The Water Diviner (32 page)

Yes. This is it. I’m sure of it.

Connor glances around him, fairly certain now that he isn’t being followed. He carefully descends the stairway, standing at the bottom for a moment to gather himself and contemplate his next move. It’s not too late to change his mind. He could still make his ship. Brindley wouldn’t be too pleased, but what he is about to do will make the captain apoplectic.

The vision that came to him this morning is still clear, still palpable and still very real. Connor knows that if there is even the slightest chance that Art is still alive he must knock on this door. He takes a long deliberate breath. Then he raps on the door quickly with the back of his hand and braces himself for what he expects will be a less than welcome reception. After a pause, the door opens with a creak and is held ajar by the proprietor Connor recognises from the previous evening. His dark eyes register surprise to see the Australian standing there. He is wary, and silent.

Connor is at a loss; he has no idea what to say. In the end he utters the one thing he can think of that may gain him entry to the
meyhane
.

‘Mustafa Kemal.’

The doorkeeper raises his chin and steps back from the entrance, allowing Connor to enter the smoke-filled room. Jemal is in a corner, nursing a raki. He looks up and glares at Connor, eyes flashing.

‘You, Australian! Can’t leave us alone, eh?’

Hasan steps forward and stands before Connor, arms crossed at his chest. His Ottoman uniform has been replaced with a peasant’s baggy woollen trousers, cotton shirt and embroidered vest. He gazes at Connor dispassionately, saying nothing.

‘He is alive. I know it,’ Connor rasps. ‘So kill me – or take me with you.’

‘T
he train will slow for us.’

Connor kneels beside Hasan, Jemal and thirty or more of their Nationalist comrades behind a bank of long reeds just past the outskirts of the city, sharp pieces of flinty grey gravel digging into his knees.

At the top of the ridge where they lie in wait, the railway runs along a steep embankment. Further down the hill towards the port and the ramshackle hovels that cling to the outermost edge of the city like barnacles, a train approaches through a steep cutting, thick plumes of black smoke and white steam billowing into the sky.

There had been a moment in the
meyhane
when Connor was certain Hasan would give the order for Jemal to slit his throat. The mood in the room was grim and resolute, and he had braced himself for the worst. With the warped perception that comes at such moments, to Connor it seemed that hours, rather than seconds, or minutes at the most, ticked by as Hasan contemplated him coolly. But a brief flicker in the Turk’s eye betrayed his decision, and Hasan’s face softened in line with the slight relaxation of his military bearing.

Everything moved at breakneck pace after that. The men listened gravely as Hasan outlined a precise plan for reaching their rendezvous point. They departed the
meyhane
in small groups, leaving at random intervals; Connor had been assigned to a group of four that included both Hasan and Jemal. Jemal didn’t hide his displeasure and distrust of Connor from his commanding officer, muttering under his breath in Turkish as they prepared to leave.

Ignoring his sergeant, Hasan brusquely explained the plan to Connor in English before they left the basement room. As he stood at the door, he turned to the Australian.

‘You are not to speak as we move through the city. We will be doing our best to avoid British soldiers. But if we do pass any, do not converse with them. If you try to draw any attention to us, I will have no hesitation in giving Jemal permission to execute you.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘As you have surely noticed, he is eager for the task.’

After that, all the communications were in Turkish, with Hasan and Jemal giving Connor quiet instructions in English as required as they moved through the streets. When they rounded one corner and encountered a small British patrol, Connor’s gut dropped. He anticipated the worst, expecting the soldiers to be on the lookout for him. But he was relieved when the only attention he attracted was barefaced stares at the curious spectacle of a European man in league with three Turkish peasants, a scrutiny that was easily diverted when Connor smiled and tipped his hat.

