Amazing Mrs. Pollifax (6 page)

She cannot bear exposure, thought Mrs. Pollifax in astonishment; yet as she stood there, lacking the decisiveness to move, she was accomplishing exactly what she did not want: people were beginning to look at her. And certainly she was not a logical person to have entered a hotel lobby. Her dress was torn, old and shabby, the castoff plaid house dress of a European, and she was thin to the point of emaciation. But her face—what a beauty she must have been once, thought Mrs. Pollifax, seeing those deepset haunted dark eyes. Even her clothes, even the irresolution and exhaustion could not conceal the intelligence in those eyes. That head went up now, and the woman moved like a sleepwalker across the lobby until she came to Mrs. Pollifax. “Your book,” she said in a low voice, only lightly accented. “You are—?”

“Sit down,” Mrs. Pollifax said quickly. “You’ll be less conspicuous and you do look exhausted.”

The woman sank down beside her on the couch. “Who are you?”

“Emily Pollifax. Are you being followed?” Beyond the woman, on the other side of the window, Mrs. Pollifax saw Colin Ramsey sitting in his jeep. He had found his parking space and was patiently waiting for dinner companions. She felt that she had met and talked to him in another world, a world of innocence that had abruptly vanished at sight of this poor creature.

“I don’t know, but—it is possible,” whispered Ferenci-Sabo. “I should never have chosen this place—so far, so public, so open.” She looked utterly wrung out, drained.

Mrs. Pollifax said crisply, “I’ve brought you money and a passport but obviously you need rest and food before you can use either. There’s a rear exit on my left, do you see it? There are also stairs going up to the second floor. My room number is—” She broke off, startled. The woman beside her on the couch was staring across the lobby in horror. At once she jumped to her feet. “Oh please,” she gasped.

Automatically Mrs. Pollifax glanced at the entrance to see what had frightened her; when her glance returned to the couch the woman was gone. She had vanished completely.

Two men in the uniform of the Turkish police were crossing the lobby, and one of them suddenly increased his pace, heading for the rear exit. His companion continued inexorably toward Mrs. Pollifax, and as he loomed above her—he looked surprisingly high—she doubtfully rose to meet him.

“Pasaport, luften,”
he said, holding out a hand.

“Passport?” faltered Mrs. Pollifax. “But what has happened? Do you speak English?”

“You are American? English?”

“American.” She opened her purse, careful not to touch the second passport.

He opened and scanned the passport, glancing from face to photograph and back again. “You arrived here only this afternoon, I see.” He frowned. “Your business in Istanbul?”

“Why—tourist,” she faltered.

“The woman to whom you spoke—the one who fled—” He broke off as his comrade entered the lobby through the
side door. His friend shook his head, pointed to the ceiling and disappeared again, presumably to search the hotel. Mrs. Pollifax’s inquisitor nodded. “You will come with me please to headquarters, to Santral Odasi.” His request lacked the courtesy of an invitation; his voice was authoritative, as was the hand he placed beneath Mrs. Pollifax’s elbow. He had also retained her passport, which he placed now in his pocket. She had no recourse but to go. As they walked out, leaving by the side door, she was just in time to see Colin shift gears, maneuver out of his parking space and drive away, his profile without any expression except boredom, as if he had at last relinquished all hope of dinner companions. He did not even see her.

The officer behind the desk was in uniform; the second man, seated beyond him and introduced as Mr. Piskopos, was not. As Mrs. Pollifax seated herself she was aware that both men studied her coldly and clinically, as if to wrest from her who and what she was by psychic divination. She had the feeling that neither of them noticed her hat or her suit, or even the expression on her face, but looked beyond and inside, into motivation, into why her hands remained in her lap, why she gazed at them imperturbably and what she had to be concealing. Since at the moment she was concealing a great deal, Mrs. Pollifax practiced exorcising all memory of Carstairs and Alice Dexter White. She was an American tourist, she reminded herself, an American tourist …

“I am an American tourist,” she said aloud in reply to the police officer.

Her passport lay open in front of him. He said dryly, “We have suddenly this week so many visitors to Istanbul. All tourists. This woman you were speaking to in the lobby of the Hotel Itep … you were there to meet her?”

