Zeitgeist (16 page)

“Stop the car,” Starlitz told the driver. They pulled over by the long stone railing of the pass through the mountains. Zeta flung herself out of the taxi with comic-opera emphasis, as if nausea had turned her bones to rubber.

Starlitz and Khoklov stepped out for a breather. The spectacular Cypriot vista showed glamorous villas, gleaming swimming pools, the tall green spikes of many cedars-of-Lebanon, and the sprawling, elaborate campus of a phony-baloney offshore university. To apologize for the wait, Starlitz slipped the young driver several hundred thousand lira. The driver shrugged philosophically, opened his glove compartment, and had a long, thoughtful shot of Beefeater gin.

Starlitz cupped his hands and lit a Dunhill.

Khoklov watched the little ritual with an addict’s desperate eagerness. “Those cigarettes will put you in the hospital.”

“No, they won’t.”

“
Yes, they will
. They may not look evil, but trust me, they are.”

Starlitz blew smoke and gazed into the lilac-blue Cypriot distance. “He’s outmaneuvered me, hasn’t he? He’s cut me right out of the loop.”

“Well, Lekhi … You’re a friend of mine, but your little music biznis is not a match for Ozbey’s biznis, understand? This fellow calling himself ‘Ozbey,’ he’s a career secret agent. He runs death squads. He has a national apparat behind him. He’s not a ‘pop music promoter’! He only looks like one.”

“Well, I only look like one too.”

“You don’t look
very much
like one,” Khoklov said sourly. “Ozbey looks much more like one than you do.”

Zeta spoke up suddenly. “Secret agent,” she parroted in Russian. “Death squad, national apparat.”

Starlitz rolled his eyes. “Zeta, don’t interrupt us grown-ups when we talk business, okay? It’s rude.”

Zeta scowled. “Well, you shouldn’t be talking to him so much! What about
me
? You can talk to him anytime! I want you to talk to
me
!”

“What did she say to you?” said Khoklov. “That sounded almost like Russian she was speaking just now.”

“My daughter was telling me to pay more attention to family matters.”

“That’s a wise little girl,” said Khoklov. “I think perhaps your time has come for some domesticity.” He looked at Starlitz thoughtfully. “Some fatherly time with this lovely young girl—or your big ugly head, in a bucket of Turkish cement—I think there may be useful signals here.”

Starlitz turned to his daughter. “Zeta, I’m gonna talk to you, I promise. I’m gonna tell you a whole lot of things. It’s just that, well, you kinda caught your dad in the middle of something important, so I have to tie up some things first.”

“Money,” Zeta said.

“That’s right. Money. That’s why people run bands.”

She looked up into his face, squinting. “Is
that
why people play music? Just for money?”

“No, no! I said that’s why people
run bands.
”

Zeta shrugged her skinny shoulders and looked at her shoes. “Okay, Dad. If you have to.”

Starlitz looked at her with the first pang of sincere guilt that he could recall in his adult memory. It struck Starlitz suddenly that little Zeta was bearing up extremely well, considering. Hauled all over the world, dumped on his doorstep like unclaimed luggage … He was being clumsy. Starlitz put on his best, firmest, dealing-with-teenybop-fans voice. “You feel better now, Zeta? Not so carsick?”

“I feel okay now that you’re talking to me.”

They slammed the taxi doors and resumed their trip. “You know, Pulat Romanevich, it’s not the first time you and I have dealt with a heavy spook. There was Raf the Jackal, back in Finland. That guy was quite a piece of work.”

“Are you joking? I’m
still
dealing with Raf the Jackal. That’s one reason why I’m anxious to leave this lousy Turkish island, and get back to the comfort and safety of
Belgrade. Raf is in Belgrade—he’s working there now. It’s been peaceful too long in the Balkans. Something will tear loose soon. Then, Russians will be very popular in Serbia. Every time the Serbs go crazy, they discover that they love Russians.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.”

“Soon they will love us, and then, the president of Serbia will forgive me for running off with his special airplane.”

“I gotta hand it to you, Pulat: that pitch makes a lot of sense. So, is there any pop band action in Belgrade? Or Novi Sad, maybe? I mean, besides all those Slavic turbo-folk chicks like Ceca Raznjatovic? We already did Croatia and Slovenia.”

“Lekhi, take my advice: put the music biznis behind you. Don’t fight Ozbey: just sell out to him. He can pay you well; he has the Turkish state behind him, he can afford to be generous. The G-7 band is worth much more to Ozbey than it is to you. An international touring act is a perfect cover for a Turkish secret agent who needs to run arms and drugs. Those girls can carry him through the Mideast, the Balkans, all over Central Asia, just like seven camels.”

