by Oliver Tidy
‘Found with the arms cache were plans, organizational charts, and other documents relating to past atrocities that had taken the lives of several prominent Turkish citizens. There was also evidence that further attacks were planned. As the investigations went on, the network of suspects grew.
‘The documents detailed an organization of astounding reach and sophistication. Ergenekon, prosecutors claimed, had members inside the judiciary, academia, the military and the press. Ergenekon’s propaganda wing was one of its particular strengths. It is claimed that it planted false stories in newspapers and on television stations, with the intention of stirring up public fear of imagined enemies. There was also a section that indulged in organized crime – narcotics, prostitution, illegal gambling, smuggling and arms dealing – to help finance its activities.’
Zeynep held up a document, a token meant to represent the whole. She was smiling and her eyes gleamed with her belief. ‘This is what we came for, Acer.’ She gestured towards the paperwork spread out on the floor in front of her. ‘If we can get this lot back to Istanbul it will have been worth it. We can dictate our own terms to him.’
Acer was remaining circumspect. Hoping for the best but not expecting things to go smoothly. ‘You’re sure? I mean, I know what you’ve told me you’ve found but are you certain he won’t be able to wriggle out of things, claim fraud, deny things?’
She was still smiling. Her enthusiasm was not to be dampened so easily. ‘Believe me, Acer. I can ruin him if I want to. Leak these documents to the proper authorities, the media, and he’ll be under arrest before he has a chance to realise what’s happening to him.’
‘But that’s not what we want, is it?’
‘I know. Being under arrest wouldn’t necessarily stop his being able to rule his empire and we would have lost our trading material. But that’s what we want him to feel. That’s what we need him to fear. And he will.’ Zeynep sighed. Acer thought it was the sound of a deeply satisfied person. A diner, perhaps, having just put down her knife and fork after an excellent meal. Her dish was revenge. Straight from the fridge.
Acer said, ‘How do you suggest we play it when we get back? He’s your brother. You know him a lot better than I do.’
‘First thing we need to do is lodge these documents with a trustworthy and secure third party. It’s got to be with someone who can’t be connected to us, someone who can’t be intimidated or corrupted. Someone who we can be certain would make sure the documents ended up in the right hands if something did happen to us.’
‘But that’s not what we want, is it?’ Acer realised he had just repeated himself. ‘That’s what we want to avoid.’
‘Of course. Again, it’s what he has to believe for sure will happen. Any ideas?’
‘Me?’
‘I don’t have any close friends in Istanbul. Friends, yes, but none close enough who would be willing to take on the responsibility. None I could trust with my life. And that’s what it will be.’
Acer knitted his brow in thought. ‘Then, yes, actually, I do know someone who would commit to it, who I trust completely. She’s not in Turkey: my UK journalist friend.’
Zeynep looked doubtful. ‘A journalist? Giving this to a journalist and asking her to keep it quiet would be like dangling a bleeding fish in front of a shark and asking it not to eat it.’
Acer laughed hard and long. When he’d recovered himself, he said, ‘That’s very good, Zeynep. I can’t wait to share your analogy with her next time I see her.’ He became more serious. ‘I trust this woman with my life. We have unbreakable history.’
‘So you would want to take the documents out of the country?’
‘No need. We can lodge them with a bank here, in a safety deposit box. I can make sure she is a named key holder. And that way, with all the documentation locked away, any temptation for her would be removed. She doesn’t even need to know what’s in it. All she needs to understand and agree to is that if anything suspicious happens to you and me she opens Pandora’s box and deals with the contents accordingly.’
‘We would need to prove to my brother that what we have could ruin him. We would need to take some copies of documents to show him. He would need to take us seriously.’
Acer smiled and said, ‘That’s easily done.’
Zeynep said, ‘I can’t wait to see his face when we turn up at Heybeliada together demanding their release.’
Acer said, ‘We’ve got a way to go yet before we can look forward to that. But I know what you mean.’
After a thoughtful moment, Acer said, ‘This is important stuff, isn’t it?’
‘Very.’
‘You’re Turkish. Don’t you feel any compulsion to use this man’s work to expose these people?’
‘Yes, I’m Turkish. It says so in my passport. And that’s about it. Our system has always suffered from corruption and now religious interference in politics is on the rise. This could hurt people, individuals, cause some ripples, but the tide has turned for Turkey. It’s no longer a country that I care about enough. I care about me and mine and about us living peacefully and free. Does that answer your question?’
‘I suppose it does.’
***
41
When Professor Dardari returned, it was with another elderly gentleman. He, too, looked like a man with the values and the clothes of a bygone age. Both men wore long, heavy-looking overcoats and brimless woollen hats. Acer was pacing about the office restlessly, trying to keep warm. Dusk was falling and with it the temperature. The radiator in the office did not work.
Professor Dardari introduced his colleague as Professor Rafe of the archaeology faculty. Rafe shook hands with both Acer and Zeynep. He seemed as old as Dardari, perhaps older, but there was a youthful twinkle in his eye, a smile hovering at the corner of his mouth. He did not look like a man who had lost loved ones in the mindless violence of a civil war and lived only to be reminded of it daily.
