The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep

Chapter 1

The Turks have dreary jails. Or is that conjecture? The plural might be inaccurate, for all I truly knew, there might be but one jail in all of Turkey. Or there could be others, but they need not be dreary places at all. I sketched them mentally, a bevy of Turkish Delights bedecked with minarets, their floors and walls sparkling with embedded rubies, their dazzling halls patrolled by undraped Turkish maidens, and even the bars on the windows lovingly polished to a glowing sheen.

But, whatever the case, there was at least one dreary jail in Turkey. It was in Istanbul, it was dank and dirty and desolate, and I was in it. The floor of my cell could have been covered by a nine-by-twelve rug, but that would have hidden the decades of filth that had left their stamp upon the wooden floor. There was one small barred window, too small to let very much air in or out, too high to afford more than a glimpse of the sky. When the window turned dark, it was presumably night; when it grew blue again, I guessed that morning had come. But, of course, I could not be certain that the window even opened to the outside. For all I knew, some idiot Turk alternately lit and extinguished a lamp outside that window to provide me with this illusion.

A single twenty-five-watt bulb hung from the ceiling and kept my cell the same shade of gray day and night. I’d been provided with a sagging army cot and a folding cardtable chair. There was a chamber pot in one corner of my chamber. The cell door was a simple affair of vertical bars, through which I could see a bank of empty cells opposite. I never saw another prisoner, never heard a human sound except for the Turkish guard who seemed to be assigned to me. He came morning, noon, and night with food. Breakfast was always a slab of cold black toast and a cup of thick black coffee. Lunch and dinner were always the same-a tin plate piled with a suspicious pilaff, mostly rice with occasional bits of lamb and shreds of vegetable matter of indeterminate origin. Incredibly enough, the pilaff was delicious. I lived in constant fear that misguided humanitarian impulses might lead my captors to vary my monotonous diet, substituting something inedible for the blessed pilaff. But twice a day my guard brought pilaff, and twice a day I wolfed it down.

It was the boredom that was stifling. I had been arrested on a Tuesday. I’d flown to Istanbul from Athens, arriving around ten in the morning, and I knew something had gone wrong when the customs officer took far too much time pawing through my suitcase. When he sighed at last and closed the bag, I said, “Are you quite through?”

“Yes. You are Evan Tanner?”

“Yes.”

“Evan Michael Tanner?”

“Yes.”

“American?”

“Yes.”

“You flew from New York to London, from London to Athens, and from Athens to Istanbul?”

“Yes.”

“You have business in Istanbul?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. “You are under arrest,” he said.

“Why?”

“I am sorry,” he said, “but I am not at liberty to say.”

My crime seemed destined to remain a secret forever. Three uniformed Turks drove me to jail in a jeep. A clerk took my watch, my belt, my passport, my suitcase, my necktie, my shoelaces, my pocket comb and my wallet. He wanted my ring, but it wouldn’t leave my finger, so he let me keep it. My uniformed bodyguard led me down a flight of stairs, through a catacombic maze of corridors, and ushered me into a cell.

There was nothing much to do in that cell. I don’t sleep, have not slept in sixteen years-more of that later-so I had the special joy of being bored, not sixteen hours a day, like the normal prisoner, but a full twenty-four. I ached for something to read, anything at all. Wednesday night I asked my guard if he could bring me some books or magazines.

“I don’t speak English,” he said in Turkish.

I do speak Turkish, but I thought it might be worthwhile to keep this a secret. “Just a book or a magazine,” I said in English. “Even an old newspaper.”

In Turkish he said, “Your mother loves to perform fellatio upon syphilitic dogs.”

I took the proffered plate of pilaff. “Your fly is open,” I said in English.

He looked down immediately. His fly was not open, and his eyes focused reproachfully on me. “I don’t speak English,” he said again in Turkish. “Your mother spreads herself for camels.”

