The light of day

7

I woke up very early in the morning and with that nasty sick feeling that I used to have when it was a school day and I hadn’t done my homework properly the night before.

I got the cigarette packet out of my pocket and had another look at my toilet-paper report. It really was not good enough. Unless I could think of something else to say, Tufan would think that I was trying to be funny. I went and had an extremely uncomfortable cold bath, collected some more sheets of toilet paper, and started again.

Period report heard. Attempts to check door contents frustrated. Will try again today, I wrote.

I thought about the “today.” Fischer had ordered the car for eleven o’clock. With that instruction to rely upon, it would be perfectly natural for me to go and fill up the car with petrol without asking anyone’s permission; and, as long as I didn’t keep them waiting, I could take my time about it. If, when I got back, they objected to my having taken the car out by myself or wanted to know why I had been so long, I could say that I had been to buy razor blades or something, and be the injured innocent.

It was six forty-five by then and in a few minutes I would have to get ready for the seven o’clock radio contact. Two other things occurred to me that I might add to my report.

Will telephone you from garage after inspection if time and circumstances allow, or will add to this report. During conversation Lipp-Miller yesterday name “Giulio” was mentioned in connection with a boat. No other details.

Then I added the bit about the Russian spies. It didn’t look quite so bald and stupid now.

I hid the report under the lining paper of one of the drawers, shut the french windows tight, and got the radio ready with the earphone attachment plugged in. Promptly at seven the car began transmitting.

Attention period report. Attention period report. Advice received from Swiss source that no passports have been legally issued to Harper and Lipp. In view Miller contact and Tekelek papers with Harper, possibility must be considered that correct names of Harper and Lipp are Hoffman and Kohner or vice versa. Miller may be Mathis. Imperative you report progress.

As the voice began repeating I switched off. When I had packed the set away, I got the report out and added five words.

Hoffman, Kohner, and Mathis names noted.

At least, I ought to get an “E” for Effort. I put the new report in the cigarette packet, burned the earlier one, and started to get dressed. As I did so, I heard the Lambretta start up and then go whining off down the drive. About twenty minutes later, I heard the sound of it returning. I looked out of the window and saw it disappearing into the stable yard with a bundle of partially wrapped loaves strapped to the rear seat.

Geven was back in the kitchen when I went down. He gave me a sullen look and did not answer when I said “good morning.” He was probably hung over as well as disgusted with me; but he looked such a mess anyway that it was hard to tell.

There was a pot of coffee on the range and I looked from it to him inquiringly. He shrugged, so I got a cup and helped myself. He was slicing the bread by hacking at it with a heavy chopping knife. From the neat way the slices fell I knew that the chopping knife was as sharp as a razor. As I had no desire to lose any fingers, I waited until he had put it aside before taking a piece of bread.

The coffee did not taste much like coffee, but the bread was good. I considered attempting to heal the breach by offering him the use of my bathroom; but I only had one towel and the thought of what it would look like by the time he had finished with it kept me silent. Instead, I offered him a cigarette.

He took it and motioned to a basket of apricots on the table. I don’t like apricots, but it seemed as well to accept the offer. Soon he began to mutter about the breakfasts which had to be served, each on a separate tray to the four “lords and ladies” above. I offered to lay the trays and, although he waved away the offer, friendly relations seemed to be re-established. After a while, Mr. and Mrs. Hamul arrived and were introduced. Mrs. Hamul was a small, stout, sad-looking old woman with the black dress and head scarf of the conservative Turkish matron. As neither she nor her husband spoke a word of anything but Turkish, the formalities were brief. I lingered there, though, and had another piece of bread. The best time to leave without attracting attention, I had decided, would be while Harper and the rest were having their breakfasts.

As soon as the trays started going up, I told Geven that I had to buy petrol and asked if there was anything I could get for him while I was in town. At once he wanted to come with me. I got out of that by saying that I had to go immediately in order to be back at the time for which the car had been ordered. I left him, sulking, picked up the Phillips screwdriver from my room, and went to the garage.

