Meryem landed with a thunk onto the roof of the shack and held her breath. The wood beneath her creaked, resisting her weight. The shack was a sloppy building of loose walls, and it would surely collapse in the next earthquake.
Hissing sounds came from the darkness, no more than an arm’s length away. She crouched, melting into the shadows, assessing her escape. From here, she would have to jump down into the Americans’ yard. It was a farther jump than the one she’d just made from the lowest branch of the tree by the general’s balcony.
If she twisted her ankle, she had no hope of income for a while. The pain might even delay her return to the appointment with the gunman who’d killed her brother.
“Over here,” a child’s voice whispered in Turkish that was worse than Meryem’s. “It’s lower over here.”
Meryem hesitated. This was a trick, but what was to gain? And for whom?
“Hurry!” said another child, a dark shadow against the faint glow of light from the Americans’ party a stone’s throw away.
Relief swept through her. It was only children, not the asker. Why they had come to her aid, she did not know. She did not question her good fortune but jumped where they showed her, and then followed them into the shack, through a hole. Once inside, one of the children slid a board across the opening, sealing them into darkness.
Meryem wrinkled her nose from the dry stench of soiled sand. “Who are you?” she whispered. “Why should you help me?”
The little girl clicked on a small light no bigger than a coin and held it up to her cheek. The dim light gave her freckled face a red, transparent glow. Red curly hair framed her distorted face. “I’m Priscilla, and that’s Tommy.” She pointed the light at the boy, who had yellow hair and missing teeth. They were small enough to be about seven or eight years old, Meryem decided, judging them against the size of seven-year-old Mustafa, who was Umit’s oldest.
Rattling sounds indicated lumbering steps on loose gravel in the general’s garden. Closer now. Then the sounds settled.
“I was only teasing you,” the old soldier called from the other side of the fence. He stood close enough that Meryem could easily make out his words as he spoke. “I have your money. You can come out now.”
Meryem grabbed the little coin of light from the girl and buried it in her skirts, not knowing another way to douse the light.
“It’s okay, he can’t—”
“Shhhh.” Meryem’s heartbeat quickened, and she pressed into the deeper shadows of one corner.
* * * * *
Anna felt a shove that sent her sprawling into darkness. She landed face-down in dirt and scratchy weeds, just beyond the pool of new light that spilled from the Wingates’ house and seeped into the garden. Rainer fell on top of her, pinning her down. His warm gasps tickled the back of her neck, and a woody branch dug into her breast, into the part of her flesh that the low cut of the black chiffon had exposed.
She spit dirt from her mouth and struggled for breath. “Let. Me. Up. You’re hurting me.” A sharp pain throbbed in her chest.
“Shhhh.” His breath blew in her ear as the pressure of his hold on her eased. “We can’t let them see us.” His words scarcely rose louder than a whisper of air.
“Is that why you stayed away all these years? Or was it because of your wife?” As a concession, she kept her voice low.
“She’s not my wife. Is that why you’re fighting me?”
“You’re the one who tackled me.”
He rolled off her and slithered away farther into the dark, away from the light that leaked out of the room. From her position on the ground, she could see bookcases through the lit window. The room was a den of some sort. Voices murmured from inside. She lifted herself into a low crouch, despite a tweak of pain in her knee, and darted after Rainer. Weeds scratched her legs, but she didn’t care. Relief surged through her. His words reverberated in her mind. Not my wife.
He caught her by the wrist and pulled her out of the weeds, across a soft strip of grass and into a bed of overgrown lilacs standing tall beside the stucco exterior of the house. “We have to talk,” he whispered, squeezing tightly. “But not here. Not now. Go back to the party and pretend you never saw me.” He released her, put his fingers to his lips, and then crept through the lilacs, closer to the circle of light spilling out the open window of the den.
She followed him.
When he stopped long enough to glance over his shoulder, she nearly bumped into him. “Go on,” he whispered. “Do as I say.”
“Who is she, then,” Anna said, “if she’s not your wife?”
“No one. Never mind about her.”
“No one? So you’re telling me the Balikos aren’t real, either? And she’s not pregnant?”
“Hush. We’ll talk later. I promise.”
“Because now,” she said, “you intend to spy on those people inside, don’t you?”
“Of course not. Why should they matter?”
An interesting response, she thought. He hadn’t denied spying, only the target. They. She didn’t know if they mattered or not. In fact, she didn’t even know to whom the voices belonged. All she knew was that she didn’t care for the hard edge behind Rainer’s voice. Had the war done this to him? Or had it been the intervening years?
Rainer gripped both her shoulders and gave her a little shake. “You’ve got to trust me.”
“Why should I? You didn’t come home.”
“I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”
“How is that possible? After all these years?”
“I will, you’ll see. But first, there’s something I have to finish.” He patted her, the way he used to do, lovingly, but now it only felt like a pat he would reserve for a faithful dog.
