WORLD OF SHADOWS
A retired smuggler, The Greek, and his much younger girlfriend, Irina, must reenter the world of shadows they left behind when they are hired to assist his surrogate nephew, Ali, find a missing Chinese girl in Istanbul believed to be the victim of human trafficking.
The Greek, world weary, in his 60s, is trying to forget the illegal activities of his past while living with Irina on the coast of the Black Sea. He agrees to the search out of familial loyalty to Ali. Irina, though, had been a victim of sex traffickers herself in her teenage years before she was rescued by The Greek. Though she is loving with him, she is ruthless in her dealings with Russian gangsters. Her deep- seated rage at her past treatment has caused her to rescue other young women from that life whenever she can. That is what motivates her to join him in the search.
This is not just a thriller but a story of family, friendship, loyalty, and retribution.
CHAPTERS
The traffic was, as usual, miserable and Ali, though used to Istanbul traffic, cursed it anyway. His mantra for coping with this today was the same as his mantra for coping with it every day: I hate this fucking traffic, I hate this fucking traffic, over and over again as he muttered obscenities at other drivers swerving in front of him or to the side. He had the Ford today and wished he had the Opel which could dart in and out of lanes quicker than this model, but the Opel was with Fatih in Bursa and so he only had a choice between this and the Volvo, which Attila insisted he needed today. Just his luck, he thought, to have to go across the bridge four times in this. Oh well, and he sighed. Such was life. At least, once at the restaurant, he would have a decent meal. He wondered what mischief awaited him at Akif’s place. His older brother always seemed to bring him business but not always the kind of business he preferred. . Usually they were paying customers, though there were also the friends of friends and cousins of cousins who, Akif would suggest, were entitled to a special discount. And then there were those charity cases he would steer Ali’s way: those in need of unique solutions to complicated problems, which, it always seemed to Ali, involved foreigners somehow. “Brother,” Akif would say, that little smile lounging on his lips, that dim, but discernible, twinkle in his eye, “should we not help these poor foreigners in our land? Is that not the proper Ottoman way?” And so Ali was always a little leery when Akif called to ask him to drop by the family restaurant on an off day, not his usual evening meal, or the Sunday dinner with his mother and brothers and their wives, his nephews and nieces. No, this was a lunch meeting with someone Akif wanted him to meet, someone with a “difficult situation” that needed his opinion, his possible help. But it was what he did, he thought to himself. . He helped people, did favors for those in need of favors, or at least saw to it that someone did. Maybe it was negotiating the arduous, maze-like process of getting goods through Turkish Customs, or getting a foreigner a tax number, or helping someone’s son or daughter get a student visa to study abroad, or just aiding an illegal worker to find a job, or a lost husband, or a wandering daughter.