On the circuitous journey to the rail yard the quartet had passed under a mossy archway that cut through the Byzantine city wall. On the other side lay the stone-faced breakwater on the Sea of Marmara. As Connor made his way through the wall, he marvelled at the ingenuity of the fishermen who now made this place their home. Ramshackle huts made of driftwood and discarded sheets of metal had sprung up like weeds in the ancient breaches in the wall’s defences.

It was on one of their first walks through Constantinople that Orhan had relished telling Connor that Mehmet the Conqueror had smashed his way through the city walls using cannon and driven the Christians into the sea. ‘And Mustafa Kemal will do it again,’ he’d added with a cheeky grin. Only now is Connor beginning to realise what Turks will risk in order to make Orhan’s bold declaration a reality.

When they arrived at the wharf, Connor was surprised that the other members of the party weren’t waiting for them.

‘We are all leaving the city from different places,’ Hasan explained. ‘If we travel together, it will raise an alarm. The British do not want us to leave the city any more than they want you to stay.’

A bent and weathered fisherman stood waiting for them by the dock. He led them down the pier towards a blue and white caique that was tied to a bollard, bucking against it in the heavy swell, the low edges of its hull perilously close to the waterline. A chilly wind blew to shore across the narrow strait, and sea spray misted against Connor’s face each time the waves slapped into the dock.

Jemal, a superstitious man, rapped his knuckles against a timber upright. ‘
Inşallah
, it won’t be a bad crossing.’ His face was pale, his usually gregarious nature strangely diminished.

‘This man does not like travelling by water,’ Hasan laughed, slapping Jemal on the back.

‘It is not natural. Otherwise we would have scales and fins.’

During the crossing from Australia, as they’d passed through the tropical regions, Connor had experienced some monumental storms. At times the boat had seemed to tilt from end to end in waves that loomed above the masthead, solid blue-black walls of water that had threatened to teeter and topple onto the boat, shattering it into splinters and sending all on board to a watery grave. To a man whose entire existence had been earthbound, the mutability of life at sea was unsettling, the sensation of the deck constantly shifting beneath his feet more than mildly disconcerting.

He smiled at Jemal. ‘I’m with you, mate.’

As predicted, the crossing from the European shore to the dock at Kadıköy was rough. The wizened fisherman blithely clung to the tiller, standing on bowed legs in the stern of the boat. Connor clutched the smooth edge of the bench seat that spanned the boat, knuckles white and teeth clenched as he fought the hot rush of nausea that washed over him.

Can’t have them thinking I’m weak
.

The passage seemed interminable. Each time he looked over his shoulder towards the Asian shore, they seemed to have made little or no progress. If Hasan was at all concerned by their circumstances it was impossible to tell; his face and carriage were impassive and unyielding. For his part, Jemal made no attempt to remain stoic; he spent most of the voyage bent double over the edge of the boat, dry-retching into the waves, all remnants of his breakfast long gone in a ghastly feast for the tiny, silver fish that darted about in the boat’s wake.

When they finally made landfall, Connor clambered to shore with a conspicuous sense of relief. Jemal had all but fallen to his knees in thanks once he felt solid ground beneath his feet; he was so shaken by the crossing he felt a pressing need to down two shots of raki to steel his nerves. By comparison, the route through the streets of Kadıköy to their rendezvous point beside the railway line was uneventful.

Crouching now behind the reeds and brush on the ridge, the group watches as cargo is loaded into the long line of carriages and the Ankara train begins to snake up the steep incline from the station below.

‘The sixth and seventh cargo carriages will be open for us,’ Hasan reports.

As the train approaches their hiding spot, it slows to a crawl. Counting the carriages, Hasan shouts to Jemal, ‘There! Those two!’

Jemal scrambles up the embankment to the track and trots beside the passing train, seizing the unsecured doors of the empty livestock carriages and sliding them open. He vaults inside the second carriage and signals the other men – all is clear. In a rush, they scurry up the gravel slope and grab the edges of the carriages, hoisting timber crates of guns and ammunition on board and tossing their packs up onto the wooden floor before leaping onto the train. Hasan waits until all his men are aboard before he turns to Connor.

