The Hidden Target (23 page)

Everything was normal. The
DO NOT DISTURB
notice still dangled; the door to their bedroom was locked, as it should be. After a small struggle with the cumbersome key—an ideal shape to prevent forgetful tourists from walking away with it—Nina could enter. She went in, smiles and cheerful words ready for Madge. The invalid was recovering. She was sitting on her bed, dressed in shirt and jeans.

“Feeling better?” Nina asked. “Better enough to go out for dinner? But change into your dress. We’re driving up the Bosporus to one of those restaurants that—”

“Going out for dinner?” a man’s voice asked, and James Kiley stepped out of the bathroom.

Madge said quickly, “When we heard your key in the lock, Jim wanted to surprise you.”

And when, Nina wondered, did he get here? How did he find us? She stared at him unbelievingly.

“I hope it was a nice surprise,” Kiley said, coming forward to remove her bag from her shoulder and throw it on her bed. He looked into her eyes. “Not the kind you gave me. Oh, Nina, Nina!” His arms slid around her and drew her close. “Don’t do that ever again! Don’t do that to me, Nina.” He kissed her hard; then suddenly letting go, he turned to glance at Madge.

“Don’t let me stop you,” Madge told him, but he walked over to the window, stood looking out, his back to the room. Madge shrugged her shoulders, said to Nina, “How was it?”

From silence, Nina broke into a rush of words. “Fabulous. I wish you could have made it, Madge. And tomorrow Topkapi is closed. But Suleyman will take us to the Bazaar and the Blue Mosque. He’s an excellent guide. And I think he really is a poet. Flights of phrases.” She eyed Jim’s back. Am I supposed to go over to him and say I’m sorry? Or is he really so upset that he doesn’t want to face us? “As we were leaving the second courtyard, the one where the kitchens have miles of shelving with all the Ming dinnerware displayed...” She didn’t end the sentence, cutting off any reference to Bob Renwick. She could hear Madge saying, but how wonderful, how is he, was that why you were late in getting back here, what did you talk about? And if she replied that Bob had been persuading her to leave? No thank you, she decided: Jim was in a bad enough mood right now. Her fault, too, she had to admit. So she rushed on, “I was so tired and hot that I decided I wanted a seat at a café and something to drink. Tea was all I got. But it was marvellous.”

“So that’s where you and Suleyman were,” Madge said. She spoke to Jim’s back. “See, I told you Nina was perfectly safe. There was nothing to worry about.”

Kiley swung around to face Nina. “Wasn’t there?” he asked quietly. “First, you scare the daylights out of me when you took off in Greece. Next, you spend hours with some little tout who picked you up at the docks.”

Madge cut in. “I told you all about that, and he isn’t a tout. I told you all about our travel in Greece, too, so you don’t have to keep worrying about Nina. You might think a little about me. I’m the one who fell ill.” Then she tried to laugh, said to Nina, “He’s been here for the last hour—almost—and nearly drove me back to bed with all his questions.”

Kiley said, “I had every right to be anxious. Nina can’t go wandering off by herself like that in a strange city.”

Let’s end this, Nina thought. “I’m sorry, Jim. But I really didn’t expect you here until tomorrow afternoon. Did you cut your visit short in Greece?”

“Oh, they drove like mad all yesterday,” Madge said, “and crossed the frontier last night. No wonder he’s in a bad mood.”

Nina was surprised. “Why all the rush, Jim?”

He said, “No rush, actually. Just trying to get back on schedule.”

“And where is everyone now?”

“We found an inn on the outskirts of the city, nice little place with a courtyard. There are some gypsies around—local colour, you know—so Tony’s keeping an eye on the camper.”

“And how is our Jolly Green Giant?”

Kiley stared at her.

Don’t tell me he has to have that little juke explained, thought Nina.

Madge was smiling. “Don’t you ever watch TV commercials, Jim?”

“Rarely.”

“Our Jolly Green Giant is now dark brown,” Madge told Nina. “It had an accident and the paint got scarred. Nothing serious, otherwise. But
you
know Tony. He had to have it looking perfect.”

“But why not keep it green? I rather liked it.”

Kiley said, “There was only a light green available. It would have taken three coats of spraying to cover the damage.”

Nina dropped down on her bed. “I really am tired. We must have covered miles and miles. All I want now is a hot bath and then—”

Madge said, “You’ll have to hurry. Jim has a car waiting for us.”

“The innkeeper’s son drove me in,” Jim explained. “He’ll drive us back.”

