The light of day

3

The post had no facilities for housing prisoners, and I was put in the lavatory under guard while the Commandant reported my arrest to headquarters and awaited orders. The lavatory was only a few yards from his office, and during the next twenty minutes the telephone there rang four times. I could hear the rumble of his voice when he answered. The tone of it became more respectful with each call.

I was uncertain whether I should allow myself to be encouraged by this or not. Police behavior is always difficult to anticipate, even when you know a country well. Sometimes Higher Authority is more responsive to a reasonable explanation of the misunderstanding, and more disposed to accept a dignified expression of regret for inconvenience caused, than some self-important or sadistic minor official who is out to make the most of the occasion. On the other hand, the Higher Authority has more power to abuse, and, if it comes to the simple matter of a bribe, bigger ideas about his nuisance value. I must admit, though, that what I was mainly concerned about at that point was the kind of physical treatment I would receive. Of course, every police authority, high or low, considers its behavior “correct” on all occasions; but in my experience (although I have only really been arrested ten or twelve times in my whole life) the word “correct” can mean almost anything from hot meals brought in from a nearby restaurant and plenty of cigarettes, to tight-handcuffing in the cell and a knee in the groin if you dare to complain. My previous encounters with the Turkish police had been uncomfortable only in the sense that they had been inconvenient and humiliating; but then, the matters in dispute had been of a more or less technical nature. I had to face the fact that “being in possession of arms, explosives, and other offensive weapons, attempting to smuggle them into the Turkish Republic, carrying concealed firearms and illegal entry without valid identification papers,” were rather more serious charges. My complete and absolute innocence of them would take time to establish, and a lot of quite unpleasant things could happen in the interim.

The possibility that my innocence might not be established was something that, realist though I am, I was not just then prepared to contemplate.

After the fourth telephone call, the Commandant came out of his office, gave some orders to the security man who had been waiting in the passage, and then came into the lavatory.

“You are being sent at once to the garrison jail in Edirne,” he said.

“And the car I was driving, sir?”

He hesitated. “I have no orders about that yet. No doubt it will be wanted as evidence.”

Direct communication with Higher Authority seemed to have sapped a little of his earlier self-confidence. I decided to have one more shot at bluffing my way out. “I must remind you, sir,” I said loudly, “that I have already protested formally to you against my detention here. I repeat that protest. The car and its contents are within your legal jurisdiction. I am not. I was refused entry because my papers were not in order. Therefore, legally, I was not in Turkey and should have been at once returned to the Greek side of the border. In Greece, I have a permis de sejour which is in order. I think that when your superiors learn these facts, you will find that you have a lot to answer for.”

It was quite well said. Unfortunately, it seemed to amuse him.

“So you are a lawyer, as well as a journalist, a chauffeur, and an arms smuggler.”

“I am simply warning you.”

His smile faded. “Then let me give you a word of warning, too. In Edirne you will not be dealing with the ordinary police authorities. It is considered that there may be political aspects to your case and it has been placed under the jurisdiction of the Second Section, the Ikinci Buro. ”

“Political aspects? What political aspects?” I tried, not very successfully, to sound angry instead of alarmed.

“That is not for me to say. I merely warn you. The Director, Second Section, is General Haki. It will be his men who will interrogate you. You will certainly end by co-operating with them. You would be well advised to begin by doing so. Their patience, I hear, is quite limited. That is all.”

He went. A moment or two later the security man came in.

I was driven to the garrison jail in a covered jeep with my right wrist handcuffed to a grab rail, and an escort of two soldiers. The jail was an old stone building on the outskirts of the town. It had a walled courtyard, and there were expanded metal screens as well as bars over the windows.

One of the soldiers, an N.C.O., reported to the guard on the inner gate, and after a few moments two men in a different sort of uniform came out through a smaller side door. One of them had a paper which he handed to the N.C.O. I gathered that it was a receipt for me. The N.C.O. immediately unlocked the handcuffs and waved me out of the jeep. The new escort-in-charge prodded me towards the side door.

“Girmek, girmek!” he said sharply.

All jails seem to smell of disinfectants, urine, sweat, and leather. This was no exception. I went up some wooden stairs to a steel gate, which was opened by a man with a long chain of keys from the inside. Beyond it and to the right was a sort of reception room with a man at a desk and two cubicles at the back. The guard shoved me up to the desk and rapped out an order. I said in French that I didn’t understand. The man at the desk said: “Vide les poches.”

I did as I was told. They had taken all my papers and keys from me at the frontier post. All I had left in my pockets was my money, my watch, a packet of cigarettes, and matches. The desk man gave me back the watch and the cigarettes, and put the money and the matches into an envelope. A man in a grubby white coat now arrived and went into one of the cubicles. He was carrying a thin yellow file folder. After a moment or two he called out an order and I was sent in to him.

The cubicle contained a small table and a chair and a covered bucket. In one corner there was a washbasin, and on the wall a white metal cabinet. The white-coated man was at the table preparing an inking plate of the kind used for fingerprinting. He glanced up at me and said in French: “Take your clothes off.”

People who run jails are all the same. When I was naked, he searched the inside of the clothes and the shoes. Next he looked in my mouth and ears with a flashlight. Then he took a rubber glove and a jar of petroleum jelly from the wall cabinet and searched my rectum. I have always deeply resented that indignity. Finally he took my fingerprints. He was very businesslike about it all; he even gave me a piece of toilet paper to wipe the ink off my hands before he told me to dress and go into the next cubicle. In there, was a camera, set up with photofloods and a fixed focus bar. When I had been photographed, I was taken along some corridors to a green wooden door with the word ISTIFHAM lettered on it in white paint. Istifham is a Turkish word I know; it means “interrogation.”

There was only one small screened and barred window in the room; the sun was beginning to set and it was already quite dark in there. As I went in, one of the guards followed me and switched on the light. His friend shut and locked the door from the outside. The guard who was to stay with me sat down on a bench against the wall and yawned noisily.

The room was about eighteen feet square. Off one corner there was a washroom with no door on it. Apart from the bench, the furniture consisted of a solid-looking table bolted to the floor and half a dozen chairs. On the wall was a telephone and a framed lithograph of Kemal Ataturk. The floor was covered with worn brown linoleum.

I got out my cigarettes and offered one to the guard. He shook his head and looked contemptuous, as if I had offered him an inadequate bribe. I shrugged and, putting the cigarette in my own mouth, made signs that I wanted a light. He shook his head again. I put the cigarette away and sat down at the table. I had to assume that at any moment now a representative of the Second Section would arrive and start questioning me. What I needed, very badly, was something to tell him.

It is always the same with interrogation. I remember my father trying to explain it to Mum one night, just before he was killed. It’s no good for a soldier who is up on a charge before his C.O. just telling the truth; he has to have something more, something fancy to go with it. If he got back to barracks half an hour after lights-out just because he’d had too much beer and missed the last bus, who cares about him? He’s simply a careless bloody fool-seven days confined to barracks, next case. But if, when he’s asked if he has anything to say, he can tell the tale so that the C.O. gets a bit of fun out of hearing it, things are different. He may be only admonished. My father said that there was a corporal in his old regiment who was so good at making up yarns for the orderly room that he used to sell them for half-a-crown apiece. They were known as “well-sirs.” My father bought a well-sir once when he was “crimed” for overstaying an evening pass. It went like this:

Well, sir, I was proceeding back along Cantonment Road towards the barracks in good time for lights-out and in a soldierly manner. Then, sir, just as I was passing the shopping arcade by Ordnance Avenue, I heard a woman scream. Pause. Well, sir, I stopped to listen and heard her scream again. There were also some confused cries. The sound was coming from one of the shops in the arcade, so I went to investigate. Pause again, then go on slowly. Well, sir, what I found was one of these Wogs-beg pardon, sir, a native-molesting a white woman in a doorway. I could see she was a lady, sir. Let that sink in a bit. Well, sir, the moment this lady saw me, she appealed to me for help. She said she’d been on her way home to her mother’s house, which was over on the other side of Artillery Park, when this native had attempted to-well, interfere with her. I told him to clear out. In reply, sir, he became abusive, calling me some very dirty names in his own lingo and using insulting language about the Regiment Take a deep breath. Well, sir, for the lady’s sake I managed to hold on to my temper. As a matter of fact, sir, I think the man must have been drunk or under the influence of drugs. He had sense enough to keep his distance, but the moment I escorted the lady out of the arcade I realized that he was following us. Just waiting for a chance to molest her again, sir. She knew it, too. I’ve never seen a lady more frightened, sir. When she appealed to me to escort her to her mother’s house, sir, I realized that it would make me late. But if I’d just gone on my way and something terrible had happened to her, I’d have never forgiven myself, sir. Stiffen up and look without blinking at the wall space over the C.O.’s head. No excuse to offer, sir, I’ll take my medicine. C.O. can’t think of anything to say except: “Don’t let it happen again.” Charge dismissed.

