Blown Circuit

by Lars Guignard

  The hot air was so thick with steam that it took several seconds before my eyes adjusted. When they did, I saw that I was in a round room. There were no windows, but there was light. It shone down from cylindrical holes in the domed plaster ceiling. The heat was overpowering. Instantly I felt the hot steam opening my pores. A white marble octagonal slab, about the size of a king-sized bed sat in the middle of the room, steam rising off it, while individual washbasins and faucets ran around the outer wall of the room in a wide ring. I counted eight stations laid out around the room like numbers on the face of a clock.

  I wasn’t alone. Across from me, in the mist, a man squatted at a far washbasin running a shallow brass bowl of water over his head. The towel around his waist was wet, his body glistening in the fog. He looked to be in his sixties, lean and tall, with gray stubble growing from his chin and a few stray strands of silver hair still left on his head. He didn’t pay me much heed. Just a brief moment of eye contact and he was back to his ablutions.

  Taking my cue from the old man, I sat down on the ledge ringing the round room like a single stair. There was a stone washbasin immediately behind me and an embossed brass bowl sitting on the ledge, pretty much every seat in the house provided a good view of everywhere else. Another door led out to a second room, similar to the one I was already in, yet smaller. The second room was empty and I ignored it. I was already getting too hot in the steam. Way too hot. I reached behind me and turned on the brass faucet, filling the stone basin with water. Even the metal of the faucet was warm to the touch. I could barely see the stubbly gray guy through the mist, but I could hear the water fall from his brass bowl as he poured it over himself.

  I followed his movements, pouring the cool water from my own brass bowl over my head and down my neck. The cool water quickly relieved the heat and I soon felt myself beginning to relax. Either it was the steam, my adrenaline was finally wearing off, or I was plain exhausted, but I felt my eyelids grow heavy. I watched as the grizzled guy slowly rose in his wet cotton towel and tossed a bowlful of water on the octagonal marble block in the center of the space. The water ran off the marble in steamy, bubbling streams as he lay down on his back, his head facing toward me, his knees slightly bent as he stared up at the ceiling.

  I knew that this was my opportunity to rest. I was nearly alone and as anonymous as I was going to get. I reached into the stone basin with the shallow brass bowl and dumped another round of water over my shoulders. I’d be getting scrubbed down at some point. That’s what they did in these bathhouses. Big, strong, fat men laid you on a slab and scrubbed your skin with a rough loofa until you were as clean as you’d ever be. They let your pores open first, though, which is what they were doing now. I reached into the crinkled, red plastic bag and cracked open my bottle of water. The water felt good going down, but seeing the amulet at the bottom of the bag brought me back to the problem at hand.

  The Turkish Eye. I let the thought of it flow over me. Why had it been hidden in the lamp? I could speculate, but the truth was, I had no idea. I gave in to my fatigue, allowing my eyes to close to narrow slits, my back leaned against the marble as I sat on the low ledge. Shafts of light shot through the tiny round skylights in the cupola illuminating the clouds of dancing steam. It was like a Rorschach inkblot test for the lethargic—you could see what you wanted in the billowing steam. And I saw a feather bed. A blissful respite from the stresses of the world. The heat suffused my bones as I smiled inwardly, secretly hoping that my rendezvous would be delayed.

  I heard a grunt, and the grizzled old man picked himself off the marble slab and shuffled slowly through the door to the smaller room. I could see the entrance to it from where I sat. It was set up the same as the room I was in, round with basins and a ledge and a cupola-shaped ceiling. The only difference was that it was about half the size. There was no need to explore it. Instead, I took a page from the old man’s book and reached into the basin behind me with my brass bowl, tossing a bowlful of water on the octagonal slab. The water sizzled as it landed, making a shallow pool atop the slab. I tossed a second bowl of water on the slab and rose. I felt limber, more limber than I had for a while, but I had to say I was happy to have the drinking water. I took another swig of it and lay down on my back on the slab.