“We’re leaving, Nina,” Madge said. “No dinner on the Bosporus. But there’s one at the inn—all arranged—gypsies and music and dancing.”

“Leaving?”

“Yes,” said Jim, “and we are late as it is.”

Nina sat bolt upright. “Look, Jim, I’m not leaving tonight. I’m going to have—” She halted abruptly.

“Have dinner with a guide? A young kid who just happened to appear at the docks this morning. Who sent him?”

“Jim—”

“Some story he laid on you! What’s his name—his full name?”

“Jim—I wasn’t going to have dinner with Suleyman. Madge and I were going to—”

“What’s his name?”

“I didn’t catch all of it. Did you, Madge?”

Madge shook her head. “He
is
a guide and interpreter, Jim. And we needed one. Without him, we wouldn’t even have found a hotel where I could be sick in comfort.”

“So he steered you here? I think I’ll get the police on to this.”

“And get him into trouble for doing nothing wrong?” Nina demanded. “You ought to thank him for making your job easy.”

He looked at her sharply.

“For helping you to track us down,” Nina said patiently. “There are a lot of hotels in Istanbul.”

“And I must have ’phoned half of them.”

“Come on, Jim. How many, really?” She was thinking, he really was worried about me.

“Three,” he admitted and laughed and took her hands to draw her to her feet. “All those where Americans are sure to be found. Now, have a quick bath if you must—Five minutes? Madge can pack for you.” His arms were around her. “My God, anything could have happened to you today. I’m sorry if I was uptight. But—”

“Pack?”

“We’re leaving. Madge told you.”

Nina struggled free from his embrace. “Look,” she said angrily, “I’ll go to the inn for dinner. But I’m coming back here to sleep in that bed. It’s mine and I haven’t—”

“There’s a bed at the inn, if that’s what you want. Now hurry, or you won’t even have time for that bath.”

“But we have this room. Why waste the money?”

“Counting your dollars?” he teased her.

“Why can’t we stay here tonight?”

“Because we leave at the crack of dawn for Bursa.”

“What? We don’t even have one more morning in Istanbul?”

“We’ve got to be in Bursa by tomorrow. That is, if you want the others to have time on the following day for that side trip to Troy. Or have you forgotten about them, Nina?”

I’ll scream, she thought, if he reminds me that Troy is one place I’ve always wanted to see. But he didn’t. He gave her a gentle push towards the bathroom. “Five minutes,” he said.

She reached for her bag.

“Going to wash that, too?”

“My make-up,” she told him and left for the quickest of showers. “Madge,” she called back, “hand me my shirt and jeans, will you?”

And what about Bob? she was thinking as she slipped out of her Greek dress. I just can’t leave without an apology, some explanation why I cut his date. I can’t do that, not to Bob... From her bag she took out her small sketchbook and pen. She tore off a page, carefully leaving intact the ones already filled with her copies of decorations and designs. Her message had to be brief: the shower, now running, was ready; minutes were vanishing. She finished writing, folded her note, slipped it into her wallet.

“Seven minutes,” Jim told her when she came back into the room carrying her folded dress to pack into her duffel bag. He was at ease, tension and worry banished. “Changed your hair back to normal? I prefer it. But I liked that dress. You looked good in it. When will you wear it for me?”

“Whenever we can get dressed up for dinner. Not much chance of that for a long time. I’ve been looking at a map, Jim. We’re really going to be travelling through some wild places. I think you should buy three black bed sheets. Then Marie-Louis, Madge, and I could wrap ourselves up like cocoons, and no one would give us a second look.”

“You’ll be safe. All the way into India. I’ll buy you a sari there. How’s that?”

“In New Delhi?” She had been trying to persuade him towards there for a major stop—after all, he knew she had spent two years in New Delhi with her parents. “I wonder how much I remember of it. I was four years old when I was sent home with Mother.”

“You were too young to remember anything. It’s always a disappointment to go back.”

“Then where do we make a major stop? Calcutta—oh, no!”

“What about Bombay?”

“And before that?”

“Curious, aren’t you?”

She concentrated on repacking the top items of her duffel bag, said, “We just like to know what we are going to see. Don’t we, Madge?”

Madge nodded. “Something to look forward to. No more dead ends, Jim—like that awful café on that empty beach in Greece. Six days there? I ask you.”

“We’ll stop at plenty of interesting towns and villages,” he assured them. “Even the wildest places will be safe.” He was amused. He began walking around the room, making sure nothing had been left.

