Death by Design by Barbara Nadel Read Free Book Online Page A

also knew that it had been necessary. Arto, and only Arto, could so easily have wheedled everything about the London mission out of him, mainly because İkmen so longed to tell him.
    After a short silence, the Armenian stood up to leave.
    ‘Well, Çetin, whatever is happening, you know I wish you well,’ he said. ‘You know I . . .’ He bit down on his bottom lip as if trying to hold back tears. It proved too much for İkmen who stood up, walked over to his friend and took him in his arms and kissed both his cheeks.
    ‘You know that I will miss you,’ Çetin said. ‘You know I only say what I do because I fear I may tell you, and only you, what I mustn’t. I’m sorry.’
    The two of them stood in the middle of İkmen’s office, in each other’s arms, for a good five minutes before the Armenian finally left without another word.
    When dawn broke over the great city of İstanbul the following morning, Çetin İkmen was already up and dressed. He didn’t say goodbye to any family members still sleeping in the apartment. He didn’t even look into what had once been his bedroom, where Fatma now slept alone. He didn’t want even the slightest hairline fracture in his already shaky resolve. Then, in line with the instructions Ardıç had given him, he stepped out of his apartment, carrying nothing, not even his wallet, and walked away from Sultanahmet down the hill towards Sirkeci railway station. Halfway down he turned off on to Ebussuut Street where, just before reaching the main post office, he rang the bell of an anonymous doorway beside a small electrical shop. After a short pause he was ushered up the stairs behind the doorway and into the flat above by a man of about thirty. Neither he nor the older woman with him said who they were or what they were doing and İkmen didn’t ask.
    ‘As you know,’ the man said as he pointed İkmen in the direction of a group of chairs in the middle of the stark, blank living room, ‘undercover work depends in part upon keeping your fake life story as close to that of your real life as possible.’ He handed İkmen a Turkish passport. ‘Your name is Çetin Ertegrul – your wife’s maiden name.’
    ‘Yes.’ That had indeed been Fatma’s name before she married him. Maybe, soon, it would be her name again. İkmen opened the passport and saw that it had no photograph.
    ‘You’re fifty-five years old, a widower, and you live in Laleli with your thirty-five-year-old daughter Çiçek and her husband Abdullah. My colleague here is going to change your appearance somewhat and then we’re going to take your passport photo.’
    ‘OK.’ The woman came towards him carrying scissors, an electric razor and a bag of other things he couldn’t yet see. She took the dressing off the wound on the side of his face. It was healing well. As she first shaved off his moustache and then coloured his hair what seemed to İkmen a most startling shade of black, the man kept on talking, telling İkmen who he was slowly but surely becoming.
    Abdullah Karabas, Çetin Ertegrul’s son-in-law, had – just like Çetin İkmen’s real son-in-law, Berekiah – sustained an injury that meant that he could no longer work. Çiçek, Çetin’s daughter, was newly pregnant. To make matters worse, Çetin Ertegrul himself had recently been made redundant from his job as a security guard at the Akmerkez mall in Etiler, possibly because his employers felt that he was too old to be seen amongst their younger and trendier customers. And so Çetin had made the decision to leave Turkey and seek more lucrative employment in the European Union. His hope was that by doing this his daughter would be able to stop worrying about money and enjoy her baby when it came.
    ‘When you get to your destination, London, you will make contact with the person listed on this mobile phone as Ayşe,’ the man said. ‘This person will be your initial contact and your story will be known to that person.’
    He handed a very