Although this stands alone as a GM espionage story, it also is a sequel to "Last Call"; This is a completed, four-chapter novella and will finish posting by 25 August 2017.
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"The flat above the garage is just about ready, if you want to move in there, Mr. Clarke."
I looked up at the back corner of the old Turkish-style compound on the street above the land side of northern Cyprus' Kyrenia Castle. I was there to view the small flat I'd asked to be readied, somewhere I could stay during the reconstruction of the old Turkish-style house. The flat was over what was just an oversized one-car garage, once a stable for assorted domestic animals, so it was very small, just sixteen by twenty feet. The garage was a bit deeper, but there was a balcony on the garden side of the flat.
The flat wasn't much larger than a hotel room, but it was mine. There would be no hotel bill. I'd be right here for the completion of the construction on the house. A kitchen and a bath, both seven feet by eight were located side by side on the alley side of the flat, which left just enough room for a double bed, a couple of dressers, a desk, and a couple of chairs in the flat. It was reached by a staircase on the outside of the garage toward the house. Outside staircases were the tradition in old Cypriot houses. Another one rose from the porch along the back of the house to an identical covered porch above.
The flat would be a tight fit, but all of the fixtures and appliances were modern, which was saying something in the Turkish-occupied territory of northern Cyprus and in a native house of this vintage.
The house itself was quite a challenge, and I needed such a challenge to take my mind off my grief. It was an old-style courtyard house opening right onto the main street and had once had an orchard running down a slope behind it. The owner of the house and orchard had abandoned the house to someone else's attempts to restore it and had built a new villa in the orchard. Access to both the garage and a parking pad for my house and to the garage and entrance of the former owner's new villa was provided by a narrow alley at the side of my house.
The old house was in the shape of an L, with some sixty-five feet across on the street front and a bit more than forty feet deep at its widest. Across the front from the alley, on the first floor, was a long, narrow kitchen that would be fully modern when I was finished with it. Behind that was the cut into the lot of the parking pad, with the one-car garage in the back corner. Extending along the front from the kitchen would be a morning room, a large entrance foyer, and a formal dining room. In the arm of the L extending back to the back of the walled courtyard was a long living room. Upstairs, there would be a master bath above the kitchen, the master bedroom above the morning room, a larger bath and laundry facilities above the foyer, and then three more bedrooms—one over the dining room and two over the living room. A two-story porch faced the courtyard.
We were keeping the old Turkish-style look for the exterior as much as possible—stone and wood and stucco on the street side. But everything inside would be modern.
The restoration would cost a fortune. I didn't care. It was my escape. It could be known to all who cared that it was my escape from a life that had turned tragic to what I hoped would be a hidden corner of the earth—the medieval harbor castle of what had been Kyrenia in the Greek period but now was Girne under the Turkish occupation.
"Would you like me to take your suitcase up to the flat?" The question came from Ergon, one of the three young Cypriot-Turkish carpenters I'd hired when I'd come briefly to Cyprus to settle on the house and hire workmen.
"Yes, please, Ergon. I'll just sit out here in the courtyard for a bit."
I watched him ascend the outside staircase to the flat, carrying the heavy suitcase almost effortlessly. He was a handsome young man—all three of them were. It was a trait of Cypriot-Turkish men. Young gods into their forties and then most of them quickly went to pot. Quite muscular all three of them too. They had to be to do this job. I had hired well—and carefully, being quite certain of what I was getting when I had hired them.
I had had to hire them quickly, searching for them through the old men sitting up in the abbey square at Bellapais in the mountain range above Kyrenia. I had learned from earlier residence on the island that consulting with the old men who drank coffee and brandy up there at the Tree of Idleness would be what was needed to get the workmen I needed. I needed something in particular, and the old men at the coffee house were quick to discern my needs without my having to state them openly. I imagine some of them were just a little less old when I lived in Cyprus before, knew of me, and knew what my requirements for workmen would be.
