The light of day

4

I woke up the next morning with a hangover; and not just because of the raki. Nervous strain always has that effect on me. It was a wonder that I had been able to sleep at all.

The “eatable food” that Tufan had ordered had turned out to be yoghurt (which I detest) and some sort of sheep’s milk cheese. I had just eaten some more bread while Tufan made telephone calls.

The Lincoln had been left out at the Karaagac customs post, which was closed for the night. He had had to get the Commandant out of bed to open the place up, and arrange for an army driver to take the car to the garrison repair shop. The grenades and arms, and my bag, had been removed to the local army H.Q. for examination. That meant that more people, including the customs inspector who had searched the car, had then had to be rounded up so that the stuff could be put back inside the doors again exactly as it had been found.

Even with all the authority he had, it had taken an hour just to organize the work. Then the question of a hotel room for me had come up. I was so exhausted by then that I would not have minded sleeping in a cell. I had told him so; but, of course, it had not been my comfort he had been thinking about. I had had to listen to a lecture. Supposing Harper asked me where I had spent the night; supposing this, supposing that. An agent sometimes had to take risks, but he should never take unnecessary ones; to be caught out through carelessness over trifles was unforgivable; and so on and so on. That had been the first time he had referred to me as an “agent.” It had given me an uncomfortable feeling.

He had told me to meet him outside a new apartment building near the hotel at nine o’clock. He was already there when I arrived. His clothes were still quite neat, but he hadn’t shaved and his eyes were puffy. He looked as if he had been up all night. Without even saying “good morning” he motioned to me to follow him, and led the way down a ramp to a small garage in the basement of the building.

The Lincoln was there and looking very clean.

“I had it washed,” he said. “It had too many finger marks on it. It’ll be dusty again by the time you get to Istanbul. You had better look at the doors.”

I had warned him to be careful about the interior door panels. They were leather and had been quite clean when I had taken the car over in Athens. If some clumsy lout of an army fitter had made scratches or marks when replacing them, Harper would be bound to notice.

I could see nothing wrong, however. If I had not been told, I would not have known that the panels had ever been taken off.

“It’s all inside there, just as it was before?” I asked.

“The customs inspector says so. All the objects were taped out of the way of the window glasses against the metal. Photographs were taken before they were removed.”

He had a set of prints in his pocket and he showed them to me. They didn’t convey much. They looked like pictures of hibernating bats.

“Have you any idea where the stuff was bought?” I asked.

“A good question. The pistols and ammunition are German, of course. The grenades, all kinds, are French. That doesn’t help us much. We do know that the packing was done in Greece.”

“How?”

“It was padded with newspapers to stop any rattling. There are bits of Athens papers dated a week ago.” He took a sealed envelope from the front seat of the car and opened it up. “These are the things that were taken from you at the frontier post,” he said. “You had better put them back in your pockets now and I will keep the envelope. I have had a special tourist visa stamped in the passport validating it as a travel document within Turkey for one month. That is in case the hotel clerk should notice the expiry date, or if you are stopped by the traffic police for any reason. If Harper or any one else should happen to see it, you will simply say that the security control made no difficulties when you promised to get the passport renewed in Istanbul. The carnet is in order, of course, and there are your other personal papers.” He handed them to me, then tore the envelope in four and put the pieces in his pocket.

“Now,” he went on, “as to your orders. You know the information we want. First, the names and addresses of all contacts, their descriptions, what they say and do. Secondly, you will attempt, by keeping your ears and eyes open, to discover where and how these arms are to be used. In that connection you will take particular note of any place names mentioned, no matter in what context. Buildings or particular areas, too. Do you understand that?”

“I understand. How do I report?”

“I am coming to that. First, from the moment you leave here you will be under surveillance. The persons allocated to this duty will be changed frequently, but if you should happen to recognize any of them you will pretend not to. Only in an emergency, or in a case of extreme urgency, will you approach them. In that event they will help you if you say my name. You will report normally by telephone, but not from a telephone that goes through a private switchboard. Certainly not from the telephone in a hotel room. Use cafe telephones. Unless, for physical or security reasons, it is impossible, you will report at ten every night, or at eight the following morning if you have missed the ten o’clock call.” He took a box of matches from his pocket. “The number is written here underneath the matches. As soon as you are certain that you will not forget it, throw the box away. If you want to communicate other than at the daily report times, a duty officer will pass your call or give you another number at which I can be reached. Is that all clear?”

