Istanbul Passage (20 page)

At first, a jarring second, he thought it was Alexei leaning over Tommy’s secretary’s desk—the same cropped gray hair and straight military back, the jacket in fact a uniform, how Alexei must have dressed once. Voices pitched low, private. It was only when they heard him at the door and turned that Leon could see his face, fleshy, almost without definition, not like Alexei at all, except for the gray.

“Mr. Bauer,” Dorothy said, jumping a little, flustered.

A closer look now, navy jacket filling out at the waist, too old for active duty, but evidently not for making a pass. Dorothy was in her thirties with glasses and hair rolled up on top, maybe glad of the attention.

“My husband,” she said.

“Jack Wheeler,” he said, offering a hand. “Didn’t mean to— Just got in from Ankara so thought I’d stop by.”

Leon nodded.

“Jack’s Naval Attaché,” Dorothy said, explaining.

“In Ankara?”

“I know,” Wheeler said, a familiar question. “Not too many ships. But lots of admirals. You have to be where the orders are cut. But I
get to go back and forth, so we pass in the night once in a while,” he said, head toward Dorothy, who looked away at this, flustered again. “Navy wives. At least I’m not at sea. And once they wrap things up here at Commercial Corp.—how long’s your brief?” What everyone in the consulate wanted to know.

“They didn’t say.”

“One thing when the war’s on. You do your part. But now they’ll be bringing new girls over, let the wives go home. You’ll be in Ankara before you know it.”

“Yes,” Dorothy said evenly.

Wheeler smiled. “She says you might as well be in Omaha. But at least the streets are safe. Hell of a thing, a man getting shot like that. An American.”

“Jack, I’ll see you later,” Dorothy said, picking up a pad.

“Isn’t she something? All business. Well, that’s right, I guess. Nice to meet you,” he said, shaking hands again. “Sooner you wrap things up here, the better I’ll like it. You take good care of my girl here.”

“Jack—”

“We’ll do our best.”

“Hell of a thing, right in the streets. You knew him, I guess?” Wheeler said, looking at Leon.

“Just from around,” Leon said. “Everybody knew Tommy.”

Wheeler waited, expecting more, then nodded. “Well, I’ll get out of your hair. Later,” he said, a two-finger salute to Dorothy.

“I have the list you wanted,” she said to Leon, barely nodding at Wheeler, shooing him out with her eyes. “I’m not sure what you meant, though, by Athens. Mr. King never called Athens.”

“His embassy contact there.”

“There was no embassy. Greece was occupied,” she said. “Well, not now, of course.”

“He had no contact there?” Someone for Alexei, once he was over the border.

“I can get the general number if you need to talk to somebody. Is that it?”

“I thought there’d be a liaison. To this office.” Using the same cover.

“Not that I know of. We deal with Turkey, that’s all. He went to Ankara, sometimes. Izmir, once, to look at companies. But not Greece. Not as long as I’ve been here.” She paused, her hands fluttering, brushing back a stray hair. “Can I ask why you’re asking? I mean, I’m not sure I understand what you’re doing here. Everyone’s nervous as a cat since the—since Mr. King died. The police asking questions and Mr. Bishop coming in and now—” She stopped.

“And now me. Have a seat. I’m not sure I know what I’m doing here, either. Snooping, I guess. That’s what Frank wants anyway.”

“On Mr. King? He was the victim.”

“But not of a robbery. You know that. So I need to know anything that might—” He looked at her. “I need your help. You knew him better than anybody.”

“What makes you think that?” she said suddenly, head flying up, so unguarded that for a moment their eyes met and he knew, both of them silent with surprise. They looked at each other, bargaining. Another piece of Tommy’s secret life. Weekends somewhere? Here in the office? Tommy, of all people. Leon imagined her without her glasses, taking the pins out of her hair. Or did she regret it? Some moment of weakness that now threatened to blow up in her face. Shooing Wheeler away.

“Working with him, I mean,” Leon said. Safe, between us.

She looked away.

