20
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PEPPER FLAKES AND GUMMY BEARS
11:40 SOKAK, ANKARA
19:49 LOCAL TIME
A few minutes later, the minibus driver pulls over at a bus stop, beside a row of pastel tower blocks. “I’m going to go back and see if I can get anybody else. Are you kids okay to get home from here? Anybody need bus fare?”
Twenty young people straggle out of the minibus, into the hot evening air.
“Allah, Allah!” The bleached-blond girl fixes Penny with an appalled stare. “Tatlım, you need a doctor.”
Penny looks away. “I’m just a little carsick. . . .”
“No, your legs—your head! What did they do to you?”
A city bus pulls up at the stop.
The students who haven’t boarded yet are starting to turn.
“It’s no big deal.” Penny shakes her head, trying to keep the girl from getting a better look at her face. She latches onto Connor’s hand. “My cousin will take me home. I live near here.” Connor’s expression is carefully neutral. Of course—he can’t understand a word. Penny silently wills him to play along. Connor nods convincingly.
“You look familiar.” The blond girl squints harder. “Are you in Öztürk’s microbiology lab?”
Penny’s heart bottoms out. Somehow, her voice stays even. “I think I saw you at the canteen.”
“Maybe.” The girl glances uncertainly back toward her friends, who are gesturing from the door of the bus.
“Go ahead,” urges Penny. “I’m okay. Go home. Be safe.”
The bus heaves away. Penny exhales.
“You look like death in a microwave,” says Connor.
She turns. “It’s your shirt, pal.”
“Come on. Hold my arm. You’ll feel better once you sit down and get some food in your stomach.”
“Food?” Penny’s hopes shrink. “I don’t have any money.”
Connor grins and pats his wallet. “The Agency always sends us with plenty of cash. What do you say to a falafel?”
“Wrong country.”
“Close enough.”
Penny makes a face. “Who do you work for, again?”
But there are no restaurants on that street, or the next. Just row after row of identical apartment blocks, unnaturally even-spaced in the bald concrete like giant hair plugs—the kind balding Arab businessmen fly to Istanbul to get implanted on the cheap.
The tower blocks thin out to shabby one-story buildings: a shuttered tailor’s shop, a secondhand hardware store with smoke alarms stacked in the window, and—finally—a little neighborhood lokanta.
Penny and Connor duck through the lokanta’s open door. The restaurant is a garishly lit, white-tiled room, lurid with cheap Orientalist prints. Near the cash register looms a blurry skyline of the Golden Horn, complete with incongruous yellow camel. A calendar illustration of Osman Hamdi Bey’s The Tortoise Trainer has been taped to the kitchen door. The TV in the corner singsongs tomorrow’s weather report: blisteringly hot everywhere, with light rains in the mountains along the Black Sea coast. The only other customers are a couple of old men playing backgammon and a young construction worker slurping lentil soup. Near the counter, the waiter’s elderly mother (same upturned nose, same shock of curly hair), airplane-feeds caramelized sütlaç, rice pudding, to a sticky toddler. They all look up to stare.
“I’d better do the ordering,” Penny mutters. “We’re conspicuous enough already.”
“Try and keep it under twenty bucks, okay?” whispers Connor, sliding into a table in the corner. “Otherwise I’ll have to file a reimbursement claim.”
Penny tries to raise her eyebrows; the gash above the right one smarts. “I’ll bear that in mind, Double-O-Seven.”
“Ne arzu edersiniz?” demands the waiter, with a challenging stare at Connor.
Speaking quickly, in hopes that her accent will pass unnoticed, Penny asks for two orders of lamb shish.
“Yok,” snaps the waiter, still glowering at Connor. It’s one of the most starkly expressive words in Turkish—“all gone,” “nope,” and “it doesn’t exist” rolled into one.
“Grilled lamb chops?”
“Yok.”
“Chicken?”
“Yok.”
“What do you have?”
“Wait.” The waiter stumps into the kitchen.
Connor reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pink smartphone. A moody portrait of the Turkish pop idol Tarkan smolders on the back, surrounded by a flotilla of tiny rhinestone hearts. “Let’s see what my boss has to say.”