“Yes.” I took the matches and looked at the number.

“Just one more thing,” he said. “The Director is not an amiable or kindly man. You will keep faith with us because it would not be in your interests to do otherwise. He knows that, of course. But, for him, stupidity or clumsiness in carrying out orders are just as unacceptable as bad faith and have the same consequences. I would strongly advise you to be successful. That is all, I think, unless you have any questions.”

“No. No questions.”

With a nod, he turned away and walked up the ramp to the street. I put my bag in the back of the car again. Ten minutes later I was clear of Edirne and on the Istanbul road.

After a few miles I identified the surveillance car as a sand-colored Peugeot two or three hundred yards behind me. It kept that distance, more or less, even when trucks or other cars got between us, or going through towns. It never closed up enough for me to see the driver clearly. When I stopped at Corlu for lunch he did not overtake me. I did not see the Peugeot while I was there.

The restaurant was a cafe with a few shaky tables under a small vine-covered terrace outside. I had a glass or two of raki and some stuffed peppers. My stomach began to feel a bit better. I sat there for over an hour. I would have liked to stay longer. There were moments like that at school, too; when one bad time has ended and the next has not yet begun. There can be days of it also, the days when one is on remand awaiting trial-not innocent, not guilty, not responsible, out of the game. I often wish that I could have an operation-not a painful or serious one, of course-just so as to be convalescent for a while after it.

The Peugeot picked me up again three minutes after I left Corlu. I stopped again only once, for petrol. I reached Istanbul soon after four.

I put the Lincoln in a garage just off Taxim Square and walked to the hotel carrying my bag.

The Park Hotel is built against the side of a hill overlooking the Bosphorus. It is the only hotel that I know of which has the foyer at the top, so that the lift takes you down to your room instead of up. My room was quite a long way down and on a corner overlooking a street with a cafe in it. The cafe had a gramophone and an inexhaustible supply of Turkish caz records. Almost level with the window and about fifty yards away was the top of a minaret belonging to a mosque lower down the hill. It had loudspeakers in it to amplify the voice of the muezzin, and his call to prayer was deafening. When Harper had made the reservation, he had obviously asked for the cheapest room in the hotel.

I changed into a clean shirt and sat down to wait.

At six o’clock the telephone rang.

“Monsieur Simpson?” It was a man’s voice with a condescending lilt to it and an unidentifiable accent. He wasn’t an Englishman or an American.

“This is Simpson,” I answered.

“Miss Lipp’s car is all right? You have had no accidents or trouble on the journey from Athens?”

“No. The car is fine.”

“Good. Miss Lipp has a pressing engagement. This is what you are to do. You know the Hilton Hotel?”

“Yes.”

“Drive the car to the Hilton at once and put it in the car park opposite the entrance to the hotel and behind the Kervansaray night club. Leave the carnet and insurance papers in the glove compartment and the ignition key beside the driver’s seat on the floor. Is it understood?”

“It is understood, yes. But who is that speaking?”

“A friend of Miss Lipp. The car should be there in ten minutes.” He rang off abruptly as if my question had been impertinent.

I sat there wondering what I ought to do. I was certainly not going to do as he had told me. The only hope I had of my making any sort of contact with the people Tufan was interested in was through the car. If I just let it go like that I would be helpless. Even without Tufan’s orders to carry out I would have refused. Harper had said that I would be paid and get my letter back when the job was done. He, or someone in his behalf, would have to fulfill those conditions before I surrendered control of the car. He must have known that, too. After what had happened in Athens he could scarcely have expected me to trust to his good nature. And what had happened to all that talk of driving for Miss Lipp while she was in Turkey?

I hid the carnet under some shelf lining paper on top of the wardrobe and went out. It took me about ten minutes to walk to the Hilton.