“Yeah, sure, maybe—but, hey, scouring the marginal, emergent markets with a Spice Girls copy band, that was
my original concept.
”

Khoklov looked at him with limpid eyes. “ ‘Your concept.’ Is this a professional talking?”

“I also have a mah-jongg bet riding on it.”

Khoklov shrugged, defeated. “There’s no accounting for you, Starlits. Sometimes you talk perfect sense, and sometimes you’re like a block of wood.”

As an outlaw state the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus had no flight clearance with the world’s many grim, self-important civil air authorities. So the republic’s primary airport was, by necessity, a rather modest place. The terminal was flat and dusty, and surrounded by unkempt flowering shrubs. The airport’s rusty radar scanner resembled a barbecue grill.

Starlitz abandoned Khoklov with the taxi. Starlitz and Zeta walked together, hand in hand, through the terminal’s cracked glass doors.

The floor of the Ercan airport had a fine layer of windblown yellow dust. There was putty and duct tape aplenty on the magazine kiosks and the tatty souvenir stands. The little airport’s battered X-ray machines looked entirely decorative.

Starlitz bought his daughter a whopping shrink-wrapped box of assorted Turkish delights.

“Do people eat these?” Zeta said skeptically.

“They’re like marshmallows.”

“I only eat
white
marshmallows.”

“Then only eat the white ones.”

Starlitz spotted Wiesel, sitting on a stool at the airport bar.

Wiesel was sipping fizzy gin-and-tonics, with big green wedges of the local limes. His sallow face was greasy with suntan oil; his upper lip was sprouting a new mustache. Wiesel sported a new haircut, new glasses, and brand-new equipment bags. A red-and-white Turkish Airlines ticket packet peeped from the pocket of his trench coat.

Wiesel was visibly startled, but he braced himself. “Legs! Fancy meeting!”

“How’s business, Wiesel?”

“Lovely! Smashing! Can’t thank you too much for introducing me to Mehmetcik. Fellow’s got all kinds of photo work for me. His uncle’s a big wheel in Turkish media, you know.”

“Yeah.”

Wiesel displayed a laminated G-7 access tag, on a beaded neck chain. “He’s got me covering the band throughout the Turkish tour. It may not be the world’s biggest pop scene, but you know something? The Turks, they still
care.
”

Wiesel retrieved a Turkish pop scandal-rag, which had been lying on the bar with a pile of its gleaming, pulpy brethren, beneath a plastic-bagged light meter
and a fresh pack of Craven A’s. “Check out these candid Turkish shots! They peep down necklines, they peer up skirts.… If a star is in bed with a fellow, the Turks still make a big deal of it! It’s all straight out of
La Dolce Vita
!”

“Don’t get stuck in the sweet old past, man.”

“I’m not stuck. I’m
floating serenely
. I’m on the dodge back there. The past will help me.” Wiesel emptied his glass. “It’ll help me to forget.”

Starlitz thought about the paparazzo’s strategy. “Yeah. Maybe. Switch from gin to arak. Use vintage flashbulbs. Date babes in foundation garments. Y’know, that could work.”

Wiesel nodded across the length of the airport’s seedy, red-velvet lounge. Gonca Utz was perching quietly among Ozbey’s bodyguards, wearing a fabric couture hat the size of a bicycle wheel, and paging through notes on a clipboard. “That girl has the voice, the moves, the face.…” Wiesel’s face lit up with hunger. “Leggy, I can feel it.”

“Where are the G-7 girls?”

“They just boarded.” Wiesel grinned. “Trace of lipstick, all that’s left. Down the runway in a cloud of glitter dust.… Ha ha ha! How about a drink?”

“Are they
gone
?” said Zeta, stricken.

“Yeah,” said Starlitz sadly. “Sorry, sweetheart. We just missed ’em. They’re flying off to Istanbul to do their next concert.”

Wiesel looked down at Zeta. “What’s this then, a little fan? Another sweepstakes winner?” He dabbed a hand in his stiff new shoulder bag and came out with a silver Japanese blob. “Give us a nice big smile! I’ll take your picture, precious.”

“Make them come back again!” Zeta insisted, hopping in place in her anguish. “I want to see them!”

“I can’t do that,” said Starlitz regretfully. “Once they seal the doors and start taxiing, it’s a total security thing.”

Zeta clutched at her sweets box with a wail of despair.

“Oh, don’t cry now, darling!” said Wiesel hastily. He aimed his pocket camera. “Here, give us a smile! I can put you in newspapers!”

