The Eighth Day (25 page)

Finally, one of them smiled. “Maytag,” he said, and explained the situation to his buddy, who ventured a commiserating look. Returning Danny’s passport with a friendly salute, the soldiers waved their weapons at the
dolmus,
indicating that everyone should reboard.

Twenty minutes later, they arrived at the outskirts of Diyarbakir, following what seemed to be a ring road that skirted the old part of the city.

Danny didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but Diyarbakir was a surprise. It was modern and sprawling, with vast apartment blocks whose curtained windows were aglow with what Danny had begun to think of as “Third World light”—a late-night mix of fluorescence and CNN. The modernity of Diyarbakir shouldn’t have surprised him. Had he imagined that outside Istanbul everyone was living in a yurt?

Not really. In fact, he hadn’t imagined anything. That was the point. Until recently, he’d given no more thought to Turkey than he had to Bulgaria or Kyrgzstan. And now, here he was, with these cheerful strangers, not just in Turkey, but headed for a town so remote that even Turks had to look it up.

They arrived at the bus station a little after midnight. Entering the terminal, Danny found a bewildering array of ticket windows, each of which seemed to be run by a different bus line. Not that it mattered: every one of them was closed.

It occurred to Danny that he could head out in search of a hotel or ask a cab driver to take him to one. But there were no cabs outside the terminal—at least nothing that looked like a cab to him—so that was out. So was the idea of wandering around Diyarbakir at one
A.M
., looking for a place to crash. With a sigh, he went back into the terminal and, seeing a plastic bench, lay down upon it under the watchful eyes of a photograph of the “founder of modern Turkey,” Kemal Atatürk. Soon he was fast asleep.

Dawn arrived at the end of a nightstick, gently prodding him in the ribs. Blinking awake, he found an irritated policeman standing over him, repeating something that sounded like “Uyanmak!”

“Sorry. . . .”

The cop stepped back, confused, abashed. “Amerik?”

Danny sat up, pinched the sleep from his eyes, and got to his feet. “Yeah. Look, I’m sorry—”

“Is good,” the policeman said, and, with a crisp nod, turned on his heel.

Danny looked around and saw that the terminal was coming alive. Light streamed in through the grimy windows overhead as passengers filtered in, lugging oversized plastic suitcases and swollen knapsacks. He bought a cup of coffee from a vendor with a rolling cart and thought about how he was going to get fromA to B.

Fully half of the ticket windows seemed to be open for business, and he went to each of them in turn, repeating “Uzelyurt?” as if it were a snack that he was selling. But he must not have been pronouncing it right, because all he got in reply was a series of shrugs. Finally, he wrote the name on a slip of paper and showed it to an elderly man in a tattered blue uniform. The old man parsed the name and nodded to himself. Then he took Danny by the elbow and escorted him to a window at the end of the terminal. A brief conversation ensued between the old man and the yawning clerk, after which the clerk nodded his understanding. Pointing to his wristwatch, he described a circle with his index finger, looked back to Danny, and made a V sign. Two hours. The American nodded and bought a ticket.

During the long wait, Danny purchased a kind of Turkish pizza, with vegetables and cheese, and washed it down with a liter of mineral water. Then he wandered outside, thinking about Caleigh.

Even though he’d warned her not to talk to him, there was nothing to prevent
him
from calling her. If nothing else, he’d hear her voice—she’d sense his presence—and if she
did
talk to him, he’d repeat his warning in a way that she’d have to take seriously. So it wasn’t as if he was calling her for no reason. Or so, at least, he rationalized.

As for the possibility that Zebek was tracking Caleigh’s incoming calls, now that he’d had more time to think about it Danny had come to the conclusion that this was not how they’d traced his whereabouts in Rome or Istanbul. Even if they had a tap on her phone, they couldn’t find out where he was calling from—not unless he announced his location or stayed on the line for a lot longer than he intended. He was pretty sure Star-69 would not work on a pay-phone in Turkey. The only other way to find out the origin of a call was from the phone company’s own records, but those took time to post and wouldn’t be available to anyone, even the phone company, for at least forty-eight hours.

He bought a one-hundred-unit phone card at a news-and-tobacco kiosk in the terminal and went looking for a public phone. He found one across the street, at the edge of a little park. Inserting the card in the slot, he was glad to find that it worked the same way that it did in the States. Then he dialed the number and waited with his heart in his throat as the phone began to ring in America.

