by Jay Amberg
“His vehicle,” Monoğlu says, “was found in the valley a few kilometers from here yesterday morning. But he wasn’t in it.”
“You haven’t seen him?” Iskan repeats.
“No.”
“We thought,” Iskan says, “he might have been on his way to see you.”
“He never came here.” Suner’s voice holds tension again.
“Okay,” she says. “Can you describe the fat man? The one you hit.”
“He has a bloody lip.”
Monoğlu smiles. “And?”
“He had a Turkish stomach.”
Monoğlu pats his own belly. “And?”
“Nothing special. Older, bald.” Suner smiles for the first time as he adds, “But nothing like you. He was soft. A ring on his little finger. Gold.” He shrugs. “Shiny shoes.”
“The ring, any markings?” she asks.
“I didn’t…”
“Where did it happen, the fight?” she asks. “Can you show us?”
“They came in… They just came onto my property without asking… Over there,” he says, turning toward the parlor.
As the three of them walk back toward the parlor, Iskan hears a televison tuned into some talk show. She says, “Get close. But don’t walk on the spot.”
“There,” he says, pointing with his hand holding the cigarette. “Right there.”
Three dark splotches of dried blood form a triangle in the dusty soil.
64
DIKILI, TURKEY
Wearing a blue tracksuit with white stripes, the Hamit family patriarch paces in the garden of his villa along the Aegean Sea near Dikili. It is early morning, the sun just risen, forty-eight hours after his son’s Range Rover was discovered parked along a side road seven kilometers out in the Kaikos Valley—near, but not all that near, three of the family properties. The patriarch has not shaved, which he normally does early each morning. This time of day is usually when he thinks most clearly, but he is struggling to link thoughts together. His son has disappeared before, once from Istanbul and twice from Chicago. All three were gambling binges, Monaco first and Las Vegas the next two times. But in all three cases, social media posts and credit card receipts left a trail. But now, nothing. The patriarch’s nephew, Bora, is checking the social media sites every half hour, and his banker has promised to call the moment there is any activity on the card. There’s absolutely nothing there either.
Although birds are singing, the patriarch doesn’t notice. His mind keeps jumping from scenario to scenario, all of them bad. The breeze is light enough that the leaves of the trees barely rustle. With villas to the north and south, the property is not isolated, but only bluff and beach stand between the villa and the Aegean. The smell of the sea only forty meters away does not reach him. He does not even hear the fountain gurgling next to him. The property’s two-and-a-half-meter walls topped with black iron rails and concertina wire are impregnable, but that’s no help whatsoever in this situation in which he needs news from the outside to reach him.
The local gendarma wanted to tow the Range Rover, but the patriarch sent Mustafa’s two Georgians to retrieve it. The crew he had dust the vehicle found only his prints, his son’s, his nephew’s, and those of the Dikili slut that his son bangs whenever he’s in town. The investigators he sent out into the fucking valley discovered Mustafa’s shoe prints leading from the driver’s door back onto the road where the car had been parked, but that’s it. And Mustafa’s phone, which he’s never without, has had no GPS signal since the Range Rover was found. Mustafa did not tell the two Georgians assigned to protect him anything about where he was going when they last saw him while they were staking out the Bergama hospital. They assumed he went to see his slut, which he did most nights. She was still asleep when the Georgians barged in on her an hour after the car was found. She admitted, under duress, that Mustafa said he was coming over, but he never arrived.
The patriarch’s cook, a bent old woman who served his father, brings out a steaming cup of tea and sets it on the glass-top table near the fountain. Still standing, the patriarch drops a single sugar cube into the cup. His shoulders are tight so he rolls his neck. While he stirs the tea with a demitasse spoon, he thinks again that someone Mustafa knew and trusted must have picked him up. But that’s absurd. The boy knew few people in the area—and trusted no one except family members, his bodyguards, and, maybe, the slut, who doesn’t even own a car. If there was any sign of trouble, he would have called his father. He always did whenever he was in a tough spot.
