Where Evil Lurks

by Robert D. Rodman

  I asked Ellis to fax everything to me. Two points had become certain. First, Ernest was not Fatboy/Tommy. He was too lowlife and ignorant for a Marquis graduate, or even for a Marquis graduate as my friends from State might say. Besides, if the bio was correct, Tommy wouldn’t be in the country, let alone have nothing better to do than act as Harry’s bouncer, or bodyguard, or whatever Ernest was. Finally, I reasoned, Harry wouldn’t have used “Beck” as an alias if an actual Beck was with him.

  Second, I could happily eliminate Beth’s husband Philip Martin. His missing toe had me going for a while, but his life story and Tommy’s life story were on divergent paths.

  Of all the foreign countries Fatboy might be in, Turkey was both unexpected and welcomed. I’d lived in Turkey for years on the military base where my father served. I could speak and understand Turkish fairly well for a foreigner, and I thought I understood the customs and values of the Turkish Islamic community.

  This would be duck soup, thought I. Fly to Istanbul, find Dr. Beck, bribe an employee to bring me his hairbrush or whatnot, visit old friends for a few days, and fly home. Not once did I suspect how soon I would be the duck in the soup.

  CHAPTER 16

  I reported to Ashley. She was pleased but hardly thrilled. She could see that the identification of Fatboy was circumstantial. “Convincing, but not conclusive,” she said. “Make sure he fits the physical description. Try to get a look at his feet.”

  The real Fatboy was missing a toe, if Ashley’s memory under hypnosis was correct. I envisioned Fatboy living among the upper class, as most westerners do who reside in Turkey. He’d be likely to have domestic services. Turkey is a poor country, and what some might term “bribery” is often taken to be a fair means of persuasion between the haves and the have-nots. With my knowledge of the language and culture, I was sure I’d have access to Fatboy through his servants. Obtaining a toe count should be easy.

  The first order of business was a plane reservation. I prefer to fly Turkish Airlines to Turkey. I can begin right away to speak Turkish and readapt myself to the culture. I telephoned the airline directly—it was too late to buy a ticket online—and was able to book a seat in business class with the return left open.

  It was noon in Raleigh, making it early evening in Istanbul—still time to reserve a hotel room for the next day. I called the Basilica Hotel, my favorite place to stay when in Istanbul. Speaking Turkish, I asked the clerk who answered the telephone for Mr. Oktalmus, the owner. I wasn’t being pushy. Husnu Oktalmus was “Uncle Husnu” when I was growing up; he was our family’s close friend. I was under strict orders to ask for him whenever I called the hotel.

  He came on the line.

  “Uncle, it’s Dagny, how are you?”

  “Dagny, my sweet little lamb, it’s so good to hear your voice. When are you coming to see me?”

  I don’t think he expected me to say, “Tomorrow, Uncle. I have the Hava Yollari”—Turkish Airlines—“flight from New York.”

  “Oh my, oh my. That’s wonderful, darling. I’m going to put you in the penthouse.”

  “Please, Uncle, I’m coming on business and I need to be invisible.” He chuckled. I had said “invisible” in Turkish when I meant “inconspicuous.”

  “You’re such a skinny little lamb, you are nearly invisible, but I can see we have to work on your Turkish. You shall have a room at the end of a nice quiet corridor by the cistern door. None of the nearby rooms is hired. It’s as peaceful as the lap of Allah”

  “That’s fine, Uncle. And you must let me pay because it’s business. Please tell the clerks, okay?”

  Everything was agreed upon. I looked forward to seeing Uncle Husnu, not only because he was a dear man and a dear friend, but because he knew everything that went on inside Istanbul, in the sky above, in the mud below. I’d need help finding Beck. Harry’s electronic address book had no information about him other than a defunct post office box number in the zip code of Marquis University.

