Meryem’s heart thudded as the asker sang. He surely knew where she hid, inside the children’s shack. Even so, he finally turned away. His voice and footsteps faded into the distance. Now was her chance. Or was it a trick?
She slid the piece of wood aside that served as a door, stared out into the night, then turned to hand the flashlight back to the little girl. She said goodbye to the children and escaped through the hole, out onto cool grass of the Americans’ yard. She darted from tree to tree, headed for the fence on the opposite side of the yard, and had barely made it there when she heard the scream.
The scream, a woman’s piercing voice, curdled Meryem’s blood. What had the asker done now? Killed one of his American neighbors? He’d practiced on kittens, after all.
What’s done was done. She picked up her skirts and sped faster, no longer taking care to cross in the shadows of trees that filled the Americans’ yard.
It was a waist-high wrought-iron fence on the far side of this yard, separating it from the vacant lot on the downhill side. Umit’s eşek had balked, pulling her into this very same vacant lot only the day before. Where Meryem had first put herself into this mess. Only yesterday. When she’d noticed the asker spying on the cackling, American women.
Bah! She had better things to do now than to become embroiled in their affairs.
She swung first one leg then the other over the top of the fence and dropped into the empty lot. She ran, slipping and snaring her tsharchaf on prickly weeds. She had to cross this open terrain as quickly as possible. No one had cultivated trees or shrubs here that would protect her from watching eyes. Not that anyone should be watching her, anyway, not after that blood-curdling scream from the American party she’d left behind.
By now, she was probably safe from the watching man on the street, but she wouldn’t take that chance. She posed too great of a risk for the general and his men. She could trust no one.
The conversation she’d overheard among the general’s men... They were plotting revolution while outside eyes thought they were merely old men, partying. Did the asker know what his pasha was really up to? Was that why he’d attacked the American woman to make her scream just now? He’d taken out his wrath on the foreign gadje because he hadn’t been able to lure Meryem out of the children’s shack.
The children. She might be able to trust Priscilla and Tommy. The girl had seen Meryem’s tussle with the secret police the day before. What else had she seen?
Meryem slid the last few feet in the dust. At the bottom of the slope, a cement retaining wall stopped her. She jumped down onto a narrow strip of ground behind the neighboring apartment building and crept along its wall to the far end. She glanced around the corner of the building at the street, Yeşilyurt Sokak. Nothing moved.
Now, a tomb-like quiet fell over the place, and she wondered if she’d imagined the scream. People should be running, alerted to trouble. Windows should be thrown open and lights should blaze.
But nothing happened. Meryem felt a cool shiver, a premonition of disaster.
Avoiding the street, she followed a path behind this building, and then behind the next one. Finally, Güven Evler lay directly ahead. She came out from behind the buildings even with the ditch that streamed through the vacant lot where she and Umit liked to rest by their water hole. Where a hollow tree surrounded by a thicket of brush made a good hiding place for valuable things.
She darted across the street and dove into the brush. A pulsing siren wailed in the distance. It hammered its route along the boulevard and whined around sweeping curves. Grew louder as it screeched closer to Kavaklidere.
Perhaps she hadn’t imagined the scream after all, she thought, falling to a crouch. Thick brush swallowed her.
She crept along, low in the brush, listening to the sirens gaining on her.
The sound of sirens always caused her heart to flutter.
Not now, she told herself, feeling as good as blind. Panic filled her breast, and the wailing siren echoed in her head. She felt dizzy and in danger of being physically ill.
Just a few more feet. The siren bleated through the air, sailing closer. Ever closer to her.
She followed the ditch through this empty field. Staying clear of the trickle of water. Then up a small rise, climbing away from the ditch. She was making far too much noise, that’s what panic did to her. She crashed through the dried stems and branches, stumbling the last of the way to the hollow stump.
She didn’t know how to handle a gun. No. She didn’t. But she did have experience. With a gun like the one she’d hidden in the hollow stump. A gun like the Luger. Or maybe that one had been a Luger, too.
She didn’t know anymore.
Hadn’t seen the other one slip up on her before.
Didn’t see this one slip up on her now. As she hunkered down to the hole in the stump. Groped around inside. Felt nothing.
Disappointment raged through her. Kept her from seeing the shadows move in the night. As they did that time before. She’d never thought it could happen again.
It did.
The stink of his body hit her first. Then one arm grappled round her breasts. His other hand pulled her head back at an angle that made her bones ache and her scalp tear. His breath tinted with licorice breathed hot and damp on her neck.
“Gypsy filth,” the asker snarled in her ear.
* * * * *
Silence descended in the aftermath of the scream, as if the party’s plug had been pulled, draining its bubble of merry voices.
“Oh, my God,” Anna mumbled, lunging to the window of Cora’s bedroom where she scanned the backyard below. Guests surged from the central lawn, strung with lanterns, to the dark perimeter of the yard. To the area where the children played in their clubhouse.