As the patriarch is sipping his tea, Bora comes out of the villa’s French doors, shaking his head. “Still no contact,” he says. “Not on any of the sites.”
The patriarch nods but doesn’t say anything. Although Bora has been dutiful the last two days, as he always is, he hasn’t turned up anything either. He reminds people of Mustafa, but the patriarch knows the two boys are not all that alike. He admires Bora’s willingness to take on any task assigned to him, no matter how difficult or unpleasant. The boy is bright, too, in his own way, but he’s not brilliant like Mustafa. And he lacks sophistication. He could never be the face of the family that the patriarch has groomed his son to be—the fifth generation of the Hamit Enterprises leadership.
When they hear shouting by the villa’s back gate, the patriarch knows by the anger in the voices that it’s not a celebration of Mustafa’s return.
“I’ll check it,” Bora says as he heads along the garden’s path.
The patriarch sets down his tea which tastes bitter despite the sugar. He stares at a bee hovering around the rosebushes. The petals’ red, the color of the Turkish flag, is brilliant in the morning light, but it fails to stir him. He has spent his adult life taking care of business, solving problems, making things happen, and he feels useless—worse, helpless.
Bora, who really does at a distance look like Mustafa, returns along the path leading two of the Georgians manhandling a scruffy man in rough jeans and a blue work shirt. The larger Georgian has the man’s left arm bent sharply behind his back. The shorter has the barrel of a Glock 19 jammed into the nape of the man’s neck.
“They found this,” Bora says, “trying to enter the gate after the gardeners.” He doesn’t add that he knows the man because he does not want his uncle to know about what happened two days ago when that fat turd from Istanbul fucked up the buyout.
The Georgian wrenches the man’s arm as he pushes him to his knees in front of the patriarch. Blood leaks from the man’s nose and lower lip.
For a moment, the patriarch thinks the man might have news of Mustafa.
“He was carrying this,” Bora says, holding up a knife with black tape wrapped around the haft. The fourteen-centimeter blade glints in the morning light.
“Why are you here?” the patriarch asks, his voice as even as he can make it.
As the man looks up at the patriarch, his eyes gleam with hatred. His face is swollen and discolored, which can’t be the work of the Georgians just now.
When the smaller Georgian kicks him in the stomach, the man falls over, curls up, and gasps for breath. The patriarch waits until the man, still panting like a dog, uncurls. “I asked you a question,” he says. As the Georgian plants his foot to kick the man again, the patriarch shakes his head once. “Are you here about my son?” The patriarch nods, and the Georgians raise the man again to his knees. “Are you?” the patriarch repeats.
The man’s eyes, squinting with pain, fire. “Your son?” He spits blood onto the flagstones and tries to catch his breath. “My son!”
“What?” The patriarch fails to keep his voice cold.
The man coughs up more blood. “You murdered my son!”
The patriarch has had the sons of his enemies dealt with over the years, but he has no idea who this man is. Turning to Bora, he asks, “Any ID?”
The patriarch clenches his fist and screams, “Where is my son?”
Still bent over, the man raises his head. His eyes meet the patriarch’s. “My son is dead! You murdered him!” There is no fear in the man’s eyes. None.
Bora cuffs the man’s head with the back of his hand.
“No!” the patriarch says, glowering at Bora. “Let him speak!”
The man cocks his head, glares at Bora. “The funicular! You had my son murdered. My father-in-law. All of those people. You destroyed my family…”
“I had nothing to do with…,” the patriarch begins, but then stops himself. He never explains himself or his actions to anyone, and certainly not to some farmer from out in the valley.
Bora punches the man in the ear.
The man does not fall over again.
“Stop!” the patriarch shouts at Bora. “You…,” he says to the man, his voice gone cold, “who told you that?”
The man glowers up at him, sniffs at the blood, but does not raise his hand to wipe it away.
“Who told you that?” the patriarch snarls.
The man does not blink. “The investigator from the Ministry.”