Dogs, camels. He went away, and I ate the pilaff and wondered what had led them to arrest me, and precisely why they were holding me, and if they would ever let me go. My guard pretended he could not speak English, and I feigned ignorance of Turkish. The high window turned alternately blue and black, the guard brought toast and pilaff and pilaff, toast and pilaff and pilaff, toast and pilaff and pilaff. The chamber pot began to approach capacity, and I amused myself by calculating just when it would overflow and by trying to imagine how I might bring this to the attention of a guard who refused to admit to a knowledge of English. Would either of us lose face if we talked in French?

The pattern changed, finally, on my ninth day in jail, a Wednesday. I thought it was Tuesday-I’d lost a day somewhere-but it turned out that I was wrong. I had my usual breakfast, paid my usual tribute to my chamber pot, and performed a brief regimen of setting-up exercises. An hour or so after breakfast I heard footsteps in the hallway. My guard unlocked my door, and two uniformed men came into my cell. One was very tall, very thin, very much the officer. The other was shorter, fatter, sweaty, and moustached, and possessed an abundance of gold teeth.

Both carried clipboards and wore sidearms. The tall one studied his clipboard for a moment, then looked at me. “You are Evan Tanner,” he said.

“Yes.”

He smiled. “I believe we will be able to release you very shortly, Mr. Tanner,” he said. “I regret the need to have dealt so unpleasantly with you, but I’m sure you can understand.”

“No, I can’t, frankly.”

He studied me. “Why, there were so many points to be checked, and naturally it was necessary to keep you in a safe place while these checks were made. And then you acted in such a strange manner, you know. You never questioned your confinement, you never banged furiously on the bars of your cell, you never slept-”

“I don’t sleep.”

“But we did not know that then, don’t you see?” He smiled again. “You did not demand to see the American ambassador. Every American invariably demands to see the ambassador. If an American is overcharged in a restaurant, he wants to bring the matter at once to his ambassador’s attention. But you seemed to accept everything-”

I said, “When rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it.”

“What? Oh, I see. But that is a sophisticated reaction, you understand, and it called for explanation. We contacted Washington and learned quite a great deal about you. Not everything, I am quite certain, but a great deal.” He looked around the cell. “Perhaps you’ve tired of your surroundings. Let us find more comfortable quarters. I must ask you several questions, and then you will be free to go.”

We left the cell. The short man with the gold teeth led the way, my interrogator and I followed side by side, and my guard trailed along a few paces behind. Walking was awkward. I’d evidently lost a little weight, and my beltless pants had to be held up manually. My shoes, lacking laces, kept slipping off my feet.

In an airy cleaner room a floor above, the taller man sat beneath a flattering portrait of Ataturk and smiled benevolently at me. He asked if I knew why they had arrested me so promptly. I said that I did not.

“Would you care to know?”

“Of course.”

“You are a member”-he consulted the clipboard-“of a fascinating array of organizations, Mr. Tanner. We did not know just how many causes had caught your interest, but when your name appeared on the incoming passenger list it did line up with our membership rosters for two rather interesting organizations. You belong, it would seem, to the Pan-Hellenic Friendship Society. True?”

“Yes.”

“And to the League for the Restoration of Cilician Armenia?”

“Yes.”

He stroked his chin. “Neither of these two organizations is particularly friendly to Turkish interests, Mr. Tanner. Each is composed of a scattering of-how would you say it? Fanatics? Yes, fanatics. The Pan-Hellenic Friendship Society has been extremely vocal lately. We suspect they’re peripherally involved in some acts of minor terrorism over Cyprus. The Armenian fanatics have been dormant since the close of the war. Most people would probably be surprised to know that they even exist, and we’ve had no trouble from them for a very long time. But suddenly you appear in Istanbul and are recognized as a member of not one but both of these organizations.” He paused significantly. “It might interest you to know that our records indicate you are the only man on earth to hold membership in both organizations.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.”

“That’s very interesting,” I said.

He offered me a cigarette. I declined. He took one himself and lit it. The smell of Turkish tobacco was overpowering.

“Would you care to explain these memberships, Mr. Tanner?”

