by Leta Serafim
“They slipped through the net and got away. I had plainclothesmen stationed at all the departure gates, checking the passengers boarding the planes. The problem is, they only screened the ones leaving for the United States. They neglected those heading elsewhere.”
“Where’s Nielsen?!” Patronas cried.
“On his way to Turkey. I don’t know how the three of them got past security, but somehow they did. Maybe nobody paid attention to them because they changed their appearance, dyed their hair, even put lifts in their shoes, and no longer matched the description on the flyers we distributed. They’re clever boys. Anything is possible. Or the person checking the passports got distracted and didn’t inspect them as carefully as he should have. Given what I’ve seen of the assholes here, that would be my guess. All I know is they managed to escape. When I found out they were missing, I went from counter to counter and spoke to the ticket agents. An employee of Turkish Airlines said he’d just booked three American kids onto a flight to Istanbul. I checked the passenger roster and there they were.”
Stathis casually admitted he’d been delayed getting to the airport. Because of the traffic in Athens, the trip had taken him twice as long as it should have. By the time he got there and realized what had happened, the kids were already in Turkish airspace.
“I just assumed they’d be going home. It was a mistake,” he admitted reluctantly.
Patronas reached for his cigarettes. Lydia had asked him to quit smoking and he’d tried, but the situation demanded nicotine, whiskey … something. “What are you going to do?”
“The Turkish government will never return them to us; that much is certain,” Stathis said. “They’ll check with the American Embassy and do whatever the ambassador says—probably put them on a plane to New York.”
“They’re going to go free? After what they did?”
Stathis raised a hand to silence him. “Calm down, Patronas. Justice will be served. Maybe not in the form you anticipated, but trust me, it will be served.”
His boss had something up his sleeve, something furtive and illegal. Patronas could almost smell it on him.
“You might say, the Turks and I have an informal reciprocity agreement,” Stathis explained. “I do for them and they do for me—not officially, of course, under the table—and the job gets done. I just called and told them the situation and they agreed to grab those kids as soon as they get off the plane and hold them for us.”
“On what grounds?”
Stathis chuckled. “It’s Turkey, Patronas. The police there have a free hand. They do what they want.” He sounded more than a little envious.
“You can’t just stuff them in a plane and bring them back to Greece. They’re Americans. What if they refuse to go?”
“I have no intention of bringing them back to Greece.” The way Stathis said it made Patronas’ blood run cold. “I have something else in mind for them.”
“Surely you want them to stand trial for what they did?”
“I don’t care if they stand trial or not. I just want them punished.”
Stathis had already bought a ticket for himself, and he instructed Patronas to do the same for himself, Tembelos, and the priest. Evangelos Demos was to go back to Chios, Nikolaidis to Sifnos. “Flight’s short, less than an hour.”
Patronas wondered why his boss wanted them to come along. As protection, probably. If everything went to hell, he would have someone to blame. It had happened before. Stathis had fired him two years ago after a murder case on Chios collapsed, waited until the publicity died down and then reinstated him. “Nothing personal,” he’d said at the time.
Sitting in the terminal waiting to board, Patronas got out his notebook and flipped through the pages, reviewing what Svenson had said during his interview about his upcoming trip to Turkey. Patronas thought the suspects might be planning to follow the same itinerary.
They’d as much as told him what their intentions were the night they’d eaten dinner together at Flora’s after Svenson died, saying they wanted to go to Ephesus as the professor had planned and from there on to Cappadocia as a way of ‘paying tribute to him.’ They’d virtually given him a roadmap and he’d ignored it.
Much as he hated to admit it, Stathis wasn’t the only one who’d fucked up. He had, too.
A Chiot to his core, Papa Michalis was pathologically distrustful of the Turks and kept dragging his heels on the way to the gate, saying he needed to stop and catch his breath.
“Come on, Father,” Patronas urged. “Our plane leaves in thirty minutes. We have to hurry.”
