Topkapi (25 page)

Hamul shuffled out and made signs to Miss Lipp that lunch was served. She glanced at me. “Bring your drink in with you, Arthur.”

Presumably I was being promoted to eating with the gentry so that they could keep an eye on me.

Miller was a gloomy feeder, and made the omelette less appetizing than it could have been by talking about infectious diseases all the time. How did they grow virus cultures in laboratories? Why, in eggs, of course! He discussed the possible consequences at length. The others took no notice; evidently they were used to him; but it got me down. I hadn’t felt much like eating anyway.

When the fruit came Harper looked across at me. “As soon as the Hamuls have cleared away,” he said, “you had better start getting the bags down. They think we’re going to Ankara for a couple of days, so it doesn’t matter if they see us. The important thing is that we leave ourselves time to clean up the rooms.”

“Clean them up?”

“For fingerprints. With any luck we’ll never be connected with this place. The rent was paid in advance and the owner couldn’t care less if we don’t show up again. The Hamuls will dust off most of it automatically. They’re great polishers, I’ve noticed. But things they could miss, like window handles and closet mirrors, we should take care of ourselves - just in case.”

By two o’clock I had all the bags down and asked Harper if I could go to my old room to clean up there. He nodded. “Okay, Arthur, but don’t be long. I want you to give Mr. Fischer a hand.”

I hurried upstairs. In the bathroom, I completed the cigarette-package message. Then I went through the motions of “cleaning up” - Tufan already had
my
fingerprints - and returned to Fischer’s room.

At a quarter to three Harper drove the car from the garage to the courtyard and I loaded the bags.

There wasn’t room for all of them in the luggage compartment, so some had to go on the floor by the back seat.

At three, Harper, Miller, and I went up to Miller’s room. There, Miller and I took our shirts off and swathed ourselves in the tackle, Harper assisting and rearranging things until he was satisfied that nothing would show. I had the spring hooks of the sling hanging down inside my trouser legs. It was dreadfully uncomfortable. Harper made me walk up and down so that he could see that all was in order.

“You look as if you’ve wet your pants,” he complained. “Can’t you walk more naturally?”

“The hooks keep hitting one another.”

“Well, wear one higher and one lower.”

After further adjustments, he was satisfied and we went downstairs to be inspected by Miss Lipp. She had fault to find with Miller - he had developed the same trouble with the blocks as I had had with the hooks - and while they were putting it right I managed to transfer the cigarette packet from my hip to my shirt pocket, so that it would be easier to get at when the time came.

Fischer was getting edgy now. The bandages prevented his wearing a wrist watch and he kept looking at Miller’s. Miller suddenly got irritated.

“You cannot help, so do not get in the way,” he snapped.

“It is time we were leaving. After four-thirty, they count the people going in.”

“I’ll tell you when it’s time to leave,” Harper said. “If you can’t keep still, Hans, go sit in the car.”

Fischer sulked, while Muller returned to his bedroom for final adjustments. Harper turned to me.

“You’re looking warm, Arthur. Better you don’t drive with all that junk under your shirt. You’ll only get warmer. Besides, Miss Lipp knows the way. You’ll ride in the back.”

“Very well.” I had hoped that I might be able to drop the packet while I was making a hand signal; but I knew it was no use arguing with him.

At three-thirty we all went out and got into the car. Miller, of course, was first in the back. Harper motioned me to follow, then Fischer got in after me and Harper shut the door. So I wasn’t even next to a window.

Miss Lipp drove with Harper beside her.

From where I was sitting, the driving mirror did not reflect the road behind. After a minute or two, and on the pretext of giving Fischer more room for the arm that was in the sling, I managed to make a half turn and glance through the rear window. The Peugeot was following.

Miss Lipp drove steadily and very carefully, but there wasn’t much traffic and we made good time. At ten to four we were past the Dolmabahçe Palace and following the tram lines up towards Taxim Square. I had assumed that the garage Harper had spoken of would be the one near the Spanish Consulate, and within walking distance of the Divan Hotel, which I had heard about from the surveillance man. It looked at that point as if the assumption were correct. Then, quite suddenly, everything seemed to go wrong.

