Amazing Mrs. Pollifax (15 page)

“How stupid you must feel,” she agreed pleasantly. “For how many years have you been a double agent?”

“It scarcely matters,” he said modestly. “Actually I’ve been what is usually referred to as a ‘sleeper.’ That is, held in abeyance for something truly worthwhile. Although I won’t say I’ve not taken advantage of my privileged situation to cast a few stones,” he confided charmingly. “An innuendo here, a lifted eyebrow there—” He obligingly lifted an eyebrow. “But Ferenci-Sabo’s defection was big enough to bring orders for me to capture her at any cost, including my usefulness as a friend of the Americans and the Turks.” He smiled. “However—happily for me—the cost looks very small indeed. By tomorrow I can look forward to resuming my
very
pleasant life in Istanbul again. For now, however,” he concluded, his voice changing, “I must get to work.”

“Hain,”
growled Sandor.

“What does that mean?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

“It means traitor,” said Dr. Belleaux indifferently. He walked over to Magda and stared down at her. “Now what I should like to learn first,” he said firmly, as if he were interviewing her for a job, “is just why the Americans have been brought into this, and how they were contacted. I find that—shall I say very suspicious?” He continued looking at Magda. “Lift your head!” he demanded sharply.

Slowly Magda lifted her head. “I want you to talk,” he said in a suddenly cold and chilling voice. “You will tell me why
and how you contacted Mr. Carstairs. You will tell me where are the papers you brought with you, and why you insisted on coming to Yozgat.”

“No,” said Magda.

Dr. Belleaux began to hit Magda across the cheekbones, methodically and viciously, and Mrs. Pollifax closed her eyes so that no one would see the tears she wept for Magda. Back and forth went the hand—one, two, one, two—but in his savagery Dr. Belleaux had miscalculated Magda’s stamina. Her head suddenly went limp—she had mercifully fainted.

“Bastard,” shouted Sandor.

Dr. Belleaux turned toward Mrs. Pollifax, and as she realized that her turn was next she closed her eyes again. A sudden picture of her sunny apartment in New Brunswick, New Jersey, flashed across her mind and she thought,
Is anything worth all this?
and then she opened her eyes and met Dr. Belleaux’s gaze steadily. He stood over her, eyes narrowed, fist lifted, and she prayed for courage.

Stepping down from the bus Colin was appalled at the sight of Dr. Belleaux in conversation with Mrs. Pollifax. It jarred all his senses; he had not glimpsed Dr. Belleaux at his house in Istanbul but he recognized him from newspaper pictures, and it was a shock to see him in the flesh, and here of all places. His second reaction was one of wild relief: everything had to be all right after all, Mrs. Pollifax had been wrong about Dr. Belleaux, and Dr. Belleaux had come to tell her so; and then he realized that this couldn’t be so, the man had no business meeting them here in Yozgat, and as his eyes dropped to the newspaper that Dr. Belleaux held in such a peculiar position he instinctively realized there was a gun hidden there. It was all very disappointing and unnerving, and for a moment he thought he was going to be ill. He stood frozen to the bottom step of the bus while behind him voices rose in protest at his blocking the exit.

The protests inevitably drew Dr. Belleaux’s attention; he turned, saw Colin staring and spoke sharply to him in Turkish, telling him to get moving, to go away. Colin was astonished to remember that he was in disguise, and was even more astonished to realize that he had not been recognized. He stammered,
“Evet—evet,”
and walked away from the bus and then across the street.

There he stopped, suddenly aware that he had nowhere to go. He realized that Mrs. Pollifax and Magda and Sandor
had just been captured, and he felt an acute sense of loss. It seemed incredibly unjust after all they’d gone through. He thought dimly of shouting for the police and then he remembered that in joining Mrs. Pollifax he had placed himself beyond such conventional avenues of complaint. This was a chilling thought. There was no one at all to help—no one except himself, of course, and there was nothing he could do. Nothing at all. He saw Dr. Belleaux lift his arm and wave to a man seated in a parked car, saw the driver nod, turn the car and drive up behind the bus. Over the top of the car he saw the heads of his three friends as they climbed inside, and he heard the doors slam. Then the car pulled out and turned down the street next him. It passed quite near but the shades had been drawn in the rear and he saw only the driver. It was Stefan.

