The Eighth Day (34 page)

He launched a little plastic boat on the surface of the bath water and watched it bob beside his discolored feet. By moving his hands in a swirling motion he could set up enough centrifugal force to send the boat rocking around the perimeter of the tub. It was a nice way to spend the morning.

“You want to sleep now?”

Danny came out of the bath, wearing the clothes that Salim had set out for him. A pair of khakis that didn’t quite reach his ankles, and a T-shirt that had the words
I’M WITH STUPID
printed across the front.

“That would be great,” Danny told him.

The Turk gestured toward a makeshift bed that he’d set up on one of the kilim-covered benches. Then he excused himself and went into the bedroom.

Danny lay down on the bench, closed his eyes, and slowly drifted off, listening to the domestic sounds around him. Muffled voices and Arab music. The rumble of traffic. Distant car horns. And, every so often, the opening notes of the
William Tell
Overture, signaling Salim that he had a call on his cell phone.

“Are you awake?”

Danny opened his eyes, blinked, and sat up. Salim was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, smiling broadly. It was evening. And still hot. “That was good,” Danny told him. “I really needed that.”

“Good,” Salim replied. “Now, let’s see who’s going to Ankara.”

The Turk had a rapid, efficient walk and Danny struggled to keep up. He worked out a kind of rolling gait that depended on turning his ankles so that in effect he was walking on the outside edges of his feet. After a half mile or so, they entered a café crowded with men sipping tea, playing cards, reading newspapers, talking. Christiane Amanpour spoke from a television screen on the wall. No one paid her any attention.

With Danny at his side, Salim went from table to table, where he laughed and joked with various men—occasionally nodding to Danny, who smiled awkwardly and shrugged a lot.

“I . . . ah . . . jeez,” Danny said as he followed Salim toward yet another table. “You’re probably sorry you stopped for me.”

The Turk looked offended. “But it’s my opportunity to help you,” he said. “The Prophet puts you in my path for a reason.”

Finally, they sat down at a table with some other men and accepted glasses of apple tea. Everyone was friendly and smiling, but the result was always the same. Salim would give a sad shake of his head and turn the palms of his hands toward the ceiling. Meaning:
He’s broke. No money at all.

It seemed hopeless, and Danny was more or less resigned to the prospect of hitchhiking. But Salim urged patience, and after a second round of apple tea they got lucky. An elderly man came to the table and had a word with Salim—who brightened. “We have to go,” he announced, jumping up from his chair. Leading Danny to a café on the next street, he explained that “Hakan Gultepe has to travel west this very night! Pistachios. I am asking his boss to gives you a ride.”

Once inside, Salim made a beeline for a table in the back and had a short, pleading conversation with a skeptical-looking man, who seemed to dismiss every argument Salim could muster. But, in the end, the matter was settled with smiles and hand-shaking.

“You have a ride,” Salim announced, “but we have to hurry.”

They walked double-time to the market where Salim had delivered his cantaloupes, and Danny was introduced to Hakan Gultepe. He was a big guy in his thirties with a thick black mustache and a mouthful of gold teeth. Hakan tapped Danny on the arm with a reassuring pat, as if he were a horse or a dog.

“He doesn’t speak English,” Salim said. “But he’s taking you to Bingöl. From there, I’m giving you enough money—no no, this is something I’m doing—enough money to get to Ankara. Don’t worry—it’s not much. But don’t get lost. Hakan leaves you at the
otogar
in Bingöl, then you take a bus to Kayseri. In Kayseri, you change for Ankara.” He wrote this down on the back of his business card and handed it to Danny with a ten-million-lire note.

Danny didn’t know what to say. “I’ll pay you back.”

Salim shrugged. “Whatever. It is one of the pillars of Islam,” he said. “To give alms to the poor . . . is a duty. But I want you to remember that, yes, bad things can happen in Turkey—but good things, too.”

“Salim—”

“I gave you my card,” Salim said. “When you get back, I want an e-mail, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay. You got it.”

