“Would you care to know?”
“Of course.”
“You are a member”-he consulted the clipboard-“of a fascinating array of organizations, Mr. Tanner. We did not know just how many causes had caught your interest, but when your name appeared on the incoming passenger list it did line up with our membership rosters for two rather interesting organizations. You belong, it would seem, to the Pan-Hellenic Friendship Society. True?”
“Yes.”
“And to the League for the Restoration of Cilician Armenia?”
“Yes.”
He stroked his chin. “Neither of these two organizations is particularly friendly to Turkish interests, Mr. Tanner. Each is composed of a scattering of-how would you say it? Fanatics? Yes, fanatics. The Pan-Hellenic Friendship Society has been extremely vocal lately. We suspect they’re peripherally involved in some acts of minor terrorism over Cyprus. The Armenian fanatics have been dormant since the close of the war. Most people would probably be surprised to know that they even exist, and we’ve had no trouble from them for a very long time. But suddenly you appear in Istanbul and are recognized as a member of not one but both of these organizations.” He paused significantly. “It might interest you to know that our records indicate you are the only man on earth to hold membership in both organizations.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very interesting,” I said.
He offered me a cigarette. I declined. He took one himself and lit it. The smell of Turkish tobacco was overpowering.
“Would you care to explain these memberships, Mr. Tanner?”
I thought this over. “I’m a joiner,” I said finally.
“Yes, I’m sure you are.”
“I’m a member of…many groups.”
“Indeed.” He referred to the clipboard once more. “Our list may not be complete, but you may fill in any significant omissions. You belong to the two groups I mentioned. You also belong to the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Clann-na-Gaille. You are a member of the Flat Earth Society of England, the Macedonian Friendship League, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Libertarian League, the Society for a Free Croatia, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajadores de España, the Committee Allied Against Fluoridation, the Serbian Brotherhood, the Nazdóya Fedèróvka, and the Lithuanian Army-in-Exile.” He looked up and sighed. “This list goes on and on. Need I read more?”
“I’m impressed with your research.”
“A simple call to Washington, Mr. Tanner. They have a lengthy file on you, did you know that?”
“Yes.”
“Why on earth do you belong to all these groups? According to Washington, you don’t seem to do anything. You attend an occasional meeting, you receive an extraordinary quantity of pamphlets, you associate with subversives of every conceivable persuasion, but you don’t do much of anything. Can you explain yourself?”
“Lost causes interest me.”
“Pardon?”
It seemed pointless to explain it to him, as pointless as the many sessions I’d had with FBI agents over the years. The charm of an organization devoted to a singularly hopeless cause is evidently lost on the average person and certainly on the average bureaucrat or policeman. One either appreciates the beauty of a band of three hundred men scattered across the face of the earth with nothing more on their mind, say, than the utterly unattainable dream of separating Wales from the United Kingdom-one either finds this heartrendingly marvelous or dismisses the little band as a batch of nuts and cranks.
But, however futile my explanation, I knew that a slew of words of any sort would be better in this Turk’s eyes than my silence. I talked, and he listened and stared at me, and when I finished he sat silent for a moment and then shook his head.
“You astound me,” he said.
There seemed no need for a reply.
“It seemed quite obvious to us that you were an agent provocateur. We contacted your American Central Intelligence Agency, and they denied any knowledge of you, which made us all the more certain you were one of their agents. We’re still not certain that you’re not. But you don’t fit any of the standard molds. You don’t make any sense.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“You don’t sleep. You’re thirty-four years old and lost the power to sleep when you were eighteen. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“In the war?”
“Korea.”
“Turkey sent troops to Korea,” he said.
This was indisputably true, but it seemed a conversational dead end. This time I decided to wait him out. He put out his cigarette and shook his head sadly at me.
“You were shot through the head? Is that what happened?”
“More or less. A piece of shrapnel. Nothing seemed damaged-it was just a fleck of shrapnel, actually-so they patched me up and gave me my gun and sent me back into battle. Then I just wasn’t sleeping, not at all. I didn’t know why. They thought it was mental-something like that. The trauma of being wounded. It was nothing like that because the wound hadn’t shaken me up much at all. I never knew I was hit at the time, not until someone noticed I was bleeding a little from the forehead, so there wasn’t any trauma involved. Then they-”
“What is trauma?”
“Shock.”
“I see. Continue.”
“Well, they kept knocking me out with shots, and I would stay out until the shot wore off and then wake up again. They couldn’t even induce normal sleep. They decided finally that the sleep center of my brain was destroyed. They’re not sure just what the sleep center is or just how it works, but evidently I don’t have one any more. So I don’t sleep.”
“Not at all?”
“Not at all.”
“Don’t you become tired?”
“Of course. I rest when I’m tired. Or switch from a mental activity to a physical one, or vice versa.”
“But you can just go on and on without sleep?”
“Yes.”
“That is incredible.”
It isn’t, of course. Science still doesn’t know what makes men sleep, or how, or why. Men will die without it. If you keep a man forcibly awake, he will die sooner than if you starve him. And yet, no one knows what sleep does for the body or how it comes on a person.
“You are in good health, Mr. Tanner?”
“Yes.”
“Is it not a strain on your heart, this endless wakefulness?”
“It doesn’t seem to be.”
“And you’ll live as long as anyone else?”
“Not quite as long, according to the doctors. Their statistics indicate that I’ll live three-fourths of my natural life span, barring accidents, of course. But I don’t trust their figures. The condition just doesn’t occur often enough to afford any conclusions.”
“But they say you won’t live as long.”
“Yes. Though my insomnia probably won’t cut off as many years from my life as would smoking, for example.”
He frowned. He’d just lit a fresh cigarette and didn’t enjoy being reminded of its ill effects. So he changed the subject.
“How do you live?” he asked.
“From day to day.”
“You misunderstand me. How do you earn your living?”
“I receive a disability pension from the Army. For my loss of sleep.”
“They pay you one hundred twelve dollars per month. Is that correct?”
It was. I’ve no idea how the Defense Department had arrived at that sum. I’m certain there’s no precedent.
“You do not live on one hundred twelve dollars per month. What else do you do? You are not employed, are you?”
“Self-employed.”
“How?”
“I write doctoral dissertations and master’s theses.”
“I do not understand.”
“I write theses and term papers for students. They turn them in as their own work. Occasionally I take examinations for them as well-at Columbia or New York University.”
“Is this allowed?”