Liar's Candle Page 2

“A tragedy.” Frank sounds like he’s trying to sound patient. “Don’t think about that right now. We just need you to try to remember. Everything you can. You were in the Embassy garden, right?”

  Penny closes her eyes.

  Red swirling patterns throb like fireworks behind her stinging eyelids.

  The memory pulls her back.

  * * *

  Fireworks.

  Round fizzing, flowering starbursts of blue and red sparkled high over the U.S. Embassy’s garden walls.

  “I typed up the expense report for those,” said Ayla Parlak, the Public Diplomacy Section’s summer intern. Her parents are Turkish, but Ayla’s a Newarker to the bone, a senior at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. “Twenty-two thousand dollars. Twenty-two thousand dollars! For fireworks. Our tax dollars at work.”

  Penny hefted the huge American flag over her shoulder. “I think my tax dollars would just about cover a box of sparklers.”

  “Okay, our parents’ tax dollars at work. Come on, Betsy Ross. I want some Ben & Jerry’s before they run out.”

  The two girls wove through the crowd toward the purple ice cream truck. The six-foot American flag propped over Penny’s shoulder flapped behind her like a cape. People in unseasonably warm suits and work-appropriate summer shifts clustered around the floodlit white tables, trying not to drip mustard on their patriotic ties, or let their white pumps sink too deep into the lawn. The grass felt weirdly greasy underfoot—nothing was ever quite clean outdoors in central Ankara.

  “What shoes are you packing for the NATO Summit?” Penny asked. “I thought maybe just comfortable sandals—I mean, they’ll just have us running errands all over Istanbul, won’t they?”

  “Sandals? Penny. Secretary Winthrop’s going to be there!”

  “I’m sure that between finalizing the peace deal, keeping President Palamut from arresting more journalists, and stopping the Russians from sabotaging the whole shebang, the Secretary of State will definitely be giving a lot of thought to the interns’ shoes.”

  “It’s not just shoes, Penny. It’s the message you’re sending. Like Madeleine Albright’s pins.”

  Penny grinned. “You could just paint HIRE ME! on your toenails.”

  “Do you think it would work better in red or silver?”

  Overhead, the last golden sparkles fizzled into gunpowdery darkness. The Embassy garden buzzed with applause and the odd inebriated whoop. Penny could smell hot dogs and hamburgers sizzling on the grills—eight hundred frozen patties and franks had been shipped in from Iowa. As if they didn’t have cows in Turkey. The brass band on the grandstand, flown in specially from Louisiana, swayed in the spotlight, their saxes gleaming as they segued into a jazz version of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” Relations with Turkey had been so tense lately, State had gone all out on the party: in the lexicon of American diplomacy, jazz was the cheapest goodwill out there, after free Coke.

  As Penny waited with Ayla in the line for the ice cream truck, coworkers kept coming up to congratulate her—none too sincerely—on winning the gigantic American flag, first prize in Independence Day bingo.

  “Hang that out your window, and you can start your very own Embassy.”

  “So let me guess. You’re . . . Canadian?”

  “Have fun taking that home on the metro,” drawled Brenda Pelecchia, as she strolled past, ketchup-oozing hot dog in hand.

  “Ha-ha,” Penny replied.

  “Swirlie,” wailed a small boy’s voice from in front of the ice-cream truck.

  “The soft-serve machine is out of order, buddy,” wheedled the Embassy’s Press Attaché. “Daddy can get you a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of vanilla. Is that good?” A three-year-old in a bow tie prostrated himself on the grass. “Chase, Daddy needs you to use your words.”

  Tiny fists pounded the earth. “Swirlieeeeeeeee!”

  The red-faced Press Attaché grabbed his son and headed for an empty patch of grass.

  The young Turkish woman in the ice cream truck smiled at Penny and Ayla as she scooped their cones. “Rough crowd.” She handed them their ice cream. “Good luck out there.”

  Penny grinned and retreated under a tree with her flag, Ayla, and a dripping scoop of Phish Food.

  “Zach totally let you win,” said Ayla, through a pink mouthful of Cherry Garcia. “Next time, they should pick a more impartial judge.”

  “Hey, I won fair and square. I got Thomas Jefferson horizontally.”

  “You and Sally Hemings.”

  “Ayla!”

