Istanbul Passage (49 page)

Leon took the pen.

“And now you should rest,” Altan said, glancing at his watch, then at Leon as he wrote, a hasty scribble, his head down, as if he didn’t want anyone to see. “Obstbaum will be angry with me. Would you like help? To the bed?”

“No.”

Altan put the statement in the briefcase. “So. We understand each other? You know, I’m looking forward to this.” He began moving to the door. “One thing,” he said, stopping. “You don’t mind? A personal curiosity. Who did shoot Mr. King?”

Leon said nothing for a second. How long ago had it been? Then he met Altan’s eyes.

“I did.”

Altan tilted his head a little, surprised. “You,” he said. “But why?”

“Self-defense.”

Altan started to smile, as if Leon had said something clever, then rolled his eyes, a genial salute. “Of course. Self-defense.” He nodded, leaving. “It’s as Lily says. An Istanbullu.”

Later, lying in bed, he looked for a wall clock and realized he had entered Anna’s timeless world. There were no hours at the clinic, no days, each the same as before, all continuous. Thoughts came out of sequence, at random, with no purpose beyond themselves, unless you tried to follow them. He had been thinking of the blue tiles at the Çinili Camii, the way they shaded into turquoise and gray, and he wondered if he was really thinking about Kay, or just the perfect peace of the courtyard that day, sitting near the fountain, Kay telling him he could never really belong here. Asking questions. For Frank. But at some point she had stopped. Maybe even that day. He would have known, felt it when they’d gone back to Laleli. It was important to remember, that she had stopped.

Maybe the night of the party, when things changed, watching him with Georg. He saw the round face again, shiny with sweat and fear, apologizing. The last thing he did in his life, too late to change. But did anyone? Even given the chance? He saw other faces, Barbara and Ed, touched by death and going on as before, and he saw how it would be for him, back to days at the office, furtive Thursdays with Marina, drinks at the Park, the nightly brandy at Cihangir with his war memorial of photographs, all the same, except for the meetings with Altan, the deceit that would give an edge to all the rest, then eat away at it until nothing else was left. Visits to Anna with nothing to say because everything in his life was now secret, even from her.

He swung out of bed, backing against it until he was no longer dizzy, then took hold of the IV rack and moved it with him. In the hall, just the dim night-lights and soft, sibilant Turkish coming from the nurses’ station, something about the supervisor changing their shifts, ordinary life. He had put on slippers and now slid quietly over the waxed linoleum. At the end, Anna’s room had the usual light near the floor, some moon coming through. She opened her eyes when he touched her hand.

“Don’t be frightened. I know it’s late. I couldn’t come before.”

Now that she had registered the disturbance, the hand touching her, she retreated, eyes blank. Thinking what? Maybe everyone at Obstbaum’s had the same mental life, stray thoughts, out of order.

“I’m down the hall,” he said. “Are you surprised? I never thought I’d be here, did you?”

He stopped. Like talking to a child. Not what he’d come for, what they could do anymore. Ed and Barbara going on as before. But it wasn’t before.

“I’m going to sit down,” he said. “I get tired.” He pulled the chair nearer to the bed. “There’s so much to tell. I’m not sure where to start.”

He sat for a minute, staring, trying to find a narrative, then gave it up.

“The funny thing is,” he said slowly, sitting back, “I thought I was doing the right thing. Each time. When I helped him in the water, I never even thought about it. How could you do anything else? And then when I shot him. Each time. I thought it was the right thing to do. But it couldn’t have been, could it? Both.” He looked up, as if she had said something, then nodded. “He asked. I was the only one he had left. To ask. So what does that make me? Not that anybody cares. He wasn’t—”

What? He thought of him in the
hamam
, showing his scars, his face in the doorway on the way down from Laleli, already a death mask.

“A good man,” he finished. “The opposite. The opposite.” Repeating it, convincing himself. “Still. I used to think I was. But who gets to say? I’ve been thinking about that, who gets to say?”