Penny stares. “Where did you get that?”
Connor all but preens. It’s the closest you can get to a swagger while sitting down.
Penny is impressed, despite herself. “Did you steal it?”
“Let’s just say the minibus was dark, and your blond friend had her hands full with the Pepto-Bismol.”
“You stole her phone?”
He crosses his arms. “I slipped a hundred lira in her pocket.”
“You know that’s only thirty bucks, right?”
“No good deed . . .” He frowns at the phone. “That’s weird. Still no response.”
“Should we send another message?”
“We can’t.” He shakes his head. “We have to follow protocol. At least if I keep checking, she’ll be able to track our location.”
The waiter reappears with two steaming brown plates of eggplant sautéed with minced lamb, each crowned with a dollop of runny white yogurt. He slams down a basket of crusty bread and a ceramic bowl of golden-crusted, jiggly rice pudding. “Afiyet olsun,” he mutters, and stumps back behind his counter.
“Brown mush.” Connor stares down at his plate. “My favorite.”
“It’s musakka.” Penny grabs a hunk of bread. “Sprinkle some red pepper flakes on it. It’s better spicy.”
“You sound like my fiancé.” Connor grins. “Alex would put sriracha on a cantaloupe.”
“Is she a chef?” Penny swipes the bread through the musakka. The meaty savor of sautéed eggplant swirls with the cool creaminess of the yogurt. God, she’s starving.
“He.” Connor steers clear of the red pepper, but gives the saltcellar a vehement shake. “And no. Latin teacher. Lived above a Szechuan restaurant in college. Burned most of his taste buds off.” He meets Penny’s eyes. “What?”
“It’s just . . .” Penny shakes her head. “I didn’t picture you—”
“Picture me what?”
“With a Latin teacher.” She swirls the yogurt. “A Navy SEAL, maybe . . .”
Connor visibly relaxes. “Alex’s tougher than I am. Never mind Navy SEALs—classicists are crazy hard-core.”
“Does he know you’re here?”
“Just that I’m overseas.”
Penny leans on her elbow. “That’s got to be hard.”
Connor shrugs. “We’re honest about everything else.”
Penny sprinkles more pepper. “So how does a spy end up with a Latin teacher?”
“We met when I was in the Navy. I was posted to a base called Sigonella, in Sicily. Alex was in college, working on an underwater dig off Taormina—a Roman shipwreck. Well, one night, there was a break-in. These guys packed a speedboat with antiquities and headed for Tunisia. Italian coast guard wasn’t fast enough. But my ship, the Mount Sugarloaf, was doing exercises off Siracusa. We nabbed them. Got everything back.” Connor smiles. “That’s how I met Alex.”
Penny cracks a smile. “That’s ridiculously romantic.”
Connor stabs his musakka. “Wish my parents agreed with you.”
“How could anyone not like that story?”
Connor rubs the back of his neck. “My dad flew helicopters for the Navy for twenty years. Taught me to fly when I was twelve, on this tiny old Bell 47G he pretty much rebuilt from scrap.” Connor drains his little plastic water glass. “He’s not a big fan of change.”
“Oh.”
Connor drums on the table. “I alw
ays told myself I wasn’t scared to come out. I was just waiting. That as soon as I met somebody special, I’d tell Dad. I knew Alex was special. So, on my next home leave, I got my family together, and I told them.” Connor shifts his shoulders, as if he’s trying to shrug it off. “They haven’t spoken to me since.”
“Jesus.”
“Jesus has nothing to do with it. Dad’s just embarrassed about what his fishing buddies will think.”
Penny doesn’t know what to say. She leans forward. “When I got sad, my grandma used to make me vanilla pudding with gummy bears.” She nudges the little ceramic bowl toward him. “You—want some sütlaç?”
Connor grins crookedly. “Do I get gummy bears?”
“Try it. It’s like lumpy crème brûlée.”
Connor takes a spoonful and makes a face. “Ever the optimist.” He checks the phone. “Let’s see if we’ve heard from my boss.”
