Last Call

Fazil’s mistake, if it was a mistake, was that the vista from the window was expansive enough that I could see the minarets of Istanbul’s signature mosque, the Hagia Sophia, and the curve of the Bosporus that connected the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Perhaps—just perhaps—he thought I would not know Istanbul well enough to get my bearings from what I could see. Or perhaps he thought I didn’t know where to go from there to safety should I be able to escape.

But I did know where to go. I couldn’t see it from there, but I knew enough about the ground floor of the building that I’d know my bearings as soon as I got out into the open—and I’d know exactly where to go.

And I knew that soon I’d have to make my move. Fazil hadn’t fucked me in three days. I could tell that his struggle for safety was beginning to win out over the needs of his dick.

The night after Fazil had taken me in the grape crate in the afternoon and Axel had come to my cabin in the night en route to the waters south of Corfu, I was left alone, locked in my room. I had assumed that would be the case as soon as I felt the engines close down and heard the hull of another ship scraping against ours and the sounds of the reverse process of loading, as the fruit-camouflaged crates of arms were lifted out of the hold of the fantail yacht and onto another, unseen ship in almost total darkness.