Professor Dardari said, ‘He doesn’t speak any English.’
Acer said, ‘Would you please tell him that we’re grateful for his help.’
Dardari related this to his friend in a sentence that seemed twice as long at least as the one Acer had used. Professor Rafe answered his friend in their shared mother tongue but looking between Acer and Zeynep. His answer was long-winded and accompanied by a variety of facial expressions and body language. When he had finished, Professor Dardari said, ‘He says you’re welcome.’
Acer looked at Zeynep to see that she was suppressing a smile.
They headed out to the car as a group of four. The pace was dictated by the slowest of them and that was their driver, Rafe, whose movement was somewhere between a shuffle and a shamble. Acer believed he could benefit from a walking frame. Fortunately, the car was close. Acer carried the cardboard box.
The car was big and old. Very old. Vintage. Something that should have been in a museum. Acer was concerned. He saw it would attract attention. He wanted to say something to Zeynep, to express his feelings, but she was already getting in the back. He exhaled heavily, passed the box in and got in next to her. At least it started first time. Acer tried to moderate his anxieties by focussing on the fact that the journey shouldn’t take long.
He slid down in the heavy leather seat so that just his head was at window level. There seemed to be something wrong with the exhaust, a hole in the pipe. The noise was loud, like a plane.
Rafe drove slowly, sedately, like he was part of a funeral procession. Other drivers quickly lost patience with him and leaned on their horns as they overtook, gesturing and snarling across the divide between them. Neither old man appeared to take the slightest interest in their critics. Acer wondered if the driver was even aware of them. He hunched tightly over the wheel, peering myopically at the road ahead in the encroaching gloom of late afternoon.
Professor Dardari issued directions as he navigated them with clear apparent knowledge and understanding of the road systems and that part of the city. His frien
d, hands at the regulation ten-to-two on the enormous old steering wheel, like something off an old steamboat, drove with little obvious consideration for other road users. Acer did not see him glance in his rear-view mirror once, not even when making turns across busy lanes of traffic.
They passed clusters of soldiers on the street and mobile patrols passed them. They did receive the attention of these soldiers. But it seemed to be good-natured interest rather than prying suspicion. The soldiers pointed and laughed. One of them even waved. Acer slid down a little more and adjusted his keffiyeh. After a couple of these remote encounters, the phrase hiding in plain sight sprang to Acer’s mind and it almost made him smile.
Dardari spoke to his friend and he pulled into the kerb. Dardari turned in his seat to face them. He said, ‘We should not go further into the ruined zone. We might be stopped and asked our business. You will have to complete your journey on foot.’
Acer recognised where they were from the scene of a bombed mosque, its domed roof missing. Across the road was a street they had used that morning. He offered his hand to Dardari and then Rafe. They both took it.
Acer said, ‘Thank you for your help. Both of you.’
Dardari said, ‘I hope you get your daughter back, Mr Sansom. Without violence. There is already enough of that in the world today.’
Acer gathered up the box and let himself out. In a few seconds Zeynep was standing next to him on the pavement watching the vintage automobile drive away with its roaring exhaust and thin plume of trailing grey fumes.
Acer shook his head. ‘Surreal or what?’ Then he snapped his attention back to their situation and their danger. ‘Come on. Let’s find some cover until it gets dark.’ They crossed the road at a trot and disappeared down a narrow and shadowy side street.
They were not the only ones out and about. Others, wrapped up against the evening chill, hurried this way and that. Some had bags, some pushed trolleys and some just had their hands stuffed into their pockets. All walked with their heads and eyes cast down, avoiding rubble and trouble, potholes and each other’s faces.
They navigated two blocks and were in an area of what had once been smart residential apartment buildings. There was little difference between east and west Aleppo here. The same wanton destruction, the same mess, the same abandonment. The further they went, the fewer people they encountered. When they heard the noise of a vehicle’s engine or the raised voices of men they dodged for cover without waiting to see what or who it was.
Soon they heard sporadic gunfire being exchanged. The unmistakable rapid staccato sounds of automatic fire and the more measured single cracks of a sniper’s rifle, perhaps, carried on the air from somewhere in front and to the left of them. They veered right.
A deep, booming, air-vibrating, thunderclap of an artillery shell being fired shattered the relative peace and echoed around the broken buildings of the district. It was quickly followed by others. A barrage was in progress. Acer wondered whether the activity could bring them any advantage.
They rounded a corner of another example of urban destruction to be confronted by a pair of hungry-looking dogs that started barking. Acer pulled Zeynep away and they went in search of another route.
Within a few yards, Acer stopped walking and cocked an ear at the darkening sky. He shoved the box under his arm and with his other he grabbed hold of Zeynep’s coat sleeve and hurried her into the bombed-out front of a nearby shop. The noise increased – a high-pitched whine, rushing closer, getting louder. Acer pushed Zeynep down on the floor and got down himself.
The explosion sounded close. Dust and loose debris fell onto them from the ceiling. Just fragments of concrete and plaster. Acer looked up and out of the shop front through the cloud of dust to see a pillar of smoke rising up to meld with the grey of the encroaching evening not fifty metres from their position. He said, ‘Close.’
