by Jay Amberg
“Mustafa?” He tries to take a deep breath but can’t.
“No!” She seems to be trying to gulp air as well. “His men.”
“The Georgians?”
“I don’t know. Just don’t go there!”
She sounds like she’s out of breath, which makes him all the more nervous. The rhythm of her voice is uneven, sometimes louder and sometimes softer, as though she is walking fast, even faster than her usual brisk pace. She must be somewhere out in the hinterland. “Is Mom…?”
“No change.” Her tone is brusque.
“And Anneanne?” His hand holding the phone is quivering.
“She’s okay. Listen, Serkan, you need to go away! Hide!”
Not knowing what to say, he looks out the kitchen’s one barred window. From this angle, all he can see is the wall with the message.
“Get out of town,” she says. “Immediately!”
“I could go to Dad’s and—”
“No!” She cuts him off. “Not to any relatives! Or friends. Not to Istanbul! Or Ankara!”
“I…Aunt—”
“No!” she shouts. “No relatives!” She pauses, sucks in her breath, and lowers her voice. “Nowhere connected to anybody you associate with now. No one the Hamits might connect you to.”
“What? Why?”
“Do you want the Georgians to find you?”
Feeling trapped, he stares out the window at the graffiti. A fleeting shadow causes him to duck. As he listens, he hears birdsong over his own breathing. The birds wouldn’t be singing if someone were there. “But what about Mom?”
“I’ve…we’ve…Anneanne and I have got her.”
“But—”
“They’re after you, damn it!” She is shouting again. “Disappear!”
He glances around the kitchen but has no idea what he’s looking for. “I could go—”
“No! Don’t tell me,” she interrupts. “Just do it. I don’t want to know!”
He starts to speak but stops himself.
“Where are you now?” she asks, her voice lower.
“At our…,” he chokes on his sadness. “At Mom’s house. I saw the signal!”
“Get out!” she yells. “Get out, now!”
“Okay.”
“Now!”
He looks out the window. A shadow causes him to duck again, but it’s just a passing cloud. “Can I at least—”
“Now, Serkan!”
“Okay. Okay.” He feels for a moment that she’s talking down to him, acting like their mother. It’s a tone he has never reacted well to, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Look, Serkan, you need to vanish for awhile.” Although she lowers her voice again, the urgency remains. “Mustafa’s men are looking for you. They’re after you!”
“I…” He takes a breath. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Again, the answer is curt. He can hear her breathing, as though she has been running or walking a long way. Even farther than usual.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing!” she says. “I’ll call you when I get a new phone.”
“What? Why?”
“They…I…they may be after…all of us.”
“Then I should—”
“Serkan, you should disappear!”
“But—”
“I’ll call you at six,” she says. “Tonight. Please, please, just get out of the house. Go away. That’s all you can do right now.”
“But—” he repeats.
The phone goes dead. He stares at it, then looks at the bag of beer on the floor, starts to push redial, and stops himself. He realizes that tears are mixing with the sweat on his face.
60
KOZAK
The knocking on the family compound’s steel outer gate is loud. It is late in the afternoon, but most of the men in the village are still out in the fields or at the quarry or the pine-nut processing plant. Having himself just arrived home, Engin Suner is standing in the parlor’s doorway. His wife, Hafize, is curled on the divan. The television is on and her eyes are open, but he thinks she is not really watching it. He isn’t sure she even sees it. She hasn’t acknowledged him at all.
Suner keeps the gate unlatched because Hafize’s friends and relatives still visit her daily, but they also fail to rouse her much. His mother stops by once a day, but she orders Hafize to cook and do chores and then scolds her when she doesn’t. Özlem Boroğlu’s mother has, understandably, not come to visit since her own child was attacked.
As two men push through the gate, Suner steps out of the parlor door. He hasn’t even had time to wash since he finished work. His shirt and pants are dirty. He hasn’t shaved all week. Wiping his hands, he meets the men near the outdoor oven. The younger, more muscular man came to the house before, but the older, pudgy man in the white shirt and dark tie is new. Outside the gate, a third man, large and dour, leans against the side of a clean black sedan. He wears dark sunglasses, and his thick arms are folded across his chest.
