NationStates Jolt Archive

It was long after the small taverna had closed and the patrons had left that General Yesmin walked up to the back door - the one coming off the deserted alley - and pounded three times. After a minute, the overweight proprietor slid the bolt and let him in with apologies for the delay. After all, it had been raining.

"Think nothing of it, my old friend. Just make sure we have lots of good, strong coffee," he said with a smile. Then he made his way to the upstairs banquet room.

A fire was burning low, but giving off quite a bit of warmth. He shrugged off his overcoat and sat down, greeting the others. They engaged in idle talk for 15 minutes until everyone was well settled in. Then the owner gave his two sons a stren look and they left. He himself made sure that a couple of full pots of hot coffee were situated on trivets before heading downstairs.

He loudly slid the bolt on the downstairs door as he reached the hallway leading to the main dining room, so that they would hear it and know they now could speak in complete confidence.

General Yesmin made a great show of pouring himself another cup of coffee, and then freshening everybody else's cup. Finally, he replaced the pot and spoke.

"If anyone wants to leave, this is the time."

No one did.

"My assessment is that Ecevit and his Progressives will win the election. Some see this as a problem. I do not," he stated without emotion.

"He is a dreamer," said another, a colonel, although tonight he wore no insignia. None of them did. "That makes him dangerous."

"Yes," the General admitted, "he is a dreamer. But I think our country needs dreamers. They are better than cynics. And certainly better than thieves."

"He will get us in trouble," complained another officer - also a colonel. "This is a dangerous world. We need pragmatism at the top."

"It is our job," offered the General, "To provide him with pragmatic advice. We have sworn ourselves to the protection of the Nation. That means protecting its elected officials as well."

"Even from themselves?" snorted the first colonel.

"Especially," said General Yesmin slowly, "from themselves."

"Then we will proceed with this?" asked another officer - this man just a major. He fidgetted nervously. "It is ... treason."

The word sat out there, like a fat, black tarantula, crouching on the table. Finaly, General Yesmin admitted, "Yes, it is treason. But it is necessary."

Silence. We are silent not because there is nothing to say, mused the General, but because there is too much to say. It is up to us, each individually, to decide if we must say it.

Apparently no one needed to.

Finally, the second colonel spoke. "I visited the site yesterday. All is ready."

Gnereal Yezmin turned towards the major. "The funding - is it in place?"

The major was clearly nervous - as he should be, for his role was pivotal. "Yes, all funding has been ... secured. And none of it can be traced to the activity in question."

"Good", said the General. "So we start tomorrow".

Another man, a third colonel, spoke softly, but emphatically. "There is," he began, "something that I wish to make absololutely ironclad." Everyone listened, intently. "We must be utterly committed to going forward to the ... final stage of the plan ... only if we are sure of everything, only if all prerequisites have been achieved."

"I have no objections", said General Yesmin without hesitation. "Anybody else?" He waited, and then repeated, more searchingly, "Is there anyone who thinks that we should proceed with the final stage if we have not achieved success at all previous stages, including the initiation of ... prophalaxis?"

They all shook their heads, and murmurred support for this stipulation.

"Very well", said General Yesmin, rising. "I bid you all good night. Communicate only through the proper channels, and if we are constant in our purpose, we shall achieve our goals".

And with that, he donned his overcoat, opened the door, and descended the stairs to the cold, wet night below.

OOC: quite a nice post, but i dont see where you're going with it...

Two years later...

"Don't tell me, let me guess..." said Kamal, "You have a relative who was hauled in last week during that big anti-nuclear protest where that policeman got killed."

"No", said the demurre woman, quietly. She was wearing a head scarf, like most pious Yekruti women do.

Kamal waited. She looked at him. Finally, he said, "Look, I haven't got all day. What do you need?"

"I need to have my father's body exhumed and an autopsy performed," she said.

He blinked. "Why?"

"I think he was murdered."

He eyed her for a minute. A crackpot? he wondered. No, she didn't look the type, although these days who can say what 'that type' is?

"What was the official cause of death?" he asked.

"The authorities said that he died in a small plane crash", she said.

A crackpot. "So why do you think he was murdered?" Kamal asked.

"His pilot was too good to have crashed in clear weather," she said.

"His pilot?" asked Kamal. "He had his own pilot?!?"

"He was on the board of directors of AutoFabrik", she replied. Suddenly it came back to him.

He remembered the headlines. There had been a crash, and everyone had grieved horribly at someone so young and energetic dying so senselessly. He'd been in the mountains of the southeast, coming back after surveying a prospective plant site. The rest of the managers had come back by rental bus, but he'd been in a hurry to make a meeting the following day.

He saw nothing in the case to suggest foul play. The man was loved by everyone; a philanthropist, a brilliant businessman, sensitive to the needs of his workers.

"Look, Miss..."

"Just call me Sofia."

"Alright ... Sofia," he said. He was not sure that he liked the implied intimacy in a new business relationship with a woman not even half his age. "Planes crash all the time. Small planes especially. Do you watch American movies or listen to American music?" Probably not, given her conservative clothing. "Buddy Holly? Will Rogers? These things happen, especially in the mountains."