Instead of turning right at Taxim Square, she went straight on across it and down the hill towards Galata. I was so surprised that I nearly lost my head and told her she was going
the
wrong way. Just in time I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to know the way. But Miller had noticed my involuntary movement.

“What is the matter?”

“That pedestrian back there - I thought he was going to walk straight into us.” It is a remark that foreigners driving in Istanbul make every other minute.

He snorted. “They are peasants. They deny the existence of machinery.”

At that moment, Miss Lipp turned sharply left and we plunged down a ramp behind a service station.

It wasn’t a large place underground. There was garage space for about twenty cars and a greasing bay with an inspection pit. Over the pit stood a Volkswagen Minibus van. In front of it stood a man in overalls with a filthy rag in his hand.

Miss Lipp pulled the Lincoln over to the left and stopped. Harper said: “Here we are! Out!”

Miller and Harper already had their doors open, and Harper opened Fischer’s side as well. As I slid out after Miller, I got the cigarette package from my shirt pocket into the palm of my hand.

Now Harper was climbing up into the driver’s seat of the van.

“Move yourselves,” he said, and pressed the starter.

The other door of the van was at the side. Miller wrenched it open and got in. As I followed, I pretended to stumble and then dropped the cigarette packet.

I saw it land on the greasy concrete and climbed on in. Then the door swung to behind me and I heard Fischer swear as it caught him on the shoulder. I leaned back to hold it open for him, so I was looking down and saw it happen. As he put out his good hand to grasp the handrail and climb in, his left foot caught the cigarette packet and swept it under the van into the pit. It wasn’t intentional. He wasn’t even looking down.

Miller shut the door and latched it.

“Hold tight,” Harper said, and let in the clutch.

As the van lurched forward, the back of my legs hit the edge of a packing case and I sat down on it. My face was right up against the small window at the back.

We went up to the top of the ramp again, waited a moment or two for a bus to go by, and then made a left turn on down towards the Galata Bridge. Through the window I could see the Peugeot parked opposite the garage.

It was still there when I lost sight of it. It hadn’t moved. It was waiting, faithful unto death, for the Lincoln to come out.

FOR A MINUTE or two I couldn’t believe that it had happened, and kept looking back through the window expecting to see that the Peugeot was following after all. It wasn’t. Fischer was swearing and massaging his left shoulder where the door had caught him. Miller was grinning to himself as if at some private joke. As we bounced over the tram lines onto the Galata Bridge, I gave up looking back and stared at the floor. At my feet, amid some wood shavings, there were torn pieces of an Athens newspaper.

Of the six packing cases in the van, three were being used as seats. From the way the other three vibrated and slid about they appeared to be empty. From the way Miller and Fischer were having to hold on to steady themselves on the corners, it looked as if their cases were empty, too. Mine was more steady. It seemed likely that the case that I was sitting on now held the grenades, the pistols, and the ammunition that had come from Athens inside the doors of the car. I wished the whole lot would blow up then and there. It didn’t even occur to me, then, to wonder how they were going to be used. I had enough to think of with my own troubles.

As Harper drove past Aya Sophia and headed towards the gate in the old Seraglio wall, he began to talk over his shoulder to us.

“Leo goes first. Hans and Arthur together a hundred yards behind him. Arthur, you pay for Hans so that he doesn’t have to fumble for money with those bandages on. Right?”

“Yes.”

He drove through into the Courtyard of the Janissaries and pulled up under the trees opposite St. Irene.

“I’m not taking you any nearer to the entrance,” he said. “There’ll be guides hanging around and we don’t want them identifying you with this van. On your way, Leo. See you tonight.”

Miller got out and walked towards the Ortakapi Gate. He had about a hundred and fifty yards to go.

When he had covered half the distance, Harper said: “Okay, you two. Get ready. And, Arthur, you watch yourself. Leo and Hans both have guns and they’ll use them if you start getting out of line in any way.”

“I will think of the two thousand dollars.”

