The Snake Stone

86

Palewski put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Look here,” he said, breathing hard. “Are we going far? A long way?”

The boy looked up and nodded.

“In that case,” the ambassador said firmly, “we’ll take a chair.”

He snapped his fingers at a couple of men squatting against a wall.

“My treat,” he said, smiling. “Just point these fellows in the right direction, there’s a good boy.”

Down on the shore they swapped the chair for a caique. The little boy pointed up the Golden Horn.

“Fener? Balat? Fener stage, boatman, please.” Perhaps Yashim had simply gone off home, he thought. But once they reached Fener, the little boy made some complicated signs and shook his head vigorously.

“All right,” Palewski said. “We’ll walk, I see. Not too far now, eh?”

He regretted taking the boy’s advice as he toiled up the hills, but they were in a shabby neighborhood that Palewski did not know, and there were no lounging chairmen here.

Finally the boy jumped up onto a low wall and sat there, kicking his heels and looking intently at a doorway across the street.

“He went in there?”

Palewski climbed the steps. There was a padlock on the door, so Palewski turned around and caught the boy’s eye. He pointed at the door. The little boy nodded.

Palewski glanced up and down the street. Apart from the little boy on the wall, it seemed perfectly empty.

Stanislaw Palewski, unlike Dr. Millingen, was not a man who placed much faith in the benefits of regular exercise. His arms were thin; his legs were long. But he was still capable of sudden, violent physical effort.

He stood back, leaned against the parapet, and doubled those long legs by bringing his knees up close to his chin.

Then with a splintering crash he brought both feet down hard on the door and burst it open.

The ambassador turned to the little boy, who was watching him with astonishment from across the street, and gave him a most unambassadorial wink.

Then he went into the icy gloom to find his friend.