51

I have already described how I was pulled into this intrigue, sometimes against my will and always against my better judgement. I hope I’ve made it clear that I had doubts all along. The most obvious question being, ‘Why me? Why drag in a journalist best known for her pioneering work on mothers and babies?’ I’ve been over my head from the moment this started, ringed in by taciturn war correspondents, arrogant sociologists and retired spies. From the very beginning, they’ve been playing me off against each other. Feeding me stories, and hoping I’ll believe them. Hoping, perhaps, I’ll go on to convince others?

The first time that question came to me was at the Pasha’s Library. I am talking now about the last hours of my last visit, the day after Jeannie disappeared. As I sat there at Jeannie’s desk. As İsmet sat downstairs guarding the door. You may have marvelled at how easy it was for me: there on the computer, was Jeannie’s letter to me. There, on the shelves, were the journals. There, pressed between the pages, were samples of hair that I was to assume belonged to William Wakefield and Sinan. And just in case I didn’t make the necessary connections, there was İsmet himself, to jab a knowing finger at the poster for My Cold War, in which Sinan’s family is joined in one picture by William Wakefield. I was to gasp and shout ‘Eureka!’ Shout ‘incest!’ Jeannie and Sinan should never have been together because they were brother and sister. Jeannie, upon hearing that her child is the fruit of incest, had lost her mind with grief. Jordan being the agent of her destruction. The informer. The agent provocateur. She had set out from the Pasha’s Library that morning to track him down. Blow him up, if need be. Stop him before he did any more damage. Stop him to save her son. This was the story that İsmet and various others seemed to want me to tell. As I stood at the window, admiring the exalted view, I had to ask myself why.

If they were encouraging me to look where they were pointing, was there something behind me that they were hoping that a journalist best known for her pioneering work on mothers and babies might overlook?

I cannot say that I knew at once what to look for, or where I was most likely to find it. But I will concede that I was keyed up by the adverse responses to the piece I wrote three days later. It is rare to get such attention in ‘motherandbabyland’. I can see that it went to my head. I was also, I am ready to admit this, terrified. But there was vanity there, too. The truth, Mary Ann, is that, perhaps for the first time in my life, I felt important.

A story had chosen me. Pulled me back thirty-five years, to a place only I could see. To the castle on its wooded hillside; the Bosphorus with its endless parade of tankers, ferries, and fishing boats, the Asian shore with its palaces and villas, the brown and rolling hills that must, I thought, stretch as far as China. The golden destination! The first of many! But now I’ve come full circle. There’s someone behind me, erasing my tracks.

 

He’s been listening in on us, Mary Ann. He’s been pelting me with his unsigned threats since the day you and I began our correspondence. That he was passing my every communication onto others was clear from the outset. And yes, this caused me to speculate. Or rather, it sent me into that spiral of second guessing that forestalls clear thought.

I should have known what he would do when crude intimidation failed to silence me. And perhaps there were moments when I foresaw this – his last and most insidious refinement. But when you are taking risks with words, when you are out on a swaying limb, you can’t afford to step out of yourself to ask how your words might sound to others. To keep your balance, you must remain in the here and now, cling to the truth and blind yourself to its possible consequences.

Until last night, when I picked up my messages, and heard his voice. I am not speaking about our tormentor now, but his number one pawn. Though it has been thirty-five years since I last heard from him, he saw no need to name himself. He got straight to the point.

It hurts too much to recall his exact words. Let alone quote them. Suffice it to say that our correspondence has been made available to him. While I understand why he might question my motives – scorn my sources – label me as Jeannie’s executioner and İsmet’s pawn – I still burn at the injustice.

Open your eyes, Sinan! For once in your life, look the messenger in the face. This is the last time you’ll hear from me. I am too angry for words.

So tomorrow the theatre goes dark again. Tomorrow the bell will ring, and my devil will step inside. He thinks he’s won. Will he take me to her, as promised? Or will I have to find my own way?

So many unknowns. It’s hard to know what to pack. But there is one thing I’d be ill-advised to take with me. Mary Ann, the time has come for me to name names.

 

I have enjoyed our correspondence. I have enjoyed it so much, in fact, that I dread the prospect of it ending. But if I am to be truthful, Mary Ann, I’ll have to admit that what I have enjoyed most has been holding back this secret. Have you ever wondered why it was arranged that we should write to each other? Have you guessed what I am yet to tell you?

During the past four weeks, I have taken the trouble to acquaint myself with your many accomplishments, most notably at your present place of work. I have done background checks on a number of your illustrious colleagues at the Center for Democratic Change, with a view to seeing who amongst them has an interest in this part of the world. There are several, but the most interesting is a man named Stephen Svabo. Born in Hungary in 1948 to academic parents who managed to relocate to Princeton, New Jersey after the 1956 uprising. Degrees from Columbia and Harvard. Active in human rights since the 70s, and (by his own account) a frequent visitor to Turkish prisons. Links with several think tanks like yours, but no university affiliation. No public profile, and no photograph on Google, but, in print at least, a vocal critic of recent erosions of civil liberties in the US, including those eroded in the prosecution of Sinan Sinanoğlu. His most recent ‘abbreviated’ list of publications goes on for six pages.

In an earlier, less abbreviated list, he mentions an introduction he wrote for a 1980 anthology of ‘silenced voices’. One such voice is an abstruse East German poet called Manfred Berger. Having heard that name in other unlikely places, I’ve investigated further. I’ve discovered that a Manfred Berger did indeed have a small reputation as a poet in East Berlin during the 70s and 80s, and that he has done rather well for himself since reunification, albeit under his ‘real’ name, Dieter Dammer. After several years in Schroeder’s party, he moved out of politics and now works for a cultural foundation that has funded many sterling ventures in Eastern Europe and Turkey. It is in that capacity that he has accompanied several EU delegations to Turkey in recent years. He has appeared, unsmilingly, in several group photographs. A beaknosed man whose jet black hair is longer than normal for a bureaucrat, he is not to be confused with the Manfred Berger who has been writing so brilliantly for the US press in recent years on the crisis in US intelligence.

Or the Manfred Berger who sits on the board of a new Eastern European telecommunications venture in which İsmet Şen was a major investor.

Or the Manfred Berger whose name has been linked to a weapons manufacturer with whom İsmet Şen’s company also has links.

Or the Manfred Berger whose monograph Sinan showed to Jeannie in Dutch Harding’s office in the spring of 1971.

It was a penname, of course. A private joke. One alias amongst many.

Dutch Harding never existed either. At least, there was no one enrolled at Columbia during the years he was meant to be there. But a Stephen Svabo does appear in the 1968 yearbook. Or rather, his name does. There is no photograph. No proof.

Until today.

 

What is his particular interest in Turkey? Whose interests does he serve? I’m sure he won’t tell me, but I’m sure I can guess.

What I have to yet to understand is why, when I sat down with Suna last night, and told her what I knew, she had the gall to insist that –