by Jay Amberg
Boroğlu glares at her mother, who usually doesn’t question her about her relationships with her children. Although the two had their share of disagreements when Boroğlu was growing up, her mother has been far more reluctant to criticize her in the decade they have lived together after Boroğlu’s father’s death. “He put us all in danger!”
“That’s true.” She waves at the notebook. “But what you’re doing is the root of it!”
“The root of it is that Serkan got into bed with the Hamits.”
Her mother turns the bracelets on her right wrist. “But you’re making it more dangerous. Giving the grave robbers information…”
“Nothing useful.” She takes another drag on her cigarette.
“That won’t make it less dangerous for Serkan!”
Boroğlu shrugs.
“It looks like you’re competing with them!”
“I am!”
“And Serkan’s a pawn?”
Boroğlu squeezes the cigarette’s filter. It’s another non-question. “I haven’t made him a pawn!” Her voice rises. “They’re paying him to spy on me!”
“And Elif?” Her mother’s eyes narrow. “It’s not some game! He’s your son! They’re your dear children!”
Boroğlu taps ash into the ashtray on the table. A motorbike is whining up the hill. Dogs are barking. “They’ve got to be stopped!”
“By you?”
“Who else?”
“The gov—”
Boroğlu snorts. “The Ministry works for the Hamits!”
“Not everyone!” Her mother’s tone is sharp.
Thinking that her mother must be referring to Tuğçe Iskan, that young woman who notices everything but understands nothing, Boroğlu doesn’t answer. She takes another drag on her cigarette and looks across the patio at the pale sky above Bergama. The noise of the motorbike has stopped, but the dogs are still barking.
“So, it’s you against the world?” her mother asks, yet another criticism masked as a question.
When Boroğlu still doesn’t answer, her mother steps to her herb garden, stoops, picks a sprig of mint, and touches it to her tongue. “What makes you so much better than the Ministry?” she asks.
As Boroğlu grinds out her cigarette, she says, “I don’t steal artifacts for myself or my friends!” She flicks the butt into the ashtray. “You saw what those bastards did to me! Destroyed Allianoi…my site…my career!” She picks up her notebook and then flings it back on the table. “And when I got Galen’s letter, they screwed me again! Took my job! Eliminated me!” When her mother still pretends to fuss over her plants, she shouts, “I’m trying to save the artifacts!”
Her mother turns and looks her in the eye. “And take the credit, get all the attention for the discovery.”
Boroğlu meets her mother’s gaze. “Yes,” she says, her tone not at all conciliatory. “And what’s so wrong about that?”
Her mother cocks her head. “Nothing! I’m proud of what you’ve done, but…”
“But what?”
“What about the risks? What’s more important? The artifacts or your children?”
“That’s not fair!” Boroğlu clenches her fists.
Her mother steps toward the table and grabs her shopping bag.
“It’s not either-or!” Boroğlu yells. “It’s not!”
Her mother stops with her hand on the shopping bag. “Are you sure about that?”
Boroğlu’s fingers drum the tabletop. This time, it’s a real question—and one she doesn’t have a ready answer for. Her mother scoops the bag from the table, turns, and heads down the stairs, her shoes clumping a refrain.
40
ANKARA
Tuğçe Iskan stands in front of the associate minister’s spacious mahogany desk. Nothing at all is on the desk except a telephone console and an iPad—no files, no pens, no notepads, no family photos, nothing for her to take notice of and store in her memory. Nothing on the walls either, except for enlarged framed photos of Ataturk and the current president. The minister sits behind the desk in a burgundy leather armchair. His hair, combed forward, hides much of his baldness. The hair on his temples has gone gray. His eyes—narrow, brown, and intense—scan her, taking in her height and hair, her bright eyes, pale skin, and large nose. His eyes pause for just a moment on her neck, which shows just a couple millimeters of her tattoo above the collar of her plain, white long-sleeved shirt. The eyes pause again, longer, on her chest.
The minister, Iskan notes, is cleanly shaved except for a tiny crescent of silver whiskers on his jaw beneath his left earlobe. A dark mole rises on his right cheek, and a small oval scar is at the base of his chin. His tie is maroon, his shirt a crisp white. His hands, folded on the desk, are hairy. His wristwatch features multiple dials.
“Sit, please,” he says, gesturing to one of the two leather-cushioned chairs set at angles in front of his desk.
She does as she has been told. She has never met one-on-one with anyone this high up in the Ministry, and she is unclear about what an associate minister does much less why she was summoned or how she should act. She was instructed to bring with her any files she retained on the Galen letter and on her earlier truncated investigation into the Hamit family finances. She has no paper or digital files on either, and the voluminous materials she has gathered on the Hamits in the last month are neatly filed—but only in her brain.
“How are you, Tuğçe Hanim?” he asks, his voice deep and his tone, she believes, unfriendly.
“I’m good. And you?”
He tilts his head and nods but does not smile. “You have taken leave?”