At that moment Colin understood that he was about to see his three friends vanish from sight—he would never know where they went, or see them again. He suddenly found this even less tolerable than his panic.

Furiously he glared at the people around him: wraith-like, ancient men slumped half-drowsing on benches in the shade; a woman dispiritedly sweeping with a twig broom; a boy pulling a loaded donkey across the road, the bus driver loading the bus with what looked like a sack of mail. At the corner he saw a narrow, fly-specked cafe open to the square—one sign said C
IKOLATA
—S
IGARA
; another advertised K
OKA
-K
OLA
. His glance fell to three old and dusty bicycles leaning against the wall, their owners apparently inside the shop. The car had just turned into the street beside that shop; a cloud of dust rose as it vanished.

Without thinking, and purely from instinct, Colin ran across the street, snatched up one of the fallen bicycles, mounted it and peddled madly down the street into which the black car had turned. There were shouts behind him but he ignored them and peddled faster. He couldn’t see the car but he knew it was there because its dust filled his nostrils and choked his throat. He had no idea where he was going, or even why, he knew only that he musn’t be separated from the group in the car.

He became increasingly aware that he was being pursued, and the shouts following him annoyed him. He peddled past
low rock walls, a dusty vineyard, little houses with peeling stucco until the cobbles came to an end and he faced two unpaved roads. As he hesitated his most immediate pursuer peddled up beside him: it was, of all things, a girl, who proceeded to upbraid him in a flurry of noisy Turkish.

Despairingly, in English, he cried, “I can’t understand you, I don’t understand a word!”

The torrent went on and then suddenly, her lips open, the girl stopped in mid-sentence, her eyes enormous. “But you speak English! You’re not Turkish!”

“Yes, I’m English, and I’ve lost my friends, they’re in that black car that drove down this street, and I’m terribly sorry to have—” He too stopped in mid-sentence. “But I say—you speak English too!”

She said impatiently, “I go to college in Istanbul. But what are you doing in such clothes? Are you a sociologist studying our customs? You are dressed like a peasant!”

“I must find that car!” he said urgently.

“The car went to the left, do you not see the dust?” she said calmly.

He peddled a few feet and turned. “Look, I’ll return your bicycle, I promise you. Or come along if you doubt me, but I have to follow that car!”

“I will go with you,” she said firmly.

They peddled together up the road to the left. Houses were set close together in a long row like small boxes; a rivulet of dirty water ran down one side of the road in a hollowed-out trough. The street turned at an angle, displaying another length of soiled houses and dirt road and Colin had to swerve to avoid a goat. A donkey brayed from under a dusty tree. Here and there sat worn men; there were no women to be seen. The houses thinned, and he saw no car but at the last house on the road—isolated and at some distance away—there still lingered a faint cloud of dust.

“They are in that last house,” the girl said. “Why are they staying there? It has been unoccupied for years. Are you sure they’re in there? I will wait while you go to the door.”

Colin climbed down from his bike. “It’s not that simple,” he said, turning to look at her and discovered that it was a mistake to look at her a second time. His first impression had been of a slightly plump and rounded young woman
with a bland and candy-box sort of prettiness. Between first and second glance all clichés had vanished: she was exquisitely lovely. Her face
did
belong on a candy box: one of those fragile old Victorian boxes that dripped paper lace. Her skin was flawless, her lips full, sensual and pink, her eyes huge, round, heavily lashed and a curious shade of vivid blue that by contrast brought to life the very ordinary shade of brown hair. He frankly stared. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Sabahat Pasha. What is yours?”

“Nazim Aziz,” he said absently.

