Far Away Places With Strange Sounding Names

Billy has been reading Eric Ambler, and is meditating on the background story of Smyrna and the war in 1922.  It's no good trying to be courteous with this rabbit, he is off in the world of 'tween war drug smuggling and murder.

At first, attempts were made to isolate the blaze. Then, the wind changed, blowing the fire away from the Turkish quarter, and further outbreaks were started by the troops. Soon, the whole city, with the exception of the Turkish quarter and a few houses near the Kassamba railway station, was burning fiercely. The massacre continued with unabated ferocity. A cordon of troops was drawn round the city to keep the refugees within the burning area. The streams of panic-stricken fugitives were shot down pitilessly or driven back into the inferno. The narrow, gutted streets became so choked with corpses that, even had the would-be rescue parties been able to endure the sickening stench that arose, they could not have passed along them. Smyrna was changed from a city into a charnel-house. Many refugees had tried to reach ships in the inner harbour. Shot, drowned, mangled by propellers, their bodies floated hideously in the blood-tinged water. But the quayside was still crowded with those trying frantically to escape from the blazing waterfront, buildings toppling above them a few yards behind. It was said that the screams of these people were heard a mile out at sea. Giaur Izmir – infidel Smyrna – had atoned for its sins.  By the time that dawn broke on the fifteenth of September, over one hundred and twenty thousand persons had perished; but somewhere amidst that horror had been Dimitrios, alive.

‘Ton,’ said Muishkin looking round. He seized the menu and after some deliberation chose the most expensive dish on it. With their food they drank a syrupy, resinous Smyrna wine. Muishkin began to talk about his life. Odessa, 1918. Stambul, 1919. Smyrna, 1921. Bolsheviks. Wrangel’s army. Kiev. A woman they called The Butcher. They used the abattoir as a prison because the prison had become an abattoir. Terrible, damn-awful atrocities. Allied army of occupation. The English sporting. American relief. Bed bugs. Typhus. Vickers guns. The Greeks – God, those Greeks! Fortunes waiting to be picked up. Kemalists. His voice droned on while outside, through the cigarette smoke, beyond the red plush and the gilt and the white tablecloths, the amethyst twilight had deepened into night.

 

(Charles Latimer, a professor of political economics, has become a successful mystery writer.  While in Istanbul, he meets the chief of the secret police who shows him the body of a much wanted criminal,  Dimitrios Makropolous, found floating in the Bosporus.  Latimer is intrigued and decides to trace the life of the dead man and discover what made him who he was.  Mr. Latimer is being very, very foolish).