An
abrazo
—“Ciao!”—and Salim strode off in the direction of the village center. Danny watched him go as the
William Tell
Overture sounded yet again:
Dah-dunt! Dah-dunt! Dah-dunt-dunt-dunt-dunt . . .
Then he climbed into the passenger seat of a truck that appeared to be the twin of Salim’s own, except that this one was piled high with burlap bags of pistachios. Hakan Gultepe bared his teeth in a gilt-edged smile as the engine coughed, and the truck lurched off into the night to the sound of a sappy Arab tune on the radio.

NINETEEN

It was a long walk from the Ankara
otogar
to the U.S. Embassy on Atatürk Boulevard, but there was no other way for Danny to get there. He had about a million lire left from Salim’s bounty—enough to buy a gyro but not enough to hail a cab. So he ate as he walked, nearly choking on a piece of green pepper when the amplified ululations of the muezzin cut loose at midday.

It was an hour later that Danny saw it, hanging limply in the pulverizing heat. The flag. Or as he thought of it:
the flaaag
! His heart did a little jig. His Adam’s apple seemed to swell. And, for a moment at least, he was as good as home.

But not really.

He had always been under the impression that one of the main responsibilities of the American embassy—
any
American embassy—was to help Americans. Fellow citizens who had hit a rough patch in a foreign land.

But no.

The foreign service officer he spoke with was a young man of about his own age. But there the resemblance ended. Where Danny was dressed in borrowed khakis and a dopey T-shirt, the FSO wore a dark-blue suit, immaculately pressed, and a crisp white shirt with a russet-colored tie. On his desk was a copy of the Princeton
Tory
.

Which brought a snicker to Danny’s lips, exposing his remarkable tooth. It was sour grapes, of course. He knew it was wrong to blame the consular official for the fact that he himself was dressed in borrowed clothes, had blood on his sandals, and looked like a madman. Still . . . the Princeton
Tory
?

Leaning back in his chair, the FSO swiveled from side to side, listening to Danny’s story with the air of a much older man, his attitude a mix of impatient boredom and naked contempt. Finally, he sighed and said, “Surely you’ve read the guidebooks. Surfed the Internet or something. I mean, why would
anyone
go to the area around Lake Van, for God’s sake?”

“Well—”

“It’s
asking
for trouble.”

“Right,” Danny told him. “That’s the point. I’m
in
trouble.”

“I can see that,” the FSO replied, and, chuckling, shook his head. “But I’m not sure what you expect
me
to do about it.”

The remark came as a shock, and for a moment Danny wasn’t sure what to say. After a bit, he explained, “I kind of thought you might be able to help. I mean, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To help Americans?”

Another sigh. “As a matter of fact,” the FSO remarked, “that’s probably the least important thing that I do.”

“
Is
it?!”

“Yes. Actually, it is.”

Danny wanted to smack him, but like the twit in front of him, he, too, had a more important mission—and that was to get home. Preferably without his hands cuffed to his belt. So he swallowed his pride and said, “Well, I’m sorry about that, but . . . what do you suggest I do? How do I get home?” It occurred to him to add,
So I can pay your salary
—but, to Danny’s credit, he refrained.

The Princeton man gave him an exasperated look and unscrewed the cap from a Mont Blanc fountain pen. “You said you lost your passport—”

“I said it was stolen.”

“Exactly. It was ‘stolen.’ When?”

“Three days ago.”

“And where did this happen?

“Dog Biscuit,” Danny replied.

“
Where?
”

“Sounds like ‘Dog Biscuit.’ I don’t know how to spell it.”

The FSO, spitting out each syllable, properly enuciated the name of the town, wrote for a bit, then looked up. “What about your luggage?”

“My luggage?”

“Yes. Your clothes and things. Suitcases.”

“There was just a backpack,” Danny told him. “I don’t know what happened to it.”

“What about money?” the FSO asked.

Danny shook his head. “They got my wallet, too.”

“So you don’t even have a driver’s license.”

Danny nodded. “Right. No clothes. No money or ID. Nothing. I’m a tabula rasa.”

A chuckle of contempt. “What did the police say?”

“What police?” Danny asked.

“When you reported the assault.”

“But I didn’t.”

“Why
not
?”

Danny shrugged. “I was pretty confused.”

The FSO laid his pen down and sat back in his chair. Folding his hands in his lap, he regarded Danny with a gimlet eye, certain now that something was . . . up. Then he glanced at the clock on the wall—twelve twenty-six—sighed, and pushed a form across his desk. “Fill this out,” he said. “We’ll make some verifying calls—at your expense—and issue a temporary passport. I’ll arrange a one-way ticket to Washington—”

“Thank you.”

