The Eighth Day (22 page)

“But he wasn’t
in
it?” Danny’s heart danced in his chest.

The man shook his head. “He let his housekeeper borrow the car. She was a college student.”

Danny’s heart sank. Was he responsible? Probably. He’d given the list of Terio’s phone calls to Zebek. “So who—?”

The man expelled a puff of air. “Who knows? With the Kurds, it’s like . . .” He paused, trying to think of the right phrase. After a moment, he turned to the woman.
“Qu’est-que-c’est ‘un panier de crabes’?”

“ ‘A basket of crabs,’ ” Donata replied. She turned to Danny. “You have this expression in English?”

Danny shook his head.

“Well,” the man told him, “it’s very bad. And very complicated. Maybe Remy writes something someone doesn’t like. The PKK. The military. A faction within a faction. Who knows? The result is the same. He’s gone.”

Donata said, “Remy did call, after the car bomb, to say that he would not be available for a while.” She turned toward the man. “How did he put it?”

A bittersweet smile played on the man’s lips. He mumbled something in French, then cocked his head, obviously translating. “He says he has to keep his head down.” He ducked his own head by way of illustration. “You see?”

Danny nodded.

“So we know he is all right, for the moment,” Donata said. “I think maybe he’s just gone home. His people—they live there. And they’re close. Like a fist,” she added.

“You mean the Yezidis,” Danny said.

Donata looked surprised. “Exactly.”

“And where is that?” Danny asked. “His home.”

“Uzelyurt,” the man replied.

Danny blinked.

Donata laughed. “You don’t know Uzelyurt?”

He shook his head.

“Well, it’s about as far east as you can go and still be in Turkey,” she told him.

“And you think he might be there?” Danny asked.

She pursed her lips. “I think, yes. It’s where he’s
from
. His family is there—old, powerful.” She shrugged. “So maybe that’s where he goes.” She frowned. “
Probably
that’s where he goes. But he could be in Paris. He lived there for many years.” She thought about it. “To be honest, he could be anywhere.”

“But if it was important—
really important
—where would you look for him?”

Donata looked at her colleague and shrugged. “I’d start in the east.”

“I mean, this place you mentioned—Oozleyurd—what’s it near?”

The older man snorted derisively, spelled out the name of the town, then patted the few strands of hair on his head, as if to make sure they were still there. “It’s near nothing,” he said. “It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

On the way back to the Asian Shore, Danny’s sense of progress began to erode. Unless he was willing to set off for the “middle of nowhere” on the off chance that Remy Barzan might be there and might have something useful to say, he’d reached a dead end. Then again, he
was
already in Turkey, so maybe it was a matter of “in for a penny, in for a pound.”

When he asked if Hasan could show him the location of Uzelyurt, the kid pulled out a battered motor club map of the Turkish republic. He smoothed out the creases, consulted the printed guide, then drew one finger down from P and another across from 12. The fingers met at a dot about an inch to the right of a place called Diyarbakir.

Hasan frowned. “You want to go
there
?” he asked. The idea seemed to cause him pain.

Danny shrugged. “I don’t know. Is it hard to get to?”

“It’s a long flight—but there’s nothing there. Checkpoints. Curfew. It’s dangerous. Why would you go?”

Danny ignored the question. “When you say it’s dangerous—”

“It’s a civil war. This city, Diyarbakir, it’s all Kurds. The newspapers say the war is over, the army wins. But this is only during the day. At night, it’s criminals. Terrorists.”

Danny thought about this for a moment and asked, “But if I had to go—if it was business—how would I do it?”

“You mean, to Uzelyurt?”

Danny nodded.

Hasan considered. “Well, you’d have to fly to Diyarbakir, then . . . I don’t know. Maybe a bus. Or a taxi, if you can get one.” Seeing his guest consider the possibility, Hasan repeated his objection. “But I am telling you: There is nothing. No business, even. No tourist sight. Steppe only.” Then the desk clerk sharpened his gaze. “You go to Topkapi?”

Danny shook his head.

“Aya Sofia?”

“Not yet.”

“Blue Mosque?”

“No.”

Hasan refolded the map. Then he twisted his face into a sad and disapproving look. “You don’t go to Aya Sofia—which is builded in the
sixth
century and is right here next to the hotel, a UNESCO treasure of the world—you don’t go there, but you go to
Uzelyurt
?”

