The Next Stop

by Dimitris Politis

  In the morning he would file his official report with the Fraud Office, with or without the evidence. They would have to accept his word. In the hope that he would have received Aggerblad’s active encouragement, he had already made an appointment for the next day. Now he felt inexplicably committed to go to the limit to clear up this strange business and discover its roots, even without the support of his colleagues. In reality, he thought then, he had nothing to lose; rather, an investigation with such an important and ultimately honest aim suddenly made his life a little more interesting. Maybe this perplexing story would finally give his life some meaning, a serious goal, the motivation he had so hopelessly felt to be missing for so long.

  Suddenly, in his mind flashed the irrelevant message he had received some months before in a dangerous slum in Brussels, The mission! The mission! A chill ran down his spine. He remembered that strange warning for which he’d been quite unprepared that uncanny night, when he had first heard about ‘the mission’. All this seeming irrelevance now took on a lucid meaning. The words which had urged him to reach at all costs the goal of his ‘mission’, to fight tooth and nail to keep anything from interfering until it was accomplished, made more sense than ever. “Maybe my life mission would be this, a final goal which would give me value in the eyes of my fellow man, as Nana Maura promised!” He felt convinced more than ever. Finally, a goal for his life; a life so battered by capricious fate that he had lost interest, believing that living or dying had no significance.

  Now suddenly there was a focus; there was a purpose.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Second Stop: Tomberg – Feridé

  The song in Keith’s iPod had already changed, but Sting continued to fill his ears with his soulful voice. Now it was the turn of Every Breath You Take. To this melodic accompaniment Keith mentally rehearsed ways to describe, clearly and convincingly, his disconcerting discovery to the English Fraud Squad inspector. Richard Palmer. That was his name, they had mentioned when he made the appointment. How could he persuade him of the truth when the document he had seen with his own eyes, the only solid evidence, had magically disappeared from the face of the earth twenty-four hours after its discovery?

  His director’s unexpected unwillingness to support him in bringing forward the complaint had already made him decide not to notify her that he was discussing the matter with the anti-fraud office. It wasn’t only that he didn’t want to, there was no reason to drag Aggerblad into it, at least for now, since her first reaction was so extraordinary. So, let them try to figure out on their own who knew of it and who didn’t. His appointment with Palmer was at ten o’clock this morning, Wednesday. They had informed him that their meeting would be attended by an assistant inspector as a witness, to ensure the impartiality of the complaint and further decisions and possible action. So he still had two and a half hours to prepare for this important meeting. Earlier scenes from his commute flashed into his mind: the Belgian Basilisk glaring at him with intent to kill, had it been possible; he had done everything to avoid meeting her eye and possibly finding himself on her breakfast menu.

  The train was already approaching the next stop and beginning to brake. It stopped with a long, slow hiss. When the doors slid open, a new wave of passengers surged into the carriage, each scrambling to find a free space. At once, Keith noticed among them a slender young woman with dark chestnut hair in a ponytail nearly to her waist, translucent olive skin, eyes of jet crystal and sweet delicate lips. By good luck she was standing in front of him. She stretched to grasp the strap over her head and her delicate perfume filled his nostrils for a second, temporarily overcoming the stale mustiness of the filthy car. She was dressed simply and tastefully, with sheer black stockings covering an elegant pair of legs. Tiny bright rings twinkled in her earlobes, and her fine silver watch reflected their glitter as she too hung on to the strap. Perfect! Just the delightful vision to eclipse the basilisk!

  ****

  Ankara, Turkey, 2004

  Feridé Ökem paused on the marble threshold of her block of flats half way along Jinnah Avenue in the upscale neighbourhood of Çankaya in Ankara. She looked up at the sky and blew on her hands, then hastily pulled from her handbag a pair of heavy leather gloves. This hard January had, last night, brought a polar cold and eight continuous hours of snow, at least half a metre. She well remembered the last time it had snowed like this, in the winter of ’85. But now the storm seemed to have abated. The biting north wind had eased, and the thick snowfall had moderated its fury. Some late white flakes were still dancing here and there, before their gentle landing on the frozen ground. However, the sky was still pale and undefined, a sure sign of more snow to follow. The town services had already cleaned and strewn salt on some streets and pavements of the main roads in the centre of the Turkish capital.

