A Colder War. Charles Cumming
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number in her phone book – and Ebru reckoned she had better contacts than any other journalist of her age and experience in Istanbul – was a story waiting to open up. All she needed was the energy and the tenacity to unearth it.
For once, however, Ebru had set aside her restlessness and ambition and, in a pained effort to relax, if only for a single day, turned off her mobile phone and set her work to one side. That was quite a sacrifice! From eight o’clock in the morning – the lie-in, too, was a luxury – to nine o’clock at night, Ebru avoided all emails and Facebook messages and lived the life of a single woman of twenty-nine with no ties to work and no responsibilities other than to her own relaxation and happiness. Granted, she had spent most of the morning doing laundry and cleaning up the chaos of her apartment, but thereafter she had enjoyed a delicious lunch with her friend Banu at a restaurant in Beşiktaş, shopped for a new dress on Istiklal, bought and read ninety pages of the new Elif Şafak novel in her favourite coffee house in Cihangir, then met Ryan for martinis at Bar Bleu.
In the five months that they had known one another, their relationship had grown from a casual, no-strings-attached affair to something more serious. When they had first met, their get-togethers had taken place almost exclusively in the bedroom of Ryan’s apartment in Tarabya, a place where – Ebru was sure – he took other girls, but none with whom he had such a connection, none with whom he would be so open and raw. She could sense it not so much by the words that he whispered into her ear as they made love, but more by the way that he touched her and looked into her eyes. Then, as they had grown to know one another, they had spoken a great deal about their respective families, about Turkish politics, the war in Syria, the deadlock in Congress – all manner of subjects. Ebru had been surprised by Ryan’s sensitivity to political issues, his knowledge of current affairs. He had introduced her to his friends. They had talked about travelling together and even meeting one another’s parents.
Ebru knew that she was not beautiful – well, certainly not as beautiful as some of the girls looking for husbands and sugar daddies in Bar Bleu – but she had brains and passion and men had always responded to those qualities in her. When she thought about Ryan, she thought about his difference to all the others. She wanted the heat of physical contact, of course – a man who knew how to be with her and how to please her – but she also craved his mind and his energy, the way he treated her with such affection and respect.
Today was a typical day in their relationship. They drank too many cocktails at Bar Bleu, went for dinner at Meyra, talked about books, the recklessness of Hamas and Netanyahu. Then they stumbled back to Ryan’s apartment at midnight, fucking as soon as they had closed the door. The first time was in the lounge, the second time in his bedroom with the kilims bunched up on the floor and the shade still not fixed on the standing lamp beside the armchair. Ebru had lain there afterwards in his arms, thinking that she would never want for another man. Finally she had found someone who understood her and made her feel entirely herself.
The smell of Ryan’s breath and the sweat of his body were still all over Ebru as she slipped out of the building just after two o’clock, Ryan snoring obliviously. She took a taxi to Arnavutköy, showered as soon as she was home, and climbed into bed, intending to return to work just under four hours later.
Burak Turan of the Turkish National Police reckoned you could divide people into two categories: those who didn’t mind getting up early in the morning; and those who did. As a rule for life it had served him well. The people who were worth spending time with didn’t go to sleep straight after Muhteşem Yüzyil and jump out of bed with a smile on their face at half-past six in the morning. You had to watch people like that. They were control freaks, workaholics, religious nuts. Turan considered himself to be a member of the opposite category of person: the type who liked to extract the best out of life; who was creative and generous and good in a crowd. After finishing work, for example, he liked to wind down with a tea and a chat at a club on Mantiklal near the precinct station. His mother, typically, would cook him dinner, then he’d head out to a bar and get to bed by midnight or one, sometimes later. Otherwise, when did people find the time to enjoy themselves? When did they meet girls? If you were always concentrating on work, if you were always paranoid about getting enough sleep, what was left to you? Burak knew that he wasn’t the most hard-working officer in the barracks, happy to tick over while other, better-connected guys got promoted ahead of him. But what did he care about that? As long as he could keep the salary, the job, visit Cansu on weekends and watch Galatasaray games at the Turk Telekom every second Saturday, he reckoned he had life pretty well licked.
But there were drawbacks. Of course there were. As he got older, he didn’t like taking so many orders, especially from guys who were younger than he was. That happened more and more. A generation coming up behind him, pushing him out of the way. There were too many people in Istanbul; the city was so fucking crowded. And then there were the dawn raids, dozens of them in the last two years – a Kurdish problem, usually, but sometimes something different. Like this morning. A journalist, a woman who had written about Ergenekon or the PKK – Burak wasn’t clear which – and word had come down to arrest her. The guys were talking about it in the van as they waited outside her apartment building. Cumhuriyet writer. Eldem. Lieutenant Metin, who looked like he hadn’t been to bed in three days, mumbled something about ‘links to terrorism’ as he strapped on his vest. Burak couldn’t believe what some people were prepared to swallow. Didn’t he know how the system worked? Ten to one Eldem had riled somebody in the AKP, and an Erdoğan flunkie had spotted a chance to send out a message. That was how government people always operated. You had to keep an eye on them. They were all early risers.
Burak and Metin were part of a three-man team ordered to take Eldem into custody at five o’clock in the morning. They knew what was wanted. Make a racket, wake the neighbours, scare the blood out of her, drag the detainee down to the van. A few weeks ago, on the last raid they did, Metin had picked up a framed photograph in some poor bastard’s living room and dropped it on the floor, probably because he wanted to be like the cops on American TV. But why did they have to do it in the middle of the night? Burak could never work that out. Why not just pick her up on the way to work, pay a visit to Cumhuriyet? Instead, he’d had to set his fucking alarm for half-past three in the morning, show himself at the precinct at four, then sit around in the van for an hour with that weight in his head, the numb fatigue of no sleep, his muscles and his brain feeling soft and slow. Burak got tetchy when he was like that. Anybody did anything to rile him, said something he didn’t like, if there was a delay in the raid or any kind of problem – he’d snap them off at the knees. Food didn’t help, tea neither. It wasn’t a blood sugar thing. He just resented having to haul his arse out of bed when the rest of Istanbul was still fast asleep.
‘Time?’ said Adnan. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, too lazy even to look at a clock.
‘Five,’ said Burak, because he wanted to get on with it.
‘Ten to,’ said Metin. Burak shot him a look.
‘Fuck it,’ said Adnan. ‘Let’s go.’
The first Ebru knew of the raid was a noise very close to her face, which she later realized was the sound of the bedroom door being kicked in. She sat up in bed – she was naked – and screamed, because she thought a gang of men were going to rape her. She had been dreaming of her father, of her two young nephews, but now three men were in her cramped bedroom, throwing clothes at her, shouting at her to get dressed, calling her a ‘fucking terrorist’.
She knew what it was. She had dreaded this moment. They all did. They all censored their words, chose their stories carefully, because a line out of place, an inference here, a suggestion there, was enough to land you in prison. Modern Turkey. Democratic Turkey. Still a police state. Always had been. Always would be.
One of them was dragging her now, saying she was being too slow. To Ebru’s shame, she began to cry. What had she done wrong? What had she written? It occurred to her, as she covered herself, pulled on some knickers, buttoned up her jeans, that Ryan would help. Ryan had money and influence and would do what he could to save her.
‘Leave it,’ one of them barked. She had tried to grab her phone. She saw the surname on the cop’s lapel badge: