Empire of Lies

47

At the clearing by the lake, Taymoor stood between the SUV Kamal and Nisreen had escaped in and the water’s edge.

A couple of other agents were close by. One of them was inspecting the inside of the vehicle. The others had been sent into the woods to look for the escapees. Taymoor’s attention, however, was riveted on the spot behind the SUV, the empty ground between it and the lake.

The ground where Kamal and Nisreen were last seen.

The place where they had been cornered.

The spot, according to the agents and the cops who had chased them there, from which there was no possible escape.

No possible escape. And yet they weren’t there. They had done just that—escaped.

How?

He’d sent out men to search the woods, to see if they could find any clue as to the couple’s disappearance. And as he stared at the bare, dry earth at the banks of the lake, to his left and to his right, and at the stagnant, shimmering water, he knew he was missing something. Something major. Something he hadn’t been deemed worthy to be informed of—neither by his partner nor by his superiors at the Hafiye.

He heard some commotion and turned his attention toward its source. Four cops were coming out of the forest. They had a couple of others with them, civilians, and were shoving them forward, herding them toward Taymoor’s position.

“Taymoor Agha,” one of them called out. “We found these two hiding in the woods.”

They jostled them over to face him. They were both male. The older man looked like he was in his forties and had a craggy, unshaven face. The younger man was somewhere in his twenties and had a handsome, clean face but was a little frail of build. They both looked terrified.

Taymoor knew where the fear was coming from. He knew what they had been doing there.

“They were hiding behind some bushes at the edge of the forest,” one of the cops told Taymoor.

“Hiding in the bushes? Doing what? Having a private little picnic,” he sneered, his anger at being kept in the dark about whatever the hell was going on overcoming his revulsion at having to play the gruff bigot.

“We didn’t see anything,” the younger man blurted nervously. “We just hid because of the shooting.”

“I didn’t ask you if you saw something,” Taymoor replied, his tone clinical. “But I’m now rather convinced that you did.”

He took a step closer to the young man, who dropped his gaze and was now visibly shaking. He held there for a long moment, giving the fear time to percolate across every pore of the young man. Then, in a lower, almost conspiratorial voice, he added, “We both know what you two were doing here. And we both know the consequences if I were to take you in for it. But if you tell me what you saw, then I might elect to forget certain things. Maybe a lot of things. What do you say, habibi?”

In the Ottoman Empire, beauty had been ungendered for centuries. It was very common for older men to pursue younger, beardless boys both romantically as well as for mentoring. Ottoman culture was rife with homoerotic poetry that extolled the virtues of this spiritualization of love. Palace elites and even some sultans engaged openly in pederasty. Things had changed, however, under Abdülhamid’s rule. Intolerance of anyone who didn’t fit the state’s vision of the ideal citizen became policy. Any form of homosexuality was now deemed to be a grave moral transgression and was unofficially criminalized, its practice driven underground.

The young man hazarded a glance up at Taymoor, then looked at his friend nervously. The older man’s face was stiff with fear and dripping with sweat, but his eyes were clearly signaling for him to keep quiet.

Which Taymoor caught.

He slapped the young man briskly, then used a firm grip to clasp his jaw and force him to face him. “My memory has a nasty habit of solidifying alarmingly fast,” he told the young man. “You really don’t want to let that happen.”

His scowl and his silence had visible consequences to the young man, whose face rippled with dread before contorting into reluctant, grudging compliance.

“There were two of them,” he told Taymoor. “A man and a woman.”

“And?”

“It all happened very fast. They rushed out of that car and hid behind it; then the others arrived. Two cars. The man started shooting at them.” He stopped and his eyes narrowed, as if he were studying the result of his revelations and hoping they were having a favorable effect on his inquisitor.

“Then what?”

“They shouted to each other. The officers wanted them to give themselves up. Then there was more shooting. A lot of it.” He paused again.

“Then what? What happened to the man and the woman?”

The young man’s eyes flashed wider. Then he dropped his gaze to the ground. And said nothing.

“Where did they go?” Taymoor repeated in a low, harsh hiss.

The young man remained silent.

Taymoor crept closer so he was now looming over the cowering man. “Where. Did. They. Go?”

The young man peered up at him from the corners of his eyes, then, his lips quivering, he said, “They disappeared.”

Taymoor’s face tightened. “What do you mean, they disappeared?”

The young man was now shaking uncontrollably and barely able to look at Taymoor. He hazarded a quick glance before he fell to his knees and cupped his face in his hands and started to sob.

“I asked you a question,” Taymoor raged.

“They disappeared,” the young man mumbled through soggy, shivering lips, barely daring to glance up at the agent who was towering over him. “They just vanished into thin air.”

Taymoor flew into a rage. He grabbed him by the hair and pulled him up with one hand while his other arm swung up and wide, his hand open and ready to deliver another monster slap. The young man yelped and curled into himself defensively. “It’s the truth—I swear it,” he blurted out in a rush to avoid the coming blow. “They just disappeared. I swear it.”

Taymoor held him there for a moment, then dropped him. The man cowered on the ground by his feet. Taymoor studied him. He didn’t know what to make of his answer. What he did know was that it didn’t make sense. He’d need a more private session of questioning to get to the truth.

He turned to face the other man. “What about you? Do you have anything to add?”

The older man looked just as fear-stricken as his younger companion. “It’s like he said,” he managed hesitantly. “They really vanished. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what happened. I can’t explain it.”

Taymoor shrugged in resignation. “Fine. Have it your way.” He nodded to his men. “Take them away. We’ll try this again later.”

The cops took hold of the men and started pushing them toward their cars. The two men tried to resist, with the younger man pleading, “It’s the truth—I swear it.”

Taymoor just nodded for his men to carry on.

“He’s telling the truth,” the older man insisted, his voice breaking. “That’s all we saw. They were just there. Then the man threw something into the lake, and they just disappeared.”

Which froze Taymoor. He snapped his fingers, which made his men stop in their tracks.

He marched closer to the old man and grabbed him by the hair, spinning his face so he was looking him squarely in the eyes.

“He threw something in the lake?”

The man nodded feverishly.

Taymoor’s eyes narrowed. “Show me.”