I approached the car park briskly, swinging my keys in my hand as if I were going to pick up a car already there. I guessed that either the man who had telephoned or someone acting on his instructions would be waiting for the Lincoln to arrive, all ready to drive it away the instant I had gone. In Istanbul, it is unwise to leave even the poorest car unlocked and unattended for very long.

I spotted him almost immediately. He was standing at the outer end of the Hilton driveway smoking a cigarette and staring into the middle distance, as if he were trying to decide whether to go straight home to his wife or visit his girl friend first. Remembering that I would have to give Tufan his description, I took very careful note of him. He was about forty-five and thickset, with a barrel chest and a mop of crinkly gray hair above a brown puffy face. The eyes were brown, too. He was wearing a thin light-gray suit, yellow socks, and plaited leather sandals. Height about five ten, I thought.

I walked through the car park to make sure that there were no other possibilities there, then came out the other side and walked back along the street for another glimpse of him.

He was looking at his watch. The car should have been there by then if I were following instructions.

I walked straight back to the Park Hotel. As I unlocked the door to my room I could hear the telephone inside ringing.

It was the same voice again, but peremptory now.

“Simpson? I understand that the car is not yet delivered. What are you doing?”

“Who is that speaking?”

“The friend of Miss Lipp. Answer my question, please. Where is the car?”

“The car is quite safe and will remain so.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The carnet is in the hotel strong-room and the car is garaged. It will remain that way until I hand it over to Mr. Harper or someone holding credentials from Mr. Harper.”

“The car is the property of Miss Lipp.”

“The carnet is the name of Miss Lipp,” I answered; “but the car was placed in my care by Mr. Harper. I am responsible for it. I don’t know Miss Lipp except by name. I don’t know you even by name. You see the difficulty?”

“Wait.”

I heard him start to say something to someone with him: “Il dit que…” And then he clamped a hand over the telephone.

I waited. After a few moments he spoke again. “I will come to your hotel. Remain there.” Without waiting for my agreement, he hung up.

I went upstairs to the foyer and told the desk clerk that I would be out on the terrace if I were wanted. The terrace was crowded, but I eventually managed to find a table and order a drink. I was quite prepared to make the contact; but I had not liked the sound of the man on the telephone, and preferred to encounter him in a public place rather than in the privacy of my room.

I had left my name with the head waiter, and after about twenty minutes I saw him pointing me out to a tall, cadaverous man with a narrow, bald head and large projecting ears. The man came over. He was wearing a cream-and-brown-striped sports shirt and tan linen slacks. He had a long, petulant upper lip and a mouth that drooped at the corners.

“Simpson?”

“Yes.”

He sat down facing me. Brown eyes, one gold tooth left side lower jaw, gold-and-onyx signet ring on little finger of left hand; I made mental notes.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My name is Fischer.”

“Will you have a drink, Mr. Fischer?”

“No. I wish to clear this misunderstanding relative to Miss Lipp’s car.”

“There is no misunderstanding in my mind, Mr. Fischer,” I answered. “My orders from Mr. Harper were quite explicit.”

“Your orders were to await orders at the hotel,” he snapped. “You have not complied with them.”

I looked respectfully apologetic. “I am not doubting that you have a perfect right to give those orders, Mr. Fischer, but I assumed, naturally, that Mr. Harper would be here, or if not here in person, that he would have given a written authorization. That is a very valuable car and I…”

“Yes, yes.” He broke in impatiently. “I understand. The point is that Mr. Harper has been delayed until tomorrow afternoon and Miss Lipp wishes her car at once.”

“I’m sorry.”

He leaned across the table towards me and I caught a whiff of after-shave lotion. “Mr. Harper would not be pleased that you put Miss Lipp to the trouble of coming to Istanbul herself to claim her car,” he said menacingly.

“I thought Miss Lipp was in Istanbul.”

“She is at the villa,” he said shortly. “Now we will have no more of this nonsense, please. You and I will go and get the car immediately.”

“If you have Mr. Harper’s written authority, of course.”

“I have Mr. Harper’s authority.”

“May I see it, sir?”

“That is not necessary.”

“I’m afraid that is for me to decide.”

