by Chuck Dixon
Two days into the strict regimen, it was debatable who was sicker of it, the prisoners, or the guards.
The lockdown was called off, and they were soon back to regular meal rotations and outdoor exercise during daylight hours. Football resumed, along with the smuggling, pimping, payoffs, and other illicit activities barely hidden from plain view. Games and commerce rolled on, not the slightest bit discouraged by the intermittent cold drizzle from the overcast sky.
Levon stayed by the edge of the football pitch, seated on the wooden bench with a few other men. He feigned divided interest in the game and a paperback book with a garish cover showing a woman dressed only in leather chaps using a bullwhip to strangle an unshaven cowboy. It was in Greek, which he couldn’t read.
He sat at the end of the bench, half-turned from the game play on the field. This allowed him a vantage point to watch the front of Hut 2 through a gap between two barracks buildings.
Levon knew what Mehmet Sadıkoğlu looked like without help from Klaus. His target was indeed a famous man in Turkey. Levon had been able to find photos of him in some of the Turkish language tabloids that were all over the camp.
Toward the end of the day’s second game, Levon saw a trio of guards approach Hut 2. They undid the locks, and hammered on the wall with truncheons. Thirty or more men filed out from inside. Levon pocketed his paperback and made his way in an easy walk to the alley between the buildings that stood across from Number Two. Sadıkoğlu was harder to pick out of the group than Levon had anticipated. A number of the men had the same slight build, carefully trimmed beard, and wire eyeglasses that the journalist had in his photos.
It was the deference the other prisoners showed him that sorted Sadıkoğlu from the pack. He had gangsta cred in his own world that the others bowed to. He took up the lead spot in the march for the dining hall, a guard walking either side of him as escorts.
The man bore himself like the first among equals, wearing his oppression as a badge of honor, a résumé enhancer. He was a prisoner, but a special one—a man who posed such danger to the people in power that he needed to be removed from society, but at the same time, kept safe from harm. There could be no risk taken of this man becoming a martyr. When the political winds blew the other way one day, he would be freed, and these days, having been a prisoner of the state would be a subject for dinner parties.
Levon broke into a trot and then an open run to intercept the head of the column of men. The guards were slow to react, perhaps thinking this sprinting man was chasing a runaway ball.
With his full weight behind it, he drove the heel of his hand up under the chin of the nearest guard. The man’s feet left the ground and he went flying.
Even before that guard struck hard on his back, Levon had made a rigid claw of his left hand and driven the hard edge of his knuckles into the throat of the next guard.
He ripped the lead-weighted truncheon from the second guard’s wrist with a snap of the leather thong that secured it there.
The third guard was charging for him, truncheon raised and shouting for backup. Levon struck him in the knee with his borrowed truncheon and laid him out with a tap behind the ear.
Through all this, Mehmet Sadıkoğlu looked on as a spectator the way the other prisoners did. It wasn’t until Levon had yanked him close to put the smooth wood of the truncheon across his throat that he realized the guards were not the true target of the attack.
Pulling the smaller man before him in a chokehold, Levon backed between Huts 2 and 4. He gripped Sadıkoğlu firmly but not painfully. He could smell the fear coming off him. The man’s hands slapped the air impotently. The other occupants of Hut 2 followed at a distance, but only to gawk.
Levon’s mouth was close to the journalist’s ear so as to be heard over the building roar of voices and whoop of sirens from the yard.
“Do you speak English?” Levon whispered.
The man nodded as much as Levon’s hold would allow, his chin prodding the American’s forearm.
“Someone wanted me to kill you. I’m warning you instead.”
The gap between the buildings closed, with three guards parting the gawkers before spreading out to block the way. One of them was the guard he’d bull-rushed to the ground. There was blood in the man’s teeth, and his face was a mask of bestial fury. Behind them, prisoners regathered to watch the show. Levon turned his head enough to see more guards behind him, preventing further retreat.
