The Star of Istanbul

33

And it was, indeed, Christopher Cobb the newsman who boarded the SS Mecklenburg just before midnight. In his passport photo he had a close-cropped beard. In the flesh, he was clean shaven with a fresh bandage on his left cheek, but people do shave, and they do injure themselves, particularly escaping from a torpedoed ship. If you were to look inside his suit coat, you’d find the label of Eisner und Söhne, but Cobb was a famous, world-traveling American journalist and he could plausibly have gone to a German tailor in his travels. The Dutch were unlikely to take him into the woods and shoot him over a thing like that.

Cobb or not, I had to stay out of sight of the firm of Brauer und Bourgani. This was going to be an ongoing challenge all the way to Istanbul. In the Gladstone bag I had some spirit gum of my own and some items of facial disguise I’d purchased at a theatrical supply house in London on my writing day; I was going to have to be resourceful. And somewhere near the Belgian border, I was going to have to turn into someone else.

For that, I had choices in the valise. Choices and a wily surprise from Metcalf. When I’d risen this morning I’d opened Metcalf’s leather valise. First out, wrapped in a leather band, was a bundle of letters-of-passage and credentials, using photographs of me clean shaven, with my naked Schmiss. These would transform me into Jacob Wilhelm von Traube, with diplomatic passport and with alternate credentials making me either a press attaché or a military attaché, as it might suit the situation.

The next thing out of the valise was an American passport. It had a photograph of me in my close-cropped beard. But I was not Christopher Cobb. I was Walter Brauer. Metcalf without qualms. Metcalf advising. Not ordering, of course, this Gentleman Jim, but subtly advising a man with a certain knack to consider what might be good for his country.

Subtly until I found the hidden flaps on the edges of the lid to the false bottom. I lifted the lid away to expose the recess beneath.

And there lay a weapon the like of which I’d handled and learned to shoot in my training late last year.

A secret service special. A pistol crafted by the outside-Washington boys from a.22 calibre, single-shot, bolt-action, 1902 model Winchester rifle. It had a severely sawed-off barrel, trued up very nicely; the two original open sights and a folding peep sight; and a stock of black walnut replacing the Winchester’s varnished gumwood, curving down into a swell pistol grip. It fired a.22 Long rifle cartridge with real punch and tight-cluster precision. What turned it from a tough kid’s target pistol into a serious weapon for America’s on-the-sly warfare was the threaded coupling driven tight into the end of the barrel and the thing that screwed onto it: the black metal tube lying next to the pistol in the bottom of the valise. A Maxim Silencer. With the aid of the box of.22 Long heavies, specially made by the Maxim Silent Firearms Company, that lay next to it, this tough guy could plug a man between the eyes from a hundred yards and not make a whisper of a sound. Not just silent in the report; the Maxim’s special round even took away the whipcrack of a bullet in the air. Not to mention the device cut recoil to almost nothing. It was too bad you had to reload after each shot, but only single-shot weapons gave up their gases completely to the silencer’s mechanism. Not a big price to pay for that big benefit.

All of which I admired at the sight of Metcalf’s little surprise.

Admired too much. Admired so much — which was the point, of course — that I got itchy to use it.

And I understood Metcalf’s message clearly: this was how I was supposed to kill Brauer in his ship cabin without raising an alarm.

But I simply put the Brauer passport, along with Herr Traube’s, into the recess, as well as my own disguise items; I fit the lid back on top, and I packed the bag.

Metcalf still stopped short of giving me a direct order. It was my choice how I managed my identity on the way to Istanbul. And I chose at least to begin my journey as the Christopher Cobb I’d always been. The war correspondent. I’d ignore, for now, that I was carrying another kind of war in the bottom of my bag.