The only trouble is that, in the army, unless you are always making a damned nuisance of yourself, they would sooner give you the benefit of the doubt than not, because it’s easier for them that way. Besides, they know that even if you have made the whole thing up, at least they’ve had you sweating over it. The police are much more difficult. They don’t want you to have the benefit of any doubt. They want to start checking and double-checking your story, and getting witnesses and evidence, so that there is no doubt. “What was the lady’s name? Describe her. Exactly where was the house to which you escorted her? Was her mother in fact there? Did you see her? It takes twenty-two minutes to walk from the shopping arcade to the other side of Artillery Park, and a further thirty minutes to walk from there to the barracks. That makes fifty-two minutes. But you were two hours late getting in. Where did you spend the other hour and eight minutes? We have a witness who says that he saw you…” And so on. You can’t buy well-sirs good enough for the police for half-a-crown. Intelligence people are even worse. Nine times out of ten they don’t even have to worry about building up a case against you to go into court. They are the court-judge, jury, and prosecutor, all in one.

I did not know anything about this “Second Section” which the Commandant had mentioned; but it was not hard to guess what it was. The Turks have always been great borrowers of French words and phrases. The Ikinci Buro sounded to me like the Turkish counterpart of the Deuxieme Bureau. I wasn’t far wrong.

I think that if I were asked to single out one specific group of men, one type, one category, as being the most suspicious, unbelieving, unreasonable, petty, inhuman, sadistic, double-crossing set of bastards in any language, I would say without any hesitation: “the people who run counter-espionage departments.” With them, it is no use having just one story; and especially not a true story; they automatically disbelieve that. What you must have is a series of stories, so that when they knock the first one down you can bring out the second, and then, when they scrub that out, come up with a third. That way they think they are making progress and keep their hands off you, while you gradually find out the story they really want you to tell.

My position at Edirne was hopeless from the start. If I had known what was hidden in the car before the post Commandant had started questioning me, I wouldn’t have told him about Harper. I would have pretended to be stupid, or just refused to say anything. Then, later, when I had finally broken down and “told all,” they would have believed at least some of what I had said. As it was, I had told a story that happened to be true, but sounded as if I thought they were half-witted. You can imagine how I felt as I waited. With no room at all for maneuver, I knew that I must be in for a bad time.

The sun went down and the window turned black. It was very quiet. I could hear no sounds at all from other parts of the jail. Presumably, things were arranged so that there they could hear no sounds made in the interrogation room-screams, etc. When I had been there two hours, there were footsteps in the corridor outside, the door was unlocked, and a new guard came in with a tin bowl of mutton soup and a hunk of bread. He put these on the table in front of me, then nodded to his friend, who went out and relocked the door. The new man took his place on the bench.

There was no spoon. I dipped a piece of bread in the soup and tasted it. It was lukewarm and full of congealed fat. Even without my indigestion I could not have eaten it. Now, the smell alone made me want to throw up.

I looked at the guard. “Su?” I asked.

He motioned to the washroom. Evidently, if I wanted water I would have to drink from the tap. I did not relish the idea. Indigestion was bad enough; I did not want dysentery, too. I made myself eat some of the bread and then took out my cigarettes again in the hope that the new man might be ready to give me a match. He shook his head. I pointed to a plastic ash tray on the table to remind him that smoking was not necessarily prohibited. He still shook his head.

A little before nine, a twin-engined plane flew over the jail and then circled as if on a landing pattern. The sound seemed to mean something to the guard. He looked at his watch, and then absently ran his hand down the front of his tunic as if to make sure that the buttons were all done up.

More to break the interminable silence in the room than because I wanted to know, I asked: “Is there a big airport at Edirne?”

