Jean-Christophe Grangé - The Empire Of The Wolves

But now, in the gardens of Galatarasay, the opposite was happening. Her memories revealed a pattern of leitmotifs that crossed each fragment of her recollections'… At first, a clumsy child, right back at the beginning. Then an awkward teenager, at the French school. Later, a fellow smuggler. In those underground laboratories, it was definitely always the same pudgy figure, dressed in a white coat, that was smiling at her.

Over the years, a child had grown by her side. A blood brother. A Grey Wolf who had shared everything with her. As she concentrated, his face became clearer. Babyish features beneath honey-colored curls. Blue eyes, like two turquoises placed among the rocks of the desert.

Suddenly a name emerged: Kürsat Milihit.

She stood up and decided to go inside the school. She needed confirmation.

Sema introduced herself to the headmaster as a French journalist and explained the subject of her report: former Galatarasay pupils who had become celebrities in Turkey.

The headmaster laughed in pride. What could be more natural than that?

A few minutes later, she found herself in a small room, its walls lined with books. In front of her, the files covering all the classes over the past few decades-names and pictures of former pupils, the dates and any prizes awarded each year. With no hesitation, she opened the register for 1988 and turned to the final year. Her year. She did not look for her previous face; the very idea of looking at it made her feel ill at ease, as though she were touching a taboo subject. No. She looked for the portrait of Kürsat Milihit.

When she found it, her memories grew even more precise. The childhood friend. The traveling companion. Today, Kürsat was a chemist. The best in his field. Able to transform any gum base into the best morphine, and then distill the purest heroin. His magician's fingers knew better than anyone how to manipulate acetic anhydride.

Over the years, she had organized all of her operations with him. During the final convoy, it was he who had reduced the heroin to a liquid solution. It was Sema's idea: they injected the smack into the air cells of bubble bags. If they put a hundred milliliters in each envelope, then only ten of them would be needed to transport a kilo-so two hundred for the entire load. Twenty kilos of number four heroin, in a liquid solution, concealed within translucent packaging containing banal documents, to be picked up at the freight terminal of Roissy airport.

She looked again at the photo. That large teenager with the milky forehead and copper curls was not just a ghost from the past. He had now a vital role to play.

He alone could help her find Azer Akarsa.

An hour later, Sema was in a cab crossing the huge steel bridge over the Bosporus. The storm broke just at that moment. In only a few seconds, as the car touched the Asian bank, the rain marked off its territory with violence. At first, there were needles of light hitting the pavements, then puddles, spreading, seeping, hammering as if on tin roofs. Soon, the entire landscape was weighed down. Dark spray swished up in the wakes of the cars, the roads swayed and drowned…

When the cab reached the Beylerbeyi quarter, snug beneath the bridge, the shower had turned into a downpour. A gray wave wiped out all visibility, mixing cars, pavement and houses into a shifting fog. The entire neighborhood seemed to be dissolving into a liquid state -a pre-historic chaos of peat and mud.

Sema decided to get out of the cab on Yaliboyu Street. She slipped between the cars and took shelter beneath an awning amid the row of shop fronts. She paused for a moment to buy an oilskin-a pale green poncho-then she tried to get her bearings. This neighborhood was like a village-a scale model of Istanbul. Its sidewalks were as narrow as ribbons, its houses clumped together, its roads like pathways leading down to the riverside.

She dived down Yaliboyu Street, toward the river. To her left, the cafés were closed, the bars had shrunk back beneath their awnings, the stalls covered with tarpaulin and to her right, a blank wall, sheltering the gardens of a mosque. A red, porous rubble surface zigzagged, its cracks sketching in a melancholy geography. Lower down, beneath the gray foliage, the waters of the Bosporus could be heard, rumbling and rolling like kettledrums in an orchestra pit.

Sema felt overwhelmed by fluidity. Drops hammered on her head, beating her shoulders, swarming over her poncho… Her lips tasted of clay. Her face seemed to become liquid, shifting, moving…

On the riverbank, the downpour intensified, as though freed by the open stretch of water. The land seemed about to drift away and follow the flow as far as the sea. Sema could not stop herself from shaking, sensing in the streams of her veins the scraps of the continent that were being shaken to their foundations.

She retraced her steps and looked for the entrance to the mosque. The wall she walked beside was flaking, pierced by the rusty bars of windows. Above it, the domes glistened and the minarets seemed to be launched higher by the rain.

As she walked on, more memories crowded in. Kürsat was nicknamed "the Gardener" because botany was his specialty-in particular, poppies. Here, he cultivated his own wild species, concealed in the gardens. Every evening, he came to Beylerbeyi to inspect his papavers…

Going through the gate, she entered a courtyard of marble tiles, with a row of basins along the ground, used for ablutions before prayers. She crossed the patio, noticing a group of white-and-yellow cats curled up along the windows. One of them had an eye missing. Another had its nose covered in blood.

After a further gate, she at last reached the gardens.

The vision moved her heart. Trees, shrubs and undergrowth spreading chaotically. Overturned soil. Branches as black as licorice. Thickets stuck with tiny leaves, tight as clumps of mistletoe. A luxuriant world, animated and tickled by the downpour.

She walked on, lulled by the scent of flowers, the dull odor of the soil. Here the hammering of the rain became more muted. The drops bounced off the leaves in a dull pizzicato, streams of water slipping from the foliage in harp strings. Sema thought, The body responds to music with dance. The earth responds to rain with gardens.

Pushing aside the branches, she came across a large vegetable patch, hidden between the trees. Bamboo props stood high, squat tubs were full of humus, upside-down jars protected young shoots. It looked to Sema like an open-air greenhouse or nursery. She took another step or two. The Gardener was there.

Kneeling on the ground, he was bent over a row of poppies protected by transparent plastic sachets. He was slipping a probe into the pistil, at the point where the alkaloid capsule is situated. Sema did not recognize the species in question. It was undoubtedly a new hybrid, which flowered early. Experimental poppies, right in the middle of Istanbul…

As though sensing her presence, the chemist looked up. His hood concealed his eyebrows, barely revealing his heavy features. A smile rose to his lips, even more rapidly than the delight in his stare.

"Your eyes. I'd have recognized you thanks to your eyes."

He spoke in French. It was a game they used to play-another mark of complicity. She did not reply. She imagined what he could see: a scrawny figure beneath a green hood, with emaciated, unrecognizable features. And yet Kürsat did not seem at all surprised. He knew about her new appearance. Had she told him? Or had the Wolves done so? Friend or foe? She had only a few seconds to decide. This man had been her confidant, her accomplice. So she must have told him about her plans.

Kürsat Milihit shifted about awkwardly. He was only just taller than Sema and was wearing a cotton smock beneath a plastic apron. He stood up. "Why have you come back?"