Dancing for the General

by Sue Star

  “You like more?” he said, presenting the ring to her.

  “It’s charming.” She took the ring and tried it on with a laugh. “I wouldn’t want to let it drop and fall apart.”

  Just then, the boy with the shaved head reappeared, carrying a round brass tray by its hook, like a balancing scale. On the tray were three demitasse cups of brass, and not a drop of the steaming coffee they contained had spilled.

  The little boy passed the coffee around. Anna was about to protest his serving the adult drink to Priscilla, of all things, but a commotion erupted outside in the street. Someone was shouting above a babble of excited voices, and Anna heard the tapping sound of running feet.

  “Hey!” Priscilla shouted suddenly, then sprang toward the door.

  Anna twisted around in her chair in time to glimpse a piece of brass swinging through the air above her head.

  Then pain.

  Pain thudded into her head and sparked through her body, all the way down to her toes and fingers. The last thing Anna remembered was a smell of wool as her vision faded into a sparkly golden aura, then blacked out.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Yaziz sprinted after the boy thief, ignoring the splinters of pain from his wounded leg. Where was Erkmen now, when his assistance was needed? Yaziz had no other choice but to chase the thief himself. He was police, and it was always his job to uphold the law. He followed, not by sight of the boy, but from the part knifing through the crowd. The boy was fast, faster than Yaziz, in spite of the hours he spent training at the gymnasium.

  This open-air labyrinth of shops was nothing compared to Istanbul, where Yaziz had grown up, but it was still complex enough. Especially when chasing a small boy. Yaziz had to be fast because the disruption settled down almost as quickly as it had occurred. As if the crowd absorbed the disturbance within their throngs.

  The boy could be hiding anywhere, Yaziz thought, his gaze sweeping the innumerable bins and walls and stacks of merchandise and hanging ropes of merchandise. He elbowed his way past doors and smaller passageways and dead-ends and bridges and tunnels. Yaziz—not the boy—became the target of oaths and shaking fists.

  “Excuse me,” he mumbled, pushing his way in a direction he thought to be forward. The boy could be anywhere by now.

  Yaziz stopped. He studied the shops. And their displays. Leather. Copper. Carcasses of mutton. Oranges from the coast. Business as usual.

  Not only had he missed whatever the woman was up to, he’d lost the thief as well.

  Perhaps Miss Riddle had hired the boy to cause the disruption and intentionally shake Yaziz from her trail. Indeed. She was more clever than he gave her credit.

  He wheeled around, heading back to Ozturk Bey’s shop.

  Then stopped again.

  Kneeling beside a stack of kilim rugs, out of view of where Yaziz had swept by only moments ago, were Erkmen and the boy thief. The police officer was rummaging into a straw bag, while the boy waited, holding out his hand, palm up.

  Yaziz took off toward them.

  “Hey!” shouted a shopper that he bumped against.

  Erkmen and the boy looked up, then scattered in opposite directions.

  By the time Yaziz worked his way to the spot behind the rugs, the suspects had disappeared. For that’s what Erkmen had become, by virtue of his flight just now. Erkmen—what was he up to?—slipped through a back door of the rug shop, and the boy melted into the crowds. On the cement floor before Yaziz lay the straw bag.

  Yaziz snatched it up and started after Bulayir’s lieutenant. Two rug merchants blocked his way, ticking their tongues at him.

  “Police,” Yaziz muttered back at them. “Let me through.”

  “I don’t see your uniform,” said one of the merchants, thrusting back his head.

  “We are a peaceful shop,” said the other. “No one else is here but us. You have no right to harass us.”

  Yaziz wrenched his arm free of the merchants and pulled his badge from a pocket. The two vendors bowed, begging his pardon, and Yaziz stalked to the back of the shop.

  The door led up a half flight of stone steps to an alley where an ox stood patiently, harnessed to a painted wagon. No one was about. Erkmen could’ve disappeared in any direction. He could be hiding in any doorway, watching him, knowing now that Yaziz was on to whatever betrayal he had planned.

  Or he could be a block away. In either case, Yaziz had lost his cover of stealth. Never mind, he’d eventually catch up to Erkmen.