I spoke in French, but it meant nothing to him. I made signs, which he misunderstood.

“Askeri ucak,” he said briefly.

An army plane. That concluded that conversation; but I noticed that he kept glancing at his watch now. Probably, I thought, it was time for his relief and he was becoming impatient.

Twenty minutes later there was the distant sound of a car door slamming. The guard heard it, too, and promptly stood up. I stared at him and he glowered back.

“Hazirol!” he snapped, and then exasperatedly: “ Debout! Debout!”

I stood up. I could hear approaching footsteps and voices now. Then the door was unlocked and flung open.

For a moment nothing more happened, except that someone in the corridor, whom I could not see, went on speaking. He had a harsh, peremptory voice which seemed to be giving orders that another voice kept acknowledging deferentially- “Evet, evet efendim, derhal.” Then the orders ceased and the man who had been giving them came into the room.

He was about thirty-five, I would think, perhaps younger, tall and quite slim. There were high cheekbones, gray eyes, and short brown hair. He was handsome, I suppose, in a thin-lipped sort of way. He was wearing a dark civilian suit that looked as if it had been cut by a good Roman tailor, and a dark-gray silk tie. He looked as if he had just come from a diplomatic corps cocktail party; and for all I know he may have done so. On his right wrist there was a gold identity bracelet. The hand below it was holding a large manila envelope.

He examined me bleakly for a moment, then nodded. “I am Major Tufan, Deputy Director, Second Section.”

“Good evening, sir.”

He glanced at the guard, who was staring at him round-eyed, and suddenly snapped out an order: “Defol!”

The guard nearly fell over himself getting out of the room.

As soon as the door closed, the major pulled a chair up to the table and sat down. Then he waved me back to my seat by the bread.

“Sit down, Simpson. I believe that you speak French easily, but not Turkish.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then we will speak in French instead of English. That will be easier for me.”

I answered in French. “As you wish, sir.”

He took cigarettes and matches from his pocket and tossed them on the table in front of me. “You may smoke.”

“Thank you.”

I was glad of the concession, though not in the least reassured by it. When a policeman gives you a cigarette it is usually the first move in one of those “let’s see if we can’t talk sensibly as man to man” games in which he provides the rope and you hang yourself. I lit a cigarette and waited for the next move.

He seemed in no hurry to make it. He had opened the envelope and taken from it a file of papers which he was searching through and rearranging, as if he had just dropped them all and was trying to get them back into the right order.

There was a knock at the door. He took no notice. After a moment or two, the door opened and a guard came in with a bottle of raki and two glasses. Tufan motioned to him to put them on the table, and then noticed the soup.

“Do you want any more of that?” he asked.

“No thank you, sir.”

He said something to the guard, who took the soup and bread away and locked the door again.

Tufan rested the file on his knees and poured himself a glass of raki. “The flight from Istanbul was anything but smooth,” he said; “we are still using piston-engined planes on these short runs.” He swallowed the drink as if he were washing down a pill, and pushed the bottle an inch or two in my direction. “You’d better have a drink, Simpson. It may make you feel better.”

“And also make me more talkative, sir?” I thought the light touch might make him think that I was not afraid.

He looked up and his gray eyes met mine. “I hope not,” he said coldly; “I have no time to waste.” He shut the file with a snap and put it on the table in front of him.

“Now then,” he went on, “let us examine your position. First, the offenses with which you are charged render you liable upon conviction to terms of imprisonment of at least twenty years. Depending on the degree of your involvement in the political aspects of this affair, we might even consider pressing for a death sentence.”

“But I am not involved at all, Major, I assure you. I am a victim of circumstances-an innocent victim.” Of course, he could have been bluffing about the death sentence, but I could not be sure. There was that phrase “political aspects” again. I had read that they had been hanging members of the former government for political crimes. I wished now that I had taken the drink when he had offered it. Now, my hands were shaking, and I knew that, if I reached for the bottle and glass, he would see that they were.

Apparently, however, he did not have to see them; he knew what he was doing to me, and wanted me to know that he knew. Quite casually, he picked up the bottle, poured me half a glass of raki, and pushed it across to me.

“We will talk about the extent of your involvement in a minute,” he said. “First, let us consider the matter of your passport.”