“Both jobs.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. Your husband’s on the embassy staff. He’d have security clearance. So you’d be vetted too. It was a natural fit.”

“I was an American wife with time on my hands. And I can type eighty words a minute.”

He held up his hand before she could say more. “Don’t. I worked for him too. Or did you already know that?”

They exchanged looks again, then she crossed her arms over her chest, a truce.

“You seem to think he—confided in me. It wasn’t like that. I did the work, that’s all. We didn’t talk about it.”

“Never?”

“Never,” she said, meeting his glance, setting a boundary.

“But you wouldn’t have to. Everything would go through you.”

“Not everything. He kept some things to himself.” A faint smile. “He was like that.” She looked up, making a decision, a direct stare. “What do you want to know?”

“We were bringing someone out. You knew that?”

She hesitated, then nodded.

“Who else did?”

“I don’t know. No one.”

“But someone must have.”

“Mr. Bishop took the operation file. You could look there.”

“I did. How about an appointment book?”

A sly smile, almost conspiratorial. “He never asked for that.”

“In my office, Turhan’s got my whole life there. Day by day.”

“I’ll get it,” she said, standing up.

“And a key for this by any chance?” he said, pointing down to the locked drawer.

She nodded then turned to go, taking off her glasses at the same time. Pleasant, no more, an ordinary woman, with enough sense to know better. Then Tommy had made her feel special. The mysteries of other people.

She came back with the calendar and a pink telephone slip.

“Mrs. King called,” she said with a straight face. “Wants to set up a time. To go over his things.”

“Okay.”

“He never kept anything at home, you know,” she said, slightly disapproving. “Said it was safer here.”

Leon took the appointment book.

“We locked the files at night. So the cleaning staff— He was strict about that. I know he liked a drink, but he didn’t talk, not even to me. Not about the work.”

“What did he talk about,” Leon said, leafing through pages. Hour after hour, all the scheduled appointments, but not random meetings in the hall, or a late drink at the Park.

“What do you mean?”

“The war? Politics?” he said easily, an idle question.

“Politics?” she said. “Tommy? I don’t even know whether he was Democrat or Republican. It never came up. You mean here? In Turkey? Well, it’s just one party, isn’t it, so there’s not much to say. I don’t think he cared about any of that. This office, you couldn’t. You have to deal with all kinds.”

“Mm.” He moved his finger over the page, shaking his head. “Look at this. He knew everybody in the building.”

“Well, the commercial department, you do,” she said, smiling a little. “But that was him too, what he was like.”

“The groom at every wedding.”

“What?”

“An expression.”

She started to turn away, suddenly at a loss. “Don’t forget to call Mrs. King,” she said, then handed him a key. “For the drawer.” She waited while he opened it.

“As I thought,” he said, bringing up a bottle. “He must have pouched this one in. You can’t get it here, since the war.”

“He brought it with him. I never saw him drink it, though. Too expensive. He was careful about money. His, anyway. Expense account—that was something else. I brought that too, by the way.” She indicated another folder. “Mr. Bishop didn’t ask for that, either.
Maybe you’ll find something there. Well, I’ll get back to the phone.” She fingered the expense folder, stalling. “You asked what we used to talk about? The house, sometimes. The one they were going to have when they got home. Him and Mrs. King. Big. With a powder room downstairs. He said it gave a house class, a powder room. You didn’t have to go upstairs. That’s what he used to talk about. To me.”

Leon looked up, caught by the break in her voice.

“So I guess he was saving it up for that,” she said, nodding at the bottle. “Anyway.”

“What are these?” Leon pulled some folders from the back of the drawer.

Dorothy opened one. “So that’s where he put them. I wondered. He didn’t want them with the rest of the files.”

“Why?” Leon said, rifling through. “Cross-refs to the Joint Distribution Committee? War Refugee Board?”

“He said one day they’d be history, but right now they were—not illegal exactly, just classified. He was proud of these. You know, people thought they knew what he was like.” She looked over at him. “But there was more to him than that. The side he didn’t let people see.”