  The detective cursed under his breath and stomped back down the steps into the rug shop. At least Erkmen had prevented the boy thief from stealing the bag. Yaziz opened up the bag while the merchants watched and pulled out an identity card. “Anna Riddle,” it read.

  * * * * *

  Anna opened her eyes to a gaze that simmered with chocolate warmth. A strand of hair irritated her eyes, making them blink with fury that pounded through her head. A finger, light as her mother’s touch, skimmed across her forehead and smoothed away the irritant. Tension melted from her muscles.

  A man’s voice murmured soft as a summer breeze whispering through cottonwoods. Except, his voice sounded crisp and British, nothing like the slow twang of a western rancher’s... “Welcome back. How do you feel?”

  She tried to sit up, but pain hammered at her head and pushed her back onto the plush fibers of a Turkish rug. Someone had deliberately attacked her! With that realization, she pushed herself up onto her elbows despite the throb in her head.

  The room spun around her. Evil eyes danced in the air above her. Voices whispered around her at the pitch of a roar. It hurt to breathe.

  “Priscilla?” Her heart lurched in her chest, and her voice rose with it. She pushed herself up onto her feet, wobbling. “Where’s Priscilla?”

  The man with the cottonwood voice offered his arm for support, and she saw for the first time that he was Hayati Orhon, the Turk from the American Embassy. Where had he come from? Confusion sent another stab of pain to her head.

  “Don’t worry,” Hayati said. “Your niece is with Ozturk Bey.”

  Anna leaned on Hayati’s arm. His gentle touch warmed her, easing the pain. Her breathing settled back to a constant rhythm.

  Hayati continued in a soft, murmuring voice. “Ozturk Bey sent Emin the photographer from next door to chase the thief and get your purse back for you, before he gets away.”

  “My...” Anna glanced down at the floor beside her chair where she’d set her straw bag. The bag wasn’t there. Instead, a brass candelabrum lay on its side. Her temple throbbed, protesting her movement.

  “In a public place like this, you cannot be too careful, Miss Riddle. Can you walk outside? Where we can find a taxi?”

  “But where’s Priscilla?”

  “Just outside, not far.”

  Alarm pounded along with her pain. “By herself?”

  “No, I told you. She’s with Ozturk Bey. Do not worry. Come. Shall I help you to the doctor?”

  “That’s not necessary.” She took a step, trying hard not to sway on her feet from the pain pounding her head.

  “The doctor I know is not far from here. He is very good. He studied in London, one of the chaps I met there in my student days.”

  “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Miss Lafferty sent me after you.”

  Anna’s mind swam in circles. “But...how did you know where to find me?” She tried to remember the conversation back at the embassy, tried to remember what she had revealed to that woman...Fran... But it hurt to think.

  He shrugged. “She thought you should not come here alone. Are you ready to go now to the doctor?”

  “No, no, not now. I’m okay, really. I can’t go anywhere without Priscilla.” She took another step, wavering closer to the door. She saw milling people through the open doorway, but not her niece.

  “Did you have anything valuable in your purse? A passport, perhaps?”

  She massaged her temple, but it didn’t help with the pain or
her memory. “No, I’m sure I left my passport and most of my money at home.”

  Home? This wasn’t her home. Home lay on the opposite side of the world. Home was where she felt safe from assassins and shadows in the night. Shadows, who followed her in broad daylight, who invaded her bedroom and pawed through her underwear.

  Random events? She thought not. Her heartbeat sped up.

  “I should’ve gone after the thief myself,” Hayati said. “When I arrived, I saw a boy run away. I didn’t know then what had happened. I could’ve caught him if I hadn’t waited for Ozturk Bey to explain it all. Because of my English, he wished me to stay here with you while he assesses the situation with his various shops.”

  Hayati’s gentle manner made Anna glad that he’d stayed with her, although she wished he’d insisted that Priscilla stay, too. “He has other stores besides these two? Why isn’t he back by now? Surely he wouldn’t leave his shops unattended.”

  The street filled with people stirring in every direction and gossiping voices that echoed throughout. From what she’d seen so far of this shopping area, she suspected that such chaos was the norm and not the result of a stolen purse.