“No,” said Mrs. Pollifax calmly. “I was sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Itep resting before dinner.”

“But you were speaking with this woman, were you not?”

“Oh yes.”

“But you did not know the woman to whom you were speaking?”

Mrs. Pollifax said truthfully, “I had never seen her before in my life.”

“That is not the point,” said the police officer quietly. “Had you an arrangement to meet her, to speak to her?”

“She came up to me and asked for money,” said Mrs. Pollifax firmly, “and I must say she looked as if she needed it.”

“In what language did she accost you?”

“English,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and suddenly realized the trap that had been set for her.

“English,” he repeated politely. “In a Turkish hotel run by Turks, in the old section of Istanbul where few tourists lodge, a woman beggar comes up to you and speaks in English?”

“She must have guessed I was American,” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax.

“Still, if she was only a beggar it is unusual that she could speak your language, is it not?”

Mrs. Pollifax sighed. “If you say so, but why is all this so important? Who is she?”

He looked faintly amused. He removed a square of cardboard from beneath his desk blotter and handed it across the desk to her, saying smoothly, “This is the woman to whom you were speaking.” It was a question, yet stated so artfully that it was also a statement; he left it up to her to dispute or accept.

Looking at the snapshot he gave her Mrs. Pollifax saw that Mr. Carstairs and the New York
Times
might lack a photograph of Ferenci-Sabo, but that a very up-to-date one had begun circulating through Istanbul. It was certainly a picture of the woman she had met at the Itep, and a very recent one of her too. The eyes were half-closed, the face haggard and thin. Then Mrs. Pollifax noticed the dress Ferenci-Sabo was wearing, the same faded plaid, and she realized with astonishment that this snapshot had been taken of Ferenci-Sabo since she had reached Istanbul on Friday.

Had it been taken at the consulate? she wondered. In the confusion of the woman’s arrival had someone really snapped her picture—or had it been taken of her
after
her abduction?

She looked at the police officer curiously. Was it possible that the Turkish government could have arranged Magda Ferenci-Sabo’s abduction from the British consulate? For the
first time she realized how important a defecting Communist agent must be to
them
. Russia was Turkey’s next-door neighbor, their frontiers met and their guards faced each other for several hundred miles in the east. A great deal of practical information could be extracted from a knowledgeable Communist defector, and why should they share her when it was they who lived virtually under Russia’s guns?

“Well?” demanded the police officer. “Is that the woman?”

“There’s a resemblance certainly but beyond that—she left so suddenly! Who is she?” Mrs. Pollifax inquired again. When he ignored this she said quietly, “I really think I must refuse to answer your questions until I am told precisely why I am here, or am allowed to telephone someone who can inform me why I am here.” She added severely, “I had understood Turkey was a country friendly to Americans—”

“To Americans, yes,” the man said flatly.

She was surprised. “You don’t believe that I’m American?”

The officer turned and exchanged a swift glance with the civilian behind him. “That is a possibility,” he said.

“But my passport—”

He looked at her pityingly. “Passports can be forged.” He hesitated and then leaned forward, frankly watching her face as he said with deliberation, “The woman to whom you were speaking is a woman wanted by the Turkish police, and one whom Officer Bey almost captured this evening. Her friends are of much interest to us—they may be our enemies. You arrived in Istanbul several hours ago, flying here directly without any tourist stops in between, and you meet this woman. A coincidence? We shall see.” He touched her passport with a finger. “In the meantime—while we very thoroughly investigate your identity—we shall keep your passport.”

She said indignantly, “I really must protest—”

He interrupted with a shrug. “You will, of course, notify your consul—we shall do this as well—but you are not to leave Istanbul, or the Hotel Itep, until you have been cleared to the satisfaction of all concerned.” His expression lightened. “We should be able to return to you the passport by late tomorrow afternoon—if your credentials, how do you call it, check out. You may return now to your hotel, please.” He did
not shake hands; the other man, Mr. Piskopos, nodded curtly, and Mrs. Pollifax left.