She smiles nervously. “Two weeks, long overdue… My department head has been…encouraging…me to.” Her left foot is dancing so she strokes her sweaty palms on the thighs of her black pants and roots the offending foot into the plush carpet.
“But you have not gone on holiday?”
Iskan is not sure it is a question so she merely shakes her head, glances over his shoulder at the portrait of Ataturk gazing into the future, and, trying to slow her mind down, forces a smile.
He looks her in the eyes for the first time. “And yet you have been to Bergama twice.”
When she told Nihat Monoğlu that she had been summoned to the Ministry, he suggested to her that she should not lie—but also not actually tell the associate minister anything he didn’t already know. “Yes,” she says, “under a directive from my department head.”
“Your new department head.”
“Yes. The department I was transferred to last November.”
“The first time.” He clears his throat. “The second visit, there was no directive from your department.”
“No.” She feels herself flushing.
“You contacted Recep Ateş. What was that about?”
She focuses on the minister’s mole. “I found some inconsistencies in the numbering of reports the Bergama office submitted to the Ministry.”
The minister takes an iPhone from his pocket, glances at the screen, looks at her again, and says flatly, “But you were not instructed to do so.”
“I wasn’t.” she smiles, this time not forced. “I don’t like inconsistencies.” It’s entirely true, of course. “I’m always very careful to straighten things out.”
“I am, too,” he says. “What did you discover?”
“That three were misdirected. But it was relatively easy to put everything in order.”
“Good.” He taps his fingertips together. “Did you see Özlem Boroğlu while you were there?”
“I did.”
“Well?”
She looks at him as though she does not understand.
He places his hands flat on the desk. “Why?”
“She thinks…thought…I c
aused her firing. I wanted to set the record straight on that, too.”
He leans forward and stares at her. “And did you?”
“No.” She looks down at her hands, which she realizes she is wringing. “That was not easy. She is bitter. Hates me.”
He leans even farther forward, as though he is going to leap on her. “But you saw her on your second visit, too.”
“Just on the street.” Technically, it is true. “She was just as bitter.” She remembers Boroğlu stomping away when she asked her about the photo of her son and the Hamit boy. “Wouldn’t speak to me at all.” She is becoming less nervous. This is, it seems, all about the Galen letter, which she knows little about, and the Hamits, whom she will not talk about.
He nods. “So you did not speak to her about the earlier matter, the Ministry’s letter she has stolen. Either time in Bergama.”
She shakes her head. “I did not.”
“But you did handle the letter?”
“The copy the Ministry received, yes. I was the first to see it.”
“And?”
She knows that she is supposed to tell him something more, but she is not about to mention that she translated the document so that she could determine its contents. “Once I realized what it was,” she says, “I passed it on to my superior.”
He presses his palms on the desk and stares at her. “Did you alter the letter?”
“What? No.” Genuinely taken aback, she takes a quick breath. “Of course not.”
He keeps staring. “It was altered, the translation. After it arrived here.”
She makes eye contact. “I don’t know anything about that.”
He holds her eyes for a moment before saying, “Okay. What about the photo?”
“What photo?”
“The one of the statue.”
He’s fishing, but for what she isn’t sure. Becoming irritated, she struggles to keep her tone respectful as she says, “I don’t know anything about that either.”
“You haven’t seen it?”
“No.” She is aware that a photo of a long-lost bronze Pergamene statue is circulating on the web, but it wasn’t her concern. “I’ve been focused on my work.”
“It’s real, the photo,” he says matter-of-factly. “Boroğlu never mentioned it to you?”
“No. As I told you, she hates me. Won’t speak to me.”
He sits back in his chair. “The woman hates a lot of people in the Ministry.”
Iskan says nothing. This man is political and therefore dangerous, but he is not as well informed as he thinks.
“There’s another matter,” he says as he slips the phone back into his pants pocket. “One of your cases.”
She makes what she hopes is a quizzical expression.
“The Hamits. Antique dealers selling ISIL contraband. Antiquities.”
“Yes?” She wonders if her expression has held. “I barely got started…”
“Did you retain any files?” He is leaning forward again eyeing her.
“No,” she says, nodding as though she is trying to be helpful. “I gave everything to my supervisor. Before the New Year.”
“You have no more information?”
“Files? None.” Checking out the mole on his cheek, she adds, as though it should explain everything, “The case is closed.”
“Nothing?” His eyes are intense once more. “Nothing digital or paper?”
Although she has much in her memory, including how and where to relocate all the relevant information, she can be wholly truthful. “I turned in everything I had.” She pauses, for the first time, genuinely curious. “Should I have saved something?”
He smiles, which, she thinks, might actually be genuine. “No. I just needed to find out.” He presses his hands again on the desk, but his expression has become abruptly friendly—and it seems to her that she may have just passed some sort of test. “Your work, your skills are being buried in your department, aren’t they?”
Because the question also seems friendly, she is unsure how to respond. “I do my best,” she says. “Always.”
