world outside the studio dissipates. She hears only the tanbur music in her earbuds and feels only the damp malleability of the clay. Her focus sharpens until something akin to light runs through her, binding her and the statue. And then finally the music fades, as does she herself. The sculpting is so clear and bright that she herself vanishes—only to find herself sometime later brushing dust from a figurine.
This small studio, clean and well lit, at least most of the time, is her sanctuary. On this side street at the edge of town near the ancient Aesklepion, it is quiet, except for the voices of the dear children in the day and the barking of the sacred dogs at night. Sometimes her cat, Sekhmet, joins her, but that is more Sekhmet’s choice than hers. But she never invites friends or family when she is working through a problem. And she is having difficulty getting her heart and soul beyond the bombing of the funicular.
More facts about the attack have emerged, but none provides meaning. A number of people in the neighborhood noticed the killer in his pick-up truck. Five elderly women remember a man in a white shirt standing in the area minutes before the blast, but for the most part they averted their eyes. One of them did say that he was young and handsome, like a movie star. The killer was, however, identified—an Irishman, a drifter with a criminal record who went to Syria to wage jihad for Daesh and then came to Bergama to wreak senseless havoc. His life was undistinguished, and people are already forgetting his name but not his heinous crime.
How the killer got into the country is still not certain. The pick-up truck was stolen in İzmir a week before the blast, but where it was turned into a bomb and how it got to Bergama are also unknown. And the truck itself has provided scant physical evidence because it is now nothing more than mangled, burned-out shards. The cleanup of the debris is requiring most of Bergama’s municipal workers, and there is already a debate growing about whether or not the funicular should be rebuilt at all.
The ritual that Elif and her friends performed at the cave was cathartic, but anger and sadness are creeping over her again. And although she erected a temporary memorial at the acropolis funicular’s ticket office, she feels she should be doing much more. The Chinese and the families of the other murdered tourists have taken home the remains of their dead. Little Mehmet, the lone survivor, still lies in a coma.
The massacre’s real toll, Elif realizes, will continue to rise. She accepts both the notion that war is in our blood and the fact that war is brutal. Massacres and scorched earth are often a result, perhaps even an inevitability. But what happened here was not warfare. Nor was it in any way heroic. The Irisher was a murderer not a martyr, and what he did here terrorizes only the innocent. It has enraged those in power, inspiring retaliation and retribution, but not fear. In Ankara and other national capitals, the “Bergama Bombing,” as it is now known, is already being used by the powerful to pursue their personal political ends. The pain, the suffering, the trauma are being felt here in Bergama, which will never again be a peaceful market town where people go about their day-to-day business. Lives here have been shattered by the blast, but the powerful elsewhere have not and will not suffer, have not and will not feel pain, in any significant way.
As Elif blows on the figurine in case any speck of dust remains, the earth trembles a little—barely enough to register on seismographs, but enough to remind her that she is living on a faultline. Yes, even this studio, her sanctuary, is always at risk. Her sculpting gives her peace, though often it’s only ephemeral. But she does not come here to run away from the dangers or the horrors of the world. Rather, she feels as though here she can enter the world more deeply, comprehending—at least for a few moments—the folly of men, the grave illness of the species. Sculpting gives her a modicum of hope even when, as now, it feels like society is foundering. But her work never blinds her to the evil in the world.
As she places the figurine on the rack, she is suddenly exhausted. Her neck and shoulders, wrists and fingers ache. Her eyes burn. After she cleans up, she could sleep here on her yoga mat, but she should go home. Her mother and grandmother are used to her nocturnal habits, but if she does not show up by dawn they will, given the current perturbation in town, begin to worry.
She stands up and stretches into tree pose on her right foot. As she switches to her left, her phone rings. She lifts her arms into a spire for three seconds before stepping back to her worktable. The number is her brother’s, with whom she still has not yet spoken. When he calls this late, he has invariably been drinking. She should let the call ring over to voicemail, but she, as the older sibling, feels obligated to take care of him. After the fifth ring, she answers, “Good evening, my dear brother.”
“Hello, dear sister,” he says, “I knew you would be awake.”
“Yes.”
“How are you?” His voice is even, his tone deliberate. When he drunk-dials, he tends to speak too carefully in a futile attempt to keep her from noticing his inebriation.
