Dancing for the General

by Sue Star

  Her? Did Paul and Fran mean Anna?

  No, it couldn’t be. Anna didn’t feel that she was in the way of anything. Well, perhaps she’d crossed paths with the murder investigation of the gypsy, but only because she didn’t really think that the investigation was proceeding as it should.

  Rainer grabbed Anna by the arm and yanked her back the way they’d come, along the row of lilacs.

  “You know what they were talking about, don’t you?” she said, gasping to keep up with his pace.

  “Quiet.” He pulled her across the stretch of grass toward the area of weeds that served as a boundary between the Wingates’ and the general’s properties. They were moving in a direction away from the backyard party, and out toward the street. She resisted, and finally he stopped, crouching behind a tangle of bushes that protected him from the streetlamp.

  “I’m not going with you,” Anna said. “And I can’t leave the party yet. I’m expecting a call from Mitzi any minute.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “The call was never placed.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He grunted. “Trust me.”

  “Oh, there you go again.”

  “Look, I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll bet you are. What are we doing here? Where are you going?”

  But he was gone already, darting across the street. Over there was the house where Gulsen lived—Priscilla’s friend. The house looked dark now, deserted, and Rainer disappeared from her sight as he slipped into shadows. She felt torn. Should she follow him? Or go back to the party?

  Perhaps he didn’t want her to take the call from Mitzi. But that didn’t make sense. Neither did any of the events so far tonight. Or today. Or yesterday, for that matter.

  The episode of the purse thief made no sense, either. She’d thought she’d been hit on the head with Ozturk Bey’s candelabrum so that the culprit could steal her purse. But maybe it was because she’d gotten in the way of whatever Paul and Fran thought she was in the middle of. She wondered how long Fran had been there, before revealing her presence.

  If it wasn’t Anna they’d referred to, then she wondered who else they could’ve meant. Maybe Cora. That woman certainly had a talent for inserting herself into the middle of affairs she had no business knowing. And she was a gossipmonger. Yes, perhaps they meant Cora. They didn’t want word to spread about...

  A coup?

  Feeling a little dizzy, Anna realized that she couldn’t stay here, hiding in the bushes. Fran and Paul would surely find her. They’d return soon with the photographer, no doubt, to disassemble the tripod, and...

  Did they mean that the general next door was planning a coup? Perhaps that’s what his men-only “parties” were all about. She shivered. Coups meant violence. And she and Priscilla lived next door to the mastermind of violence.

  She’d have to get Priscilla out of the way, maybe out of the country.

  Meanwhile, she had to get out of here. Unseen. She had to return to the backyard party without being noticed. She couldn’t go back along the side of the house and risk getting caught near the incriminating tripod, so she’d use the front door. Enter the house through the front door and exit through the back, returning to the party under the watchful eyes of the servants.

  She stood up from the bushes, brushed off some dirt, and swished past branches. No one was around, thankfully, to hear her rustling movement. The front lawn appeared like a smooth sea, and she darted across it to the sidewalk that led up to a porch.

  She ran up the steps and stopped abruptly. On the middle step. With a gasp. A man sat atop the low wall that lined the perimeter of the porch.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Only a thin panel of wood separated Meryem from the asker. She could not see anything but the blackness of the interior of the children’s shack, but she could smell the drink on him as he stood outside. For an instant she considered charging out there like a wild cat, leaping onto his back and scratching out his eyes.

  But she did not know who partnered with him. She’d heard other, arguing voices pursuing her along with the asker. Her chances against more than one, in times of desperation, were too uncertain. She shrank back into a dark corner and listened to his slurred words. He spoke as if he knew the exact spot where she hid. And why not? He’d surely seen this shack before on his regular patrols. He’d guess that she would’ve found it by now. He was playing with her. She could play, too.

  But not with children present.

  Meryem’s skin crawled with her eagerness to escape these foul-smelling quarters. Something lived here besides children. Snakes? Her heart lurched in her chest, and she sprang up, ready to take her chances with the asker and flee. Her head smacked against the ceiling.

  “Why is he chasing you?” Priscilla asked.

  “Shhh.” The children were about to betray her with their noise.

  “Don’t worry,” said Tommy. “He’s deaf and blind. He can’t hurt us here. We’re safe in our spaceship.”

  The asker’s footsteps scuffled farther away. “Come out, come out!”

  Meryem realized from his fading movements that he didn’t know where she was, not exactly. He was fishing for her. She inched closer to the hole that served as her exit from the shack.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Priscilla said. “He doesn’t need a reason to chase anyone. That old asker is mean. He killed my kitten.”

  “Oh,” Meryem said. “I’m sorry. You can find another kitten. Take your pick, in this city of stray cats.”

  “No. There was only one Muffin.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Meryem shifted on her haunches. Now was her chance to escape while the asker had turned his back. She scrabbled around in the dark for the piece of wood that had sealed them inside the shack.

  “You can stay here, if you want,” said Priscilla. “My turtle won’t mind.”

  “Your turtle?”

  “I hunt turtles, and when I find them, I bring them here. Mama won’t let me keep them more than two days, but she’s not here.”

