Istanbul (22 page)

When Constantin saw Nick he hauled on the hawser and pulled the boat closer to the quay. He leaped onto the dock.

He was a grizzled salt with three days’ stubble and a sad moustache that gave him a perpetually downcast look. His long lank hair was thinning and was swept across his bald head like guitar strings.

Nick offered him a cigarette, and lit it for him. Constantin was not an appetizing specimen up close. His fingernails were rimmed with oil from the engine and his teeth were bad.

‘I want you to go to Dobruja,’ Nick said.

Constantin smiled. Until the war he had lived almost his entire life in a village ten miles south-east of there. ‘I could find my way there with a blindfold.’

‘We need three men dropped off, usual rates.’

‘I don’t care about money. When?’

When they were done Constantin jumped back in the boat, rejoining his two crewmen, Jews like himself, from Dobruja. He put a bluefish in a tin can and threw it on the deck. Some schoolchildren squealed with delight as it bounced on the planking. His grandchildren would have been that age, if they were still alive.

CHAPTER 49

The sabotage of the enemy’s installations and infrastructure had once been the purview of Section D of the British Secret Intelligence Service, but early in the war Churchill had formed a separate organisation, the Special Operations Executive, to take over those responsibilities. The SOE became the mavericks, the renegades of the service, the errant sons.

They were more abhorrent to the Foreign Office mandarins than the Gestapo.

Yet it seemed to Nick that there were good reasons for separating the two organisations; SOE agents were trained for a single act of sabotage, while officers like himself were involved with long-term intelligence gathering that required plausible cover, good security and a great deal of patience. Different kind of chap altogether, he had heard SIS colleagues saying among themselves; they were chess players, but the SOE, well, they were just cowboys.

Patrick Jordon did not look like a cowboy; he was an affable, loose-limbed Oxford man with blues in rowing and rugby and a pipe for ever clenched between his teeth. The last time Nick saw him, he had been playing with a detonator in the basement of the Bucharest legation.

He had arrived from Cairo just the previous afternoon and Abrams had summoned him immediately to the briefing room at SOE’s Istanbul office, an eighteenth-century house close to the Park Hotel and the German Consulate. Nick glanced out of the window and saw von Papen, the German Ambassador, smoking and laughing with consulate staff in the leafy garden on the other side of the wall

He returned his attention to the map of Romania spread out on the polished oak table. Jordon, wearing a navy-blue polo neck jumper and baggy khaki pants, regarded it with scholarly interest.

‘The boat will land us here, ten miles south of Dobruja,’ Nick said. ‘The captain will anchor in the bay here and you and your radio operator will be taken ashore in a boat. The leader of the local resistance, Dumitrache, will be waiting on the beach. He’ll signal with a torch, two long flashes and a short one.’

Jordon nodded, looking very relaxed for a man about to go to war. ‘This fishing captain is reliable?’ he asked.

‘Completely.’

‘You’re coming with us?’ Jordon asked.

Nick nodded. ‘I want to talk to Dumitrache. I’ll stay overnight and come back with Constantin the next day.’

‘By the way, the group you’re going to spend the next six months with are all Marxists,’ Abrams said.

Jordon looked up. ‘Does it matter?’

‘It may, later on, after the war.’

‘I’m sure they want to see the Germans out of Romania as much as we do.’

‘Even so, they’re going to be a headache for all of us when it’s over.’

‘First we have to win the war.’

‘Oh, I don’t think there’s any doubt about who will win. Stalin worries me more than Hitler.’

Jordon looked at Nick for support. ‘The Russians are our allies, sir,’ he said.

‘People in London should think of the long term consequences when they decide to support communists, even if they are fighting the Germans. The war won’t last forever and then politicals like Nick and I have to sort out Whitehall’s mess for them. Want to see Romania annexed to Russia, do you, Jordon?’

‘I believe everyone has a right to self-determination.’

‘Trying telling that to Stalin.’

Abrams went to the window. It was open and they could hear von Papen laughing at some joke. A strange war.

‘Look at him,’ Abrams said. ‘Devious. Egotistical. Ambitious. There’s a man we could have done business with.’

Later, as Nick and Abrams drove back down Istiklal in the back of a Chancery saloon, Abrams said, ‘Queer duck, that Jordon. Not sure I care for him.’

‘No, sir.’

‘But that’s the SOE. Spent their childhoods making bombs from castor sugar and benzine. Pulling the wings off flies. Ever pull the wings off a fly, Davis?’

‘No, sir.’

‘There you are. That’s why you work for us. How’s the wife?’

The sudden turn in the conversation startled him. He wondered who had been talking; or perhaps everyone had. ‘She’s down in Devon with the boys. Breathed a sigh of relief when they got out of London.’

‘She must miss you.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘It’s important to have a good wife, Davis. If you’re ambitious. Remember that, won’t you?’

They drove through the gates of the consulate. He said no more about it.

Whatever Abrams thought of Jordon, Nick found his easygoing manner appealing. That evening they arranged to go for a drink in Taksim, to toast the success of their mission. They walked up Istiklal under a leaden sky, past rows of bootblacks and across Taksim Square, dodging buses and clanging trams. Commuters clung to the sides, the bells ringing frantically as they bumped over the tramlines, scattering dawdling pedestrians.