“What do you want from me?” the smaller man asked. His voice squeaked.
“You need to be isolation. Solitary.” Levon relaxed his grip a bit.
“How do I do that?”
“We’re going to fight the guards together.”
“They will beat me.”
“Not as bad as they’re going to beat me.” With that, Levon shoved Sadıkoğlu toward the guards in front of him.
The journalist made a half-hearted swipe at a guard before being shoved to the ground and kept there under a flurry of kicks.
With the same motion he used to fling the little man away, Levon whirled, throwing the truncheon to crack off the skull of a charging guard. That man went down, unconscious, and two more guards stumbled over him. That gave Levon time to close the gap. He tackled a guard, lifting him bodily to use a ram on the phalanx that had filled the narrow alley. He fell in a scrum of kicking legs and swinging batons.
A sudden burning pain seared across his back to turn his vision red around the edges. He still gripped the guard he had tackled, and they shared the charge of the taser contacts now stuck to the back of Levon’s damp coat.
Levon tumbled off the man to lie on his back. Hands shaking in an uncontrollable palsy, he could see the Prick approaching. There was a smile on the man’s face. The Prick released his spent taser from his gloved hand to accept another one, fully charged, from a guard behind him. The man’s thin smile broadened, showing tobacco-stained teeth as he straightened his arm. The guards around Levon backed away as the second taser was discharged, the contacts flying toward Levon on loops of thin cable.
The fire in his muscles was stoked higher. His back arched, his form rigid with pain. A barked command came through the drumbeat of his pulse—the Prick calling in the jackals.
Boots, fists, and truncheons rained down, barely felt through the electrical fire from the twin taser shots. He did his best to raise his arms to protect his head and curl his body to shield his guts and loins.
After a while, it didn’t matter. The fire died away, and the light went with it.
37
Amalia was reminded of Kiko.
Kiko was a kitten, a little black kitten, she had found when she was a child. She had been maybe five or six years old. She found the tiny thing in the weeds behind the house she lived in with her father and mother and sisters and brothers. A house? More of a shack, a single room with stacked cinder block walls and an aluminum-sheet roof. Her father said it was all he could afford on his pay from working on the pipeline, but there was always money for beer and cigarettes. Always money for him to play cards.
She kept the kitten hidden in a shed that stood against the fence that surrounded her yard. At each meal, she would save a mouthful, spitting it into her hand once she was away from the others. She slipped back to the shed to feed the kitten. Kept a cracked saucer of water filled for the little one to drink.
At night, she prayed that Kiko would not cry out or scratch at the door. She prayed her father would not find Kiko.
Her prayers to God, Jesus, and the virgin Maria bought Kiko five days.
Amalia’s father came home late from the pipeline one night. He was drunk, but not insensate enough to miss the mews coming from inside the shed. Kiko came to him, hungry still, rubbing against the leg of his work pants.
He killed the kitten with a brick. Amalia found it the next morning before school. She dug a grave and marked it with flowering weeds. Her mother yelled at her because her hands and knees were dirty.
Amalia thought of Kiko
now because of her new secret. The phone the boys had given her was something she had to keep from the eyes of everyone. Her children would ask too many questions. They would tell others, as children do. She would not tell her husband since she would have to explain it to him. It would not help his failing health to be worried over the threats the boys had made. She did not want him anxious that they were unsafe. He was not strong enough.
She swaddled the phone and charger in a towel to mute the occasional beeps it made. Amalia knew little of these phones. Some of the women at the sneaker plant owned them. She wished she’d been more curious, asked more questions. To be interested now might seem suspicious.
A few times it rang. She answered it each time, and each time, it was men speaking in Spanish or English. Always laughing. Always saying terrible things. Was this the world of Al-Obama? Was this where her little girl was now?
When it was safe, she would open the phone on her own. She understood enough to know that the tiny bar at the top corner of the screen represented the battery life. It was already nearly halfway down from when the boys had given it to her three days before. How could that be, from answering just a few calls? Perhaps opening it to check the screen used power.
