Page 7 of Power's Fall
“It was a resort in Crimea,” Devon said.
Hande grimaced.
Eric pointed at Hande. “What’s with the face?”
“There’s an issue in my territory that seems…similar,” she said slowly.
“Your territory.” Nikolett took a deep breath. “Crimea, and the rest of the Ukrainian and Romanian coastline, should be part of Hungary.”
“They’re not.” Hande smiled at Nikolett.
Nikolett smiled back.
Colum scooted his chair closer to Franco’s and away from Hande. Around the table, other people tensed, that heavy silence of anticipation blanketing all of them.
“Explain,” Eric demanded. “Not your border dispute. Hande’s thing.”
“Fifty years ago,” Hande said slowly, “a member of the Ottoman territory bought a resort on the water in Crimea. There were other resorts in the area, and most of the visitors were wealthy Russians. Not that there should have been wealthy Russians at the time. But our members’ resort was a little different. It catered to members of our society.”
“It was poly-friendly?” Owen asked, taking notes on a small tablet.
“Yes. Only members of our society, or those with similar tastes, were allowed to stay there. Usually guests sailed from Istanbul, the cruise part of the appeal of the trip. They’d dock at the resort, stay for a week, then sail home.”
Hande sighed. “It took some time for my predecessor to find out that almost every trinity that visited there received blackmail pictures once they returned home.”
“How many people are we talking about?” Antonio asked.
“Nearly forty trinities over the course of several years. There may have been more.”
Antonio said something in Italian that definitely had to be a curse.
“I assume people stopped going there?” Eric was pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Yes. Once he knew about it, the admiral at the time forbade anyone else from going, and the owner closed the resort, then several years later sold the property.”
“Did the janissaries at the time figure out who the blackmailer was?” Owen asked.
“No,” Hande said. “A failure by my territory, but without actually going there to investigate, it was difficult.”
“And they’ve all been paying this whole time?” Percy asked.
“No. After the coup in Turkey, no one paid. That was a…difficult time for our members. If the letters with the demands did get through, they were ignored.”
There was a beat of silence before Eric said, “Colum, summary.”
Colum sat forward, staring into middle space. “A woman from Ottoman opens a resort in Crimea designed for trinities. The guests are mostly from Ottoman, but other like-minded people visit, including an American trinity. Someone, most likely a staff member at the resort, takes pictures of the trinities, and uses those to blackmail guests once they get home. It takes a couple years for everyone to confess to the Ottoman admiral what’s going on. The owner shuts down the resort, but before they can go in and find the blackmailer, Kenan Evren leads a coup in Turkey, and blackmail is the least of anyone’s problems.
“Most likely the blackmailer figures out that his Turkish victims aren’t viable payers anymore, but he still has the Americans. He or she continues to blackmail the Americans, meaning that either the blackmailer was young at the time they took the photos, enabling him to keep up the blackmail for forty-five years, or the blackmail scheme was inherited by someone who wasn’t actually there for the initial photographing.”
Franco nodded in appreciation of Colum’s summary of the situation, sprinkled with logical conclusions such as the blackmailer being a staff member at the resort.
“There’s more,” Hande said grimly.
“Of course there is.” Eric scrubbed his face with one hand.
“It happened again. Recently.”
“Fuck.”