Enlightenment

by Maureen Freely

  ‘Never you mind,’ said No Name. He dipped into the kitchen, and as he emerged with two beers, Jeannie saw Sinan in the corridor, beckoning.

  Dutch was in what had once been a study. Now it was piled high with boxes. He was sitting in the only chair, his legs propped on the cluttered desk before him. Was she seeing him in a clear light for the first time ever? Did he trust her at last? He studied her frankly, and for some time, before he spoke.

  ‘So you think it was Jordan, do you?’

  ‘Jordan,’ Jeannie said. ‘Who’s Jordan?’

  ‘The guy with the beers,’ Sinan explained. Turning to Dutch, he said, ‘She calls him No Name.’

  Dutch almost smiled. ‘If only. Nice touch.’ He picked up his pipe, blew in hard as he lit it. He offered it to Jeannie. ‘Want some?’ It was stronger than what she was used to. She had to prop herself up against the wall.

  ‘So tell me,’ Dutch said, tipping back his chair. ‘How does it feel? I mean, you’ve spent – what? A year? For almost a year, you’ve been sitting on that fence. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Am I right?’

  ‘This is different,’ I said. ‘If my father’s planting bombs…’

  ‘No, of course not. I understand perfectly. And we’re grateful. Indeed.’

  ‘I’ll do anything it takes. We have to stop him,’ Jeannie said.

  ‘This we can do,’ Dutch replied. ‘In fact, there’s someone at the Washington Post…but first things first. We need a positive identification. So go back out into the front room. And listen to this “No Name” of yours. But carefully. No point in taking action until we’re sure…’

  ‘I am sure,’ Jeannie protested.

  ‘Then help us by keeping him occupied. Enjoy the curfew! Help yourself to a beer!’

  He stood up, as if to indicate the meeting was over. But as she turned for the door, he said, ‘Stop. One more thing. Jeannie – we never had this conversation. More to the point – we’ll never have another. Something you need me to know, just tell Sinan. Something I need you to know, I’ll do the same.’

  ‘And that, as I saw it, was that. I had stepped over the line. Now all I had to do was stand firm. Thinking, prevaricating, hashing over the “if onlys” and “what ifs” – I was to save these luxuries for later. I had done the most difficult thing, Sinan told me. I had done the most important thing a spy’s daughter could ever do, and now I was to sit back, carry on as normal, and “let events unfold”.

  It was all coming to a head, he told me. As we sat on the marble bench in the meydan – the same bench where I’d heard my father lecturing his cool American only hours earlier – he warned me that this might mean going days without my hearing from him.’

  ‘But why?’ she protested. This she had not bargained for. She had stepped over the line, after all! She could stand next to him now and hold her head high, and he could, too!

  ‘Soon,’ he said. ‘But not yet. Right now we can’t do anything to alert your father. This is the part you have to play. You must be patient.’

  So she promised. He sealed it with a kiss. A very long kiss. A kiss to last, he said. And perhaps he could taste her sorrow.

  ‘Look,’ he said finally. ‘I can’t tell you everything, but I’ll tell you as much as I can. You saw Dutch packing. Did you guess why? Well, they took him downtown last night. I mean to İsmet’s office. They played him tapes. Tapes of visits to the Russian consulate. You remember – the Sergei from Nazmi’s. I warned you – remember?’ He went on to tell her that they’d threatened Dutch with prison ‘for inciting his students to take up arms against the state, for teaching them how to make bombs.’ Now he was free again – no one knew for how long.

  ‘If they charge him with spying…’ Sinan shuddered. ‘Do you know what they do with spies? We have to get him out of the country. I may have to go with him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That I cannot say. But Jeannie – you need to prepare yourself. If I have to go, if you’re not here when I get back…’

  ‘I’ll be here.’

  ‘You can’t be sure. If your father…’

  ‘He can’t send me anywhere.’

  ‘Jeannie – this is Turkey. He can send you anywhere he wants.’

  ‘Let him try,’ she said.

  ‘But say he does,’ Sinan insisted. His voice was hoarse, as if he were fighting tears. ‘If something happens. Will you wait for me?’