He sat back breathing deeply. “I will give you one more chance,” he said after a pause. “Either you hand over the car immediately or steps will be taken to compel you to do so.”

As he said the word “compel,” his right hand came out and deliberately flicked the drink in front of me into my lap.

At that moment something happened to me. I had been through an awful twenty-four hours, of course; but I don’t think it was only that. I suddenly felt as if my whole life had been spent trying to defend myself against people compelling me to do this or that, and always succeeding because they had all the power on their side; and then, just as suddenly, I realized that for once the power was mine; for once I wasn’t on my own.

I picked up the glass, set it back on the table, and dabbed at my trousers with my handkerchief. He watched me intently, like a boxer waiting for the other man to get to his feet after a knockdown, ready to move in for the kill.

I called the waiter over. “If this gentleman wished to make a report about a missing car to the police, where should he go?”

“There is a police post in Taxim Square, sir.”

“Thank you. I spilled my drink. Wipe the table and bring me another, please.”

As the waiter got busy with his cloth, I looked across at Fischer. “We could go there together,” I said. “Or, if you would prefer it, I could go alone and explain the situation. Of course, I expect the police would want to get in touch with you. Where should I tell them to find you?”

The waiter had finished wiping the table and was moving away. Fischer was staring at me uncertainly.

“What are you talking about?” he said. “Who said anything about the police?”

“You were talking of compelling me to hand over the car to you. Only the police could make me do that.” I paused. “Unless, that is, you had some other sort of compulsion in mind. In that case, perhaps I should go to the police anyway.”

He did not know what to say to that. He just stared. It was all I could do not to smile. It was quite obvious that he knew perfectly well what was hidden in the car, and that the very last thing he wanted was the police taking an interest in it. Now he had to make sure that I didn’t go to them.

“There is no need for that,” he said finally.

“I’m not so sure.” The waiter brought me the drink and I motioned to Fischer. “This gentleman will pay.”

Fischer hesitated, then threw some money on the table and stood up. He was doing his best to regain control of the situation by trying to look insulted.

“Very well,” he said stiffly, “we shall have to wait for Mr. Harper’s arrival. It is very inconvenient and I shall report your insubordinate behavior to him. He will not employ you again.”

And then, of course, I had to go too far. “When he knows how careless you can be, maybe he won’t have much use for you either.”

It was a silly thing to say, because it implied that I knew that the situation was not what it appeared on the surface, and I wasn’t supposed to know.

His eyes narrowed. “What did Harper tell you about me?”

“Until tonight I didn’t even know you existed. What should he have told me?”

Without answering he turned and went.

I finished my drink slowly and planned my movements for the evening. It would be best, I thought, to dine in the hotel. Apart from the fact that the cost of the meal would go on the bill, which Harper would be paying, I wasn’t too keen on going out just then. Fischer had seemed to accept the situation; but there was just a chance that he might change his mind and decide to get rough after all. Tufan’s men would be covering me, presumably, but I didn’t know what their orders were. If someone were to beat me up, it wouldn’t be much consolation to know that they were standing by taking notes. It was certainly better to stay in. The only problem was the ten o’clock telephone report. I had already noticed that the public telephones in the foyer were handled by an operator who put the calls through the hotel switchboard, so I would have to risk going out later. Unless, that is, I missed the ten o’clock call and left it until the morning at eight. The only trouble was that I would then have to explain to Tufan why I had done so, and I did not want to have to explain that I was afraid of anything that Fischer might do. My trousers were still damp where he had upset the drink over me, and I was still remembering how good it had felt to make him climb down and do what I wanted. I could not expect Tufan to realize how successfully I had handled Fischer if I had to start by admitting that I had been too nervous to leave the hotel afterwards.

All I could do was to minimize the risk. The nearest cafe I knew of was the one on the side street below my room. With so many lighted hotel windows above, the street would not be too dark for safety. The telephone would probably be on the bar, but with any luck the noise of the music would compensate for the lack of privacy. Anyway, it would have to do.

By the time I had finished dinner I was feeling so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open. I went back to the terrace and drank brandy until it was time for the call.

