Hello Ester (Afternoon, Day 10)

The Tokatlıyan Hotel is on the Cadde-i Kebir. It opened a few years after the Pera Palace but it is just as famous. As students at the Imperial High School, we had walked past it many times, watching elegant gentlemen and beautiful, chic ladies waltz in and out of its front doors, a reminder to us of the presence of an entirely different world out there. All of us, without exception, dreamt of one day staying in that hotel. I don't know about my classmates, but the dream had at least come true for me as I used to frequent the hotel during my years with the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa. Not for pleasure, of course, but to track down spies. The Tokatlıyan, the Pera Palace, the Grand London Hotel… Those were the kinds of places where the foreign heads of the treacherous underground networks that were causing mischief and mayhem all over the country could be found. But now it had been some time since I had come to the Tokatlıyan. I entered the grand lobby, walked across the huge Afghan carpet towards reception and asked for Ali Yunus Bey. Reşit, bless him, had seen to everything and a few minutes later I was seated on a velvet chair in the hotel manager's office waiting for the customer records to be brought to me.

‘We've had a lot of guests from Salonika’, Ali Yunus told me. ‘Especially Jews. The richer ones, of course. We've had guests stay a few days and others that didn't leave for months. Some went to Izmir, others stayed and settled in Istanbul. So in that respect, it is quite possible that Monsieur Leon has spent time with us. However, as to whether he left a forwarding address or not, I cannot tell.’

The customer records arrived before the coffees. Ali Yunus opened the large ledger on his desk and peered at me over his glasses.

‘What was Monsieur Leon's surname?’

‘Azuz’, I replied, getting to my feet and bending over the records. ‘Leon Azuz… He was seen here around two months ago.’ I stopped and hesitated and then added, ‘We can also check his niece's name.