“It is out of date. I admit that. But it was a mere oversight. If the post Commandant had behaved correctly I would have been sent back to the Greek post.”

He shrugged impatiently. “Let us be clear about this. You had already committed serious criminal offenses on Turkish soil. Would you expect to escape the consequences because your papers are not in order? You know better. You also know that your passport was not invalid through any oversight. The Egyptian government had refused to renew it. In fact, they revoked your citizenship two years ago on the grounds that you made false statements on your naturalization papers.” He glanced in the file. “You stated that you had never been convicted of a criminal offense and that you had never served a prison sentence. Both statements were lies.”

This was such an unfair distortion of the facts that I could only assume that he had got it from the Egyptians. I said: “I have been fighting that decision.”

“And also using a passport to which you were not entitled and had failed to surrender.”

“My case was still sub judice. Anyway, I have already applied for restoration of my British citizenship, to which I am entitled as the son of a serving British officer. In fact, I am British.”

“The British don’t take that view. After what happened you can scarcely blame them.”

“Under the provisions of the British Nationality Act of 1948 I remain British unless I have specifically renounced that nationality. I have never formally renounced it.”

“That is unimportant. We are talking about your case here and the extent of your involvement. The point I wish to make is that our action in your case is not going to be governed in any way by the fact that you are a foreigner. No consul is going to intercede on your behalf. You have none. You are stateless. The only person who can help you is my Director.” He paused. “But he will have to be persuaded. You understand me?”

“I have no money.”

It seemed a perfectly sensible reply to me, but for some reason it appeared to irritate him. His eyes narrowed and for a moment I thought he was going to throw the glass he was holding in my face. Then he sighed. “You are over fifty,” he said, “yet you have learned nothing. You still see other men in your own absurd image. Do you really believe that I could be bought, or that, if I could be, a man like you could ever do the buying?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to retort that that would depend on the price he was asking; but if he wanted to take this high-and-mighty attitude, there was no sense in arguing. Obviously, I had touched him in a sensitive area.

He lit a cigarette as if he were consciously putting aside his irritation. I took the opportunity to drink some of the raki.

“Very well.” He was all business again. “You understand your position, which is that you have no position. We come now to the story you told to the post Commandant before your arrest.”

“Every word I told the Commandant was the truth.”

He opened the file. “On the face of it that seems highly unlikely. Let us see. You stated that you were asked by this American, Harper, to drive a car belonging to a Fraulein Lipp from Athens to Istanbul. You were to be paid one hundred dollars. You agreed. Am I right?”

“Quite right.”

“You agreed, even though the passport in your possession was not in order?”

“I did not realize it was out of date. It has been months since I used it. The whole thing was arranged within a few hours. I scarcely had time to pack a bag. People are using out-of-date passports all the time. Ask anyone at any international airline. They will tell you. That is why they always check passengers’ passports when they weigh their baggage. They do not want difficulties at the other end. I had nobody to check. The Greek control scarcely looked at the passport. I was leaving the country. They were not interested.”

I knew I was on safe ground here, and I spoke with feeling.

He thought for a moment, then nodded. “It is possible, and, of course, you had good reason not to think too much about the date on your passport. The Egyptians were not going to renew it anyway. That explanation is acceptable, I think. We will go on.” He referred again to the file. “You told the Commandant that you suspected this man Harper of being a narcotics smuggler.”

“I did.”

“To the extent of searching the car after you left Athens.”

“Yes.”

“Yet you still agreed to make the journey.”

“I was being paid one hundred dollars.”

“That was the only reason?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “It really will not do.”

“I am telling you the truth.”

He took a clip of papers from the file. “Your history does not inspire confidence.”

“Give a dog a bad name.”

“You seem to have earned one. Our dossier on you begins in fifty-seven. You were arrested on various charges and fined on a minor count. The rest were abandoned by the police for lack of evidence.”

“They should never have been brought in the first place.”

He ignored this. “We did, however, ask Interpol if they knew anything about you. It seemed they knew a lot. Apparently you were once in the restaurant business.”

“My mother owned a restaurant in Cairo. Is that an offense?”

“Fraud is an offense. Your mother was part owner of a restaurant. When she died, you sold it to a buyer who believed that you now owned all of it. In fact, there were two other shareholders. The buyer charged you with fraud, but withdrew his complaint when the police allowed you to regularize the transaction.”