Once. Twice. Three times. And then the message began to play. Only it wasn’t the message he was used to—it wasn’t the one that
he’d
recorded, the one that began, “Hi, you’ve reached Caleigh and Dan. . . .” It was a new message, this time in Caleigh’s voice, and what it said was: “Hey! It’s Caleigh. Leave a message, and I’ll call you back.”

Jesus Christ!
he thought.
I’ve been expunged.

FOURTEEN

The landscape beyond Diyarbakir was a monochromatic blond—the color of wheat fields, the color of builders’ sand, the color of Caleigh’s hair. The only variation was in the windbreaks of poplar trees planted in regimental lines and in the occasional vineyard. Unlike vines in America, which clung to trellises, the Turkish vines were left to sprawl against the earth.

Anatolia. The steppes. Rolling prairie, jaundiced sky.

Every fifteen or twenty minutes, the bus wound around a hill into a village or town. Gunesli, Urkelet, Sarioglan. It seemed to Danny that the adult population of these towns was almost entirely male. There were no women to be seen, or very few. And those who could be seen reminded him of nuns. Their clothing was entirely black or entirely white, and it covered them from head to foot.

At first, it appeared as if all the towns were under construction, with piles of stone everywhere and cranes standing tall against the sky. Sturdy and square, the buildings bristled with double solar panels and hot-water heaters on their roofs. But gradually, as the bus wound deeper into the countryside, the towns grew smaller and farther apart. The landscape became more rural, and he caught glimpses of shepherds standing with flocks of sheep. Farmers worked the earth with primitive plows, relying on animals in the absence of engines.

Then it all began to change again. Suddenly the bus was cruising past wildly improbable conical rock formations. These were the same honey-blond color as the earth and reminded Danny of barnacles clustered on the hull of a boat. The stone was obviously soft, because entire houses had been carved into it. From the back of the
dolmus
it looked as if the windows and doorways were perfectly “true,” cut into the rock at ninety-degree angles. Peering out through the window, he saw that some of the caves had satellite dishes bolted to the rock, cars parked out front. Electric lines hung in the air like strokes from a pen.

It was the most foreign place Danny had ever been or seen or imagined. Everything was unfamiliar, and not just unfamiliar—it was strange. As the miles and minutes passed, the likelihood of learning anything he needed to know in a place as remote as this seemed slim to none. For one thing, no one seemed to speak English, and his Turkish was limited to four words:
evet, yok, tuvalet,
and
merhaba.
Danny was glad he’d picked them up, but the ability to say
yes
,
no
,
toilet
, and
hello
was unlikely to resolve the issues at hand.

Beyond the few words that he knew, there was a name that he listened for throughout the morning:
Uzelyurt
. He expected to hear it at every stop, but it was a long time coming.

Again the landscape changed. The road ran for miles along the side of a steep gorge, carved by a broad stream that had long ago slaked the thirst of dinosaurs. The road veered off to the south, and the hills softened. The blond earth deepened to a golden color, then seemed to catch fire as the
dolmus
plunged past fields of poppies, quavering in the heat. In the distance, astride a low hill, a Mediterranean villa basked in the sun. Then the bus went round another curve, and the villa was gone, and so were the poppies.

Danny wondered about the occupants of such a house in such a remote place—but not for long. A few miles down the road, the driver killed the bus’s engine in a sort of parking lot at the edge of a very small town. A rusting placard announced their whereabouts:
UZELYURT
. It was just after noon.

Climbing out of the
dolmus
, Danny found half a dozen buses parked beneath a corrugated iron awning, with knots of people either looking bored or jostling to climb aboard. Workmen in long pants and tightly knitted caps idled against a cinder-block wall, smoking cigarettes, their eyes on the American. Then the bus that he’d taken began to pull away, rumbling off in the direction of the sun. Without wanting to, Danny inhaled the diesel fumes as he followed the
dolmus
with his eyes, suppressing an impulse to run after it.

The town consisted of a single paved road, with maybe a dozen side streets acting as tributaries. Each side of the road was fronted by a row of small shops, selling everything from groceries to farm implements. There was a gas station with a single pump, a hardware store that reeked of oil, and a welding shop that snapped, crackled, and popped. The only restaurant that he could see appeared to be closed, but there was a surprisingly nice patisserie in the middle of it all. Danny stopped in for a glass of apple tea, then ordered a second one to wash down a wedge of baklava.