Penny leans forward. “Anything?”
“Something’s not right.” Connor shakes his head. “It shouldn’t be taking this long.”
“Check the news. Anything about the car bomb?”
“No.” Connor scrolls. “But . . .” He looks grim. “It’s official. The Hashashin just claimed the Embassy attack. With a mass decapitation video.”
Penny’s voice shakes a little. “Let me see.”
Connor holds out the phone.
Beneath the headline is a still photograph, taken in front of the tower of Mor Samuel. Six masked Hashashin fighters stand in a row. Each holds a severed head up to the camera. Most of the victims look old—gray beards, dripping blood. Monks? Sickened, Penny is about to look away when she notices the last head in the row. A dark-haired, bearded man, his dead blue eyes still staring.
The cold pudding feels like wet cement in Penny’s mouth. She can’t force it down. She spits into her napkin.
“Penny?” Connor looks worried.
“Mehmetoğlu,” Penny chokes. “That’s him.”
Connor is perfectly still. “You’re sure?”
Penny nods and squeezes her eyes shut. Doesn’t help. She won’t ever unsee that. She can still hear his dry voice in the Embassy garden.
“You said the terrorists loaded two men into the van.” Her face is wet, but she doesn’t remember crying. “If the Hashashin have Mehmetoğlu, they must have Zach, too.”
Connor’s voice is quiet. “Trust me, if they’d beheaded an American spy, we’d be hearing about it. Zach must still be alive.”
“Which means they’re probably torturing him.”
Connor puts a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry.”
“Mor Samuel . . .” Penny traces her finger on the screen. “We have to tell someone. The State Department, the army, the media—somebody!”
“We can’t.”
“They’ll kill him!”
“Whoever blew up our car hacked a secure Agency line. Do you have any idea how impossible that’s supposed to be? We’ve got the Turkish police against us. Palamut said you were dead. Frank Lerman said you were dead. Brenda Pelecchia said you were dead. How high up does this go? There’s no one left to trust, except my boss.”
“So you think we should just hide and let those bastards murder Zach?”
“Until we get through to my boss, there’s nothing we can do.”
“Why can’t we just go to the media?”
“You’d be putting anyone you contact in danger. These people already blew up our car. Are you prepared to bet they won’t blow up a newspaper office? A TV station?”
“So we put it online. Tell the whole world!”
“Put what? That Zach’s a diplomat? A CIA officer? If that goes public, our government will pressure Turkey to attack Mor Samuel. I don’t see how Zach survives that.”
Penny clenches her fists so tight her fingers ache. “Zach has a little girl,” she says hoarsely. “She’s almost six. Zach gets up at three a.m. every single day so he can blow Mia kisses at bedtime. Zach was counting down the days until she comes to live with him in Ankara.” Penny’s voice gets stronger. “If there’s anything I can do to save Zach’s life, I’m going to do it.”
Connor exhales. “Zach Robson is a trained officer. There’s nothing you can do for him he can’t do twice as well for himself.”
She nods, throat tight.
“You’ve just got to have a little faith. If anyone can save Zach, it’s my boss.”
Penny picks up the sparkly phone. “There’s a new comment. From ‘BuckeyeBuckwheat’?”
“That’s her.” As Connor decodes the message, relief spreads across his face. “Get the bill. My boss is sending help.”
21
* * *
OKYANUS
NEAR BIŞKEK CADDESI, ANKARA, TURKEY
20:36 LOCAL TIME
Fifteen minutes later, Connor and Penny step out of a taxi on a deserted side street in Emek, on the other side of Ankara, just a few blocks from the central bus station. The untidy backs of shops make the street dingy, all pipes and wiring and dirty windows. Behind a photocopy store, a family of black-and-white kittens nurses in an old printer-cartridge box. The side of a purple van proclaims OKYANUS DÜĞÜN VE SÜNNET SALONU.
“This is it,” Connor says, checking the location on his phone.
Penny looks up at the back of a two-story concrete building, to all appearances a repurposed warehouse. “Are you sure?”