  Back went the dogs to Janet’s, out came the suitcase, and off I went in a Raleigh cab to the airport. Exactly fourteen hours later I emerged from the Atatürk International Airport. It was shortly after 11 a.m. Turkish time, which was shortly after 4 a.m. Dagny time. I’d managed a few hours of fitful sleep during the overnight flight. I wasn’t sufficiently inured to jetlag to escape feeling as though I’d been knocked down again by the late Ernest.

  Atatürk Airport is never short on taxicabs. There must have been two hundred of them queued up in their own parking lot by the international terminal. The drivers at the end of the queue are often asleep in the back seat of their cabs. Some of them, I’m almost positive, live in their cabs 24/7. My driver was a burly, mustachioed man with brown hair, tobacco-stained teeth to match, and breath to stun a camel.

  He was delighted, as Turks always are, when I spoke to him in Turkish. He had me sit up front so he could bring me up to date on all the “real” news, not the “pap one reads in the papers.” He spoke a mile a minute and gesticulated wildly with both hands as we raced through morning traffic. I tightened my seat belt. It would be too ironic if I ended up like Ernest. Turkish taxis do not have airbags.

  My constant requests to him to repeat what he said due to the rapidity of his speech tempered his talkativeness. By the time we were cruising alongside the Sea of Marmara, heading for downtown Istanbul, both his speech and his driving had slowed. I had a few moments to absorb the beautiful vista of this inland sea, dotted with commercial vessels from all over the world.

  We turned off the highway and drove directly to the Basilica Hotel. The hotel is so named because it sits over the Cistern Basilica, a sixth-century underground reservoir. It’s a wondrously eerie place to explore, dimly lit and dripping with mystery. Its roof is supported by hundreds of floor-to-ceiling columns that seem to fade away to infinity in the murkiness. This imparts a labyrinthine feeling to the place, and a sense of vastness that belies its mere two acres. It still contains water, so one must stay on raised walkways or ride in a shallow-bottomed dory to explore its fringes. Many people have unwittingly seen the Cistern Basilica. It was an on-location site in the James Bond movie “From Russia with Love.” There is a little known access to the cistern from the hotel, and the staff provides private tours after hours to privileged guests.

  Uncle Husnu was there to greet me. He took me into his private office and sent for tea, the traditional daytime drink that always accompanies business and social meetings throughout Turkey. We talked until the afternoon call to prayer floated through a window and intruded on our conversation. Uncle showed me to my room which was, as he had said, at the end of a quiet corridor, and left to fulfill his religious duty.

  The highly amplified recorded chanting—the call to prayer—that summons the faithful to cleanse, face Mecca, and worship Allah, often startles the first-time visitor. The sound is distorted and discordant, and has a sinister air about it. To the unaccustomed ear it sounds like caterwauling, and one is unable to distinguish the individual words: “God is great! There is no deity but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet.” It’s very much a part of the exotic atmosphere that surrounds the foreign visitor to Istanbul.

  In my room I stripped, showered, unpacked and crawled between the sheets to catch up on lost sleep. Uncle insisted that I dine with him that night. That would be a treat for he knew the best bistros in Istanbul. I’d asked him to find out what he could about Dr. J. Thompson Beck and his orphanage-cum-adoption agency. He promised to report to me over dinner.

  I awoke, still a bit groggy, in the late afternoon. I didn’t feel like jogging but the mild October sunshine beckoned me outside. The hotel is just a few hundred yards from the Hippodrome, a one-acre plaza that was the center of the city’s life for 1400 years. It still contains impressive statues and obelisks despite most of its treasures having been looted over the centuries. Many a popular uprising had its start in the Hippodrome, which had also been the site of grisly executions, including crucifixions, over the ages.<
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  I jogged around the Hippodrome toward The Blue Mosque—so-called because of the striking blue tiles of the interior. Ordinarily, its tier upon tier of domes, culminating in the colossal main dome, appears to be a glory to the architects and the God they worshipped. On this occasion, in the dwindling daylight, the mosque seemed to float ominously above the ground, dwarfing the people around it, and promising terrible retribution to the sinner.