“I didn’t know of the existence of these other shareholders. My mother had never told me that she had sold the shares.” This was perfectly true. Mum was entirely responsible for the trouble I got into over that.

“In 1931 you bought a partnership in a small publishing business in Cairo. Outwardly it concerned itself with distributing foreign magazines and periodicals. Its real business was the production of pornography for the Spanish- and English-speaking markets. And that became your real business.”

“That is absolutely untrue.”

“The information was supplied through Interpol in fifty-four by Scotland Yard. It was given in response to an inquiry by the New York police. Scotland Yard must have known about you for a long time.”

I knew it would do no good for me to become angry. “I have edited and sometimes written for a number of magazines of a literary nature over the years,” I said quietly. “Sometimes they may have been a little daring in their approach and have been banned by various censoring authorities. But I would remind you that books like Ulysses and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which were once described by those same authorities as pornographic or obscene, are now accepted as literary works of art and published quite openly.”

He looked at his papers again. “In January fifty-five you were arrested in London. In your possession were samples of the various obscene and pornographic periodicals which you had been attempting to sell in bulk. Among them was a book called Gents Only and a monthly magazine called Enchantment. All were produced by your Egyptian company. You were charged under the British law governing such publications, and also with smuggling them. At your trial you said nothing about their being literary works of art. You pleaded guilty and were sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment.”

“That was a travesty of justice.”

“Then why did you plead guilty?”

“Because my lawyer advised me to.” In fact, the C.I.D. Inspector had tricked me into it. He had as good as promised me that if I pleaded guilty I would get off with a fine.

He stared at me thoughtfully for a moment, then shut the file. “You must be a very stupid man, Simpson. You say to me: ‘I am telling you the truth,’ and yet when I try to test that statement all I hear from you is whining and protestation. I am not interested in how you explain away the past, or in any illusions about yourself that you may wish to preserve. If you cannot even tell the truth when there is nothing to be gained by lying, then I can believe nothing you tell me. You were caught by the British smuggling pornography and trying to peddle it. Why not admit it? Then, when you tell me that you did not know that you were smuggling arms and ammunition this afternoon, I might at least think: ‘This man is a petty criminal, but it is remotely possible that for once he is being truthful.’ As it is, I can only assume that you are lying and that I must get the truth from you in some other way.”

I admit that “some other way” gave me a jolt. After all, five minutes earlier he had been pouring me a glass of raki. He meant to put the fear of God into me, of course, and make me panic. Unfortunately, and only because I was tired, upset, and suffering from indigestion, he succeeded.

“I am telling you the truth, sir.” I could hear my own voice cracking and quavering but could do nothing to control it. “I swear to God I am telling you the truth. My only wish is to tell you all I can, to bring everything out of the darkness into the light of day.”

He stared at me curiously; and then, as I realized what I had said, I felt myself reddening. It was awful. I had used those absurd words Harper had made me write in that confession about the checks.

A sour smile touched his lips for an instant. “Ah yes,” he said. “I was forgetting that you have been a journalist. We will try once more then. Just remember that I do not want speeches in mitigation, only plain statements.”

“Of course.” I was too confused to think straight now.

“Why did you go to London in fifty-five? You must have known that Scotland Yard knew all about you.”

“How could I know? I hadn’t been in England for years.”

“Where were you during the war?”

“In Cairo doing war work.”

“What work?”

“I was an interpreter.”

“Why did you go to London?”

I cleared my throat and took a sip of raki.

“Answer me!”

“I was going to answer, sir.” There was nothing else for it. “The British distributor of our publications suddenly ceased making payments and we could get no replies from him to our letters. I went to England to investigate, and found his offices closed. I assumed that he had gone out of business, and began to look for another distributor. The man I eventually discussed the possibility with turned out to be a Scotland Yard detective. We used to send our shipments to Liverpool in cotton bales. It seems that the customs had discovered this and informed the police. Our distributor had been arrested and sent to prison. The police had kept it out of the papers somehow. I just walked into a trap.”

“Better, much better,” he said. He looked almost amused. “Naturally, though, you felt bitter towards the British authorities.”

I should have remembered something he had let drop earlier, but I was still confused. I tried to head him off.

