The Star of Istanbul

9

After thoroughly searching the bedroom and finding nothing further of interest, I slipped out of Brauer’s suite and left him and Cable behind for a couple of hours. I ate à la carte in the Verandah Café and I strolled the promenade and I settled into the still mostly empty Smoking Room, and until the moment I pulled out my cigarettes and lit one up, I thought about other things. About my feature story and about the reporting I would do in the other role I still played — no matter where I went, I’d find stories for Christopher Cobb to cover — and I thought about the Cubs, how I’d miss hearing the scores through the summer, and about the new Chicago Federal League team and their swell new ballpark on Addison. And I thought about Selene, though I tried not to, as I was determined for the rest of the night to keep my thinking just as it would have been before I went to Mexico last year, when I was simply Christopher Cobb, war correspondent.

But when I lit up a cigarette on the end of a couch in the Smoking Room, I let my thoughts turn once more to Brauer. Oddly, he seemed more human to me now. Not so easy to despise. I’d been around a lot of men in tough situations and I knew that these feelings existed in the world. Sometimes men even responded to the stress of battle by reaching out like that. I was ready to think that Brauer wasn’t working on board, that he was simply in transit to London, that I’d simply have to follow him to the city and continue to keep track of him there. And I did have the slip of paper in my pocket and a chance to get a little something out of it.

But if the Lusitania were merely transportation for him, I still wondered why Brauer was in first class. The cost of his suite would’ve kept a working-class family of four in a London suburb subsisting for two years. A prohibitive extravagance for his German bosses. An impossible lot of money for a college lecturer. Perhaps Cable had lied. Given their relationship, that would’ve been possible. Perhaps they hadn’t met on board. Maybe they’d planned this rendezvous, and the moneyed Cable had sprung for Brauer’s first-class accommodations.

Two Fatimas later, the first influx of post-dinner smokers began to arrive, and among them was Cable. I assumed Brauer was immediately behind him. But he wasn’t. At least not right away. Brauer could have stopped in the wash room, but I was picking up something in Cable’s manner that suggested he was alone. He drifted in; he looked around as if trying to decide what he would do. If he were expecting Brauer, there would be no doubt: he’d find their accustomed place and claim it before the following surge of diners took away the option. But he was hesitating; he was wondering, it seemed to me, if he should simply leave.

Then he noticed me. He did not brighten, even in a routinely social way. But he registered my familiarity. I nodded. He nodded in return, and he hesitated some more, made a decision. He crossed the room and arrived before me. “Good evening, Mr. Cable,” I said.

He nodded again.

“Would you like to join me?” I asked.

“Thanks,” he said.

There was a fresh shaving cut on his chin. I thought of his razor lying beside Brauer’s. Cable’s hand had been a bit unsteady tonight in using it. It was a risky thing, I thought, to keep your face bare.

He looked behind him and backed into the chair that faced the couch. He sat down and went straight for his smokes. As he fumbled with his matches — his hands were still unsteady — a steward appeared and took our drink orders. Two whiskeys. He made his a double.

When the steward was gone and Cable had taken a long, calming drag on his cigarette, I said, “Where’s Walter?”

Cable had been watching his smoke and he cut his eyes to me as if I should have known better than to ask about this. That attitude instantly passed. But clearly there’d been some sort of break between the two men.

“Working,” Cable said.

“Working?”

“He has a lecture to write.”

This sounded fishy. From his pinched tone, it sounded fishy to Cable as well.

I said, “So you two knew each other in London, right?”

“We’ve only known each other a few days,” he said, and he was looking away, talking as much to himself as to me, thinking: I never really knew this man. He hadn’t been lying about when they met. Now it sounded as if Brauer was through with his bookseller, who no doubt possessed — he did passionately love books, after all — a romantic streak.

I said, “An experienced teacher like him, writing a lecture shouldn’t take long.”

Cable didn’t answer but took a drink of his whiskey. Which was itself an answer to the question I really had intended to ask. Brauer had let Cable know he’d be tied up for the rest of the trip.

I felt a little ruthless now. Cable was just a bookseller. I didn’t need to be indirect with him. “Does he have another friend on the ship?” I asked.

Cable looked at me. If my impertinence ended the conversation, it made no difference now. But his face went blank. This was a question he hadn’t considered.

I had him talking to himself even as he talked to me, so I pushed it: “Have you seen him with anyone?”

He furrowed a little at this, but he clearly hadn’t.

“Did he speak of anyone on board?” I asked.

Cable shook his head no. I was sitting, I realized, with a jilted lover. One who had trusted completely.

I could have pushed harder. But I wasn’t all that ruthless after all. And Cable wasn’t holding anything back. He hadn’t held back from his Walter either, sadly. Once again it was easy to despise Brauer. Which was just as well.