I thought this over. “I’m a joiner,” I said finally.

“Yes, I’m sure you are.”

“I’m a member of…many groups.”

“Indeed.” He referred to the clipboard once more. “Our list may not be complete, but you may fill in any significant omissions. You belong to the two groups I mentioned. You also belong to the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Clann-na-Gaille. You are a member of the Flat Earth Society of England, the Macedonian Friendship League, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Libertarian League, the Society for a Free Croatia, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajadores de España, the Committee Allied Against Fluoridation, the Serbian Brotherhood, the Nazdóya Fedèróvka, and the Lithuanian Army-in-Exile.” He looked up and sighed. “This list goes on and on. Need I read more?”

“I’m impressed with your research.”

“A simple call to Washington, Mr. Tanner. They have a lengthy file on you, did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“Why on earth do you belong to all these groups? According to Washington, you don’t seem to do anything. You attend an occasional meeting, you receive an extraordinary quantity of pamphlets, you associate with subversives of every conceivable persuasion, but you don’t do much of anything. Can you explain yourself?”

“Lost causes interest me.”

“Pardon?”

It seemed pointless to explain it to him, as pointless as the many sessions I’d had with FBI agents over the years. The charm of an organization devoted to a singularly hopeless cause is evidently lost on the average person and certainly on the average bureaucrat or policeman. One either appreciates the beauty of a band of three hundred men scattered across the face of the earth with nothing more on their mind, say, than the utterly unattainable dream of separating Wales from the United Kingdom-one either finds this heartrendingly marvelous or dismisses the little band as a batch of nuts and cranks.

But, however futile my explanation, I knew that a slew of words of any sort would be better in this Turk’s eyes than my silence. I talked, and he listened and stared at me, and when I finished he sat silent for a moment and then shook his head.

“You astound me,” he said.

There seemed no need for a reply.

“It seemed quite obvious to us that you were an agent provocateur. We contacted your American Central Intelligence Agency, and they denied any knowledge of you, which made us all the more certain you were one of their agents. We’re still not certain that you’re not. But you don’t fit any of the standard molds. You don’t make any sense.”

“That’s true,” I said.

“You don’t sleep. You’re thirty-four years old and lost the power to sleep when you were eighteen. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“In the war?”

“Korea.”

“Turkey sent troops to Korea,” he said.

This was indisputably true, but it seemed a conversational dead end. This time I decided to wait him out. He put out his cigarette and shook his head sadly at me.

“You were shot through the head? Is that what happened?”

“More or less. A piece of shrapnel. Nothing seemed damaged-it was just a fleck of shrapnel, actually-so they patched me up and gave me my gun and sent me back into battle. Then I just wasn’t sleeping, not at all. I didn’t know why. They thought it was mental-something like that. The trauma of being wounded. It was nothing like that because the wound hadn’t shaken me up much at all. I never knew I was hit at the time, not until someone noticed I was bleeding a little from the forehead, so there wasn’t any trauma involved. Then they-”

“What is trauma?”

“Shock.”

“I see. Continue.”

“Well, they kept knocking me out with shots, and I would stay out until the shot wore off and then wake up again. They couldn’t even induce normal sleep. They decided finally that the sleep center of my brain was destroyed. They’re not sure just what the sleep center is or just how it works, but evidently I don’t have one any more. So I don’t sleep.”

“Not at all?”

“Not at all.”

“Don’t you become tired?”

“Of course. I rest when I’m tired. Or switch from a mental activity to a physical one, or vice versa.”

“But you can just go on and on without sleep?”

“Yes.”

“That is incredible.”

It isn’t, of course. Science still doesn’t know what makes men sleep, or how, or why. Men will die without it. If you keep a man forcibly awake, he will die sooner than if you starve him. And yet, no one knows what sleep does for the body or how it comes on a person.

“You are in good health, Mr. Tanner?”

“Yes.”

“Is it not a strain on your heart, this endless wakefulness?”

“It doesn’t seem to be.”

“And you’ll live as long as anyone else?”

