“Come in,” he said quietly, stepping aside to allow her to enter. “How long have you known my father?”
“We taught together at the university before I left for a position with the UN. We still do some research together.”
“So, you’re a historian?”
“Not compared to your father, but, yes, history is my passion as well.”
He saw her demeanor change when Gary and McIntosh walked in. A shadow of puzzled consternation moved across her face at the sight of a policeman. He paused for a moment to see how she would react. She said nothing. He waited until the pause bordered on rudeness before continuing.
“Then, I’m sure you’ll be sorry to hear that my father has passed away.”
Her smile vanished and the lower lip began to quiver. He could see her confidence melt. Tears welled up in her eyes. She blinked several times in an attempt to keep them back. It was useless. They fell anyway. The burst of uncontrolled emotion lasted only seconds. The grief-stricken look of shock hardened into ice.
“I just spoke with him on Tuesday . . .” she said to no one in particular. “I’m so sorry. Please accept my condolences. This is such a shock. We had just begun working on a new project together.” She started to turn away.
“Please, sit down,” said Gilbert. “He clearly meant something to you.”
“No, I should go. How did it happen?”
“We think it was a heart attack,” said Gilbert repeating the initial summation of the medical team.
“When will the funeral be?”
“We just arrived ourselves. Nothing has been set.”
She pulled a card from her purse. “I should very much like to be there.”
Gary took the card.
“I’ll be sure you receive the details.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly, turning to go. Gilbert stopped her.
“What was the project you were working on with my father?”
Judith turned back and stared at the ground, wondering how to answer.
“Last Saturday, he and I found a document hidden in a book he purchased in Amsterdam. It was in Arabic, so I don’t know what it said. He was going to have it translated. I had to leave for meetings in Brussels and only just returned today. On Monday, I talked to him about it on the phone. Apparently, he had found some clues and was obviously working on a hunch, but refused to share that on the phone. He said we could talk about it on Thursday, and he seemed pretty excited. That’s why I stopped by.”
“Ms. Herrin, we’re on our way to the morgue right now. I might want to talk to you about this document later. Would it be alright if I called later in the week?”
“Of course. I know this is not the time, but I’d very much like to continue the project. Maybe, after the funeral, you would allow me to copy some of his notes.”
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”
CHAPTER
25
Salih leaned back in his chair and re-read the plan he had put together. He had decided to only send two men to take the girl. There would be three technical intercept personnel assigned to the job, but only one needed to be in the States and he was already in place, an electrical engineering student at the University of Texas at Arlington. He would be completely isolated from the details of the plan. His job was merely to provide technical support if necessary to run GPS-cell phone triangulation. The two men assigned to take the girl out and recover the document were the best he had. Most volunteers were Arabs as there was no shortage of unemployed 25-year-olds bursting with testosterone and boiling in the cauldron of hate the Middle East had become. But their performance was not always stellar, so this time he had chosen two Turkish brothers.
One of them had gained his experience fighting the infidel in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. The other had worked in the Turkish intelligence agency, MIT, for years as an inside contact for the brotherhood in their struggle against secularism. Salih had complete confidence in both of them. He breathed deeply and moved his mouse to the “send” button, closed his eyes and muttered a fervent prayer for success before pressing the button. This had to be perfect, or Ahmet would see to it that he was assigned to some particularly hellish place like Peshawar, Somalia or Saudi Arabia. It would be difficult enough for him after having the comforts of London for the last fifteen years, but it would be sheer torture for his new, British-born bride.
><><><
I
STANBUL
The travel agent one street off of Taksim Square took the passport Zeki held out to her.
“It is too bad that you need to leave right away. If you can wait until tomorrow, I can get you a better flight—shorter and cheaper.”
“I’m afraid I really must leave as soon as possible. There has been a death in the family and I must get there quickly.”
“Well, Mr. Çölasan, in that case we can give you a refund for a portion of the ticket if you present a certified copy of the death certificate when you return. However, for now I have to charge the full amount.”
“I understand.”
She turned back to the screen. With the advent of e-ticketing, it had become extremely unusual for them to have walk-in customers for simple transactions like this. His age was the only explanation she could think of. He probably didn’t use a computer or the Internet. Otherwise, he would have booked the ticket online. The young people were all cyber freaks, but older people were slow to change.
Zeki watched her as she scanned the screen, looking for the flight which would suit him best. He already knew that Madrid was the option she would give him. She was an attractive girl. With unemployment among young people at twenty-seven percent in the big cities, a pleasing appearance was an important asset when it came to getting a job that involved interaction with customers.
“Mr. Çölasan, the only flight I have is Turkish Airlines to Madrid and then American Airlines non-stop to Dallas. The layover is short, so you will only have one hour to get from terminal 1 to terminal 4, the new facility that handles most of the trans-Atlantic traffic.”
