She studies his face. “All right,” she says, reluctantly. “You can come. But this is about Toni, not about you and me.”
“I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
“Well, that’s good, Leo, because there isn’t any other way. Just so we’re loud and clear on that.”
“Oh, crystal,” he says.
9
Whatever terrorist threat there had been, there’s no sign of it when Julia and Leo step off the plane at Ataturk Airport. Julia’s surprised by the state of the airport. Dusty and forlorn-looking. Chipped linoleum and walls in need of a fresh coat of paint. The place feels more like a railway station than an international airport. Functional, but that’s about it. Julia had expected armed security, too, especially given the potential terrorist threat. But she’s lucky to spot a luggage handler let alone an armed guard.
After passing through passport control, Julia and Leo follow the crowd to a squeaking luggage carousel and wait for their bags to emerge. It seems to take forever. Julia glances up and spots the trio of western backpackers watching the conveyer belt, bleary-eyed and ragged. They look exactly how she feels.
Looking around, Julia wonders how Toni did this all the time. Be so far from home, in strange places, all by herself. Not knowing how to speak the language or read the signs. Which plane, bus, or train to catch. There’s a strange type of terror to it. But that’s Toni to a T, isn’t it?
Leo yawns and rubs his eyes. “I’d kill for a coffee right now.”
Julia envies him. He’d slept for most of the flight. She, on the other hand, had not even managed five minutes. The brain chatter had been too loud. The checklists she had formed and reformed in her mind. The awful scenarios she had played out in all their gory and graphic detail. The sense of being totally and overwhelmingly out of her depth. Her sister is missing in a country of eighty million people. She does not have a single clue about where to begin. Open heart surgery is far less complicated.
Julia watches as the same motley collection of luggage travels around the conveyer belt for the third time and thinks that maybe, just maybe, this is all one giant mistake, and Toni will be waiting on the other side of the arrival gates with a simple explanation and contrite apology.
But after they collect their bags and walk through the arrival gates, there’s no Toni, just a middle-aged man in a plain brown suit holding a sign with Julia’s name on it.
“I’m Dr. Norris,” Julia says, approaching him.
“Driver from the embassy. Follow. Please.”
The man grabs their suitcases and strides off toward the exit.
“Wait a minute,” she says, fast-walking to keep up. “Ms. Fletcher was supposed to meet us.”
“Julia, I’m sure it’s fine,” says Leo.
“You don’t know that, Leo.”
The man gives no indication he’s heard Julia and carries on through the sliding doors to a loading zone outside the terminal where a shiny black Lexus is parked. The man unlocks the trunk and dumps their suitcases inside.
“Sir, if you could just wait a moment while I make a call to find out what’s going on.”
Leo looks at her. “Maybe you made a mistake.”
She glances at him dismissively, reaching into her bag for her phone. “I didn’t make a mistake, Leo. When I gave John Miller the flight and accommodation details, he said an embassy representative named Christine Fletcher would be here to meet us.”
The driver shrugs. “They tell me take doctor to hotel, so that’s what I do.”
“Hotel?” exclaims Julia. “What? No, there’s been some sort of mistake. Please take us directly to the American embassy.”
The driver opens the back door for them. “This I cannot do.”
Julia’s throat tightens. “You don’t understand. My sister is missing.”
Leo touches her arm. “Hey, we’ll call from the hotel, find out what’s going on.”
The man plants himself in the driver’s seat and turns on the ignition.
“We go now, okay,” he says, staring out the windshield.
Julia stands on the sidewalk, shaking. She doesn’t like this feeling. When things don’t go according to plan, when things happen outside of her control.
Leo lowers his voice. “Like I said, it’s probably just a misunderstanding. We’ll sort it out.”
Finally, she relents and gets in the car. It isn’t as if she has much of a choice.
“Hot shower and something to eat, you’ll be as good as new,” says Leo, sliding in after her.
“I’m not a child, Leo,” she says, facing the window.
But right about now that’s exactly how she feels.
10
Julia isn’t prepared for the beauty of it. But even in her current state of gnawing anxiety, she can see Istanbul for the marvel that it is. She’s read about it, of course. In high school she’d studied the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire, and how, unlike any other city in the world, Istanbul was split between two continents, Asia and Europe. But seeing it in person is a whole other matter.
As the Lexus races along the four-lane road, she tries to take in the splendor. To the right, the restless Bosporus Sea is in constant motion, all peaks and valleys, the color of the deepest blue. While out in the middle of the strait, the tankers and trawlers blow black smoke and drift back and forth across the channel. Beyond that, there’s the modern side of Istanbul, the Asian side, with its concrete high rises and commercial center.
The Lexus rounds a corner, and the surrounding low-lying hills that make up the old quarter come into view. Exquisite mosques with gorgeous vaulted domes and slender minarets stud the crowded landscape, their exotic silhouettes prominent against the clear blue sky. Stone buildings of various heights, the color of sand and amber, cluster together in a strange