“You do that. I’ll be right behind you now, just to see that you make it inside.”

“We’ll make it.”

I wanted to appear as co-operative as I could just then, because, although I was sick with panic, I had thought of a way of stopping them that they couldn’t blame on me - at least in a dangerous way. I still had my guide’s license. Tufan had warned me against attracting attention to myself as a guide in case I was challenged and had to show it. He had said that, because I was a foreigner, that would cause trouble with museum guards. Well, trouble with museum guards was the one kind of trouble I needed at that moment; and the more the better.

Fischer and I began to walk towards the gate. Miller was within a few yards of it, and I saw a guide approach him. Miller walked straight on in without a glance at the man.

“That’s the way,” Fischer said, and began to walk a little faster.

The hooks began to thump against my legs. “Not so fast,” I said; “if these hooks swing too much they’ll show.”

He slowed down again immediately.

“You needn’t worry about the guides,” I said. “I’ve got my license. I’ll be your guide.”

As we got near the Gate, I began to give him the set speech, all about the weekly executions, the block, the fountain, the Executioner who was also the Chief Gardener.

The guide who had approached Miller was watching us, so I raised my voice slightly to make sure that he heard me and knew what I was up to. What I hoped was that he would follow us and complain about me to the guard at the gate. Instead, he lost interest and turned away.

It was disappointing, but I had another plan worked out by then.

Just inside the gatehouse there is the counter where you pay to go in. When I got to it, I handed the man three separate lira and said: “Two tickets, please.” At the same time I showed him my guide’s license.

From his point of view I had done three wrong things. I had shown a guide’s license, and yet, by asking for two tickets, revealed that I didn’t know the guides were admitted free; I had given him three lira, which a real guide would have known was enough to buy six tickets; and I had spoken to him in English.

He was a haggard man with a small black moustache and a disagreeable expression. I waited for trouble. It never came. He did absolutely nothing but glance at the license, push across one ticket, take one of the lira, and give me sixty kurush change. It was maddening. I picked the change up very slowly, hoping he would start to think, but he was gazing into space, bored to death.

“Let’s go,” Fischer said.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Harper approaching the gate. There was nothing for it but to go on. Usually there are one or two guides touting for customers inside the Second Courtyard. In fact, it had been there that I had been challenged three years previously.
That
episode had ended up in my being jailed for the night. I could only count on the same thing happening again.

Of course, the same thing did
not
happen again. Because it was the last hour of the museum day, all the courtyard guides were either out with parties of suckers completing tours of the palace or cooling their fat arses in the nearest café

I did my best. As we walked on along the right side of the Second Courtyard, I gave Fischer the set speech on the Seraglio kitchens - all about the Sung, Yuna, and Ming porcelains - but nobody as much as looked at us. Miller had already reached the Gate of Felicity and was standing there gawking at it like a tourist. When he heard our footsteps behind him, he walked through into the Third Courtyard.

I hesitated. Once we were through the gate, the Audience Chamber and the Library of Ahmed the Third would screen us from the buildings across the courtyard that were open to the pubic. Unless a guard came out of the manuscript library, and there was no reason why one should, there would be nothing to stop us from getting to the door to which Miller had the key.

“Why are you stopping?” Fischer asked.

“He said that we were to stop here.”

“Only if there were guides watching.”

There were footsteps on the paving stones behind us. I turned my head. It was Harper.

“Keep going. Arthur,” he said; “just keep going.” His voice was quite low, but it had an edge to it.

He was only about six paces away now, and I knew suddenly from the look on his face that I dare not let him reach me.

So I went on with Fischer through the Gate of Felicity. I suppose that obedience to Harper had become almost as instinctive with me as breathing.

As he had said, the walk was exactly sixty paces. Nobody stopped us. Nobody noticed us. Miller already had the door open when Fischer and I got there. All I remember about the outside of the door was that it had wood moldings on it arranged in an octagon pattern. Then, with Fischer behind me, I was standing in a narrow stone passage with a vaulted ceiling and Miller was relocking the door.