The Star of Istanbul

51

When he reached the bottom of the gangway, he fixed on the boy before him and I figured he recognized Lucine. After that one beat of a pause, she turned her back on him, faced in my direction, and started walking this way. He immediately followed.

She approached, a couple of arm lengths to my left, and I watched her face closely. Just before she drew near, she caught my eyes and did a careful turn of her head motioning me, as I understood it, to head along the quayside street in the direction away from Place Karakeuï. I had no choice but to trust that interpretation.

She passed, the father passed without looking at me, and I walked off, angling up to Rimtim Caddesi, and I began to follow it north. After about a hundred yards I was approaching the west end of the dry docks, near the nighttime rendezvous place Hansen had set up if we needed to exit Istanbul in a hurry. A short distance ahead was a sharp left turn at a warehouse. I stopped and turned to look back.

This was not a deserted stretch of road. Perhaps such a place as that did not exist within Istanbul during the daylight hours. Turks had been pressing past from the north heading south and a man on a bicycle had just brushed by me on the earthen shoulder of the road to my right, keeping off the cobbles, his bell clinging furiously. So when I turned, I found a Turk was striding toward me. He was close and I started a bit but I did not think for a moment he was following me; he was a Turk of the sort I’d seen dozens of times already along the streets, vending or getting a shave or drinking coffee on the edge of an empty lot. He already was adjusting his course to go around me but not by enough to avoid bumping me. I assessed his authenticity instantly.

But I saw a man following twenty yards or so farther behind, nattily dressed and carrying a kit bag, and this man was a Westerner — trim, moving light on his feet, heavily bewhiskered with muttonchops — and my suspicion sprung instantly into full flame. I made the immediate decision not to let him think he’d been recognized. As soon as I saw him I looked away, focusing without any pause on the Turk, who obliged by bumping me, letting me spin to his receding figure and curse him.

And then I continued to walk north.

If Muttonchops was following me still, I’d find a better place to confront him. And it was now that it struck me that the next ship from Constanţa could also have been bearing Der Wolf and there I’d been — standing in plain sight — and if he knew me I would have made his job very easy. I was aware of my Mauser in the small of my back.

Would he shoot me from behind in a busy Istanbul street?

I didn’t think so.

The warehouse was approaching. I could make a last-moment dash for the building.

But this guy was a professional. A specialist with the knack. There were too many risks in public. And he didn’t know I was portraying Brauer, so he didn’t know where I was staying. For now, perhaps he’d just follow.

The warehouse was only a half dozen paces away.

I had to decide.

And then the plosive chatter of an automobile engine rushed up from behind and I saw the vehicle stopping in my periphery as I heard the goose honk of its horn.

I looked.

I stopped.

A Unic taxi was waiting beside me.

The door of the tonneau opened.

I could see inside. Lucine, her sunrain hat off, her hair piled beautifully on her faux-boy’s head, and her father beyond her, his face brought forward and turned toward me.

I took the two quick strides to them and stepped into the tonneau and sat down facing father and daughter. Lucine closed the door and leaned across me — smelling only of herself this time, no perfume, just her own hot-morning musk — and she rapped on the front window.

As she retreated to her seat, I slid toward the center of mine and then rose up from it a little so I could see discreetly between her and her father and out the back window.

Muttonchops was continuing to walk in our direction and closing on us steadily. He was keeping his eyes forward with a disinterested air, but as the driver ground the taxi into gear, he turned his face to us.

In the morning sunlight, I didn’t know if he could see through the back window and into the depths of the tonneau, but if he could, he and I were looking each other in the eyes.

I sat back down as we began to move, and he appeared again in the window, receding as we accelerated away. He had stopped. He was watching us. We made the turn west and he vanished from my sight. One thing seemed clear, and I strongly suspected another. This man was following me. And I bet he smelled of spirit gum.