Istanbul (17 page)

‘
Liebling
,
I want you,’ he whispered.

‘I want you too,’ she said.

But she did not want the intimacy of him inside her. Instead she started to kiss his chest, then his belly, as signal of her intention, and his hand on her head encouraged her.

She heard him groan as she took him in her mouth, felt a sense of relief that perhaps this was all he would expect of her tonight.

What a great actress I am, she thought. I wonder if I will ever really know this girl I am playing to the world.

CHAPTER 36

The next morning, with twenty-six developed negatives in a brown manila envelope under his arm, Nick knocked on the door of Abrams’s office. He had not shaved, had hardly slept. Abrams stared at him in mild disapproval.

‘Davis. You look terrible. What’s happened?’

‘Something I want you to see.’

Nick put the envelope on his desk. Abrams frowned and picked it up.

He spread the glossy black and white prints on the desktop. Nick handed him a magnifying glass. Abrams examined each of the prints in turn, without comment.

‘Some of it appears to be routine traffic between Berlin and Istanbul,’ Nick said, when he was finished. ‘But there are two top secret dispatches from Canaris to von Papen in Ankara. I’ll have them properly translated but this one appears to be detailed plans of German ground forces in Bulgaria, and this one is from von Papen describing his efforts to pressure Ankara into allowing military advisers into the country.’ He picked up another of the prints. ‘This one has the name of a Turkish national at the Ministry of Defence who has been supplying the Abwehr with classified information from the Minister’s Office.’

Abrams leaned back in his chair and regarded Nick down the length of the fine patrician nose. ‘This is very impressive. How did you come by this material?’

‘Daniela Simonici. You were right. She’s a gold mine.’

‘She’ll need some coaching. Some of the photographs are blurred.’

Nick swallowed down a flash of temper. Daniela had taken terrible risks to get these and Abrams’s first instinct was to complain.

‘Not bad for her first attempt, though,’ he said.

‘How did she come by them?’

‘She stole them from Maier’s safe.’

Abrams was silent, considering the implications. Finally, he returned his attention to the photographs. ‘We should give your new agent a code name.’

‘I’ve already given it some thought. What about Trojan?’

Abrams mused on this. As a history scholar, with an honours degree from Oxford university, it perhaps seemed a little too obvious. ‘The Trojan horse. The prize Maier brings into his own house, not knowing he has invited the enemy. Very good, Davis. Now I appreciate you’ve probably been up all night with this but perhaps you should look the part of the assistant military attaché and go home and have a shave and a bath.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Nick said and got up to leave.

‘And Davis,’ Abrams said.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well done,’ he said and for a moment the expression on his face was almost human.

CHAPTER 37

Every garden had a Judas tree, and with spring the Asiatic side at Scutari was a blaze of red. Cherries appeared in the fruit market and cockchafers swarmed in the treetops. Belgrade and Athens fell to the Germans, and on one terrible night in May the Luftwaffe dropped one hundred incendiaries bombs on London.

While Nick shopped for melons and apricots and peaches in the nearby markets, the Germans launched a massive invasion of Russia. The oil at Ploesti fuelled Hitler’s Panzer divisions as they rolled through Minsk.

With autumn there were figs and grapes, and polite conversation at cocktail parties in Pera. They ate mussels fried in batter, caviar, and savoury lobster patties while they starved in Stalingrad.

As 1941 rolled away the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and finally brought the Americans into the war that had convulsed the rest of the world. Nineteen ships of the Amercian navy went down that December morning, but it was the fate of a rusting hulk called the
Struma
that consumed Nick’s attention that grim winter.

CHAPTER 38

Nick crossed the lobby of the Pera Palas, and ran up the marble steps to the domed foyer. It was a curious mixture of the Orient and Victoriana, the red plush and mahogany at odds with the fretted and arched windows of the mezzanine.

He found Max nursing a gin and tonic in the bar, swaying dangerously on one of the high stools. He had been drinking heavily since Bucharest; the dash through the snow and the encounter with the young green shirt with the rifle had ruined his nerves.

‘You look like death,’ he said to Nick as he walked in. ‘Hell you been up to, sport?’

‘Just tired.’

‘If you say so. Drink?’

‘Why not?’

Max ordered two more gin and tonics. ‘Have you heard about this ship that’s docking here tomorrow? The
Struma
, out of Constanza. Some rust bucket packed with Jewish refugees that no-one wants. Ancient Mariner all over again. Or the Ancient Meshuggah in this case,’ he said and gave a braying laugh.

‘Nothing we can do for them here.’

‘Of course not. We’re British. We don’t do things for other people, against our religion.’

‘You have a point, Max?’ Nick said, irritated.

‘Have you heard the rumours, old chum? About what’s happening in our old stamping grounds? Never liked gypsies and Jews, can’t trust ’em, but I’ve heard the Germans are loading them in cattle trucks and thousands of ‘em are just disappearing. There’s been massacres in Kishev.’

Nick knew about the massacre in Kishev and the mass deportation of Jews and gypsies from Bessarabia and Bucovina. He had compiled endless reports for Whitehall but so far he had had no response.

‘So what are they saying at the consulate, old chum? Will the Panzers be rolling across the Galata Bridge next week?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘Come on. Just a whisper. Won’t print it. Mother’s life.’

‘It’s true. We don’t know, Max. I don’t think even Hitler knows what he’s going to do next. But why would he attack Turkey while he’s got his hands full in Russia?’

