Authors: Ian Mcdonald
The Dervish House (57 page)
‘You need a better deal,’ Adnan says. ‘Not just a plea bargain, but immunity from prosecution.’
‘Well, yes darling, but that’s only for whistleblowers who bring down state institutions . . .’ Ayşe stares as Adnan gets up from his chair and begins to pace around the tables of smokers and drinkers. He wanders into the old Hippodrome, looks up at the Egyptian obelisk, wanders back. When Ayşe tries to ask him what has gotten into him Adnan presses his finger to his lips:
ssh don’t speak
. It’s a plan, pure and simple, perfect and entire; as totally and instantly there in its every detail as Turquoise was when it appeared to him written on the smoked glass of an elevator. Only this is much, much bigger than Turquoise.
ssh don’t speak
. It’s a plan, pure and simple, perfect and entire; as totally and instantly there in its every detail as Turquoise was when it appeared to him written on the smoked glass of an elevator. Only this is much, much bigger than Turquoise.
Adnan sits down on his wicker stool, hooks up his ceptep.
‘Bekdil. Adnan Sarioğlu. Thanks for taking the call. I need to talk to you, urgently. You might want to bring a couple of the partners with you. Well, you either bring them or you’ll bring them later. What’s it about? Well, we might say, you’re a good lawyer, but you’re not a dealer.’
The last unit on the right, next to the ElmaÖrap apple packing unit, upstairs from the accountants; that’s where they’re holding Necdet, the Boy Detective deduces. He’s been past three times, the last a saunter among kids heading from the close of afternoon school. The young man with the scrubby moustache in the security booth doesn’t worry Can; grown-ups never notice anything and between buzzing trucks in and out his time is spent watching the sports channel or playing with his ceptep. But there are cameras and a quick check on the BotSpotters forum pegs two Samsung FBII8 Security drones pinned to the map of Bostancı Dudullu Business Park. Pattern recognition, gait and facial analysis AI were all introduced on that particular model and they come with equipped with RFID tag darts as standard. The consensus among the commentators is that their attention piques after three passes. Can took care to snap his photographs on his first recce, shooting low from the hip, clickety-click of the ceptep. It was a risk, opening up the phone, but as soon as he realized he would need photographs he also realized he had forgotten to add a camera to his Boy Detective Check List. Next case he’ll know better.
Kayişdaği is a flat, ugly place, nothing over two storeys high, all wedged tightly and meanly, paint peeling and plaster mould-stained, plastic, wide streets patrolled by wide cars, dust everywhere. Dust on the white Toyota pick-ups, dust on little three-wheeler citicars, dust on the tin dome of the small cheap community mosque, dust on the plastic store signs. All the women wear headscarves. There are a lot of babies and very small children. Some don’t look very clean. The sound is flat out here, thin and high-pitched. The sun is very strong and hot. Can has slapped on half a tube of factor thirty.
Can thinks he has chosen the stake-out well. The Kapçek teashop faces on to the side of the business unit where Can suspects Necdet is being held across Bostancı Dudullu Cadessi. The road is wide and busy, two carriageways of constant traffic. Samsung FB118s are smart enough to disregard background vehicular traffic; scanning and identifying every car is within their capabilities but it would leave them little else for janitoring. Can will hide behind walls of moving vehicles. Beneath the teashop awning he can sit and work on his computer and carry out his investigation. No one will dream of asking him what he’s doing.
Cayhane
is a recognized way of life.
Cayhane
is a recognized way of life.
Can nods to the clientele as he takes a stool at a table by the street.
‘Gentlemen,’ he says nonchalantly. The men of the Kapçek are less well shaven, their faces thinner, their hands browner, the folds at the corners of their eyes deeper drawn, but they are of a type with Mr Ferentinou and his old Greeks. Can slides his computer out of his backpack and opens it up. The proprietor is at the table. He’s younger and skinnier than Bülent and has rather prominent teeth.
‘Sir?’
Can looks at him over the top of his Detective shades.
‘Ayran please. Over ice.’
Ayran on the Asian side is cheap and very very good. Can takes shots through a straw as he opens up the BitBot application while loading the photographs from the ceptep chip directly into Panoramika, which whipstitches them into a fully explorable three-sixty model of Bostancı Dudullu Business Park. He needs to get the Bots over there to check out locations and faces before it’s too dark to see. There’s the van. It hasn’t moved since it arrived here last night. If he zooms he can make out Rat Baby hooked on to the rear fender. It makes Can giggle in glee at his cleverness. BitBot is ready. Can slides in the earphone and taps up the haptic field. A wave of his fingers and Snake comes to life around his neck, disgorges his tail and slithers down Can’s arm on to the table.
