Istanbul Passage (4 page)

“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.”

It was still raining hard enough to get wet again and he was shivering when he got home. The Cihangir Apartments, just down Aya Paşa from the Park, had been put up in the twenties and still had a few moderne touches in the lobby, but the plaster had begun to chip, a sign of larger decay to come. Reynolds had bought a company flat here because it had central heating, a luxury, but fuel shortages had kept the radiators tepid all during the war, and now Leon relied on space heaters, a few rows of toaster coils barely strong enough to warm your hands. The elevator was sporadic. Hot water came through the geyser in a trickle, so that it was cool by the time the tub had filled.

None of it mattered. The first time he and Anna had come to the flat, a ritual handing over of keys, all they saw was the window with its view across the rooftops of Cihangir, past the mosques at Kabataş and Findikli to the open mouth of the Bosphorus, alive with boats. On a clear day you could see Leander’s Tower, the green park at Topkapi. That first year they’d sit with a drink after work and
watch the ferries crossing to Asia, the freighters passing up the strait. There was no balcony, just the window, a private movie screen.

“You’ll like it here,” Perkins had said, a little wistful. “Of course, it helps if you’re handy yourself. Mr. Cicek, that’s the building—well, manager, I suppose. Not much with a wrench. With anything, really. So if you need something—”

“Oh, it’s wonderful. Just the way it is,” Anna had said, eyes fixed on the view. “How can you bear to leave it?”

But that was when everything was new, Istanbul something almost magical after Germany, somewhere you could breathe. Leon remembered the very first day, stepping out of Sirkeci station into a swarm of motorbikes, the smell of frying fish, trays piled with
simits
balanced on vendors’ heads, boats crowding the Eminönü piers, everything noisy and sunlit. In the taxi crossing Galata Bridge he had turned back to look at Sinan’s graceful minarets pricking the sky, and at that moment a flock of birds rose up, swooping around the dome of the Yeni Mosque, then diving back to the water, rippling with light, and Leon thought it was the most wonderful place he had ever seen.

During those first weeks they didn’t see the old wooden houses, listing and creaking from neglect, the backstreets with clumps of garbage and mud, cracked fountains seeping moss. They saw color, heaps of spices, everything that wasn’t Germany, and water everywhere, a city where you took ferries just to be out on it, looking at domes and spires, not the crooked dirty streets. Anna wanted to see everything, the famous sights, then things she found in books, the Camondo Stairs, twisting down Galata Hill, the cast-iron Bulgarian church, the Byzantine mosaics out near the old city walls where they could eat picnics on the yellow grass, looking up at giant stork nests in the ruins. Their building had been fronted with sunny lemon plaster then, a confection, the plane trees in the median shading Aya Paşa. That was before the grime had settled in the edges, the white trim faded, before anything had happened to them.

There was a small pile of mail on the floor just inside the door, pushed through the slot by Cicek. Did he glance at them first, report anything interesting? But these days not much came. No air letters from home, no thick envelopes with consular seals. When he and Anna had been a new couple in town, invitations fell in clumps through the door—tennis parties, drinks parties, receptions, the endless social life of the European community. Then, after she got sick, he noticed the thinning out, events one could attend alone, sometimes just bills or nothing at all. He picked up the mail—at least one invitation, a thick envelope—then shivered again, a chill that didn’t stop at the door. He went over and switched on the space heater, stood next to it, and opened the envelope. A party at Lily’s, something to look forward to. Piles of food and the
yali
warm even this time of year, fuel never a problem for the rich. A woman who had actually been in the sultan’s harem, something out of the last century, now serving cocktails to modern Turks who still left their wives home, one more Istanbul paradox.

He looked down. As usual, the coils were glowing without producing any heat. At least get out of the wet clothes. He went to the bathroom, stripping on the way, the clothes sticking to him. When he reached for his bathrobe, he shuddered with cold, almost a spasm. Chilled to the bone, not just an expression. He threw the clothes over the shower rod to dry, then wrapped the robe tighter and went back out to the drinks table to pour a brandy. You don’t want to get sick, not before a job. Which Tommy could easily have done himself, putting John Doe up at the consulate, safe, out of sight, until the plane was ready. Why involve Leon at all? A bonus in it for you, if you do your piece. The brandy burned as it went down, the only heat in the room. But why do it in pieces anyway? Unless he didn’t want anybody at the consulate to know, didn’t even want his own office to know. I’m not invisible. No connection until they were on the plane together. A German with
photographs. Important enough, maybe, to get Tommy a bigger desk in Washington. Planning it. You were the best I had. A cheap compliment, while he looked out for himself and Leon went back to buying tobacco.

He went through the rest of the mail. A utility bill, a circular for made-to-order suits, and a card from Georg Ritter, a namesake knight on the front. On the back, a pen drawing of a chessboard. “A game this week? Thursday?” Tomorrow. Well, not Thursday. He’d have to call. Which Georg could have done. Why send a card when you could just pick up the phone? But a call was an intrusion. You could ignore a card, just not respond if you’d rather not, the formal manners part of Georg’s way of dealing with the world, as if the past fifty years had never happened. Calling cards, notes, a
pneumatique
if they still existed, even his flat with its heavy furniture and Meissen figurines a relic of old Europe. He’d been fond of Anna, a kind of substitute father, and now like an aging parent was becoming easy to neglect. He shouldn’t have to be sending cards, gentle reminders. A game once a week, some gossip, just being company—it wasn’t a lot to ask. Call tomorrow and set a date.

He put the invitation on the piano, the upright Georg had found for them. Keys dusted, in tune, ready for her to play again. During the war it had been Mendelssohn because you couldn’t play him in Germany,
jüdische Musik
, Anna thumbing her nose at the Nazis with
lieder
. Along the piano top was the row of framed photographs Leon had come to think of as his war memorial. Anna’s parents, dressed for a walk in the Tiergarten, the last picture they’d sent before they were taken away. Anna herself, mouth open in laughter, when she still had words. Phil kneeling with the ground crew on an airstrip somewhere in the Pacific, the propellers just behind their heads. His unexpected baby brother, so many years between them that they had never been friends and then suddenly were the only family each of them had. The telegram had come to him, the only one left. Missing
in action over New Guinea. Then, months later, a letter from an officer who’d survived the Japanese camp, who wanted Leon to know that Phil had been brave to the end. Whatever that meant. Maybe a samurai sword to the back of the neck, maybe dysentery, anyway gone, Leon’s last tie to America. And yet, oddly, losing Phil had pulled him closer to it, wanting to be part of it, even carrying papers for Tommy, as if that would help somehow, like a ground mechanic who checked the oil and waited for the others to come back.