She was so alone. Amalia wished she could share her secret with someone. Someone who might have an idea to help her. Or just someone to pray with, to tell her not to worry so. There was no one she trusted enough for that.
She worried that the phone might run out of power when she was at home and far from an electrical outlet. Amalia would have to recharge it at the plant. It was like a living thing, a thing to be guarded and fed.
Like Kiko.
And in one way, it was alive. It was a lifeline to her daughter. If it rang, it meant her little girl was alive. If it rang, it meant that Amalia would not have to repay the men who took Esperanza. If it rang, it meant Carlito would stay with the family.
She arrived at work early and made her way to her assigned station at a long row of women seated on stools and bent over machines to sew soles to sneakers. It was one of many rows under the fluorescent lights that hung from the ceiling of the cavernous room. The woman who worked her station overnight was still there. Today it was jogging shoes in a rainbow of colors on a pink rubber sole. The hundreds of machines created a random rhythm like rainfall on a metal roof. Cardboard cartons sat by each stool, loaded with finished sneakers.
A section supervisor stopped to speak to Amalia. He lifted one cup of his ear protectors and asked why she was so early. She explained that the walk was cooler before the sun rose. He nodded and moved on.
There was an open outlet under the lip of the worktable near her station. She eyed it with hungry eyes, imagining the little bar on the phone in her pocket shrinking and shrinking toward zero. Other workers from the day shift drifted in to help themselves to coffee or stand along the walls talking.
The klaxon sounded, and the women along the tables rose to leave. Amalia rushed in to take her stool. The woman at her station made a remark Amalia did not hear. Others laughed. She had seen this woman twice a day for the past five years, yet she did not know her name. She forced a smile for her departing co-worker before turning to her machine.
Before the rest of her shift could reach the table, she had the phone and charger out of her smock. She plugged the box in and rested the phone and cord on a ledge under the table. Her knee could touch the underside of the ledge. She hoped she would feel the vibration of it ringing through the metal surface.
The full cartons of completed joggers were taken away and replaced by empty cartons. Soles and shoe tops came down the conveyor that ran through the center of the long table. It would run all day at a crawl. Thousands of sneakers would be completed each day at this station alone, and tens of thousands more across the whole of the plant. Today was men’s size seven. Smaller shoe. Less sewing. The supervisor would expect Amalia to fill two cartons before her ten-hour shift was done.
The mindless work went on, a set rhythm that would only be interrupted by the midday break for lunch and an evening break for dinner. The company provided the meals, but watched the workers carefully to make sure there was no pilfering. They had no interest in feeding anyone but the workers. It always made Amalia think of Kiko.
Somewhere in the world outside, the sun had come up. The fans above them whirled to life to add an ambient drone to the tap-tap-tap of the machines. She pressed her knee hard up on the ledge. She would never hear the phone over the din of the plant.
She left her station to line up for the midday meal. Each section was called in turn and given twenty minutes to eat a prepared sandwich or a bowl of rice and beans. Sometimes there was sliced oranges or mango. Everything was washed down with a watery fruit drink. They cleaned their hands afterward at a long trough and dried them on towels handed to them by an attendant. There was no time to wash their hands before they ate, but they were not allowed to return to work without doing so.
It was not until Amalia had received her paper-wrapped sandwich and drink that she realized she had forgotten the phone. She put her lunch down on a table and ran back to her station through a group of women from another section approaching for their own meal. She sprinted between the rows of long tables to see Señor Kim standing at her stool.
He was standing at her stool with the phone and charger in his hand.
She approached him, eyes lowered and offering apologies. He was scowling at her, displeased, scolding her in sing-song Spanish. This row and the one next to it was shut down for the midday meal. The machines were silent.
Silent enough for her to hear the insistent buzzing of the phone in Señor Kim’s hand.
