How to Betray Your Country Page 2

  He had written his own reference and used a clean email address for the Istanbul job, to avoid giving his former employers the opportunity to block his application. Not that he would have been too disappointed if it came to nothing. It was hard to imagine a more dead-end role than the one waiting for him on the third floor of a building in Cihangir. Give it a week and he suspected his new boss would find it hard to imagine a more deadbeat employee.

  “Executive recruitment?” asked his neighbour. “And what – your firm won’t fly you business either?” His brown hair was combed in straight lines like a freshly ploughed field. “Fucking cutbacks. With your height too. What are you, six three, six four? Cheap bastards.”

  “It’s a point of principle with me,” said August. “Downsizing, you should try it. Last year I had an epiphany, sold my BMW, the cottage in the country, gave twenty Italian suits to my local charity shop.”

  “The result being that you don’t look like any executive I’ve ever seen. What, did you sell your washing machine too?”

  “One of the perks of being the boss is that no one can tell you what to do.”

  “You’re the boss? No offence but you look a bit … what are you, thirty-five? Forty? I thought business prodigies were into yoga, tofu, that kind of thing. Not drinking neat gin from a bag hidden under the seat.”

  “I only drink when I fly. I’d be a bag of nerves otherwise.”

  “Okay, it’s like that.”

  “I’ve got two days of back-to-back interviews followed by an overnight to New York. And perhaps the most difficult client I’ve ever seen.”

  “My home town. You recruiting for this client?”

  “In theory, yes. In reality, nobody’s good enough. Plenty of interested parties, given the crazy bonus structure. They’re offering upwards of – well, it’s a good package. They keep on saying they’re looking for someone a little different. What does that mean, though, that’s my question.”

  “Someone from outside the sector is my guess.”

  “Who knows.”

  “Okay, Mister Recruiter, you’ve got me interested. Tell me more.”

  “What? Oh, I see. Listen, no offence, but it’s a few levels above agriculture salesman.”

  “Regional sales manager.”

  “Let me top up your medicine there while Nurse Ratched is out of sight.”

  “I’m good, thanks. What’s the company?”

  “Come on, hold your cup still.”

  “American or European?”

  “Can’t say, it’s all very hush-hush, they’re still clearing out dead wood.”

  “What sector, then?”

  “Your firm probably makes a machine for clearing out dead wood, am I right?”

  “Finance?”

  “No, and it’s not farming either, don’t worry, your job’s safe.”

  “Industrial?”

  August sighed. “Could be.”

  “If they’re paying top dollar it’s got to be either —”

  “I’m not going to confirm any names.”

  “That sector’s not a million miles from agriculture. As I tell my team, end of the day it’s all about men, money, materials and machines.”

  “Or plants, pitchforks and pesticides in your case.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Tractors then.”

  “Our bestselling combine starts at half a million, buddy, and I closed on six of them last quarter. Have you heard the saying ‘sell snow to the Eskimos’?”

  “What? No. I like it, though.”

  “That’s me all over.”

  “Come on, let’s stop talking business and make a toast. To a successful —”

  “I mean it, I’ll send you my numbers. You on LinkedIn?”

  August thought: now’s as good a time as any. Quicker and considerably rougher round the edges than he would have liked, but over the years he’d seen too many opportunities missed by people waiting for a perfect opening that never came. Besides, he had to dodge the LinkedIn question somehow.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “See that young guy with gel in his hair? Four rows ahead of us?”

  “What? Listen, I’ve got —”

  “In seat 34c. Sell him … this.” He picked up his paperback. “Instead of sending me your numbers, show me how good you are. You can’t give it away; I want at least ten dollars. Now, this is the important bit. See if you can find out in the process where he’s going and what he’s doing there. You must be good at reading people in your line of work. He doesn’t look like a tourist, does he, in that cheap suit, but he’s got all those books stacked up. So what’s his story?”

  “I’m not going —”

  “If it makes it easier, imagine he’s an Eskimo.”

  It was only as his neighbour was lowering himself into 34b with a wink in August’s direction and a loud comment about how the view was better from this side of the plane that he suddenly remembered the book had been a gift. Martha had even written an inscription inside the front cover, just one year ago, on the occasion of his fortieth birthday. What else did he have with her writing on it? He had burned all the letters, all the cards, in a bonfire that made his eyes water for days afterwards, the smoke clinging to him like grief. Two parks police had appeared from nowhere and chased him as far as Battersea Bridge. He wished he’d burned the book too – that he’d burned everything. Her clothes filled three bin bags. He tried to leave but found himself sitting at a bus stop outside the charity shop for the rest of the day, watching through the window as other women bought pieces of her. He even followed one of them home, the one who bought her pea-green winter coat, and on the worst nights he was ready outside her house long before her morning walk to Clapham Common Tube station, the change at Stockwell, the Earl Grey with skimmed milk from Starbucks and the arrival at work at nine on the dot. Some evenings there were work drinks or a date. He even saw off a mugger once, snapping his wrist and throwing him into a rose bush while she clutched the coat around her and ran off in tears down the street. That night his house felt emptier than ever.

