"His creatures?"
The instruments of the cause. We were educated, indoctrinated, brought up as Wolves. When you were born, you were nobody. A lousy peasant raising sheep. Like me. Like the others. The camps gave us everything. Faith. Power. Knowledge."
Sema needed to find out the essential information, but she could not resist digging for more facts, further details. "Why are we speaking in French?"
A smile inched its way over Kürsat's chubby face. A smile of pride. "We were chosen. In the 1980s, the refs, the chiefs, decided to set up an underground army, with its officers and elite soldiers. Wolves who could mingle with the highest social strata."
"Was it Kudseyi's idea?"
"He started the project off, but with everyone's approval. Emissaries from his foundation were sent to the clubs in Anatolia. They were looking for the most gifted, most promising children. The idea was to provide them with the best possible education. It was a patriotic project. Knowledge and power were being given back to the real Turks, to the children of Anatolia, instead of the bourgeois scum of Istanbul…"
"And we were chosen?"
The pride swelled even further. "Yes, and sent to Galatasaray, along with a few others, thanks to grants from the foundation. How can you have forgotten all that?"
Sema did not answer. Kürsat went on, in an increasingly exalting voice. "We were twelve years old. We were already little baskans, chiefs of our region. First we spent a year in a training camp. When we got to Galatasaray, we already knew how to use an assault rifle. We knew entire sections of Nine Lights by heart. Then suddenly we were surrounded by decadents who listened to rock music, smoked cannabis, imitated Europeans-fucking Communists… To survive, we stuck together, Sema. Like brother and sister. The two bumpkins from Anatolia. The two paupers with their pathetic grants… But no one knew how dangerous we were. We were already Wolves. Fighters who had infiltrated a forbidden world. So as to struggle all the better against that Red scum! Tanri türk'ü korusunr!*"
"God save the Turks!"
Karsat raised his fist, with his pinkie and index fingers raised. He was doing his utmost to look like a fanatic, but he just came across as being what he always had been: a sweet, awkward child who had been conditioned into violence and hatred.
Motionless among the props and foliage, she asked. "What happened then?"
"For me, a science degree. For you, the modern languages department at the Bogaziçi University. At the end of the 1980s, the Wolves took over the dope market. They needed specialists. Our roles had already been set down. Chemistry for me, transportation for you. There were many more Wolves in high places. Diplomats, CEOs…"
"Like Azer Akarsa."
Kürsat jumped. "How do you know that name?"
"He was on my trail in Paris."
He shook the rain off himself like a hippopotamus. "They sent out the worst one of them all. If he's looking for you, then he'll find you.”
“I'm the one who's looking for him. Where is he?"
"How should I know?"
The Gardener's voice rang false. At that instant, she was pricked by a suspicion. She had almost forgotten her side to the story. Who had betrayed her? Who had told Akarsa that she was hiding in Gurdilek's baths? But she kept that question for later…
The chemist continued, slightly too hastily "Do you still have it? Do you still have the dope?"
"I've told you. I've lost my memory"
"If you want to negotiate, you can't come back empty-handed. Your only chance is to-"
She suddenly asked, "Why did I do that? Why did I try to double-cross everyone?"
"You alone know that."
"I involved you in my scheme. I put you in danger. I must have explained my reasons."
He gestured vaguely "You never accepted your destiny. You were always saying that they'd forced us to obey. That we had no choice. But what choice did we have? Without them, we'd still be shepherds. Bumpkins at the far end of Anatolia."
"If I'm a drug dealer, then I have money. Why didn't I just disappear? Why did I steal the heroin?"
Kürsat sneered. "You wanted more. You wanted to screw them. To set one clan against the other. This mission gave you a chance to get your revenge. When the Uzbeks and the Russians get here, it'll be mayhem."
The rain slowed. Night was falling. Kürsat gradually sank into the shadows, as if he was fading away. Above them, the domes of the mosque looked fluorescent.
The idea of betrayal forced its way back. She now had to go to the bitter end. She had to get this over with. "What about you?" she asked coldly. "How come you're still alive? They didn't come to question you?"
"Of course they did."
And you told them nothing?"
The chemist seemed to shiver. "I had nothing to say. I knew nothing. All I did was to transform the heroin in Paris and come back home. Then no one heard from you again. Nobody knew where you were. Especially not me." His voice was trembling.
She suddenly felt sorry for him. Kürsat, my Kürsat, how have you survived so long?
The fat man went on at once: "They trust me, Sema. Really they do. I'd done my part of the job. I didn't hear from you again. After you'd hidden in Gurdilek's place, I thought "
"Who mentioned Gurdilek? Was it me?" She now understood. Kürsat knew everything but had revealed only part of the truth to Akarsa. He had saved his skin by providing him with her Paris address but had said nothing about her new face. Thus had her blood brother negotiated with his own conscience.
The chemist stood there for a moment, his mouth agape, as though dragged down by the weight of his chin. The next moment, he stuck his hand beneath a plastic sheet. Sema aimed her Glock from beneath her cape and fired. The Gardener crashed back between the shoots and the jars.
Sema knelt down. This was her second murder after Schiffer. But from the confidence of her movements, she realized that she had killed before. And in this way. With a handgun. at point-blank range. When? How many times? She had no idea. On that point, her memory was still a sterile zone.
She looked at Kürsat. lying motionless among the poppies. Death had already smoothed out his features. Innocence was slowly rising back across his face, which was free at last.
She searched the corpse. Beneath his smock, she found a cell phone. One of the numbers in its memory was labeled Azer. She stuck it in her pocket, then stood up. The rain had stopped. Darkness had taken hold of the place. The gardens were breathing at last. She looked up toward the mosque. The drenched domes seemed like green ceramic, the minarets about to take off for the stars.
Sema remained for a few more seconds beside the body. Inexplicably, something clear and precise surged up inside her. She now knew why she had done what she had done. Why she had fled with the dope.
To be free, of course.
But also to avenge a particular wrong.
Before proceeding any further, she had to check that. She had to find a hospital. And a gynecologist.
71
All night spent writing.
A letter of twelve pages, addressed to Mathilde Wilcrau, Rue Le Goff, Paris, fifth arrondissement. In it, she told her life story in detail. Her origin. Her education. Her job. And the last consignment.
She also provided names: Kürsat Milihit, Azer Akarsa. Ismail Kudseyi. She placed each person, each pawn on the chessboard. Describing their precise roles and positions. Putting back together each fragment of the puzzle…
Sema owed her these explanations. She had promised her in the crypt at Père-Lachaise, but above all she wanted to make her story intelligible to the psychiatrist who had risked her life for nothing in return.
When she wrote Mathilde on the white hotel notepad, when she maneuvered her pen around that name, Sema said to herself that she had perhaps never possessed anything so solid as those letters.