From Russia With Love

Many of my younger readers may not be aware that Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond series completely as a satire on the Intelligence Community and on espionage in general. Bond was right about one thing however, and that was the amount of intelligence that could be "gleaned" through "pillow talk". The book and the movie From Russia With Love was set in Istanbul, and was filmed just prior to my arrival. Whenever I get nostalgic, I watch the movie and it takes me back all those years to a very exciting period in my life. All of the sights, sounds and smells of Turkey come rushing back.

If you remember one of the early sequences in the movie, Bond was taken to a Gypsy Camp and met a beautiful Gypsy girl. The Gypsy's were Armenians who settled in Turkey and were persecuted on a regular basis. As late as the early Twentieth Century, there was some "ethnic cleansing" involving the Armenians.

Sometime in the first month that I was in Istanbul, I met Zeckiya...a beautiful seventeen year old belly dancer. We lived together for most of my tour of duty in Turkey. You have to remember that I wasn't the grizzled old wolf that I have become, but still a pup in many ways. There are many stories to share about this wild Armenian girl, who preferred to call herself Gilda, a name she had chosen to use as a dancer...I always called her Zeckiya and sometimes she called me Yahootie (Turkish for Jew). She thought that I didn't spend much money on her...I told her that I provided the roof she and her brother lived under, the food they ate and bought her clothes, and an occasional trinket. But, she was right...I didn't spend a lot of money on her because that would have made our situation "dirty" and it would have tarnished it enough that I wouldn't have enjoyed it.

Zeckiya was a lot of fun, a lot of trouble, and at times a very valuable resource. By virtue of her profession, she met a lot of men and they told her things, and in turn she told me things. She provided me with information I could never have gotten on my own, and never realised what she was doing.

Our routine was to have an early dinner and I would catch her first show and then go back to the apartment and sleep. Most of the time she worked until two or three in the morning. She would come back to the apartment and be all excited and want to talk about all the things that had happened over the course of the evening. There was one time I remember that I didn't wake up fast enough and she started "tatooing my head" with the spiked heel of her shoe. She was not dressed, so I wrapped her in a sheet...threw her into the hall and locked the door, and went back to sleep.

Another time we were sitting at a bar having drinks when the bartender made an obscene remark to her and she spit in his face...I thought the whole situation was very comical, but the bartender didn't grasp the humor and came across the bar with a knife in his hand. He got me once before I could disarm him, and turn him over to the tender mercies of a few of my Turkish police friends. I ended up spending the rest of the evening getting "stitched up" by an Armenian Doctor that Zechiya knew.

I will probably return to this era from time to time as there are a lot more stories that happened in Istanbul, but I will close this log out for now.

Until next time!!