“I was bitter at the time, of course, sir. I did not think I had had a fair trial. But afterwards I realized that the police had their job to do”-I thought that would appeal to him-“and that they weren’t responsible for making the laws. So I tried to be a model prisoner. I think I was. Anyway, I received the maximum remission for good behavior. I certainly couldn’t complain of the treatment I had in Maidstone. In fact, the Governor shoook hands with me when I left and wished me well.”

“And then you returned to Egypt?”

“As soon as my probationary period was up, yes. I went back to Cairo, sir.”

“Where you proceeded to denounce a British businessman named Colby Evans to the Egyptian authorities as a British secret agent.”

It was like a slap in the face, but I managed to keep my head this time. “Not immediately, sir. That was later, during the Suez crisis.”

“Why did you do it?”

I didn’t know what to say. How could I explain to a man like that that I had to pay back the caning they had given me. I said nothing.

“Was it because you needed to prove somehow to the Egyptian authorities that you were anti-British, or because you didn’t like the man, or because you were sincerely anti-British?”

It was all three, I suppose; I am not really sure. I answered almost without thinking.

“My mother was Egyptian. My wife was killed by a British bomb in the attack they made on us. Why shouldn’t I feel sincerely anti-British?”

It was probably the best answer I had given so far; it sounded true, even though it wasn’t quite.

“Did you really believe this man was an agent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then you applied for Egyptian citizenship.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You stayed in Egypt until fifty-eight. Was that when they finally decided that Evans had not been a British agent after all and released him?”

“He was convicted at his trial. His release was an act of clemency.”

“But the Egyptians did start to investigate you at that time.” It was a statement.

“I suppose so.”

“I see.” He refilled my glass. “I think we are beginning to understand one another, Simpson. You now realize that it is neither my business nor my inclination to make moral judgments. I, on the other hand, am beginning to see how your mind works in the areas we are discussing-what holds the pieces together. So now let us go back to your story about Mr. Harper and Fraulein Lipp.” He glanced again at the file. “You see, for a man of your experience it is quite incredible. You suspect that Harper may be using you for some illegal purpose which will be highly profitable to him, yet you do as he asks for a mere hundred dollars.”

“It was the return journey I was thinking of, sir. I thought that when he realized that I had guessed what he was up to, he would have to pay me to take the risk.”

He sat back, smiling. “But you had accepted the hundred dollars before that possibility had occurred to you. You would not have searched the car outside Athens otherwise. You see the difficulty?”

I did. What I didn’t see was the way out of it.

He lit another cigarette. “Come now, Simpson, you were emerging very sensibly from the darkness a few minutes ago. Why not continue? Either your whole story is a lie, or you have left something of importance out. Which is it? I am going to find out anyway. It will be easier for both of us if you just tell me now.”

I know when I am beaten. I drank some more raki. “All right. I had no more choice with him than I have with you. He was blackmailing me.”

“How?”

“Have you got an extradition treaty with Greece?”

“Never mind about that. I am not the police.”

So I had to tell him about the traveler’s checks after all.

When I had finished, he nodded. “I see” was all he said. After a moment, he got up and went to the door. It opened the instant he knocked on it. He began to give orders.

I was quite sure that he had finished with me and was telling the guards to take me away to a cell, so I swallowed the rest of the raki in my glass and put the matches in my pocket on the off chance that I might get away with them.

I was wrong about the cell. When he had finished speaking, he shut the door and came back.

“I have sent for some eatable food,” he said.

He did not stop at the table, but went across to the telephone. I lighted a cigarette and returned the matches to the table. I don’t think he noticed. He was asking for an Istanbul number and making a lot of important-sounding noise about it. Then he hung up and came back to the table.

“Now tell me everything you remember about this man Harper,” he said.

I started to tell him the whole story again from the beginning, but he wanted details now.

“You say that he spoke like a German who has lived in America for some years. When did you reach that conclusion? After you heard him speak German to the man at the garage?”

“No. Hearing him speak German only confirmed the impression I had had.”

“If you were to hear me speak German fluently could you tell whether it was my mother tongue or not?”

“No.”

“How did he pronounce the English word ‘later,’ for example?”

I tried to tell him.