  ‘Of course I’ll wait for you. Of course!’

  ‘No matter what happens, no matter what lies people tell?’

  ‘He’s not sending me home,’ she said. ‘Home is here.’

  ‘And if something bad happens, if they send you away, you’ll come back and find me? No matter what people say?’

  ‘No matter what,’ Jeannie said. ‘No matter how long it takes.’

  What she did not know then was that she’d already lost him.

  The next day the Martial Law Command imposed a fifteen-hour curfew and sent out 25,000 troops and police to scour the city for the kidnappers. On Sunday, they found the Israeli consul in an apartment only 500 yards from the consulate. His hands were tied behind his back and he’d been shot three times in the head.

  The owner of the flat said she’d rented it out to two young men who had presented themselves as an engineer and an architect. The caretaker reported seeing five young men leave the building the previous evening. The Prime Minister spoke of his shock and revulsion and had difficulty believing the perpetrators could be ‘Turks or idealists’. Amid calls for ‘quick justice,’ the security forces plastered the walls of the city with 20,000 posters of the eight men and one woman thought to belong to the cells responsible for Elrom’s death.

  There was a second list of about sixty people, mostly students, who were wanted for questioning. By Tuesday, there had been six arrests. On Friday, three men and a woman thought to be connected to the kidnapping were captured when a security team burst into a flat on the European side of the Bosphorus. They found three pistols in the flat, ammunition and a wig. There were vague reports of ‘other arrests’ in ‘other parts of the country’. The witch-hunt had begun.

  ‘They won’t stop until we’re all behind bars,’ Suna said. This was on Sunday afternoon, when Jeannie walked into the college cafeteria, in the nagging, fading hope of meeting Sinan. Finding Suna alone at the corner table, she told her the news: army officers had stopped two young men in the suburb of Maltepe and asked to see their identity papers. They’d taken flight, firing submachine guns, wounding one of the policemen and a woman standing nearby. They had rushed into a building and broken into an apartment on the third floor. It happened to be the home of an army colonel, who was not at home. His wife and son had escaped, but the gunmen had seized his fourteen-year-old daughter hostage. Some time later, they had dropped a bag from a window in which the police found Elrom’s identity card and his passport, a pistol and ammunition.

  There were now a thousand troops surrounding the building, and behind them a lynch mob. ‘What about that poor girl?’ Jeannie asked. ‘Is she safe?’

  Suna shrugged her shoulder. ‘Of course, they are saying that her life is in danger. But we know these boys. They would never hurt a child. As even you must understand by now, they have been savagely manipulated. And to be sure, the person who pushed them into this terrible act is now sitting safely in Europe, with a fat bank account, and a false passport. What a service he has done for his country! In one fell swoop, he has made the entire country hate all students fighting for freedom! Now they want us behind bars! It was a pretext, Jeannie! Can’t you see?’

  But Jeannie was having a harder and harder time seeing anything. Why were Suna and all the others shunning her? This was the one thing she hadn’t bargained for. To put your life on the line, to turn in your father – didn’t this rate some consideration? Or were Dutch and Sinan the only ones who knew what she had done for them?

  ‘One has but to ask the simple question,’ Suna continued. ‘Cui bono? Who will
benefit most from these two kidnappings? The generals with their American paymasters? Or these poor boys? It is they we must mourn now. For they have been undone by agents provocateurs. Yes, this is the age of the stoolpigeon and the informer. Even if our friends do not touch this girl, their fate is written. They will hang…’

  ‘But not before they’d had a trial, surely?’

  Suna slapped the table. ‘What kind of question is that?’ she cried. ‘From you of all people?’ She gathered up her books. ‘God damn you, Jeannie. God damn you, and all your kind!’

  So she was alone, in the Pasha’s Library – staring at the phone, waiting for some word from Sinan, who had been gone now for six days, eleven hours and fifty-five minutes, who, true to his word, had sent no word – when her father called to tell her that a second car bomb had gone off, this one under his own car. It was pure luck he’d been spared. Korkmaz the driver, having dropped his master off at a luncheon moments earlier, was standing next to a kiosk eating his lunch – a toasted cheese sandwich – when the bomb went off. Only the man in the kiosk and Korkmaz had been injured, and only Korkmaz seriously. He was still in a coma. ‘But I’ve put him into a private hospital so keep your fingers crossed.’

