Istanbul (3 page)

‘Why are the Turks helping us?’

‘Ankara believes Romanian oil will one day fuel an invasion of Turkey. They think it is in their interests to help us, while maintaining the illusion of neutrality, of course.’

‘Illusions are important.’

‘Bendix is to be paymaster. There’s a suitcase waiting for you in the safe in the Ambassador’s office with a considerable sum in sterling inside. You’re to take it to Ploesti tomorrow night and deliver it to him personally.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Make sure he understands what we need and the necessity for complete secrecy. That’s all. Good luck.’

He got up to leave. ‘By the way, I want to talk to you about some visas . . .’

‘What visas?’

‘They’re friends of mine. Jews. I want to get them out of the country.’

‘You know British policy on Romanian Jews, Davis.’

‘There’s only three of them.’

‘Thin end of the wedge.’

‘Or a drop in the ocean. Depends how you look at it.’

‘Have they applied?’

‘Not yet.’

Abrams’s eyes were perfect mirrors. ‘Well, give me the names. They’ll have to come to the embassy and fill out the forms in the usual manner. I’ll see what I can do.’

‘I’d appreciate it,’ Nick said, and Abrams went back to his paperwork.

He had first met Jordon in a dusty corner office in the basement, had come across him by accident. Jordon had a pipe clamped between his teeth and a screwdriver in his hand and was absorbed with a small metal device lying on the desk in front of him.

‘Who are you?’ Nick said. ‘What the hell are you doing with that?’

Jordon looked up and grinned, revealing a charming gap in his front teeth. ‘Jordon. Section D.’

Section D – Dirty Tricks – was a branch of his own service, the SIS. No-one had even bothered to tell him Jordon was here.

‘Davis. Nick Davis.’

‘Oh right. Heard of you.’

So much for security.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘You weren’t told?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Sorry. Thought someone would have mentioned it.’

‘Is that a detonator?’ Nick asked, knowing precisely what it was.

‘If you hear a bang, head for the door and send someone down here with a paper bag for the bits.’ He tamped some tobacco in his pipe. ‘They sent me here from Cairo. There’s talk about dynamiting a few barges at the Iron Gates on the Danube and blocking the channel.’

‘Is there?’

‘Whitehall sent some plastic explosive in the diplomatic pouch.’

‘Nice of them.’

‘It’s in the safe there,’ Jordon said, pointing to the squat grey metal cabinet in the corner of the room. ‘Have to stop Hitler getting his hands on that oil. Any means.’

‘Any means,’ Nick said.

Jordon went back to his fiddling. What a surreal war, Nick thought. Abrams had not even seen fit to tell him Section D were in the building. He wondered what else he wasn’t telling him.

CHAPTER 5

August, 1940

The Jewish Quarter had narrow cobbled streets filled with Orthodox Jews with ringlets and long beards. He found the bookshop he was looking for just off the Strada Lipscani. It was dusty and cramped, religious books and commentaries crowded the shelves. He waited in the back of the shop.

A stocky Jew in a black fedora walked in and their eyes met briefly. He pretended to browse for a book, overplaying his hand, as amateurs will. Eventually he took out a thick volume of religious commentary and slipped an envelope inside. He replaced it on the shelf and went out again.

Nick found the book, took out the envelope and put it in his jacket. The Jew was general manager of an armaments factory; the envelope contained the production schedule for the last three months.

Nick slipped out into the sunshine, the heat of the cobblestones burning through the soles of his shoes. What was the use? The production schedule would be filed away in some dusty cabinet in Whitehall and make not a scrap of difference to the course of the war. If they could sabotage the Ploesti oilfields, now that would mean something but now the damned mandarins in London were stalling. They were frightened of upsetting the Romanians.

And then he saw her, just a glimpse of her in the crowd, and his heart lurched in his chest. It was just a moment, a jade-green shawl bobbing among a sea of ringlets and black homburgs. She turned a corner into Strada Zarafi. He ran to catch up with her, but she was gone.

He stood there, feeling like a fool.

He got into a
trasura
and told the coachman to take him back to the British Legation.

A flick of the reins and they moved off. The leather seat was scalding where the hood did not provide enough shade from the sun. The city cooked in the furnace heat, the air gritty with dust and pale yellow like a smoke haze.He wanted to get away from the beggars, the noise and the crush.

A motorbike and sidecar roared past, carrying three Guardists in green peasant shirts. It passed so close that the horse skittered and the coachman had to use his whip to bring it under control. A police car, bell clanging, went past a few seconds later, the driver shouting abuse at the coachman, who ignored him with the lumpen passivity of a sack of potatoes.

Instead he directed his rage at the horse. ‘Settle down, you stupid Jew!’ he shouted and slapped her again with his whip.

Nick turned around and watched the police car disappear into the twisted lanes off Lipscani. The horse shied and twitched. A premonition of death overtook him.

Levi, walking ahead of them, saw the motorbike and sidecar parked in the street outside their apartment. He shouted a warning.
Greenshirts
.

Simon grabbed Daniela’s hand and they ran. A black police car turned the corner, blocking their escape. Two policemen jumped out. One of them was holding a wooden truncheon. The other had a whip.

