The Ghosts of Anatolia (44 page)

“The Arabs and Jews battled on, but for the most part, we lived in peace during those years. I poured myself into my work at the hospital, and after a few years I got promoted to senior staff surgeon. But then the world came crashing down around us. The fighting intensified again and your mama pleaded with me to take the family out of Jerusalem. But I didn’t want to lose the power and prestige of my position at the hospital, and for this, we all paid dearly.”

“Papa, it was war. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It
was
my fault. In early 1967, rumors began to circulate that Syria and Israel would soon go to war. Your mama pleaded with me to take the family to Beirut or Amman, or even America. Ara was nineteen at the time, which means you were fourteen and Mina was thirteen. Every day we risked being shot by snipers or wandering into some no-man’s-land peppered with mines and being blown to pieces. But I valued the trappings of my position at the hospital more than my family, and because of this, your mama, sister, and Aunt Izabella were killed.”

“Papa, it was war.”

“I’ve had to live with my failure ever since that horrible day.”

“Where were you that day? I’ve forgotten.”

“I was at work. I remember that the day before I heard on the wireless at the hospital that the Egyptian Air Force had been destroyed on the ground and I rushed home to be with you kids and your mama. Shortly thereafter, we learned the Iraqi, Jordanian and Syrian air forces had also been destroyed. That night we heard distant gunfire, and a deafening artillery barrage shook the house. Most of the shells seemed to be directed to the west, but a couple fell nearby. There was a lull in the fighting the next morning, and I was called back to the hospital to care for wounded soldiers and private citizens. I’d just finished operating on a soldier who’d had both of his legs blown off, when Doctor Levin rushed into the operating room to find me…”

June 6, 1967, Jerusalem

The door outside the surgery control desk burst open and a doctor dressed in blue surgical scrubs and cap rushed through the door.

Sirak glanced up from his paperwork. “Hello, Joseph,” he said tiredly.

Doctor Levin stared back sorrowfully.

“What’s wrong?” Sirak asked.

“It’s your family.”

Sirak dropped his pen. “My family? What about my family?”

“My dear friend, something horrible happened. An artillery shell hit your house.”

“Who told you this?”

“Your neighbor, Adam Bluestone. He’s waiting downstairs. I’m so sorry.”

Sirak rushed past Doctor Levin, and running to the stairwell, took the stairs two at a time down to the ground floor. He burst through the door into the lobby and spotted Bluestone standing at the main entrance. “Adam!” he called out.

Tears in Bluestone’s red eyes were daggers to his heart.

Sirak collapsed to his knees. “Oh, my God, no! Please, God, no!”

“Your sons are alive,” Bluestone whispered compassionately. “I’ll take you to them.”

Sirak followed the old man out to the curb and climbed into his dusty old Renault sedan. The boom of artillery and crackle of gunfire echoed from the distance. Too numb to speak, Sirak slumped into the front passenger’s seat and slammed the door. Bluestone made a U-turn in front of the hospital and accelerated up a nearly-deserted access road that wound to the east toward the Old City walls.

They came across a dozen dead Arab fighters sprawled across the road half a mile from the hospital.

“Dear, God, the fighting is everywhere,” Bluestone muttered. “Should we stop?”

“No, they’re dead. Keep going.”

Bluestone wove through the grisly scene and raced toward the Katamon neighborhood. The rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire and the boom of artillery and mortars grew louder as they got closer. Finally, they reached the main Katamon road and the old Jew turned into their residential neighborhood.

Bam, bam, bam
, resounded three shots to the rear passenger’s door and window.

“Keep going!” Sirak shouted. “Don’t stop!”

Bluestone accelerated down the street and swerved around a pickup truck sitting cockeyed in the middle of the street. Sirak glanced out Bluestone’s window at a body slumped against the steering wheel of the vehicle. He spotted two Arabs firing on the car from atop a wall surrounding the neighborhood.

“Bastards!” Bluestone bellowed angrily. “They fire at anything that moves.”

Two more shots hit the rear of the car before Bluestone turned the next corner. He eased the car to the curb halfway down the street and pulled to a stop in front of a one-story house.

Sirak gaped at the collapsed wall on one side of his house. “Oh, my God.” He leapt from the car and bounded up the walkway and through the open door. The entry side of the house hadn’t been touched, but it smelled of explosives and was blanketed in eerie silence.