  The call to prayer at dusk interrupted my darkening thoughts. A great bustle arose as the devout converged on the mosque for their ablutions and prayer. I walked back to the hotel to dress for dinner.

  Uncle had one of the hotel staff drive us to Istiklal Avenue, a popular pedestrians-only street of shops, restaurants, jazz bars and late-night tavernas. There we got out and made our way through a fifty-fifty mix of tourists and locals to a building with a jewelry store on the ground floor and a restaurant on the floor above.

  The maître d’ knew Uncle, of course, and sat us at a table where we could look down at the bustling crowd below, while enjoying the quiet elegance and filtered air of a dining establishment that claimed to date back to the days of the Ottoman Empire. Uncle ordered a bottle of raki, an anise-flavored brandy. This was a surprise.

  “Uncle Husnu, I can’t drink a bottle of raki by myself.”

  “Dear child, it’s not all for you. I will drink raki tonight.”

  I expressed my surprise, for as long as I’d known Uncle he had obeyed the Islamic stricture against the use of alcohol.

  “My sweet lambkin”—this is my best translation of the Turkish—“it’s true that I’m a Muslim, and I believe that Allah is God and Muhammad his sole messenger. But I’m also a Turk, and raki is the national elixir of Turkey. And you, my precious one, you are an honorary Turk and like a daughter to me, so together we must drink raki.”

  And so we did. The raki is poured into a narrow glass over two cubes of ice. Water is added to produce a milky drink with a distinct licorice flavor. It’s best to go easy with it. Its effect is summed up by an adage often seen imprinted on T-shirts generally worn by the young: “Raki is the answer” says the front; and, “if only I remembered the question,” says the back of the garment.

  The food was superb, as I knew it would be. Uncle is somewhat of a gourmet and he did the ordering, emphasizing variety over quantity. We ate and chatted and it wasn’t until dessert that we’d finished talking about family, friends and politics. I was somewhat antsy to hear about Beck, but politeness and custom must reign, and the raki helped me to nurture my patience.

  “You’re a patient little doe,” said Uncle. “Most Americans want always to go straight to the point. You must come to Turkey and become a Muslim and marry a wealthy Turkish businessman.” With that, he sat back in his chair, crossed his arms, and beamed at me.

  “Uncle, you’re teasing me. Really rich Turkish men marry European actresses, isn’t that so?”

  “Not always true, my lovely little dove. I could marry you by the next new moon to a man who would worship the ground you walk on, and give you a bank account as big as my belly,” he said, thumping said part of his anatomy with both his hands.

  “Perhaps, Uncle Husnu, if you’d help me finish my business here I’d have time to meet one of your Turkish Adonises.”

  “Yes, yes, you’re right, my charming raptor. I’ll help you find this man Beck. Is he a dangerous criminal? Will you devour him? Or will he devour you?”

  “Uncle, you’re too dramatic. I have a client who wants to know where this man is, and beyond that I cannot say more. So will you be a good Uncle Husnu and tell your little lambie pie what you found out?”

  Over the last of the raki, Uncle Husnu told me that Beck did, in fact, run an orphanage called “Angel Wings Home for Children.” It was located on the Asian side of the Bosporus Strait, about five miles northeast of downtown Istanbul. Adoption agencies in Orlando and Los Angeles were active in placing the children with American families. There was controversy about the Home. Muslim clerics were concerned that the children weren’t receiving an Islamic education.

  Back at the hotel, Uncle gave me a week-old newspaper to read with some articles about Angel Wings. Conservatives had picketed the orphanage and demanded that the government close it, or at the very least ensure that Islamic law was being obeyed on its premises. Dr. Beck said that the orphanage operated under the aegis of the secular Turkish government, and was therefore itself a secular institution.

  One writer argued that the children, while awaiting adoption, were given “Christian exposure.” He went on to note that Dr. Beck was a “doctor of Christianity” and could hardly be indifferent to religion.