  There followed a long pause. Was he waiting for Jeannie to say something? She was tempted, sorely tempted. If she asked him outright – perhaps his cool American had gone too far again? Perhaps the time had come to pull the plug on this whole thing, whatever that might be?

  Just in time, she remembered her promise. She played her part. And everything she said about poor Korkmaz, she truly meant.

  But there were too many pauses, and when her father got home that night, he still looked wary. As he sat there munching on the Caesar Salad she had made for him, he spoke only to send compliments to the chef. He did the same when she brought out a six-egg omelette. Then he asked about Sinan. Still not speaking? ‘That must have been one hell of an argument you two had. Gosh, this isn’t curtains, is it? Now that would be a real shame.’

  It took seven or eight bourbons before he was ready to tell her how numb he felt. Numb because it could have been her in the car. Could have been both of them. ‘And yet here we are, alive and unscathed…’

  Meanwhile, Korkmaz lay in a coma in hospital. And that poor, poor fourteen-year-old girl in Maltepe – the gunmen said they were treating her like a sister. But neighbours who could see into the apartment said she was tied to a chair. ‘It’s been more than a day since they took her hostage. It makes me sick.’

  He felt sick, too, about Korkmaz, and the large family that depended on him. And then there was the fury, the fury against the people who had done this. ‘Either I let it eat us up or I find these bastards and nail them. Nail them good.’

  He gave her a beady look.

  ‘So tell me,’ he said. ‘Who’s next on their list?’

  ‘How would I know?’ she said.

  ‘Spoken like a true innocent.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘What does it sound like?’

  She swallowed hard. ‘I can’t help thinking that you blame me somehow.’

  ‘Oh really? What makes you think that?’

  ‘I don’t know. The way you’re talking to me, maybe?’

  ‘Honestly, Jeannie.’ He knocked back the rest of his bourbon. ‘You really do have a one-track mind.’ He gazed out at the Bosphorus, his eyes following a tanker that was rounding the point, and then he burst into tears.

  But she kept herself strong. It was a week now since she had heard from Sinan, but she could still feel his arms encircling her. It was just a question of keeping faith.

  Korkmaz came out of his coma on Tuesday morning. Just after lunch, Jeannie and her father went to the Admiral Bristol Hospital to see him. There were a dozen distraught relatives in the room. They were very kind. Very warm. Very physical. Grasping Jeannie’s hands, they spoke of the wickedness of politics. She nodded. She couldn’t agree more. They told her what a good man her father was, what a kind and generous employer. She nodded, as vigorously as before. Then on to safer ground: what a good man Korkmaz was, what a good son, what a good father. When she rose to leave they drenched her hands with eau de cologne.

  ‘Thanks for coming’ her father said afterwards. ‘They really appreciated it. Of course, they don’t blame you.’

  She had to find Sinan. At least, find out where he was! She imagined her strength draining away, until there was nothing to stop her dialling all his numbers, scouring the campus, racing down to the garçonniere, leaning on the bell. But she held herself in. Played her part as best she could. She wasn’t losing her nerve. Her father’s barbed hints meant nothing to her. All she had to do was sit here, calmly, and wait for events to unfold.

  But she couldn’t sit still. She had to find Sinan! Perhaps if she asked Chloe. Perhaps, if she dropped by and didn’t ask her outright, Chloe being Chloe would let something slip. Or even if she didn’t. It would bring some relief just to chat about nothing in particular. The isolation was getting to her. Isolation was the one thing she hadn’t bargained for.

  When she walked into the Cabot kitchen at that afternoon, it was to find Chloe hacking at a piece of cheese, and her father sitting at the table.

  ‘You’ve heard the news, I take it,’ he said. The girl had been rescued. ‘One of the gunmen died on the way to hospital. The other joker’s still alive, though not, I’d say for long. Does the name Mahir Çayan mean anything to you?’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ Chloe screeched.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jeannie asked.