  “Piece of cake, buddy.”

  “What’s that?” August said, rubbing his face. He couldn’t swear he hadn’t fallen asleep.

  “The book, he bought the book.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I told you, he said yes. Ten US dollars for a rare first edition complete with an inscription from the author’s wife.”

  “With a what?”

  “Talk about making lemonade. There’s some handwritten thing on the first page that makes no sense at all so I improvised —”

  “Hang on, let’s start at the beginning. What’s his name?” asked August.

  “Joe or John or something like that.”

  “Why’s he wearing a suit?”

  “I don’t know, I was trying to sell him a book, remember?”

  “Where’s he going?”

  “Istanbul would be my guess, Sherlock. Listen, I started telling him how Turkey’s changed, all the years I’ve been going there. He comes across pretty nervous, must be the flying thing, like you. He’s a tourist – I could hardly shut him up about the places he’s going to visit: the Blue Mosque, Topkapı, the spice bazaar. He’s from Trafalgar Square in London. Is that good enough? Now listen to this.” He leaned towards August and lowered his voice. “I told him the book was a gift from the writer’s crazy wife, what was her name, Zorba, Zelda, something like that. Anyway, I spun him a story about her last night in the asylum before she topped herself. Puts the value of the book through the roof. His lucky day, though, because I need cash for a cab. You should have heard me, I’ve got her stuck in the tower of this castle, thunder and lightning outside, she uses a bed sheet to fashion a noose —”

  “Okay, I think I’ve got it.”

  “Then the rafter breaks but it’s too late, she’s writhing in agony as the staff rush in —”

  “I get the picture.”

  “They can’t bring her back, the
y search for a suicide note but the only thing they find is this crazy inscription about —”

  “Jesus Christ,” said August, “I’ll give you ten dollars to stop talking too, how about that?”

  “Hey, what’s your fucking problem?” His neighbour pulled back sharply from their conspiratorial huddle. There was a sudden, audible hush. All around them faces appeared in the gaps between seats like rows of pale fruit in a slot machine. “This was your idea, remember? Don’t look at me like that, what, you want to go back to sleep, you want to go back to your gin? What am I doing this for if you’re just snoozing? Who drinks neat gin anyway?” Even 34c was watching them now. “You want some free advice, you’re such a fucking success story, run a comb through your hair, have a shave, have a shower for Christ’s sake. You know what one of those is?”

  On the plus side, had he still been in government service, August would have had to heap praise upon his agent, however talentless and unproductive he’d been. He would have had to apologize and empathize and agree that no one could have done a better job. He would have had to consider a substantial pay-off to keep him quiet.

  “Tell you what, buddy,” he said, turning away and closing his eyes with a sigh. “You keep the ten dollars and we’ll call it quits.”

  Perhaps there were some benefits to being on the outside after all.

  You couldn’t call it sleep, what came next. Six cups of gin and his mind was nothing like the map on the screen in front of him, each thought like a country with a name and a border and his mind a pixelated plane, crossing neatly and in the straightest possible line from one to the next. Instead he roamed over a dark and illogical landscape: the songs Martha liked to sing, the last words she had said to him, the way 34c had started four films but not watched more than twelve minutes of any of them. Converts were among the fiercest people August had known – if that’s what 34c was. Often it took so much momentum to propel themselves through the thicketed objections of others and over the line that they ended up further than they had ever expected, in a place they had never imagined.

  August felt some sympathy with this. In his own way he was a recent convert too. He would have been the first to admit that by that point the unsurfaced road of grief had done its bit to judder loose the nuts and bolts that held him together. But while walking an anti-surveillance route on his way to meet an agent in Green Park, six weeks after her death, ten weeks before he boarded the flight to Istanbul, he saw the same man – late thirties, short brown hair, athletic build, grey business suit – behind him on no less than three separate occasions.

  Things weren’t quite the same after that, and not just because of what he went on to do. It wasn’t that the man in the grey suit had been following him. Rather, August realized that he had seen him three times because they caught the same early train to work from the same exclusive neighbourhood, because they drank the same expensive coffee, because they favoured the same well-maintained streets, because they made the same small choices about when to cross and how fast to walk and when to stop and look at something in a shop window that had caught their eye. It was a poor anti-surveillance route, that’s what the tradecraft instructors would have told him – and with some justification. Wrong time of day for that part of town, not enough stops. Your route should be able to defeat pure coincidence, which is exactly what this was. But all August could think about was that in a city of ten million people he was living in a town of thousands, one that might cover every geographical corner of the city but was as separate from it and the people who lived there as it was possible to be. It wasn’t political, this epiphany. It wasn’t about rich and poor or black and white. It wasn’t about class. It was an understanding that despite everything he had done, so much of his life still ran like a factory machine along grooves worn into the air around him by routine and conditioning. It was a conversion to the belief that he wouldn’t be free until he smashed everything around him to pieces.