Old men and proprietor alike stare.
‘It’s a toy,’ Can says. He crosses his hands, spreads his fingers and Snake becomes Bird.
‘Why didn’t we have toys like that when I was a kid?’ says a chubby, smiley man with a grand moustache.
‘God keep us so my grandsons never ever get to hear about those,’ says the grizzled man with cheeks sunken from missing teeth.
Now Can will really make their eyes pop. A flick of his hands and Bird flitters up from the table, over the traffic constant along Bostancı Dudullu Cadessi, spiralling up like a stork on the heat beating up from the blacktop, high over the solar roofs of the business centre. The first part is the tricky part, bringing in Bird unseen by the Samsung Sisters and reconfiguring it so Rat and Rat Baby rejoin. He makes a high pass, all eight-camera-eyes wide angle. It’s a risk, if he enters their patrol perimeters those bastarding robots will see at once this is no ordinary bird. There. Opportunity. Can drops Bird on to the roof of an inbound truck stopped at the security gate. He pulls his fists apart. Bird transforms to Snake and wriggles down the back of the truck to the fender. Another conversion and Snake is Rat, clinging behind the licence plate. The truck swings wide to reverse up to the ElmaÖrap bay, Rat hops off the trailer at the maximum of its articulation, scurries under the wheels to leap, dissociate and mingle with the simultaneously leaping and dissociating BitBot swarm of Rat Baby, releasing from the back of the white truck. Rat reforms in mid-air, full and complete, then rolls under the van out of sight of the twitching eye-antennae of the Samsungs.
In.
Can feels an audience on his shoulder. He turns round to see that the old men have all moved their chairs round to watch the transforming robot show playing out on his silkscreen.
‘Never mind your grandchildren, I want one of those,’ the çayhane owner says.
‘Is this for television?’ says Sunken-Cheeks Missing-Teeth.
‘But seriously son, where did you get those things?’ There’s a sour one, like the nasty old Egyptian in Adem Dede Square. There’s always a nasty one. ‘What devilment are you up to with them?’
Can’s heart flaps and beats like a pigeon trapped in a balcony. His plans never allowed for the fact that other people might be suspicious of his detective work. The detective is always right and straight. His goodness is never questioned. Now that it has been, other realizations clutch at Can’s chest. Any one of these men might be bad guys. The bad guys might walk in at five o’clock every day to order ayran fresh from the fridge. Sour One might be sour because he’s a policeman. Chubby-Good-Moustache could be a teacher or a social worker or someone from the ministry for children. People with the power to stop his investigation and send him back home. Then Can knows how to work it.
‘My brother has been kidnapped.’ The men start back. Here’s what I’ll say when you say,
then call the police
, Can thinks. Oh, it’s finger-snapping brilliant. ‘He owes money to these men.’ The men relax back with an audible
oh
. ‘Except he doesn’t. Except there’s been a mistake. Except I got this tag on him, and found him here, and when I find where he really is, I’ll get in the rest of the family and they’ll smack them up, the money lenders.’
then call the police
, Can thinks. Oh, it’s finger-snapping brilliant. ‘He owes money to these men.’ The men relax back with an audible
oh
. ‘Except he doesn’t. Except there’s been a mistake. Except I got this tag on him, and found him here, and when I find where he really is, I’ll get in the rest of the family and they’ll smack them up, the money lenders.’
‘Are you making this up?’ Sunken-Cheek Missing-Teeth asks.
‘No,’ says Can with the little upturn at the end that he uses on his parents when he wants to double-bluff them. ‘Really.’ Now you don’t know what to believe, but I am telling the truth. Sort of. Can has another Brilliant Detective Idea. This will really confuse them. ‘Have you noticed anything or anyone strange coming or going from the end unit?’
The proprietor shakes his head, in bafflement rather than negation.
‘Kids,’ Sunken-Cheeks Missing-Teeth says with a dismissive wave of the hand.
‘Do your parents know you’re out?’ Good Moustache says, half-joking. Only Nasty-Man-Egyptian keeps his eye on Can as the others return to their çay and cards. Can flexes his fingers. Peace at last.