“I hope you are aware of our shared history with the Turks, Yiannis. How they murdered sixty thousand of your ancestors on Easter Sunday in 1821. Threw the Greek residents of Smyrna into the sea.”
“A long time ago, Father. Come on. Let’s get a move on.”
The flight to Istanbul was surprisingly short, barely long enough for Patronas to buckle his seatbelt and drink the free soda the flight attendant gave him before the plane landed. Stathis was waiting for him at the gate. “The Turks have them in custody.”
“No problem then?” Patronas said.
“Not for us,” his boss said. “Their problems, on the other hand, are just beginning.”
The airport itself was far bigger and more congested than the one in Athens, the vast lobby crowded with people in native dress, garments Patronas had only seen in geography books or on television newscasts. A group of Sunni women waited by the elevator, clothed entirely in black. Their hair and faces, everything but their eyes, was veiled. A few were wearing sunglasses as well, making them appear like apparitions from another world. In marked contrast were the people dressed in Ihram clothing in preparation for their Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca; both men and women wore pure white cotton garments. Others were clad in the tunics, vests, and loose pants of Pakistan. Pashtun hats from Afghanistan were also in evidence on some of the men as was a kind of flattened turban. Patronas saw few women in Western dress, tourists mainly. The vast majority wore traditional garb, the long robe-like dresses and headscarves of Turkey. In spite of the heat, a few had on handsome knee-length jackets as well.
Walking among them, Patronas felt farther away from home than he’d ever been in his life. The language, the features and physiognomy of the people, everything was unfamiliar. He felt unsteady, as if he’d lost his balance, the culture of the Middle East closing in on him from all sides. A pair of young women in floor-length robes and scarves hurried past, their eyes downcast, accompanied by a much older man in a caftan. Father? Husband? Patronas couldn’t help but wonder. He paused for a moment, looking up at the list of departing flights: Sana, Islambad, Yerevan, Tbilisi. He doubted he could locate half on a map.
“My mother was from Asia Minor,” the priest said, “and she said that at Turkish weddings, they hoist the mother of the groom up in a chair; the bride has to crawl under her. They do it to show her, right from the beginning, what her place is.”
“On the floor,” Patronas said and everybody laughed.
“My wife and I visited Istanbul a couple of years ago,” Tembelos said, “but we didn’t see anything like that. Turks were real friendly. When we said we were from Greece, they called us sympetheroi.” The in-laws. “But even then, you could tell the country was in a state of flux, and that it was growing more and more conservative. Outside some of the mosques there were soldiers with machine guns—Sunni, Shiite, I never could figure it out. What impressed me was the way everybody stopped talking when the muezzins called them to prayer.” He laughed. “Imagine trying that in Athens.”
“Hard to believe religion can make such a difference,” Patronas said.
“Of course it does.” Papa Michalis motioned to the masses of people moving around them. “You yourself might have no need of faith, Yiannis, but what most people believe and worship defines them.”
Feeling uneasy, Patronas studied the list of flights again, curious about the passengers on those planes. Was there really no conn
ection between those people and him? No common bond? He was an atheist. Did that really define him?
Stathis led them down to the lowest level of the airport and along a dimly lit corridor. At the very end was a small, windowless room. Dank and cell-like, it had dingy walls and a cement floor. A fluorescent light flickered overhead, and there were three chairs in a row, a card table set up in front of them. The three suspects were standing just inside the door, their hands cuffed behind them. They’d been roughed up. Gilbert had the beginnings of a black eye, and all were subdued. Bowdoin was whimpering quietly while Nielsen stared defiantly ahead.
A heavyset man in a uniform appeared to be in charge. He greeted Stathis warmly and whispered something in his ear.
“Good, good,” Stathis said.
Two other officers were with him, and he gestured for them to bring the students’ luggage forward. “Are these yours?” he asked each of the Americans in turn, gesturing at the suitcases.