“Not quite as long, according to the doctors. Their statistics indicate that I’ll live three-fourths of my natural life span, barring accidents, of course. But I don’t trust their figures. The condition just doesn’t occur often enough to afford any conclusions.”

“But they say you won’t live as long.”

“Yes. Though my insomnia probably won’t cut off as many years from my life as would smoking, for example.”

He frowned. He’d just lit a fresh cigarette and didn’t enjoy being reminded of its ill effects. So he changed the subject.

“How do you live?” he asked.

“From day to day.”

“You misunderstand me. How do you earn your living?”

“I receive a disability pension from the Army. For my loss of sleep.”

“They pay you one hundred twelve dollars per month. Is that correct?”

It was. I’ve no idea how the Defense Department had arrived at that sum. I’m certain there’s no precedent.

“You do not live on one hundred twelve dollars per month. What else do you do? You are not employed, are you?”

“Self-employed.”

“How?”

“I write doctoral dissertations and master’s theses.”

“I do not understand.”

“I write theses and term papers for students. They turn them in as their own work. Occasionally I take examinations for them as well-at Columbia or New York University.”

“Is this allowed?”

“No.”

“I see. You help them cheat?”

“I help them compensate for their personal inadequacies.”

“There is a name for this profession? It is a recognized profession?”

The hell with him, I decided. The hell with him and his questions and his rotten jail. “I’m called a stentaphator,” I explained. He had me spell it and he wrote it down very carefully. “Stentaphators are subsidiary scholars concerned with suasion and ambidexterity.”

He didn’t know trauma; I was fairly sure suasion and ambidexterity would ring no bells, and I guessed he wouldn’t ask for definitions. His English was excellent, his accent only slight. The only weapon in my arsenal was double-talk.

He lit still another cigarette-the man was going to smoke himself sick-and narrowed his eyes at me. “Why are you in Turkey, Mr. Tanner?”

“I’m a tourist.”

“Don’t be absurd. You’ve never left the United States since Korea, according to Washington. You applied for a passport less than three months ago. You came at once to Istanbul. Why?”

I hesitated.

“For whom are you spying, Mr. Tanner? The CIA? One of your little organizations? Tell me.”

“I’m not spying at all.”

“Then why are you here?”

I hesitated. Then I said, “There is a man in Antakya who makes counterfeit gold coins. He’s noted for his counterfeit Armenian pieces, but he does other work as well. Marvelous work. According to Turkish law, he’s able to do this with impunity. He never counterfeits Turkish coins, so it’s all perfectly legal.”

“Continue.”

“I plan to see him, buy an assortment of coins, smuggle them back into the United States, and sell them as genuine.”

“It is a violation of Turkish law to remove antiquities from the country.”

“These are not antiquities. The man makes them himself. I intended to have him give me an affidavit testifying that the coins were forgeries. It’s a violation of U.S. law to bring gold into the country in any form, and it’s a case of fraud to sell a counterfeit coin as genuine, but I was prepared to take that chance.” I smiled. “I had no intention, though, of violating Turkish law. You may believe me.”

The man looked at me for a long time. Finally he said, “That is an extraordinary explanation.”

“It happens to be true.”

“You sat for nine days in jail with an explanation in your pocket that would have gotten you released at once. That argues for its truth, does it not? Otherwise you might have told your cover story right away, accompanied it with a bribe, and attempted to get out of our hands the very first day; before we began to learn so many interesting things about you. A counterfeiter in Antakya. Armenian gold coins, for the love of God. When did Armenians make gold coins?”

“In the Middle Ages.”

“One moment, please.” He used a phone on his desk and called someone. I looked up at Ataturk’s portrait and listened to his conversation. He was asking some bureaucrat somewhere if there was in fact a counterfeiter in Antakya and what sort of things the man produced. He was not overly surprised to find out that my story checked out.

To me he said, “If you are lying, you have built your lie on true foundations. I find it frankly inconceivable that you would travel to Istanbul for such a purpose. There is a profit in it?”

