“Papa,” Miriam said tiredly.
The old man went on to Jake, “I say this in English so that you can hear and understand, Colonel Burnes. Yes, yes, I know, you now hold a civilian position, but an officer is an officer is an officer. A goy and an officer of a foreign army. Here. In my house.”
“Papa, please,” Daniel’s voice implored quietly. “You shame me.”
“No, it is you who shames this house. Such an invitation, never have I heard of such a thing.”
Jake kept his tone as steady as his gaze. “It is true I remain an officer in my country’s army,” he agreed quietly. “This is something I remain very proud of. I was called, and I served.”
“America has long been friend to the Jews,” Miriam said, her tone downcast.
“Yes, yes, I know of your family’s sentiments,” the old man snapped. “And how even now they wish for this man to come and visit them, so that they might press him for visas.” He stared balefully up at Jake. “But my place is here, I tell you. This has been home to my family for almost five hundred years. Twice again as long as America has been a nation.”
“He has been ill,” Daniel said apologetically.
“I am not ill,” the old man retorted. “I am confident in the face of my adversaries.”
“Papa, shame. He is a friend.”
“ ‘Though an host should encamp against me,’ ” Jake quoted, wanting only peace with the old man, admiring him and his stubborn strength, “ ‘my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.’ ”
“What is this?” The old man backed up a pace in astonishment. “You are quoting the Psalms to me?”
“Did I not say?” Daniel spoke quietly. “An exceptional man, Papa.”
“Please, please, you must enter,” Miriam urged, ushering Jake down the hall and into the living room. “Take this seat here. It is the most comfortable. Daniel, come help me in the kitchen, please. Papa, you must behave, do you hear?”
Jake remained standing, looking around the room. It was cluttered with the possessions of ages—chairs etched with ancient floral patterns, a high-backed wooden bench scrolled with Hebraic writing, a copper-topped central table, aged carpets upon the floor. Jake found himself drawn to a series of framed prints upon the walls. Most were in Hebrew, but one was in a different, almost cuneiform-shaped script.
“My ancestor received that letter some two hundred years ago. It is curious that you would choose it to inspect.” The old man watched Jake from his chair. “You see, Colonel, that letter is from a Christian, one you would probably call a soldier, but we would prefer to think of as a pirate. Of course, what are we but ignorant Jews?”
“I would never have thought of you in such a way,” Jake said, taking the chair Miriam had shown him.
But the old man did not let up. “That letter, Colonel Burnes, was written by this Christian pirate, who had captured an ancestor of mine and was allowing him to send one letter begging for ransom money. The Christian, you see, was willing to sell this innocent trader and his family for the price of one sack of gold per family member. The trader was begging for his life.” The old man’s gaze was bright and keen and watchful. “My family has kept that letter upon our wall ever since as both reminder and warning to watch out against the treachery of outsiders.”
“It was not Christians who imprisoned you and your son in the camp,” Jake pointed out.
“No, indeed not.” The dark eyes remained steady and accusing. “Not this time.”
“Enough of this, enough.” Daniel entered the room bearing a platter of sweets. “We did not invite this man into our home to insult him.”
But Jake kept his eye upon the old man, held by a sudden thought so strong he knew it was a gift, an invitation. “I wonder,” he said calmly, “if there might not be a point where we can know a meeting of the minds.”
“Impossible,” the old man expostulated.
“Perhaps a meeting of the hearts as well,” Jake went on, feeling the gentle guiding force. “Perhaps even, in time, become friends.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed, but something held him silent. Daniel stood over the pair of them, his questioning gaze shifting back and forth.
Jake leaned forward. “I would consider it an honor,” he said quietly, “if you would teach me of the Torah.”
Chapter Eight
Jake sighed his way into the office building’s ancient elevator. He watched as Mrs. Ecevit slid the brass accordion doors shut and pressed the top-floor button. He waited as the floors clanked by, his mind far too slack for what lay ahead. But he could not help it. His world was out of kilter. His heart thudded miserably in his chest. He sighed again.