When the kids nodded, he removed their handcuffs and ordered them to initial a piece of paper. When Gilbert balked, saying he couldn’t read Turkish and didn’t know what he was signing, the officer grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head hard against the table. Handing Gilbert a pen, he pointed once again to where he was to sign. Crying, Gilbert quickly wrote his name where the man had indicated.
The officer then put the handcuffs back on and had his men seat the students in the chairs.
After that, things proceeded quickly. Pulling on latex gloves, the Turks began opening up the suitcases. Inside, hidden away in the interior pockets of each of the bags, was a sealed plastic pouch of white powder. The pouches weren’t large—no more than five centimeters square—but, realizing instantly what it was, Patronas knew it would be more than enough.
Removing the pouches from the suitcases, the Turks handed them to the officer-in-charge, who deftly slit them open with a knife and tasted the contents of each in turn. “Heroin,” he said in English.
The kids went crazy. “It’s not ours! Somebody planted it on us!”
They continued to yell, swearing they’d never seen the pouches before and didn’t know where they’d come from. The Turkish policemen nudged each another with their elbows and laughed at their distress.
Stathis, too, was enjoying the show. “Heroin?” he sang out. “My, my, you’re in a world of trouble, my friends. Well and truly fucked.”
“Aren’t they allowed to call their parents?” Patronas asked.
“All in good time,” the Turk said, unperturbed.
When Patronas stepped forward to read the name tags on the suitcases, his boss pulled him back. “Stay out of it,” he said fiercely.
Gathering up the bags of heroin and putting them in a briefcase, the officer ordered his men to take the students away and stalked out of the room.
By this time, all three of the kids were in tears.
Stathis watched them go. “You see, Patronas. I told you I’d take care of it.”
“It was you?”
His boss nodded smugly.
Patronas just stared at him. If the rule of law was indispensable to civilized society—the only thing that separated it from the time of the Neanderthals—then his boss had just returned them to the cave. Stathis’ actions were a travesty, a violation of the Greek constitution, every law he was sworn to uphold.
The frame-up had been deftly done. Either Stathis had brought the heroin with him from Paros—it was commonly used there and would have been easy to obtain—and planted it in the suitcases when he got to Istanbul, or he’d arranged to have the Turks do it for him. It didn’t really matter. As his boss had said, the Americans were well and truly fucked.
Years ago, there’d been a poster in the airport with the picture of a young man behind bars in what looked like Devil’s Island. The caption had read: ‘If you get caught with drugs in Turkey, you’re in for the hassle of your life.’ There’d been a movie, too, about an American drug smuggler in a Turkish prison, The Midnight Express. Tourism in Turkey had plummeted ninety-five percent upon its release. It was as close to a vision of hell as Patronas had ever seen.
Knowing what lay ahead, Patronas felt a little sorry for the students—not much, just a little. He wished it had gone differently, that they’d been charged and gone to trial, been sentenced in a Greek court. Given the conditions in the Turkish prisons, he doubted the kids would last a month. What Stathis had done to them amounted to a death sentence.
“They’ll never see the light of day again,” Stathis said, as if reading Patronas’ mind. “The penalty for trafficking here is twenty years, which is doubled if heroin is involved, making it an even forty. And if the perpetrator is part of a criminal conspiracy—defined by Turkish law as more than two people as was the case here—they add another twenty to the sentence for a grand total of sixty years. Sixty years of what in their criminal code is defined as ‘heavy imprisonment.’ ”
Devil’s Island, in other words.
Chapter Thirty
A serpent, unless he devours another serpent, does not become a dragon.
—Greek Proverb
Patronas got his chance to talk to Michael Nielsen the following day. Overseen by a burly Turkish policeman, he and Papa Michalis sat with the three Americans in their cell in Maltepe Prison where they’d been transported in a police van after leaving the airport the previous night.