“Priscilla!” Anna turned and ran. She didn’t know if Fran followed or not.
The woman’s scream outside echoed the tumult of Anna’s mind. Danger had followed her everywhere, stalking her from Atatürk’s Tomb to Ozturk Bey’s shop to here.
Danger had finally caught up to Priscilla. Why ever had Anna left her precious niece unattended, even for a moment, even in the company of her friend? This was a strange land, she reminded herself. Where anything could happen.
Coups.
Anna raced through the hall. Clattered down the steps. Flung open the back door.
A lull had fallen over the party. Some guests, women mostly, milled under the lanterns and stared into the dark beyond the periphery of the tree-lit glow. Anna had stood with them only a short while ago, listening to their innocent gossip.
Nothing was innocent anymore.
Farther away, a cluster of men huddled in the shadows of the untamed areas beyond the edge of grass. Somewhere in that tangled mess of weeds and wild brush was where Anna had found the tripod, and Rainer had found her.
Anna plunged past the servers and their bar tables. She shoved her way into the crowd of women. “What is it? What’s happened?”
Soft voices rippled under the lanterns. Someone cried. The ripple grew to a buzz. Then to a roar.
One of the women Anna had bumped said, “It sounded like Eve screaming.”
“Remember how she screamed at the bridge party that time?” another said.
“She’d seen a mouse.”
This was no mouse, Anna thought. Judging from the shrill index in her scream, Eve had seen something far worse.
Anna followed the direction of their stunned gazes, aimed at the edge of the yard, where the children had set up their playhouse as a spaceship tonight.
Oh God.
The playhouse barely held together. Had it finally crumbled? With the children inside? Her pulse hammered, and she pressed on, past the gossiping women, onward through the lantern light.
“Priscilla?” she called.
A man in a white suit separated from the group of men who gathered near the boundary between this yard and the general’s. It was Hayati, and he trotted toward Anna.
She turned her back on him and called, louder this time. “Priscilla!”
“She’s okay,” he said, breathing heavily as he reached Anna’s side. He laid his hand on her arm, a gentle move to prevent her from investigating any further.
She shook it off and kept marching toward the children’s playhouse. “Priscilla! Come out of there this minute.”
“She’s not in there.”
Anna stopped in her tracks. Wheeled around to face him. “How do you know? Where is she, then?”
“With the lady of the house, Mrs. Wingate.”
Anna breathed again. Priscilla was safe.
Then jealousy flared through her in a flash. Her niece had sought out someone else for comfort. Not Anna. She pushed aside her unfair thought and focused on Hayati’s words: She’s okay.
“You’re cold,” Hayati said, stepping closer.
“On a night this warm? Of course not.” Yet, she trembled and spoke in breathless spurts. “What’s happened?” she asked, trying to keep her teeth from clattering.
“There’s been an accident.” He took her by the arm and forcibly steered her away from the murmuring voices in the tangle of weeds. “The men will take care of it. You should go back with the other women.”
Anna flung off his restraint and dug her heels into the grass. “I won’t hear such nonsense. If someone’s hurt, why are we wasting time when we can—”
“It’s too late. If anyone needs help, it is Mrs. Matheson, who is in a state of shock. She found him.”
“Found who?”
Hayati gave her a sad look. “The photographer for this evening. He’s...dead.”
Anna gasped. Emin! Ozturk Bey’s employee. He’d known Umit.
Her trembles grew to a shudder. Remembering. The scolding. The hidden tripod and camera. The talk of a coup. Paul Wingate had told Fran to get rid of the photographer.
But surely not this way.
Rainer, whom she no longer knew, had overheard their discussion, too. And now he was gone. But perhaps he’d never been here in the first place. Had she imagined him?
Swaying on her feet, she took a deep breath to steady herself and asked, “How did it happen?”
Hayati shrugged. “It’s not apparent yet. Someone from the medical dispensary is here tonight, fortunately, and he’s looking at him now.”
“So he wasn’t shot?” As the gypsy at the tomb had been shot.
“No, no. He went into convulsions, and then collapsed. Maybe he had a massive heart attack.”
“I doubt it,” Anna said.
Hayati narrowed his eyes at her, evaluating her, probing her mind. She wouldn’t let him in. She clamped her hands together to still the trembling.
Just because the man was dead didn’t mean he was murdered, she reminded herself. “Someone had better call the police,” she said.
“Mr. Wingate is handling everything.”
“Did anyone see the photographer collapse?” She was willing to bet it wasn’t a heart attack.
Hayati’s mouth drew itself into a tight line, making his voice terse. “The children, I believe.”
Dear God, Anna thought. How much more could her niece take?
Just then, a commotion erupted at the table set up as a bar. Two Turkish servers raised their voices at a third man, short and tired-looking in a rumpled, gray suit with no tie. He wore sunglasses, even though it was night.
That Turkish detective. Yaziz. How had he gotten here so fast?