She laughed. “What? But you are not Turkish!”

He flushed. “Actually it’s Colin Ramsey but—oh hang it all, do go now,” he said, parking his bicycle against a crumbling wall. “I’m going to walk the rest of the way.”

“Go?” she said, and laughed. “How can I ride two bicycles back to town? And why do you not ride up to the door and make sure your friends are there?”

“Damn,” he said, and looked at her helplessly, at her wide naïve eyes, and warm sympathetic mouth. How could he possibly explain the situation to her? It was impossible.

“Something is wrong,” she said, watching him. “You are in some kind of trouble.” The laughter had gone from her eyes, leaving them grave.

“Yes,” he admitted. “But it’s not a police matter,” he added hastily. “They’re all Americans, and calling the police would—well, prove very embarrassing.”

“Americans!” she exclaimed. “Americans here in Yozgat? Oh but I would love to meet them! What brought them here to Yozgat? Are they also studying the customs?”

“We came to—” He stopped. With extraordinary clarity he suddenly remembered why they had come to Yozgat, and it occurred to him that help might be available after all. He said excitedly, “Sabahat, tell me. Are there gypsies camping in or near Yozgat?”

She looked startled and then thoughtful. “There were a number of them camped just outside of town for a few days. I know because they read the palms of many of my friends. But I hear they left yesterday, going south, and now there is only the man with the dancing bear.”

“And is he a gypsy too?”

The girl laughed. “But of course—only the gypsies have dancing bears!” She looked at him, puzzled. “But he is very dirty, very soiled,” she pointed out.

“Do you know where he stays?”

She nodded. “Beyond the mosque, on the road leaving town. I have seen his wagon. Also his dog.” She shivered distastefully.

He said recklessly, “Please—if I ride the bicycle back to town with you, could you direct me to the road leading to the gypsy with the dancing bear?”

“You wish to
see
him?” she said in astonishment.

“I must.”

She recoiled, obviously disturbed, and then she looked into his face and suddenly laughed. “Your moustache has slipped! It is crooked!”

He grinned. “I’m not surprised, the blasted thing itches, too.” He felt for it with two fingers and began to peel it off, the girl watching gravely, as if the most important thing in the world at the moment was to learn how moustaches were removed.

But he had underestimated her intelligence, which had continued to assess and appraise him as they talked. She nodded suddenly, as if she had made up her mind. “Come—I will take you myself to the gypsy,” she said. “You would not be able to speak to him if you found him, would you? I’m sure my friend won’t mind if I borrow the bicycle a little while longer.”

“I say—that’s awfully kind of you,” he said gratefully, and then he heard himself ask, “Your friend—is it a girl or a boy?”

She glanced over her shoulder at him with amusement. “It is my girlfriend.”

Colin turned his bike around and followed her back down the road into town. When they reached the square the bus had finally departed and in its place stood a small dingy cardboard suitcase and a string bag. “Good grief—my cameras! And Magda’s suitcase!” he gasped. He had forgotten all about them. He stowed them away on the back of the bicycle, and with Sabahat in the lead they set out to look for the gypsy.

* * *

The gypsy’s cart stood at some distance from the road, half-hidden within a grove of scrub and stunted trees. His campfire burned in a circle of stones, guarded by an ugly, ferocious-looking dog. “He must be at home because the bear is tied up to the wagon,” Sabahat said, and added nervously, “But the dog is not tied.”

“I’ll go first,” Colin told her. “Stay well behind, until I can get him to tie the dog. If he’s there.”

They didn’t need to shout; they had no sooner left the road than the dog sprang up, growling, snarling, barking, baring his teeth in a terrifying manner, and when this did not send Colin into retreat the dog flew toward him as if to devour him. Colin stood still, his heart hammering. The gypsy appeared suddenly from the woods and stood watching, saying nothing, his gaze hostile, arms folded.

“I must talk to you,” Colin shouted. “Call off your dog, will you?”