Mrs. Ecevit glanced his way. “There is something wrong?”
He started to deny it but did not have the strength. “I argued with my wife. Last night. And again this morning.”
“Ah.” She nodded. “Men are such bad quarrelers.”
“I sure am.” Jake watched her ratchet the inner door back and push the outer one open, then followed her out. “I can’t win a debate. She’s much more intelligent than I am. So I lose my temper and end up ordering her to do what I want her to do.”
For the very first time a hint of something human, something warm and compassionate, showed through Mrs. Ecevit’s brittle shell. She slowed her pace. “I do not know American women, but if they are anything like intelligent Turkish women, they would not like such an order very much.”
“No,” Jake agreed. “Sally sure doesn’t.”
He tried to compose himself as they entered a large outer office, but the weight of his heart pulled his face back into the same slack lines. Jake watched from the doorway as she walked over and gave their names to an attractive receptionist.
Mrs. Ecevit returned to where he stood and said, “We are early, and the man we are scheduled to meet has other people with him.”
“No problem.” Jake sank down into the corner seat, as removed as possible from the cheerful bustle filling the large chamber. Mrs. Ecevit took the seat beside him, her eyes darkly humorous. He said, “I’d give anything never to have to argue with her, not ever again.”
The humor broke through then, and Mrs. Ecevit dropped ten years as she flashed white teeth and chuckled. “Ah, Mr. Burnes, you Americans are so wonderful at times.”
“Call me Jake. I can’t be talking about something this personal and hear you call me by my last name.”
“All right.” Another flashing smile, and he realized that beneath that diamond-hard exterior dwelled a truly striking woman. “You may call me Anya. There is an expression we use very often, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow the apricots.’ It is very Turkish. The story goes, once there was a handsome young man, just like yourself, I imagine. He was pressing his favors upon a lovely young maiden. As he grew more impatient for her answer, she replied, yes, all right, but tomorrow, tomorrow when the apricots appear on that tree. Only the tree she was pointing to was a pear tree.”
“Meaning I’m asking for the impossible.”
“Yes,” she agreed, trying to recover her accustomed solemnness, but the light in her eyes giving her away. “But it is very nice that you would even wish for such a thing. It is very romantic. Would it be impertinent of me to ask what happened?”
Jake sighed his way into the tale, the situation he faced becoming impossibly entangled with his worry—Sally’s meeting the two women on the train, the Russian’s appearance, the confrontation with Fernwhistle, Sally and Jasmyn’s talk with Mrs. Hollamby, his own meeting yesterday afternoon with the consul general and the time limit placed on him. “Then when I came home last night,” he went on, “Sally had just arrived back from some clandestine meeting at a place called Topeppy.”
“Topkapi,” Anya corrected. “The sultans’ summer palace.”
“Whatever you say. Anyway, she and Jasmyn were led around by a stranger who tells them the Russians have planned some deception to pull us off the track.”
“It would not surprise me,” Anya said slowly. “That would be very much a Soviet-type strategy.”
“This woman also told her we were being followed. All of us. Then they heard something and hightailed it away.” Jake grimaced at the thought. “I was furious that she’d taken such a risk.”
“And she,” Anya finished for him, “was furious that you did not appreciate her efforts.”
“Don’t tell me you were in the lobby and heard us.” He dropped his head. “I can’t believe we argued in a hotel. We might as well have been standing in the middle of the street.”
“Hotel staffs are paid to be discreet. And no, I was not there, I did not need to be. It is one of the most ancient of disagreements. You want to protect her, she wants to help you.”
Jake lifted his head. “So what’s the answer?”
“For you to be grateful, and for her to be careful.” Again the flashing smile. “And keep hoping that the tree will someday grow apricots.”
“Anya, so sorry to have kept you waiting.” A young man in a finely cut Western suit rushed over, took both Anya’s hands in his, smiled, then turned as Jake rose to his feet and offered his hand. “And you must be Colonel Burnes.”
