Stardust (68 page)

“Washington. You know, September they handed us over to the War Department. Couldn’t get rid of Bill fast enough, I guess. What G-2 wanted all along. R&A went to State. Whole unit. Now they’re Research Intelligence. Office of. But the field? What’s the War Department going to do with field officers? War’s over.”

“Tell that to the Russians,” Leon said.

“That’s Europe. Not here. Christ, Leon, you didn’t think we’d just keep going here forever, did you? After the war?” he said, his tone slightly defensive. “Ah, Mehmet.” Making room for the new drinks, some banter Leon didn’t hear as he watched Tommy’s face, the red cheeks moving as he talked. Knowing it was coming, arranging his own transfer, taking care of business. A desk at the War Department? Or something closer to the Mayflower bar? He looked down at the fresh drink, his stomach queasy. Now what? Back to the desk at Reynolds, days without edge.

“When does this happen?”

“End of the month.”

Just like that.

“What about me?”

“You? I thought you’d be glad it’s over. You never wanted— I had to talk you into it, remember? Though I have to say you took right to it. Best I had. You know that, don’t you? That I always thought that.” He moved his hand, as if he were about to put it on Leon’s, but stopped. “I could put in a word for you— I mean, knowing Turkish, that’s something. But they’re closing the shop here. Everything back to G-2 and you don’t want to join the army, do you?” He looked over the brim of his glass. “It’s time to go home, Leon. OWI’s already packed up. Everybody’s going home.”

“I haven’t been back to the States in— what? Ten years now.”

“You don’t want to stay here. What’s here?”

My life.

“Get Reynolds to transfer you back. Be a big shot in the tobacco business.”

Would they? An office in a long corridor of offices, sharing a secretary, not his own corner overlooking Taksim. A house in Raleigh with a small yard, not the flat on Aya Paşa looking all the way to the Sea of Marmara. Anna where?

He shook his head. “I don’t want to move Anna. She’s doing so well now. Real progress. A move now—” The lie effortless, one of the reasons he’d been the best.

“She’d do even better in the States, if you ask me. They could do something for her there. Hospitals here—” He stopped. “You look all funny. What is it? The money?”

“The money?” Leon snorted. “What you pay? That’s not enough to notice.” Just enough to make a difference. “It’s the drink, I guess,” he said, pushing it away. “I’m beat. All the waiting around.” He looked up, feeling Tommy staring at him, alert behind the glassy eyes. “I never did it for money, you know.”

“I know. I appreciate that.”

“I’m surprised we’re pulling out, that’s all. Be a little dull. Pushing paper at the office.”

“Want to push some more? They’re going to need somebody at Western Electric. Middle East account— the whole territory. Guy in charge now is leaving.”

“For Washington?”

“So I hear.”

“You had someone at Western too?”

“Now, now.”

“Like to keep your bets all over the table, don’t you?” Separate drawers, separate secrets.

“Safer that way.”

“You’ll be running out of covers soon. No more Lend-Lease. No more OWI. Western Electric. Even the guy in the tobacco business.”

“What guy?”

Leon smiled. “I’m going to miss you. I guess. When do you go?”

“As soon as we can arrange air transport. For our friend. The one who got seasick tonight.”

“You’re going with him?”

“We don’t want him to travel alone. He might get lost. We just need to park him here for a day or so. Then all your troubles are over. But while you’ve got him— well, I don’t have to tell you. It’s not as if you’ve never done this before. Just be careful.”

“Always.”

“With this one, I mean. Lots of people want to talk to him. So all the old rules. He doesn’t go out. He doesn’t—”

“I know the rules, Tommy. If you’re that nervous, why don’t you pick him up yourself?”

“Spread the bets, Leon. This time, I’m not even at the table. Nothing to see, nothing to connect me. I just pack up my bags and leave. You run into people on the plane, that’s all. But I can’t put him there. The board would light up. I’m not invisible here.”

“And I am.”

“You’re freelance. They won’t be expecting that. Not for him.”

“What’s he got, that you have to take him to Washington yourself?”

“Leon.”

“You owe me that much.”