Sirak rushed into the shattered kitchen. Looking up, he peered at the sky through a gaping hole in the roof. He darted through the open door into the back yard.

Three sheet-draped bodies were arranged side-by-side in the middle of the sandy, weed-choked yard. Ara and Keri were huddled beside two neighborhood women.

Sirak felt he would vomit. He stumbled down from the porch and spread his arms. “My sons.”

Both boys whirled around and lunged into their father’s embrace.

Ara peered up at Sirak. “Papa, they’re dead. Mama, Mina and Aunt Izabella—they’re all dead.”

Sirak hugged the boys to his chest. After a moment, he knelt beside the first body. He pulled the sheet back and bit down on his lip in horror. Mina’s pale countenance was framed by her dark, curly hair. Her expression was peaceful, with a hint of surprise.

“My precious baby,” Sirak cried. “Oh, my darling, please forgive me.” He buried his face against his little girl’s chest and sobbed.

Sirak crawled on his knees to the next shrouded body and pulled back the sheet. Yasmin’s pasty-white face was heavily pocked with shrapnel. “
Habibi! Habibi
, I failed you!” Cupping the back of her head in his trembling hands, he kissed her tenderly on the forehead. “How can I live without you?” Sobbing, he beat his fists on the ground.

Keri knelt beside his father and comforted him. Sirak crumbled face-down to the ground beside his wife. Howling with grief, he clutched Yasmin’s dress, as mortar blasts and rifle fire echoed in the distance.

After a long while, Sirak crawled to the last body. He pulled down the sheet and Izabella’s half-opened eyes stared up at him. He traced his fingertips across two deep puncture wounds on her left cheek and a gash across her chin. “My precious sister,” he sobbed, “you’ve finally found peace. I pray you’re with Jesus now, with Mama, Papa and our brothers
and sister.” He closed her eyes and kissed her forehead before replacing the shroud.

Struggling to his feet, Sirak hugged Ara and Keri to his chest. “Thank God you boys are safe. Why didn’t I heed old man Jeremiah’s warnings? How many times did he tell me this city would break my heart?” Sirak gasped despondently. “And your mama told me, too. My sons, forgive me.”

“What should we do now, Papa?” Ara asked.

Sirak turned and looked over the rooftops at the distant, pink-tinged walls of Jerusalem and the great golden Dome of the Rock shrouded in smoky haze. “We’ll bury them properly, and then we’ll leave this place forever. We’ll leave for America as soon as possible.”

Ara nodded and wrapped his arm around Keri’s shoulders.

Adam Bluestone stepped around the bodies. “I’m deeply sorry, my friend. Come with me and I’ll help you make funeral arrangements.”

Sirak nodded. He glanced down once more at the shrouded bodies and led his sons into the house.

“F
or years after that, I saw your mother’s sunken, lifeless eyes everywhere I went. I saw them at the market, in the church and at the hospital. I thought nothing could ever be worse than losing her—until we lost your brother.”

Keri looked up at a sailboat easing out of a slip. “What did you do with our house in Jerusalem?”

“I sold it for a pittance. The Israeli Army secured all of Jerusalem and we buried your mama, Mira and Izabella in the Armenian Cemetery just outside the Old City walls.”

“I remember that, Papa. Did you ever feel like you wanted to go back to Jerusalem—you know, to visit their graves?”

Sirak sighed deeply and looked up at Keri. “Only once, when your brother died. But I knew no good would come of it.”

Both men sat staring at the rippling water beyond the breakwater. Each was lost in his own thoughts—transported to another place and another time.

November 11, 1996

Agent Jim Butler leaned back from his desk and stared out the window. He watched yellow, orange and red leaves flutter across the grass at the front of the building. He stood up, stretched his frame to its full height, and stepped over to the window to watch a pretty young woman secure a package on the back of her motor scooter. A brisk knock at the door snapped him out of his trance. “Come in!” Butler called out.

The door opened and a young, clean-cut Asian in a dark blue suit stepped through the door. “Good morning, Jim.”

“Welcome back, Leo. How was your vacation?”

“Awesome. Have you ever been to Colombia?”

“No, never.”

“It’s incredible, man. I’ve never seen such amazing fishing, wonderful beaches and awesome women.”

Listen, do you have time to go over the analysis performed on the explosives from the Bedford storage locker case?”

