Istanbul (18 page)

‘There’s nothing we can do about it,’ Abrams said. ‘We have our instructions from Whitehall. Have you thought about putting them on the train?’

‘You know as well as I do that the Turks won’t allow them to land, because you have told them your government would consider it an unfriendly act. You have bullied and harangued them into this and now you want to blame them for this situation.’

Abrams spread his hands. ‘I wish I could help you.’

‘Have you seen this ship? The Turkish authorities will not give me permission to go aboard but I have spoken with the captain. The vessel is overcrowded and food is running low. They cannot even cook the food they do have because the Germans in Constanza stole all their pots and pans! What is going to happen to them?’

‘Personally, I wish them the best, of course,’ Abrams said, ‘but we can’t change our government’s policy.’

‘Is it British Government policy for them to drown? The engine broke down even before they left Constanza. She had to be towed out to sea by the Romanians.’ He slammed his fist on Donaldson’s desk. ‘This ship was registered in 1830, for the love of God. She was being used as a cattle barge on the Danube when the war started, was declared unfit for sea travel! She’s a death trap.’ He jumped to his feet and pointed at Abrams. ‘You’re a Jew, aren’t you? How can you work for a government that can do this to your own people?’

‘I may have been born a Jew but England is my country.’

‘Well, that is nothing to be proud of,’ Ben-Arazi said and he turned and walked out, nearly knocking over Abrams’s secretary and spilling the tea tray she was holding.

There was a long silence.

‘Well, that went well,’ Nick said.

Donaldson grunted, embarrassed. He stood up and went to the window.

‘Why don’t we help them?’ Nick said.

‘We need Arab support in Palestine against the Germans,’ Abrams said. ‘We won’t get it by helping the Jews colonise the country.’

‘If that’s the reason, we’re not getting much value for money from the mullahs. I hear they’re practically reading from
Mein Kampf
in the mosques.’

‘Letting these Jews in would open the floodgates,’ Donaldson said, sweetly reasonable. ‘Thin end of the wedge.’

The thin end of the wedge: politics by platitude. Nick knew that Churchill was sympathetic to the Jewish immigration, but there were men in the Foreign Office who didn’t share his views. He had read a top secret report that had even floated the idea of sinking ships carrying Jewish migrants to Istanbul. It had concluded:
This is the only way in which the traffic can with certainty be stopped. It is, however, a step which, for obvious reasons, His Majesty’s Government would hardly be prepared in any circumstances to authorise.

Instead ships that broke the Palestinian blockade were seized, the immigrants deported and the crews arrested. The soft option.

‘The Arabs will never be friends of ours,’ Nick said.

Donaldson shrugged. ‘That may be true but we cannot afford to inflame the situation further. That’s official government policy.’

Nick got up to leave. ‘Well, as long as it’s just policy.’

He was almost out of the door when Abrams called him back. ‘Davis,’ he said, ‘don’t forget you’re in the diplomatic service. Be diplomatic. This is a consulate, not an orphanage.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Nick said and walked out.

CHAPTER 40

She came late at night, as she always did, slipping dark and silent as a shadow through the gate in the garden wall.

Tonight there was no envelope for him, and when he kissed her she did not respond. He made them both vodka-vermouths and she took her drink and went to the window. The
Struma
was out there in the darkness, he could see searchlights sweeping the water from the tugboats that guarded her.

‘What’s wrong?’ he said.

‘They’re Jews on that ship, just like me.’

‘I know. I wish I could do something.’

‘What good are the British in this war? You couldn’t help us in Bucharest, you can’t help us now!’

He held out his hands in a gesture of despair. She was right.

‘If you could help me, Nick, would you do it?’

‘You know I would.’

There was that look on her face.

‘Daniela?’

‘I do need your help now.’

‘Come here. Sit down.’

He sat down on a divan by the little tiled stove where it was warm. She came to join him but not too close. She sat hunched over with her elbows on her knees as if she had been punched in the stomach. ‘That ship out there. I think my brother’s on board.’

‘Your brother?’

‘Amos. He wrote to me a few weeks ago to say he had a ticket for a boat called the
Struma
and he was going to try to escape to Palestine.’

‘He wrote to you? How did he know where you were?’

‘After my father was arrested Amos escaped from Bucharest and went to the country. He thought it would be safer. He wrote to me every week at the Athenee Palace. Even when I came here I wrote back to him, though I was never sure he got my letters. Until now.’

She stared across the black water.

‘What’s going to happen to them, Nick? I heard that the captain plans to run the British blockade and put her aground on the beach.’

‘In that rust bucket? Even if they get to open sea, they’ll never make the crossing.’

‘Is no-one going to help them?’

‘My government’s only concern is that those people don’t reach Palestine. They are trying to pressure the Turks into sending them back.’

‘I know he’s on there,’ she said.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Can you get him off that death trap and get him to Palestine some other way?’

‘It’s impossible.’

‘I have helped you, haven’t I? That must count for something with your government.’

‘It should but it won’t.’ He tried to reach for her again but she twisted away from him. ‘I’m sorry.’

The look in her eyes was unfathomable. ‘Whatever happens, I don’t want you to hate me.’

He frowned. ‘Why would I hate you?’

She started to say something and stopped herself. It was only later that he understood what she was afraid of. But at the time he could only stare at her, mystified by this enigmatic woman that he loved.