“Will that present a problem?”
“No, of course, not, but you won’t have any time to spare. Have one of our agents at the gate point you to the right shuttle and when you arrive at terminal 4, be sure to ask for directions. I am told that the new concourse is a bit confusing.”
“That’s fine.”
“Now, if I can have your credit card, I will go ahead and issue the ticket.”
“I’ll be paying in cash.”
“Cash?”
“That’s right.”
“I see. Well, the total is 4,573 TL.”
Zeki reached for his bag, unzipped it and took out a large wad of cash. The travel agent watched him put a bundle of Euro and another of dollars back in the bag before he began counting out forty-five 100 TL banknotes. Then, he took out his wallet to find the smaller bills, after which he handed the whole stack to the girl behind the counter. She counted the bills once more and then went to the printer to retrieve the ticket.
“Your flight leaves at 6:55 am and you arrive in Dallas at 14:05 pm.” She folded the itinerary and slipped it into a shiny THY envelope along with the ticket. She handed it to him and said,
“Have a safe trip.”
“Thanks.”
><><><
T
IRA,
T
EXAS
Gwyn lay staring at the ceiling fan spinning gently above the bed, wondering if life really was just an unending circle of birth, pain and death. It was 4:30 in the morning. She had been up for half an hour, fighting back the tears. It was no use though, she could not go back to sleep because her body was on a different time zone and if she kept lying there in bed, she knew she would spend the whole day crying, which was not what she wanted to do.
A rooster crowed outside and Gwyn smiled to herself as she waited for the other testosterone-charged members of the flock to take up the challenge. In seconds, every other male member joined the chorus. It lasted less than thirty seconds, and they would crow intermittently right up until sunrise.
What was the instinct that drove them to compete?
She heard footsteps in the kitchen. She started to panic and then remembered Aunt Bonny had told her last night that she would be over with fresh ground coffee. Gwyn rolled out of bed and walked into the kitchen in her night gown.
“Good morning, Aunt Bonny. I didn’t expect you so early.”
“I knew jetlag would have you up early, so I wanted to bring over the coffee grinder and some fresh eggs. They’re in the paper sack on the table. Besides, those roosters won’t let anyone sleep in anyway.”
“Oh yes, the roosters. I love to hear them crow.”
“Now, don’t you go getting sentimental on me, young lady. Nothing nice about a rooster unless he’s in a pot of dumplings.”
“Well, that is a lesson we learned right here.”
“It’s too bad you didn’t visit more when you were kids. Your uncle and I loved watching you and your two brothers running around. You never came inside, always fishing in the pond, gathering crawdads, climbing trees, swimming in the lake, feeding the animals and picking blackberries. It sure felt like family then.”
“We all have very fond memories of those visits, Aunt Bonny.”
“All but Gilbert, you mean?”
Gilbert’s disdain for country life was well-known.
“Can you blame him after his scrape with the rooster?” Gwyn laughed.
Aunt Bonny smiled. “Well, that’s what he gets for mocking them.”
“He was just crowing along with them, Aunt Bonny, being a kid. How was he to know they would take it personal?”
Gwyn could see it now. The flock’s alpha male had set to crowing while they were gathering eggs. Gilbert echoed the call, and the next thing they heard was the sound of flapping wings and Gilbert screaming in pain. She and Gary came out of the henhouse to find an eight-pound rooster attacking a boy weighing over hundreds pounds, flying up at his face and raking him with the spurs on the back of his feet. His fury was shocking.
Fortunately, Gilbert had instinctively covered his face with his hands, but
the rooster had scored several times and blood was oozing from superficial scratches on his arms. He was clearly determined to drive this invader out of his harem. As soon as Gilbert recovered from the initial shock, he had sent the rooster flying through the air like a football with one well-placed kick, but he never crowed at the rooster again and the kids never forgot the experience.
“Gwyn, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna run down to Walmart before the sun comes up and turns the asphalt into blackstrap molasses. Stop in for lunch. Henry promised to make us some iced tea with fresh mint and lemon.”
“My favorite. I’ll be there.”
She watched her aunt walk out the door and down the steps on the porch, but she was still thinking about the rooster. She had thought about it years earlier in college too when reading a convincing treatise which claimed to demonstrate that all human behavior was connected to the survival instinct and consequently to sexual desire. This, the author claimed, was the determining factor in relations of all kinds. It had taken several months before the jury of Gwyn’s heart returned a verdict. The thesis clashed with everything her parent’s had taught her. And, yet the idea that sexual desire was the foundation of human relation seemed to play a dominant role in animal behavior.
Especially male behavior
, she had thought wryly.
No wonder a male rooster has become synonymous with the male organ.