  “Do not worry,” Hayati said. “They will be back soon. Then we can go to the doctor.”

  “But you said Priscilla is right here, just outside, and clearly she’s not.” Then alarm caught hold of her once more, and she reached for the doorframe to steady herself. “Priscilla!” she called out into the street.

  Thieves, she thought, didn’t usually hit their victims over the head before stealing their purses.

  This had not been a casual purse-snatcher. Out there on the street was where purse thieves would more likely work. They wouldn’t charge into one of the shops.

  No, someone had targeted her. Someone had sent the boy in with coffee to distract her while someone else hit her over the head and stole her purse. She didn’t think the boy could’ve done it. He was too little to wield the heavy brass. Besides, he was busy with his coffee tray. No, someone had hired the boy. The man with the bird nest hair whom she’d thought worked for Yaziz?

  Whoever it was had been looking for something—the letter that Umit had tried to pass to her at Atatürk’s Tomb.

  Or... Maybe it was the medallion that he wanted.

  Her heart raced and her mind spun as she stood there in the doorway scanning the busy crowd, waiting for Priscilla to return.

  Finally, the crowds parted as someone short rippled through them.

  “Priscilla?” Anna called hopefully.

  It wasn’t a child, but a man. A short man, dressed in a western business suit, emerged from the crowd. Grinning behind his gold-tinted lenses, he carried her straw bag and headed straight toward her, as if he’d known all along to find her here in Ozturk Bey’s shops.

  “Miss Riddle,” Yaziz said, holding out her purse, “does trouble always follow you wherever you go?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Yaziz offered the straw bag to the American, but she did not take it. She did not even seem to see it, her own missing bag.

  Her voice rose to a shriek. “Oh, detective! It’s you! Did you find her? Where is she?”

  He shrugged off the spectacle of her disturbance. “It was just a boy. He was hiding behind some rugs when I found him, going through your bag. But he ran off, the little thief. You should be more careful.” He nudged her with the bag, and this time she noticed it.

  “You found my purse?” She grabbed it from his hands, flung open its lid, and dug into its basket shape. “How fortunate for me that you happened to be passing by at the right moment.”

  “Yes. Fortunate.” Yaziz watched her claw faster through her bag, rattling items one by one. The hairs rose at the nape of his neck as he realized he was standing next to the embassy man, Hayati Orhon, a sorry example of a Turk. “Tell me what happened,” Yaziz said to Miss Riddle.

  Her face, a chalky bronze through his lenses, paled another degree as she shook her bag, searching for something that was not there. Perhaps the white of the salt lake of Tuz Gölü was her natural skin color. The woman was full of surprises. He intended to uncover every one of them.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, instead of assisting him in his investigation.

  “Doing my duty, Miss Riddle.”

  Orhon the embassy man moved closer to her, as if his allegiance lay more with the Americans.

  Miss Riddle did not appear to notice. “You and also the man you assigned to watch my house,” she said. “Did you know that he followed me to the bazaar today? Yes, of course you know. That’s why you’re here, because he phoned you to report where I am.”

  Yaziz frowned, careful not to betray his inability to soothe her rising hysteria. “It is a police matter. Someone will please explain what happened here.”

  Orhon spoke up. “The embassy sent me along to accompany Miss Riddle, and—”

  She dropped the bag with a yelp and examined her trembling hand. A puzzle ring decorated one finger, and she twisted it off. “I only tried it on,” she said, swooping down to place it in one of the opened trays of jewelry that littered the carpeted floor. Yaziz also recognized her bundled-up purchases from the slipper shop.

  Nearby, a brass candelabrum lay on its side.

  “Ozturk Bey was showing me these rings,” she continued, even though he was not interested in the rings, “when someone suddenly ran into the shop and hit me over the head. It must’ve happened while the boy distracted us with coffee. Or maybe it was the boy himself. I don’t know.”