CHAPTER 41

Neman Konic kept them waiting for half an hour in the anteroom of his office at the Ministry of Defence. Finally his personal secretary, a young man with an effusive black moustache, showed them into his office. Konic greeted them expansively and three glasses of apple tea were brought. The weather was discussed – it had been one of the coldest winters anyone could remember – and the progress of the war, which was just as bleak. Rommel’s Afrika Corps were threatening Egypt, and the Japanese had taken Rabaul.

Konic offered them cigarettes. He lit his own and his head was immediately wreathed in a thick fug of smoke. ‘Now then, gentlemen,’ he said, in excellent if heavily accented English, ‘what can I do for you?’

‘It’s a rather delicate matter,’ Abrams said. ‘It concerns the
Struma
.’

The ship’s name fell into the room like a curse. Konic said nothing.

‘There’s someone on board of great interest to us. We want to get him off.’

Konic raised an eyebrow. ‘Your government has so far been most insistent that we do not allow any of these refugees asylum or free passage.’

‘This matter is considered classified. It does not indicate a shift in government policy.’

‘Would you care to tell me what this is about?’

‘It concerns a certain individual who is in a position to help His Majesty’s Government.’

Konic seemed to relax. His eyes sparkled with amusement. ‘I see. Well, perhaps something can be arranged. It will have to be handled with some discretion, of course. What is this person’s name?’

Nick leaned forward. ‘His name is Amos Simonici. He is twenty-four years old, a Jew from Bucharest.’

‘Why do you want him?’

‘As I have indicated, it’s an intelligence matter,’ Abrams said.

‘What will you do with him if we take him off the boat?’

‘We will arrange a visa for him,’ Nick said. ‘Then we’ll put him on a train through Syria to Haifa.’

Konic nodded, and put three teaspoonfuls of sugar in the little glass of apple tea. ‘If we agree to help you with this, then perhaps you might assist us with an intelligence matter also.’

‘Of course. If we can.’

‘We think someone inside this office is providing the Germans with copies of cables between Istanbul and Ankara. We want his name.’

Nick looked at Abrams. Daniela had already provided them with that information. His name was Saffet Diker, and he was Konic’s own private secretary, the man with the moustache who had just shown them into Konic’s office. Nick had already approached him and blackmailed him into working for the SIS. Copies of cables intended for Konic now came first to Nick’s desk at the British Consulate.

This fact might prove embarrassing if the man was interrogated by the Emniyet.

‘Why do you think we could provide you with that sort of information?’ Abrams asked.

‘One of your officers is meeting regularly with the mistress of an Abwehr colonel. Either the Abwehr is getting information from you or you are getting information from them. I suspect it is the latter.’

So, Nick thought, I was right, the Emniyet has been watching me.

‘We’ll see what we can do,’ Abrams said.

They left the office and walked to the car. Abrams said, ‘I hope this is going to be worth all the time and trouble.’

‘If it’s not, we can at least sleep well knowing we’ve done the decent thing.’

‘I always sleep well, Davis,’ Abrams said and got into the waiting embassy car. ‘There’s nothing on my conscience. What about you?’

Nick stood at the bow of the police launch as it sliced through the water towards the black silhouette of the
Struma
. The lights of the city sparkled in the cold, clean air and a searchlight played across the dark water. The icy wind made his cheeks burn.

The ship rode at anchor about three hundred yards from the shore. At first it appeared abandoned, but as they got closer Nick saw crowds of people lining the ship’s rails. They stood silent, like mourners at a funeral.

Up close the
Struma
looked even more pitiful. The wooden hull was rotting, and rusted steel plates had been clamped to the sides to hold the vessel together. A crude wooden superstructure had been jerry-built on the deck, no doubt as quarters for additional paying passengers on the already overcrowded ship. He couldn’t see any life preservers or lifeboats. They were hoping to reach Palestine in this rust bucket? She was the most miserable vessel Nick had seen in his life.

He wondered how she had got as far even as Istanbul; he would not have trusted her to cross the Horn.

A yellow flag hung limp from the stern, to indicate the ship was in quarantine.

The launch pulled up alongside and a rope ladder was thrown down to them. Faces peered down at him, the pale and haunted faces of the damned. Two of the policemen started climbing up, and Nick followed.

He was overwhelmed by the pervading taint of human waste. The ship was in darkness, but Nick glimpsed a pale human face in the light of a candle before the flame was extinguished by a gust of wind.

The two policemen shone torches around the deck, picking out huddles of frightened, shivering people, all clustered together in groups.

‘Welcome to the rat trap,’ a voice said, in French. ‘My name is Garabetenko. I am the captain of this wretched ship. How can we assist you,
monsieur
?’

‘My name is Davis. I’m from the British Legation.’

‘You people finally want to help these poor bastards?’

Nick hesitated. ‘I wish we could.’

‘I didn’t think so. What do you want?’

‘I’m looking for someone. His name is Amos Simonici.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to get him off this ship.’

‘You have a visa for him?’

‘Possibly.’

‘A visa!
Monsieur
, what is it like to be God?’ He took a deep breath. ‘One man among seven hundred. What has he done to be so fortunate?’

‘Is he on board?’

They were buffeted by another icy blast of wind. The captain ran his hand across his face and Nick heard the rasp of stubble on his chin. ‘The bastard who owns this ship didn’t give me a passenger list,
monsieur
.’