“Good afternoon,” Suner says, blocking the men from coming farther into the compound’s courtyard.
“Hello,” the older man says as the younger nods. “Thank you for seeing us,” he adds as though he has been invited.
Although Suner is thirsty, he does not offer these intruders anything to drink. He remembers what Özlem Boroğlu told him after the funeral and on the morning she examined the artifacts, which turned out to be priceless: Do not sell to anyone, but pretend that you are willing to do so in the near future. She also told him to be nice, but he is exhausted from his work and, more so, from the unrelenting anger and sadness he feels whenever he is in his house.
The pudgy man takes a billfold from his pants’ back pocket and extracts a business card embossed with gold lettering. Suner has never heard of the company, Anatolia Enterprises, that the man represents. When the man smiles, his double chin becomes more prominent. He wears a gold ring on his stubby right pinky finger. He smells of cologne. His shirt, though tailored, protrudes over his belt. “May we talk for a moment?” he asks, his voice oily.
“It’s not a good time.”
“Yes, our condolences. How is your wife?” His double chin bulges.
Suner shakes his head once hard. He is not going to talk about Hafize with any stranger, much less this man he already dislikes.
“Yes,” the man repeats. “We understand. We would just like to talk with you for a moment only.”
Suner does not say, And I’d like you to get the fuck off my land right now! He does, though, bend the card in half as he folds his arms.
“Your father-in-law’s property,” the fat man says. “We are prepared to—”
“Not now!”
“Hear me out…,” the man wipes his fingers along his sweaty jowls, “for just a minute.” He takes a pack of Marlboros from his pants’ front pocket, flips the top, and offers a cigarette.
Suner looks at the cigarette but says, “No… No, thank-you.”
“We are very interested in two parcels your father-in-law owns…owned in these hills. The parcels are not arable. They’re of no use to a farm—”
“No!” Suner interrupts. “I will talk to you later about selling my place.” He’s losing his patience. “But Dede’s farm belongs to my wife! And she is not in any condition to talk yet!”
The man’s eyes narrow. “May we come in for just a moment?” Sweat is forming on his upper lip.
“No!” Suner tries to soften his voice, but his head is starting to pound. “Not today!” He shakes his head vehemently. “It’s time for you to leave.”
“Mr. Karan,” the young man says, “has come all the way from Istanbul. Just to meet you. His offer is well above the market.”
Sune
r glances at the young man, who has grown a well-trimmed beard since he was last here. “Yes,” he says, his anger billowing, “I’m sure that it’s a good offer. And I’m interested.” He rubs his hand across his mouth. “But the land belongs to my wife. The time is not good. She is not ready… Not healthy enough to—”
“Perhaps,” the fat man interrupts, “you would be interested in a very generous offer for both properties. Yours and your family’s.”
“Get…!” He stops himself, hears himself say, “Very interesting.” He glances at the large man who is now looming just inside the gate, clenching his fists. “But not today! I—”
The fat man smiles. “The proceeds would allow you and your wife to live elsewhere.” He takes a step forward. “To forget all about—”
“Get off my land!” Suner’s vision darkens around the periphery.
“Your wife—”
Suner hits the fat man in the mouth, splitting his lip. As the man reels, the young man coldcocks Suner, who staggers backward. The large man in the sunglasses is already coming at him fast. When Suner swings at the young man, the large man punches him in the ear. Suner, feeling like he has been hit by a fence post, slumps to his knees and then falls to all fours. The young man kicks him in the balls. The third man gets him in the ribs. Gasping, he curls on his side, his cheek in the dirt. Waves of pain and nausea break against each other in the pit of his stomach.