Leon raised his head.

“Mr. Hirschmann, from the War Refugee Board, brought a boatload of children out. Tommy got the transit visas for the train. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been allowed to go. Strictly speaking, the ambassador wasn’t supposed to ask for something like that, so Mr. Hirschmann got Tommy to do it. Three hundred dollars each. I never forgot that. Imagine, selling children. He helped them lease some Turkish ships too. That’s how he knew about you. Your wife was working for one of the groups getting refugees out. Is she still doing that?”

“No.”

“But that’s how he heard. That you went to Ankara.” She nodded again at the expense folder. “Good luck with this,” she said, looking
straight at him, her voice lower. “He wasn’t always the most sensitive man in the world, but he had this side too. He didn’t deserve to be killed.”

Leon waited, feeling a burning in the tips of his ears, not sure how to answer. “Nobody does,” he said finally.

“No, that’s right. Nobody does.”

He suddenly imagined her entering a jury box, next to Barbara, next to Frank, all of them looking at him, taken in. The lies got easier, one leading to the next until you believed them yourself. The way it must have been for Tommy, lying to all of them too.

A few minutes later Frank came in, looking pleased.

“Take a look. Gülün actually came through with something. They’ve traced the other gun.”

“What other gun?”

“Tommy had two on him. Now why the hell he needed two never made any sense.”

“No,” Leon said carefully, seeing Tommy plant them, one in Alexei’s dead hand, one in his.

“And look. It turns out it’s Romanian.”

“The one he fired?”

“No. That was Turkish.”

“Turkish? He didn’t have his own?”

Frank nodded. “But a Turkish gun couldn’t be traced back here. No American connection, if anything happened.”

“Where did he get it?”

“Gülün says it’s like buying a pack of cigarettes. Not this baby, though,” Frank said, poking his finger at the police report. “Not so easy to pick up a Romanian gun.” He looked up. “Unless you happened to be meeting a Romanian.”

“So you think it’s Jianu’s?”

“Don’t you? Maybe Tommy frisks him—he should have—and, oh, look, maybe we’ll just hold onto this until— Too bad, in a way. Meant Jianu was unarmed when the Russians got there. They plug Tommy and the guy hasn’t got a chance.”

Leon listened to him fill in the scenario in his head, detail by plausible detail.

“So where does that get us?”

“Not very far. But not wondering about two guns anymore, either. So one less thing.” His eye caught the open folder on Leon’s desk. “Oh, the kids,” he said. “He kept copies? He wasn’t supposed to.”

“You can read upside down? Quite a talent.”

“The letterhead. Hirschmann had his own.” He picked up a sheet, glancing at it. “So now you know. Not that it matters anymore, I guess.”

“Now I know what?”

“What you were carrying,” Frank said easily. “Tommy always used you for the Hirschmann deals.”

“These?” Leon said. “Why? Why not use the pouch?”

“He never explained? Distance the ambassador. You send it by pouch, it’s official. Logged in. Distributed. This way Steinhart could say he never knew. What did you think you were carrying? The Allied invasion plan?”

“No,” Leon said, looking away, oddly embarrassed, remembering the train, alert in his compartment, feeling important. He picked up a folder. “War Refugee Board? He had to be distanced from that?”

“You have to remember what it was like last year. The Bulgarians, the Romanians—Hitler doesn’t look like a winner anymore.
Everybody wants some way to look good to the Allies, for after. You know even Eichmann approached us? Wanted to trade trucks for the Budapest Jews. That didn’t go anywhere—sending war matériel to the Nazis?” He touched the folder, reminiscing. “But Hirschmann got a waiver from Morgenthau in Treasury. Otherwise, he’d be trading with the enemy—which is what it was, technically, you’ve got money changing hands. So he could make deals. He says he got fifteen thousand out. Maybe less, he likes to exaggerate. But we’re not supposed to know. Nothing in the pouch. So Tommy sends you. No embassy connection, and if anybody finds out, well, you’ve got a wife in the business. It’d be natural, you being involved in this.”