  Another pundit observed that the orphanage removed homeless children from the streets and provided them with food and shelter at no cost to the government. He congratulated Dr. Beck for his “good works for the Turkish people and the poorest of poor children.” He further noted that because Dr. Beck was a Christian minister, he’d see to it that the children went to homes of believers in God, and in the end that was what mattered.

  There had been violence, and the orphanage was now under an around-the-clock police guard.

  I slept poorly, in part owing to jetlag, and in part because I’d drunk a bit more raki than was good for me. At breakfast I choked down a cup and a half of instant coffee, adored by the Turks for some mysterious reason, and ordered a cab to take me to the Angel Wings Home for Children.

  Uncle had told me that the Home was a converted hundred-year-old palazzo once owned by an Italian count. The count’s fortune collapsed along with the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. The estate was eventually bought “for a melody”—Uncle was practicing his English—by a council of churches, who used it as a rest stop for Christian pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. When air travel made such a stopover unnecessary, the once splendid palazzo became a humble orphanage.

  Most of Turkey is in Asia, or “Asia Minor” as my social studies teacher called it, prompting me to ask where is “Asia Major,” a question that earned me an hour of detention. The piece of Turkey that is in Europe is roughly the size of New Jersey and comprises but two percent of the whole. That two percent, however, contains the ancient city of Constantinople—now part of Istanbul—and its world-famous antiquities. Istanbul itself is a reflection of the country as a whole, being also divided geographically into European and Asian sectors. The airport, the commercial centers, and the major hotels, including Uncle’s, are in Europe. The sprawling Asian sector is far more residential, and is poorer and rougher than its European counterpart.

  The Bosporus Strait is an eighteen-mile-long waterway that separates the two continents, as well as dividing the city of Istanbul into its European and Asian halves. Travel between the two parts of the city is usually by ferry, though a few miles up the Bosporus toward the Black Sea, where the waterway narrows, are a couple of bridges. The orphanage was close to a bridge, so I told the taxi driver to cross to the Asian sector that way.

  In bygone days, high walls surrounded the nobleman’s palazzo to keep out the rabble. The walls, though crumbling in many places and riven by tremendous cracks, nevertheless afforded the orphanage a degree of privacy and some protection from the current tumult. I had the taxi driver circle the compound so I could get a feel for the place. Access to the property was via a front gate for foot traffic, and double-doors in the rear for vehicles. Two police officers patrolled each of these locations, and four more sat in a police van across the street from the front entrance. All of them cradled Uzi submachine guns. Policing is serious business in Turkey.

  Hanging around waiting to meet someone who worked at the orphanage would raise suspicions. I’d have to get creative. I had the taxi drop me near the front and asked the driver to wait. A patrolman, or really a patrolboy, for he couldn’t have been more than eighteen, challenged me at the front gate. I smiled and asked in English if he spoke English. He shook his head wistfully and attempted a sexy gaze that merely ma
de him look sleepy. He livened up when I switched to Turkish. I apologized for my terrible accent, explained that I’d come all the way from America to see the great Dr. Beck, whose charitable deeds were admired by God. Would he be so kind as to announce me?

  The other officer heard me and came over. After answering a bunch of flirtatious questions of the “what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” variety, they let me through the gate. I rang the doorbell of a massive front door. There was a stirring within and a woman’s voice cried out in Turkish that she was in the toilet, or cleaning the toilet, or maybe fixing the toilet for all I could tell. A man’s voice said something muted and I heard him stride toward the door. Several dead bolts were thrown back and finally the heavy door opened slowly inward.

  CHAPTER 17

  Standing before me was a porcine man in his early thirties. He was clearly a westerner. He was too light-skinned to be Turkish and he was clean-shaven. Moustaches are de rigueur for Turkish men. He wore western-style slacks and an open-collared shirt. A large silver cross hung from his neck and rested against his breastbone. Light from the morning sun glinted off its surface. It fit Ashley’s description of Fatboy’s crucifix to a tee.

  I said, “May I please speak with Dr. Beck?”

  He peered over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t the vanguard of an unwelcome mob. When he saw that I was alone, he beckoned me in and closed the door.