He rubbed the bandage over the IV on the back of his hand, the thought circling.

“During the war it’s okay, killing people. Then it’s not. Can you turn it off, just like that? Like some switch in people’s heads. Once you start.”

He looked up again, but she hadn’t moved, her face smooth, not a line.

“Anyway, it’s done. You don’t get to do it over.” His eyes went to the window. “Any of it, I guess. Everything you’ve done.” Drifting, thoughts out of sequence again. “I met somebody.”

He pulled back, hearing Kay’s voice. She wouldn’t like it.

“I thought that was right too. And stealing the money. Everything. And now—” Another minute, the silence like sleep. “It just happened, meeting her. I didn’t plan it.” He made a face. “She did, I guess. I don’t know. But then—she didn’t expect— Anyway, she said so.”

This thought getting away too, his mind wandering out to the garden. Where he and Alexei had stood watching the dark room, saying good-bye. But there was something else, important.

“Do you believe someone can lie,” he said, “and still tell the truth?” His face still turned to the window. “Lie about things. But not the two of you. What happens between you, that has to be the truth, doesn’t it? Or we wouldn’t have anything. Even for a while.”

He stopped, aware that he was talking out loud, that she might actually have heard. Something she couldn’t hear. He turned back to her, covering it.

“The rest I don’t know. That’s a funny thing too. I wanted Tommy to give me a job and now I’ve got it. But not for him.” He leaned forward. “We need to think about what to do. Work for Altan—it’s not illegal exactly, but it’s something. And it won’t stay that way, whatever he says. He wants me to think I can get away with it, everything, but the minute he’s finished with me—” Alexei’s lemon now. “They’re all bastards. All of them. They throw people away. Our side too.” He looked up. “But even so.” He thought of Phil, kneeling with the ground crew.

“We have to leave Istanbul,” he said, his voice firmer, planning. “He thinks I’m trapped, but he doesn’t know about the money. The rest of it, just sitting there. Nobody knows. We can use it to get out. There are ways—that’s what I’ve been doing. I can do it. I’m resourceful,” he said, a rueful joke to himself. “We could go to Italy. Help Mihai with his boats again. Anywhere. We could go home.”

He leaned over, but her eyes were just as still as before and looking at them he saw that there wasn’t any home, just where they already were, in-between.

“It wouldn’t be hard to do if you came back,” he said. “For me to arrange things. Altan wouldn’t suspect. And what could he do, once we were gone. You can’t want to stay there, wherever you are. And I’d be with you. I’d never leave you. You know that. She knew that. She knew that about me. We could—”

And then he was suddenly out of breath, leaning back against the chair, knowing that none of it was going to happen, that all the
plans were just a last defiant wriggle before Altan’s chains settled around him.

“I thought it was all for the best. Something I could do,” he said quietly. “For the war. No. Not just that. Exciting. I thought it would be exciting. Be one of those people at the Park.”

Feeling a tightening around his chest, not fear, something staring at him, implacable, his new life. There wouldn’t be any starting over, no new evenings together in Cihangir. What would there be to say? Both of them locked in silence for their own reasons. Even here, having to be careful everywhere. Anna lost to him now too. Then, for only a second, he thought he saw her finger move, maybe sensing it, feeling it with him, the way it would be, and he reached over and covered her hand.

“It’s going to be all right, really,” he said quickly, reassuring. “This is the best place for you and when you’re better— Don’t worry about Altan, I can handle him. He’s no worse than the rest. Look at Tommy. I just have to keep him interested. You learn these things. And actually, I’m good at this. That’s why he— I don’t want you to worry about anything.” Holding her hand tighter, his voice bright, making conversation, keeping everything from her now, not just Kay, everything he’d have to do. “You always liked it here. And you know, a Janissary, if he played his cards right, could become an important man. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head? The last thing we expected but—” Bubbling, keeping her spirits up, away from the rest. “And we’d still have the money if we need it. So there’s nothing to worry about. We’ll be fine.” He stroked her hand. “You know, on the bridge, when I saw your face, you looked just the way you did when we first met. So that must mean something, don’t you think? Nothing’s changed.” He paused. “Not for you.” He looked away, out to the garden. “It’ll be spring soon.” In a month the Judas trees outside would start to blossom all along the Bosphorus. “You could come back for that,” he said.