Returning outside, he saw a sign for
OTELI HITTITE
and set off uphill in the direction of a three-story building. Midway, he stopped at a small store whose entrance was flanked by open burlap bags that brimmed with pistachio nuts, dates, and other fruit. Inside were shelves of Pepsi, beer, and water, cereal, and detergent. A rack of videos stood beside the counter on a rotating wire stand. Danny checked the offerings, which consisted mostly of American films repackaged in Turkish boxes. He recognized
Swordfish
,
Pulp Fiction
, and
The Matrix
.

He bought a toothbrush and a bottle of mineral water, two bottles of Efes Pilsen, and a paper cone filled with dried apricots. The proprietor smiled at him as he made change for a ten-million-lire note.

“Canadian?”

Danny shook his head. “American.”

The man’s smile expanded. “My son! He was Columbia University. Now he is Morgan-Stanley!” He gestured to a Columbia decal on the back of the cash register, then pointed to a resin replica of the rock formations around the town. “One day—he is caves. Then Ivy Lick. Then . . . I don’t know!” A booming laugh.

Danny laughed. “He must be smart. Columbia’s tough.”

The man nodded and smiled, but Danny could tell that the grocer’s English vocabulary wasn’t much larger than his own repertoire of Turkish.

“Well,” he said. “Catch you later.”

“Oh, yes!” the grocer replied. “Later!”

The Oteli Hittite was a no-star affair, which meant that it was very basic. The “lobby” consisted of a small room with high ceilings and a front desk that was actually a desk. The old man behind the desk didn’t speak English, but a sign on the wall indicated that single rooms were six million lire—about five bucks—a night.

Danny gave his passport to the old man, who clucked at its condition, then handed it back, along with a hotel registration card. He offered a pen and waited, smiling, while Danny filled out the card. When this had been done, the old man glanced at the card and placed it on top of half a dozen others. Finally, he got to his feet and, flapping his hand, gestured for Danny to follow him. Which Danny did—after grabbing the registration card and jamming it into his pocket.

They went along a dark corridor and outside to a courtyard with plastic tables shaded by large red umbrellas. A riot of flowers grew against concrete walls topped with shards of broken glass. With a tug on Danny’s sleeve, the old man put the palm of his hand beneath his chin and pretended to scoop something into his mouth.

Danny smiled. “Got it. A little later, maybe.”

With a deferential nod, the clerk handed him a key with the number 7 on it and gestured to a flight of stairs.

His room contained a large cot with a thin mattress, a metal table flanked by mismatched chairs, and a tired wooden dresser. A threadbare kilim lay on the tiled floor beneath a bank of windows overlooking the street. No screens, but heavy shutters, painted blue. Overhead, a single fixture held a compact fluorescent bulb encased in a pleated shade. That was it, except for a can of Raid that stood beside the cot. The insecticide gave him pause, but only for a moment. While the room was down-at-heels, it was scrupulously clean, the cot’s snowy sheets crisp to the eye and deeply inviting. Danny resisted temptation, wrote Barzan’s name on the back of the bus ticket, and headed back downstairs.

The eldery desk clerk stared at the name, thought for a moment, and shook his head. Then he looked up and, with a sweet smile, returned the scrap of paper to the American.

Leaving the hotel, Danny walked out into the furnace of mid-afternoon, wincing at the light. The blond stone and treeless landscape. The bleached sky and waves of heat. It took your breath away. A woman of indeterminate age, shrouded in white from head to foot, bared her gold teeth in a silent hello. Across the street, a boy of about ten labored uphill with a dead lamb slung over his shoulder, its white eye staring. It was all so disorienting—like stumbling onto a stage set.

Halfway down the hill, he began to ask about Remy Barzan, showing the scrap of paper to one shopkeeper after another. He made his first inquiry at the grocer’s, moved on to a store that sold beer and arrack, then crossed the street to a dusty carpet shop. Just inside, three young men sat near the door, hunched over a backgammon board, laughing and drinking tea. Seeing Danny, the biggest of the three, wearing a new-looking Nike T-shirt, jumped to his feet and greeted him with (literally) open arms.
“Wilkommen! Hereingekommen, bitte!”

Danny gave him a look that was at once confused and apologetic. “Actually,” he said, “I’m American.”