“Sure,” Butler replied. “I just reviewed my notes yesterday. What’ve you got?”

The young agent handed Butler several sheets of paper. “Take a look at this. The composition of the dynamite from Bedford matches the 1976 theft at a Michigan drilling site.”

Butler perused the first page and turned to the next. “So what’s the numerical correlation?”

“Ninety-nine point eight percent. It doesn’t get much better than that, buddy.”

“It sure doesn’t.”

“It also matches the dynamite the FBI found at an Armenian youth camp in Massachusetts back in the eighties. Did you get the traces back on the firearms?”

“All the guns were untraceable, except for that Winchester rifle with carving on the stock. It belonged to a woman from West Virginia, but she lived in Cleveland until ten years ago. I interviewed her last Friday. Her son sold the gun to his boss at an Open Pantry convenience store in Euclid.”

Leo’s mouth dropped open. “You’re full of shit. Open Pantry?”

Butler nodded. “The same one on the storage locker rental agreement.”

“Bingo! Who was the boss at Open Pantry?”

“He was an Armenian guy in his thirties named Moose. I pulled up the tax records on the store. An outfit named Zakian Enterprises owned it.”

Leo clapped his hands. “So it was owned by Armenians, too?”

“Yeah, then I really got lucky. On a hunch, I had Donna run ‘Zakian’ and all the last names the woman, Louise, used when she rented the Bedford storage locker—Corona, Buschel and Cazian. She found a couple named Gevork Zakian and Michelle Cazian who lived in a house in Mayfield Heights. They live in Florida now. We pulled up Michelle Cazian’s driver’s license photo. Unfortunately, she doesn’t look anything like the composite drawing of the woman who rented the locker.”

“When are you going to talk to them?”

“Maybe next week. I’m driving out this afternoon to visit another Zakian who lives in Euclid—a Lucy Zakian.”

Leo smirked. “You’re kidding. Louise Zakian?”

“No, Lucy—but that’s pretty close. She doesn’t have a driver’s license, but she’s forty-nine years old according to tax records.”

“Perfect.”

“Do you want to drive over with me? We can grab some lunch on the way.”

“Just give me fifteen minutes to sort through my mail.” Leo glanced at his watch. “How about if I meet you downstairs at eleven-thirty?”

“See you then.”

Butler merged onto I-71 headed north and, squinting through the bright afternoon sun, eased into the left lane. He popped on his sunglasses. “What’s up with your love life? Are you and Suzie still dating?”

“Nope,” Leo said emphatically. “She dumped me for some weasel music producer with a Mercedes.”

“That figures. Didn’t I tell you she was a gold-digger?”

“Yeah, you did. I was getting tired of her bitching and moaning anyway. She did me a favor doing it just before my vacation. That Colombian girl, Caro, was unbelievable. Too bad you weren’t there to meet her sister. What a hottie she was.” Leo pounded out a drum roll on the dash with his fingertips. “Are you gettin’ any?”

Jim shook his head. “Ha! Teri and I go out every once in a while, but she’s busy most of the time with her kids. I had a blind date last weekend. She was nice, but there was no chemistry.”

“Have you visited FBI headquarters lately?” Leo asked.

“Last week.”

“Did you meet the new receptionist?”

“You mean the one with the long curly hair?”

“Yeah, that’s her. Now that’s what I mean by chemistry.”

“She’s hot, but too tall for me. Besides, she’s married.”

“She’s not married, dumbass. She wears that ring to ward off lowlife.”

“Are you serious?”

“That’s what she told me. She broke off her engagement to a fireman a couple of months ago when he decided he didn’t want children.”

“Really?”

“I asked her out myself, but she said I wasn’t her type. She was nice about it though. She seems like an old-fashioned girl—a real sweetheart. You’d better hurry before those vultures at the Bureau start circling.”

Butler rolled his eyes. “What’s her name?”

“Hailey—Hailey Stevens.”

“Hailey,” Butler muttered. “I’ve always loved that name. Let’s drive by there this afternoon. There’re a couple of details related to this case I need to pull up on their computer.”

“Sounds good to me.”

The two agents sped along in silence for a few minutes.

“Did you ever hear about the Armenian Holocaust during World War I?” Butler finally asked.

The young agent nodded his head. “A little, but history wasn’t my strongest subject.”