As I walked from the hotel entrance to the road I had to get out of the way of a taxi and was able to glance over my shoulder casually as if to make sure that it was safe to walk on. There was a man in a chauffeur’s cap about twenty yards behind me.

Because of the contours of the hill and the way the street twisted and turned, it took me longer than I had expected to get to the cafe. The man in the chauffeur’s cap stayed behind me. I listened carefully to his footsteps. If he had started to close in, I would have made a dash for the cafe; but he kept his distance, so I assumed that he was one of Tufan’s men. All the same it was not a very pleasant walk.

The telephone was on the wall behind the bar. There was no coin box and you had to ask the proprietor to get the number so that he knew what to charge you. He couldn’t speak anything but Turkish, so I wrote the number down and made signs. The noise of the music wasn’t as bad inside the place as it sounded from my room, but it was loud enough.

Tufan answered immediately and characteristically.

“You are late.”

“I’m sorry. You told me not to call through the hotel switchboard. I am in a cafe.”

“You went to the Hilton Hotel just after six. Why? Make your report.”

I told him what had happened. I had to repeat the descriptions of the man at the Hilton car park and of Fischer so that he could write them down. My report on the meeting with Fischer seemed to amuse him at first. I don’t know why. I had not expected any thanks, but I felt that I had earned at least a grunt of approval for my quick thinking. Instead, he made me repeat the conversation and then began harping on Fischer’s reference to a villa outside Istanbul and asking a lot of questions for which I had no answers. It was very irritating; although, of course, I didn’t say so. I just asked if he had any additional orders for me.

“No, but I have some information. Harper and the Lipp woman have reservations on an Olympic Airways plane from Athens tomorrow afternoon. It arrives at four. The earliest you will hear from him probably will be an hour after that.”

“Supposing he gives me the same orders as Fischer-to hand over the car with its papers-what do I do?”

“Ask for your wages and the letter you wrote.”

“Supposing he gives them to me.”

“Then you must give up the car, but forget to bring the carnet and the insurance papers. Or remind him of his promise that you could work for Miss Lipp. Be persistent. Use your intelligence. Imagine that he is an ordinary tourist whom you are trying to cheat. Now, if there is nothing more, you can go to bed. Report to me again tomorrow night.”

“One moment, sir. There is something.” I had had an idea.

“What is it?”

“There is something that you could do, sir. If, before I speak to Harper, I could have a license as an official guide with tomorrow’s date on it, it might help.”

“How?”

“It would show that in the expectation of driving Miss Lipp on her tour, I had gone to the trouble and expense of obtaining the license. It would look as if I had taken him seriously. If he or she really wanted a driver for the car it might make a difference.”

He did not answer immediately. Then he said: “Good, very good.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You see, Simpson, when you apply your intelligence to carrying out orders instead of seeing only the difficulties, you become effective.” It was just like The Bristle in one of his good moods. “You remember, of course,” he went on, “that, as a foreigner, you could not hold a guide’s license. Do you think Harper might know that?”

“I’m almost sure he doesn’t. If he does, I can say that I bribed someone to get it. He would believe me.”

“I would believe you myself, Simpson.” He chuckled fatuously, enchanted by his own joke. “Very well, you shall have it by noon, delivered to the hotel.”

“You will need a photograph of me for it.”

“We have one. Don’t tell me you have forgotten so soon. And a word of caution. You know only a few words of Turkish. Don’t attract attention to yourself so that you are asked to show the license. It might cause trouble with museum guards. You understand?”

“I understand.”

He hung up. I paid the proprietor for the call and left.

Outside, the man in the chauffeur’s cap was waiting up the street. He walked ahead of me back to the hotel. I suppose he knew why I had been to the cafe.

There was a guide to Istanbul on sale at the concierge’s desk. I bought one with the idea of brushing up on my knowledge of the Places of Interest and how to get to them. On my way down to my room I had to laugh to myself. “Never volunteer for anything,” my father had said. Well, I hadn’t exactly volunteered for what I was doing now, but it seemed to me that I was suddenly getting bloody conscientious about it.