The FSO snorted. “Don’t thank me. It’s going to be fucking expensive. I’m not your travel agent and, anyway, there is no advance purchase. You get what you get. And you’ll have to reimburse us within thirty days. If you don’t, you’ll be taken to court and your wages will be garnished.” A poisonous smile as a thought occurred to him. “Do you even have a job?”

Danny returned the smile in the same spirit. “No,” he said. “I’m an
artiste
.”

Three hours later, he had a spanking new passport and a small envelope containing four twenty-dollar bills and a one-way ticket to Dulles. He signed a paper agreeing to repay the United States Treasurer $1,751.40. In his passport photo, behind the iridescent display of eagles and arrows, he looked wasted, like a model in one of those Calvin Klein ads that were popular in the heyday of junkie chic.

He rode out the night in the Hotel Spar, which cost him $8.25. Basic, if clean, it was a kind of purgatory—neither heaven nor hell but somewhere in between. Flat on his back on its hard, thin bed, he lay in the darkness with his eyes on the ceiling, thinking of the bloodshed of the day before. Or was it the day before that? Without newspapers or television—or any responsibilities (other than the need to survive)—time was beginning to get away from him. And he himself was changing, getting older in certain ways. He could feel it.

Layla and Barzan. The washerwoman. The dogs. The soldier’s head disintegrating in the air. He remembered something—about the gun. He had very deliberately placed it next to Remy Barzan’s body, as if he’d been returning a borrowed book.

Eventually, he fell asleep.

In the morning, he caught a taxi to the airport, where he spent half an hour answering questions at the security gate. It didn’t surprise him. He had a one-way ticket, paid for in cash, and no luggage. The clothes he wore were obviously not his own, the pants too short, the shirt too . . . Turkish. His hair was at a peculiar stage, too short to comb, too long to brush back. And then there were the scrapes and bruises. The tooth.

If he’d been a cop, he’d have arrested himself.

Still, it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good. Though there were plenty of seats on board, the embassy hadn’t bothered to secure him a place on the aisle or next to a window—so he found himself wedged into a middle seat beside an eight-year-old boy and a matron with a head scarf. No sooner was he seated than the woman pressed the call button. A hasty conference with the flight attendant ensued, and Danny soon found that he had three seats to himself.

Which left him with his thoughts—not Barzan, this time, but Caleigh. What should he do? What
could
he do? It occurred to him that he could just show up at her door, looking wounded and pathetic—but no. Pathos wouldn’t get the job done, and neither would flowers. Winning Caleigh back was going to take a campaign. He’d have to lay siege to her and, even then, the outcome was . . . dim.

Until he’d arrived at the embassy in Ankara, there was no way for Zebek to know where he was (though he might have guessed that he was still in Turkey). How wide a net did Zebek cast? Could he access Customs and immigration records? Maybe, maybe not. But sooner or later, Zebek would know that Danny was back in the States—and sooner was probably closer to the truth.

And what was Danny going to do about that? He couldn’t run forever. He wasn’t cut out for it. No one was. Among other things, he couldn’t imagine disappearing from the life of his parents and friends. Not to mention Caleigh. So there wasn’t any decision to make. Not really. He had to expose Zebek. As a murderer and a fraud.

That’s all. Only . . . how?

The Atlantic slid by under the belly of the plane. The Tanqueray and tonics that the flight attendant gave him were just the thing. Before long, he drifted into an exhausted stupor that was more like a coma than real sleep. When the flight attendant woke him up, it was dark, and the plane was beginning its descent toward the gauzy sprawl of light that was Washington.

His parents still lived in the house where Danny had grown up, across the Potomac in the Rosemont section of Alexandria, a leafy neighborhood only fifteen minutes from National Airport. Their house, a turn-of-the-century colonial on a quarter-acre lot, was as familiar to him as his own heartbeat—which more or less came to a full stop when he knelt beside the planter to feel for the key to the front door and a barrage of security lights flared. He froze in a cone of brightness that would have sufficed to stop a breakout from Attica.

Jesus!
When did they put that in?

