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waiter came by, glanced briefly at the empty chair. Then handed me the bill.
    “Well,” I whispered. “That went well.”

    Chapter Six

    I stepped out of the restaurant and into the cool night air. The rain had come and gone, leaving Dogubayazit in muddy ruins. I picked my way carefully over the broken cobblestone sidewalk, slipping once or twice in the slime that had washed up from the street. I was slightly drunk, having celebrated my failure to dissuade her attempt to climb the mountain with a few more beers.
    Faye Roberts was headstrong and reckless. And those were two characteristics that can get you killed on Ararat. Her father had probably been the same way.
    I turned my collar up and shoved my hands deep into my pockets.
    Faye Roberts wasn’t my concern. I had done my best to discourage her. And she hadn’t listened.
    “Stubborn broad,” I mumbled.
    The shops were closed. The streets empty. The cobblestone sidewalk morphed into a long swath of black mud. My hiking boots made sucking noises with each step. Water drip-dripped everywhere. In the far distance I saw a flash of headlights, heard the grind of a very old motor as the vehicle turned down a side street and disappeared. The air was crisp, and there was the sweet smell of rain on the wind, perhaps the promise of more to come.
    Faye Roberts had looked gorgeous tonight. The designer of that silver blouse should receive a fashion award. Or a handshake. It had shimmered in all the right places.
    I turned onto a larger street. There were more hotels here, all glowing invitingly at this late hour, foyers brightly lit. Ten minutes later, I stopped in front of my bar with its double doors wide open as dim yellow light issued across the sidewalk. I paused and lit a cigarette. Which turned the pause into something more than a pause.
    I leaned against the wooden door frame, smoking contentedly, staring out into the quiet night. Somewhere a dog barked, a deep-throated mean-sounding bark. Another dog responded. This one more of a yipe. This went on for some time until both pooches were suitably caught-up on the night’s gossip.
    The wooden sign above me creaked in the wind. A dirty spotlight illuminated the sign, revealing a single hand-painted word: Bira . Beer.
    I like to keep things simple.
    I took one last drag from the cigarette and flicked it away and stepped into the near-empty bar.
    * * *
    Like the name, the bar itself was simple. There were a half dozen of the requisite neon lights on the blond pine walls, and scattered here and there were posters of scantily clad women holding their favorite bottles of beer. Round tables scarred with cigarette burns, knife blades, fingernails and sharp elbows. Two ancient ceiling fans, powered by exposed leather belts, did little to disperse the pall of white smoke that hung suspended in the air. A typical bar, even in Eastern Turkey.
    Five customers remained at this late hour, sitting in wooden chairs of varying degrees of solidity, talking amongst themselves, some louder and more drunk than others.
    Pascal was behind the bar, cleaning glasses with a rag that could have used some cleaning itself. A good kid. Nineteen years old. Whip-thin. Always a smile on his face, which said a lot. Because he didn’t have much to smile about. Both his parents were killed by Kurdish guerrillas, a bomb left in a duffel bag on their bus, leaving Pascal to raise a kid sister in a small apartment on the east side of town. During the day he studied accounting, via a correspondence course from the university in Istanbul. The correspondence course had been my idea.
    He saw me and smiled from ear to ear. There was a shiner under his left eye, courtesy of the yuruk .
    “I was getting worried, Sam bey .” He used the word bey as a sign of respect, or if he wanted to borrow some money.
    “Anything exciting happen while I was gone?” I asked.
    He pointed to a broken chair in the corner of the room. Two of its legs were gone. “Just one fight,