The Lincoln was a quiet car, and I knew that all they would probably hear of my going would be the sound of the tires on the gravel of the courtyard; but I was so afraid of Harper or Fischer suddenly appearing on one of the bedroom balconies and yelling at me to stop, that in my haste to reach the drive I almost hit the basin of the fountain. As I went on down the drive I broke into a sweat and my legs felt weak and peculiar. I wanted to stop and be sick. That may sound very stupid; but when you are like I am, the bad things that nearly happen are just as hard, in a way, as the bad things that actually do happen. They are certainly no easier to forget. I always envied those characters in Alice who only felt pain before they were hurt. I seem to feel things before, during, and after as well; nothing ever goes completely away. I have often thought of killing myself, so that I wouldn’t have to think or feel or remember any more, so that I could rest; but then I have always started worrying in case this afterlife they preach about really exists. It might turn out to be even bloodier than the old one.

The Peugeot was back on duty again. I drove towards Sariyer for about half a mile, and then turned left onto one of the roads leading up to the forest. It was Sunday morning and families from Istanbul would soon be arriving at the municipal picnic grounds to spend the day; but at that early hour the car-parking areas were still fairly empty, and I had no difficulty in finding a secluded place under the trees.

I decided to try the same door again. I had scratched the leather on it once already; but if I were very careful it need not be scratched again. In any case, as long as I drove the car, scratches would be less noticeable on that door than on the others. The earlier attempt had taught me something, too. If I removed all the screws on the hinge side of the door first and only loosened the others, I thought it might be possible to ease the panel back enough to see inside the door without taking the whole panel and electric window mechanism completely away.

It took me twenty minutes to find out that I was right about the panel, and a further five seconds to learn that I had been completely wrong about the stuff having been removed. There it still was, just as I had seen it in the photographs Tufan had shown me at Edirne. In this particular door there were twelve small, paper-wrapped cylinders-probably grenades.

I screwed the panel back into place, and then sat there for a while thinking. The Peugeot was parked about a hundred yards away-I could see it in the mirror-and I very nearly got out and walked back to tell the driver what I had found. I wanted badly to talk to someone. Then I pulled myself together. There was no point in talking to someone who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, usefully talk back. The sensible thing would be to obey orders.

I took my report out of the cigarette packet and added to it.

9:20 a.m. inspected interior front door driver’s side. Material still in place as per photo. In view of time absent from villa and inability to add to this report, will not telephone from garage now.

I replaced the toilet paper in the packet, tossed it out of the window, and drove back onto the road. I waited just long enough to see a man from the Peugeot pick up the report, then I drove into Sariyer and filled the tank. I arrived back at the villa just before ten.

I half expected to find an angry Fischer pacing the courtyard and demanding to know where the hell I’d been. There was nobody. I drove the car into the stable yard, emptied the ash trays, brushed the floor carpeting, and ran a duster over the body. The Phillips screwdriver in my pocket worried me. Now that I knew that the stuff was still in the car, it seemed an incriminating thing to have. I certainly did not want to put it back in my room. It might be needed again, so I could not throw it away. In the end, I hid it inside the cover of an old tire hanging on the wall of the garage. Then I went and tidied myself up. Shortly before eleven o’clock I drove the car round to the marble steps in the front courtyard.

After about ten minutes Harper came out. He was wearing a blue sports shirt with blue slacks, and he had a map in his hand. He nodded in response to my greeting.

“Are we all right for gas, Arthur?”

“I filled it this morning, sir.”

“Oh, you did.” He looked agreeably surprised. “Well, do you know a place called Pendik?”

“I’ve heard the name. On the other side somewhere, isn’t it? There’s supposed to be a good restaurant there, I think.”

“That’s the place. On the Sea of Marmara.” He spread the map out and pointed to the place. From Uskudar, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, it was twenty-odd miles south along the coast. “How long will it take us to get there?”

“If we have luck with the car ferry about an hour and a half from here, sir.”

“And if we don’t have luck?”

“Perhaps ten or twenty minutes more.”

