“Hello,” Then a string of something in Turkish.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
“Of course, who is this?” A woman’s voice demanded.
“I’m at your sailing school at the mall, there is a number here. Is this the right number?”
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Nothing’s wrong, I want to speak to someone about sailing lessons.”
“Uh-huh, your charter operator will set that up before you arrive. Who are you chartering with?” The woman asked.
“No one. I’m not chartering. I am in Marmaris in front of your office.” I said.
“Oh, right, you said that and your number is local.” The woman broke into a fit of coughing.
“Do you give sailing lessons? Is this the…” I looked for a name on the storefront.
Anna elbowed me and pointed at the sign.
“…C.Y.A. Lykia Sailing School, number?” I sounded like a quiz show contestant.
“Yes, it is. You want sailing lessons for how many, what rating, when?” More coughing.
“One person.” I looked at Anna. “I need someone to teach my friend to sail a fourteen meter Beneteau as soon as possible.” Once arranged, I intended to follow along like I had done during the sea-trial. “I would teach her myself.” I explained to the woman on the phone. “But I have no patience and I believe she — my ah, um… sailing partner — will benefit from professional instruction.”
“Okay sure, only one person? What outfit are you with?”
“I’m not with an outfit. I’m buying a sailboat. My friend and I need to sail to Canada. She needs sailing lessons before we leave. Can someone from your school teach her on my boat?”
“I suppose so, as long as it’s seaworthy and insured.” The woman paused. “It’s fifty Euros an hour and I teach C.Y.A. if that’s okay.”
“C-Y-A?” I asked.
“C-Y-A, that’s the Canadian Yachting Association. It’s standard here. R.Y.A. is the British version. If you need the A-S-A, American Sailing Association certification, I think you have to go to Bodrum.”
“No, the C.Y.A. sounds just right. I’m Canadian and we’re on our way there.”
“Yeah, you said, but not on a yacht, right?”
“Actually, yes… on the yacht. I’m buying it now, here in Marmaris.”
“And you need sailing lessons?” She half laughed, coughed. “Look, I’m close. Can you wait for me at the office?”
Three minutes later a short, tomboyish woman skidded her mountain bike to a stop in front of the office. “It’s you that phoned, right?”
“Yeah, it’s us.”
“I had to see if this is for real.” She held up her hands. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it sounds crazy. She needs sailing lessons to cross the Atlantic?”
Inside the Lykia Sailing School’s Spartan office, the woman introduced herself as Sinem. She sat behind a desk, poked a prehistoric IBM PC to life and waved us toward a couple of folding chairs. “I work with another instructor who owns the school.” She saw me staring at boxes of personal belongings stacked on the bare cement floor. “Oh, that stuff. We don’t teach here. The space is free and I needed a place to stow my things. We teach on yachts, out there, on the water. My partner is okay letting me freelance if you don’t care about certification or a rating.”
It worked for me. Anna didn’t need a rating and having Sinem freelance for us was cheaper. I was rather proud of what I’d engineered. Sinem would instruct Anna aboard Shadow, and I would learn surreptitiously over her shoulder.
“Hey, grab the door.” Sinem wheeled her bike into the mall’s courtyard. Outside, she looked down at our boots — my heavy tall boots and Anna’s Doc Martens. “You guys haven’t been in Turkey long?”
“You can tell, huh?” I tugged the collar of my turtleneck away from sweaty skin. Looking at her tanned muscular legs, I admired Sinem’s aggressive looking, seriously practical, sandals.
“You’re not going to last long dressed like that.” She handed me the bike while she manhandled a giant key fob. “And you don’t sail in those clod-hoppers, I hope.”
Anna shot me a puzzled look.
“Your boots, my dear. You won’t get near a yacht wearing those.” Sinem pointed at Anna’s bright green, super-trendy mock work boots. “I’ve got a friend in this complex. He just opened. Sells sportswear and casual stuff for sailing. I’ll introduce you. He’ll set you guys up with some good deals.”
I was learning more about business — Turkish style — every day. It was like we’d dropped from the sky into a place where everyone’s a friend and nothing’s impossible.
Getting back to the marina, the first sign of trouble was Shadow dangling at some weird angle in the travel lift. The crowd of men arguing around the suspended yacht, long after Harvey’s deadline, was more bad news. A quick scan of the area didn’t turn up Harvey or his floppy hat.
“Wasn’t the boat supposed to be back at the dock before now?” Anna asked.
“That was the plan.”
Several men broke from the group and headed toward us. In the lead, a middle aged Turk with a prominent belly, called out, “You are owner of this boat, yes?” He was dressed in casual business wear and was followed closely by a couple of men in coveralls.
“Not yet, I am in the process of buying it, though.”
“Then you will have to pay. This is very serious. Lift is out of service now. Many customers need lift and launch. Work is canceled. Workers must be paid. Very, very bad, indeed.”
“Uh, who are you and what’s going on?” I handed Anna an overflowing shopping bag in order to shake the guy’s hand.
“I am manager of marina. Look, everything stopped. Bad for people working here, bad for customers on schedules.” He grabbed my wrist and dragged me toward the travel lift. The crowd parted and let us through. Nothing looked wrong until the manager dragged me under the boat, bent down and grabbed one end of a severed nylon strap. The crowd oohed and clucked. The manager waved his cut end of the strap toward its mate, dangling from twisted chunk of metal above the yacht’s deck. “Look, man working on your boat cut this!”
“You have got to be kidding!” I ran a finger along the fraying edge.
“I assure you, nobody is kidding. Boat could fall. Kill someone.”
The guy had a point! I scrambled out from underneath. There were plenty of other straps, in pairs, holding the boat up, but the metal brackets holding the pair with the severed strap were twisted at a crazy angle. It really did not look good. “Who did that?” I asked.
“These men.” He grabbed one of the two coverall clad workers who’d been following him like puppies. He thrust the smaller of the two men toward me.
“Do you work for Harvey?” I asked.
The man just stared at me, grinning.
“Ach, he speaks only Turkish.” The manager snarled. He grabbed him by the arms, barked something in Turkish. The man mumbled on until the manager cut him off. “He says it was his brother who cut that strap. Says Harvey need to see underneath strap and his brother cut it.”
I looked at the brother, a big man with Down’s syndrome. He smiled at me and I couldn’t help but smile back until that oh shit feeling rose in my throat. Several more men came running from lean-to shops and offices around the marina’s yard. It felt like there was going to be a lynching and I was going to be it.
Anna was on her own, orbiting the throng, balancing the bags of groceries we’d picked up on the way back from town. She was retreating from a couple of Turks in suits. They weren’t backing off, Anna was. Lawyers or salesmen, no doubt. Either way, Anna was back stepping toward the seawall. From the corner of my eye, I saw a tall reasonably fit, middle aged westerner standing astride a folding bike, arms crossed, taking everything in with a bemused smile.