“And they’ll believe that.”
“Why wouldn’t they? It’s what everybody wants. What suits. Jianu’s dead, which is what the Russians wanted. And you know, I think they’ll be grateful Melnikov’s dead too. A brutal man, even for them. You heard about Stalingrad? His own men? Think what a relief to have him gone. Of course, they can’t say this.” He drew on the cigarette. “The Americans avenge their Mr. Bishop. And we? We get to protest to both. Guns in the streets. Endangering Turkish citizens. Apologies have been demanded. Even the Russians are embarrassed. An excess. They should learn from the Ottomans. The silk cord. No noise. No
“And who shot me? If they killed each other.”
“Jianu. Before. If we say a Russian, there’s no end to this. Official protests. Swords waving. Everybody a
“Anybody else you can think of while you’re at it? Some unsolved cases you can throw in the file? Christ. Alexei killed everybody. That’s what I’m supposed to say?”
“You already have,” Altan said, lifting the briefcase. “You think only Emniyet does this? Arranges things?” He patted the case. “We have the statements. Gulun confirms yours. No medal this time, but a different reward, for his discretion.” He paused, taking in Leon’s expression. “You think it’s corrupt. The old empire. My friend, everybody changes the story. The Russians? They’ve believed their own lies for so long that-” He let the thought finish itself. “And now the Americans. You’re just learning how to live in the world.” He looked over at Leon. “They shot each other. You recovered. It’s the convenient story.”
“But there were witnesses. Not everybody’s Gulun. So you got rid of her. You sent her home.”
“Who? Oh, the faithful Mrs. Bishop.”
“You couldn’t take any chances with her. You got her a priority.”
“Leon, she didn’t need anyone to do that for her. All she had to do-” He stopped. “You still don’t know? She didn’t tell you?”
Leon said nothing, feeling for the armrest.
Altan made a kind of sigh through his nose. “That she leaves to me.” He put out the cigarette. “So foolish, the Americans, using the wife. His idea too, I’m told. Why? To save money? She has time on her hands, why not put her to use? To get what? What people say at parties in Ankara? Amateurs.” Alexei’s assessment too, a professional shake of the head. “And what happens? Complications,” he said, rolling an eye at Leon. “Emotions. There’s no place for that. She wanted the trade. Her husband’s killer.” He glanced away. “Maybe she felt-well, whatever reason. I told Barksdale it wasn’t necessary. Don’t give up Jianu. It’s just a matter of time. But no. They listened to her. An amateur.”
Leon was listening now too. Just a trade, she’d said, until you- Why did you?
“Always a mistake, using a wife. Think of the risk, the one can be used against the other.”
“But they weren’t,” Leon said dully, leading him, wanting to know, his voice sounding like an echo.
“Still, a risk. Two. It compromises any operation.”
“No. She never said a word.”
“Of course not. You were the operation.”
He felt the chill on his back, air coming through the open hospital gown. Then the weight again, his body sinking into the chair.
“Not that it did much good,” Altan was saying. “You didn’t give her anything. I thought, now she’s got him. But she didn’t.”
“No,” Leon said, another echo.
“You never gave Jianu away. Not even to her,” he said, oddly admiring.
“I couldn’t,” Leon said, his voice still far away.
“Leon?”
He looked up, aware now that Altan had been talking. “I was supposed to keep him safe. That’s what it was all for. Everything that happened. To keep him alive.” His mouth began to turn up, as if he had heard a joke, back where his voice was. “Keep him alive.”
Altan raised his eyebrows, a nurse watching a patient.
“You all wanted him,” Leon said. “Everybody. Then nobody did.”
Altan shifted in his chair. “In my opinion, a waste. What can he do for anybody now? Dead.”
“Nothing. That’s what he wanted.”
Altan looked at him, not sure how to take this.
“All this to get Dorothy,” Leon said, the idea still implausible.
“No.”
“No?”
“A very devious man, Melnikov,” Altan said, sitting back, settling in. “I don’t think he trusted you. Your mistress, a little insurance to keep your gun in your pocket. Mrs. Wheeler to distract you. While the real one is taken away. Of course eventually you would realize the mistake. All those questions with no answers. But by then too late. He’s gone.”
“Who?” Leon said, only half listening.
“Mr. Wheeler. Naval attache. An expert on the Black Sea. And much else, it seems.”
Leon raised his head. Another joke, off somewhere. “Alexei always said he’d be in Ankara,” he said.
“Yes. The logical place.”
“She knew?”
Altan shook his head. “The Soviets would never use a husband and wife. They’re too experienced for that,” he said, making a point. “She knew nothing. Which, of course, came out. An odd marriage. But maybe not. What do any of us know? But suspicions, yes. A woman who noticed things. So maybe she knew and she didn’t know. Both. It’s possible, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“Anyway, we detained Mr. Wheeler before he could go, so not such an ordeal for her. Polite questions, I understand.”
“You detained him?”
“The Black Sea was an Ottoman lake. Once. When the bear takes an interest-we like to know why. A few questions. But now the Americans have him.” He opened his hand. “They paid for him. You paid for him.”
A face he couldn’t even remember, leaning over Dorothy’s desk.
“He went along with this? Setting her up?”
“Leon,” Altan said, a mock patience. “What would be the sense of telling him? You never know how people are going to react. Of course he was in no position to object. They were getting him out. Maybe later he could send for her. Maybe she refuses. They often do, I’m told. Given what it’s like there. But we got to him first.”
He leaned back again, pleased, as if he had tied a bow that had come out right, like the statements in his briefcase. Dorothy would have to make one too. What she knew and didn’t know. Left behind.
Leon looked up from the chair. “You’re all bastards, aren’t you? All of you. Tommy and-” He stopped, too tired to follow his own thought. “Bastards.”
Altan stared at him for a minute, then nodded slowly, humoring him. “But in a good cause,” he said, getting up and walking to the window, then turning to Leon. “What did you think this was?”
Another echo, her voice again. What did you think this was? In the beginning. Maybe not thinking at all.
“Good cause,” Leon said, his voice rough with scorn. “What cause?”
Altan’s body went still, not rising to this. He took out another cigarette.
“Do you know how long we have been doing this? The empire should have been finished two hundred years ago, more. From then on, there were only bad choices. Good for someone else, maybe, but bad for us. How much money to borrow? How much land to give up. All bad choices. But we survived. We found a balance between. The Ottoman solution,” he said ironically. “I like to think it’s a kind of wisdom. Life is like that, don’t you think? Mostly bad choices. All you can do is keep your balance between them.”
“You lost the empire,” Leon said flatly.
Altan peered at him through the smoke, annoyed. “And we learned from that too. Sometimes one bad choice is
