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By Root 414 0

in a spidery slanted hand with an old fountain pen. The fatter envelope contained a letter of credit from a Luxembourg bank and two folded sheets of paper which had been typed using an old manual typewriter. Ace could feel the impression of the type with her fingers. Both folded sheets had been sealed with wax. She gave one to Miss David and the other to Dfewar. Miss David tucked hers away. Dfewar broke the seal on his and glanced at the instructions. He spoke to Miss David in Turkish. ‘He says it’s all fine,’ said Miss David. ‘They’ll meet you on the boat in Marmaris.’ She pressed a switch beside a fuse box on the wall and the large rear door of the warehouse began to creak open. A band of pale evening light appeared at the bottom of the wall and widened steadily upwards. ‘They can go now,’ said Miss David. ‘Don’t you think?’

Petrol fumes boiled in the warehouse, blue smoke clouding from the exhaust of the Suzuki as the engine revved and the Kurds climbed in. Only five of the men were seated in the vehicle as it drove out of the warehouse. Massoud remained, still sitting on the crate. He got up, moving casually and slowly, and advanced on Ace and Miss David. He came so close to Ace that his elbow slid up across her ribs when he suddenly lifted his arm. He reached above her and pulled a leather jacket down from the top of a stack of crates. He looked Ace in the eye as he zipped the jacket and murmured something. ‘He’s apologizing,’ said Miss David. ‘He doesn’t mean it.’

She and Miss David left the warehouse by the side door, Massoud sauntering after them. A string of helicopters hung in the darkening sky like geese straggling home. Good target for a ground‐to‐air missile, thought Ace. She was aware of Massoud behind her, his eyes following her. He walked to a motor scooter leaning on a wall of the courtyard and kicked it to life. As he rolled down the cobbled yard towards the street, he glanced back at Ace. ‘You can wait here a while before you leave,’ said Miss David, watching Massoud. ‘I can make you more tea.’ The engine sound of the scooter was diminishing, the buzzing of a big insect caught between the stone walls of the old buildings.

‘No. I’d better make a move. Thanks anyway.’

Ace made her way down hot twisted streets that smelled of the sea and blossoms. She walked past Ottoman houses and Roman ruins. On the broad avenues of the modern section of the city troop carriers rumbled past, freshly painted UN insignia stencilled beside the Turkish markings on their armour. Old diseased horses pulled two‐wheel carriages with tourists in them. Dutch and Germans, unperturbed by the promise of war. Everywhere Ace went it seemed she could hear the buzzing of a motor scooter one street away.

At the intersection of Cumhuriyet and Ataturk Caddesi there was a narrow street lined with restaurants where she’d eaten lunch. Now Ace paused there to buy a kebab, marinated vegetables grilled and wrapped in unleavened bread. From the sealed private rooms of restaurants above her she could smell the forbidden meat grilling and touts wandered the street offering black‐market meals of mutton, beef and chicken. The government directives were having little impact on a nation of seventy million carnivores. Ace waited for her kebab, standing by the hot coals of the open grill. On a table nearby she saw a Turkish daily newspaper spread open, a beer bottle anchoring it in the breeze. The cover featured an advertisement for lottery tickets beside colour photographs of an actress in a bikini and an aircraft carrier sinking in a sea of burning petroleum. They gave Ace her kebab wrapped in an earlier edition of the same paper. Vegetable oil soaked through images of soldiers in dune buggies and sitting on tanks. Smiling for the camera from behind mirrored sunglasses. Gung‐ho, young and immortal. Most of them would be dead by now. The darkening stain on the newsprint obliterated their smiling faces. Ace burned her fingers, picking fragrant onion rings out of the pitta bread.

She was wolfing down the kebab when she stepped off the pavement and heard