I surmised long ago that many middle-aged expatriate men settled in Cyprus to feed a particular need, and that there were young, randy Turkish-Cypriot men enough to respond to these needs—at a reasonable price. Not that I thought, at thirty-seven, that I'd be taken as a middle-aged British expatriate—the usual men who came to Cyprus for a very particular retirement life. I worked hard to look younger than my age. But taking the role of expatriate and restoring an old Turkish house on Cyprus obviously tossed me into that bin.
I'd always been quite careful with my hires. That's why the loss of Peter had been such a blow. I sat in an old wicker chair in the courtyard and rummaged around in my carryon for a photograph. I placed it on my lap, mentally talking to it about what had brought me here—in retreat from the world that had been mine and Peter's.
I had been very careful in getting here, coming here from Langley, Virginia, by a circuitous route, making the arrangements I had to make, and then traveling through Europe and even down to Bangkok and back, making sure that no one was tracking me, before coming back here to start my work in northern Cyprus.
It was unusual for an American expatriate to be restoring an old house on Cyprus. Not so unusual for a British expatriate. So, I would feign being at least Canadian, I supposed. Not being an American would be an advantage to me here, even though it was the Americans who got the best service.
Ergon came back down and walked over to my chair and went down on his haunches beside me. The other two continued their noisy work in the house. From the outside the restoration looked nearly complete. On the inside it was still quite a mess. It was a massive undertaking. When it was finished it would be far larger than I'd need—now that I was alone. But it was the house I had to buy.
"You look sad, Mr. Clarke," Ergon said. "Was yours a bad journey?"
"It's been a very bad journey indeed, Ergon," I said, giving him a slight smile. He was such a handsome young man—very sensual, but in a strong, manly way. Just like Peter had been.
"That photo," Ergon said, pointing to the one I sitting on my lap. "You and a younger man. Is that what has made you sad? Is a bad relationship what has brought you here? Has he left you?"
That took me a bit by surprise. Was I that easy to gauge? I had planned to get there eventually, but I had no idea that I was that transparent. But, of course, I had asked for a certain kind of worker. The old men at the Tree of Idleness would have told the young men what sort of worker I was looking for. I guess I knew that, and it certainly simplified the process.
"Yes, Peter has left me, Ergon," I answered in a low voice. "But perhaps not in the way you think. He was my partner, yes—my partner in bed—but he has died. And I guess it's true that I'm escaping here because of him."
I wouldn't tell Ergon how Peter died, and he didn't ask. He put a sympathetic hand on my forearm, though, and I looked down at it and then up into his face. He was looking sad and full of sympathy, and I couldn't prevent my eyes from brimming up in tears.
I wouldn't tell Ergon that Peter had died a violent death—all videotaped and shared with the world. I'd been the one to send him to Syria. It was his job, of course, as it was mine, but I would have given anything not to have sent him to Syria in the guise I did. He hadn't lasted more than two months. The failed operation had been too much for me, and I'm afraid the effect of Peter's death on me had been quite obvious to all of those in my office at the Agency. I fled, leaving behind a formal request for a six-month sabbatical, not waiting around to see if it had been granted or not. Not really caring whether it was.
"Would you like to come up to the flat and see how we have finished it off?" Ergon asked in a soft voice. I appreciated that, but I knew Ergon wasn't a soft person. I hadn't wanted him to be a soft person.
Ergon's eyes and the way he was taking control told me that we weren't going up to the flat just to inspect it—and that I wouldn't have to ask for what I wanted from Ergon.
He stood, bare-chested, at the side of the bed, between my spread knees, as I unzipped his tight jeans, flared out the fly, pulled out his engorging cock, and opened my mouth over the bulb of it. He placed his hands on either side of my head, running his fingers into the reddish-blond sideburns of my hair and arching his back a bit, flexing those magnificent chest muscles of his, and sighing slightly in response to what my mouth was doing to his cock.