“All right. Here’s what we do. First, we go into town and drop Miss Lipp and Mr. Miller off at the Hilton Hotel. Then, you drive Mr. Fischer and me to Pendik. We’ll be there a couple of hours. On the way back we stop off at the Hilton to pick the others up. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who paid for the gas?”

“I did, sir. I still have some of the Turkish money you gave me. I have the garage receipt here.”

He waved it aside. “Do you have any money left?”

“Only a few lira now.”

He gave me two fifty-lira notes. “That’s for expenses. You picked up a couple of checks for Miss Lipp, too. Take the money out of that.”

“Very well, sir.”

“And, Arthur-stop needling Mr. Fischer, will you?”

“I rather thought that he intended to needle me, sir.”

“You got the room and bathroom you asked for, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well then, cut it out.”

I started to point out that since I had been shown to the room the previous night I had not even set eyes on Fischer, much less “needled” him, but he was already walking back to the house.

They all came out five minutes later. Miss Lipp was in white linen; Miller, draped with camera and lens attachment case, looked very much the tourist; Fischer, in maillot, white jeans, and sandals, looked like an elderly beach boy from Antibes.

Harper sat in front with me. The others got into the back. Nobody talked on the way into Istanbul. Even at the time, I didn’t feel that it was my presence there that kept them silent. They all had the self-contained air of persons on the way to an important business conference who have already explored every conceivable aspect of the negotiations that lie ahead, and can only wait now to learn what the other side’s attitude is going to be. Yet, two of them seemed headed for a sightseeing tour, and the others for a seaside lunch. It was all rather odd. However, the Peugeot was following and, presumably, those in it would be able to cope with the situation when the party split up. There was nothing more I could do.

Miss Lipp and Miller got out at the door of the Hilton. A tourist bus blocked the driveway long enough for me to see that they went inside the hotel, and that a man from the Peugeot went in after them. The narcotics operation suddenly made sense again. The raw-opium supplier would be waiting in his room with samples which Miller, the skilled chemist, would proceed to test and evaluate. Later, if the samples proved satisfactory, and only if they did, Harper would consummate the deal. In the meantime, a good lunch seemed to be in order.

We had to wait a few minutes for the car ferry to Uskudar. From the ferry pier it is easy to see across the water the military barracks which became Florence Nightingale’s hospital during the Crimean War. Just for the sake of something to say, I pointed it out to Harper.

“What about it?” he said rudely.

“Nothing, sir. It’s just that that was Florence Nightingale’s hospital. Scutari the place was called then.”

“Look, Arthur, we know you have a guide’s license, but don’t take it too seriously, huh?”

Fischer laughed.

“I thought you might be interested, sir.”

“All we’re interested in is getting to Pendik. Where’s this goddam ferry you talked about?”

I didn’t trouble to answer that. The ferryboat was just coming in to the pier, and he was merely being offensive-for Fischer’s benefit, I suspected. I wondered what they would have said if I had told them what the sand-colored Peugeot just behind us in the line of cars was there for, and whose orders its driver was obeying. The thought kept me amused for quite a while.

From Uskudar I took the Ankara road, which is wide and fast, and drove for about eighteen miles before I came to the secondary road which led off on the right to Pendik. We arrived there just before one o’clock.

It proved to be a small fishing port in the shelter of a headland. There were several yachts anchored in the harbor. Two wooden piers jutted out from the road which ran parallel to the foreshore; one had a restaurant built on it, the other served the smaller boats and dinghies as a landing stage. The place swarmed with children.

I was edging my way along the narrow road towards the restaurant when Harper told me to stop.

We were level with the landing stage and a man was approaching the road along it. He was wearing a yachting cap now, but I recognized him. It was the man who had been waiting at the Hilton car park on the night I had arrived in Istanbul.

He had obviously recognized the car and raised his hand in greeting as Harper and Fischer got out.

“Park the car and get yourself something to eat,” Harper said to me. “Meet us back here in an hour.”

“Very good, sir.”

The man in the yachting cap had reached the road and I heard Harper’s greeting as the three met.

“Hi, Giulio. Sta bene?”