  Penny could see Zach across the Embassy garden, standing near the Ambassador’s grandstand, deep in conversation with a heavily bearded Turkish man. Zach snagged a hamburger off a passing tray and said something that made the tired-eyed waitress laugh. Zach could always make people laugh. He caught Penny’s eye and raised the hamburger in her direction, as if making a champagne toast.

  He wasn’t even all that good-looking, Penny told herself. Okay, a bit like a young JFK in that suit, if JFK had dark stubble and had lived in Baku and Johannesburg.

  She returned his toast and pretended to sip the cone of Phish Food, pinkie raised.

  There was something about him. Confident. Complicated. Clear-eyed. Zach made a few people bristle—especially the Embassy’s more hidebound higher-ups. But in the end, his wry, adaptable charm won almost everyone over. The fruit sellers near the Embassy joshed and saved the juiciest nectarines under the cart for him. Turkish officials asked if they could meet with Zach instead of his red-faced supervisor Martin MacGowan, whose postdivorce health-food kick—he brusquely refused all tea, coffee, and sugar—had already offended half the Turkish Foreign Ministry. When Zach walked Penny home after a picnic last Sunday, even her landlady Fatma—tough as old leather—pinched his cheeks and made him stay for three whole plates of crunchy, wincingly sour green plums. Which Zach—bless him—had manfully pretended to enjoy.

  People muttered that he must have serious connections to breeze so casually through the bureaucracy, as if the rules didn’t apply to him. Penny wasn’t so sure. Zach had an uncanny gift for listening through the noise and hearing what really mattered. A man like that can pull strings for himself. Zach was going places, and he knew it. With him, Penny felt as if she were part of some stylish drama with high stakes and sweeping cinematography: good versus evil set to a swelling score.

  Penny’s huge flag billowed with snappy nylon enthusiasm. She clamped it down, trying to roll it up; it flapped rudely in her face.

  “Hey, Penny!” called Matt, the ex-Princeton ultimate Frisbee captain who manned the Counterterrorism desk. He raised an open can of Bud Light in each hand. “Fly it proud!”

  Penny obliged with a big wave.

  “That’s more like it. U-S-A!” chanted Matt, pumping the beers until they sloshed onto the grass. “U-S-A!”

  Penny caught sight of the guest of honor, President Palamut’s thirty-something daughter, Melek, eyeing Matt with obvious revulsion. Melek Palamut was her father’s angel, unmarried as yet because, she often told the press, no man could live up to President Palamut. This evening she was resplendently self-satisfied in a tight Hermès head scarf and ankle-length gray Armani raincoat—the uniform of Turkey’s elite conservative wives and daughters. It was the most expensively, aggressively unflattering outfit Penny had ever seen, offset by the world-class scowl Melek had directed at Matt’s brace of Bud Lights.

  Penny saw Matt grimace; he wasn’t that drunk. “Shit,” he muttered. “Brenda’s going to kill me.”

  Melek stalked away, flanked by her six dark-suited bodyguards. She looked like she was headed for the exit.

  “Excuse me.” An unfamiliar Turkish woman touched Penny’s arm. “Aren’t you the girl who won the bingo?”

  Penny plucked at the flag. “How did you guess?”

  The woman laughed; she had kind brown eyes, a majestically curved nose, and deep worry lines in her tanned face. The pale violet scarf draped around her neck matched her purple tunic. Too stylish
to be in government. Fulbright Commission, maybe? Probably a journalist, Penny thought, or somebody from a local NGO?

  The woman looked from Penny to Ayla. “You seem very young to be diplomats.”

  “We’re only interns,” said Penny.

  “Interns do important work, too,” said the Turkish woman, smiling.

  “Not this intern, I promise you.” Penny grinned.

  “Speak for yourself,” said Ayla, straightening the American flag pin on her dress. “I make some very important photocopies.”

  “Everything must have a beginning,” said the Turkish woman. “Here.” She unfastened a string bracelet on her wrist, a thin red cord strung with a single dark blue glass bead, decorated to look like a tiny eye. “You know about the beads we wear? To ward off the nazar—the evil eye?”

  “Oh,” Penny began, “I couldn’t possibly—”

  “Please, canım! It cost one lira.” The woman clipped it onto Penny’s wrist and waved away her thanks. “Güle güle kullan! May it bring you luck.” The woman turned to Ayla. “And for you, canım, let’s see . . . ah . . .”