Can sends Rat out from under the white van along the foot of the wall to cover behind the garbage. Just like a flesh rat. There he converts to Snake and goes up the wall behind the drain. Easy easy so easy. These people with their clunky big Samsungs are no match for the Boy Detective and his BitBots. This is the plan: take Snake out along the walls, clinging to the roughly painted cinderblock easily with the nanoscale hooks that bind and release from different forms, finding cover in the shadow of window sills and eaves. Windows are the big goal: a good look in through each one. Can snaps his fingers in excitement. This is so good. He is so clever.
Through the first window: an empty room with a broken-down sofa, a desk with some electronic equipment that won’t resolve properly on Snake’s limited field of resolution.
Through the second window. Snake lifts his camera-jewelled head over the edge of the sill. Three mattresses, some sheets, flat looking foam pillows. Empty water bottles: many. Empty fast-food containers: several. Black plastic refuse sacks: bulging. Magazines, books with dull covers and scrolly writing.
The third window. Desks are pushed against the wall, the floor space is taken up with styrofoam crates and cardboard boxes. Here Can spots his first human. A young man sits at a desk at the side of the room where he can see both door and window. He has curling hair and blue eyes and the kind of almost-beard men grow first when it’s time to experiment with facial hair. He might be one of the men who kidnapped Necdet, Can can’t remember the faces too clearly. The man’s intent on his work on a silkscreen computer. Can fiddles with the focus but can’t get a clear shot of the screen. He daren’t linger, the man could look up at any moment. But there is an angular object under the desk. The young man shifts in his chair and now Can sees the object for what it is: an assault rifle.
In the Kapçek çayhane Can starts back from the screen. A little gasp puffs out of him. He looks around quickly, guiltily to see if anyone else has seen the gun. The men seem happy with their cards. Quickly Can pulls Snake away from the third window and on to the fourth.
Here is Necdet. He lies on his side on a mattress. Can’s angle is acute and he cannot see the face but the man is wearing the same clothes he was when Can saw him bundled into the white van. Can will always remember that. Squatting on her heels, facing Necdet, is a woman. She wears a headscarf but her face is young. She has fashionable glasses, jeans and boots, Her heels come a little off the floor. Her lips are moving, she is clearly talking to Necdet. Audio was never very good on BitBots. It’s much harder to get decent sound than an acceptable picture. Can is sure he’s never seen this woman before. The man behind her, cross-legged on a mat on the floor, is vaguely familiar. He is one of the kidnap crew. He is a square man, he looks old to Can but he never was very good at age over fourteen. They all look the same. He has dark skin, an eastern complexion, and wears a SuperDry T-shirt going at the collar. He has a big sport of hair at his throat; that’s what’s wearing away at the T. A big assault rifle lies comfortably across his thighs.
Everyone but Necdet is in a position where they could see peeping Snake as plain as a minaret. Can pulls Snake in to safety under the window sill. He’s found him. He’s found Necdet. He’s seen the people holding him, and something of their plan. They have guns. He always thought they might but the truth knocks him back. What does he do now? One immediate must. The BitBots are low on power.
The çayhane owner is startled to find Can behind him as he washes glasses. Can holds up his power adaptor.
‘Can I use some electricity? I’ll pay you.’ The teashop owner silently plugs in the cord. Can carefully adjusts his seat so his back is to a wall and he can see both street and teashop, a lesson he has already learned from the terrorists. He risks a mid-air shift into Bird and a swoop across Bostancı Dudullu Cadessi. Mr Ferentinou once told him that people find things moving away less interesting than things moving towards them. Bird’s arrival makes the card-players look up from their game.
‘Needs recharging,’ Can says. The hour of charging is endless and agonizing. The light is going. The teashop owner is impatient. The men have drained all interest from their cards and will soon start with their questions again. And he has no idea what is going on over in the house of terror. Planning is good. Think strategy. Greater Istanbul Department of Planning and Building Control will have architect’s plans for the business park. As he shuffles through the search menus, Can wonders that the planning office for Istanbul contains Istanbul, flat and drawn on paper. A two-dimensional city. Bostancı Dudullu Business Park. Easy. Can plans his assault. He will take the easy option through the accountants’. He will gain entry by a vent brick, then work his way up through the wall cavity. This is very easy for Snake to do. Along the floorspace: the office suites are generously endowed with air vents. Marrying plan to memory, he locates the one closest to Necdet.
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