The Star of Istanbul

27

Almost at once his face swung in my direction. I ducked below the bookcase. I’d made no sound. He was probably turning to Selene.

His face was a blur now in my head from this quick glance, and there was very little that was new. The beard again dominated my impression of him. His eyebrows were bushy; that was something I’d not noticed across the Palm Court. His plastered hair with that center part was vaguely brown. But I still needed a clear and steady look at him from close up.

His attention did indeed go to Selene. He was talking trivially to her about the wine. A nice German wine.

He’d been watching me this morning. That much was clear. There were other things to consider about this man, though I felt further away than ever from recognizing his voice. I might have been wrong about that. But I had to shut down my mind for now. I was still lurking a few feet from my own little den of German spies and I needed to listen.

Playing up that soft-edged quality in his voice, Squarebeard prattled on about how they discovered the beauties of late harvest grapes in the Rheingau. “What seemed to be too old, what seemed to be rotten, turned out to be the sweetest and finest of all,” he said, and I could imagine him leaning to her, touching her wrist lightly, putting the mash on Selene Bourgani.

Then for a time there were only clinking sounds and bits of conversation about everyone getting a nice glass of late-harvest Riesling, and then a silence fell over the table.

I wanted to rise up once again to look into the room. But either Brauer was back in his chair and I’d see nothing or I’d be directly in Squarebeard’s line of sight and it would be too dangerous. I stayed where I was.

“So then,” Squarebeard said. “It is time for us soon to go, but first a toast. To Miss Bourgani and to international understanding that will help bring about a quickly achieved but eternal peace in the world.”

A beat of silence during which, no doubt, Squarebeard repressed the gagging reflex from his tripewurst of a toast, poor man. Surely he didn’t fool Selene; he could have simply toasted to the crushing victory of Germany over all her enemies and to the establishment of a vast new Germanic Empire and saved himself this discomfort. Then the glasses clinked and Metzger and Strauss, in unison, murmured “Zum Wohl.”

A longer silence fell upon the room as they drank, broken only by Metzger praising the pleasing sweetness of the wine and by a desultory murmuring of agreement.

This thing would soon end.

I had to decide what to do. They’d leave in several taxis, as they’d come. Who might linger? I’d heard some useful things but nothing of the details of what Selene was expected to do in Istanbul. I could wait for whoever remained possibly to reiterate informally some of what I’d missed.

But Squarebeard might clear out quickly and he was the one — the obvious leader of the group — I was most interested in.

He didn’t give them much drinking time. Suddenly a chair scooted and it must have been his. He said, “So we must go now.”

Glasses clinked down to the table.

Chairs began to move.

Shoes began to scuff and shuffle.

I backed away and circled around the side of the rows of boxes and I reached the rear wall. I crouched low again and moved toward the door as quickly as I could without audible footfalls.

Before I stood in full — though shadowed — sight of the office, I peeked from my crouch a last time. The bright frame of the doorway for the moment showed only a center slice of the refectory table, and then a body moved into frame, the large, laboring body of Metzger, bracing himself with his hand on the tabletop, hobbling in severe pain on his broken foot.

He was heading for the front of the shop, to show his visitors out. I did not have time to wait till the office was clear. I rose slowly and then took a brisk step to the door, eased it open, and went out into the night, carefully closing the door behind me.

My passage was in darkness now but I moved as fast as I dared. Along the back of the shop to the Friends Meeting House. Through the Quakers’ back rooms. I paused only before I entered the Meeting Room.

It was dark. The candle was out. The old man was gone. Matches lit my way past the empty benches and through another door, and before me, in the windows of the front entrance, was the street, almost bright by contrast, with its taint of electric light.

The handle did not yield to my turn. Of course. The old man had locked up on his way out. I turned the bolt key and I opened the door slowly, quietly. Voices were coming from nearby to the right. My German spies scattered from under their rock.

I took a step back and pulled the sling from my pocket and reset my left arm in it. I tapped my cane to the floor. I touched the gauze on my cheek to make sure it was there. I could cross the street. But I was still hungry for any scrap of information. For a closer look at Squarebeard. For a glimpse of Selene. I had to be bold now and trust my disguise. I would pass before their very eyes. I figured at the very worst there’d be a delay for them to realize who I was. I could handle any of them in a scrap and could simply outrun them if need be. They’d soon know I’d been around anyway when the dead body in the doorway made his appearance in their little drama.

I took a quick initial look in their direction before stepping out. It would help if they didn’t realize I’d entered the scene from just next door.

Squarebeard was disappearing into a taxi.

“Damn,” I said, almost aloud. Almost.

The others were distracted.

It was too late for the boss man, but I stepped out quickly, dragging my putative bad leg — overacting terribly — and the taxi containing Squarebeard slipped past me, his shadowed face flashing by in the tonneau.

He did not look my way.

Ahead were agitated voices. Hushed, not rendering themselves into words, but the contentious intensity was clear.

Selene and Brauer had moved a ways down the street, toward the corner, and they were face to face at the edge of the sidewalk, Brauer with his back to me. He raised his left arm, signaling for a taxi.

I limped slowly their way.

Selene’s voice rose, lost its hush: “Mr. Brauer, the next taxi is yours or it is mine. You will not escort me. Is that clear?”

I was passing the front window of the bookstore. In my periphery I saw shadows moving behind the front desk lamplight.

Brauer’s voice rose to match hers. “I am following my orders.”

Selene said, “You will take me to my final destination but not to my hotel.”

I slowed to keep as much of the conversation before me as I could, lowering my face and turning a little to the right, showing my bandaged cheek, which would arrest any brief glance.

Brauer said. “I will fetch Herr Metzger. He will tell you.”

“You go do that,” she said.

“Taxi,” Brauer cried.

I glanced their way. Brauer had taken a step into the street. An earlier model Unic, a 1908 12/14, tall and sputtery, with a foreshortened tonneau, approached. Selene turned to watch the taxi.

And then a whistle cried sharply from across the street — the garbled, trilling sound of a bobby, like two differently pitched whistles blowing at the same time, not quite blending but not quite separating themselves. The cop blew three short, sharp times in a row, a call for other bobbies in the area.

My handiwork had been discovered.

Brauer jerked his head in the direction of the sound. Selene didn’t look at all but stepped forward and flung open the back door of the taxi and vanished inside, and before Brauer could turn back, she’d slammed the door.

I realized I had to follow her. She certainly didn’t think Brauer was putting the mash on her and this wasn’t about proving her independence. She had somewhere to go.

I wanted to sprint away back to my own taxi, but that could draw the attention of the bobby, and so I walked briskly instead.

I glanced into her tonneau and Selene was giving her driver instructions.

I pushed on more quickly.

My driver was alert. He’d turned his Unic around to face this way, so he could watch for me, and he started up now, even as another taxi cut me off, turning from New Street into St. Martin’s.

I heard Brauer cry, “Taxi!”

I figured he was going to follow her as well.

I glanced back and I caught a glimpse of her old Unic puttering off as Brauer’s taxi, a British Napier Landaulet, slid into its place. The Napier’s cloth rear top was down, but Bauer opened the door into the forward hard cabin and he began to climb in.

I took the last few strides to my Unic and leaped into the back. I grabbed the speaking tube and told my man to follow the taxi in front of us, which was following the taxi I was primarily interested in, and he said “Yessir” as if he actually knew what I wanted, and we were all off.