Levi slipped on the cobblestones and went down. The two policemen were on him immediately and started beating him. He only screamed when he went down for the second time.

Daniela retreated into a doorway and stood there with her hands to her face, screaming. Simon was already at the corner. Two greenshirts came out of the apartment, grabbed him and dragged him back up the street towards the police car. They bundled him in the back and the car drove away, the wheels bouncing on the cobblestones. Terrified passers-by threw themselves in doorways to get out of the way.

The two men who were beating Levi grew tired of it. There were flecks of blood on their faces and their shirts. Levi didn’t look human anymore; his hair was matted with black blood, his face unrecognisable. He lay like a bunch of rags on the cobbles.

The men looked up and saw her, and one of them gave a wolfish grin. She knew what would happen now.

Someone grabbed her hand and she tried to twist free. But it wasn’t a greenshirt, it was
him
, the stranger from the other night, the Englishman who had taken her home in the
trasura
. She gaped at him in astonishment.

He dragged her down an alleyway, bare brick walls crowding either side. There was a
trasura
waiting at the far end, the driver throwing anxious glances over his shoulder. When he saw the greenshirts, he jerked at the reins and moments later he was gone.

‘Bastard!’ the Englishman shouted after him.

She looked behind her. The two greenshirts were almost on them.

She threw off her high-heeled shoes and, clutching his hand, followed him through the maze of streets, suddenly deserted now, fire burning in her lungs.

CHAPTER 6

The lobby of the Athenee Palace Hotel had witnessed many grand entrances, but the appearance of a barefoot and beautiful woman with blood on her skirt, hand in hand with a dishevelled and sweating Englishman, created an immediate buzz of interest.

The American Bar, Nick decided, was too public. Instead he led her to a small courtyard at the back of the hotel, which was accessible only through the French doors in the breakfast room. A Romanian army officer and his paramour had come there for a clandestine meeting, and they looked up resentfully at this unwelcome intrusion.

Nick and Daniela sat down at a grey weathered table under the limes. It was just on dusk.

‘Wait here,’ he said.

He went to the bar and brought back two glasses of
tsuica
. Daniela’s hands were shaking so badly she could not hold the glass. Her skirt was torn and her face was streaked with sweat.

‘I must look a mess,’ she said.

He helped her drink the
tsuica
. She gasped as the strong brandy hit the back of her throat.

She took his hand; she had small hands, delicate and pale. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘You saved my life.’

‘Who were those two men?’

‘The one they threw in the car was my . . . he was my brother. I’ve got to find him.’ She spilled some of the brandy on her skirt. ‘Where have they taken him?’

‘Prefecture headquarters, I expect.’ Poor bastard, he wanted to add. The Prefecture had a grim reputation and the police there did as they wanted with any unfortunate that fell into their power.

‘I have to find him,’ she repeated.

She was shaking uncontrollably. He put his arms around her and held her as she wept. ‘Why were the greenshirts after you?’

She gasped out the story; her father had owned the Banque de Credit Bucaresti. Simon had been a director. He had been convicted
in absentia
of fraud, but that was a cover up. The government had stolen the bank from
them
. They had both been hiding from the police since their father had been arrested two months before.

‘You can’t go back to the apartment, they’ll be waiting for you. Have you somewhere else you can stay tonight?’

‘I haven’t any money. Everything I have is in the apartment.’

‘Then we’ll have to find you somewhere to sleep.’

She stood in the middle of the room, her arms folded across her chest. She looked lost, like a little girl. The room reminded him of a minor salon in Versailles; there were heavy gold drapes on the windows, gilt Louis Seize chairs covered with rose brocade.

He drew the drapes across the window and both their eyes fell on the huge bed.

The door to the balcony was ajar and the summer breeze brought with it the fragrance of roses from the garden below. ‘What will happen to Simon?’ she said.

He pushed back the fall of dark hair from her face. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ He put his arms around her, held her, felt her move against him. He thought about scooping her up and carrying her to the bed. He knew she would submit as this was the only way she had to repay him, but he didn’t want to be repaid.

He thought about Jennifer.

‘What’s wrong?’ she murmured.

‘I have to go. I’ll come back in the morning and we’ll see what we can do about your brother.’

He left before he had the chance to change his mind.

Even as the key turned in the lock, the door swung open and Jennifer threw herself in his arms. ‘Where have you been? I called everyone at the legation.’ Her eyes went wide. ‘What happened?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘There’s blood on your shirt.’

‘It’s all right. It’s not mine.’

It’s not mine.
What did he mean by that? It’s not my blood on me, so you needn’t have worried? He wondered how the blood had got there; perhaps when Daniela had fallen as they were running from the greenshirts. It might have come from the graze on her hand.

He couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘I’m fine, Jen.’ He disentangled himself and moved past her into the apartment. He badly needed a whisky. He went to the liquor cabinet and splashed three fingers into a tumbler.

Better.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’

‘The greenshirts decided to crack some heads in the Jewish Quarter. Got caught up in it.’

‘Caught up in what? Whose blood is this?’

‘I don’t know.’

She was staring at him like he was a stranger who had just lurched through the door into her living room. Perhaps he was.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the hallway mirror. He looked like he had come from a bar fight.