And then they were walking back along the landing stage. In the driving mirror, I could see a man from the Peugeot sauntering down to the quayside to see what happened next.

At the end of the landing stage they climbed into an outboard dinghy. Giulio started it up and they shot away towards a group of yachts anchored about two hundred yards out. They went alongside a sixty-foot cabin cruiser with a squat funnel. The hull was black, the upper works white, and the funnel had a single band of yellow round it. A Turkish flag drooped from the staff at the stern. There was a small gangway down, and a deck hand with a boat hook to hold the dinghy as the three went on board. It was too far away for me to see the name on the hull.

I parked the car and went into the restaurant. The place was fairly full, but I managed to get a table near a window from which I could keep an eye on the cruiser. I asked the headwaiter about her and learned her name, Bulut, and the fact that she was on charter to a wealthy Italian gentleman, Signor Giulio, who could eat two whole lobsters at a sitting.

I did not pursue my inquiries; Tufan’s men would doubtless get what information was to be had from the local police. At least I knew now what Giulio looked like, and where the boat which Miss Lipp had mentioned to Miller was based. I could also guess that Giulio was no more the true charterer of the Bulut than was Fischer the true lessee of the Kosk Sardunya. Wealthy Italian gentlemen with yachts do not lurk in the Istanbul Hilton car park waiting to drive away cars stuffed with contraband arms; they employ underlings to do such things.

Just as my grilled swordfish cutlet arrived, I saw that the Bulut was moving. A minute or two later, her bow anchor came out of the water and there was a swirl of white at her stern. The dinghy had been left moored to a buoy. The only people on the deck of the cabin cruiser were the two hands at the winches. She headed out across the bay towards an offshore island just visible in the distant haze. I wondered whether the Peugeot men would commandeer a motorboat and follow; but no other boat of any kind left the harbor. After about an hour, the Bulut returned and anchored in the same place as before. I paid my bill and went to the car.

Giulio brought Harper and Fischer back to the landing stage in the dinghy, but did not land with them. There was an exchange of farewells that I could see but not hear, and then they walked ashore to the car. Harper was carrying a flat cardboard box about two feet long by six inches wide. It was roughly tied with string.

“Okay, Arthur,” he said as he got into the car. “Back to the Hilton.”

“Very good, sir.”

As I drove off he glanced back at the piers.

“Where did you lunch?” he asked. “That restaurant there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good food?”

“Excellent, sir.”

He grinned over his shoulder at Fischer. “Trust Giulio!”

“Our man Geven can cook well,” said Fischer defensively, “and I intend to prove it to you.”

“He’s a lush,” Harper said shortly.

“He cooked a castradina before you arrived which would have made you think that you were in the Quadri.” Fischer was getting worked up now and leaning forward over the back of the front seat. His breath smelled of garlic and wine.

I could not resist the opportunity. “If you don’t mind my saying so, sir,” I said to Harper, “I think Mr. Fischer is right. Geven is an excellent cook. The chicken soup he gave me last night was perfect.”

“What soup?” Fischer demanded. “We did not get soup.”

“He was upset,” I said. “You remember, Mr. Fischer, that you told him that he was not good enough to have a bathroom. He was upset. I think he threw away the soup he had made.”

“I told him no such a thing!” Fischer was becoming shrill.

“Wait a minute,” said Harper. “The cook doesn’t have a bathroom?”

“He has the whole of the servants’ rooms for himself,” Fischer said.

“But no bathroom?”

“There is no bathroom there.”

“What are you trying to do, Hans-poison us?”

Fischer flung himself against the back seat with a force that made the car lurch. “I am tired,” he declared loudly, “of trying to arrange every matter as it should be arranged and then to receive nothing but criticism. I will not so to be accused, thus…” His English broke down completely and he went into German.

Harper answered him briefly in the same language. I don’t know what he said, but it shut Fischer up. Harper lit a cigarette. After a moment or two he said: “You’re a stupid crook, aren’t you, Arthur?”

“Sir?”

