In November 2005 – only hours before I was due to leave for London – I woke up to find my mother on the balcony with three visitors.
But it was me they wanted to see. ‘I’m sorry to take you by surprise like this,’ Hector said. ‘But Haluk, Lüset and I have been talking. We think there’s something you should know.’
What they wanted me to know, what they made me swear to keep secret, was ‘the rumour’. Rather than tell me the story themselves, they handed me a document. It was a printout of a PDF document downloaded from the Internet. ‘You may recall,’ Haluk said, ‘that we were reading this very file on the day, the hour, we renewed our acquaintance. We are speaking of the day last August, when Jeannie brought you back to the Pasha’s Library. Do you remember our concern? Do you recall how hard we all worked to hide from her this paper?’
There were, in fact, three documents. The first report, dated April 15th 1979, was an account – by William Wakefield? – of a meeting with a Mr Sergeyev, the then Soviet military attaché. He was trying to defect. He claimed to have in-depth knowledge of the space programme, but the author of the report concluded that this was largely bluff. The Russian went on to give information about a key Soviet agent operating inside MİT, the Turkish national intelligence service.
Mr Sergeyev would not provide the name of this agent, but he did hand over the identity of a Turkish-Yugoslav jeweller who had operated for many years as a drop. He could not remember his name, only that he was an old man whose shop was in the Bedestan section of the Old Bazaar. His daughter was also involved. She ran their branch in Şişli. Mr Sergeyev could remember nothing about her beyond the fact that she was middle-aged and not particularly attractive.
Seeing that his interviewer was not impressed, Mr Sergeyev then offered information on a US national recently arrived to take up a teaching post at Robert College, who was, he said, working for the Stasi, the East German Intelligence Service. The author of the report did not think much of this tip either. It was not his view that the Stasi had the funding for ‘extravagances’.
The second document was a memorandum marked Confidential, dated March 12th 1972. The author was a Douglas Hanes of the Canadian Department of Mines and Technical Surveys and concerned two meetings in Paris with Mr Sergeyev, now of the State and Scientific Committee of the Soviet Union.
At the first, Mr Sergeyev had asked Mr Hanes to pass a letter to the Americans. At the second, Mr Hanes had informed him he was not prepared to be a go-between. Mr Sergeyev had responded with the ‘utmost agitation’, claiming that his ‘fate’ was in Mr Hanes’ hands. Although Mr Hanes claimed to have ‘declined everything from this one-sided gushing flow’, he had agreed to pass on a message for him. ‘He claims to have had dealings with a double agent during his previous post at the Soviet consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.’
Although Mr Hanes advised caution – Sergeyev was a ‘disgruntled citizen in a minor post that must be a great comedown from his military career’ and ‘worst of all, dangerously talkative’ – the Americans had taken Mr Sergeyev’s advances seriously. The third document was titled ‘Meeting No 40.’ It, too, took place in or near Paris. It was couched in routine language; ‘Subject was picked up at RV No 1 by L and G at 2000 hours while Roger provided surveillance cover.’
There followed a transcript of a meandering conversation between L, G and Mr Sergeyev. At one point Sergeyev described a ‘very interesting’ party at the Soviet Consulate that was attended by a number of young American Communist sympathisers from Robert College. He could not remember all their names, only that one of them had the strange first name of Dutch. In the past, said Mr Sergeyev, Istanbul had been a ‘hard nut to crack’. But during his own stay there, he had made great headway into both the American community and the Turkish left through contacts made at Robert College. He had been helped in this by an old associate from his days in Cairo, whom Mr Sergeyev declined to name. ‘Suffice it to say that he was a Turkish diplomat in his mid-forties with a number of peccadilloes.’ It was through this old contact that he had been able to forge a link with the Turkish diplomat’s son, then a student at said institution. This had proven most useful, as this same boy had already forged personal links with ‘your man in Istanbul’. That this was an extraordinary achievement Mr Sergeyev could confirm personally. ‘But as luck would have it, he had an Achilles Heel. Our friend from the CIA had formed an affection for the boy I have mentioned, as I understand was the case for your man’s teenage daughter. So interesting, don’t you agree?’
His interviewers thought differently. ‘Let’s get back to the illegals,’ they said. It was in the last moments of the meeting that Mr Sergeyev, now aware that the US had no use for him, found the sting in his tail.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he said, ‘I’ve remembered the name of that Turkish diplomat. Would you like it?’
No, they wouldn’t.
‘Then perhaps you’d like this. A story, a very sweet story, about your man in Istanbul. As I’ve said before, he took a very keen interest in this diplomat’s son, whose name was Sinan. So too did Mr Wakefield’s lovely daughter. We all found this rather strange you know – for you see, in the late 1940s, your man Wakefield, then posted in Washington, had had a heated affair with this boy’s mother, whose cuckolded husband also happened to be posted in the same city at that time. You may have heard of her – she gained some notoriety later, in the 60s, when she enjoyed a brief singing career in this very city of song. This woman – her name was Sibel but she was at least half-Greek, you know, and it was neither her first scandal nor her last.
‘Get to the point,’ said his exasperated interviewer.
‘Well, the long and the short of it, is that your man Wakefield got this Sibel pregnant during this affair he had with her. And Sinan is his son.’
I had read these documents before, but as I did not wish to explain how and when, I tried to look surprised.
When he spoke again, Haluk’s voice was very soft.
‘It isn’t true. I hope you know that.’
I nodded. Though of course I did not yet know for sure.
‘Who would want to spread such an ugly rumour? That’s what I still can’t understand.’ I said that, though of course I had my suspicions. I noticed, too, that Haluk’s shoulders relaxed.
‘The only person who would want to spread such a rumour would be someone who did not wish Jeannie and Sinan to remain together.’
‘Someone like İsmet?’
Another faint smile.
My next question made his eyes bulge. ‘You may not know this,’ I said, ‘but if you had to guess. How many years did Sinan walk around believing this?’
A shrug of the shoulders. ‘Twenty? Thirty? Thirty-five?’
‘We cannot say for sure,’ said Lüset. ‘All we know is the day he discovered it to have no basis in truth.’
The harbinger of truth, they now informed me, was William Wakefield. Or rather, it was he who had ferreted out the lie. He had done this the night of his arrival in Istanbul, in August 2000. ‘The night before little Emre was born.’
‘Of course William Wakefield could only give him his word on that occasion. But later, there were the tests.’
‘In between there were many weeks of anger. It was this anger that marked the beginning of the change.’
‘We are talking about a change of heart not just in Sinan but in William Wakefield.’
‘What had been to him a game until this moment, was no longer a game.’
‘He saw his enemies for who they were, and they saw what they had done to him.’
‘And to Sinan. And his daughter.’
‘He made a vow that night. A vow he kept.’
‘But he also made us promise something.’
‘This was to keep the entire matter safe from his daughter’s eyes.’
‘He did not wish any shadow to pass across her happiness.’
‘However, we are almost certain that it was this document that Jeannie discovered just a few nights ago.’
‘We fear that this was what sent her into despair, and disappearance.’
‘Do you really now?’ I said.
They looked up, surprised.