  “Where did this come from?” Yaziz pulled his handkerchief from a pocket and used it to pick up the ornate piece of brass, heavy enough to damage anyone’s head. “Does Ozturk Bey sell brass items in this shop?” He looked around at the glass evil eyes, dangling from the rafters on strings, at the stacks of jewelry trays, and a glass counter displaying meerschaum pipes and cigarette holders.

  “Not here,” Orhon said, “but he does sell brass only next door.”

  “You are familiar with this merchant’s set-up?” Yaziz already knew it too, but he had his routine.

  “We at the embassy refer the Americans here, to these shops.”

  “A convenient arrangement for Ozturk Bey,” Yaziz said. “Surely he cannot manage both shops by himself.”

  “It is true,” said Orhon. “There are helpers that he employs. Ozturk Bey is a wealthy man, thanks to his increasing popularity with the Americans. They like to buy their copper and brass from him.”

  Yaziz carried the weapon to a spot under the single electric light bulb illuminating the shop. He thought he saw a smudge of blood along the carved side of one of the three shafts designed for holding a pair of candles each. Perhaps the lab could lift fingerprints, although he was fairly sure there would be no records to match their owner.

  “How is your head after that blow?” Yaziz asked, laying down the weapon on a piece of tissue paper. Then he glanced up at the woman, who still frowned. She rubbed the crown of her head. Hair coiled there in a thick, black rope the Americans called a “braid,” and a wet cloth balanced atop the whole thing. The overall effect was that of a turban, and he couldn’t help smiling.

  “It hurts.”

  “You need to see the doctor,” Orhon said.

  Miss Riddle turned to the embassy man and said, “You were starting to tell the detective what you saw, when I interrupted.”

  “You saw what happened?” Yaziz asked Orhon.

  “No. I was just arriving when Ozturk Bey suddenly cried out for help.”

  “You saw nothing unusual on the street?”

  “Someone running. It must’ve been the boy, but I didn’t know then that she’d been attacked.” He smiled shyly at Miss Riddle, and Yaziz felt his skin prickle again at the back of his neck.

  “What about the copper and brass shop?” Yaziz said with a cough. “Did you see anything unusual there?”

  Orhon’s downturned face told Yaziz that he had noticed nothing.

&
nbsp; “You’ll have to ask that nice young man who minds that store,” Miss Riddle said, interrupting the interview. “But you already know about him, don’t you? He works for the police sometimes as your photographer. He told me his name is Emin Kirpat.”

  Yaziz covered his embarrassment from the assault of the American’s forthrightness by pulling out a small notebook from his pocket. He flipped through its pages until he found the notes that his assistant, Suleyman, had given him. They confirmed Miss Riddle’s information.

  “And where is he now?” Yaziz said.

  “Ozturk Bey sent him out to chase the thief. He should have returned by now.” Orhon glanced at Miss Riddle’s stolen bag, returned now.

  “Detective,” Miss Riddle said, “didn’t you find my niece on your way here?”

  “The little miss is here?”

  “Well...not here, as you can see. She’s out there. With Ozturk Bey. They must be looking for the thief, too. You must’ve seen Priscilla, since you found my purse. Where is she?”

  Yaziz shrugged rather than admit that he’d lost them all. Even if he wanted to tell her the truth, he couldn’t, since that would reveal that he’d been following the woman and child ever since they’d climbed into the taxi at the Burkhardt house on Yeşilyurt Sokak earlier that day.

  “Don’t worry,” said Orhon, stepping closer to Miss Riddle. “She is safe with Ozturk Bey, I promise.”

  But the American woman’s face twisted in consternation.

  “Is something missing?” Yaziz asked, nodding at the bag at her feet.

  She hesitated a moment too long for such a simple question. “My money is still here, and so is my identification card that Henry’s office gave me. How did you know...where to find me?”

  “What do you think the thief wanted in your bag?” Yaziz asked, instead of confessing.

  “Why don’t you tell me? You probably have a much better idea of these things.”

  He shrugged again. “It’s usually money they want. Are you in the habit of carrying something else, something valuable, perhaps?” The thing, Yaziz thought, that she was going to pass to Umit Alekci before he’d inconveniently been murdered. He’d been wrong about Erkmen, and he could just as easily be wrong about the letter serving as a signal.