“Not good, Serkan.” She sits on her stool. “Upset. Sad and angry about what has happened here.”
“I know,” he says. “It’s awful.”
She says nothing. He doesn’t know. He couldn’t. If he did, he would have come home.
“I’m driving down tomorrow…today…after an important meeting in the morning…”
“Have you called Mom?”
“Uh, no…” He hesitates. “I wanted to surprise her.”
Again, she says nothing. A quick cough in the background informs her that he is not alone.
“I should’ve called. I know.” His voice is sincere. When he intermittently feels guilt about not keeping in closer touch with his mother, he is genuinely remorseful—but the pattern doesn’t change. He tends to call her only when he needs money. “I’ve been in Cappadocia,” he adds, as though that might explain the lack of contact. “And…,” his voice rises, “I’ve got a great deal going!”
Taking a breath, Elif brushes her left hand down her face. The couple of times he has visited in the last two years, he has taken two dozen of her statues back to Istanbul to sell in boutiques, promising to split the profits.
“This is it,” he says. “A game changer. A real breakout!”
She rubs her left eye, which is burning more fiercely than her right.
“The Americans you met,” he says.
“Yes…” She hesitates. She did meet an older American couple, but they were only in Bergama for half a day—and Serkan didn’t even stay long enough for them to meet his mother. The wife, Clare, has e-mailed Elif half a dozen times about designing a piece—a golden goddess amulet. Serkan knows about the project, but she isn’t sure he understands that they’re providing her with both the equipment she needs and the precious metal necessary.
“They want me to find them an ancient amulet,” he says. “Something really old!”
“Uh, okay.” But it’s not okay! She opens both eyes wide.
“Something gold!”
“How? You can’t… We can’t—”
“I have connections!”
“What connections?” Their mother has discovered quite a number of priceless artifacts over the years, but none of them is hers. They all belong to the country, to the nation, to Turkey. As far as Elif knows, their mother never held out any artifacts from any site. “You don’t—”
“I thought you’d be excited!” he says, interrupting her again.
“I…” She has no idea what to say, and this is clearly the time not to say anything.
“Don’t tell Mom,” he says.
She won’t. She can’t. Even Serkan’s entertaining such an idea worries her. She takes a deep breath, exhales, and then rubs her hand down her face again.
15
KAIKOS VALLEY
When the burly man cradling the semiautomatic rifle steps onto the dirt track in front of �
�zlem Boroğlu’s gray Dacia, she brakes quickly. The man wears combat boots, baggy camouflage pants, and a forest-green T-shirt. He is unshaven, and his cadet cap is grimy. The afternoon sun glints off his reflective sunglasses and his rifle’s barrel. She taps her cigarette’s ash out the window, turns the car off, switches on the dashboard camera, and stares silently at the man. They are one-and-a-half kilometers away from the main road between Bergama and Dikili. The track slopes slowly up and then winds behind a hill. The land behind her is flat, with rectangular fields in variable shades of green and brown.
“Stop!” the man shouts. “Go away!”
Even with just these three words, she can tell he is neither Turkish nor military. She has, of course, already stopped, so, saying nothing, she glares at him through the windshield. His thick neck and hairy arms are thoroughly tattooed.
“Go!” he shouts, gesturing with the rifle. “Get out! Leave!”
She takes a long, slow drag on her cigarette and exhales through her nose.
The man reaches up and begins to talk into the radio microphone clipped to his T-shirt’s neckline. The language is a mixture of Georgian and poor Turkish. His thick hand adjusts the angle of the microphone, and, cocking his head, he speaks more intensely.
Sweating in her long-sleeved, blue cotton workshirt, Boroğlu reaches toward the passenger seat for her thermos. The man swings the rifle and points the barrel at her face. Very slowly, she raises her hand, palm open. He circles to his right and approaches the driver’s-side window from just behind her view. Her heart pounds. She has stood up to and stared down many men in her life—but never a Georgian with an automatic rifle.
The man stays just behind her left shoulder. She places both hands on the steering wheel and tries to slow and deepen her breathing. Sweat runs down her chest and back. She can hear his quick, shallow, adrenaline-soaked breaths and smell his sour sweat. It’s possible, she thinks, that this moment is even trickier for him than it is for her. Whatever he has been hired to do, he is certainly not being paid to blow the head off an unarmed older woman.