Dark Water

by Parker Bilal

  When he woke it was light and the house was quiet. Koçak was in the kitchen, his usual unshaven self, smoking a cigarette and listening to the radio.

  ‘Amin Bey, alhamdoulilah, I hope you have slept well.’

  ‘Very well, thank you. It’s very good of you to help me like this.’

  ‘My wife is worried.’ Koçak shook his head fretfully as he prepared coffee. ‘She thinks it is strange that a man such as yourself is not staying in a fine hotel. I told her, Amin Bey is different. He wants to see how real Turkish people live.’

  ‘And she was satisfied with that?’

  ‘Ah …’ Some more head-wagging. ‘I tell her you are a Muslim and she must be a good host and not ask too many questions.’

  ‘I don’t mean to cause any problems for you and your family,’ said Makana. ‘But I’m in a bit of trouble. In a couple of days it will be over, I hope, and I’ll be out of your way.’

  ‘Amin Bey, just tell me what you need from Koçak.’

  ‘Well, first of all I need to find a place I was taken to a few days ago.’

  Makana explained the problem. He had not seen where he was taken, although he had the idea that it was in the neighbourhood of Eyüp. He also described his escape through the houses before he abruptly found himself on a dual carriageway.

  ‘So from house to road – big, small?’ Koçak held his hands apart in the air. He was sketching a rough map with a crayon on the back of a child’s school notebook. Makana thought about how far he had run.

  ‘Maybe two hundred metres in a straight line?’

  Koçak grinned and tapped the crayon on the notebook.

  ‘Amin Bey, I think Koçak can find this place. No problem.’ Beaming, he set a cup of coffee and a plate of simit on the table. ‘You should eat something.’

  Despite his enthusiasm, it proved a little more complicated than Koçak thought it would be.

  They started where Makana had been picked up outside the bazaar. He knew the direction his abductors had taken and so they followed the road along the waterfront. He closed his eyes as Koçak drove, recalling the sounds he had heard, feeling the car stopping and starting as they moved uphill away from the sea, the sound of the seagulls dying away in their wake.

  That was the easy part. After that it became more complicated. They took several wrong turns, having to back out of narrow alleyways that proved to be blocked. Eventually, there came a moment, when they were locked solid with people moving past them on both sides, that it became obvious they had to proceed on foot. Koçak, although reluctant to leave his beloved vehicle unattended, nevertheless conceded it was necessary.

  ‘What could you see?’

  Makana turned to look down at the Golden Horn. What could he see?

  ‘The Topkapi Palace?’ Yes. The Blue Mosque, yes. Further to the left. Higher up. They turned and walked up more streets. Makana tried to concentrate on the sounds again. Men hurried by bearing sacks. Quieter. The sound of a muezzin struck him as significant. How far away had it been?

  By the end of the morning Koçak was sitting on the kerb looking exhausted, his optimism having given way to despair. They collapsed into rickety wooden chairs outside a corner café and ordered tea.

  ‘Amin Bey, please, tell me why this is so important to you.’

  Makana offered his cigarettes and lit one for himself. ‘I came here to help a man whose life is in danger. I need to get him out of Istanbul.’

  ‘Mr Amin Bey. I believe you are a good man, so I will help you, but please, we must find another way.’

  So Koçak led the way up towards the big road that ran behind Eyüp. They stood on an overpass and Makana tried to fix the place where he had caught a taxi. From there they worked their way back down through the narrow streets.

  At some point Makana noticed an old woman emerging from a narrow gap between two buildings and suddenly realised there was a way through. Calling to Koçak, and getting a weary wave in return, Makana slipped through the gap and climbed a steep ramp to find himself miraculously delivered to a familiar corner. He turned slowly in a circle and realised that he was standing opposite the spot where the van had been parked. To his left the road began to wind down, and the house he was looking for was thirty metres away to his right.

  Now that he had found it everything seemed to fall into place. It had all looked different in the dark. Walking up, he examined the house more carefully. It was big. The part he had been in was the front section, but the outer wall, cracked and shedding plaster, stretched all along the side road to the next street. A painted sign that he could not read stretched along the wall. A loose web of wires dangled overhead, connecting the house to telephone and power networks. The door had once been painted green, and flecks of paint still clung to the wood, reminders of a splendour long departed. Koçak had joined him now. He looked up at the house and frowned.

  ‘Is an old school,’ he said, pointing to the sign.

  Together they walked round to the other side. At the rear of the building there was a small door leading into a basement which was held shut by no more than a rusty bolt.

  ‘Wait for me here. Keep an eye out.’

  ‘For what, Amin Bey?’

  ‘Anything or anyone who doesn’t look right.’

  Koçak nodded, although it wasn’t clear he completely understood Makana’s meaning.

  The basement was dark. A long corridor brought him to a wide set of steps that opened onto the inner yard where he had been. There was a tree in the middle of the yard and washing hung on a line on the roof opposite. Grey bed sheets flapped gently in the wind, dusty and ragged from hanging for far too long. Makana stood for a time and just listened. He could hear pigeons cooing somewhere inside, the sound of wings flapping. He made his way carefully around the courtyard, peering in through open doorways and windows at a kitchen, then a communal washroom and toilets. All of it was fairly run down. He saw cracked tiles and broken taps. No one had cared for this place in a long time.