“You know, the German ‘l’ is more frontal than that,” he said; “but in Turkish, before certain vowels, the ‘l’ is like the English consonant you were pronouncing. If you were told that this man had a Turkish background, would you disbelieve it?”

“Not if I were told it was true perhaps. But is Harper a Turkish name?”

“Is it a German one?”

“It could be an anglicization of Hipper.”

“It could also be an anglicization of Harbak.” He shrugged. “It could also be an alias. It most probably is. All I am trying to discover is if the man could be Turkish.”

“Because of the political aspects you mentioned?”

“Obviously. Tear-gas grenades, concussion grenades, smoke grenades, six pistols, six times twenty rounds of ammunition. Six determined men equipped with that material making a surprise attack on some important person or group of persons could accomplish a great deal. There are still many supporters of the former regime. They do not like the army’s firm hands.”

I refrained from telling him that I wasn’t so very fond of those firm hands myself.

“But, of course,” he went on, “we keep our eyes on them. If they wished to attempt anything they would need help from outside. You say he had Swiss francs and West German marks as well as dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Naturally it is possible that what we have here is only one small corner of a much larger plan. If so, there is a lot of money behind it. This man Harper went to a great deal of trouble and expense to get that material through. Perhaps…”

The telephone rang and he broke off to answer it. His call to Istanbul had come through. I understood about one word in ten of his side of the conversation. He was reporting to his boss; that much was easily gathered. My name was mentioned several times. After that he mostly listened, just putting in an occasional evet to show that he was getting the point. I could hear the faint quacking of the voice at the other end of the line. Finally it stopped. Tufan asked a question and received a brief reply. That was all. Tufan made a respectful sound, then hung up and looked across at me.

“Bad news for you, Simpson,” he said. “The Director does not feel disposed to help you in any way. He regards the charges against you as too serious.”

“I’m sorry.” There seemed nothing more to say. I downed another raki to try to settle my stomach.

“He considers that you have not been sufficiently helpful to us. I was unable to persuade him.”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

“It is not enough. What we need to know is more about this man Harper, who his associates and contacts are, who this Fraulein Lipp is, where the arms and ammunition are going, how they are to be used. If you could supply that information or help to supply it, of course, your case might be reconsidered.”

“The only way I could possibly get information like that would be to drive on to Istanbul tomorrow as if nothing had happened, go to the Park Hotel, and wait for somebody to contact me as arranged. Is that what you’re telling me I have to do?”

He sat down facing me. “It is what we might tell you to do, if we thought that we could trust you. My Director is doubtful. Naturally, he is thinking of your past record.”

“What has that to do with it?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Supposing you warn these people that the car was searched. Perhaps they would reward you.”

“Reward me?” I laughed loudly; I think I must have been getting a bit tight. “Reward me for telling them that they are under surveillance? Are you serious? You were talking about a group of men determined enough to risk their lives. At the moment, the only contact I can identify is Harper. He may or may not be in Istanbul. Supposing he’s not. Someone has to contact me to get at the car. What do I do? Whisper ‘Fly, all is discovered’ into his ear, and expect him to tip me before he leaves? Or do I wait until I’ve made a few more contacts before I tell them the good news, so that they can pass the hat round? Don’t be ridiculous! They’d know at once that they wouldn’t get far, because you’d pick me up again and make me talk. Reward? I’d be lucky if they let me stay alive.”

He smiled. “The Director wondered if you would have the sense to see that.”

But I was too annoyed by what I thought was his stupidity to grasp the implication of what he had said. I went on in English. I didn’t care any more whether he understood me or not. I said: “In any case, what have you got to lose? If I don’t turn up in Istanbul tomorrow, they’ll know that something’s gone wrong, and all you’ll have is a couple of names that don’t mean anything to you, and a secondhand Lincoln. You’ll have me, too, of course, but you already know all I know about this, and you’re going to look damn silly standing up in court trying to prove that I was going to carry out a one-man coup d’etat. Your bloody Director may be one of these fine, upstanding, crap-packed bastards who thinks that everybody who doesn’t smell to high heaven of sweetness and roses isn’t worth a second thought, but if his brain isn’t where his arse ought to be he must know he’s got to trust me. He has no bloody alternative.”

Tufan nodded calmly and moved the raki bottle just out of my reach. “Those were more or less the Director’s own words,” he said.