Tommy looked at him for a minute, then downed the rest of his drink. “Lots,” he said finally, nodding. “Up here.” He touched his temple. “Also a very nice photo album.”

“Of?”

“Mother Russia. Aerial recon. The Germans photographed everything, when they still could. Valuable snaps now.”

“And he got these how?”

“That I couldn’t say. Fell off a truck, maybe. Things do. Want another?”

Leon shook his head. “I’d better go. Start being invisible. Here, finish this.”

“Well, since I’m paying—”

Leon stood up. “Some evening.”

“Tomorrow then. One more and you’re a free man.”

Leon looked at him, disconcerted by the phrase. “Who is he, Tommy?”

“He’ll answer to John.”

“As in Johann? German?”

“As in John Doe.” He glanced up. “No funny business, okay? Let Washington ask the questions. Just do your piece. There’ll be a bonus in it, if I can talk them into it.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“That’s right. Good of the country. Still. Think of it as— I don’t know, for old times’ sake.” He turned his head to the room.

“You coming?”

“I’ll just finish this. Give the place one last look. Goddam three-ring circus, wasn’t it?” he said, his voice drooping, like his eyes, maudlin.

Leon picked up his damp coat. “By the way,” Tommy said, sharp again. “Separate pieces, but where the hell’s Laleli?”

“Past the university. Before you get to Aksaray.”

“Christ, who goes out there?”

“That’s the idea.”

PRAISE FOR
STARDUST

“In Stardust, Kanon rescues postwar Los Angeles from noir clichés. . . .Hovering over it all, like a freakish fog off the Pacific, is the shadow of the Holocaust, its enormity only now becoming apparent. . . . [Kanon] operates with an intelligence that briskly evokes the atmosphere of a vanished era.” —
The New York Times Book Review

“A delicious synthesis of menace and glamour, historical fact and rich imagination. . . . Among the real movie people making appearances here is Paulette Goddard—just one element of a perfect setting for a story in which nothing is obvious.” —
The Seattle Times

“Spectacular in every way . . . wonderfully imagined, wonderfully written, an urgent personal mystery set against the sweep of glamorous and sinister history. Joseph Kanon owns this corner of the literary landscape and it's a joy to see him reassert his title with such emphatic authority.” —Lee Child

“Stardust is sensational! No one writes period fiction with the same style and suspense – not to mention substance—as Joseph Kanon. A terrific read.” —Scott Turow

“STARDUST is the perfect combination of intrigue and accurate history brought to life.” —Alan Furst

PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS NOVELS BY JOSEPH KANON

The Good German

“Kanon is the heir apparent to Graham Greene; he writes of moral quandaries that are real and not created to drive a plot. A multilayered story, beautifully told.” —
The Boston Globe

“[Kanon] is fast approaching the complexity and relevance not just of le Carré and Green but even of Orwell: provocative, fully realizes fiction that explores, as only fiction can, the reality of history as it is lived by individual men and women.” —
The New York Times Book Review

“As he did in Los Alamos, Kanon demonstrates an eerie mastery of the evocative historical detail . . . You can feel the shattered glass crunching beneath your feet as you read. You can smell the smoke-scorched broken bricks . . . Kanon is as ambitious a novelist as he is a gifted one.” —
The Washington Post

“Gripping . . . Kanon has written a tale about the untenable choices war entails, and about the moral dangers of demonization. For American readers, the book cuts to the bone, coming at a time when we have become the demonized and are doing our best to avoid becoming the demonizers.” —
Newsday

“The kind of book that reads so easily that it’s almost impossible to put down once you’ve started it.” —
The Baltimore Sun

“What the The Third Man World did for Vienna immediately after World War II, Kanon’s superb thriller does for Berlin during the same period.” —
Booklist

Alibi

“Burrowing deeply into Patricia Highsmith territory, Kanon has crafted an absorbing tale . . . [Kanon is frequently compared to the likes of john le Carré and Graham Greene. With Alibi, he shows that he’s up to the comparison.” —
San Francisco Chronicle

“Kanon’s richest, most full-blooded work to date . . . [He] has mastered the art of the historical thriller.” —
The New York Times Book Review