  The marble was hot on my back, but not so hot as to cause pain. Obviously the slab was heated, probably with some kind of radiant-water system running below the tiles. I looked up to see that the light coming through the round glass holes in the cupola had changed. It was more diffused. I guessed a cloud had passed in front of the sun, but at that point I couldn’t say that I really much cared. I was too tired. I watched as dust motes danced in the steam, my hair slicked back, the marble slab hot on the tips of my ears and the back of my neck. I felt as if I was in a hot tub without the weight of the swirling water. It was perfect. And then I felt a waft of cooler air blow over my chest and everything changed.

  Chapter 6

  “MIKE.”

  It wasn’t loud, but I heard my name. I turned my head to see my unit leader standing there in a blue, checkered hammam towel. His dreadlocks were tied back and he was cleanly shaven, a tattoo of Earth as seen from space on his pale chest. We called him Crust, and though he was in charge of our little unit of covert backpackers and technically my boss, I still didn’t know his real name. I’d last seen him four or five days earlier in Yangshuo, China, and he didn’t look like he’d slept since.

  Beside him stood Jean-Marc, another backpacker in my unit. Jean-Marc was dark, swarthy, and French, or at least he spoke with a French accent most of the time. I didn’t know where he was from, but given that the CIA employed him, I had to assume some allegiance to America. Jean-Marc was a little shorter than Crust, but a lot more muscular. Not the kind of guy you wanted to meet in a dark alley.

  “Hey,” I said.

  I kept my voice to a whisper, but it was still louder than I would have liked.

  “How was your evening?” Crust asked in his Scottish brogue.

  I hesitated. I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Especially with the old man in the other room.

  “I don’t know yet,” I replied.

  “Progress?”

  “You could say that.”

  I picked myself up and sat back down next to the basin beside Crust and Jean-Marc. Then I turned on the water faucet, lowering my voice yet again.

  “Did you check out the fireworks?” I asked.

  “You betcha,” Crust said. “You need to keep a low profile, friend.”

  “I found some things,” I said.

  Crust raised a finger to his lips.

  “Later,” he said. “I trust you found your pack? Jean-Marc will bring you up to speed. Listen to what he has to say. Stay strong.”

  Then Crust rose and left the room.

  “BONJOUR, MICHEL,” JEAN-MARC said as Crust disappeared out the swinging door.

  Great, I thought. He was speaking French again. In my limited experience with Jean-Marc, his mind was on serious matters when he spoke French.

  “Bonjour, Jean-Marc,” I replied.

  “Il fait chaud. It’s hot.”

  No shit, Sherlock, I thought. But I scolded myself. I was being too harsh. Jean-Marc was my point man on this mission and though he’d mildly irritated me since we’d met in Hong Kong, I knew I’d better get over it. I wasn’t sure why he rubbed me the wrong way. It probably had something to do with his stare. It was the way the guy made eye contact. He didn’t just look at you. He overstayed his welcome. He drilled a hole right through your skull with his eyes. And now he wanted to talk business. Right away. He was as amped up as a Kentucky racehorse.

  “The authorities are looking,” Jean-Marc said. “They know the explosion in the harbor last night was not an accident. They have an image of you on CCTV.”

  Jean-Marc’s voice was low, low enough that nobody could hear it over the running water, but I still didn’t like talking about it in there. Of course, Crust had chosen the place.
r />   “Do they have my face?”

  “We do not know. Maybe so. Our information came from a contact inside the Turkish Police. But we cannot help you here in this country. It would damage your cover.”

  “I get it,” I said. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “So?” Jean-Marc said.

  “So what?” I said.

  “So what did you find?” Jean-Marc asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  I didn’t know why, but I was feeling cagey. Probably because he’d blown my perfect hammam buzz.

  “Last night. What did you find?”

  I eyed the door to the smaller room. Water gurgled loudly into the basin beside me. There was no way the old guy could hear us.

  “An Eye,” I said.

  “An eye? What kind of eye?”

  “A Turkish Eye. One of the ceramic things.”

  Jean-Marc didn’t respond to that. He just sat there quietly. I didn’t really expect him to say anything. What could he say? It was too random. I dipped my bowl into the stone basin and poured a cool splash of water over my shoulders.