Max finished his drink and ordered another. ‘Sometimes I have this nightmare about the Luftwaffe dropping incendiaries on Istanbul. All these wooden houses, they’d see the glow in Dusseldorf.’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’

‘Guess who I saw the other day? That chap Maier. Remember him? Spent the longest two hours of my life with you trying to get his mistress out of the shit.’

Nick saw a Turk in a brown suit smoking and drinking
raki
, reflected in one of the mirrored pillars. He was pretending to read a copy of the
Cumhurriyet
. They were being watched. Emniyet, the Turkish intelligence service, he supposed.

‘What do you think he’s doing here? Think he still has that girl with him?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Max gave him a wry smile. ‘Careful, old love. Don’t get caught up again.’

‘No idea what you mean,’ Nick said, and let the matter drop.

Abrams sat in the back of the Bentley, staring at the bustle along the docks at Eminönü with a look of utter disdain. The windows were up but his nose wrinkled at the smell of fish.

Nick had known Abrams now for over two years and was still not sure what to make of him. He was an austere man, never given to laughter or anger. Some people called him cold but yet he could be passionate about history and philosophy. He struck Nick as the sort of man who loved humanity, but just didn’t like people very much.

‘Well, there she is,’ Abrams murmured.

The
Struma
was docked opposite the Tophane ferry landing, three hundred yards from the shore on the Asian side. They got out of the car and walked to the quay for a better view. The morning air was bitter and their breath formed clouds on the air.

The
Struma
was streaked with rust. The gulls circled above it, screeching.

‘Christ, I wouldn’t cross the lake in Regent’s Park in that,’ Nick said.

Abrams frowned at the blasphemy.

Tugboats and Turkish navy gunboats were beetling around it and soldiers patrolled the wharves in case some misguided refugee tried to swim for the piers. Crowds of Turks had come down to stare, their expressions hostile. They were Jews out there, and they didn’t want them in Turkey.

The
Struma
had left Constanza three days before, loaded with refugees fleeing Romania. At the mouth of the Bosphorus the engine had failed and the ship had started to drift towards a minefield, but was rescued by a Turkish navy tugboat. They had towed it the last eighteen miles to Istanbul.

‘The captain has told the port authorities that the engine needs repairs but they’re suspicious. It’s going to take about a week to fix the problem but no-one wants to pay the five thousand US dollars. They’re not allowing any of the crew or the passengers off the ship while it’s done.’

Shadows of rain drifted towards them. They hurried back to the car.

‘Can’t we do something?’

Abrams gave him a disbelieving look. ‘Why?’

‘For the sake of decency. Out of Christian charity.’

‘What would they want with Christian charity? They’re Jews. Besides, Whitehall suspects there are Nazi agents among the refugees.’

‘What possible reason do they have to think that?’

‘Romania is on Germany’s side now. We have to be diligent, Davis. The Germans have set up a school in Prague to train their agents to act as Jews. They learn to speak Yiddish and how to pray.’

‘I suppose they have themselves circumcised as well.’ They got back into the car. ‘With all due respect, sir, that’s utterly ridiculous.’

‘I know that and so do you, but it’s government policy and it’s our job to implement it. What may not be so ridiculous is the idea that the Nazis are deliberately flooding us with Jewish refugees in order to upset the Arabs in Palestine and bring them into the Axis camp.’

Nick nodded in the direction of the
Struma
. ‘But what’s going to happen to them?’

‘That’s not the concern of the British Government. We have problems enough of our own.’

They drove back across the Galata Bridge. Nick felt sick to his stomach. Politics was a simple matter when people were just numbers. It was when they had faces that it became complicated.

CHAPTER 39

The attaché, Donaldson, was an enigma; he was short, stout and bespectacled, with the most beautiful wife any man on staff had ever seen. Without her he might have become a figure of fun, for he was the most boring man Nick had ever met. But his wife’s charm conferred a certain cachet. There was not a man or woman in the consulate who did not look at Donaldson and speculate on his secret, or, in the case of the younger men on the staff, treat him with a kind of mystified awe.

Nick and Abrams were shown into his office by his secretary. It was large and uncluttered, with tall windows and a commanding and airy view.

Donaldson sat behind his desk, fingers steepled. He was not alone; Nick’s old friend from the Haganah, Jacob Ben-Arazi, was with him.

After the introductions were made, Donaldson offered Ben-Arazi a cup of tea.

‘No, I don’t want any tea. I want you to do something for those people on that boat.’

Donaldson asked his secretary for a pot of tea anyway.

‘Have you seen the
Struma
?’ Ben-Arazi said.

‘Mr Davis and I have just driven up from the docks,’ Abrams said.

‘There are over seven hundred people on that ship, more than three hundred are women and children! It was designed to carry one hundred passengers.’

‘Yes. I understand.’

‘Do you, Mr Abrams? Do you understand what it is like to be a Jew in any country other than your own? For instance, do you know that before they left Constanza these people had their money and their jewels stolen from them on the docks?’

‘Mr Davis here was one of the last members of our legation in Bucharest to leave Romania,’ Donaldson said. ‘I am sure he understands as well as any of us.’

Ben-Arazi looked at Nick. As if a non-Jew could possibly understand, he was thinking. ‘These people want to go to Palestine but your government won’t give them visas.’