Istanbul (33 page)

CHAPTER 79

He kept his Webley .38 revolver in a drawer in his study, it was a replacement issued by the Service for the gun he lost the night he was kidnapped. He took it out to clean it and re-familiarise himself with its mechanism.

Never love too much, he heard Max say. Leaves you defenceless, old chum. Always hold something in reserve, that’s the thing.

There was a small box of ammunition in the drawer and he took out one of the bullets and placed it with great care in the revolving chamber, spun the mechanism several times and then snapped it shut.

So many advocates for the defence: his sons, of course, for it was not a lesson any father wished to teach his children; Jennifer, also, who kept a light burning in his past, would still grieve for him, though he had given her good cause to hate him; most of all there was Daniela Simonici, telling him that she had never betrayed him, that Maier had lied.

He was not a religious man but God was there also, frowning in silent admonition; and there was that most terrible Judas, hope, whispering that tomorrow might be better if only he would endeavour to live another day. Hope is just despair deferred, someone once said.

He was not an especially brave man and it takes great courage to hold a gun to your own head and pull the trigger. But he had never felt as abandoned of all human emotion as he did at that moment.

The hammer snapped back and the chamber turned in the revolver. One chance in six, good odds for a merciful deity, if there was such a thing, or for fate, if that was all it was. For the first time in months, perhaps years, he felt a sense of elation, for his future was finally to be decided and he was free of all responsibility for it.

BOOK FIVE

CHAPTER 80

Bucharest, August 1944

Three months later chance brought him to another hot day in August, and an RAF de Havilland flying him and Abrams from Istanbul to Bucharest. As the plane approached the airstrip on the southern fringe, Nick saw a pall of smoke hanging low over the city.

The Soviet offensive had begun on August 20 and the German and Romanian positions had collapsed rapidly. Carol’s son, King Michael, had staged a coup with the help of the army and had Antonescu arrested, then replaced his government with Stanciu’s National Democratic Block. The King immediately announced that his country would join forces with the Allies against the Axis powers.

That night the German commander was received at the palace and, after a brief discussion with the King, had undertaken to leave Bucharest immediately. He kept his word; but as soon as he was gone he ordered the Luftwaffe to bomb the city. The raids continued unabated for the last three days.

Nick and Abrams touched down at the Baneasa airfield, taxied past the wreckage of German Heinkels caught in a Russian bombing raid a few weeks before. They bumped across the grass towards the hangars at the edge of the aerodrome.

Bucharest, once more. She was out there, somewhere.

Nick looked at Abrams and wondered what he was thinking. Two weeks before, a field marshall and four generals had been executed for their part in the plot to kill Hitler; Canaris himself was strangled with piano wire. Abrams was on the winning side but he had lost the war.

They would just have to make the best of this now. The Soviets would be arriving soon and Abrams’ brief was to liaise with their new allies; they had come to meet the Devil.

A black Opel saloon waited for them outside the customs shed. As Nick climbed out of the de Havilland, Stanciu ran across the grass to greet him.

‘Welcome to Romania!’ he shouted over the roar of the engines. ‘I hope you enjoy this visit more than your last.’

A grim joke. Stanciu kissed him on each cheek in the Romanian manner. Abrams held out his hand for a more formal introduction. Stanciu led the way to the car.

If the Romanians had listened to Stanciu and negotiated with us sooner, Nick thought, they would not now be in the predicament they find themselves. Their fate had been sealed three months before when Churchill and Roosevelt agreed on the military operational zones in south Eastern Europe; by terms of the agreement the Allies got Greece, Stalin got Romania.

It was too late to do anything about that now. The Red Army were closing in on the city.

As they drove in from the aerodrome, Nick heard the rumble of artillery in the distance. The Russians were just a few miles away, wiping out the remaining pockets of German resistance.

They passed through dismal suburbs, past wooden shacks, tethered horses and goats, then concrete blocks of flats, surrounded by wasteland or peasant fields. The roads shimmered with mirage.

Finally, they reached the city itself, still ravaged by the earthquake and the civil war over three years before. Many of the buildings that survived had now been reduced to rubble by the Luftwaffe.

He remembered Bucharest when he first arrived in 1939, it was more decadent than Paris, they said, and cheap, Black Sea caviar sold by the pound, and lunches that lasted from noon until five. There were Parisian perfumes and Parisian fashion in the shops along the Chaussée; the city’s public gardens were lush with flowers; and its streets were swept daily by an army of peasant women with stick brooms.

But that was then.

Now the streets were deserted, the few stragglers they saw were empty-eyed and dressed in rags. Much of the city lay in ruins and the boulevards were cratered from German bombing raids. The shops along the Chaussée were boarded up and almost all the lime trees were gone. A mob had burned down the German Bureau and there was at least grim satisfaction in seeing it gutted and smouldering.

Sirens wailed around the city. Those caught in the open started to run. Nick heard the terrifying wail of Stukas. Stanciu shouted at the driver to get off the street.

They jolted to a stop in front of the National Bank. Stanciu threw open the door and herded them towards the building. ‘This way, this way!’

They took refuge inside one of the vaults. Nick felt the ground shudder as the German bombers once again took extended leave of their former allies.