“It’s just an idea,” Danny told him with a smile. “And I
will
check out Topkapi and the rest. But, first, I think I’ll have a drink. Is the roof garden open?”

“Of course,” Hasan replied, and gestured graciously toward the stairs.

Climbing to the third floor, Danny stepped out onto the roof, where half a dozen tables sat beneath big umbrellas overlooking the great, tumbling waterscape that was Istanbul. Taking a table, he asked the waiter for a glass of sweetened apple tea. As Danny sat down, it occurred to him that this was the most foreign place that he had ever been—and, under the circumstances, the loneliest.

A small group of backpackers sat nearby in the shade of a green umbrella. In flat midwestern accents punctuated with laughter, they talked about Lebanese hash, the best clubs in Bodrum, and the cheapest pensions in Ephesus. Danny envied their camaraderie and the feeling of immunity that came off them like warmth from an oven.

His tea was delicious. Gazing out at the ships on the Golden Horn, he had an overwhelming urge to call Caleigh but found the gumption to resist it. Seeing a copy of the
International Herald Tribune
abandoned on a nearby table, he reached for it and signaled the waiter for a second glass of tea. Then he sat back in his seat and opened the paper to the sports section. He was thinking that he’d read for a while, then walk over to the Aya Sofia. Afterward he’d go to a travel agency and buy a ticket to Diyarbakir for the next day. But as he sat there, sipping his tea and reading about Barry Bonds’s home-run spree, an argument broke out in the lobby, two floors below.

Soon the argument became a shouting match. The backpackers fell silent, exchanging glances and giggles, while Danny strained to hear what was being said. But the argument ended before he could understand a word. There was a clipped shout and a cry of pain, followed by the thud of feet pounding up the stairs to the second floor. Then . . . silence, ending in a sudden crash that Danny knew—he just
knew
—was the door to his room, splintering. Getting to his feet, he looked wildly around but saw in an instant that there was nowhere to hide and nowhere to run. The only way off the roof was to take the stairs or jump—which was suicide, either way.

“Vaff!”

“Dove e lui?!”

“Porco mondo!”

Danny didn’t know what the words meant, but they were unmistakably Italian, and he was pretty sure they were coming from his room or just outside it. His eyes scanned the rooftop for something he could use as a weapon, but he saw nothing that would help. One of the backpackers had a walking stick, but a club wasn’t going to cut it. Not with these guys. At a minimum, he’d need a chain saw or a Glock. Both would be better.

Walking quickly to the edge of the roof, he judged the distance to a chestnut tree outside the hotel. If he got up to speed and launched himself, he could probably make it—though whether he’d be able to hang on or not was a separate question. Not that it mattered. The roof was edged by a low wall, about six inches high, making a flat-out run impossible. What began as a long jump became a broad jump in the end—and an impossible one at that.

Then they were there—not on the roof but standing in the street, outside the hotel. Pausing in the shade of the chestnut tree, the Brow and his friend seemed uncertain about which way to go or what to do. To his horror, Danny saw they were standing next to a menu stand advertising the roof garden’s delights. If they noticed it, the Italians would undoubtedly want to check it out.

But they didn’t notice.

The Brow removed a cell phone from his pocket, flipped it open, and punched in a number. While he waited for the phone to ring, he raised his eyes to the hotel’s upper floors and slowly scanned the windows, left to right. Then someone must have answered, because the Brow shook off his stillness in an instant. Suddenly animated, he spun around on the ball of his foot and, leaning into the phone, began an urgent conversation that lasted no more than twenty seconds. Then he shoved the phone back in his pocket and headed off with his friend in the direction of the Blue Mosque.

Danny exhaled.
Jesus Christ,
he thought,
it’s like Butch Cassidy or something. Who
are
these guys?

Taking the stairs to the second floor, he saw at a glance that the door to his room was hanging off its hinges. Going down to the lobby, he found Hasan sitting on the floor with his back against the front desk and a bloody handkerchief pressed to his nose. Behind him, a frightened housekeeper pleaded with someone on the telephone.

The desk clerk looked up. “I think they saw you come in.”

“Who?” Danny asked.