  “Where is she?” The child’s an-ne, the foreign gadje, was surely at the party. She would be looking for her child and discover Meryem in a matter of moments.

  “Gone away,” Priscilla said.

  The sadness in the girl’s voice tugged at Meryem’s heart. “Well, it’s very nice of you to offer me a place to stay, but I have someplace else where I have to go.”

  Then the footsteps crunched outside once again, louder. The asker’s voice floated through the night, nearer. “I’m coming!”

  * * * * *

  The man rose, and Anna stepped backwards, down to the next lower step of the porch. His white suit gave him a ghostly appearance in the dark, and she took another step backwards.

  “Don’t go,” he said, sauntering toward the top step. One hand in his trouser pocket. The other, holding a cocktail. Hayati.

  She let out her breath, not realizing she’d been holding it. He must’ve watched her furtive movements just now with Rainer in the bushes. “Oh! I didn’t see you.”

  “A pleasant evening,” he said. “Your head is better now?”

  She touched her temple where pain still throbbed, freshly exacerbated by Rainer’s rough handling in the bushes. “I’m fine, thank you. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Nor I, you.” He chuckled.

  “Isn’t it odd? It seems to be your job to rescue me. First from the police station, and then from Ozturk Bey’s shop.” And now, from Rainer. She fanned herself with her hand and went on. “That is, what I mean to say is that I keep running into you everywhere I turn. Did Henry put you up to this?” Finally, she bit her lip to stop her blathering.

  He tipped his head to one side and studied her, as if trying to read her thoughts. “You are not happy,” he finally said as a statement, not a question.

  She gripped the railing beside the porch steps to keep from stumbling as her thoughts switched directions
again. Regaining her balance, she climbed the steps the rest of the way and stood tall, facing him. “You astonish me with such an observation. I’m quite content, thank you.”

  But, happy?

  “You are...how do they call it? Homesick?”

  “If I were homesick after only one week away from home, then I’d be in serious trouble.” She laughed off his question, and he laughed with her, but her laughter caught in her throat with an uncertain edge.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I often see this sadness in the people at the embassy, especially when things don’t turn out as they expect.”

  “I have no expectations, so I can’t be disappointed. Although, I certainly didn’t expect all that’s happened.” Rainer, alive! She wasn’t sure how she felt about that—joy or betrayal?

  Hayati watched her silently, as if waiting while she decided. Did he know about Rainer?

  She rushed on with her questions. “Why did you say what you said back there? About that man... Viktor. You seemed to think that I’d met him before. In a taxi.”

  “But you did. At the police station. The first time I came to help you. Don’t you remember?” He grinned, and his white teeth gleamed in the dark.

  “I’m sure I would’ve remembered. No, it’s not so. That man wasn’t there. You lied about that, and I want to know why.”

  He chuckled and nodded towards the weeds where she had just tussled with Rainer. “You said it yourself. It is my duty to rescue you, is that not true? Would you prefer to be the subject of Mrs. Wingate’s gossip?”

  “So you only thought that man, Viktor, meant something to me. He doesn’t.”

  “Okay, I believe you.” His teeth flashed again. “Come sit with me for a while, and allow me to tell you about the places we might choose for our dinner.”

  “Really, Mr. Orhon. I don’t see how I could abandon Priscilla.”

  “No doubt she has a friend she can stay with.”

  “I don’t mean to sound ungracious. It’s just that...”

  “Yes?”

  “It might...appear frivolous. In these somber times, you see.”

  “You do not strike me as the sort of woman who cares much for the games society plays. I wonder who you really are, Miss Anna Riddle?”

  “Sometimes I wonder that, too.” She blurted it out before thinking. She knew who she’d been, up until now, but she didn’t care to explain her personal history to strangers, how she’d come to this moment and this uncustomary state of uncertainty.

  She turned away from his scrutiny of her. A solitary streetlamp flickered on the corner, where Yeşilyurt intersected Güneş. Where Erkmen had stood watching her house the night before, after Yaziz’s visit. Rainer was out there now, somewhere in the dark between the pools of light from the streetlamps.

  She wasn’t going to let Hayati distract her. “I’m sorry,” she said, “will you excuse me?”

  “No, actually, I won’t.” Ice rattled in his glass as he set it down and stepped closer, taking her wrist gently in his hands.

  “I beg your pardon?” Her voice rose, matching the rising hammer of her heart.

  “Shhh,” he said. “Stay with me another moment. Would you like a cigarette?”

  “I have to get back.”

  “Why? Are you afraid someone will see us together? An American woman alone with a Turkish man?”

  “Of course not. Please turn loose of me this instant.” She could step away from him any time she chose, since his light touch on her wrist wasn’t restraining her, not the way Rainer’s grip had squeezed her with force.

  He released her, but she did not step away. “Did you really want to learn Turkish?” he said.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Why? They don’t encourage learning our language.”

  “You learned English.”

  “That’s different. I was in London for a while, in school.”

  “And now I’m in your country. Why should it be any different?”

  He laughed. “Some people think the Americans don’t actually live in my country but in a little America within my country.”