“What about languages, road signs?” Nina asked. After today’s experiences, her confidence was shaken. “Tony may be good at following maps, but what about food and shelter?”

“We’ll manage,” Jim said. “We’ve got an interpreter for each country where language is a difficulty. We have one for Turkey right now. He met us at the frontier last night.”

“But how?” She was knotting the duffel bag’s cord, securely but slowly, wondering now about her note to Bob: would Jim find an excuse to read it when she left it at the desk?

“Advance booking. Simple. There’s a tourist agency that handles these things.”

“Such efficiency!” Madge exclaimed. “But what extravagance.”

“Not much. You pay a little and you get a lot.”

“Oh, heavens!” Nina was horrified. “Three dollars a day. Madge, we forgot all about that!”

Kiley stared at them in turn.

“Suleyman’s fee,” Madge said.

Nina moved to the writing table. “I’ll leave him a message cancelling tomorrow.”

“There’s no paper left, just envelopes,” Madge said. “I used it to write my mother and Beth Jenson and Herb Galway and—”

“Letters?” Kiley asked. “I’ll mail them downstairs while you check out. The time you waste, you two! Come on, come on.”

Nina found an envelope. “I’ll put the money in this and leave it at the desk.”

“Marked for Suleyman? Some hope that he’ll ever get it.”

“At least I tried.” That would make a nice epitaph for her tombstone, she thought as she scrawled Suleyman’s name on the envelope. She took out her wallet and removed three dollars from her American-money section. Her note to Bob was among them. She had a brief pang of guilt as Jim, with Madge’s bag in his hand, came to pick up hers. “I’ll leave Suleyman’s envelope downstairs with our room key,” she said, and wondered at her calm voice. Not really a lie, she told herself: I didn’t tell the facts, but who asked me for them? A lie is the opposite of truth, and that’s a different matter. I wasn’t the one to say I was going by bus to Salonika and then took a car in quite another direction.

Still troubled by that memory—but now she knew somehow that she’d never challenge Jim on that story—she followed him into the corridor.

***

In the lobby, Madge said, “There’s Suleyman!” He was standing by one of the decorative plants, talking amiably with a bellboy. But his eyes were alert. He had seen the girls and the stranger. No astonishment showed on his face. He looked completely unconcerned, and totally innocent of the stranger’s sharp scrutiny.

A seventeen- or eighteen-year-old kid, thought Kiley; nothing to worry about there. “I’ll get the right stamps for your letters,” he told Madge. “Shove them in my pocket. And you tell the desk you’re checking out. I’ll pay the bill when it’s ready.”

Nina said, “I’ll do that, Jim. But first—Suleyman.”

“Keep it short.”

“I will,” she called back, already on her way. “Suleyman— your fee,” she told him, handing him the envelope. “With our thanks.”

“You are leaving?”

“Yes. And inside the envelope you will find a note. Please give it to my friend—the man who met us today at Topkapi. He will be here at half-past eight.”

“I will give it to him.”

“And tell him not to worry. We are having interpreters and guides all the way to India.”

“To India?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “They speak English there. We will have no need for an interpreter in Bombay.”

“Bombay,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“I will tell him all that,” Suleyman assured her solemnly.

“Thank you, Suleyman.”

He pocketed the envelope, bowing politely, thanking her with a flow of charming phrases. Suddenly, he was aware that the stranger now buying stamps at the porter’s desk had a keen eye directed at him. So, with another small bow, he quickly turned away to resume his conversation with the bellboy.

Abrupt, thought Nina, as she joined Madge. But she was more puzzled by herself: why mention Bombay at all? The name had slipped out. Purposefully? Just a need for a little insurance—in case the letters she’d write in Bursa to her father and Aunt Eunice would go astray like the rest of her mail? Her suspicion distressed her, stabbed at her conscience. She glanced over at Jim, now posting Madge’s envelopes. At least he was standing in front of the letter box going through the right motions, although her view of them was partially blocked. Really, she asked herself, why shouldn’t our mail arrive home? You’re ridiculous, she told herself. Just because two postcards and a letter, sent on three different dates from three different places, never arrived. They could have been delayed by a coincidence of strikes or a slowdown in services; such things happened nowadays. She clung to that hope as she saw Jim coming to meet her. There was a warm smile on his lips, pleasure in his eyes, and admiration, too. He’d never hurt me, not Jim. And if he lied about Salonika? There could be an explanation for that. She hoped so.