The German doctors alerted the foundation in Turkey that was paying the student's medical fees. Kudseyi himself made the journey. The psychiatrists explained the situation and suggested committing him at once. Kudseyi agreed but had Azer sent back to Turkey the following week. He was sure that he could control, and even exploit, his protégé's murderous streak.
Sema Hunsen's problems were of a totally different order. Solitary, secretive and obstinate, she was constantly slipping away from his organization. She had run away from school at Galatarasay several times. Once, she had been arrested at the Bulgarian border. On another occasion, at Istanbul 's Atatürk Airport. Her independence and will to be free had become pathological, leading to aggressiveness and a constant desire to run away. Once again, Kudseyi had seen this as a plus. He would turn her into a nomad. An elite drug smuggler.
In the mid-1990s, Azer Akarsa, the brilliant businessman, had also, become a Wolf, in the occult sense of the term. Via one of his lieutenants, Kudseyi had given him several missions of intimidation or escort, which he had carried out brilliantly. He was to cross the sacred line-of murder-without the slightest qualm. Akarsa liked blood. Too much so, in fact.
There was another problem. Akarsa had set up his own political group of dissidents whose opinions were far more violent and excessive than the official party line. Azer and his companions showed their disdain for the old Grey Wolves, who had sold out, and even more so for nationalistic Mafiosi like Kudseyi. The old man felt increasingly bitter. His child was turning into an increasingly uncontrollable monster..
He sought comfort by turning toward Sema Hunsen. But in a purely abstract way. He had never seen her and, since leaving the university, she had practically disappeared. She accepted transport missions-aware of what she owed the organization-but in exchange had demanded a quite exceptional isolation from her masters.
Kudseyi did not like that. Yet each time, the dope arrived at its destination. How long would this reciprocal agreement hold up? But at the same time, he found her mysterious personality more and more fascinating. He followed her career, delighting in her abilities…
Soon, Sema was a legend among the Grey Wolves. She had faded away into a labyrinth of languages and borders. There were many rumors about her. Some said that she had been seen on the border with Afghanistan, wearing a veil. Others claimed to have spoken with her in an underground laboratory on the Syrian frontier, but she had been wearing a surgical mask. Others still swore that they had had dealings with her on the coast of the Black Sea, in a dark nightclub torn by strobe lights.
Kudseyi knew that these were all lies. No one had ever really seen Sema. At least not the original Sema. She had become an abstract being, changing her identity, movements, style and technique depending on the objective. A shifting being, with just one concrete aspect-the dope she was transporting.
Sema did not know it, but in fact she had never really been alone. The old man was always by her side. Not once had she conveyed dope for anyone else but the baba. Not once had she run a consignment without his men watching over her from afar. Ismail Kudseyi was inside her.
Unbeknownst to her, he had had her sterilized when she had been hospitalized for acute appendicitis in 1987. Her fallopian tubes had been tied, an irreversible mutilation that does not disturb the menstrual cycle. The operation had been done using laparoscopic surgery via minute incisions in her abdomen. No traces. No scars…
Kudseyi had had no choice. His fighters were unique. They could not reproduce themselves. Only Kudseyi could create, develop, or kill his soldiers. Despite his certainty, he was always worried about that mutilation, with an almost holy dread, as though he had broken a taboo, had trodden on forbidden ground. Sometimes, in his dreams, he saw his white hands holding her innards. He vaguely sensed that a catastrophe would be born of that organic secret…
Today, Kudseyi had admitted his failure regarding both of his children. Azer Akarsa had become a psychopathic murderer, at the head of an independent group of activists-terrorists who made themselves out to be ancient Turks who were planning attacks against the Turkish state and those Grey Wolves who had betrayed the cause. Kudseyi himself might well be on their list. As for Sema, she was more than ever an invisible messenger, both paranoid and schizophrenic, awaiting the moment to run away for good.
All he had done was to create two monsters. Two rabid wolves ready to tear out his throat.
And yet, he continued to give them important missions, hoping that they would not betray a clan that thought so highly of them. Above all, he hoped that destiny would not inflict such an affront, such negation on him, who had invested so much in their lives.
That was why, last spring, when he had to organize a consignment, which would inaugurate a new alliance in the Golden Crescent, he mentioned just one name: Sema.
That was why, when the inevitable finally happened and the renegade vanished with the dope, he had chosen just one killer: Azer.
As he had never made up his mind to eliminate them, he set them against each other so that they would do the job for him. But nothing had gone according to plan. Sema had remained untraceable. And Azer had merely succeeded in sparking off a series of murders in Paris. His name was now on an international arrest warrant, and Kudseyi's own criminal cartel had sentenced him to death-Azer had become too dangerous.
Then, suddenly, something had upset the entire situation.
Sema had reappeared. And asked to meet with him. She was still leading the dance…
He took one last look at his reflection in the mirror and abruptly discovered a different man. A dotard with a burned frame, his bones as sharp as blades. A charred predator, like that prehistoric skeleton that had just been dug up in Pakistan., He slid his comb into his jacket and tried to smile at his reflection. It felt as if he was greeting a death's-head, with hollow eye sockets.
He headed toward the stairs and gave an order to his bodyguards: "Geldiler. Beni yalniz birakin."
75
The room he called his meditation room measured a good thousand square feet and had a parquet floor. He could also have called it his throne room. On the top of the three steps of a dais stood a long off-white sofa covered with cushions of golden braid. In front of it was a coffee table. On either side, two lamps shed arcs of shaded light onto the white walls, along which chests of carved wood were aligned like solid shadows, secrets sealed with mother-of-pearl. And nothing else.
Kudseyi liked this simplicity, this almost mystic void that seemed ready to receive the prayers of a Sufi.
He walked across the room and up the steps and stopped by the table. He put down his stick and picked up a carafe of ayran -made of yogurt and water-which was always there for him. He poured a glass and drank it all in one gulp. Savoring the freshness that was filling his body, he stared at his treasures. Ismail Kudseyi had the finest collection of carpets in Turkey, but the true masterpiece was kept there over the sofa.
The small ancient rug, just three feet square, glimmered with a dark red, trimmed with tarnished yellow-the color of gold, of corn. of baked bread. In the center was a blue-black rectangle. a sacred color evoking heaven and infinity. Inside it, a large cross was decked with ram's horns. symbolizing the male warrior. Above, an eagle spread out its wings. crowning and protecting the cross. Meanwhile, on the bordering frieze.