Veli Yaziz rapped on the open door to the chief’s comfortable office of mahogany, leather, and silk. “We’ve identified him, efendim,” Yaziz said, feeling proud of his efficiency.
Adem Bulayir waved his fountain pen at a chair that faced the broad desk where he sat. He’d been scribbling on a sheaf of papers. Hastily, he stuffed them into a folder, which he jammed into a drawer as Yaziz crossed the thick carpet.
Yaziz dropped his typed report onto Bulayir’s now barren desk, and then stood, waiting for permission to sit while his boss frowned at the document before him.
“Victim’s name is Umit Alekci,” Yaziz said helpfully, worried by the apparent distraction in the chief. Bulayir flipped through the pages, clearly missing pertinent details.
“What is this?” Bulayir grumbled, not finding whatever it was he looked for in the report.
“About the shooting today, sir. At Anit Kabir. My officers have tracked down the victim’s identity, and—”
“You waste valuable resources on this, Veli Bey?” Bulayir flung down the papers, rose from his desk, and paced to the window.
Yaziz hated being addressed in the antiquated way that Atatürk had worked so hard to reform, but he wouldn’t risk his position by inviting his superior’s anger. Bulayir could call him what he would.
“Sir, it is my job to investigate. Because the Alekci family has connections to the copper trade—”
“They’re tshinghiane, Veli Bey. Gypsies. Nomads. Thieves!”
“Actually, sir, they’re not Turkish gypsies. This family survived the Nazi bombing of Bucharest, then years of Soviet persecution, from which they somehow escaped two years ago to Ankara—”
“Enough. We have more important work to do than monitor gypsy squabbles.” Bulayir took a deep breath and stared out the window. The boulevard bustled with workers on their way home at the end of the day.
Yaziz watched the chief’s back, the way it heaved in and out. Bulayir’s hands rested behind his back, the fingers of one hand barely bumping those of the other. A tespih dangled from his fingertips, and the fact that its beads hung unused indicated to Yaziz the extent of the chief’s preoccupation. Something greater than the aggravation of gypsies surely worried him.
Bulayir turned suddenly from the window and strode back to his desk. His shoes squeaked, echoing the bluster that radiated from the man. Bulayir paused beside the handsomely carved mahogany of his desk and picked up the report on Umit Alekci, the only item occupying space on the glass-topped surface.
“You have no time to waste on this matter,” he said, tossing the document back to Yaziz. “There is a plot brewing to take power away from the Grand National Assembly, and you will stop it. You will find the plotters and bring them in before they can do any harm to our lawfully elected Democrat Party.”
Yaziz frowned. “May I ask what is the evidence?”
The tufts of Bulayir’s eyebrows raised up, and at the same time the chief rocketed up on his toes, squealing his patent leather. Yaziz thought the chief would explode. “You have all the evidence you need,” Bulayir said, “when the minister’s office issues a directive.”
“I see.” Yaziz’s frown deepened.
Bulayir motioned Yaziz to sit in one of the leather chairs facing the desk, and then he sank down into the other one. He templed his tespih-entwined fingers beneath his chin. “How long have you been with us, Veli Bey?”
Yaziz tensed. “Four years, sir.” Since returning from his duty in Korea. Bulayir knew that.
“And you have been promoted three times already, have you not?”
“That’s correct, sir.” Promotions came once every three years for officers of the National Police, but Yaziz was koreli. He’d been one of the first Turks ever to fight on foreign soil for a foreign cause. The honor sometimes gave him unexpected privileges, and he was gaining steadily on the chief’s position. Was that what worried Bulayir?
The chief cleared his throat and assumed a solemn tone of voice. “The Minister of the Interior has asked for you personally to handle this matter. You will not embarrass me by failing him. Do you understand?”
“Yes, efendim.” Yaziz understood more than Bulayir probably wished. His chief didn’t think he could do it, koreli or no, Yaziz thought, carefully removing a piece of lint from his silk tie. “May I assume, then, that I should start my investigation of this plot in the military?” That’s why the Minister wanted him, an ex-military man.
Bulayir frowned. “Do not take this lightly, Veli Bey. I trust you will be discreet in this sensitive matter.”
“Of course.” Yaziz straightened with importance on the lumps of his chair. “I have an informant at one of the newspapers—”
“The newspapers print nothing but lies!” Bulayir shouted. Then, with the speed of a cobra, he snatched up a copy of the Republic News lying on the small table between their chairs. “Lies are what fuel the conspiracy.” Bulayir smacked the paper against the wooden surface, hard enough to shake the brass table lamp. “But we will break it up.”
Yaziz cleared his throat. “Sir, about the murder today—”
“An unimportant matter. Gypsies fight among themselves all the time. Do not bother me with them again.”