  Most of the other side of the yard was taken up by what might once have been an old schoolroom. Here he saw signs of change. The door and windows had been repaired. A new lock on the door was reinforced by two shiny new bolts secured by hefty padlocks, one high and one low. The windows were not shuttered but the glass was grimy and sheets of newspaper had been taped over the inside to hide the interior. Both tape and newspaper looked new. Through a gap he could see almost the full length of the room. The interior looked as if someone was doing repairs. He could make out a tarpaulin draped over something in one corner, and the room appeared to be partitioned by sheets of clear plastic, although there wasn’t enough light to make out what was behind them.

  Outside, Makana found that Koçak was making friends with the neighbours: two elderly women dressed in black, grey hairs sprouting from chins and underneath their headscarves.

  ‘Amin Bey, please.’ Koçak waved him over with all the panache of a professional guide. He was smiling and flirting with the two ladies, who seemed to view him as perfect son-in-law material.

  ‘They tell me that you are not the only person to take an interest in this house.’

  ‘Who has been using it?’

  Koçak turned back to continue his introductions. The women nodded as they gave Makana a wary appraisal. Their expressions suggested some scepticism.

  ‘I tell them you are an inspector of police,’ Koçak grinned cheerfully.

  ‘I’m not with the police.’

  Koçak held up a hand to stay all objections. ‘Amin Bey, I am telling the ladies what I think. That way nobody can say that Koçak was lying.’ He closed his argument with a smile before turning back to address his subjects.

  ‘They say government is very bad for closing this school. Everybody not happy. Where can children go for learning?’ The ladies continued their summary. ‘Then, one month ago, suddenly very busy. People coming and going. Everyone is happy. They think maybe the school is going to open again.’ Makana tried to follow the nodding and smi
ling. Koçak clearly had talents that went above and beyond his abilities as a taxi driver. ‘But school is not open. People come at night.’

  ‘What kind of people?’

  ‘Men and women. They come at night and they leave at night. Then nothing. During the day nobody, except one woman.’

  Makana stiffened. ‘A woman alone?’

  More consultation. Makana fought his impatience.

  ‘Yes,’ Koçak announced after what felt like an interminable delay. ‘This woman, she come alone. Not with the others.’

  ‘Can they describe her?’

  More back and forth ensued, this time with some amusement. The women were covering their mouths and giggling like schoolgirls.

  ‘What are they saying?’ Makana asked.

  ‘Dark, they say.’

  ‘I thought they said she came during the day.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Koçak explained with the patience of one who is used to dealing with those slower-witted than himself. ‘It was not the day that is dark, but the woman.’

  ‘The woman is dark?’

  Koçak smiled. ‘They say she is like you.’

  ‘Like me?’ Makana echoed, his heart beating faster.

  Koçak elaborated. ‘A young woman dressed in trousers and a coat.’ He broke off to listen to more of their comments. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, except Makana. He looked into Koçak’s laughing face.

  ‘They say she not only looked the same as you, she behaved like you, asking a lot of questions. Funny, eh?’

  Makana was deep in thought as they drove back down towards the centre of town. He noticed that Koçak was paying a lot of attention to the rearview mirror.

  ‘What is it?’ Makana asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Amin Bey. Maybe I am catching your sickness, but I think that Mercedes is following us.’

  Makana craned his neck to look back just as the silver Mercedes accelerated and cut in front of them. Koçak stamped on the brakes. Two men were already out of the other car and coming towards them. Both wore suits and both looked familiar to Makana in the way that one’s countrymen always look familiar.

  ‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ he said. Then his door was wrenched open.

  ‘You need to come with us,’ said the man.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  There were four men in the Mercedes. Makana was sandwiched between two of them in the back seat. The car smelt of air freshener and plastic. The driver spoke to the man next to him, but it was impossible to make out the words. The vehicle took off, screeching down one narrow lane after another, bumping over the intersections with little concern for people or livestock. Makana placed his hands on the backs of the seats in front of him to brace himself. Neither of the men beside him objected. He could have thrown himself at the driver, or tried to reach the handbrake and create a diversion, but apart from possibly causing himself damage, he couldn’t see the advantage of such a move just yet.

  The man to his right was around forty years old. He remained tight-lipped and silent, staring out of the window, his face expressionless. The man to his left was younger. They were doing a job and they were clearly not interested in engaging with him. They were the messengers and Makana was the package they were charged with delivering.

  They drove for about ten minutes. Once they reached the main road they slowed to a reasonable pace, slotting into the traffic, moving cautiously, as if trying not to draw any attention. When they came to a halt the men got out on either side and invited him to step out. They each took hold of an arm.

  ‘Don’t make this difficult on yourself,’ the one to his right whispered. Makana knew by now that they were neither Mossad nor the MIT. This was worse than that.

