"So, will you go with me?"
I looked across the table in the open-air area of Effendi's Restaurant on the Kyrenia Harbor quay, and I could see the need in Tahir. I had known he would ask me that question. That was why I was here, in the Turkish zone, on my last night in Cyprus.
Make him happy, the chief of station had said. He hadn't said how to make Tahir happy, and it was something that had to remain unspoken, but both he and I knew why I had been here in Cyprus and why I had been assigned to run Tahir—and how I was to make him happy. Tahir was well placed in the Turkish Cypriot prime minister's office, and the station knew exactly what Tahir's weakness was—what could be used to win him over, to suborn him to keep providing the information we needed to know about what the Turkish Cypriots were up to.
Thus far I had kept Tahir interested and productive by the big tease. A bit of lip work and furtive hand jobs and, when his interest seemed to be lagging, a surreptitious blow job, with the excuse that we had to be extremely careful in our contacts and a promise of paradise "someday soon." And even though my tour was now up, Tahir was still producing ever-more-interesting material, and thus this was a delicate time in the asset's life.
"Make him happy," was the last thing the COS had said to me before I had crossed the border from the Greek side of the divided island for the last time. "Make him look forward to your replacement," the COS had said.
I didn't answer Tahir's question immediately. I was thinking about the other man at the table, his warm, hard-muscled thigh pressed maddeningly against mine.
Tahir had left word by the usual means that I was to meet him at 11:00 PM at Effendi's Restaurant. I'd never met him here before—never before in such a public place. But it was my last night, so it didn't matter to me if it didn't matter to him. And I couldn't have hoped for a better place to spend my final evening.
We were dining on the quay of the small, picturesque Kyrenia harbor, the ancient horseshoe-shaped fishing village with the Byzantine castle at its eastern end, wrapping around the small inner harbor to the Dome Hotel and the breakwater holding back the waves of the Mediterranean to the west. Lining the stone quay in the curve between the castle and the hotel were multistoried stone buildings from the same era as the castle. At one time, when Kyrenia was one of the main trade ports of the ancient island, these were all storage houses, set into the sharp incline up from the seaside. The lower stories of these buildings, facing the sea, were the storerooms and trade houses of the merchants; the upper stories, facing out onto the street ringing the harbor, were the residences of the merchant princes. The buildings abutted each other and functioned in ancient times as a city wall protecting the harbor. And to the south, looming over the coastal town and splitting the island from east to west, was the ragged-peaked Kyrenia mountain range.
Now Kyrenia was a major tourist center of the island—or as major as a blockaded island territory no country but Turkey recognized and that was in perpetual belligerence with Greek Cyprus occupying the southern half of the island could be. The harbor had been made into largely a pleasure yacht basin, and the lower stories of the ancient buildings were restaurants with tables stretching from the entries into their dimly lit interiors, used only during the colder winter months, down to the edge of the quay and the start of the masted sailboats. At night, with the fairy lights strung in the rigging of the boats in the basin, on the ramparts of the castle, and around the periphery of the restaurants, and the people strolling among the revelers of the restaurants, Kyrenia was a treasured last memory of a very pleasant foreign assignment.
The magic of the night started at 10:00 in Kyrenia, the dinner hour of the Mediterranean culture, and I had arrived at the restaurant at the height of the evening.
Tahir had been waiting for me, the look of longing on his face, hopeful in the opportunity to bed me at last—the possibility that I had held over his head for months while he was feeding his government's secrets to me.
Tahir was very nice to look at—slim but well muscled, hirsute in a way that I liked. Black curly hair. A handsome, swarthy face, with a very nice smile.
Everything should have been just fine. But I liked my men appreciably older than me, experienced, controlling, and slightly cruel. A touch of danger went with why I was in this business at all. Tahir was younger than I was, and he gave me the impression that I would have to be the aggressor. As badly as he obviously wanted me, I felt like he would want me to dominate—but not much. Tahir wanted romance. And that wasn't what aroused me. Still, it was probably what made Tahir so easy to run as an in-place asset. And he had earned his reward.
I knew I had to try to please him—not only so he could be passed on, but also because he had done well by me. I owed him. If I left him unsatisfied, I wasn't being fair to the agent who replaced me. Tahir would know we were leading him on, soaking him for as much useful information as we could before cutting him off—or if he had been valuable enough to us, before we extracted him and gave him a new life somewhere far less exotic and friendly than Turkish Cyprus.
As I walked up to the table, I was smiling suggestively at Tahir, signaling that tonight was the night. And all of that time I was telling myself that somehow I had to become aroused enough to satisfy him.
But then my smile froze and I became genuinely aroused as a figure passed between Tahir and me. It was the restaurant host, asking me if I wanted a table, hearing Tahir call out that I was with him, and then giving me a broad, knowing smile.
A smile that melted me.
He was Tahir twenty years from now. Dark, much more substantial than Tahir. The same handsome face and melting smile. But older, more in control. The same dark hair, but streaked with gray and longer than Tahir's, banded into a ponytail. Not fat but solid, heavily muscled. Substantial. This stood out in stark contrast with Tahir's youth, puppy-dog diffidence, and hesitancy. He was the older, more world-wise, form of Tahir, giving me a knowing look as he escorted me to the table. He was guiding me with a beefy palm to the small of my back. And with that he was branding me as his—if he wanted me. Somehow he knew the decision was his; that I would have no choice.
"This is my Uncle Fazil, Jack," Tahir said—almost unnecessarily, as we reached the table. "Can you sit with us, uncle?" Tahir asked.
Yes, yes, I was screaming in my brain.
"Perhaps a bit later, when the customers are settled," Fazil answered. A beautiful, smooth baritone voice, with a charming Turkish-British accent.
I sat across from Tahir, and we talked about not much of anything, he fidgeting and nervously waiting for me to become mellow on the wine and atmosphere and delicious food, and me waiting for his uncle to return.
Tahir was giving me that puppy-dog look, afraid to ask what he wanted to ask. I relieved his anxiety by reaching over and playing my fingers down his forearm, through his dark matting of hair. He shuddered in recognition of what that meant. He took the fingers of the hand I wasn't lifting the wine glass with in his hand and gently stroked my fingers. I leaned across the table and let him kiss me lightly on the lips.
As we were coming out of the kiss, Uncle Fazil was there, beside our table, and he sat down next to me and turned toward me and smiled. And I melted to him.
I had to think of something to say to him. I wanted to make whatever connection I could. It was lame, but it was a start.