  “Can I see this Eye?” Jean-Marc said.

  I reached into the plastic bag and pulled out the ceramic oval, handing it to him.

  “Here’s looking at you,” I said.

  I wasn’t kidding. In the steam the Eye almost seemed to be looking back at Jean-Marc, probing his thoughts. I heard a splash and turned my head to see that the old man had dumped an entire bucket of water on the heated slab in the smaller hammam room. Then the old man lay down on his belly, the soles of his feet facing toward us. I was starting to feel restless so I decided to stretch my legs. I stood and walked toward the doorway of the smaller room, poking my head inside.

  As I thought, it was the same as the main room, except smaller. It looked like the hammam equivalent of a private room at a nightclub. A more intimate space for those high-powered hammam nights. Sure, I’ll take two bottles of Dom Perignon with my steam bath, I chuckled quietly to myself. I was so amused by my comedy routine that I nearly mistook the garrote that dropped around my neck for a change in the light.

  Chapter 7

  I DIDN’T MISTAKE the garrote’s grasp, though. It wasn’t made of piano wire or leather. It was a simple checkered hammam towel, rolled tightly along its length, but I knew from the moment I felt its clutch, that I wouldn’t be looking at cotton towels the same way ever again. I hadn’t been paying attention, not really. I’d let the heat and the steam dull my senses. But I was paying attention now. Mainly because I couldn’t breathe. The wet cotton towel was cutting into my throat like a barbell. I forced myself not to think about the lack of oxygen. It took discipline to ignore that I was suffocating, but if I played my cards right, I had enough oxygen to do what I needed to do.

  Standard move when somebody is choking the life out of you is that you reach for your throat. Try to get your hand between whatever is doing the choking and your neck. Try to turn the tables on your assailant. The problem is, unless you have some kind of opening, unless the guy who’s choking you somehow lets you in, there’s no way to get a grip on the garrote. Your natural response to save yourself by grabbing whatever it is that’s choking your neck, ends up killing you.

  I knew it could happen, I had heard about it happening, and I wasn’t about to let it happen to me. So when I felt my windpipe almost crease in half, I didn’t reach for my throat to stop it. No. I turned my right shoulder a little to get into a decent position, cupped my hand down and hit a quick reverse-groin strike. It wasn’t going to kill anybody, but if I did it right, it was going to buy me some time.

  The blow was glancing, but my assailant eased up, if only momentarily. It was enough time, however, for me to sink into my knees and bend my back forward before launching into an explosive backward head butt. Now a reverse head butt was a risky move, and I knew it. I had to hit my assailant with the hard part of my skull, just below the crown of my head, and I had to connect with something a little softer on him. Preferably his nose, or his cheekbone, or maybe his jaw, but, and this was the difficult part, not his teeth. If I connected with his teeth, I’d have a lacerated skull. And hitting the right part of your opponent when you can’t see what you’re aiming for is not for the faint of heart. Of course, neither is being strangled to death.

  I got lucky because the back of my head connected with one of the softer parts of his anatomy that I was going for. I knew because I heard the impact. It was like a cabbage being hit by a wood bat. But the guy wasn’t down. I could feel that. The brief interval of shock did, however, give me the opportunity to get my hands over the garrote. I grabbed it overhand because I figured it was the only way I would be able to sneak my fingers in and I was right. I felt the garrote loosen as I sunk down on my left knee and pulled over my right shoulder.

  The trick now was speed. Speed and finesse. I used my momentum and the garrote to my advantage, pulling my aggressor all the way over. It was a smooth move and the garrote, which a moment before had been my biggest problem, became my biggest asset. My attacker didn’t let go and it turned into a perfect handle to hammer him smack down to the floor in front of me. A second later I was staring into the eyes of Jean-Marc. I breathed in deeply, holding my fist above his throat, ready and willing to crush his trachea. And then I made my first mistake.

  I didn’t do it.

  “I am so sorry, Michel.”