In the police car, as it carried her back to her hotel, Mrs. Pollifax experienced something of the loneliness of the outcast. She had successfully met Ferenci-Sabo—this much was now obvious—only to see the woman frightened away; and now she had ignominiously lost her passport for twenty-four hours. What did she do next? What
could
she do? Did she go again tomorrow night to the lobby at the same hour? She could imagine Officer Bey’s face should he see her there a second time at the same hour and clutching the same copy of
Gone with the Wind
. She did not concede failure as yet but she did admit to a deep discouragement and a certain amount of frustration.

She saw the hotel ahead, its exterior no longer nondescript at night under a blaze of neon color; somewhere along the pavement that other, nameless American agent had been pinned to a wall by an automobile. Mrs. Pollifax leaned forward. The taxi ahead of them slowed, turned, and pulled into the only empty space in front of the Itep to discharge Henry Miles—dear Henry, she thought fondly, and wondered what significance he had attached to her visit to police headquarters. His taxi drove away and as the police car in which she rode headed into the narrow opening another taxi suddenly cut in ahead of them, almost sideswiping them; a man leaped from it in a great hurry, pulled bills from his pockets, shoved them at the driver through the window and turned to run into the hotel. But something arrested him; he stopped, put his hands into his pockets and very casually sauntered across the pavement to the hotel. What he had seen, realized Mrs. Pollifax, was the back of Henry Miles disappearing into the lobby.

He was following Henry!
thought Mrs. Pollifax in astonishment. It was no more than an impression but it was a vivid one: the haste, the panic, the fear of having lost sight of the subject, followed by the abrupt halt and even more abrupt change to casualness.

Only a few yards from here—somewhere beyond the front entrance, Carstairs had said—that other agent had been killed on Sunday night.

I can’t let that happen to Henry—there must be some way to warn him
, she thought in horror. Carstairs had said,
There may be a leak somewhere, or with so damn many agents in Istanbul they may be keeping one another under surveillance
; but what if Henry didn’t know he had acquired a shadow?

She thanked her driver and walked into the hotel. There was no sign of Henry in the empty lobby. To the man at the desk she said, “There is an Englishman staying here, I saw him drop this earlier.” She held up her small travel guide to Turkey and smiled at the man. “If you tell me his room number I should like to return it to him.”

The translations took a few minutes and drew in the manager’s son, who was fourteen and “took the English” in school, but had apparently not ventured beyond nouns and pronouns, and very few of those. A dictionary was produced and each word spelled out before it was understood what she wanted, and the boy offered to take the book himself to room 214.

“No, no—thank you,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and then with another look at the dictionary added, “
Tesekkur edehim
, no.”

She walked up the stairs, ignored her own door and continued down the hall. The door to room 214 stood ajar and the lights were on. She tapped lightly. When there was neither reply nor movement she tapped again and then swung the door wide and peered inside. “Henry?” she called in a low voice. She recognized his green suitcase on the bed, its contents scattered all over the coverlet as if it had been unpacked by the simple expedient of turning it upside down. Then she saw that every drawer in the tall chest along the wall had been left open, and his trenchcoat lay on the floor in shreds. She realized that while Henry had waited patiently for her outside the police station someone had been searching his room. But who? And where was Henry?

The curtains opening to the balcony trembled slightly, catching Mrs. Pollifax’s eye, and her glance moved from the curtains to the open window and then to the darkness beyond. She shivered suddenly.
I’m not supposed to be here
, she thought.
I’m not even supposed to know Henry, and certainly I musn’t be found here calling out his name
. His absence was alarming. Had he unlocked his door, switched on
the light and retreated when he saw the state of his room? Was he even now down in the lobby complaining to the manager she had just left? Or had he stopped first in the public lavatory at the end of the hall?

She backed out of the room, touching nothing, and walked down the hall to the bathroom, but the door stood open and the room was empty. Mrs. Pollifax unlocked the door of her own room and flicked on the lights. Everything was in order, nothing had changed here except that a slip of white paper had been inserted under her door and glimmered white on the rug. “Henry!” she whispered in relief and picked it up, went to her window to check the lock, pulled the curtains and then unfolded the slip of paper.