"If you will not help me", she said in a quiet, determined voice. "I will find another attorney to file..."

"That ... will ... not ... be necessary." Never let money walk out the door, his old mentor had told him. "I'll do it." He paused. "O.K., you want the body exhumed and an autopsy performed, right?"

"Yes", she said simply.

"Then", he said, pushing a standard contract across the desk, "That will be a 500 lira retainer, plus 150 lira per hour for billable hours, minumum 5 hours in advance."

She pulled out ten 500 lira bills. "Will this do to get you started?"

"What do you mean, 'the body was cremated?!?'" asked Kemal incredulously.

"What, you don't speak Yekruti? I mean that the body was cremated", said the funeral director.

"Was that his wish?" asked Kemal.

"No, that was how it came", said the man, exasperated. "They said that it was burned in the crash."

Funny, he thought. There was no reference to a fire at the crash site. According to the officials at the nearby military base - the first people on the scene - the man and his pilot had died of trauma. Not surprising, since their plane struck a dense copse of trees and was torn apart.

"So he came in just a box", Kamal asked.

"Yes", said the funeral director, talking to Kamal as though he were talking to a child. "That is how cremated bodies come, in a simple shipping box, all ashes."

"Thank you", mumbled Kamal, and hung up.

He mulled things over. He was just an attorney, not a private investigator. He could get the coroners records from the military base, he was sure - but was that what his client wanted?

He opened up the search engine on his personal computer, and began to find the number he'd need to call to do that. Then he stopped.

A little voice in the back of his head was begging him to let it go.

When he was young, his grandmother, the woman to whom all the other women came when they wanted an elixir to cure this, or advice on how to have a little boy instead of a little girl, or any of the other things village women want, had said to him, "Kemal, you have a gift. It runs in the family. It is a voice, and when you hear it, you should listen."

Then she'd tapped him on the brow and said, "Someday it will save your life."

His hand strayed to his daytimer. He found Sofia's number. He called her residence.

He was about to hang up when a sobbing woman answered. "Hello?" she barely got out, her voice racked by sobs.

"My name is Kamal and I am an attorney retained by Sofia. May I speak to her?" Even as he said it, a chill seized his spine.

The woman on the other line dropped the phone and screamed, a long, deep, keening wail.

He knew what was coming. He loosened his tie, but he still couldn't breathe.

A man. Angry, the way some men get in grief. From the age, maybe a cousin, maybe a brother. "Who is this?!? What do you want?!?"

He repeated himself, barely hearing his own words, knowing the response that would come. "I don't know about any lawyer. All I know us that Sofia is dead. She died in her sleep."

Kemal sat for a few minutes, stone silent. He then picked up an envelope, wrote a quick letter, and then left for the bank.

At the bank, he withdrew 5000 lira, in ten crisp new 500 lira notes. Oh, by rights he could have kept 1250 lira, but the voice in the back of his head said that if he knew what was good for him, he would return it all.

And then forget that the woman had ever even been in his office.

That was for the best. Really.

OOC: If you are going where you think you are going with this, i'm a liberal and i will help any rebellion in a country run like i think yours is run...

OOC: If you are going where you think you are going with this, i'm a liberal and i will help any rebellion in a country run like i think yours is run...OOC: I'm probably not going the way you think I am, but...

I haven't yet been able to write a Yekruti Factbook. In lieu of that, here's what I can tell you:

Yekrut ("Turkey" backwards) is what I envision Turkey being like if it were closer to EU admission requirements. You can see this by looking here ( http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/target=display_nation/nation=yekrut); note the "Excellent" political freedom rating. While Yekrut has had problems with military juntas in the past (and obviously has control problems still, from what's appeared so far in this thread), the country is currently undergoing democratic revival under a newly constituted parliamentary government (and doing so with the military's blessing, although this is not completely unequivocal, as center-left parties have come to dominate the political landscape).

As far as Muslim countries go, Yekrut is fairly liberal (!). Gambling, alchohol, cigarettes, and prostitution are all permitted (although regulated). Nonetheless, this is a "Law & Order" state, trying to steer a careful course between a disciplined society and a free society. Except for the current weakness of the national economy (which admittedly needs more work), the civil authorities seem to be doing quite well.

Still, there is cause for concern. The greatest danger lies in the fact that Islam is viewed with tremendous suspicion in the NS world; there are countries that will invade you simply for being Muslim. This has created a rift between nationalist officers who possess a siege mentality and the idealistic politicians, who hope that by stressing secularism and disestablishmentarianism (hey, I actually got a chance to use that word!!!!) they can produce a "Westernized" Muslim state that is palatable to the anti-Muslim fanatics.

If you want to find out what's happening, investigate. I've given you some clues: a secret meeting by military men two years earlier, the suspicious death of an industrialist in a remote mountain region and the obvious coverup of the causes of that death, and maybe a few more to come.

This story line has a time element attached to it; within a week or so that story line will begin to take emerge.