The Star of Istanbul

37

This time the question of gentle or rough didn’t even come up. This deal was sealed in hot wax. I pounded and she pounded and the only disagreement between us was when she declared, with her words broken into eight distinct phrases from our ongoing activity: “If you finish. . now. . or even soon. . Kit Cobb. . I will get. . my pistol. . from your coat. . and kill you.”

I heeded her warning. Selene Bourgani and I extended things to her satisfaction, though my own personal problem with extending this sort of thing cropped up: my body kept on, but my mind drifted off. At first, not entirely, as the departure point was a surge of jealousy at Enver Goddamn Pasha. With the thought of what a man like him was mysteriously able to command from a woman like Selene Bourgani, I began, indeed, to despise Enver Pasha, despise him perhaps not with the depth but surely, I fancied at that moment, with the intensity felt by even the Greeks and the Armenians. Of course not with their intensity either, but yes, my mind had wandered as far as the massacres of both those peoples in recent years, and I thought how these Young Turks were no better than the Crimson Sultan in this regard, given what had already been reported of their actions against the Greeks in Smyrna last summer and Thrace the summer before, and against the Armenians in Adana soon after these new boys came to power, six years ago, those actions being the wholesale slaughter of every Greek and Armenian in sight — man, woman, and child. Which gave me a thought that got drowned out by screaming.

This was from Selene beneath me, though it was not — I was happy to realize — a scream of rebuke. I was still working out okay for her. Maybe, indeed, my thoughts of politics and massacres were helpful in that regard. She was finishing up and would soon let me do likewise. And then she stopped screaming and her own mind apparently wandered off and I was happy to finally put my stamp in the sealing wax and blow it till it cooled.

Afterward, as we lay wrapped tightly together on the narrow bed, the thought that slid into me a few minutes ago returned. And when we rather gently untangled and sat side by side with our backs against the wall smoking Fatimas, I said, “Your Greeks have a real beef with your garlicky Turk.”

She finished blowing a plume of smoke before her as if she hadn’t heard. But then she turned her face to me. “My Greeks?”

“Your life story.”

“I think I told you once already that was all lies.”

“I figured you might have lied about some of the lies.”

She nodded faintly. “I could do that,” she said. “But I didn’t.”

She looked away again and took another drag on her cigarette.

I made my voice go quite soft. Actually it wasn’t so willful as that. I did know that if I wanted an answer, I needed to be soft. I’d often used the trick with news sources. But at that moment I did indeed feel a little surge of gentleness about Selene and her phony public life and her raging private dramas and desires. I said, “What is your story?”

“I’m American.”

“By birth?”

“Not quite.”

“And your parents?”

She watched the smoke she’d just blown in a long, thin ribbon till it dissipated into the cabin air. When it was gone, she said, “Cypriot.”

“Greek-Cypriot or Turk-?”

“Both. I come from far back, intermingled. We didn’t take a side in that fight.”

All this came easily from her. Which didn’t mean any of it was necessarily true. But there was even less reason to believe the overt publicity tales about her.

“So the island was Cyprus, not Andros,” I said.

She exhaled softly, without smoke. “Part of me comes from Andros, I guess. My first lover was a Greek and he took me to Andros for the deed. I was fifteen. He was forty-five. I had a certain look about me and a certain willingness and a certain freedom to act. He owned ships. I was fond of Andros. I was fond of him. He was like the leaves of the olive trees on the mountains there. Silver laid upon green.”

We both fell silent for a long while. Both of us smoking. This thing about her first lover: it was maybe the only thing she’d ever said to me that had instantly felt true.

Then she broke the silence. “How will you save me, Kit Cobb?”

I took a long drag on my cigarette and began my own moment of contemplating the smoke I was blowing. But she interrupted.

“I was glad to stop your damn questions,” she said. “Glad to do what we just did. But we have to face facts now. My usefulness to the United States of America won’t last long when the Germans and Turks find out about Brauer. I’m afraid the best you can do is shield me long enough so I can get on a train or a ship or a donkey cart and try to vanish.”

All that was delivered with a flat, steady tone. This was a tough dame, even without a pistol in her hand.

I said, “Did you have any sense that Brauer would remain in Istanbul as your contact?”

“No. I got the impression he’d be coming back to London.”

“Did you hear anything to give you the impression he was personally known in Istanbul?”

“I think he’d studied there some years ago. But I didn’t pick up on anything else, one way or the other.”

This was a chance we’d have to take, I thought. Obviously Metcalf figured Brauer was unknown by sight in Istanbul or he wouldn’t have urged me to kill the man and take his place. Not that Metcalf would hesitate to take a chance — even a big one — on my behalf, seeing as he was advising a man of a different temperament from himself.

“I can play Brauer,” I said.

She turned her head to me sharply. “You can pull that off?”

“I can.”

“Good,” she said, with an intensity that struck me as odd. Maybe it was relief. Maybe she suddenly felt her place on a train or ship or donkey cart was enssured. That made sense. But there was something in her at that moment I wished I could get her to talk about.

“I know this has been scary for you,” I said.

She shot me a look that confirmed my gut feeling. This intensity wasn’t about a release of fear. It was something else.

She was on her feet and moving to her clothes.

She bent to them and I tried to memorize the flash of her body. Each time always felt like the last time with Selene Bourgani.

“Selene,” I said.

She turned to me, pressing her dress to her chest.

At least she did turn.

“I know you’re not afraid,” I said.

I could see her mind working for a moment, trying to figure me out. Then she said, “I know you’re not either.”