  Ayla held up her hand, to show off a ring with an identical evil eye bead, the same kind every tourist shop and street peddler in Turkey seems to sell. “I’ve got two Turkish grandmas and five Turkish aunties. Trust me, I’m covered.”

  “Good.” The woman in purple looked relieved. “Excuse me, please. Happy Independence Day!”

  “What a sweetheart,” said Penny.

  “Well,” teased Ayla, “now that you’re officially lucky, are you going to quit making eyes at your beau and ask him to dance?”

  Penny laughed. “My beau?”

  “Isn’t he?” Ayla leaned forward, grinning. “You’ve been out together every day for two weeks.”

  Penny exhaled slowly. “I’ve never met a man like him, Ay. He has the most incredible stories—adventures he’s had in the craziest places. Yesterday we talked so late the metro stopped running, and he drove me all the way home.”

  “Why am I not surprised the International Man of Mystery likes talking about himself?”

  “He’s not like that when you get to know him. Really. He’s so sweet. You should hear the way he talks about his little girl.”

  “Whooaa. He has a kid? Where’s the mom?”

  “Promise you won’t tell anybody? Zach’s really private about it.”

  Ayla nodded.

  Penny lowered her voice. “After college, before he got his FSOT results, Zach was doing Teach for America in Texas. He was seeing this girl and she got pregnant. But they lived in the middle of nowhere, and her health insurance sucked. She had preeclampsia, and the clinic didn’t catch it. She died two days after Mia was born.”

  “Oh my God.” Ayla presses her hand to her mouth.

  “Mia’s back in the U.S. with Zach’s sister and her husband. She’s moving over here in August for kindergarten. Zach’s so happy. He asked me to help pick out some toys for her room.”

  “He’s already got you playing house?” Ayla teased.

  “Stop!” Penny laughed. “I’m going to go talk to him. You coming?”

  “I’m going to go dance with that cute Marine.” Ayla pulled out a compact to check her sparkly eye shadow and dabbed discontentedly at a tiny zit.

  “Stop it. You look gorgeous.”

  Ayla smiled. “Good luck, Pen.”

  Penny crossed the garden to where Zach and the bearded man were chatting.

  “Nice flag,” said Zach.

  “Oh, this old thing?” She draped it around her shoulders like a mink stole. “Is this Mr. Mehmetoğlu?”

  The bearded man shot Zach a questioning look. He had the tawny, sun-blasted coloring of southeastern Turkey, and the extraordinarily intense blue eyes that sometimes go with Kurdish blood.

  “This is Penny,” said Zach, reassuring. “She’s our intern.”

  “I’m so glad you could make it.” Penny switched to Turkish to put Mehmetoğlu at ease. “Your name got left off the invite list, and Zach had me fix it.”

  Mehmetoğlu’s cell phone buzzed; a text.

  Zach and Penny watched in slow, polite silence as Mehmetoğlu slowly checked it, read it, nodded, and stuffed the phone back into his pocket.

  Penny’s smile was starting to go stale. “If this is a bad time, maybe I should . . .”

  “Stay. Please.” Zach put an arm around her shoulder. “And since I’ve got a captive audience . . .” He pulled out his phone. “Mia’s Daisy troupe marched in the Independence Day parade.” He scrolled through pictures of a beaming little girl with round, brown freckly cheeks and a halo of tight black curls.

  Penny leaned into his shoulder. “Oh, look at her on the float! Did she end up singing?”

  “She was really shy. But I took your advice. I skyped her before the parade and told her to imagine everybody in their underpants. My sister said Mia sang so loud she almost broke the mike.”

  “Aw.” Penny looked up. “Do you have kids, Mr. Mehmetoğlu?”

  “One son.” Mehmetoğlu smiled ruefully. “Teenager. He tells me I am stupid like a rock. Then he asks me for a motorcycle.”

  Zach grinned. “Wrong order of operations.”

  Talk turned to the traffic in Ankara. The weather lately. The recent renovations at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. How nice the fireworks had been.

  Though Zach maintained an expression of polite interest, Penny could tell his mind was elsewhere. He turned his wrist to check his watch and dumped half his drink on the lawn. “Whoops.” He chuckled. “There goes the worst Bellini this side of my mom’s book club.”