“This is my husband, Turgay Ecevit,” Anya said.
“Your husband,” Jake said dully.
“Turgay is director of this office, which runs the party’s Istanbul-based operations,” she said with quiet pride. “He is also personal assistant to Celal Bayar, leader of the Turkish opposition.” She looked up at her husband, then back at Jake. “As you can see, I did not need to hear your discussion of last night. I know it all too well.”
Her husband looked from one to the other. “What is this?”
“Just finishing a discussion,” she said quietly. “Perhaps we should begin another. Colonel Burnes has very little time.”
* * *
Istanbul was a world of endless contrasts, where modern met the ancient and the timeless held place with the immediate. Handcarts bustled between smoky buses and clanging streetcars. Donkeys brayed as they pulled wooden carts and impossible loads. Women stepped over craters in the sidewalks, one hand gripping eager children while the other fanned the flames of conversation. Great clouds of noise and diesel fumes and fresh energy billowed in the air. Despite the ache she felt over quarreling with Jake, Sally found herself captivated by the excitement and the mystery of it all.
The fish market was on the legendary stretch of water known as the Golden Horn, an inlet of the Bosphorus. The stalls did not line the streets because there was simply no room. The buildings bellied right up to the street, and the lane dropped directly into the rock-lined water. Enterprising fishermen used broad flat-bottomed boats as stalls, standing in one end, calling their endless song of quality and selection and price and barter, one hand slinging water over the stock to keep it shining and fresh. Potential customers walked the crowded lane, leaned over the railing, waved their arms, and argued prices with exuberance. Overhead, gulls echoed their boisterous refrain.
“Ah, there you are, my dear. And on time yet again. How marvelous.” Phyllis Hollamby walked up, moving briskly even while leaning heavily on her cane. “And where is your lovely companion?”
“She had to attend another reception with her husband.”
“Pity. But it can’t be helped, I suppose.” A keen ear picked up on the unsaid. “What did your husband think of the information you got from Jana?”
“I’m not sure,” Sally said dismally. “We ended up arguing about my taking risks.”
Phyllis gave a magnificent sniff. “Men. They are so utterly blind at times, aren’t they, my dear?”
“Jake is a wonderful man,” Sally said defensively.
“No doubt, no doubt. And he must love you dearly, to have such concern for your well-being. Yet one would think that, given the critical nature of his affairs, he would welcome a bit of help.”
“Not to mention the time pressure,” Sally added, and related the three-day ultimatum.
“Well, there you are.” The dimples appeared in age- spotted cheeks. “Still, I suppose if men did ever reach perfection, life would become an utter bore. Don’t you agree?”
Despite the weight of her heart, Sally could not help but smile in reply. “I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”
“That’s my girl.” Mrs. Hollamby reached over and patted Sally’s cheek. “Your husband is a most fortunate gentleman. I hope he realizes that.”
“He does,” she said, then amended, “most of the time.”
“Well, we shall just have to remind him, then, won’t we?” She spun about. “Come along, my dear. I smell adventure on the wind.”
Sally hung back. “Jake doesn’t want me taking any more risks.”
“Who said anything about risks?” Phyllis sniffed. “From now on, we shall limit ourselves strictly to a bit of sightseeing. Not even your gallant but somewhat overprotective husband can object to that.”
* * *
“Have you heard, Colonel, of yagli gúres?”
Jake accepted a tulip-shaped tea glass from the attendant, holding it gingerly by the rim. “I don’t even know if it’s animal, vegetable, or mineral.”
“None of them.” Turgay accepted his glass, thanked the young man, sipped noisily. “It is a distinctly Turkish form of wrestling in which men oil down their bodies, then grapple for a hold to throw their opponent off his feet. It is a dance of conflict and balance and opposing powers, and it says much about my land. We grapple with ourselves, Colonel. The modern with the ancient, the Muslim with the secular, the democratic with the authoritarian, the internal with the great powers to every side. To govern Turkey is a constant struggle in which one slip spells disaster.”