“If you were a smart one, all you’d be thinking about would be how much dough you could screw out of this deal without getting your fingers caught in the till. But not you. That miserable little ego of yours has to have its kicks, too, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“Yes you do. I don’t like stupid people around me. They make me nervous. I warned you once before. I’m not warning you again. Next time you see a chance of getting cute, you forget it, quick; because if you don’t, that ego’s liable to get damaged permanently.”

It seemed wiser to say nothing.

“You’re not still saying that you don’t understand, Arthur?” He flicked my knee viciously with the back of his hand. The pain startled me and I swerved. He flicked me again. “Watch where you’re going. What’s the matter? Can’t you talk while you’re driving, or has the cat got your tongue?”

“I understand, sir.”

“That’s better. Now you apologize, like a little Egyptian gentleman, to Mr. Fischer.”

“I’m very sorry, sir.”

Fischer, appeased, signified his forgiveness with a short laugh.

The ferry from Uskudar was crowded with returning Sunday motorists and it took half an hour to get on a boat. Miss Lipp and Miller were waiting at the hotel entrance when I pulled up. Miller gave a wolfish grin and, as usual, leaped into the car ahead of Miss Lipp.

“You took your time,” he said to no one in particular.

“The ferry was crowded,” Harper replied. “Did you have a good afternoon?”

It was Miss Lipp who answered him. “Let the dogs be fed and clothed,” she said. It was the same sentence that I had heard Miller cackling over the previous night, and I wondered idly what it could mean.

Harper nodded to her. “Let’s get back to the villa, Arthur,” he said.

None of them uttered a word on the drive back. I sensed a feeling of tension between them, and wondered who was waiting to report to whom. As they got out of the car, Harper picked the cardboard box up off the floor and turned to me.

“That’s it for today, Arthur.”

“What time tomorrow, sir?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“The car is very dusty, sir, and there is no proper hose here. I would like to get it washed at a garage.”

“You do that.” He could not have cared less what I did.

I drove into Sariyer and found a garage where they would wash the car. I left it there and went to a cafe. I had a drink before I telephoned Tufan.

The written report of the morning had been supplemented by reports from the surveillance squad and he had more to tell me than I had to tell him. Giulio’s other name was Corzo, and his Swiss passport gave his occupation as “industrial designer.” His age was forty-five and his place of birth Lugano. The cabin cruiser had been chartered a week earlier, for one month, through a yacht broker in Antalya. The crew of three were local men of good reputation. As for Miss Lipp and Miller, they had lunched in the Hilton grill room, then hired a car. They had spent forty-five minutes sightseeing and returned to the Hilton, where Miss Lipp had visited the hairdresser. She had had a shampoo and set. Miller had passed the time reading French newspapers on the terrace.

“Then it must have been the meeting with Giulio they wanted to hear about,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

I told him of the feeling I had had on the way back that they had been impatient for a chance to talk privately.

“Then why are you not at the villa? Go back there immediately.”

“If they wish to have private talk there is nothing I can do to overhear it. Their part of the house on the ground floor is separate. I have not even seen those rooms.”

“Are there no windows?”

“Giving on to their private terrace, yes. I could have no excuse for being even near it, let alone on it.”

“Then do without an excuse.”

“You told me to take no risks.”

“No unnecessary risks. An important discussion justifies risk.”

“I don’t know that it is important. I just had a feeling. I don’t know that it’s a discussion either. Harper may just have wanted to pass on a piece of private information he had received from Giulio to the others. The whole thing could have been over in a minute.”

“The meeting at Pendik was obviously important. We must know why. So far all you have learned is gossip from a fool of a cook. What do these people with arms and ammunition hidden in their car and false passports discuss when they are alone? What do they say? It is for you to find out.”

“I can tell you one thing they say-‘Let the dogs be fed and clothed.’ I overheard it first last night. It seemed to be some sort of private joke.”

He was silent for a moment and I waited for another angry outburst. None came. Instead he said thoughtfully: “That is quite an interesting joke.”

“What does it mean?”

