THURSDAY
After a good night's sleep in their Istanbul hotel, and some truly lethal Turkish coffee, Lee and Amanda set of on foot for the marina. Amanda had read extensively before the trip about the brackish inland Sea of Marmara, which connected to the Aegean Sea by way of the narrow Dardanelles strait and the Black Sea by way of the Bosporus. At just over 4,300 square miles, it was smaller than Lake Erie, and home, among others, to the Princes' Islands, and their contact, Omar Sahin.
Work had taken Amanda to Austria, Germany, and England with Lee, more than once, which was thrilling. But this trip marked the farthest afield she'd ever been from Virginia, both physically and culturally. Everywhere she looked she saw something new and different. And familiar and the same. While the smells of a meal she'd never experienced before or the unfamiliar chatter of a different language caused her to lean in and wonder and try to understand, it was never a far-off thought that everywhere she went, people had jobs and families and hopes and struggles, just like her neighbors on Maplewood Drive in Arlington. The Republic of Turkey might be a long way to go on Agency business, but the desire to live life in freedom rather than tyranny didn't seem to know a language or a border. And she thought, like the crabgrass determined to invade her flower beds every spring, somewhere on earth, something undesirable was always trying to spoil something beautiful.
From the port in Istanbul, ferries carried hundreds of tourists a day to several of the islands, the largest of which in the Princes' was their destination, Büyükada. Which she'd just taken to calling Big Island, since that's what it meant, anyway, and for a single day's visit, tackling two umlauts seemed excessive. Or so they had joked, and Big Island it was.
With the ferry engine churning and the moving wind and water, it was sufficiently noisy that they could huddle together a little apart from their nearest neighbors and talk freely. The 40-minute ferry ride was plenty long enough to get Lee to review their objectives, and to spend the rest of the time relishing the feel of the wind and the salt air. It was unseasonably warm for the first week of December and forecasted to reach the high 50s by late afternoon. That and the perfectly clear mid-morning sky loaded her expectations with promise.
At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Muslim nations and the West, the majority of intelligence about happenings in Asia and the Middle East passed through Turkey. The country itself, while on decent terms with Europe fiscally, and with leanings toward a form of democracy that appealed to the West, had a long history of internal strife.
The nations of the West worked hard to maintain reliable sources of intelligence in politically stable countries, but in a country rife with political squabbles, the few really solid relationships the West had in Turkey were vitally important.
"We like to visit in person and gauge the health of our contacts and remind them how important they are to us. And frankly, provide some financial assistance to keep them afloat," Lee reminded her. "A little personal attention is a small price to pay for the kind of information we get from Omar."
"And he's a merchant?" Amanda asked.
"Yeah, Omar has more rugs and other wares in our embassies and offices around the world than we can count. Omar lives and works on the largest of the Princes' Islands. Visitors to Istanbul spend a lot of tourist money there. The local fishing supports a lot of restaurants and couple of tiny hotels on the island, and beyond that, it's a rabbit's warren of shops and bazaars, narrow streets and warehouses. Anything artsy you can buy in Turkey, you can buy on Büyükada or one the other islands. Which is nuts, because you can buy the same things on the mainland, but I guess the islands seem exotic. Omar might live on the island, but he's influential, and spends a lot of time in Istanbul and the neighboring cities and sees and hears things we'd never know without him. As milk runs go, it's a valuable one. And a day on the island is way better than one in the catacombs," he mused, then shivered with what must have been an unpleasant memory.
Amanda smiled and replied innocently. "I don't know, there's a lot of history and mystery surrounding the tunnels. They have flyers in the hotel lobby for some of those excursions, where you get to go underground and explore with a tour guide. It seems fascinating. We'd probably have time to squeeze one in this trip."
"Not in a million, billion, trillion years," Lee said. "Dark. Damp. Rats the size of a Volkswagen. 'Til the end of time, no thank you. I can recommend a good documentary. IFF made it in a collaboration with MI-6 so we would both have a big team of people in Turkey as Iran was gearing up for the revolution in 1979."
In the distance, Amanda could see the shadow of the Princes' Islands on the horizon. As they chugged toward them, she pressed up against the rail. Lee hugged her around the waist and watched the horizon over her shoulder.
"At this rate we're going to end up hugging by accident in front of the bullpen coffee pot," Amanda mused.
Lee made an irritated noise and started to release her.
"No," she said, pulling his arm back around her. "It's chilly and I'm not complaining. But can you imagine having to hold this cover if Francine was around? She'd be intolerable."
"Can I tell you something you can never, ever repeat?" Lee asked.
"Sure?"
"Francine has never been very easy to work with like this. She's always so focused on what it looks like that she forgets to let it be what it is. Everything is calculated to be seen, and it's a terrible chore. If it's possible, she's even worse at this than I am."
"I don't think you're bad at this, not at all," Amanda said, leaning back into him. "What about this is difficult, now that we're friends? The only odd part is sometimes, after a long few days with you, when I go home I turn around to tell you something, and you're not there, and then I feel silly. Boy, have I gotten a couple of strange looks from Mother. But this?" Amanda hugged his arm tightly, and he responded, by snuggling up to her back. "You make this easy."
Lee rested his forehead on her shoulder. When he didn't say anything, Amanda reached up and carded her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. "You still there?"
"Yep. Just…reminiscing," he replied.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah, I'm thinking how Francine needed that root canal and you were stuck at the Cumberland with me for the weekend. I did not make that easy." There was a smile in his voice, so Amanda didn't worry that he was beating himself up over it too badly.
"You seem to be spending a lot of time mulling over our missteps lately. I wasn't exactly easy to work with that weekend."
"How can I be a good partner if I don't try to learn and improve?"
"Aww, Lee. That was a long time ago." Amanda turned a little and dropped a kiss on his cheek, just catching the corner of his mouth. "Don't go improving too much, I kinda like you the way you are."