Though some of your colleagues at the Center for Democratic Change have been kind enough to sign the queries they have emailed me after each new instalment, others have preferred to remain anonymous. Forgive me, Mary Ann, if I am jumping to conclusions. But I have to wonder what these people have to hide.
In answer to one of their questions: I myself have nothing to hide. Moving on to a second question:
How long was William Wakefield in the dark?
In all honesty, I can only guess. He knew he’d been framed. He read the warning in the Trunk Murder: clear out now, or next time it won’t be some hopped-up underling who’s lying in a shallow grave in the garden of the Pasha’s Library, or inside a trunk at the bottom of the Bosphorus. I am in no doubt it came as a shock to know his life to be in danger, yet not to know where the danger was. He’d grown so accustomed to omniscience. Or rather, the illusion of it.
As for his activities during his last year in Istanbul: it is clear that (between drinks) he was running some sort of agent provocateur. This person would have been expected to involve him or herself in student politics, perhaps to influence the direction it took. It is not clear how much control William Wakefield had over this creature. My guess is that somewhere along the way he lost his grip.
Or someone else took over. Changed the game. Used William Wakefield’s own people against him. For there is no doubt that other intelligence services operated on campus, and also in other universities across the country. They, too, would have had an interest in agents provocateurs. Sometimes the same agents provocateurs.
There are those who hold that every act of violence perpetrated by the student left in the 60s – and the 70s, and even the 80s – was either planned or pushed forward by agents provocateurs – the aim being to crush and discredit the student left. And certainly, by the end of the Cold War, it wasn’t just the student left that had died a death, but the Turkish left in its entirety. However, I refuse to believe that this was down to a handful of intelligence services running a handful of agents. That lets too many people off the hook.
But back to the question. How long was William Wakefield in the dark? Despite his forced departure from Istanbul and the demotion that followed, he remained a company man, so I am in no doubt that he was using the company’s resources to research his suspicions from the moment he got to Williamsburg. He might have been ‘dead meat’ in Istanbul, as he put it, but the letter from the Turkish Embassy is proof that he could still pull in the odd favour. He would have known all along that the story about the Trunk Murder didn’t add up. When he found himself publicly denounced by his own daughter for having been its mastermind, he would have been doubly keen to track down the true culprit.
Then he discovered (upon reading the famous letter of complaint from the Turkish Embassy in Washington) that Anonymous had added a new twist to the story – No Body! Which would have told William that a certain someone, having rid himself of one agent provocateur, and pinned the blame on four baby revolutionaries, was now seeking to erase all record of it.
Now why would that be? As Suna might say, cui bono? The question would have been there, fomenting in the back of his mind. Forever taking new shape. Because of course he knew there was a body.
So even when he was out in the middle of nowhere, running fronts, he would have been putting lines out, and stockpiling clues. Just when he saw the light is not for me to say.
But if I had to guess how long it took William Wakefield to figure out who had done him over, and why, and how, I would say it took him a good ten years. If I had to pinpoint the exact moment of enlightenment, I’d say it was the day his daughter returned from her short but colossally ill-advised trip to Istanbul in January 1981.