“What investigator?” The veins in the patriarch’s neck bulge. “What ministry?”
“The woman from Ankara.”
“A woman?” The patriarch’s tone is both angry and skeptical.
The man looks from the patriarch to Bora and back. “Yes.” He starts to smile through his bloody teeth, as though his words are the blade of a knife cutting toward truth. “They did not give me their names.” His eyes do not blink as the blade twists. “She showed me her ID, but so fast that I didn’t see the name.”
The patriarch runs his upper teeth over his lower lip. “They?”
“An older man was with her. Worked for her.”
“You’re sure?”
Still unblinking, the man says nothing.
The vein in the patriarch’s neck pulses. “The man worked for the woman?” The possibilities—the probabilities—are vile. He has been warned that the current investigation comes from high up, but it was supposed to be stopped already. Politicians—they are inherently untrustworthy, always serving their own interests first… Not as bad as extremists… But this! He has paid a lot of money for a long time to protect the family’s interests. Retribution must be swift and fierce.
The patriarch’s breath catches in his throat. Could Ministry agents have picked up Mustafa out there in the valley? Was there a meeting? Is that what happened? The log of Mustafa’s cell phone showed no calls after he left the Georgians ouside the hospital—and really nothing but routine calls before that. Are Ministry agents trying to turn Mustafa? He wouldn’t cave… But Mustafa, for all of his excellent qualities, does have weaknesses. Could he stand up to intense interrogations? Death threats? Will they find out that Mustafa and Bora were providing logistical support to the ISIL terrorist? “You lost your son in the bombing?” he says to the bloody, kneeling man. It’s not really a question. “Your only son?”
The man doesn’t say anything, but the answer is in his eyes.
“You won’t believe me,” the patriarch says, his voice low, soothing, “but I’m sorry for your loss.” He finds himself almost believing his own words. He looks down at the man. He has that rural toughness that the patriarch’s own grandfather had. He’ll never tell them more than he already has, never bargain, never plead, never grovel. His grief has made him dangerous. The patriarch takes a breath before glowering at the larger Georgian. “Take him to the farmhouse,” he commands. “Do not hurt him unless he struggles. We will need to speak to him again later.”
As the Georgians lift the man to his feet and turn him, the patriarch leans close to Bora and whispers, “Break him. Then, kill him.” His voice is weary. “He knows too much.” He can finally hear the fountain. Even the bees. He is no closer to understanding what has happened to Mustafa than he was before the man appeared, but he is at least finally doing something—fixing a problem for the family.
65
KAIKOS VALLEY
Bora, the Hamit patriarch’s nephew, paces behind the ramshackle farmhouse. He stops near the rusted wheel of a broken-down farm wagon and looks at the cell phone he only uses for family calls. Unable to get any more than two bars anywhere in the vicinity, he calls his uncle, even though he knows the poor reception will anger the man. When he hears a scream, he glances at the open cellar door. The farmhouse is isolated, far out along a dirt road, and so the screams don’t matter. There are no curious neighbors, and vehicles only pass this way once in a while. In the time the Georgians have worked the farmer over, they have gotten almost no information out of him, but Bora has to make his report anyway.
When the patriarch answers, Bora asks, “Is there any news?”
“No.”
Although Bora waits a few seconds, his uncle says nothing more. “We’ve got something here,” he says.
“What?” Again, there is nothing more.
Bora sets his left cross-trainer on the wheel’s rim. Tall, yellow wildflowers wave on the fallow land beyond the decrepit barn. “The farmer admitted there was a Russian.”
“A Russian?” Ire surges through the phone.
“Yes.” Before his uncle can interrupt, he adds, “He’s not coherent…” The screams from the cellar have stopped—for the moment. “But a Russian’s definitely involved…somehow.”
“Vlad? What fucking Russian?”
“No name… Just, ‘the Russian.’ The investigators apparently mentioned the Russian a couple of times.” Bora isn’t sure how many times, but he will not let his uncle know that. He looks over at the van they used to transport the farmer and, earlier, the Irishman. They have parked it between the barn and the olive trees where it cannot be seen from the road.