  The plane banked and tipped August out of his thoughts. Four rows ahead, 34c began his preparations. He stood up to open the overhead locker and August saw him take a small piece of paper from a pocket of his rucksack, glance at it and then feign a cough in order to put it into his mouth and swallow it. As the wheels hit the runway he covered his face with his hands and moved his lips as though in prayer.

  It was all for nothing. Two men in cheap suits stood at the end of the gangway, watching the passengers enter the terminal. August saw the confusion in their eyes, and it registered for the first time that he and 34c were the same height and build, with the same dark hair, even if they were a good ten years apart in age. The two men examined a piece of paper and settled on 34c, following him closely, more concerned with control than discretion. As they turned a corner another three policemen standing to one side looked up and started walking in their direction. At that point even 34c realized what was going to happen. He stopped to tie his shoelace and made a sudden dash for a nearby bathroom door. The two men following him were slowed by the passengers streaming past. When they came out one of them was carrying 34c’s rucksack and the other one was holding him by the elbow. There was a red mark on his face and he looked as though he might cry.

  August watched the group disappear through a narrow grey door in the corner of the arrival hall. He had to be quick – the bathroom wouldn’t stay empty for long. Inside, six cubicles, cisterns behind wall panels, no signs of interference. Anything flushed away would be long gone by now. A padlocked storage cupboard. The ceiling panels were too high to push loose without a broom or a mop handle, even standing on a toilet seat. The bin was a slot in the far wall. He rolled up his sleeve and pushed down through damp bundled paper towels until his fingers touched something. He was surprised – he hadn’t expected this. Did he really want it back, along with whatever trouble it was about to get him into?

  He waited until he was on the train into the city. The inscription from his wife was still there. And on page 26, newly written in the margin, “Clive Albert Scrivener”, on page 173, “Feriköy cemetery, Abide-i Hürriyet Cd.”, and on page 210, “b. 1930”.

  August was working again.

  3

  It was crazy, what he was planning to do. Whatever he might have told himself, August hadn’t really stopped to consider the possibility that 34c had been released, or allowed to make a phone call, or persuaded to talk, or that the reason he had been picked up in the first place was that the police knew all along exactly what he was planning to do. His attempt to conceal the name and address of the cemetery in the margins of the book must surely mean something was supposed to happen there, something he wanted to keep secret from the Turkish authorities. And it wouldn’t take an expert to point out that the people still on the side of Islamic State in 2016 weren’t doctors and engineers and teachers – the early nation builders. They were the ones who had seen the Jordanian pilot, the Yazidi slave markets and the balaclava, and they had thought: yes. It was crazy from every angle. But August, who intended to deal with his grief by throwing himself down every rabbit hole he passed, thought: it’s just a dead letter box. How much trouble can you get into with a dead letter box?

  The problem was that he was still drunk. He had sobered up a bit by having three cups of coffee at the airport, by eating a cheese sandwich on the train, by not drinking any more gin. He sat on a narrow bed in the two-star Hotel Turkish Delight, a towel wrapped around his waist, his room higher than it was long or wide, like a matchbox tipped onto its end. It looked as though he was made of rib and muscle and shadow. Far above him a dusty bulb swayed, casting barely enough light for him to study the map of Istanbul spread out on the faded black and white floor tiles. He found Feriköy cemetery in the neighbourhood of Şişli and looked for the nearest metro station. It would be safer than taking a bus, given that he was unfamiliar with routes and prices. There should be nothing that linked him to this journey, nothing that stood out – no phone, no bank card, no interaction with a city employee who might later remember a ta
ll foreigner with a stoop who slurred his words and didn’t understand the coins in his pocket. He dressed in dark colours, ran a comb through his hair and slipped on the stairs on his way down to the lobby. All that free advice on the plane about drinking and here he was going out drunk. At least gin didn’t smell.

  A dozen or so cats watched as he emerged unsteadily. His hotel, its once-grand facade the colour of dried mustard, was by some measure the most dilapidated building in a narrow street taken over by coffee bars, fashion boutiques and a costume shop promoting a discount on superheroes. The door slammed shut and a shower of fine grit settled on his shoulders. The rusted scaffolding over the entrance, he understood, was not there to facilitate repairs so much as to catch pieces of falling masonry. He set off through a series of steep alleyways, on cobbles glazed by rain. Parked cars and vans were tucked in tight along the edges, allowing him the opportunity to step out and see whether anyone was following him. He stood for a while to watch a solitary man working patiently on a piece of furniture in the depths of a dimly lit workshop. As he approached Taksim Square the streets filled with evening shoppers and people returning home. He found a Turkish newspaper on a bench and put it under his arm. Before long he was lost in crowds of commuters and allowed himself to be gently swept along in the direction of the metro. In the train carriage he pulled his woollen hat low and avoided eye contact with other passengers. It was two stops north to Şişli-Mecidiyeköy. He could have walked, but he knew that surveillance teams hated metros at rush hour, and this was an opportunity to take his first deep breath of Istanbul in full flow. From there he doubled back and walked for twenty minutes to the cemetery. He stopped once to buy water, hoping to clear his head, and then at a bus stop, just after rounding a corner, where he consulted the timetable and waited to see if anyone came after him.