A collection of red-roofed buildings on the outskirts of Istanbul, the prison was so large, it was like entering a small city. The cell the students were in was part of a unit, seven rooms housing four inmates each, opening into a larger space. A single shower and a hole in the floor, an old-fashioned Turkish ‘squat,’ served the twenty-eight prisoners who were housed there. The primitive toilet smelled so bad it was like breathing in raw sewage. Drawn by the stench, clouds of flies were buzzing around the cell; a sheen of filth coated every surface.
Taking it all in, Patronas again doubted the kids would survive their incarceration. Terrorists were housed in the same prison, and they would know via the prison grapevine the crime the three were accused of—the murder of a Muslim child. They might well take matters into their own hands. He wondered why the Turkish officials had chosen to house the three kids with the general population, if it had been deliberate. As Americans, they would have been far better off in solitary.
He had asked to speak to them, telling Stathis he still had questions about the murder he wanted resolved before returning to Greece. “I promised the boy’s aunt I’d find out what happened to him. I gave her my word.”
Stathis had arranged the interview with the appropriate Turkish authorities, making it clear that even if the three confessed, it would make no difference. “They’re staying in Turkey, Patronas. Nothing you do can change that. There will be no extradition to Greece.”
As soon as Patronas entered the cell, the students started begging and pleading with him to get them out of prison.
“Did the guards let you call your parents?” Patronas asked, thinking he would do it himself if they hadn’t. It was their right as prisoners, whether here or in Greece. He’d notify the American Embassy, too, if he had to.
Bowdoin nodded. “One phone call apiece, just like in the movies. My parents were real upset and said they’d get here as soon as they could, but it would take time—what with getting tickets and waiting for connecting flights and all this other crap. In the meantime, I’m stuck here in this hellhole.” He slammed his fist against the wall. “Fuck!”
He, too, had been beaten since the last time Patronas had seen him. There were black and blue marks on his face, wrists, and neck, and his shirt was torn in places. All three stank, their pants stained and foul-smelling. The Turks must have kept them in that room at the airport for a long time before moving them here, denied them access to a bathroom.
“What about the American Embassy in Ankara?” asked Patronas.
“My parents said they were going to call them,” Gilbert volunteered. “Demand that t
hey send somebody to help us out. But so far it’s been nothing doing. You’re the first person we’ve seen since we got here.”
The parents of Nielsen and Gilbert were also en route to Istanbul. The latter’s father was a lawyer, and Gilbert said his father was less than optimistic about their prospects.
“I swore up and down that we weren’t dealing drugs,” the boy said, “that someone had planted them on us. But he said, given the evidence, it would be hard to convince the Turkish authorities of our innocence. Also, the fact that we’re Americans would probably count against us. He told me he and my mother would do what they could, but that I might be looking at sixty years in prison.” Gilbert started to weep. “I don’t want to stay here! I want to go home.”
Bowdoin couldn’t sit still. “I still can’t believe it,” he said, pacing back and forth, “Heroin? What … are we crazy? Everyone knows what happens if you traffic drugs in Turkey.”
“We’re not here about the drugs,” Patronas said, cutting them off. “We’re here about the killing of Sami Alnasseri, the ten-year-old boy you strung up in Thanatos.”
The students exchanged uneasy glances. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bowdoin stammered, not meeting his eyes.
“We found the knife,” Patronas said. “Your fingerprints are all over it.”
“Damn it, Charlie,” Nielsen said, glaring at him.
Again, the three looked at each other.
Bowdoin hesitated. “Will it go better for us if we confess?”
“Of course it will,” Patronas said expansively, knowing it was a lie. “We’ll keep it informal, just a couple of questions. As this is Turkey, I have no authority here, which means nothing you say can be used in court. Afterward, I’ll tell the Turkish authorities that you cooperated. I’ll say you’re just kids and they should give you a second chance—show you some leniency. We have a reciprocity agreement with them and they’ll listen to me.” More lies.