The fat man, bringing a bloody handkerchief to his mouth, sputters, “On our nechst vishit…,” he dabs his battered mouth, “you’ll remember to ashept our generoshity!” He kicks Suner in the stomach, knocking out what little breath he still had. The ringing world fades in and out as he watches the three pairs of shoes turn and walk away—the glossy, black dress shoes, the pale cross-trainers, and the dark steel-toe boots.
61
İZMIR
The scrawny, gray-brown dog lies on a remnant of gray carpeting just inside the Otogar, İzmir’s main bus terminal. As Serkan Boroğlu passes the dog, he thinks, At least it has a home, a place to lie down and feel safe. He is carrying only the backpack he tramped around Turkey and Europe with in his university days. He has not since he left Bergama noticed any followers, but almost everyone everywhere has looked in some way suspicious. After talking with Elif, he stuffed a change of clothes in the backpack and left town—a bus to Dikili, another to Aliaga, and a third to İzmir. None of the same passengers were on all three, but that doesn’t mean he’s not being tailed. He has seen all of the spy movies and, for that matter, the old gangster films. Mustafa may even be sending a woman to make the hit.
Still jittery from the Red Bull he bought in Aliaga, he turns right and heads toward the men’s room. When the chubby man with lottery tickets heads straight for him, he stops in front of one of the shops selling sweets and trinkets. He pretends to be studying the racks of blue heart-shaped name tags, but the name “Mustafa” keeps jumping out at him. A man in a dark uniform pushes a Terminal Café tea cart past the mostly older people sitting in the gray-green steel chairs along the windows. The café’s name alone causes Serkan to keep surveying the concourse.
Before entering the men’s room, he stands under the red, white, and blue TUVALET sign for more than two minutes, scanning for…he’s not sure what. No one, man or woman, is loitering nearby. Everyone except him seems to have some clear destination. He pays the one-and-a-half-lira fee and rushes to the toilets that are in a room separate from the urinals. Three T-shirts hanging on a line block most of the window’s light. After choosing the stall at the end closest to the window, he closes the door, flips the latch, and hangs his backpack on the hook on the back of the door. Doing everything left-handed aggravates his headache. He got rid of the soft cast in Dikili for fear it made him more conspicuous, but his right hand is still swollen, still discolored, still pretty much useless.
The stall is neither clean nor well-lighted, but, breathing through his mouth, he tries to settle on the seat. The water on the floor makes him wish that he had shoes other than the sandals he was wearing when he left the Istanbul apartment…in that other life before the Georgian pulled the razor on him. When he hears someone enter the room, he clinches. There’s shuffling and then the latch on the door of the next stall clicks. The smell of his cold sweat mixes with the stench of shit.
Choking down panic, he leaves the stall without relieving himself. Splashing water on his face in the room with the sinks calms him but only for a moment. It’s all gray here, too, except for the bright pink of the liquid soap in clear containers on the wall. He looks into the mirror at the water dripping through four days growth of beard, at the dark rings under his eyes, and at the disheveled hair. But what really daunts him is the haunted look in his eyes, that of an indigent, a fugitive, an animal about to be cornered. His sweat goes cold again.
When an older man, shorter and skinnier than he is, enters and says hello, Serkan bolts for the door. He then remembers his backpack and doubles back to the toilets. He holds his breath until, the backpack slung over his shoulder, he passes the man taking money at the door. His breathing is quick and shallow as he enters the terminal’s cavernous main concourse. Scores of ticket counters line the entire length of the wall to his left. He can, from this terminal, quite literally, flee to anywhere in Turkey, but the choices are overwhelming, as is the noise of the milling crowd. Light blasts through the wall of windows to his right. The killers could be almost anyone. Two Otogar policemen in dark uniforms, pistols in holsters at their sides, are walking toward him.
He turns and heads toward the exit again. He doesn’t need a ticket—he’s going to take a dolmus to Bostanli where his university friend, Zafer, has an apartment he can use. Zafer is in Çeşme with his family for the next week. Serkan, too, would like to be with his family, anywhere, but he knows he’s toxic, pure poison for both his family and current friends. His mother will probably live, but she’ll be a quadriplegic, at least for some time, and, knowing her, will not let him forget it’s all his fault. In any case, he can’t forget and can’t forgive himself for involving her in his scheme. And Elif, she did nothing but help him, and she’s in danger now, too.