I spent most of the following morning in bed. Just before noon I got dressed and went up to the foyer to see if Tufan had remembered about the guide’s license. He had; it was in a sealed Ministry of Tourism envelope in my mailbox.

For a few minutes I felt quite good about that. It showed, I thought, that Tufan kept his promises and that I could rely on him to back me. Then I realized that there was another way of looking at it. I had asked for a license and I had promptly received one; Tufan expected results and wasn’t giving me the smallest excuse for not getting them.

I had made up my mind not to have any drinks that day so as to keep a clear head for Harper; but now I changed my mind. You can’t have a clear head when there’s a sword hanging over it. I was careful though and only had three or four rakis. I felt much better for them, and after lunch I went down to my room to take a nap.

I must have needed it badly, for I was still asleep when the phone rang at five. I almost fell off the bed in my haste to pick it up, and the start that it gave me made my head ache.

“Arthur?” It was Harper’s voice.

“Yes.”

“You know who this is?”

“Yes.”

“Car okay?”

“Yes.”

“Then what have you been stalling for?”

“I haven’t been stalling.”

“Fischer says you refused to deliver the car.”

“You told me to wait for your instructions, so I waited. You didn’t tell me to hand the car over to a perfect stranger without any proof of his authority…”

“All right, all right, skip it! Where is the car?”

“In a garage near here.”

“Do you know where Sariyer is?”

“Yes.”

“Get the car right away and hit the Sariyer road. When you get to Yenikoy look at your mileage reading, then drive on towards Sariyer for exactly four more miles. On your right you’ll come to a small pier with some boats tied up alongside it. On the left of the road opposite the pier you’ll see a driveway entrance belonging to a villa. The name of the villa is Sardunya. Have you got that?”

“Yes.”

“You should be here in about forty minutes. Right?”

“I will leave now.”

Sariyer is a small fishing port at the other end of the Bosphorus where it widens out to the Black Sea, and the road to it from Istanbul runs along the European shore. I wondered if I should try to contact Tufan before I left and report the address I had been given, then decided against it. Almost certainly, he had had Harper followed from the airport, and in any case I would be followed to the villa. There would be no point in reporting.

I went to the garage, paid the bill, and got the car. The early-evening traffic was heavy and it took me twenty minutes to get out of the city. It was a quarter to six when I reached Yenikoy. The same Peugeot which had followed me down from Edirne was following me again. I slowed for a moment to check the mileage and then pushed on.

The villas of the Bosphorus vary from small waterfront holiday places, with window boxes and little boathouses, to things like palaces. Quite of lot of them were palaces once; and before the capital was moved from Istanbul to Ankara the diplomatic corps used to have summer embassy buildings out along the Bosphorus, where there are cool Black Sea breezes even when the city is sweltering. The Kosk Sardunya looked as if it had started out in some such way.

The entrance to the drive was flanked by huge stone pillars with wrought-iron gates. The drive itself was several hundred yards long and wound up the hillside through an avenue of big trees which also served to screen the place from the road below. Finally, it left the trees and swept into the gravel courtyard in front of the villa.

It was one of those white stucco wedding-cake buildings of the kind you see in the older parts of Nice and Monte Carlo. Some French or Italian architect must have been imported around the turn of the century to do the job. It had everything-a terrace with pillars and balustrades, balconies, marble steps up to the front portico, a fountain in the courtyard, statuary, a wonderful view out over the Bosphorus-and it was huge. It was also run down. The stucco was peeling in places and some of the cornice moldings had crumbled or broken away. The fountain basin had no water in it. The courtyard was fringed with weeds.

As I drove in, I saw Fischer get up from a chair on the terrace and go through a french window into the house. So I just pulled up at the foot of the marble steps and waited. After a moment or two, Harper appeared under the portico and I got out of the car. He came down the steps.

“What took you so long?”

“They had to make out a bill at the garage, and then there was the evening traffic.”

“Well…” He broke off as he noticed me looking past him and over his shoulder.

A woman was coming down the steps.

He smiled slightly. “Ah yes. I was forgetting. You haven’t met your employer. Honey, this is Arthur Simpson. Arthur, this is Miss Lipp.”