  Penny spotted a waitress handing out drinks near the ice cream truck. Martin MacGowan seemed to be scolding her about something; his face was turning crimson.

  “I’m going to get a lemonade,” said Penny. “You want one?”

  “Stick around.” Zach’s hand slipped around her waist—the first time he’d ever done that. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

  A blast of light and heat and noise.

  Penny’s head slammed against the wooden corner of the Ambassador’s grandstand.

  And then—

  2

  * * *

  THIRTEEN DIMENSIONS

  In the Ulus Devlet hospital, Penny’s eyes snap open.

  “Zach!” She’s breathing much too fast. “Where’s Zach?”

  “Shh, canım.” The nurse puts a cool, reassuring hand on Penny’s shoulder and glowers at Frank.

  “Zachary Robson?” Frank Lerman’s expression sharpens. His small, quick hazel eyes fix on Penny’s face. Penny knows that expression. It’s the look the greedier simitçis and scarf sellers always give her upon the unpleasant discovery that the sweet young foreigner can haggle tough. But why should this guy care if she knows Zach?

  “Yes. Zach.” Penny’s voice falters, and she looks to Brenda. “Oh my God. Is he . . . ?”

  “We don’t know, Penny. They’re looking for him.” Brenda’s voice is level, but it sounds like she is keeping something back.

  Penny’s nausea has returned. She balls her hands into fists. Her blurry gaze fixes on the peeling pink paint, the dented white door. Her mind is a vertiginous gallery of faces: ordinary, grumpy, overworked, snickering over the Foreign Service Problems blog. Matt twisting Oreos in a long meeting. Nur giving her a ride to the Embassy gym. Ayla . . .

  She’s got to know. “Where’s Ayla? Ayla Parlak?”

  “Parlak . . .” Brenda checks the spreadsheet on her BlackBerry, a highlighted minefield of murderous reds and critical-injury yellows, with a scanty scattering of unhospitalized greens. “Public Diplomacy intern?”

  Penny nods.

  “I’m sorry.” Brenda shakes her head. “She’s passed.”

  Penny gags. A sharp breath. “What about Matt? Sandra. Özlem. Are they . . . ?”

  Brenda’s face is answer enough.

  Penny closes her eyes and lets her shoulders rock. She clings to the familiar sound of Brenda’
s calm voice—unusually deep, cracking a little now.

  “Manuel, Nur, and Katie are in intensive care. Josh and Ayşegül are fine. Some cuts. Greg wasn’t at the party. His son’s soccer game. The others from POL . . .” Penny hears Brenda swallow. “They’re dead.”

  Tears are stinging in the shatter cuts down Penny’s face.

  For a moment, Brenda looks like she was about to comfort her, but instead she folds her hands in her lap.

  The nurse fusses, smoothing Penny’s brow, murmuring comforts.

  Frank waits a respectable fifteen seconds. Then, impatiently: “Penny, do you know the name Davut Mehmetoğlu?”

  Frank has found Brenda’s last nerve and stepped on it. “Mr. Lerman, if you had even a shred of simple, human—”

  “Mehmetoğlu?” Penny stares wet eyed at Frank.

  “Ring any bells?”

  Penny is shaking her head.

  “He’s the only one whose name wasn’t on the guest list I approved last week,” says Brenda. “We think he might be the terrorist who planted the bomb. He was standing near you right before it exploded.”

  “Nice,” snarls Frank.

  “Oh my God.” Penny takes a deep, choking breath.

  Brenda glares at Frank as if to say, I told you so.

  But Penny hasn’t finished. She’s still shaking her head. “Zach asked me to add him to the final guest list yesterday.”

  “Zach Robson told you to do it?” demands Frank.

  “Mr. Lerman, stop shouting at her!”

  “Zach said it was fine, Mehmetoğlu’s name just got left out.” Penny feels the cold sweat down her neck. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” She tries to bury her face in her hands; the IV snags her arm. Dizzy. Head spinning, breath coming short. “Oh, God.”

  “Sorry?” Frank seizes on the word. Steps closer to the bed. “You’re sorry?”

  The nurse glares and demands in Turkish if he would treat his own daughter like this. Frank doesn’t understand a word, but the tone makes it pretty clear.

  Frank fixes on the nurse. “Get her out of here. Now.”

  Brenda crosses her arms. “Mr. Lerman, Penny needs—”