“I was thinking of the American woman and child who were witnesses.”
The chief dropped the paper and leaned back in his chair. His fingers worked at the tespih, rattling its beads. “Ah, yes,” Bulayir said. “You are correct to be concerned for their safety. You must move with care in that matter. We cannot allow the Americans to become involved in our larger problem. They are valuable to us with their gifts of dollars, and we must not risk offending them, even though...”
“Efendim, they are already involved. We found the name ‘H. Burkhardt’ sewn into the inside jacket pocket that Umit Alekci was wearing. You think the Americans—”
“I think nothing, and neither should you, Veli Bey. You will find the plotters, and you will see that the Americans remain our friends. That is all.”
“Yes sir.” Yaziz recognized the dismissal and rose. The wound in his leg, a permanent reminder of his Korean experience, throbbed from his sudden movement.
But he didn’t mind that pain, not nearly as much as he minded the pain in his heart. He despised what he had to do next. The responsibility did not go away just because he had received new instructions. Someone would still have to speak to the gypsy’s mother. Who better for that unpleasant job than Yaziz, a koreli?
“And one more thing, Veli Bey. When you bring in the plotters, do not forget to bring in the evidence, too.”
* * * * *
Meryem tugged the eşek’s leather strap, dragging the reluctant beast out of the weeds of the vacant lot and onto the pavement of Yeşilyurt Sokak once again. If her brother had truly escaped the police, she thought, then he should surely have caught up to her by now. That he hadn’t filled her with unease. But she banished such worry to the back of her mind. Someone still had to bring home the lira if the family was to eat.
The donkey’s resistance pulled her off balance, and she slipped, staggering backwards a few steps on the slick pavement of the hillside street. Perhaps her strength abandoned her while she was distracted with concern for Umit. He was clever, although not as clever as she, and now she worried that a gun could’ve undone his “quick deal.”
She’d seen once before, long ago, back in the hills of Romania another face wearing that same look of desperation, of pure evil, that today’s gunman had worn. Evil had permeated that Carpathian foe just as it had scorched her today from the pretend peasant whom Umit’s donkey had kicked in the balls.
Had that long-ago horror finally found the Alekci family here in Ankara?
If Umit had also recognized that old evil on the face of today’s gunman—and why wouldn’t he?—then he would’ve gone into hiding. That’s why he hadn’t shown up this afternoon. He couldn’t risk leading the evil to Meryem and to the rest of the family. If that old evil found them, they would have to run again.
The anger that had swelled in her breast earlier on account of Umit’s absence now converted into anxiety that took her by the throat in a chokehold, cutting off her breath. There was nothing to be done about it at the moment. There was still the matter of feeding the family.
She tied the eşek’s reins to one of the iron stakes atop the yellow wall that surrounded the Americans’ house and left it there to sniff the low-hanging branches of the willow trees. Emerging from their leafy protection, she continued on up the hill, moving swiftly toward the pink wall that enclosed the general’s yard next door.
As she crested the hill, rustling sounds reached her, like leaves in a wind. Only, no breeze moved the singed air of this late afternoon. She dropped to a crouch beneath the general’s pink wall and held her breath to aid her hearing.
Whispering voices.
She crept to the edge of the wall, where a wrought-iron gate revealed a view into the general’s yard. The garden inside was designed like one of the formal parks in Yenişehir, the new business district of the city. Both there and here, gravel paths followed a crisscross design, where planting beds lay between the paths’ intersections.
Meryem’s gaze followed the source of the whispering to a grove of young trees, protected by a wall of shrubs. The old asker knelt on the ground among an assortment of tools for the garden. Hunkered close to him was a civilian whose black jacket-clad back aimed in her direction. A newspaper-tied bundle lay on the ground between them, and the asker was ticking his head backwards in the gesture that meant a forceful “no.”
Suddenly, the civilian rose and dropped a handful of coins on the ground beneath the old man’s nose. He turned with a shrug and strode toward the gate where Meryem spied on them. His step on long, thin legs was brisk, unlike that of the Turks she knew.
She didn’t know this man, but she had seen him before. Somewhere. Where, she could not remember, but with hair like his, how could she forget? Hair curled in black coils as thick as a lamb’s coat, sheared to a point hanging low over his forehead. Hair curled up from the ends of a thick mustache. His nose shaped like a hawk poked out of all that hair, flapping as he walked, no, raced. He closed in on Meryem.
She jerked away from the wrought-iron gate and flattened herself against the rough surface of the pink wall. She nearly gave herself away, crying out when a thorny branch from the general’s yard bent over the wall and scratched her face.
And what if she had given herself away? She had every right to stand on this street, even though he might very well accuse her of spying. What was she doing, separated from her donkey that provided her excuse for fouling this fancy neighborhood?