The young Turk grinned. “Even better. My German’s lousy. Where you from?”

“Washington,” Danny replied, astonished to hear his own language.

The Turk’s face contorted into a look of pained commiseration. “Buhhh-ddy, buhhh-ddy,” he said, miming a little set shot, “you guys
never
get into the play-offs.” Turning to his friends, he translated, and they laughed along with Danny.

“Michael’s gonna play,” Danny told him. “That ought to help.”

“I heard he got hurt,” the Turk said. “Maybe no comeback after all.”

Danny shrugged. “We can hope,” he said. “But anyway, right now—”

“You’re looking at rugs?” Before Danny could reply, he added, “You come to the right place, man.”

“Listen—”

“I give you best price.”

“Thanks, but—”

“Buhhh-ddy, buhhh-ddy—I am no bullshit. Best price!”

Danny shook his head. “Some other time maybe, but right now I’m looking for a person. Not a rug.”

The Turk gave him a bemused look.

“A friend,” Danny said. “Maybe you know him?” He handed the scrap of paper to the Turk, who glanced at it and showed it to his pals. One of them muttered something that Danny didn’t catch. Finally, his
buhhh-ddy
made a soft clicking noise and jerked his head backward.

Danny had seen the gesture before: it was a Turkish way of saying no—as in
No way, never heard of him
.

“I don’t think this guy’s from anywhere around here,” the man said. He looked at his friends. “If he was, we’d know him.” Returning to his seat on a pile of rugs, he took a sip of tea and gave up on the conversation.

Suddenly there was no more
buhhh-ddy buhhh-ddy
in the room, and Danny found himself standing awkwardly beside the door. “Well,” he said, “thanks anyway.” The others nodded without looking up.

No one said it was going to be easy.

Crossing the street to the bus station, he went into the ticket office where a neat little man stood behind a grille, helping customers. There was a short line, and Danny waited until it was his turn. Then he gave the paper to the clerk, who peered at it through a pair of gold spectacles. After a moment, he pushed the paper back to Danny, cocked his head, closed his eyes, and wagged his forefinger back and forth as if it were a windshield wiper. Then he stopped and opened his eyes.

“You know him?” Danny asked.

The clerk went through the same routine a second time, then made a point of looking over the American’s shoulder to the next person in line.

He was beginning to get the point.

Leaving the bus station, he found a cabdriver who seemed eager to help, then drove away when it became apparent that the American wasn’t interested in a ride. The police station (a concrete cube at the edge of town) was only a block away but turned out to be “closed.”
How the hell can a police station be closed?
Danny wondered.

Nearby, a couple of soldiers sat in a Jeep, cradling their M-16s. Approaching them with a smile, Danny showed them the scrap of paper on which he had written Barzan’s name, but there was no reaction. A bored glance, a shrug, and they looked away.

That’s when he caught a whiff of roasting peppers, garlic, and onions wafting along the street and realized how hungry he was. With his nose as his compass, he traced the smell to an upstairs restaurant whose sign had long ago toppled from its perch above the door. Stepping inside, he found himself in a large dining room, cooled by a pair of industrial fans. Overhead, an acoustic tile ceiling bristled with scores of knotted tubes, compact fluorescents fitted into receptacles meant for what Danny guessed were prohibitively expensive incandescent bulbs.

An elderly waiter welcomed him with a bow, then led him to a refrigerated case that held an array of dishes under glass. The
mezze
, or appetizers. Danny pointed to a mound of deep-green
dolmas
stuffed with rice, a tomato-and-eggplant salad, hummus and
pide
, and a bowl of greens. The waiter nodded his approval, then sent him over to a long grill.

A light-haired man wearing a blue T-shirt presided over pyramids of kebabs, covered with plastic wrap. Danny pointed to one of the smaller piles, and the chef scowled in disapproval, gesturing toward the lamb, chicken, and sausage kebabs.

Danny shook his head. “Just veggies,” he explained.

The cook looked surprised. “U.S.?”

Danny nodded.

“Hey, I got a cousin,” the chef said.

“No kidding.”

“Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. He’s got a cleaning business.”

“That’s not too far from D.C., where I’m from.”

“No kidding? Rehoboth—it’s good?”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “It’s great. You know—sun, sand, the ocean.” He shrugged. “Really different from here, though.”

The man stuck out his hand. “I’m Atilla,” he said, flashing a big smile. “Like the Hun.”