Without a conscious thought, she lunged forward to grab the phone from her supervisor’s hand. His face was a mask of outraged surprise, but Amalia didn’t care. She ran from him, the phone open and pressed to her ear.
“Esperanza? Mi niña! Mi niña!”
38
Gunny Leffertz said:
“A good beating’s like a good drunk. Only hurts the next morning.”
He came around feeling pain in every joint and muscle. There was a copper taste in his mouth. He was naked, and his flesh was greasy with a sheen of sweat mixed with his own blood. He was seated in a straight-back chair, his wrists secured behind it and the chain looped through the slats. He kept his eyes closed and his ears open.
It was an enclosed room, deeper than it was wide, with a low ceiling. He could smell fresh tobacco smoke over a background scent of sweat and garlic. Urgent electronic voices issued from a speaker at the end of a room. When they were joined by a female voice, he opened one eye a crack.
A uniformed guard sat at the far end of the room, lounging back in a rolling office chair, his feet up on a desk. He was watching an obviously American television show dubbed in Turkish. A cop show. Two men in ties with guns and badges speaking to a woman in a low-cut blouse with an athletic body and a Botoxed face. There was a bank of surveillance monitors or rather, a bank where monitors should be. The recesses for the screens were cut in the facia board, but no electronics had been installed. The only screen was the one on the laptop.
All of the cameras across the camp were dummies. That explained why Levon wasn’t suspected of the two killings in the shower building. He closed the eye again and feigned a sleep that became real.
A finger prodded his jaw. A man was speaking.
“Kukola? You want? Can have this.”
Levon opened his eyes to the same guard he had seen watching TV earlier. The man was smiling and holding up a red and white can of Coca-Cola.
“Kukola? Is good?”
Levon nodded. The man popped the top and levered the can so Levon could slurp a few mouthfuls.
The metal door of the room banged open. The Prick entered and crossed the room in three strides to swipe the soda from the guard’s hand with a swing of his rattan stick. A younger guard followed him and watched as the Prick dressed down the first guard in harsh terms. The kind
guard, the good cop, was ordered from the room. The Prick closed the laptop with the tip of his stick and took a seat in the swivel chair.
“The commander will ask you questions through me. I speak English. Do you understand?” the younger guard asked. He had a touch of Cambridge in his adopted accent.
“Yeah, I understand.” Levon’s voice was a croak. He was dehydrated.
“Very good. Excellent.” The younger guard turn to the Prick, who muttered a question for him to translate for the prisoner and then translate back. The exchange went on like this for a while.
“Why did you attack that man?”
“He reminded me of someone. Someone I don’t like.”
“But he is not this man, this man you dislike.”
“I was mistaken.”
“And this man you dislike is here? Is a prisoner?”
“No. He’s probably back in Toronto. Fucker owes me money.”
In response to the translated reply, the Prick waved the end of his stick at Levon, pointing there, there, and there.
“You have many scars.”
“I get in a lot of fights.”
“You are here for fighting. You like this fighting?”
“It’s just something that seems to happen. Some guys get the girls. I get into fights.”
“Some of these are bullet wounds.”
“Sometimes it’s those kind of fights.”
The Prick’s frown deepened. He growled further questions.
“This other man, the one you attacked, says he doesn’t know you.”
“I told you that. I don’t know him. He doesn’t know me. I just lost it. You know what ‘lost it’ means?”
“We think this story is a lie. You both are lying. We will hold you until the truth is told.”
That meant they were keeping Sadıkoğlu in a cell in this building. He was safe for now. The truth would probably come out eventually, but not from Levon. He had no cause to trust anyone here. Not Sadıkoğlu. Not the guards. And certainly not the Chechen. For all he knew, Levon was supposed to kill this journalist, then be killed himself. If Sadıkoğlu died at the hands of another prisoner, a Western-born one at that, the government’s hands were clean. There was no other reason why a thug like the Chechen would want some anti-Erdoğan reporter dead. It was the scenario that made the most sense.
