30

Istanbul, Turkey, May 2007

Mert Ortaç drew in his breath as he was shown
into the drawing room of the opulent guesthouse.
The room reminded him of the Sultan Suite at the
Çırağan Palace, the late nineteenth-century
masterpiece built at the behest of his imperial
highness, Sultan Abdülaziz, and acquired more
recently by the Kempiński hotel chain. Swirls of
gold leaf adorned the sofas and chairs, while the
wallpaper, with its Arabic patterns, glistered as it
caught the sun.

In fact, the Çırağan Palace stood only 800 yards
away from the guesthouse, which was itself sealed
off in a heavily guarded compound. Agents stalked
the environs and scowled at anybody with the
temerity to try to park there. Set at the very edge
of Beşiktaş district, the mansion stared imperiously
from atop a hill in Europe, across the Bosphorus
Straits to Asia. Most surprising was that the
drawing room, into which they had shown Mert,
boasted no portrait of Kemal Atatürk, modern
Turkey’s revered founder. Portraits of Kemal are
de rigueur throughout Turkey, and not just in
private and public offices: they will often be
found in every room of a building. Not in this
room, though, despite this being the guesthouse
at the Istanbul regional headquarters of the Milli
İstihbarat Teşkilati (MİT), Turkey’s National
Intelligence Agency.

In most anxiety-inducing situations, Mert would
react either by giggling gently behind his
infectiously mischievous smile or he would cut and
run. On this occasion, neither was appropriate.
Mert was transfixed by the elegant waiters as they
served tea and coffee. Above