  His soft laughter infected her with his good humor and gentle nature, easing her anxiety, encouraging her to stay. “Paul said that you sometimes work in Henry’s office,” she said. “What do you do there?”

  “Translate, mostly.”

  “Was that what Paul wanted from you? That report he wanted by this morning. Was it a translation of the police report?”

  Hayati shrugged, rummaging into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a small pack of cigarettes. “If you won’t have one, may I?”

  “As you wish. They’re your lungs, not mine.” She felt a prickle of annoyance from his indirect way of answering her direct question.

  He took his time lighting up and exhaling the bitter smell of tobacco. “Did you find them?” he finally said.

  “Find what?” Her pulse sped up. How did he know that she was intent on recovering her letters from Cora?

  “The Alekci family. You wanted me to take you there today, remember?”

  “Oh!” The heat of a flush crept up to her cheeks. To cover the embarrassment of her misunderstanding, she told him all about it. She described how she’d found the family’s place and how her visit had ended with Mrs. Alekci’s hysterics. How Anna had nearly sustained another bump to her head when the woman had thrown a small, wooden box at her.

  “What do you think she kept in the box?” Anna said, thankful that it had been empty.

  “The letter, probably.”

  “But how did she get my letter in the first place?”

  “From your Rainer, I imagine.”

  Anna gulped, trying to swallow her rising confusion. Was she supposed to claim that Rainer was dead? “He’s not ‘my Rainer’.”

  “As you wish.”

  “What I wish is that I could have talked to her myself.”

  “You were asking about Turkish lessons, and I will teach you.”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t mean—”

  “It is no trouble. I sometimes teach English downtown. Why not my own language?”

  “I had in mind something more formal.”

  “You can pay me if that will make you feel better.”

  The more he insisted, the more reluctant she felt. He was being both helpful and evasive, and she wondered why.

  “It’s not that I’m not. Comfortable, that is.”

  “Then what is it? I assure you that I am qualified.”

  “Yes, of course you are,” she said. “All right, when do we start?” The words flowed out before she could think through the arrangement.

  Besides, she wanted to know why he’d lied to her about meeting Rainer in a taxi. He’d practically admitted lying. Because, she felt certain, he was covering up something.

  Why else had he been here on the front porch, conveniently waiting to intercept her? If he was working with Rainer... He’d been watching Rainer’s back just now.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Anna finally escaped from Hayati with an excuse no one could argue. She had to powder her nose.

  He offered to escort her to the powder room, but she insisted she would find her own way.

  The powder room on the ground floor, however, turned out to be a Turkish toilet—a hole in the floor, straddled by two cement footprints. Anna smiled. This would work to her advantage. If the Wingates’ house was anything like the Burkhardts’, then there would be a western toilet on the floor above. If someone caught her upstairs in Cora’s bedroom, she would claim to be searching for the western facilities.

  She ran up wooden stairs to a darkened hall. At the end of the hall, a light shone in a bedroom, drawing her to it, the moth to flame. A small lamp sat atop a vanity table, cluttered with a disarray of boxes and spilled cosmetics and sprinkled with a fine dusting of perfumed powder.

  Anna’s heart soared. This would be easier than she’d thought.

  She hesitated only an instant, distracted by a display of miniat
ure photos in silver frames, and then bent down to the narrow drawers beneath the cluttered tabletop. A place to hide stolen letters.

  Her fingers shaking, she went to work, pulling out drawers one by one, sifting through beads and feathered clip-ons and rhinestone pins. Halfway through her search, the letters still hadn’t turned up. She dug on, certain that the very next drawer would be the hiding place.

  “Looking for something?” a husky voice said from the doorway.

  Anna lurched, straightening upright. Beads slipped from her fingers, clattering back into the drawer she’d been searching.

  Fran!

  Anna squared her shoulders and stepped away from Cora’s vanity table. What could she say? She’d been caught red-handed. The heat of a flush crept up her neck. Her ears must be red flags.

  Fran Lafferty smirked while leaning one shoulder against the doorframe. Her cigarette holder, even though it was empty, cocked between two fingers. She arched one penciled eyebrow high as she studied Anna and waited for an explanation.

  “Um, yes,” Anna said. “Cora has something of mine, and I was looking for it.”

  “I see. And you took it upon yourself to reclaim the presumably borrowed item? I wonder what that could be?”

  “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Look, I know what you must be thinking, but you’re wrong. I didn’t take anything. Search me if you want. You must believe me.”

  “Why should I?”

  “I can see this looks bad. I would prefer that you not say anything about this to anyone.”

  “No doubt.” Fran switched her meerschaum holder to her other hand. Her eyebrow arched even higher, and frowns lined her forehead.

  Anna’s head throbbed as her indignation flared. “I was on my way to the powder room, you see, and when I saw the light on in here, I became distracted.”

  “You don’t seem like the sort of woman who distracts very easily.”

  “Oh, I am. Really.”

  “No. That’s Mitzi. Not you. You don’t strike me as anything like Mitzi. In fact, it’s hard to believe you’re sisters.”