Zeta shot Wiesel a poisonous glare. Wiesel pantomimed a shot. There was no flash. Wiesel looked at his lens in puzzlement. “Oh, hell.”

“Tell you what,” said Starlitz to Zeta. “You see that big ugly guy over there, with the fez and the big hammered crates? That’s Ahmed, our collectibles guy. He’s got all the band memorabilia. You tell him I said to show you everything he’s got. All the best stuff.”

Zeta blinked away tears. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. For you it’s all on the account. Quick now, before he gets away.”

Zeta scampered off.

Starlitz turned to Wiesel, scowling. “Why’d you sell me out to Ozbey, you dumb bastard?”

Wiesel shrank back on his rotating stool. “Because it’s my way through! I
love
Istanbul—just like you said I would! It’s got cafés a thousand years old. So what’s Y2K to them, or them to Y2K? I’ll just sit quiet under some nice awning with my hubble-bubble, till everything blows over. I’ll polish my lenses, and cash my paychecks, and count my blessings.”

“And what else did he hire you for, Wiesel? You’re gonna be out with your big telephotos, trolling for lefties and Kurds?”

“If it pays the bill, of course I am! Nothing wrong with working for Ozbey—because he’s NATO, y’know! He’s fightin’ Commies, just like the Swingin’ Sixties in Carnaby Street! His kind of work, it’s all about click-click-click at Miss Christine Keeler.”

“Look, Wiesel, you and I had an arrangement.”

Wiesel pawed nervously at his empty gin glass. Despite his bluff front he was the picture of moral conflict. “Look, don’t feel badly about this. So what if you lost some stupid band? You’ll be back, Leggy. You’re always back, with another daft scam. Because you’re Leggy.”

“I needed you, man. I had you on personal retainer.”

Wiesel sniffed, considering. “Yeah, awright,” he said at last. “Your money was good, and a deal’s a deal, right? A man’s as good as his word. So, I won’t let you down, Legs.
I’m gonna turn you on to someone else, you get me? Somebody really sweet. My man Tim. Tim the Transatlantic. Tim from ECHELON. You got a biro?”

Starlitz handed him a chromed fibertip.

Wiesel reached into his wallet, plucked out the dogeared business card of a London camera repair shop, and flipped it over. “So here you go,” he said, scribbling. “Beeper number. Twenty-four hour. Now, he’s your man, our Tim. Up on all the latest equipment. Big computer boffin, you know? ‘Never Says Anything.’ ”

Starlitz lifted his brows. “This guy ‘Never Says Anything’?”

Wiesel put one finger along his gin-flushed nose. “Tim from ECHELON sees all, Tim knows all! Never says a word!”

“Does Tim work scale?”

“ ‘Scale’? He’s so far underground, he’s got eyes in orbit!”

“Okay,” Starlitz grunted, jamming the business card into his pocket. “Yeah. I think I might have a use for this.”

“No hard feelings, then? Shake the old hand, brother?”

“No,” said Starlitz. He had just spotted Ozbey.

Ozbey emerged from behind the airport customs booths. Even Starlitz, who made something of a habit of buying official favors, had never seen such jolly customs personnel as these local Turkish Cypriots. They were whacking yellow chalk along G-7’s untouched crates and cases, as if they were proud and privileged to have the opportunity.

Ozbey broke from their hearty grips and mustached cheek-kisses. He crossed the lounge to the bar. “Leggy, we’ve all been waiting.”

“How’s the situation, Mehmetcik? Everything under control?”

“I would say so, yes.”

“Drink, boss?” offered Wiesel.

Ozbey gave Wiesel a silent, contemplative stare.

Wiesel slid a five-million-lira note across the bar,
touched the brim of his hat, hoisted his shoulder bags, and vanished.

Ozbey brushed at his spotless jacket sleeves, settled daintily onto the cleanest, least-damaged barstool, and crossed his creased trousers at the knee. Starlitz had never seen Ozbey looking so dapper. Ozbey was poised, radiant, and stagy; if Starlitz wasn’t mistaken, Ozbey had even gained a full two inches in height. His Cyprus jaunt had clearly been a tonic to Ozbey: he was tanned, rested, and looked ready for any conceivable form of mayhem.

Ozbey glanced back at the disbanding cluster of customs men with mock disdain. “Her Former Majesty’s Former Customs Service … It’s important to care for them properly. Turkish Cyprus is a Commonwealth country, another government service, there are certain interbureau rivalries.… We must remain friendly.”

“Yes, I agree.”

Ozbey settled confidently onto one elbow. “I have to compliment you, Leggy. The new American One.”

“Yes, Mehmetcik?”