She told herself to avoid it all and run away. Hide, as Umit was hiding. Her heart, thundering in her chest, refused to give in to such cowardice.
The soft sounds of whimpers drifted to her from nearby, echoing the sobs that deep inside her, pricked her heart. No, it wasn’t herself crying out, but a child, perhaps. A child cried from the upper floor of the yellow house only a few feet away, over Meryem’s right shoulder.
She couldn’t be bothered by a child, not when the gate to her left squeaked, and she turned to face the tall, hairy stranger whom the asker had sent away. The fabric of his western suit was a shiny black, not on account of expensive threads, but rather its worn thinness. Beneath the jacket, he wore a cream-colored shirt of coarse fabric and no tie. Beneath that, black chest hair curled through the unbuttoned collar.
He was secret police, she realized with a sinking feeling of dread. Now she remembered where she’d seen him, and others like him. In her own neighborhood, patrolling the alleys of Ulus. The secret police were no secret. They wore their identity in the irked lines of their faces as surely as if they displayed a badge.
He recognized her as well, she could tell from the way his flat eyes went dead from under his sheep-like hair. “How convenient,” he said, “that you have followed me. Now I don’t have to hunt you down.”
“Do not flatter yourself. I don’t know you. Why should I follow you?”
“Then, what are you doing here?” His brusque tone meant business.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Don’t lie to me.” He stepped forward and squinted past her, in the direction of Umit’s donkey tied up down the hill. “That is yours. You’re one of the hawkers from Ulus. Don’t you know the other hawkers have all gone home by now?” He inched close, smelling like rotting mutton. “You filthy, gypsy trash have no business on this side of town this late in the day.”
He caught her arm in a grip that stopped the blood from flowing. Her arm went numb, then he twisted it in an angle that sent stabs of pain piercing her shoulder. Her eyes rolled back and forth, and she cursed Umit and all men in general.
“Why are you hurting me?” she said, her voice rising to a wail. Pain wracked through her as he ratcheted his grip on her. “I have done nothing wrong.”
“Do not become too accustomed to the soft life of our city. You have no business in our affairs.”
She refused to protest, and he twisted her arm some more. She swallowed a low cry.
“Go back to where you came from,” he said, spitting the words on her cheek. “And take the rest of your gypsy trash with you.”
His closeness to her brought him within reach of a thorn, which snagged a coil of his hair. His eyes rolled up and rested on something past her head and beyond the thorns—the source of the stifled sobs issuing from the Americans’ house.
The gate squeaked, and just as fast, the asker shot into view, jabbing one of his garden tools into the secret policeman’s back. “Leave her alone.”
Her foe suddenly stiffened. His grip on Meryem slipped enough that she twisted free. Before she backed away from him, she spat on the scuffed, black leather shoe of his nearer foot. He was more peasant trash than she.
“I’ll take care of her,” the asker said, pressing his tool as if it were a gun into the back of the shiny, black suit.
The secret policeman lifted his hands up, showing that he carried no gun. He glanced over his shoulder, and when he saw the old man’s harmless weapon, he snarled. He untangled his coiled hair from the limb, snapping the twig in two. By the time his attention turned back to Meryem, she was more than a body length away from him.
“I’m not finished with you, gypsy,” he said, pointing a finger at her. “I know where to find you.” Then he strode swiftly away, out of sight, toward the mosque on the opposite side of the hill.
Meryem breathed again and rubbed her wrist. “Thanks,” she mumbled. She could’ve taken care of herself. The asker did not have to intervene on her behalf. But she was glad he had.
“A man of your strength needs something better than a garden shovel,” she continued.
He grunted. “The general provides everything I need.”
“But it’s not enough. Maybe I could help you find a more suitable weapon. One with real bullets.”
His breath rasped on a sharp intake. “How would someone like you find a thing like that?”
“I have my ways.”
The asker’s gaze moved up and down her figure. “The general wouldn’t allow it.”
Rearranging the heavy folds of her scarf to hide the curves of her body that the tussle with the secret policeman had revealed, she recognized her opportunity. “For only a few lira,” she said, her eyelids fluttering, “I will persuade the general for you. At his next party.” She took a breath and nodded in the direction of the yellow house. “Or I could tell my friends the Americans of your interest in them. You choose.”
The asker grunted. “Come back later tonight. You can dance tonight.” Then he retreated into the garden, slamming the gate behind him.
Left alone in the street, Meryem glanced first to the east, the direction of the mosque. The secret policeman did not reappear. Then she contemplated the west, where the eşek twitched at flies. Finally, she looked up at the yellow house. A small face, framed with curly red hair, watched her from a narrow balcony.