The Star of Istanbul

30

Istanbul was not where I had expected to end up when the secret service boys finally let me take a crack at this war. They hadn’t either. And deep into that eventful Monday in London, after I’d made sure Selene returned to her hotel and I was heading back to the Arundel, I finally took time to wonder if, in fact, that’s where they would have me go. For all I knew, they already had some other sneak-and-snoop Johnnie in Istanbul, someone who’d get the chance to take his own crack at Selene Bourgani. But either way, him or me, Metcalf was arriving tomorrow and the German team was leaving the next day, and I needed him and his minions to work on a few things right away. Even if it wasn’t for my benefit.

So I asked my man and his taxi to stay with me for a while longer, at which he gave me a slow nod yes and a touch to the brim of his cap even before we’d talked about money.

I dashed up to my room and was happy to actually put some words together on my Corona, banging out a report and a list of queries for Metcalf, covering everything from Selene’s German movie director-lover to the man I strongly suspected was her father, from the flag on the bar wall to the smell of spirit gum, from a square beard at the head of a table to a dead Hun in a doorway. And I told him that if I was going forward, I needed a pistol. And — a thing I almost forgot — I let him know I’d changed hotels.

Then I was off again through the night, back along the Strand, past Charing Cross just south of Metzger & Strauss, Booksellers, across the street from which there’d been a bit of an incident earlier this evening. And the Strand turned into the Mall and the Mall led us to the front gates of Buckingham Palace and we circled good King George V, perhaps just as he was having his man adjust the shoulders of his pajamas.

We ended up on the southwest side of the palace gardens, in Westminster, at Number 4 Grosvenor Gardens, at the north end of a long, attached block of grand Second Empire town houses, five stories high with slate pavilion roofs and tall mansards. The houses were three bays wide and each had the same front porch — there were a dozen or more such, arrayed down the street — with squared granite columns holding up garlands of stone flowers.

Somewhere between my hotel and these stone flowers, I’d also given a brief thought to my killing a man tonight. To my having to kill a man. This thought came shortly after we’d circled Buckingham Palace and I had actually given a few moments of brain time to the King’s pajamas. Ironically. But still. I’d killed a guy tonight and I hadn’t really expected to, given all the little pitter-pat of sneaking and snooping that my recent secret service work had entailed. Now I’d found it necessary to act more like a soldier in the field than a spy. But maybe I didn’t understand the spy stuff yet. Or maybe I was supposed to have finessed that confrontation somehow. But I couldn’t see how. And I’d done this before, killed a man. And even as I was thinking this, as we’d rolled to a stop in front of the embassy and I took in the architectural details as I always did, I knew that I was about to forget the dead Hun, pretty much for good.

Which made me pause on the sidewalk before the embassy of the United States of America and silently pledge the blood of an enemy — and the ease with which I’d shed it — to the defense of my country. However subtle the circumstances or untraditional the battlefield.

I rang the bell at the timber double door and it opened to a U.S. Marine in his dress blues. I told him I was Christopher Marlowe Cobb in search of Mr. Smith. Which suddenly sounded like a phony name to me. But after asking me politely to wait and closing the door in my face, it took only a few moments for him to return and invite me in.

I stepped into a marble foyer hung with an American flag and a framed Woodrow Wilson. The marine joined a similarly attired comrade — they were both sergeants — and they stood at parade rest, flanking the main staircase. In the center of the foyer was a large oaken desk with a telephone receiver prominent at the sitter’s right hand, the sitter being an apparent civilian in a dark blue sack suit, with the jacket buttoned up tight — even here late at night — and with the same close-cropped hair as the soldiers.

He nodded me to a wingback chair on the wall.

I sat, and soon there was a clattering of feet coming down the staircase. And then Smith.

He strode across the marble floor as I rose and he gave me his hand firmly. “Smith,” he said. “Ben.”

He was about fifty, with a shock of gray hair, a comfortable vision, like a Chicago City Hall reporter on deadline, his jacket somewhere else, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his tie askew. He was working late, and I wondered if he looked the same when Metcalf was around, who I had a feeling didn’t approve of his boys looking like Chicago City Hall reporters. I liked Smith for his casualness around the embassy, even more so if the boss wouldn’t approve but he was doing it anyway, after hours.

“Cobb,” I said. “Kit.”

“We got a little worried about you,” he said. “I dropped round to check on you at the Waldorf this evening.”

“It’s all in here,” I said, handing over the sealed envelope.

He nodded at my bandaged left cheek. He knew about the Schmiss beneath: “Set to unveil your sordid past at Heidelberg, are you?” he said.

“Things happened.”

“You want to go up?” Smith gave a slight toss of his head toward the staircase behind him.

I hesitated. I was feeling a little weary, having lately escaped a sinking ship and snuck around pretty seriously and killed a man wielding a knife.

Before I could answer, Smith said, “You probably have a story you don’t want to tell twice.”

“I wrote the highlights,” I said, nodding at the envelope in his hand.

“Got it,” he said. He cupped my elbow and turned me toward the front door, stepping up instantly beside me and putting an avuncular arm around my shoulder. We moved toward the night. “Hold down the fort, boys,” he said raising his voice to pitch the comment to the marines covering our retreat.

We pushed through the eight-paneled doors and stepped out onto the porch, and we stopped in its deep shadow.

He offered me a cigarette and we lit up and blew some smoke into the sooty London night air.

My loyal taxi was sitting at the near curb, a couple of automobile lengths north, at which, after our second, silent puff, Smith nodded. “Is that yours?” he said.

“Yes. Good man. Been with me through a lot tonight.”

Smith grunted. Then he asked a question about a thing I kept forgetting and he’d apparently waited for us to be alone to ask. He nodded toward my shirt, down near the belt line. The blood. I’d forgotten it again. “Is that yours?” he asked.

“Nope.”

He grunted again and took another drag on his Fatima. He said, “Metcalf’s somewhere out in the Irish Sea about now, but I’m to wire him at Holyhead if I hear from you.”

“Sounds like serious worry.”

“Of course.”

“Like you expected me to be dead.”

“That’s always our expectation.”

“You from Chicago?” I asked, trying to compliment him on his straight talk, though I realized he might not know what I was referring to.

But maybe he did. “You from Cleveland?” he answered, which was a curve ball that dropped in for a strike.

“Nope,” I said.

“Nope,” he said. “But thanks for thinking I might be.”

“I’ll give you the key to the city sometime,” I said.

“First you got to dine with the boss,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Good pudding for you, Kit Cobb.”

“Yeah?”

“He likes swank food. Carlton Hotel at six. Escoffier’s joint.”

“I’ll think of it as a last meal,” I said.