“I could buy a thousand dollars worth of rare forgeries and sell them for thirty thousand dollars by passing them as genuine.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes.”

He was silent for a moment. “I still do not believe you,” he said at length. “You are a spy or a saboteur of one sort or another. I am convinced of it. But it makes no matter. Whatever you are, whatever your intentions, you must leave Turkey. You are unwelcome in our country, and there are men in your own country who are very much interested in speaking with you.

“Mustafa will see that you get a bath and a chance to change your clothes. At three-fifteen this afternoon you will board a Pan American flight for Shannon Airport. Mustafa will be with you. You will have two hours between planes and you will then board another Pan American flight for Washington, where Mustafa will turn you over to agents of your own government.” Mustafa, who was to do all this, was the grubby little man who had brought my pilaff twice a day and my toast each morning. If he was important enough to accompany me to Washington, then he was a rather high-level type to use as a prison guard, which meant that I was probably thought to be the greatest threat on earth to the peace and security of the Republic of Turkey.

“We will not see you again,” he went on. “I do not doubt that the United States Government will revoke your passport. Unless you are, in fact, their agent, which is still quite possible. I am beyond caring. Nothing you tell me makes any sense, and everything is probably a lie. I believe nothing that anyone tells me in this day and age.”

“It’s the safest course,” I assured him.

“In any case, you will never return to Turkey. You are persona non grata here. You will leave, taking with you all of the personal belongings you brought in with you. You will leave and you will not return for any reason.”

“That suits me.”

“I hoped it would.” He stood up, dismissing me, and Mustafa led me toward the door.

“A moment-”

I turned.

“Tell me one thing,” he said. “Precisely what is the Flat Earth Society of England?”

“It’s worldwide, really. Not limited to England, although it was organized there and has most of its members there.”

“But what is it?”

“A group of people who believe the earth is flat, rather than round. The society is devoted to propagating this belief and winning converts to this way of thinking.”

He stared at me. I stared back.

“Flat,” he said. “Are these people crazy?”

“No more than you or I.”

I left him with that to contemplate. Mustafa led me to a rudimentary bathroom and stood outside while I washed an impressive amount of filth from my body. When I got out of the shower he handed me my suitcase. I put on clean clothes and closed my suitcase. I tied my dirty clothing into a fetid bundle-shoes and socks and all-and passed the reeking mess to Mustafa. He was not an overly clean man himself, but he took a step backward at once.

“In the name of peace and friendship and the International Brotherhood of Stentaphators, I present this clothing as a gift and tribute unto the great Republic of Turkey.”

“I don’t speak English,” Mustafa lied.

“What the hell does that mean?” I demanded. “Oh, the devil with you.”

We stopped at the clerk’s desk. I was given back my belt, my necktie, my shoelaces, my pocket comb, my wallet, and my watch. Mustafa took my passport and tucked it away in a pocket. I asked him for it, and he grinned and told me he didn’t speak English.

We left the building. The sun was absolutely blinding. My eyes were unequal to it. I wondered if Mustafa would consider dropping his pose of not speaking English. We would have a long flight together. Would he want to pass the whole trip in stony silence?

I decided that I could probably get him to talk, but that it might be better if I didn’t. A silent Mustafa could well be more bearable than a talkative one, especially since I would be able to pick up some paperbacks to read on the plane. And I did seem to have an advantage. He spoke English and didn’t know I knew it. I spoke Turkish, and he didn’t know that, either. Why give up that sort of edge?

We walked along toward a 1953 Chevrolet, its fenders crippled, its body riddled with rust. We sat in back, and Mustafa told the driver to take us to the airport. He leaned forward, and I heard him tell the driver that I was a very deceptive spy from the United States of America and that I was emphatically not to be trusted.

They all see too many James Bond movies. They expect spies everywhere and overlook the profit motive entirely. A spy? It was the last thing on earth I would ever become. I had no intentions of spying for or against Turkey or anyone else.

I had come, quite simply, so that I could steal approximately three million dollars in gold.