“I don’t even know who you really are anymore,” she said. “The war’s been over twelve years.”
“It’s not over for everyone.”
“You don’t have to spy anymore.”
“Go on. Back to the party. Wait for me just a little longer, like a good girl.”
“Forget it. I’m done waiting. I’ll find out now what this is all about.” She charged ahead of him, stepping away from the lilacs, and she didn’t stop until she came even to the window’s ledge.
“Shit,” said a man from within the room. “I can’t believe he actually used us for his set-up.” The deep voice sounded like Paul Wingate’s, but Anna couldn’t be sure without risking peeking inside, and she wasn’t that daring. Rainer crept up beside her. Enough light shone through the window for her to see the frown on his face.
“He denies knowing anything about it,” said a woman’s voice from inside. Fran Lafferty.
“Of course he would,” Paul snapped. “We can’t be any part to this. You’ve got to get rid of it.”
Anna furrowed her brow and glanced at Rainer, but his attention focused on the conversation inside. Get rid of what? The tripod?
“Me?” Fran said. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“Get him to get it out of here. I don’t want it on the property or your prints on anything.”
“I don’t think he’s in deep—”
“I don’t want to know about it. The less we know, the better it’ll look for us, if there’s a coup.”
Anna sucked in her breath. A coup? She looked again at Rainer, whose lower lip twitched, as if he struggled to remain silent. Was that why Rainer was involved? As a spy?
“It may be too late for that,” said Fran, “now that she’s stumbled into the middle.”
“You’ll think of something. Just get rid of him, understand? And don’t let her get in the way.”
Paul’s slow, heavy footsteps and Fran’s rapid clicks crossed the room. Then their footsteps faded away, but the light stayed on in the den. Now Rainer studied Anna, his gaze burning into her. His frown deepened from an unhappy discomfort to undisguised worry.
Her? Did Paul and Fran mean Anna?
No, it couldn’t be. Anna didn’t feel that she was in the way of anything. Well, perhaps she’d crossed paths with the murder investigation of the gypsy, but only because she didn’t really think that the investigation was proceeding as it should.
Rainer grabbed Anna by the arm and yanked her back the way they’d come, along the row of lilacs.
“You know what they were talking about, don’t you?” she said, gasping to keep up with his pace.
“Quiet.” He pulled her across the stretch of grass toward the area of weeds that served as a boundary between the Wingates’ and the general’s properties. They were moving in a direction away from the backyard party, and out toward the street. She resisted, and finally he stopped, crouching behind a tangle of bushes that protected him from the streetlamp.
“I’m not going with you,” Anna said. “And I can’t leave the party yet. I’m expecting a call from Mitzi any minute.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“The call was never placed.”
“How do you know that?”
He grunted. “Trust me.”
“Oh, there you go again.”
“Look, I’m sorry.”
“I’ll bet you are. What are we doing here? Where are you going?”
But he was gone already, darting across the street. Over there was the house where Gulsen lived—Priscilla’s friend. The house looked dark now, deserted, and Rainer disappeared from her sight as he slipped into shadows. She felt torn. Should she follow him? Or go back to the party?
Perhaps he didn’t want her to take the call from Mitzi. But that didn’t make sense. Neither did any of the events so far tonight. Or today. Or yesterday, for that matter.
The episode of the purse thief made no sense, either. She’d thought she’d been hit on the head with Ozturk Bey’s candelabrum so that the culprit could steal her purse. But maybe it was because she’d gotten in the way of whatever Paul and Fran thought she was in the middle of. She wondered how long Fran had been there, before revealing her presence.
If it wasn’t Anna they’d referred to, then she wondered who else they could’ve meant. Maybe Cora. That woman certainly had a talent for inserting herself into the middle of affairs she had no business knowing. And she was a gossipmonger. Yes, perhaps they meant Cora. They didn’t want word to spread about...
A coup?
Feeling a little dizzy, Anna realized that she couldn’t stay here, hiding in the bushes. Fran and Paul would surely find her. They’d return soon with the photographer, no doubt, to disassemble the tripod, and...
Did they mean that the general next door was planning a coup? Perhaps that’s what his men-only “parties” were all about. She shivered. Coups meant violence. And she and Priscilla lived next door to the mastermind of violence.
She’d have to get Priscilla out of the way, maybe out of the country.
Meanwhile, she had to get out of here. Unseen. She had to return to the backyard party without being noticed. She couldn’t go back along the side of the house and risk getting caught near the incriminating tripod, so she’d use the front door. Enter the house through the front door and exit through the back, returning to the party under the watchful eyes of the servants.
She stood up from the bushes, brushed off some dirt, and swished past branches. No one was around, thankfully, to hear her rustling movement. The front lawn appeared like a smooth sea, and she darted across it to the sidewalk that led up to a porch.
She ran up the steps and stopped abruptly. On the middle step. With a gasp. A man sat atop the low wall that lined the perimeter of the porch.