The Star of Istanbul

24

I scanned all the passersby, all the lingerers, every man within sight of the taxi. Only two that I could see seemed suspicious. But I was relying on the shadows around me in the tonneau, and there were plenty of shadows on St. Martin’s Lane to hide the Huns.

One of the men I didn’t like the looks of was just across the street, in the far left lobby doorway of the theater. He was a burly man in a three-piece tweed without a hat, smoking a cigarette. This one was the right physical type. He was nearby, and he had the best chance to be checking me out as well. He was hatless, which made me notice him as out of place. That should have made me less suspicious of him, the men watching for me not wanting to make themselves noticeable. But the Germans were smart, and hatless in front of a theater would be smart.

So I watched carefully as he finished his cigarette. He dropped the butt and stubbed it out with the toe of his shoe. If he lingered on, if he lit another, that would make him a real suspect. But instead he turned and opened the door and went in. I could see him through the windows, crossing the lobby. The curtain had gone up a few minutes ago. He was the director. Or the playwright. Calming his nerves.

The other guy was farther up and also across the street. I turned my eyes to him. He was still there. He was mostly just a dark shape, but clearly a big guy. He was standing a couple of closed shop doors this side of Cecil Court. Even as I watched, he eased back into the deeper darkness of the doorway behind him.

I would’ve put two bucks on the nose that this one was a Hun.

I figured I could sit here in the shadows and wait it out and follow someone at the end of the meeting. I wasn’t getting inside the shop anyway. This taxi might have seemed a bit suspicious after a while, but the Kaiser’s boys couldn’t clearly see who was inside, and what glimpses of me they might get didn’t square with my known appearance. They sure weren’t going to try to drag a vague someone out of the back of an automobile on the streets of London on spec.

So what was my frame of mind, that I should have almost immediately climbed out of the taxi? I’d never reported on the battles in other people’s wars where I didn’t push as close to the field of fire as I could. Now that I was actually, officially — if secretly — involved in the action against the enemies and potential enemies of my own country, I’d been turned into a goddamn lurker. A sneak. A second-story man with lock picks in his pocket and theatrical disguises. I was once again reduced to watching others do the real stuff, much as I’d always done, only without the bylines. Those few seconds of a fracas in the bookshop were the best of my official secret service career so far. Sitting any longer in the shadows in the taxi, watching from the wings still again while the real actors performed in this play — and not even being able to hear their lines — those would be just about the worst moments of that career. So I figured the least I could do was get out of the taxi and drag my bum leg past the shop. I might see a thing or two inside. I might even pay a visit to the guy in the doorway across the street.

As soon as I was on the sidewalk I decided that since he was pretty much on my path to the bookstore, I wouldn’t wait; I’d drag my bum leg right past that guy in the shadows.

I took on my wounded veteran bit part and labored across the street and past the theater, and I focused on the doorway up ahead where I knew he was watching. Let him check me out. Let him decide I was a nobody so that when I crossed over to the bookstore and looked in the window, it would take him some extra time to get suspicious. Or just let him go at me right away. That thought quickened me. Made me want to drop my role and simply deal with him. But I didn’t. Instead, for the moment at least, I relaxed into the role, made the limp look real. But I prepared for action. I angled out to approach along the farthest edge of the sidewalk. I kept my eyes on the doorway.

He stepped forward a little. A thin slice of him appeared, not quite lit by the electric light across the street but at least suggested by variations of darkness, from hat brim to forehead and nose to shirt front and legs and shoes. Perhaps the sound of my approach — the step and the scrape of me — had brought him out. His face turned toward me but I could see no features.

I stepped and scraped, stepped and scraped along, and his face was turning as I approached, following me. I’d been inside the dark stretch of street long enough that my eyes had adjusted and I was close now and at last I could see the wide, broken face. It was indeed a Hun; it was the Hun with the staghorn knife who’d tried to rush me at the bookshop.

“Evenin’ Gov’nor,” I said, sliding down the social scale to make me chattier with a stranger in a doorway.

The Hun didn’t speak. He glanced down at the drag of my foot. I came even with him and I saw his right hand move inside his coat. A reflex he’d no doubt have even if he were ready to believe I was a local and not the man he was looking for. I trusted the differences in my appearance, especially in the dark, given the brevity of our previous encounter. But I took another step and would soon have my back to him and so I had to make sure.

I stopped. I turned to face him. “Got a fag?” I asked.

He kept his gaze full upon me, though I couldn’t read his eyes in the dark. His hand remained inside his coat, on the handle of the knife, I felt certain. He said nothing.

