Hello Ester (Noon, Day 5)

Again, I woke up just before noon. The maid has grown accustomed to this and now cleans the room whenever I'm out. Sometimes she has to wait two days before she gets a chance to come in and clean. Like the crew outside, she keeps tabs on my movement as part of her job. Although having said that, the snoops are still nowhere to be seen. The more I think about it, the more I am starting to believe what Mehmed Esad had said but I still need to meet Cezmi Bey before making up my mind. But I have my doubts about that meeting – expecting a man as timid as Reşit to take a marked man such as myself to an old CUP stalwart like Cezmi may well be a pointless exercise. I say stalwart because Cezmi has never acknowledged or accepted our defeat. The last I heard, according to what Kara Kemal told me anyhow, he was working at the Progressive Republican Party's Istanbul headquarters. That must have been around two years ago.

‘He's a funny old man, our Cezmi. Just like Enver Paşa, he cannot distinguish between his ideals and reality. He behaves more like a guardian of the republic than a member of the Progressive Republican Party. You should see the way he addresses the police and members of the gendarmerie; like he's still a major in the army and the police and gendarmerie are privates under his command. As soon as I get the chance, I'm going to have to tell him that the CUP are not in power. Otherwise if he keeps on acting up the way he is, he'll not only get himself into hot water but those around him too.’

Kara Kemal was most probably killed before he had the chance to tell the old major to quieten down, which means, in a way, that that particular duty has fallen to me. But for all I know, the Cezmi I meet may be a changed man, especially after the assassination attempt in Izmir. I mean, even a fearless old CUP gunman like Mehmed Esad is now telling me he wants to get on with the government. The world is changing, the times are changing and circumstances are changing, so it is only normal that people should change too, isn't it?