So long and thanks for all the oil.

CHAPTER 81

The prison stank of fear and sweat. A guard led the way to the warden’s office. Unspeakable things had been done here and even though he had one of Stanciu’s confederates with him, a bespectacled functionary by the name of Emile, Nick could not help a shudder of apprehension when he heard the steel door slam shut behind him.

The mention of Stanciu’s name brought the warden snapping to attention. Nick looked around his office: a grim room with a steel desk, a grey filing cabinet and a barred, grimy window looking out onto a cement exercise yard.

Emile dismissed the warden’s unctuous offer of
tsuica
with a wave of his hand. ‘We are looking for two prisoners who were brought here at the start of the war,’ he told him. ‘This gentleman is the assistant military attaché from the British Consulate in Istanbul and he has a special interest in them.’

‘Of course,’ the warden said. ‘What were their names?’

‘Simonici,’ Emile said. ‘One was named Simon. He was arrested in June 1940. The other was his brother, Amos. He was still at liberty in December, 1941. That’s all I know.’

‘A moment please,’ the warden said and hurried away to check the files himself.

Nick asked himself why he was doing this. She had betrayed him and he owed her nothing. And yet a part of him still wanted to believe that Maier had lied. Besides, if he found one of her brothers, he might find more answers to the puzzle.

The warden returned with a dusty cardboard folder. He laid it on the desk. ‘I have found the records. Amos Simonici was arrested on March 28, 1942. Age twenty-four. A banker and a Jew,’ he added with a sneer. ‘He died while trying to escape. Fell from a third-storey window.’

Emile turned to Nick and explained what had been said. Nick was scarcely surprised, he had not really expected to find either man alive after so long.

‘He is the only Simonici on file,’ the warden said. ‘But there is a file note here. It seems there was another member of the family detained here, but his name was Kransky, Simon Kransky. He was taken from here in November 1940 by the Abwehr and transferred to another prison. He was returned here only recently, in March.’

‘He’s here?’ Emile said.

‘Yes. You wish to see him?’

Emile turned to Nick. ‘The one called Simon is still in this prison. But his name is not Simonici, it is Kransky. You wish to see him?’

Nick had not expected this. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said.

Four years in a Nazi prison doesn’t do anyone much good. They brought him in with his hands chained in front of him. His eyes were sunken in his head and yellowed with jaundice, and his skull had been was shaved for lice. Nick could make out the bones.

The ring finger of his left hand was missing.

He sat in the chair on the other side of the desk – Emile had commandeered the warden’s office for the interview – and stared at them with dull eyes. He spoke no French, so Emile translated.

‘Tell him, please, who I am,’ Nick said to Emile, ‘and that I’m from the British Consulate in Istanbul. Tell him we’re here to help him.’

There was a quick exchange, which seemed to impress the other man not at all. He answered with a few sullen words and looked away.

‘He wants to know how you can possibly help him,’ Emile said.

‘Does he know the Germans have left Bucharest?’

‘He knows. He doesn’t seem to think it’s going to make any difference.’

‘Tell him who you are. Tell him you can get him out of here.’

Another swift exchange. For the first time Nick saw hope in the man’s eyes, grudging and fearful though it was.

‘Ask him if he knows a woman called Daniela Simonici.’

Emile translated and seemed surprised by the answer he received.

‘Is he her brother?’

A murmured exchange. Emile shook his head. ‘He says no, he’s not her brother. He’s her husband.’

Stanciu had arranged the loan of a car and a driver. Nick directed his chauffeur to the old Jewish Quarter. He remembered how one cold night he had walked Daniela through these ancient cobbled streets. All that was left now was scorched walls and mountains of rubble.

He wondered what had happened to the thousands of people who had once lived there; perhaps some had sailed on the
Struma
.

His driver parked in the square. Nick knew the way from there.

But the apartment where she had lived was gone. The whole block had been obliterated, all that was left was a few walls teetering dangerously above the street.

He supposed he would never see her again.

CHAPTER 82

But he did see her again.

He saw her in the only place she could possibly be. At the Athenee Palace.

The garden had been hit by Allied bombs in an air raid and was just rubble now. All evidence of her former guests and masters had been erased. The huge red and black swastika was gone, revealing a crack in the facade, left by the earthquake of 1940. The gloom of the lobby with its pairs of yellow marble pillars gave it the air of a tomb.

The fox-furred princesses, the effete South American diplomats and the Nazi functionaries had seen out their time. The city’s former masters were now departed and the plush cherry sofas and Louis XV chairs awaited the arrival of the new commissars. Nick wondered if the cadres of the Workers Soviet would disdain the luxuries of the grand old hotel.

Somehow he seriously doubted it.

He remembered where she had sat that night. He had almost stumbled over her in the darkness.

I’m a good actress. I always have been.

Instead of going up to the room Stanciu had arranged for him, he sat where he had sat that night, and summoned her from memory.

And then she walked through the revolving door with a man in the uniform of a senior Romanian army officer. His beautiful survivor, arm in arm with another lifeline.

She saw him and stopped.

She was a good actress –
always had been –
but in that moment her talents deserted her.