“Cigarette,” I said, putting my two fingers to my mouth to mime smoking. And I tightened my own hand on the T-shape of the fritz handle of the cane, splitting my fingers firmly around the shaft.

He still wasn’t saying anything. I thought he might not speak English. Or if he did, he’d have a clear German accent, and if he believed my wounded-British-war-vet disguise, he’d know there could be trouble. He kept hold of his knife inside his coat.

“You a bloomin’ mute, ducky?” I said.

He motioned me off with his free hand, a measly little flick of the wrist, like I was a fly on his nose.

I didn’t move.

“Go away,” he said in a ponderous German accent.

Perhaps I should have let things be. He didn’t recognize me. But that was temporary. I wanted to cross this street and see what I could see inside the shop, and I knew I wanted to do even more than that, knew somehow I had to get inside, get closer to what was going on; I knew I had to run more risks now to properly play this role I’d taken on, and I was finally absorbing the reality of the Lusitania, the reality that the Germans were becoming the mortal enemy of my country whether formal war had been declared or not, and this man before me intended to find me and kill me and I’d be compelled to have this out with him very shortly anyway. I needed to make a peremptory strike against my enemy.

“With that accent,” I said, “you’re the one who should move away.”

I said this in my own voice. He straightened, looking hard at me in the darkness.

“That’s right,” I said, ripping my left arm out of the cloth sling. I figured it was only fair that he knew who I was and what was at stake in the fight to come. “I’m Cobb,” I said.

His knife hand started to move and I had an easier path. My right hand was trigger-ready and I drew up the cane as the knife was coming out and I grabbed the shaft of the cane with my left hand as well, gripping it hard halfway down like a rifle and this was the basic bayonet move. I took a forward step to leverage the thrust of the cane aimed now for the middle of his forehead even as the knife blade glinted as it came free, even in the darkness catching the tiniest fragment of light, but I had to focus on the target and my arms were rushing and my torso powered forward behind this strike and his head was moving off center, he was quick and trying to dodge away but the metal tip of the cane caught him just at the curve of his right temple and his head jerked at the blow but I couldn’t drive through, the hit didn’t feel solid, and yet his knife hand did jerk away from the striking arc he’d begun, and I was pulling the cane back quick to strike again but his head was hard and the blow had glanced and he grabbed the shaft of my cane with his left hand even as he reeled, as he stumbled deeper into the doorway, and so I couldn’t simply pound him unconscious and I was happy now to play the chess game, sacrificing the cane for both my hands to be free to use on his knife arm, so I let go of the cane handle and it flopped away in his wrenching grip and both his hands were suddenly occupied, which also gave that knife an extra beat of distraction. I grabbed his right wrist in both my hands just as he was beginning a new thrust and in these moments when it was two arms straining against one I twisted the knife sharply from its rush and forced it inward, toward the center of his own chest because he would not stop coming for me, the Germans wanted me dead, and he was strong and his left hand clapped over mine at his wrist and it was both his arms and both mine, both his hands and both mine, and the knife stopped its plunge and we strained hard and we came to a quaking suspension and the knife quivered only a few inches before his chest and he was backed against the door and it was all darkness around us in this tiny place, in this upright casket which echoed with our heavy grunting, and the knife quaked and I strained against this terrible force beneath my hands, squeezed all my body into that knot of hands and he was braced against the door but I was leaning a little downward and my left leg was pressed hard against his right leg and I figured I might have the tiniest fragment of a second to divide my energy, and the leaning would help and our hands trembled and our arms trembled and I took a quick breath and I began to lift my trailing leg and I felt his hands gain strength and felt my own begin to yield, but only for the briefest moment as I flexed my right leg and thrust it hard forward into his crotch and he grunted and I felt the strength in him waver and instantly I redirected my own energy to the knife even as I was falling into him and I drove the blade forward and into his chest.

I let go and leaped back at once. The blade had gone in deep, I knew. I wanted no part of him now. I straightened upright and from inside the shadows before me came a tightly squeezed cry, remarkably low, remarkably soft, compressed as intensely as our fists had been moments ago, and I felt a sharp pain at my ankle and I jumped back a little. He’d kicked me. But it had not been a conscious blow. The Hun’s feet were shuffling hard, from the pain and the panic and from something like the reflex of a dog struck down by an automobile in the street and lying on its side with its legs still moving as if it could run away from this thing that had happened, run from the pain. It was like that with the Hun: his feet ran and ran and he went nowhere; he could not escape what was happening in the center of his chest. And then the feet stopped running, and they slid a ways toward me as his legs went slack, and the sounds from the shadows stopped, and everything stopped, and he was dead.