  “Things are so much better organised here for hard winter and snow…” Feridé smiled to herself, recalling her chaotic and beloved home town of Istanbul. There a mere two inches of snow created pandemonium and traffic mayhem which could afflict the whole big city with anarchy for a whole day.

  She began the long slow climb up Jinnah Avenue, wary of the thick pieces of ice which had been pushed to the roadside and turned into lethal slides. A few pedestrians, like her, defied the arctic conditions to get to work, and their struggles to stay upright as they slid and slipped were almost comical. Her doctor’s appointment was at eight thirty; she had specifically asked his assistant for the first appointment of the day. She thought she could be in and out in half an hour and make it to work just after nine; it was only two blocks to the Regional Middle East headquarters of Monsanto where a hefty workload would be waiting on her desk.

  She stood in the foyer of the three-storey building and shook off some persistent snowflakes from her beret and the shoulders of her coat. A polished brass plate screwed in the wall announced:

  Dr Urdu Özel, Gynaecologist

  Daily 8.30 - 12.30 and 18.30 - 20.30 by appointment

  Phone: 312-898 9811/12

  She entered the lobby and greeted the concierge who was squeezed behind a small desk and headed briskly towards the converted apartment at the back. She rang the doorbell of the doctor’s office and heard the sound of high heels tapping towards the door. The middle-aged nurse-receptionist-cum-secretary opened it at once. “Good morning, Ms. Ökem. What a winter this is again, we going crazy with snow!” she said, smiling cheerfully in her startling teenager’s voice.

  “Good morning, good morning to you,” smiled Feridé as she lifted her tartan beret and began to unwind the long mohair scarf from her head, and then from her neck. She shook her head slightly, letting her rich chestnut hair spill over her shoulders, and went towards one of the chairs in the waiting room. Before she reached her seat, she was interrupted.

  “Doctor is ready to see you right away. Please go right in,” said the nurse, showing her to the door of his office. Feridé obeyed without delay.

  She found the doctor seated at his desk, an envelope stuffed with papers before him. His face seemed calm, even expressionless. No matter how she tried, she could detect no trace of either relief or anxiety in his dark eyes,

  “Good morning, Mrs Ökem. Please be seated,” he said courteously, giving her a long look from behind his gold-framed glasses. Feridé sat down slowly in the black metallic chair in front of his desk. She met his eyes with acute impatience. “As expected, we received the results of all your latest examinations late yesterday...” The doctor hesitated. “Unfortunately, they are not quite what we’d hoped.” He bent over the papers in front of him, as though he wanted to avoid her direct gaze. A few seconds passed in uneasy silence.

  “Tell me clearly and plainly, Doctor,” Feridé replied quietly. “I’m ready to listen, whatever you have to say. It doesn’t matter; what does matter is to get on with the next step as soon as possible to fix whatever the results show... if, of course, it’s something that can be cured...” Her voice faded as sudden agony possessed her whole body.
Her hands gripped the arms of the chair.

  The doctor went on looking at his papers without turning to her. Then he took off his shiny spectacles, laid them gently on the desk, raised his head and looked her straight at her eyes.

  “While we were almost sure before and during the surgery that we were dealing with a benign form, the biopsy has shown that the lump removed from your right breast was unfortunately one of the most malignant and aggressive cancers. We must proceed immediately to a more intensive examination to see if it has affected the rest of the breast and the surrounding glands. These tests will tell us what course of treatment we must follow from now on. You may require more surgery, perhaps some other therapy, as soon as possible. Whatever the additional tests reveal will have to be dealt with as soon as possible to be effective.”