Within seconds the air was filled with the noise of another incoming missile. Acer couldn’t discern what it was. The sound did not resemble the mortar and artillery shells he’d been on the wrong end of in his time with the army.
They came at intervals of a minute or just over. Falling on the already-ruined district in a seemingly pointless and wasteful act of war – there was nothing left to ruin here. The explosions brought other noises: sounds of buildings crumbling and collapsing, sounds of combustible materials being detonated, sounds of stubborn window glass finally succumbing to the shock waves, sounds of sheet metal being thrown around. One missile fell not twenty metres from where they lay huddled behind an overturned table. The open-fronted shop was peppered with stones and splinters of concrete and bits of the road’s surface. Their ears rang. A large chunk of the ceiling fell to the floor a few feet away, sending up another thick cloud of dust.
Acer said, ‘This is getting dangerous. We should find better cover. Come on.’
He got to his feet and went to look out of the front of the shop. He was wasting precious time. With incoming shells of that calibre and regularity, there wouldn’t be any army patrols on the streets. Acer realised they could use the bombardment to their advantage, providing it didn’t kill them.
He led Zeynep down the street where the dogs had been barking at them. There was no sign of them now. From the dust and a small fire that was burning it was evident that one of the buildings had taken a direct hit. Lying on a mound of rubble a little further on was a dead dog where it had been thrown. One of its legs was missing and there was a large gash in its side.
They scrambled over the wreckage and the debris. The whine of another incoming round sent them scurrying for cover. It sailed overhead. Acer didn’t wait for it to hit its unlucky target. Signalling to Zeynep that they were moving, he led them back out into the open and managed another few dozen metres before the next one could be heard.
All the time, the crackle of small arms and the noise of artillery shells being fired back in the tit-for-tat exchange provided an accompanying percussion to the main soundtrack.
Just as it was becoming difficult to see well, they stumbled into the street where they had left the radio. The shelling and small arms fire was experiencing a hiatus. Acer left the box with Zeynep out of sight and, with the Sig in his hand, approached the building cautiously.
He crunched back over the same mess he’d crunched over that morning. He reached up and felt on top of the cupboard. The radio was still there. He breathed a sigh of relief. Before going back for Zeynep, he investigated the route they had fled down during their escape.
The man Acer had shot dead had been removed. There was a dark stain on the floor. Acer put the toe of his boot in it to confirm what he believed it was. It still felt greasy and sticky. He spared the man a thought. He would rather not have killed him. He hadn’t even had a chance to see how old he might have been. He could have been a husband, a father, a sibling in a close family. He was certainly someone’s son. And now he was dead.
Acer turned and walked away, pushing the sentimental feelings from his mind – he had believed that the man was intent on killing them.
He said that they should wait out the few hours in a different building, until it was properly dark – a building without the ghost of a man whose life he had ended.
***
42
They found a building over several floors – taller than anything around it – that was still, miraculously, standing. Acer wanted to investigate it. He wanted to see if he could get a view of the city, particularly the part they needed to cross soon. The light was dying quickly.
He said, ‘Look, no point in both of us risking it. I want you to stay down here. Hide yourself in one of those houses opposite.’
‘Is there a good reason that you need to ‘risk it’?’
‘I just want to see.’
‘See what? It’s almost dark.’
‘There might be something that’s changed from this morning. Something that we need to be aware of before we try to cross over.’
‘And what if they star
t up with the shelling again and your building gets hit?’
‘That could happen if we were both sitting comfortably in some cosy little cellar. Luck of the draw. Look, I really need to go now.’
Zeynep took the box and Acer watched her disappear into the ruins of what remained of the building next door. He turned and went in.
It was dark inside and he briefly considered forgetting it, turning back and taking the easy option. There was the smell of explosives and burning and disturbed powdered concrete on the chilly evening air. The passageway was a carpet of fallen masonry, broken glass and smashed possessions. Somewhere, a broken water pipe was dripping loudly.
He found the main staircase and went up it as quickly as he could. It was an awkward ascent. More than once, he disturbed loose fragments that clattered away down the stairs as he swore under his breath. He caught the sound of renewed gunfire. It didn’t sound close enough to be of immediate concern.
On the fifth floor he went in through the open front door of an apartment. It had been abandoned in a hurry. There were things out of place and it was messy. But not as the result of a direct hit. He thought of shock waves or reverberations and vibrations from close explosions – the same ones that had loosened the masonry in the stairwell. He crossed to a window that gave him a good view of the adjoining streets and the no-man’s-land they’d crossed in the morning.
The light was slightly better because of the height of the floor and lack of other high buildings close by. He saw nothing to make him think of changing their plans of return. From behind the net curtains, he stared out over the distance to the ‘safe’ side of Aleppo. He remembered the radio in his pocket, took it out and signalled Tanner. He answered quickly.
‘Tanner?’
‘Acer? Good to hear from you, buddy. Where are you?’
‘Should I say on the radio?’
Tanner laughed quietly. ‘You never know who could be listening, eh?’
‘Let’s just say we’re back and ready to cross.’