“When one of the old Sultans was preparing to receive a certain class of persons, he would always keep them waiting a long time, perhaps a whole day. Then, when he thought that they had been sufficiently humbled, he would give that order-‘Let the dogs be fed and clothed.’ After that, they would be admitted to the chamber of the Grand Vizier, given food, and robed in caftans.”

“What class of persons?”

“The ambassadors of foreign powers.” He paused. Obviously, he was still thinking about it. Then he dismissed me curtly. “You have your orders. Report as arranged.”

I went and got the car. The man at the garage who had the key to the petrol pump had gone home, and there was only the old man who had washed the car waiting for me. I wasn’t too pleased about that, as it meant that I would have to fill the tank in the morning. Opportunities for making telephone reports to Tufan did not seem particularly desirable at that moment.

When I got back to the villa it was almost dark and the lights were on in the terrace rooms. I put the car away and went to the kitchen.

Geven was in a jovial mood. Fischer had moved him to a bedroom near mine and told him to share my bathroom. Whether this was due to spite on Fischer’s part or a shortage of bathrooms, I couldn’t tell. Geven, through some obscure reasoning process of his own, had decided that the whole thing had been my idea. In a way, I suppose, he was right; but there was nothing to be done about it. I took a tumbler of brandy from him and beamed like an idiot as if I had earned every drop. He had cooked a spaghetti Bolognese for the kitchen. The spies were having canned soup and a shish kebab made with mutton which, he proudly assured me, was as tough as new leather. The spaghetti was really good. I had a double helping of it. As soon as the Hamuls arrived, I got away, giving as an excuse that I had work to do on the car. I went out to the yard.

The terrace ran along the front and right side of the house; I had noticed a door in the wall beside the garage. There was an orchard of fig trees beyond and I thought it possible that the side terrace might be accessible from there.

The door had no lock, only a latch, but the old hinges were rusty and I used the dip stick from the car to run some oil into them before I attempted to open it. It swung inward silently and I shut it behind me. I waited then, not only so that my eyes would get used to the dark but because the spies had not yet gone into dinner. I could hear their voices faintly. I knew that Tufan would have wanted me to go closer and hear what they were saying; but I didn’t. The ground was uneven and I would have to feel my way towards the terrace balustrade. I preferred to do that while they were well away from the terrace and trying to get their teeth into Geven’s shish kebab.

After fifteen or twenty minutes, dinner was served and I edged forward slowly to the terrace. As soon as I reached it and was able to see through the balustrade, I realized that it would be impossible for me to get close enough to the windows of the room they had been using to hear anything. There was too much light coming from them. I suppose one of these daredevil agents you hear about would have concealed himself in the shadows; but that looked too risky for me. Getting to the shadows would have been easy enough; but if Harper and Co. decided to sit outside, as they had done the night before, there would have been no way of getting back without being seen.

I walked on through the orchard until I came to the outer edge of the front courtyard. This was the side which overlooked the Bosphorus and there were no trees to obstruct the view. A low stone balustrade ran along the edge with a statue on a plinth at each end. The first of these statues was over thirty feet from the corner of the terrace, but it was the nearest I could get and still remain in cover. The top of the plinth was chest-high. Using the balustrade as a steppingstone, it wasn’t difficult to climb up. The statue, a larger than life-size Vestal virgin with bird-droppings all over her, seemed quite steady, and I was able to hold on to her draperies. From the plinth I could see over the terrace balustrading and through the windows of the corner drawing room. It was not much, but it was something. If they did decide to come out onto the terrace, I might even catch a word or two of what they said.

