Читать книгу Deadline Istanbul (The Elizabeth Darcy Series) - Peggy Hanson - Страница 32

CHAPTER 28

“…I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Before me stood the handsomest man I had ever seen. Pure Mediterranean—curly dark hair sprinkled with distinguished gray. Strong, craggy features lined with an indeterminate number of years.

“Ahmet Aslan,” said the head-turner, holding out his hand.

I caught the flash of something in his expressive dark eyes. The glimmer’s meaning was clear to any woman who has cut her eye-teeth. It surprised me and put me on guard.

“Aslan here was due to have a meeting with me, and I said he should meet you. By the way, Elizabeth, Mr. Aslan is one of Turkey’s biggest businessmen.” Lawrence—no, I couldn’t call him that yet—Andover--turned to discuss something with his butler.

“What sort of business?” I asked.

“We make dishes and tiles, for the domestic market and for export,” said Aslan. “And we do some cement projects.”

“Saying Aslan makes dishes is like saying Wedgwood makes plates,” remarked Andover, turning from his butler and offering me another glass of rakı and water. “His name is the signature brand of Turkey.”

I said no to more rakı. After all, I had a significant trip returning to the Pera. Ahmet Aslan took a glass and added water from the bottle the servant had brought.

At this point, Andover excused himself to take a telephone call, leaving Aslan and me to do the homo sapien equivalent of dogs sniffing around each other.

“Does your family live along the Bosphorus, too, Ahmet Bey?”

“My family roots are in the southeast of Turkey, in Diyarbakır.”

Interesting. Coming from there, he could be Kurdish.

He continued. “And you, what does your husband do?”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Would the world never get past this kind of sexism? I decided to throw it back at him. “I am not married. Does your wife work?”

“If I had a wife, she would take care of my children and cook my meals. That is the way of the East.” The smug, infuriating words were accompanied by such charm I couldn’t take them seriously. I didn’t think Aslan did, either. He was trying to rile me.

So I laughed. “Well, it may once have been, but, after all, Turkey has beaten the United States in having a woman head of government. Aren’t you overstating the case?” I licked butter off my fingers as I spoke. The same old boring argument, the role of women. When would we get past it?

When it’s no longer an issue, I guessed.

Andover returned and glanced at the table.

I had already had far too much and wanted to get back to my primary mission.

“Did you know Peter Franklin?” I asked Ahmet Aslan.

“Of course! Terrible thing. Awful.” Aslan’s thoughtful frown morphed into concern for me. “You also work for the Tribune?”

Andover confirmed this with a sympathetic nod. “Elizabeth knew Peter well, Ahmet. I gather they were friends.”

I composed my face. “Yes. We were friends and long-time colleagues. All of us at the paper miss him very much.”

All of us looked at the floor and there was a moment of silence in the room. A tribute to Peter. I turned to Andover. “I suppose Peter was pretty much a novice when you knew him in Cairo.…”

“Peter and I were both novices!” Andover’s pleasant laugh broke the solemn silence and went well with the perfect room. “I was in the consular section and he was reporting freelance. But we at the Embassy knew Peter was a good source for finding out what was going on.” Andover gestured us into the comfortable chairs arranged in a conversational ell around the carpets, facing the windows toward the water. He sat in a sleek leather chair. I shared the couch with Aslan.

“Yes,” I agreed. “He was always first with a story! Tell me more about what he was doing here.” I addressed the question to both men, trying to sound nonchalant.

Ahmet answered first. “Istanbul’s a complicated city and Peter was one of the few correspondents who got past the surface. I always read his pieces. Sometimes I, as a Turk, learned things from his writing. In fact, I saw Peter at parties. I knew him. I would say we were friends. Nice. He was nice.”

“Nice” was not a word I’d ever heard used in relation to Peter Franklin.

Andover uncrossed his trim legs. “I didn’t know him well. Of course, I read his stories in the Trib clippings at the Embassy every morning. Sometimes we had drinks.…”

I knew I was skating on thin ice, but went ahead: “There wasn’t any police follow-up to his death? I haven’t heard much about that.”

Andover answered. “I guess you probably saw the official cable we sent to your paper. The police assumed it was an overdose. They didn’t want to get dragged into another country’s affairs. They were only too happy to have us arrange to cremate the body.”

Why hadn’t I organized a group from the Trib to meet the plane carrying Peter’s ashes? We should have done that, out of respect.

“Where did you send the ashes? To his parents?” It occurred to me I knew absolutely nothing about Peter’s family life, even after working with him for years, after being friends with him.

“His sister. Lives in New Hampshire, apparently.” Andover got up again and headed for the kitchen.

So Peter didn’t have much in the way of family. I sighed and dug once more into the meze, dropping börek crumbs on Andover’s beautiful Hereke carpet.