Jake lifted his glass, felt the liquid’s near-boiling heat before his lips touched the rim, lowered it without tasting. Drinking such tea had to be an acquired trait. “Sounds like a risky business to be in.”
“To understand just how risky, Colonel, it is necessary to explain a bit of our history.” A more thoughtful sip, then, “In 1453, after a bombardment lasting fifty days, the city fell to the Ottoman Turks. It is said that the paintings and mosaics upon the church walls sweated from fear. The pope himself offered daily prayers for deliverance from what he saw as two equally great evils, a large comet and the Ottoman ruler, Sultan Mehmet. But the city did fall to the sultan. The city of Constantinople was renamed Istanbul, and a period of Ottoman domination began which lasted almost exactly five hundred years. The domination was absolute. Opposition to the ruling sultan and his court was strictly forbidden. There was only one voice, one law. And with time, this law became increasingly corrupt. By the time World War One broke out and the sultan decided to side with the Germans, Turkey was trapped within the nightmare of a hopelessly backward, hopelessly corrupt regime. Time and the rest of the world had passed us by.”
Turgay had more the air of a passionate professor than a politician. He was tall and striking, with chiseled olive features and intelligent eyes. He carried his authority with the ease of one for whom such trappings mattered little. The fire of conviction ignited both his gaze and his words. “After the debacle of World War One, a general called Mustafa Kemal, later renamed Ataturk, which means Father of the Turks, led a war of insurrection against the corrupt Ottoman rule. The struggle ended in 1923. In the eyes of the common man, Ataturk had won a victory on par with Mehmet’s original taking of Constantinople. This gave him the power to sweep aside Ottoman history and declare Turkey a republic.
“Ataturk was determined to drag Turkey out of the Middle Ages and into the twentieth century. To him, this meant a complete break with the Ottoman religious past. So Turkey became not only a republic, but also secular, meaning that religion and state were separated once and for all. Ataturk also embarked on a rapid expansion of state enterprise, education, and health care. The Latin alphabet replaced the Arabic, and the entire nation, literally, went to school. For the first time in its histor
y, the common man was given the opportunity to read and write. And women were freed from imprisonment behind the sharia, or Islamic code of law.”
Anya Ecevit sat listening to the history lesson with a patience that surprised Jake, seemingly content to set aside her normal drive and energy and share in her husband’s interest. Jake found himself watching her as much as Turgay. “Yet there was a downside, as you Americans say, to this reform,” Turgay went on. “A very great one. All these new laws were strictly enforced. No opposition, or even opposing thought, was permitted. Anyone who voiced an opinion contrary to the new, modern, secular state was considered a traitor.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Indeed, yes. Fortunately for Turkey, Ataturk was both a charismatic leader and a statesman, a figure greater than life, one determined to lead Turkey not toward aggression, but rather toward a new future.”
“You sound almost awed when you talk of him,” Jake said. “Strange to hear, coming from an opposition politician.”
“In your country, perhaps. But in my country, Ataturk was in truth the only politician. It is because of him that we are free to be politicians at all. So you see, Mr. Burnes, although I disagree with where the country has arrived, I do not disagree with the path upon which it trod nor the leader who brought us here.”
“This Ataturk must have been quite a man.”
“Indeed he was.” He grimaced apologetically. “But Turkish politics remain treacherous, Colonel, with intrigue and corruption practiced with a skill learned over hundreds of years. That is what we the opposition are up against when we begin speaking of much-needed change.”
Jake decided his tea had cooled enough to risk a sip. “So what is the answer?”
“We of the Democratic Party do not condemn Ataturk’s policies. Our leader was himself once a prime minister under Ataturk. But we feel that if progress is going to continue, private enterprise must be given a chance to succeed. We are worried that if both political power and business remain within the hands of central government, the old problems of corruption and intrigue will resurface.”
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