“Matches the coordinates.” Connor taps the phone. “Okay, my boss posted the security code.” He squints at letters stenciled on the back door, in the same swirly typeface as on the van. “Huh. Ok-ya—”
“Okyanus Düğün ve Sünnet Salonu.” Penny crosses her arms. “The Okyanus Wedding and Circumcision Salon. The little paper sign says ‘foreclosed.’ ”
“Wedding and Circumcision Salon?”
“Circumcision’s a big deal in Turkey. They wait until the boys are about seven or eight, then dress them up like little princes with sparkly capes and scepters and have a huge party for everyone they know.”
“Sparkly capes?” Connor steps up to the door and dials the four-digit security code.
The tiny white box emits a fusillade of loud, shrill beeps.
“What’s happening?” hisses Penny.
“I must’ve got the code wrong!” Connor scrolls frantically on the rhinestone phone, as the beeps increase from alarm-clock to fire-alarm loud.
“It’s counting down from ten.” Penny looks frantically for an electric cord to cut, but the alarm box is cemented in place, cord sheltered deep in the wall. “What happens when—”
“Seven to eight tablespoons, five cups—four!” Connor pounds frantically on the little box’s keypad. “Seven—eight—five—four.”
The beeps subside. Connor exhales. Penny wipes her stinging forehead.
The stillness seems to throb.
The door swings open.
The narrow hallway opens into a huge, dark celebration hall.
Connor fumbles for the light switch.
Suddenly, a galaxy of pinprick lights illuminates the low, pillared hall. Water stagnates in a still fountain. Tall-backed chairs—wrapped like mummies in white canvas and blue gauze bows—circle dozens of tables with dubious dolphin centerpieces, crowding the hall to the edge of a shimering dais. On the dais, two irridescent clamshell-backed thrones sit empty, ready for bride and groom to intone their vows into two large microphones bolted to a conference table.
“Little Mermaid meets regional sales conference,” says Connor, pulling up a mummy chair at a table near the wall. “Got to admit, it’s an original theme.”
“It this normal?” Penny rubs her eyes. “When you said ‘deserted location’ . . .”
“It’s a bit unusual.” Connor shakes his head. “Typically, if a safe house is compromised, we’d meet in a neutral high-traffic location. But Palamut’s people won’t be looking for us here.” He checks the time. “T minus two minutes. You’d better get under the table.”
“What?”
; “Under the table. The bad guys hacked my comms once. We can’t rule out that someone might know we’re coming. If there’s going to be a mess, I want you out of the way.”
“Connor . . .”
“Indulge me.”
“This is ridiculous.” Penny crawls under the tablecloth and kneels uncomfortably on the cold tile. “Isn’t your boss’s guy supposed to be here already?”
“We’re a touch early.”
“Connor?” Penny swallows hard. “You really think he can help us save Zach?”
“First, let’s worry about getting us out of this alive.” Connor’s eyes fix on the door. “Hush.”
Penny hears footsteps approach on the tiles. She holds her breath. From under the tablecloth, she sees Connor pull back his chair to stand up.
“Hey,” says a woman’s cheerful voice, with an unmistakable Boston accent. “You know a decent sports bar this side of Sakarya?”
Connor answers, “If the Braves aren’t playing, I’m not watching.”
Connor and the woman both sit down. Penny sees the woman’s long legs stretch wide, as if in a La-Z-Boy. There’s something so American, so harmlessly lady-on-a-jog normal about her white sneakers and black cargo pants that Penny almost smiles with relief. Her legs are getting uncomfortable. Can’t she just crawl out already?
“Name’s Liza,” says the cheerful woman.
“Connor. Boy, am I glad to see you.”
Penny hears their hands clasp.
“I bet.” Liza chuckles. “The way Christina told it, I thought I might be scraping you up off the floor.”
Then, to Penny’s disbelieving horror, she sees Liza’s muscular left hand open the knee pocket of her cargo pants and silently draw out a small black pistol, followed by a thick metal cylinder.
“So”—Liza twists the cylinder onto the muzzle—“where’s the little lady?”
22
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Liar's Candle Page 14