  She felt tears prickling her eyes for a split second, but did not give in. Instead she turned and answered the doctor in the same even voice, her feelings under complete control. “When can I get the new tests? When and where? As soon as possible... I’ll have to arrange things at work...”

  “I have already made an appointment for you tomorrow morning at ten thirty in the Oncology Hospital at Demetevler. The hospital will fill you in on the details,” said Dr Özel, raising his eyes to look at her now with compassion.

  “Is there anything else I need to do, Doctor?” Feridé asked, still maintaining her detached tone.

  “No, I can think of nothing else,” replied the doctor and rose from his desk. “Just – I would like you to be aware that there is a group in the same hospital where you’ll have the examination tomorrow which offers psychological support to cancer patients. There are people, specialists, who should be able to offer you support, help you face the situation and the disease with a more positive psychological attitude…”

  “Yes... my disease... a psychological attitude...” she thought, and silently rose from her chair. “Thank you so much, Doctor,” she said aloud. “I’ll follow your advice to the letter.” She bade him good day and withdrew, closing his office door behind her. Then she quickly went through the formalities with the nurse-secretary and rewrapped herself to face the snowfall outside, carefully avoiding the curious eyes of the two old women sitting in the waiting room. As she set foot on the threshold of the door of the blank grey building, icy air slapped her face as if to revive her.

  She took a deep breath and began walking quickly up the hill towards her office building two blocks up, trying to dodge the dirty grey ice covering the greater part of the pavement on either side. Her mind ran immediately to her office where a backlog of tasks awaited her. She was all too aware that she was progressing rapidly through that snowy morning, not only in the direction of her desk, but towards a new, unpredictable, probably difficult and certainly unpleasant chapter of her life.

  Her baby, Umut, was just eighteen months old and already orphaned by his father’s unexpected death in a car accident a few months earlier when the trees still had leaves. He was all she had left, and she was all he had. She felt battered by the successive blows that fate seemed to be mercilessly dealing her. She had not even begun to cope with Erdem’s death, and now this. But the same forces awoke in her an even stronger instinct to survive. She must summon up all the strength she could and stay strong, for herself and for Umut. She had never been one to wallow in self-pity and she wasn’t about to start now.

  She paused for breath for a moment at the red light which loomed up at the first crossing and felt her eyes tingling, with tears, or with cold, she wasn’t sure. She scolded herself. No, no, she must not waver even for a moment. No matter what. She must fight hard with all her might until the end. So when the traffic light changed, she crossed and trotted to the next corner and the entrance to her building. It was among the few times in her life when an unknown tomorrow and the looming possibility of her own death made her feel terribly insignificant and fragile. Not so much for herself personally; she didn’t care that much. Nor was she afraid of dying, which was basically something natural; everyone dies sometime, early or late. What ate at her soul and filled her with trepidation was what her death would cost her only child whom she had known so short a time. And she might not have the chance to be with him much longer, with her adored baby and all the others who cared for her, all the others who she would have to leave behind her so suddenly and unprepared.

  If she didn’t make it. But she was not going to go there. Not yet. There were more tests, there were therapies.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Third Stop: Gribaumont – Kasja

  Keith’s iPod ran at its own speed regardless of the infuriatingly sluggish metro train, which today was even slower than usual, and had launched into the next song. It was playing the intro to Ferras’ Soul Rock as the braking of the train for the next stop threw him to the right as all the standees lurched back. The long-drawn-out screech of the brakes was lost in the loud music still ringing in his headphones. A new torrent of passengers invaded the car as the doors opened, squashing into the narrow aisles between the rows of seats.

  Another nicely put together young woman came to stand almost directly in front of Keith, right next to the sleek brunette who had occupied the space since the previous stop. Both she and the newcomer sought frantically for available straps to cling to. She barely managed to grasp one of the remaining few as the train lurched forward again, and their eyes met for a second as he turned slightly to her left. Her age was a mystery.