“I’m sure you do.” He sits back, hooks an elbow over the back of his chair, and looks at her from a different angle, seeming to appraise her. “I…we should find a position that will better suit your skills.”
She nods, confused not only by the change in his expression and voice but also by the implications of what he is saying. Unable to form a response, she feels her face flushing again.
“With some additional training,” he says, “you could do excellent work. Provide real service to our country.”
She can’t be sure but thinks he might be leering again.
“Well,” he concludes, “that’s a conversation for another day.” He rises from his chair and comes around the desk. By the time she stands, he is next to her. He is about her height and more muscular, much more fit, than she thought. “It has been good talking with you, Tuğçe,” he adds as he puts his hand on her shoulder.
She flinches. Since her experience with her husband, she has not liked men touching her. When she was a child, her father seldom hugged her. He was fair to her, never harmed her, but he was really only interested in his son, her older brother, who was an excellent footballer. When she was young, she played with the boys sometimes and was often able to keep up on the pitch, but any contact was just part of the game. By the time she was a teenager, boys no longer let girls play. And she never had a boyfriend. She was too smart in school, too isolated, and, when it came to all the social intricacies of teenaged courtship, too clueless. Her husband…well, his touch was never pleasant, and she learned to flee to a private garden in her mind.
The minister’s hand lingers too long on her shoulder, but she does not brush him off. As they turn toward the office door, he says, “Yes, Tuğçe, I am glad to meet you.” He places his hand in the small of her back as though he is escorting her. She can feel him gazing at her profile. “I’m sure we can find a position that better suits your abilities.”
41
ISTANBUL
Clare, the American lawyer, takes from the coffee table the gold amulet that rests on the black cashmere cloth in the center of the three flutes bubbling with champagne. As she inspects the gleaming image of Athena holding the head of Medusa, she says, “It’s beautiful.” Her hand is steady even though she is impressed with the piece—in fact, covets it. She looks across the posh apartment’s coffee table at the impeccable young man with the bright green eyes and adds, “And it’s just the sort of thing I was hoping for.”
Mustafa Hamit, who has been entrusted by his father to close this deal, smiles and nods. He has not even negotiated the price with the Americans, but he believes he has already got them. He lifts the flute closest to him, sips the Krug, and smiles at her.
She returns his smile and then turns slowly to her husband who sits with her on the plush beige couch. “Do you think we should take it, too?” she asks.
Too? Mustafa’s back stiffens and his smile freezes.
“Maybe,” Jack says without glancing at Mustafa. “If we can make certain arrangements.”
Certain arrangements! As he slips the flute back onto the table, Mustafa looks from the wife to the husband and back. This meeting was called on short notice and set up for the brief period of the Americans’ stopover in Istanbul before the couple’s return flight to Los Angeles. It was all seeming too easy, the couple so amiable and so willing to meet here at the apartment the family uses only for its especially private deals. And at the time he suggested. Adrenaline starts pulsing. “You have acquired something else in your travels?” he asks politely.
“We have,” she says, still smiling at him. “A Sekhmet amulet. I identify even more with her than with Athena.”
Mustafa nods. This woman may look l
ike an aging Barbie doll, but she identifies with the Egyptian warrior goddess, the fiercest of hunters, the Powerful One whose breath created the desert, the one who once in her bloodlust almost annihilated the human race, who only stopped the carnage when she became drunk on seven thousand jugs of beer colored by pomegranate to look like human blood. This deal could prove more difficult—and more interesting—than he expected. He knows from Serkan Boroğlu that when the couple cut short their Turkish tour, they visited Rhodes and other Aegean islands, but an ancient Sekhmet amulet shouldn’t have been available—or, if there was one on the market, he and his family should have known about it. His tone becoming even more polite, he says, “I didn’t know you visited Egypt.”
“We didn’t,” Clare answers. She cocks her head and looks into his eyes. “The piece is from the Bergama area. Finely wrought gold.”
Mustafa masks his rising anger. There is no way in hell a piece from Pergamon could have, should have, escaped his family’s notice and control. “A Sekhmet amulet?”
Clare holds his gaze. “Why, yes, an exquisite miniature similar to the statue being reconstructed at the Red Basilica in Bergama. Do you know it?”
“Yes,” Mustafa answers. He doesn’t add, Of course, you stupid bitch! Instead he says, “That’s very interesting. You bought it from a local dealer?”
“Yes,” Clare says, but she doesn’t add that she had the Sekhmet piece made for her. She inspects the Athena amulet closely, almost fondling it.
Mustafa looks at his manicured fingers as his mind races. His tone remains friendly, almost conspiratorial. “Did you have it authenticated?”
Clare’s smile turns up at the corners. “Oh, quite!” she says. “The provenance is clear.”
Mustafa keeps his voice even, although the ire inside is simmering. “The provenance can be, as you say in America, doctored.”
Clare glances at her husband who is leaning forward staring at Mustafa. “Oh, we know that, Mustafa!” she says. Her smile is fixed, but something in her voice is changing. Not unfriendly, but more businesslike.