‘It’s not too late to change your mind, Australian.’

Connor doesn’t hesitate. ‘Not a chance. I don’t have anywhere else to go now.’

‘If you insist.’ Hasan waves Connor forwards and they clamber up the embankment and make a dash for the second carriage. ‘Come on, then.’

The air is implausibly crisp and clear as the train begins its slow ascent into the wooded mountains to the east of the town of Izmit.

The slatted doors of the railway car Connor is in are fully open on both sides, allowing cool air to circulate in the carriage in gentle waves, a relief after the heavy and humid air of the port. After leaving Izmit, the soldiers had changed out of their peasants’ clothes and put their uniforms back on. Now, some of them sit with their legs dangling over the sides, quietly smoking and chatting. Others relax inside the carriage, backs leaning against the stack of crates that sit in one corner, cleaning their guns or seizing the opportunity to sleep, caps tilted over their eyes to shut out the light filtering through the open slats.

Connor sits on the side of the train that faces the downward slope of the mountain, watching the sparkling waters of the Sea of Marmara recede in the distance. He is mesmerised by the verdant forest before him. It is unlike anything he has ever seen before, accustomed as he is to broad, desiccated plains and the tenacious but flinty life forms that manage to survive there. The loamy, rich volcanic soil tumbling down these craggy slopes supports a profusion of living things. Groves of lilac arch above dense mats of bracken and blood-red lilies. Soaring trees form a lush canopy – dark green pine needles, broad emerald plane tree leaves and the scalloped leaves of the oak – that casts dappled golden shadows on the forest floor.

‘Tell me, Australian,’ Jemal says, hefting his bulk to the floor to sit beside Connor. ‘What part of the Ottoman Empire did Australia get?’

‘None of it. The war was never about land for us.’

Jemal scoffs. ‘Always it is about land. English get Egypt, Palestine. France gets Syria. Even Italy gets a beach. You don’t get land?’

‘We don’t need more land. We’ve got too much of that as it is. Australians didn’t even know where Turkey was before the war. We weren’t fighting for land. We fought for a principle.’ Just saying it makes Connor feel hollow. A generation of Australia’s youth decimated, the country’s coffers stripped.

A costly principle, indeed
.

Slapping his thigh with mirth, Jemal roars with laughter. ‘You fight. You die. You get nothing. Good principle! We should make business with your country!’ He translates for his fellow fighters who laugh along with him.

Jemal shakes his head, shouting out to Hasan who lounges against his pack in the corner of the carriage. ‘His whole country must be from the Black Sea!’

Connor is confused.

‘All Turkish people are brave and smart,’ Jemal explains. ‘But not in Black Sea, all people are stupid.’ Without needing any encouragement Jemal launches into a story. ‘Two men in Trabzon, Temel and Dursun. They fight and don’t talk to each other anymore. One day Temel walks past Dursun with goat. “Where are you going with donkey?” Dursun shouts. “It is not donkey, it is goat!” Temel says. “Shut up! I not talking to you. I talking with goat.” See?’ Jemal cackles with laughter. ‘Black Sea people are stupid like Australians!’

Suddenly, Jemal becomes serious. ‘We did it for two battleships.’

‘What?’

‘We go to war for two battleships. Four million of your pounds. We pay your George King to build us two battleships. He steals our money, and keeps our ships.’ Jemal snaps his fingers in front of Connor’s eyes. ‘
That
is why Turks help the Kaiser.’

Connor shakes his head, frowning. ‘The British didn’t do that.’

From his corner of the carriage, Hasan snorts. ‘They did, as a matter of fact. But it is old news. Governments will always find a reason to go to war.’

‘And peasants like me do not need a reason. Being shot at is more exciting than watching sheep.’ Jemal laughs. ‘Me? I like war so I not have to sex my wife anymore.’ He repeats this in Turkish to gales of laughter from his comrades.