  ‘He’s been asking me questions about his stupid car,’ said Chloe.

  ‘He’s trying to pin the whole thing on me!’

  ‘That’s not what I said,’ said her father. ‘But the fact remains that I gave Chloe a lift to school yesterday morning. And as it happens, she left a bag in the car. That was what I was asking her about. The bag, and what was in it.’

  ‘There was nothing in it but the fucking Norton Anthology!’

  ‘Be that as it may, I had to ask.’

  ‘What were you doing with the Norton Anthology?’ Jeannie asked stupidly. ‘Didn’t you have that exam three days ago?’

  ‘What – are you your father’s second lieutenant?’

  Jeannie turned to her father. ‘Are you actually accusing Chloe of planting the bomb in your car?’

  And Jeannie’s father yelled, ‘She wouldn’t have the guts!’ He slammed his fist down on the table. ‘That goes for both of you! You have no idea what you’ve mixed yourselves up in. You have no idea what these people are like! Honestly!’ he said. ‘It’s like cleaning up after a pack of fucking toddlers.’

  He lit up a cigarette. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That was uncalled for.’

  They all sat still for some time after that. Then he asked Jeannie what her plans were. He and Amy were taking a deputation from Washington out for a tour of the Bosphorus on the Hiawatha. Did Jeannie want to come too?

  She certainly did not.

  ‘Fine, then,’ he said. ‘Have it your way.’

  It was while he and Amy were out on the Hiawatha, and while Jeannie was sitting with Chloe in her kitchen, eating supper, and pretending to be friends, that two polite, well-dressed men knocked on the front door and asked if they’d mind going downtown to discuss the ‘recent car bomb’. Their black sedan was waiting outside, the engine running. The well-dressed men remained vacantly courteous throughout the half-hour drive. When they pulled up outside a mustard yellow stucco building, the man who wasn’t driving jumped out to hold the door.

  23

  The corridor was long and unadorned and smelled of disinfectant. There was a man with a mop at the far end and the floor was still damp. The two girls were shown into a waiting room. Here they found Suna, Haluk, Lüset, and a uniformed man with a submachine gun.

  Where was Sinan? Her voice echoed, but no one answered. Had they been arrested? There was no one else to ask. So Jeannie sat
down between Chloe and Haluk. Outside in the corridor, she heard footsteps, sometimes heavy, sometimes light. The men passing by their door spoke in whispers. Now and again a door would open, and they’d hear a low moan. An anguished cry. The tail end of a curse. Then the door would slam shut.

  Once, when a door shut, Suna began to sob. Lüset nudged her and she stopped. At no point did either look Jeannie in the eye.

  One day, they would find out what she’d done for them. One day, they would run up to her with open arms to thank her. But for now, this was just the way it was. No justice without a price.

  She had been sitting next to a stony, blank-eyed Haluk for the better part of an hour when a factotum came into the room, read out her name, and told her to follow him. When she hesitated, Haluk nudged her. ‘Go before he hurts you.’

  So she went. They took her to another room, an anteroom. The sign on the door said ‘İsmet Şen’ but he didn’t seem to be at home.

  ‘Long time no see,’ said İsmet. It had been at least an hour. He was holding out his hand. ‘I hope you haven’t been too uncomfortable. I’m afraid we’re a little short on the luxury front here but you don’t have long.’

  He offered her tea, then made a great show of getting his assistant to call for it. When it did not appear at once, he excused himself. ‘Time to kick ass.’

  He had not yet returned when her father appeared. Settling grimly into his chair, he turned to Jeannie and asked, ‘Have I missed the tea game yet? Or are we still to have the pleasure?’

  ‘He’s gone to get it now, I think.’

  William just snorted. ‘He hates me, you know. Of course – if I were in his shoes, I’d hate me, too. So anyway. I let him play the tea game. But don’t let that fool you. If there’s anything you’d like to tell me, this is your very last chance.’

  But she remained steadfast.

  ‘Okay then. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.’