Serkan can’t contact his father. That would put him and his two young children in jeopardy. He’s also afraid that Mustafa’s Georgians are still watching his Bavarian girlfriend’s apartment. He doesn’t even want to think about what they would do to her. At least he has a safe house, an apartment he can hide in for a week. But what’s he going to do then? Given the Hamits’ connections, he can’t get a job where tax records will be kept. He can’t go home, and he can’t go to either Istanbul or Ankara without endangering those he cares about. And it’s only in the last few days that he has even realized how much he cares. He’s alone, isolated—and he has no one to blame but himself.
He stops again ouside the terminal. He needs a beer to calm himself—he can almost taste that first cool draught. A beer would do him a world of good. Just one. That’s all. He’ll be able to think, and he needs a plan. He circles the outdoor area which, of course, has no bars, no place that sells beer at all—and so he settles on Okibar. There’s too much glass here, too, but he goes to the one corner table that’s best protected, at least on two sides. He orders a Coke from the thin, dark-haired waitress who, in his other life, might have attracted him. He would normally scoff at the restaurant’s orange plastic chairbacks and the cheap tiles on the floor and walls, but here he feels anonymous, not having to constantly look over his shoulder. He’ll stay vigilant, of course, but maybe he can avoid the anxiousness that followed Elif’s morning call. The music video on the restaurant’s large television monitor still disconcerts him. Young men singing soulfully wander around a mansion’s grounds as a young woman in a bikini swims laps in the pool.
When the waitress returns with a Coke, a straw, and a glass, he finally begins to relax. The Coke fizzing in the glass is no Heineken, but for hundreds of
years, caffeine has helped men make clear decisions—and he needs clarity. He’s where he is because he got greedy. He should’ve taken Mustafa’s first offer for the hookup with the Americans and been done with it. Or would he have been? They were his clients. Mustafa knew, or must have known, that he was his mother’s son. It could’ve been—it was—a setup from the start. The arrogant prick was using him from the beginning. It’s even more deeply his fault that his mother lies in a coma. Were the Americans, Jack and Clare, in on it? That’s impossible…but were they?
He pops the straw into the Coke. He never uses a straw, but he places the tip of his left forefinger on top of the straw. As he pumps it like a piston, his eyes catch two muscular, dark-haired, square-faced men pausing as they pass Okibar. One, wearing a black, sleeveless T-shirt, has hairy shoulders and a tattoo of a dagger on his forearm. The other is smoking a brown cigarette. They seem to be talking, but he can’t tell if the language is Turkish. And they are standing so that they almost block the door. A Nutella advert is on the TV.
Greed got Serkan into this, and now he has no money at all. He has the five thousand American dollars from the Hamits hidden in his Istanbul apartment, but trying to retrieve the cash would be suicidal. His debit card is almost maxed, but that doesn’t really matter because he can’t use it anyway. Purchases would leave a trail for the Hamits to follow. Just to get to İzmir, he had to borrow money from the bronze box his grandmother keeps in her underwear drawer. He took only half of the money, a little over half, and he left her a note saying he loved her and would pay her back. And he wants to. But how is he ever going to do that?
The two men start to walk away, the one waving his cigarette as if to emphasize a point. As Serkan’s eyes dart, searching for whoever else is out there, he sucks Coke through the straw. He’s sweating again even though Okibar is air-conditioned. The math concerning the cash he has left is like some sixth grade story problem from hell. He had to spend almost a fifth of the money on the three bus tickets and the Red Bull and the doner in Aliaga. He’ll last on what’s left for two weeks, maybe three if he doesn’t eat out or drink. And then what? Washing dishes in a kebab joint? Sleeping on Zafer’s couch until he kicks him out? Nutella and ekmek forever?