There was a large grey monument in the centre of the square commemorating the dead of the war of independence. The Turks had seen enough of wars in their history; Nick understood why they wanted no part of this one.

‘How long have you worked with Abrams?’ Jordon asked him.

‘About three years now.’

‘Odd, isn’t he? All due respect and all that.’

‘I suppose he is, a little. Always on his high horse about the Russians.’

‘Jewboy?’

Nick nodded.

‘Well, he’ll learn to get along one day.’ He grinned, the pipe still clenched between his front teeth. ‘God, I could drain a lake right now. Call me daft, but war makes me nervous.’

There saw a neon sign that said ARIZONA. Turkish music wailed from inside. Nick led Jordon down a flight of narrow steps into a dimly lit bar with gilt walls and mirrors so dirty they were almost opaque. It was hot and stank of tobacco and sweat.

There was just one other patron in the club, a Turk in a western suit slowly drinking himself into oblivion in the corner. A bored and overweight Syrian girl was performing a belly dance.

Nick ordered a bottle of
raki
and two glasses. The first drink eased the tension in his shoulders and took away the pain behind the eyes; the second made the belly dancer appear more beautiful than she really was; after the third, he was in love with the world again.

‘Are you scared?’

‘I try not to think about it,’ Jordon said, the pipe dancing between his teeth. ‘The thing you worry about most is being betrayed. In this job you can never trust anyone. Have you ever been betrayed, Nick?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

Jordon reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He showed him a photograph of a young and pretty woman and two young girls, their sepia smiles grinning at the world. The backdrop was a Scottish glen in a London photographer’s studio. He brushed a forefinger over the three people in the photograph. ‘Are you married, Nick?’

Nick produced his own photograph; pinched and tattered at the edges, taken some five years before. He had not looked at it in months. ‘The boys are grown now. It seems forever since they were that young.’

‘Trouble with kids. They have a habit of growing up.’

‘My wife and I . . . well, things aren’t that good between us.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

Jordon drained his glass. Nick poured two more.

‘Are you having an affair?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘I don’t know. Are you?’

‘I suppose I am. In love with the damned woman, actually.’

Jordon examined his pipe thoughtfully. ‘That’s bad luck. How long’s it been going on?’

‘More than two years.’

The belly dancer plumped off the stage. The drunken Turk in the corner applauded enthusiastically.

‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘I don’t know. It’s complicated. She’s one of my agents.’

‘So you’re doing this to help the war effort?’

‘Not something you get a medal for.’

‘Well, I’m sure you’ll be mentioned in dispatches,’ he said, and Nick smiled at that. ‘Well, be careful,’ he added, which was strange advice, Nick thought, from a man about to go of his own free will behind enemy lines, facing certain torture and death if he was caught.

They finished the bottle of
raki
and staggered back to the consulate in the early hours of the next morning where Nick rang the night porter and demanded someone take them both home.

CHAPTER 50

He was too drunk to go to bed. He slumped into an armchair and poured another whisky. Best way to avoid a hangover; don’t sober up.

The letter from Jennifer lay open on the floor. He picked it up and read it again. She had met a major in Bomber Command, there were a lot of details about how she met him, a long description about a Lyons teahouse and some co-incidence about him knowing her cousin; when he first read it, he thought she was trying to tell him that she had bumped into one of his old school friends. It wasn’t until the last paragraph, the bit where she asked for a divorce, that he realized she was describing an affair.

It was unexpected, and also a relief, in a way. He missed the boys was all. He hoped they would remember who he was.

CHAPTER 51

Nick ate a breakfast of thick yellow yogurt and green figs and strong black coffee then went out onto the patio to feed the birds. Every morning sparrows came to peck at the crumbs he left for them. They were quick, nervous birds but one was a little more daring than the others. She would spend several minutes hovering and flapping in the bushes, working up her courage, and then she would come to peck a few crumbs from his fingertips, darting towards him, then as quickly retreating.

That morning she did not appear. He wondered what had happened to her. It was a dangerous world beyond the garden walls, there were cats all over the city, looking for a quick and easy meal.

Or perhaps she had simply flown away.

A driver picked him up in a black Humber, and as they drove to the Legation he sat in the back seat, lost to his own thoughts. The roads were choked with traffic; just ahead of them a silver-grey Rolls Royce belonging to some rich spice merchant disputed the intersection with a pony cart; the farmer on the running board ignored the blaring of klaxons around him. A donkey bucked and stamped while its owner slashed at it with his cane.
Hamals
with handcarts piled with sacks of tumeric and cumin for the bazaar struggled through the chaos.

Nick saw a woman walking arm in arm with tall fair-haired man, scattering the pigeons gathered around the steps of the mosque. Her hair was hidden beneath a jade-green silk headscarf. Twisting in his seat, he saw them hurry past the beggars selling razor blades and cigarettes on the steps. They disappeared into the warren of streets behind the han.

He jumped out. He pushed his way through the early morning crush, attracting the curses of sack-laden
hamals
. Others stared in wide-eyed astonishment at the Englishman running through the souk shouting a woman’s name. Didn’t he know that the day was long and there were hours enough for the busiest of men?

Nick ran into the han but was soon lost. The muezzin began calling the faithful to morning prayer. Beggars pulled at his sleeve. He could not see her. She was gone.

CHAPTER 52