The Star of Istanbul

58

Funny how this kind of thing sometimes works. We didn’t kill our captive Huns, and as a direct result — while Arshak was off getting the ropes and I stared at the field-gray colonel blending into the shadows — my plan refined itself. I had Ströder remove his uniform, and after Arshak — who had learned some things in his working time at the London Docks — did some fancy knots on our two boys, I turned myself into a German army colonel.

The uniform fit pretty well. The hat was a bit small, but it squeezed on okay. The Luger in its holster and a magazine pouch were strapped to my waist. And just as the Mercedes headlights died, I carefully stripped off the gauze bandage from my left cheek.

“You’re pretty frightening in that costume,” Arshak said as I approached him.

I turned my face so he could see the scar in the starlight.

“Mother of God,” he said. “Is that makeup?”

“No.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Long story,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“The battery went dead.”

“We’ll catch a taxi,” I said.

And I quickly explained where we had to go, what we had to do. To his credit, the ham took direction pretty well and we were off in the Unic.

We parked around the corner from the hotel, beside the iron fence along the public gardens. Arshak and I gave a wordless nod to each other and I got out and walked back down the street and approached the hotel. I ran an iron rod up my back and played my role, returning the salute of a major emerging from the front hotel doors, and I passed into the lobby and kept my eyes forward, looking at no one, walking briskly.

I approached the elevator, which had just arrived at the ground floor. The wooden and glass doors of the car opened and a man in a suit took the couple of steps to the outer cast-iron gate and pushed it open. I drew near.

It was the colonel from down the hall, the guy in uniform and Pickelhaube that Lucine and I followed into the hotel upon our arrival.

He took another step and still I wasn’t registering on him and now we were about to pass and he focused on my face and then on my epaulet pips and then on my scar and then on my face — all in very rapid succession. And he stopped. The officers I’d encountered so far were of lesser rank. This guy was my equal and it was his business to know other full colonels in town. Maybe he thought he knew them all.

I brazened on by him with a little nod — he was in mufti, after all, and if he didn’t know me, I didn’t know him. I took another step beyond him and was about to pass through the art nouveau proscenium that led to the elevator carriage.

And the colonel said, “Colonel?”

I stopped and I turned and I said to the colonel, “Colonel.”

I figured he had a strong hunch I wasn’t a colonel.

I could see in his eyes that indeed he did think he knew all the colonels.

Maybe he was even in the process of placing my face as the man who’d followed him into the hotel thirty-six hours ago. He’d seemed to look past or through me in my couple of encounters with him, but he might simply have been cagily observant.

I kept my eyes on him but turned my face slightly to the right, thoughtfully, as if I were trying to figure out where I knew him from. In the process, I reminded him of the Schmiss he’d noticed a few moments ago.

This drew him away from the broader face recognition he’d been attempting. It was a big thing to a man like him, this university fencing scar. It was a nobleman’s badge of courage.

His eyes were still on it.

He had no such scar.

I smiled and chuckled patronizingly. “Heidelberg,” I said.

He clicked his heels.

After all, even if he recognized me, what had he seen me do yesterday? I’d simply checked into the hotel dressed as he was now. And with a beautiful woman.

“I am sorry to be out of uniform,” he said. “They’ve asked us to look like civilians when we are off duty. I am Colonel Conrad Lüdike.”

I clicked my heels and flipped him a courtesy salute. He was flattered, giving an ardently crisp salute in return.

Then we shook hands with Germanic fervor.

“You are new to Constantinople,” he said.

“I am. Let’s soon have a drink together, Colonel,” I said. “And we can speak of it.”

“Yes,” he said. “By all means.”

And he continued the handshake.

“And now if you’ll excuse me,” I said, gently extracting my hand.

“Of course,” he said, bowing at the waist.

“Perhaps tomorrow,” I said.

“Of course.”

And I turned my back on him and stepped through the iron door and across the carpet and into the elevator carriage, and I stopped in the center of the floor.

I turned.

Colonel Lüdike was already passing into the Kubbeli salon, and I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. “Der fünfte Fußboden,” I said to the operator.

And I was on the fifth floor.

I walked briskly, stifling the urge to run.

I passed Lucine’s room.

I arrived at my door. I went in.

I would not be back, I realized. I’d be either dead or on the USS Scorpion before this night was through.

Too bad. I’d lose my third Corona Portable Number 3 in barely more than year.

I pulled my valise out of the wardrobe and set it on the bed.

I extracted the false bottom.

I pulled out the sawed-off and reshaped Winchester. I screwed the silencer into the muzzle. I laid the weapon on the bed and I put all the.22 Long heavies from the box into the two lower side pockets of my tunic.

I removed the remaining documents and stuffed them into the inner tunic pockets. No tracks left behind.

All that remained at the bottom of the valise were a few sets of whiskers and a bottle of spirit gum.

The German officer persona would help me in making progress through the villa. But it was possible Der Wolf was waiting with Enver Pasha. I figured I might find myself, in my improvisation, needing a little delay time before I was recognized. He’d seen my face. The revealed scar was not enough.

I removed a Kaiser Wilhelm uptwitched mustache — a good one, densely tied onto sheer lace in two parts — and the screw-stoppered bottle of spirit gum, and I stepped into the bathroom.

I turned the electrical switch and stood before the mirror.

I took one bracing glance into my own eyes, shaded beneath the brim of the peaked cap. I removed the cap and laid it aside. I gave myself one last look. My eyes again. And then the scar: that too was mine. It was me. Let anyone else interpret it as they would. I’d earned it.

I got to work. I brushed on spirit gum and applied the two parts of the mustache, leaving the central hollow of the lip appropriately naked. Done. I dropped the bottle into the basin.

I pressed my officer’s cap onto my head.

I strode to the bed. I picked up my Winchester 1902, which had been mutilated and hushed into a deadly frame of mind. A one-handed weapon, all right, but not a small thing. I had to pass across the salon and lobby of this hotel.

I still had the leather portfolio Metcalf had given me in London. I retrieved it from the Gladstone in the wardrobe, and I stuck the Winchester inside, on the diagonal. I put the portfolio under my arm and went out of the room and down the staircase — hotfooting the steps — and through the salon, reining myself in now, making myself slow down. I should not draw attention, though the brain in my head and the heart in my chest were pounding at me to rush, to run, but I walked, briskly purposeful but controlled, across the lobby and out the door and to the left and to the corner and to the right and across the street and I was walking faster now and the Unic was ahead and I wrenched the passenger door open and slid in next to Arshak.

He reared back at my mustache. “Mother of God,” he said.

“She’s far away tonight,” I said.

And we drove off.