“Disturbing and hypnotically readable, Alibi is a mystery, a love story, and a work of philosophy—and a perfect companion for the thriller reader who wants a philosophical challenge, as well as entertainment.” —
Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Joseph Kanon is a specialist in superior historical thrillers. . . . Moody, deeply atmospheric, and as labyrinthine as the streets of Venice.” —
The Seattle Times

“Alibi is a thriller with a slide-rule perfect plot . . . Wholly engrossing and one of the finest thrillers you will read this year – up there with the classics of the genre.”—
The Daily Telegraph
(London)

“Once again, Kanon has written a novel set against the backdrops of World War II that is evocative and sensitive, moody and thought provoking.” —
Arizona Daily Star

“Kanon juxtaposes a powerful love story and a gripping thriller against a palpable historical moment. . . . The novel holds us completely, with its vision of a sadly inadequate hero striking deep at our fears about ourselves.”—
Booklist

“Kanon offers such vivid sensory detail that a reader emerges as steeped in atmospherics as a seasoned diplomat with a passport full of visa stamps. You feel initiated, as if you’ve been let in on some dark and well-kept secrets from some of the twentieth century’s most pivotal moments. . . . In Kanon’s eclectic cast of policemen, soldiers, revolutionaries, and ex-pat socialites, no one is spared the deep, dark smudges offered by war and its aftermath.” —
Baltimore Sun

“If you want to explore life, love, death, beauty, and moral confusion, you won’t do much better than this.” —
San Jose Mercury News

The Prodigal Spy

“An edgy spy thriller . . . [and] a tale of love—between father and son, man and woman—set against a foreboding background that is poignant and imminently believable.” —
The Denver Post

“Compelling . . . intriguing . . . reads beautifully and convinces utterly.” —
The Wall Street Journal

Los Alamos

“Powerful . . . Compelling . . . [Kanon] pulls the reader into a historical drama of excitement and high moral seriousness.” —
The New York Times

“A well-plotted novel that effortlessly dissolves real people and events into an elegant and moving thriller.” —
San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

Joseph Kanon is the author of five previous novels
Stardust, Alibi, The Good German, The Prodigal Spy
, and
Los Alamos
.
Alibi
won the 2005 Hammett Award for Best Novel from the International Association of Crime Writers, and Kanon was the 2007 recipient of The Anne Frank Foundation Writes Award. His work has appeared in 24 languages. Before becoming a full-time writer, he was a book publishing executive. He lives in New York City.

Atria Books/Simon & Schuster Author Page
authors.simonandschuster.com/Joseph-Kanon/1766010

Author Website
JosephKanon.com

A Walking Tour of Hollywood
youtube.com/watch?v=V-yF8lS4TgA

About Atria Books

Atria Books was launched in April 2002 by publisher Judith Curr as a new hardcover and paperback imprint within Simon & Schuster, Inc. The name Atria (the plural of
atrium
—a central living space open to the air and sky) reflects our goals as publishers: to create an environment that is always open to new ideas and where our authors and their books can flourish. We look for innovative ways to connect writers and readers, integrating the best practices of traditional publishing with the latest innovations in the digital world. We are committed to publishing a wide range of fiction and nonfiction for readers of all tastes and interests.

The first book published under the Atria name,
The Right Words at the Right Time
by Marlo Thomas, became an instant #1
New York Times
bestseller, and since then Atria has gone on to publish more than 185 
New York Times
 bestsellers. Atria is the publishing home to many major bestselling authors including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Jude Deveraux, Vince Flynn, T.D. Jakes, Shirley MacLaine, Kate Morton, Jodi Picoult, Sister Souljah, Brad Thor, Jennifer Weiner, Lauren Weisberger, Zane, and Rhonda Byrne, author of the international bestsellers
The Secret
and
The Power.

In recent years, the imprint has placed a strategic emphasis on publishing for diverse audiences through the acquisition of the African American–oriented press Strebor Books, the launch of Atria Books Español, and co-publishing agreements with Beyond Words Publishers and Cash Money Records. Atria Books also publishes literary fiction and topical nonfiction in trade paperback under the Washington Square Press imprint, and popular fiction and nonfiction under the Emily Bestler Books imprint, launched in 2011.