He shook his head and waited for the tumult in his chest to subside. Since retirement, Dad had gone on a do-it-yourself bender. Restrained for years by lack of time, he had become the Fix-up King, always in the middle of one project or another. Danny fit the key into the dead bolt and let himself in, grateful that the old man had yet to get around to an alarm system.

Standing in the kitchen, he cranked up the air conditioning and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. Padding silently through the house, he went to the bathroom on the second floor and stripped off his clothes. Then he took a long, hot shower, letting the water pound on his back and shoulders, his face to the ceiling, eyes closed. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought:
Life is good.

When the hot water threatened to run cold, he wrapped a thick towel around his waist and headed for his old room on the third floor. As befitted the youngest son, this was the smallest bedroom in the house—an attic space with sloping walls and lots of dormers.

Between two of the dormers was a dresser with clothes that he hadn’t worn for years but which his mom kept washed and ready—apparently, for days like this. Letting the towel fall, he picked out a pair of jeans and a red sweatshirt, fresh underwear, and socks, and dressed, luxuriating in the feel of his own clean clothes.

The room was pretty much as he’d left it: clunky wooden furniture and muted plaids. A Phish poster on one wall, an “early Cray” on another. In the corner, on a small bookshelf, was a tacky collection of dusty soccer trophies and a plaque commemorating his second-place finish in the eight hundred at the Woodbridge Invitational.

A little pile of mail was stacked on the desk—non-urgent stuff that still came to his parents’ address. His mom held it for him, and every couple of weeks, when he dropped by to see them, he went through it. And it was always the same: alumni appeals from T.C. Williams and William & Mary (“the College of Knowledge”); some art-supply catalogs, and credit-card offers—the usual junk, in other words, except this time there was one envelope of real interest. And he didn’t have to open it to know what it was: its stiffness and weight, coupled with the printed injunction that it should not be forwarded, marked it as a credit card.

A Platinum Visa card, as it turned out—with a William & Mary embossure. It was probably the first account he’d ever had, and given the interest rate it charged, he’d intended to cancel it. But now the renewal had gone through on its own, and he was glad. It had a 2004 expiration date and a ten-thousand-dollar limit—which made it a gift from the gods.

The paper folder that held the card noted that it was necessary to activate it from your home telephone number—in this case, obviously, the phone at his parents’ house. So he shuffled down the hall to Kev’s old room and punched in the numbers. Then he went through the rest of the mail while he waited on hold. A clutch of postcards from galleries (they never seemed to update their mailing lists), including one from Neon. The front bore a photo of
Forest and Threes
. The back announced:

Friday

October 5: 7:00

WORKS BY DANIEL CRAY

The announcement looked great—Lavinia had done well by him. But Jesus! The opening! How was he going to mount it? And with what?

Finally, a real person came on the line and he activated the card. After shaking off a pitch for “credit insurance,” he hung up the phone, nicked the tape from the back of the card, and peeled it off. Then he went to his room, because finding the credit card reminded him of money, and money reminded him of—

The closet in his room. This was one of those 1920s creations, suitable for someone who owned three shirts, two pairs of pants, a belt, a tie, and a jacket. Recognizing the need for more storage space, Danny’s father had undertaken one of his first home improvement projects. This was a box at the back of the closet, measuring thirty inches on each side. It had served during Danny’s childhood as the repository of successive ruling passions. At one time or another, it had held Star Wars toys, Nintendo games, hockey pads, a Fender Stratocaster and a Sidekick amp, a wet suit and flippers. But that was just the
top
of the box. Danny had long ago undertaken his own “home improvement” project, creating a false bottom that was about an inch deep. It was in this hiding place, under the Nintendo games and hockey pads, that he’d kept his copies of
Playboy
and
Penthouse
, packages of Marlboros, Zig-Zag papers, and the occasional plastic sandwich bag stuffed with marijuana.

But Danny’s stash was not just a repository for passing vices. It also contained what his brother Kev called “the cache.” This was a secret savings account to which each of the brothers had contributed, squirreling away whatever spare change they happened to find at the end of the day. The goal: to buy a racehorse—specifically, an Arabian. And not just any Arabian—it had to be a stallion. And not just any stallion—it had to be . . . black.