He waited a minute for an answer, and then nobody said anything at all.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The horrors of Străuleşti, the sinking of the
Struma
, Ira Hirschmann’s heroic work for the War Refugee Board rescuing European Jews, and the tireless efforts of Mossad le Aliyah Bet (Committee for Illegal Immigration) are all matters of historical record and appear here only as background. The events and people in
Istanbul Passage
are fiction.

Much has changed in Istanbul since 1945. The city now sprawls beyond its hills to accommodate an estimated eleven million more people. Old tram lines have been discontinued. The fabled Park Hotel was torn down to build a parking garage (with the same fabled view). Robert College is now Bosphorus University. Street names have changed: the old Rue de Pera had already become the Istiklal Caddesi, but now Aya Paşa Caddesi, where Leon lived, is Ismet Inönü Caddesi, etc. Word spellings, in a country that has used a western alphabet only since 1928, keep taking new forms. Haghia Sophia or Aya Sofya? Abdülhammit or Abdul Hamid?
Meyhanes
or
mihanyes?
Alternative spellings extend into
the Balkans too. The Black Sea port may be Constancia or Constanţa, and its country Romania, Rumania, or Roumania.

Given all this, my hope was to use only those place names and word forms current in 1945, but source materials show the same variants and inconsistencies, so in the end the usage here is whatever I felt would be most familiar to the reader or, sometimes, just personal preference. Of course, as any grateful visitor to Istanbul knows, much has not changed. Sinan’s beautiful buildings still give the city its timeless profile and the fishermen and
simit
sellers still line Galata Bridge.

STARDUST

Hollywood, 1945.
Ben Collier has just arrived from war-torn Europe to find his brother has died in mysterious circumstances. Why would a man with a beautiful wife, a successful movie career, and a heroic past choose to kill himself?

Ben enters the uneasy world beneath the glossy shine of the movie business, where politics and the dream factories collide and Communist witch hunts are rendering the biggest star-makers vulnerable. Even here, where the devastation of Europe seems no more real than a painted movie set, the war casts long and dangerous shadows. When Ben learns troubling facts about his own family’s past and embarks on a love affair that never should have happened, he is caught in a web of deception that shakes his moral foundation to its core.

Rich with atmosphere and period detail,
Stardust
flawlessly blends fact and fiction into a haunting thriller about the glory days of the movies and the dark strain in American political life, brilliantly proving once again why Joseph Kanon has been hailed as the “heir apparent to Graham Greene” (
The Boston Globe
).

Read on for a look at Joseph Kanon’s

Stardust

Currently Available from Atria Books

Excerpt from
Stardust
copyright © 2009 by Joseph Kanon

A MAN RIDES INTO TOWN

A
S IT HAPPENED
, Sol Lasner was also on the train. Ben spied him first on the red carpet at Grand Central posing for photographers, like one of his stars. Shorter than Ben remembered, his barrel chest wobbling on thin legs, storklike, but with the same tailored look, natty. He gave a quick, obligatory smile to the flashbulbs, then herded a group of men in suits onto the train, back to business. At Croton, where they switched over to the steam engine, most of the suits got off for the ride back to the city, but two stayed on through dinner, so Ben didn’t have a chance to talk to him until they were past Albany, when the landscape had already turned dark and there was nothing to observe from the observation car but blurs of street lamps and platform lights streaking past.

He’d been sitting near the rounded back of the car, smoking and staring out at nothing, when Lasner came in, holding a cigar. He nodded to Ben, not recognizing him, and for a moment Ben was tempted to let it wait, talk later on the Army’s time. The next few days were supposed to be his, little shrouds of time to wrap himself up in, prepare for the funeral, stare out windows, get used to it.