“The Italians. They ask for your room. I don’t want to tell them, but . . .” He winced in pain.

“It’s okay.”

Hasan regarded him over the top of his handkerchief. “You were up on the roof?”

Danny nodded.

The desk clerk chuckled, but it cost him, and he winced. “He hit me.”

“I can see that.”

Hasan cast his eyes toward the ceiling, tilting his head back in an effort to stop the bleeding. “I think it’s broken.”

Danny nodded. “I know. Listen, Hasan—” He wanted to thank him.

The desk clerk gestured toward the room where Danny had breakfasted that morning. “You can go out the back way, through the garden. There’s an alley behind the gate.” As Danny turned to leave, he added, “But I have to ask . . .”

Danny paused and looked back. “What’s that?”

“The minibar. Did you use it?”

The alley took him out to a leafy street of carpet shops, cafés, and small hotels. There were really only two ways to go, he saw. He could walk uphill in the direction of the Aya Sofia’s massive dome, or he could follow the same street down to the highway that ran along the water’s edge. If he was lucky, he might find a cab that would take him to the airport.

If he was lucky . . . Danny considered the possibility. If he was
lucky
he wouldn’t be looking over his shoulder on a street called Yeni Sarachane Sok.

He headed uphill past the ancient church and caught a glimpse of Topkapi Palace off to his right. Then a little park with a forlorn zoo, followed by a couple of blocks of cheap “pansiyons,” some kebab shops and stores, then downhill toward the docks at Eminönü.

Turning a corner, he came upon the Basilica Internet Cafe & Laundromat and stopped inside to see if Mamadou had come up with anything. Ordering a cup of coffee, he sat down at one of the computers and logged onto Yahoo. Nearby, a grizzled old man sat beside a washing machine, reading a battered Penguin paperback, while a young woman stood a few feet away, folding polo shirts and underwear.

There wasn’t much in the way of mail. Most of it was spam, promising to get him out of debt or offering to hook him up with “the horniest chixxx on the Web!!!” There was a string of bad jokes forwarded by his brother Kev and, finally, what he was looking for:

Sender
[email protected]
Subject
Your Big Problem

Zebek’s trying to KILL you? You gotta be kidding! He’s one of Fellner’s best clients. I think we billed him close to half a million last year. What did you *do* to him, anyway?

Assuming this isn’t a joke, has it occurred to you that you might want to call the cops? Because I don’t see how a credit report’s gonna help. But if that’s what you want . . . I’ll get on it. Meantime, I looked at a couple of databases, and what I got was this:

Zerevan Khalil Zebek: Born: June 6, 1966. Azizi, Turkish Republic. Baccalaureate degree (Business Economics and Management) Università di Ca’Foscari, Venice, Italy, 1987. MBA Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1989. Residence: Palazzo di Pavone, Siena, Italy. Director, Zebek Holdings, Plc (Liechtenstein); CEO, Sistemi di Pavone, S.A. (Siena). No criminal record in the U.S. or Italy.

Very Small Systems, Inc.: subsidiary of Sistemi di Pavone. Sistemi controlled by bearer shares, which are probably parked with the Liechtenstein holding company. (No way to know.)

Kroll did a report on VSS about a year ago, but I couldn’t get it. Some Japanese
zaibatsu
(is there any other kind?) made an offer for it—but nothing happened. Which was surprising, because this is a company with serious cash-flow problems.

(A note from Rappaport, Reich & Green sez VSS had a $32.4 million credit facility—this was in February—no revenue, and a burn rate of $4 million *a month.* So, obviously, they’re going to need an angel—and soon.)

Company’s about as secretive as you can get—and you can get real secretive when you don’t have any clients, revenue, or product. Near as I can tell, it’s all R & D—for now, anyway.

As you’ve probably guessed, I’m taking this stuff directly off the Web—so if you think I don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re right. But it sounds to me like you might be in the middle of an industrial espionage problem.

Which brings me back to my first suggestion: the PO-lice. Maybe you should call ’em.

Gotta run. Luv ya, man!

Dew

P.S. Nothing new on Patel. He was the CTO at VSS. Well thought of in the Valley. Cops think his murder was “a gay thing” (whatever that means). But all of that was in the papers. Watch this space, and I’ll try to do better next week.