  He was led forward, through a row of parked cars and along a pavement beside an old stone building. He had seen this place before. Koçak had driven past it on one of their tours. The Yerebatan Seray or Sunken Palace: the old Basilica Cistern. Built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian, it had once been a reservoir that held the city’s water. The two men led Makana through the entrance. They seemed to have been expected, as they were ushered through the door without fuss. Someone had gone to some trouble to stage this visit, but to what purpose Makana could not say.

  The underground palace was a vast subterranean cavern ten metres deep supported by hundreds of massive stone pillars arranged in rows to support the structure. They descended the steps to a wooden walkway that led deeper into the darkness. It wasn’t long before they had left the tourists behind. They passed a huge carved pedestal of the head of Medusa lying on her side. In the shallow water on either side of the walkway Makana could make out the twinkle of orange carp swimming in the eerie green light.

  They came to a halt at an intersection in the boardwalk. One of the men placed a hand on his shoulder to restrain him. They stood in silence as a couple in their sixties wandered by, laden with cameras and rucksacks like elderly children lost in an enchanted forest.

  Off to the right, down a side path, a figure stepped from behind a pillar. Makana squinted, unsure of what he was seeing. The two handlers let go of him and stepped back. He moved along the walkway. With each step he felt as though he were moving deeper into his own past.

  The years had not been kind. Mek Nimr’s face was grizzled and swollen.

  ‘I thought you’d feel more comfortable in a public place,’ he grunted as Makana drew near.

  ‘That was thoughtful of you.’ Makana stayed just out of reach, not trusting his own anger. He could feel his fists clenching so hard that his knuckles hurt. Mek Nimr had changed, but not so that he was unrecognisable under the fleshy layer. Now he carried himself with the bearing of an important man, the kind who made people jump to his commands. He wore a suit that hid some of the weight he’d put on over the years, but although his skinny frame had filled out, his face still had the same rigid lines that lent it a wooden squareness. He’d never been an attractive man to look at, but now it was as if the bitterness he carried within him had seeped out to permeate his skin. On either cheek he bore a wide cross: tribal scars that had been cut into his skin when he passed into manhood. It was a practice almost forgotten nowadays, and on Mek Nimr it added a sense of age, lending him the air of a primordial beast that had outlived its natural term of life.

  ‘You look surprised,’ Mek Nimr said. The smile was reptilian in its coldness. ‘Surely you must have suspected …’

  ‘There’s a difference between suspecting something and knowing,’ said Makana. ‘I was hoping I was wrong.’

  ‘The world has moved on,’ said Mek Nimr, waving a hand magnanimously. ‘We are now collaborating with British intelligence.’ He smiled. ‘I find that particularly amusing.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. Collaborating how exactly?’

  ‘I shall come to that.’ Mek Nimr had been planning this for a long time, Makana realised. This was his moment, and he was going to savour it. ‘I wonder how that makes you feel.’

  ‘Why should it make me feel anything?’ asked Makana.

  ‘You with your moral code, your sense of right and wrong.’

  ‘I never assumed the British represented good.’

  ‘Really?’ Mek Nimr’s face was a picture of mock surprise. ‘Yet you looked down on us, on your own people, for trying to restore our country’s cultural integrity.’

  ‘Is that what you call it, imposing Islam as the solution to all the country’s problems? It didn’t work out too well, did it?’

  ‘And yet here we are, with you on the losing side of history, and me on the winning side.’

  ‘You really believe there are winners and losers?’ Makana was wondering just how deep the water was on either side of the walkway, and how long it would take to drown someone before the guards managed to shoot him.

  ‘You have a choice. You can work for me, or you can die.’

  Makana shook his head. ‘You should have killed me all those years ago, when you had a chance.’

  ‘And miss the
pleasure of watching you suffer for all this time?’

  ‘You didn’t need to kill them,’ said Makana slowly. ‘You could have just killed me.’

  ‘Ah, but I wasn’t the one who brought your family into the picture. You did that all by yourself. You could have left them out of it. You could have fled the country alone, but to you that would have been defeat.’ Mek Nimr smiled slyly. ‘It was your pride that killed them.’

  A packet of Benson and Hedges and a matching gold lighter appeared out of his pocket. There was an expensive Rolex on his wrist. All the trappings of a man determined to show he has come up in the world. Makana wondered just how lucrative it was to be head of what was now known as the Directorate for Intelligence and Counterterrorism. They kept changing the name in an effort to keep up with the times. No doubt it bought you privileged access to government contracts. The last decade had seen the economy boom thanks to the revenue from oil exports. The reserves weren’t going to last for ever, but those in power had made sure that they saw the benefits before they got around to thinking about the rest of the country.

  ‘I get it,’ Makana shrugged. ‘You’re an important man these days. Why should that change anything? As far as I can see, you’re the same small-minded subordinate seeking approval.’

  Mek Nimr snorted as he had expected something of the kind. The world might have changed, but underneath it all, he was still the same.

  ‘You were always too hasty to pass judgement,’ said Mek Nimr. ‘Have you not asked yourself why you are here?’

  Above him swallows, or perhaps bats, flew through the shadows, circling the carved pillars of this stone forest.