“Find…” Bora’s uncle says more, but it’s indecipherable over the phone’s static.
Afraid to ask his uncle to repeat himself, Bora says, “Okay. Okay!”
The line goes dead. Bora waits for his uncle to call back, but he does not. Find out…what? he wonders. He stuffs the phone into his jeans pocket. Something…something more! But getting more information out of the farmer will be like squeezing juice from a turnip. The man won’t survive much more of the Georgians’ work, and he probably doesn’t even know anything more. His description of the woman—blonde, athletic, intense, authoritative—doesn’t fit anyone in any of the higher levels of any of the ministries his uncle deals with. And, the description of the man—stocky, bald, tough—fits practically everyone.
As Bora heads down the dilapidated wooden steps to the cellar, four figures rise out of the wildflowers. Each is dressed in camouflage, each has his face covered by a ski mask, and each carries in a gloved hand a 9mm automatic pistol with a sound suppressor. The figure on the left also has an M416 carbine, the one on the right an MP7 submachine gun.
The cellar’s twilight outlines the farmer, stripped to the waist and trussed between two pillars, as though he has been crucified in midair. His ankles are bound, and, no longer able to stand, he sags forward and to his left. Each wrist is tied, the ropes extended to the pillars, but all of the farmer’s weight hangs from his dislocated right shoulder. Four of his fingers are also dislocated, bent backward at angles, the result of a series of questions the farmer failed to answer. His head is bowed, and blood runs down his chest over the burn marks made by the smaller Georgian’s cigar. The farmer’s breath rattles erratically.
Bora nods to each of the Georgians, who have themselves removed their shirts and pants so that their clothes don’t get splattered with blood. Without the use of high-tech gadgets or, for that matter, any equipment, even pliers, they have already reduced the far
mer to something far less than a man. Their torture is fast, simple, efficient—and brutal. They did not put out the farmer’s eyes or cut off his ears because Bora wanted him to experience the mutilation with all of his senses. The farmer has pissed himself and shit his pants, but that’s to be expected.
Shadows dim the light from the door. Six quick pops, and both Georgians collapse into the cellar’s dirt. Bora barely turns before bullets strike him in the left eye and chest. The convulsing stops within seconds. The leader gestures for each of the two men on his flanks to go up the stairs and maintain the perimeter with their fourth teammate. They all keep their masks on. “All clear,” he says into his body mic. “Send in the investigator.” He surveys the cellar with his body cam, but touches nothing, not even the wretch who is strung up.
As Tuğçe Iskan descends the steps into the cellar’s dimness, she is met by gunsmoke, the odor of rot, the smell of men—living and dead—and the stench of piss and shit, new and old. She scans the place carefully, noting the detritus: the dusty, discarded, plastic liter water bottles; the blue plastic pail; the crumpled brown-paper bags; and the three bodies akimbo in the dirt.
“Nothing,” she asks the team leader, “has been disturbed?” She has never seen any of the team members’ faces. She came in a separate black SUV that halted two kilometers from the site. Although there was radio contact, she saw nothing. All she knew, all she knows, is that the men, including the paramedics who will arrive any moment, are retired special forces veterans.
“Nothing,” the team leader says. “We will clean the place as soon as you are finished here.”
His voice sounds familiar. She looks at his eyes—brown, narrow, intense—and is sure she has seen them before.
Looking away from her, the team leader steps back into the shadows.
She follows him with her eyes. She thought this was her op. She was told it was. Or was it just an audition? At least, it was her idea. Or was it Nihat’s? She can remember exactly where they had the conversation but not exactly who said what. And in any case, the execution of the op was entirely out of her hands. She rode in the command vehicle, but she gave no commands. She wasn’t even a spectator to any of it. And now—now Mehmet’s father hangs half-dead before her. She is responsible for him—responsible, too, for the corpses on the floor.