  “Sorry for what? Going all psycho on me?”

  He breathed heavily on the floor in front of me. I was within striking distance. I felt confident. I watched him squirm on his back on the floor beneath me, wearing nothing but his hammam towel, his body slick with sweat.

  “No, my friend. I am sorry you have to die.”

  Obviously, Jean-Marc wasn’t the upstanding Gallic cousin I’d been led to believe he was. But I still felt confident. I was down on one knee, with one hand on top of his head and my fist aimed at his throat. I could finish him and he knew it. I expected whining from him, pleading, there wasn’t much else he could do. But he was a slippery bastard. The whole situation should have told me that. Instead of buying time with lies, he squirmed to the side, lifting his left shoulder off the floor.

  It happened in the blink of an eye. One moment he was helpless and the next he had reached beneath him for some kind of gleaming blade. It must have been tucked flat into the back of his towel because I hadn’t seen it in the takedown. He came up fast and furious with his left arm slicing towards me. It was all I could do to leap away. Even then I felt his razor-sharp blade shave the hairs off my forearm. Just lovely, I thought. A knife. I really, really didn’t like knives.

  Jean-Marc arched his back and leapt onto his feet. He was brawny, but he was also fit as was evidenced by the move. It required strong legs and a limber back and excellent abdominal muscles to jump up like that. In that moment, I realized that I may have underestimated him as an opponent. No doubt he’d done martial arts training of some sort, judo, or grappling of some kind. I had no idea why he had turned on me, but I was in for a fight.

  I stood back, dancing on the balls of my feet on the slick floor, loose and ready. I hadn’t been hit yet and I didn’t want to be, given the weapon Jean-Marc was now brandishing. It wasn’t a regular knife. It was a short saber with a forward-curved blade and a bone hilt called a yatagan. In my brief time in Turkey, I’d already seen several of them for sale in shopkeeper’s windows. The sword had probably been hidden behind one of the stone basins prior to my arrival at the hammam. The yatagan’s single-edged, hand-forged steel blade gleamed in the mist. It was short enough to be concealable, but long enough to provide a good reach. I had little doubt that a single swipe of its high-carbon steel would be fatal. The trick would be, not getting hit.

  Jean-Marc didn’t waste time talking. He let the blade speak instead. I twisted to my left watching him swing the glinting steel through the space I had occupied only a moment before, his wet towel making a stretching snap as he moved. I was thankful that he was s
till wearing it. I guessed he’d brought a spare towel to choke me with.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about this?” I said.

  “I am sure, Michel.”

  I continued to back up toward the marble octagon in the center of the room. Go to a knife fight without a knife and the number-one thing you want is a gun. Barring a gun, second choice is room to move. I didn’t need Jean-Marc swinging his yatagan at me with one hand while some well-meaning wall held my back in place for him. I stepped backward, Jean-Marc matching my step.

  “Jean-Marc! What the hell are you trying to do to me, man?”

  “It is not you, Michel. It is the job.”

  “What job?” I asked.

  Jean-Marc smiled.

  “Killing you, my friend.”

  Chapter 8

  I FELT THE adrenaline surge through my body as he said the words. I’d struck his groin and flipped him on his back, but the Frenchman was tough, I gave him that. Whatever damage I’d been able to inflict, it hadn’t been near enough. Jean-Marc parried forward with the blade, scything by my shoulder for a second time. I glanced back, counting two more steps behind me before I hit the marble octagon in the middle of the room. I knew I couldn't keep backing up. Defense may keep you alive, but it doesn’t win a fight. I wanted to know, scratch that, I needed to know why my colleague was attacking me. And that meant I needed to go on the offensive.

  But Jean-Marc didn’t need to know that. Better for him to think he had me. I counted another step backward. Jean-Marc grinned like a man possessed, sweat glistening on his forehead. The guy seriously wanted to hurt me, there was no question about that. He darted forward and thrust his yatagan down again. I turned, spinning on my left heel. Even so, I felt the blade connect with the tiny hairs on my arm for a second time. Any closer and he’d have me. I needed a plan.