  He couldn’t even guess any more about women between thirty and forty-five! They all looked so young. He tried to look at her discreetly and guess: thirty-eight, even forty? She was wearing stylish glasses with tortoiseshell frames. She was very neat, her haircut slightly old-fashioned shorn close and styled with gel, clothing colours, sand and gold, even the boots were beige suede. In stark contrast to the dreary colourless carriage and its occupants, this new passenger had a strong positive aura. A glow of joy, delight and satisfaction painted her face in brightness. Light blue eyes gleamed like crystal behind the lenses of her glasses, reflecting sparks of happiness to light her Slavic cheekbones.

  ****

  Krakow, Poland, 2001

  Kasja Ofianefska ran with her heart in her mouth to the offices of the Polish Inland Revenue. “Bloody awful train!” she thought, and breathlessly asked the receptionist where to find Hall 1-35. The indifferent girl behind the glass pane mumbled something without turning her head, and with an air of boredom, waved a right hand tipped by long fire-engine-red nails towards the corridor opposite the booth. The IT seminar where Kasja had been registered by her ministry department was to begin at ten o’clock and it was already twenty past. The train that carried her into Krakow from Katowice had been a whole hour late this morning, wiping out the half-hour’s leeway which she had carefully calculated last night while she was studying timetables for the trip.

  She felt bruised, her cold hands numb as chunks of raw wood. In her hurry, she had forgotten her thick fur gloves; during the trip she had been stupefied by the cold as she stared through the murky windows of the train at snow-misted landscapes passing one after another. Standing for the whole trip because she wasn’t lucky enough to find a seat, she was subject to a freezing wind that knifed through the cracks in the rickety door of the carriage that she had barely managed to squeeze past at the last moment. The dilapidated Soviet-era car was jammed with people without a trace of heating.

  Standees occupied every corner of the sorry communist relic, which roared and almost bucked every few seconds with a monotone tookoo-tookoo as the slow train crossed neglected rusty rails. The journey which normally lasted an hour and a half in normal morning conditions seemed like centuries. When it finally arrived a full sixty five minutes late, she jumped out among the first onto the platform and ran to the nearest exit.

  Without losing a minute, following the direction indicated by the long red nails, she dashed across the lobby and down the ill-lit corridor and stood before the last door. Much to her relief, s
he saw a sign proclaiming in red marker that this was Hall 1-35. The one she sought! She had reached her destination at last. She tapped timidly on the door and tentatively pushed it open. At that, twenty-three pairs of eyes turned as one and stared at her curiously. “Sorry, my train from Katowice was late,” said Kasja diffidently in Polish. She searched desperately for an empty seat among the rows of chairs that created a temporary classroom in this bare and ill-lit room.

  “Good morning Madam, welcome to the seminar!” cried the leader of the meeting in broken Polish, with a strong accent and a wide grin. He was very handsome in his neat business suit, tall, solid, a typical example of success from the other side of the Atlantic, and about her age, thirtyish, with short brown hair and dark green eyes. As soon as she laid eyes on him, she felt her heart skip; something new and unusual was happening. She was puzzled by her reaction. The stranger’s hearty welcome in Polish, even at her lateness, sounded in her ears and disconcerted her even more. She knew very well that the class was conducted in English; that was why the Finance Ministry had chosen her to attend. Although her English was still wobbly, it was much better than that of her colleagues. She had heard that the presenter of this seminar was an American executive from IBM Europe’s Amsterdam headquarters, presenting a new IT system which the ministry was to use. So she was impressed that he spoke Polish, even broken, with his odd accent. She had to suppress laughter at all the mistakes he was making with the language; he was mixing up declensions, nouns, pronouns and cases, interpreting Polish grammar in his own charming way.

  “So sorry I was late,” she found the composure to murmur again. Her face turned red as a beetroot as she felt his gaze following her persistently with evident curiosity, until she managed to find the last available seat squeezed into the corner of the very last row.