After about twenty minutes, they came back into the room. The bits of it that I could see contained an old leather-topped library table, part of a faded green settee, part of a wall mirror, a low round table, and one or two gilt chairs. The only person I could actually see at first was Miller, who took a corner of the settee; but he was talking nineteen to the dozen and waving his hands about, so he obviously wasn’t alone. Then Mrs. Hamul came in with a coffee tray, which she put on the round table, and I saw bits of the others as they helped themselves. Somebody gave Miller a glass of brandy, which he drank as if he needed it; he could have been trying to wash away the taste of his dinner. After a bit, he stopped talking and appeared to be listening, his head moving slightly as he shifted his attention from one speaker to another. Then, there was a flash of white in the mirror and his head turned. For a moment, I saw Miss Lipp. She had changed into a green dress, though; the white belonged to a large sheet of paper. Almost immediately it disappeared from view. Miller’s head lifted as he began to listen to someone who was standing up. A minute or so went by, and then the paper reappeared, as if put aside, on the library table. I could see now that it was a map. At that distance and at that angle it was impossible to tell what it was a map of, but it looked to me like a roughly triangular island. I was still staring at it when Harper moved in and folded it into four.

After that, nothing seemed to happen until, suddenly, Harper and Miss Lipp came out onto the terrace from a window much farther away and walked down the marble steps. There was nothing purposeful about their movements-they were obviously just going for a stroll-but I thought it as well to get out of the way. If they were going to admire the view from the balustrade, I would be in an awkward spot.

I got down from the plinth and moved back into the shelter of the fig trees. Sure enough, they made their way round to the balustrade. When they turned to go back I was only twenty-five feet away from them. I heard a snatch of conversation.

“… if I took over?” That was Miss Lipp.

“He was Leo’s idea,” he answered. “Let Leo take care of him. After tomorrow, he doesn’t matter too much anyway. Even Arthur could do the rest of that job.”

She laughed. “The indignant sheep? With his breath you wouldn’t even need the grenades, I guess. You’d get a mass surrender.”

He laughed.

She said: “When does Giulio’s man arrive?”

“Sometime today. I didn’t wait. Giulio knows…”

I heard no more.

As soon as they were well clear, I went back through the orchard to the yard, and then up to my room. I locked the door. Geven would be free of the kitchen at any moment, and I did not want to be bothered with him.

I had to think about what they had said and it was hard to do so, because all I could think about was her laugh and the words she had used about me. I felt sick. There was another time when it had been like that, too. Jones iv and I had gone up to Hilly Fields to meet a couple of girls we knew. One of them was named Muriel, the other was Madge. Madge didn’t turn up because, so Muriel said, she had a cold. So there were just the three of us. Muriel was really Jones’ girl, so I was more or less out of it. I tried to pick up another girl, but that was more difficult when you were alone and I didn’t have any luck. After a while, I gave up and went back to where I had left the other two necking on a seat under the trees. I thought I’d come up quietly and give them a surprise. That is how I overheard it. She was saying that she had to get home early, for some reason or other, and he was asking her about Saturday night.

“With Arthur, too?” she said.

“I suppose so.”

“Well, Madge won’t come.”

“She’ll be over her cold by then.”

“She hasn’t got a cold. She just didn’t want to come. She says Arthur’s a little twerp and gives her the creeps.”

I went away and they didn’t know that I’d heard. Then I was sick behind the bushes. I hated that girl Madge so much that it was like a pain.

Geven came up and I heard him go into the bathroom. A little while afterwards he came out and knocked on my door. I had taken the precaution of switching off the light so that it wouldn’t show under the door and he would think that I was asleep. He knocked again. After a few moments I heard him muttering to himself. Then he went away.

I nearly changed my mind and called him in. I could have done with a drink just then, and someone to talk to. But then I thought of how dirty he was and how the stink of his body would stay in the room-the “perfume of the great unwashed,” as my father would have said. Besides, I couldn’t be sure of getting rid of him when I wanted to, and I had the eleven o’clock radio call to take.

It came at last.

Attention period report. Attention period report. Passenger for yacht Bulut arrived Pendik seventeen hundred hours today. Name Enrico, other names unknown so far. Description: short, stocky, black hair, brown eyes, age about thirty-five. Casual observation of subject and hand luggage suggests workman rather than guest of charterer Corzo. Are you able to identify this man? Important that written notes of all conversations, with particular care as to political content, should be made. Essential you report progress. Repeat. Essential.

The outside of the body can be washed of sweat and grease; but inside there are processes which produce other substances. Some of these smell. How do you wash away the smells of the inside of the body?