Istanbul (7 page)

CHAPTER 14

Two days later Clive Allen was at the Piatsa Universitatea, reporting on an Iron Guard demonstration. A gang of young students chased him because he was a foreigner. They cornered him in an alleyway off the boulevard and beat him with fists and iron bars. Another journalist from Havas, a French agency, managed to get away and drove back to the Athenee Palace to get help.

When Max and a handful of other journalists went back to the square in Max’s Humber, they found Clive lying face down on the pavement, his head surrounded by a pool of blood. A crowd had gathered around him.

He had been so badly beaten one of his eyeballs had removed from its socket and all his teeth were broken. He was mercifully unconscious. His head was so swollen that Max only recognised him from his suit.

They picked him up and took him to the nearest hospital, where a Romanian doctor left him lying on a gurney for two hours. The next day Hoare, the Minister, arranged for him to be evacuated on a ship back to England but he died halfway between Constanza and Istanbul.

Nick never mentioned the incident to Abrams. But he often wondered about it. In his experience, there were few coincidences in his profession.

That same evening Nick saw Daniela Simonici in the American Bar.

She was surrounded by three Wehrmacht officers. The broken and dishevelled girl he remembered was gone. The transformation was astonishing.

She must have sensed his gaze, for her eyes moved from her companions to him, and when she saw him the dazzling smile dropped away.

One of the Wehrmacht officers saw Nick staring. He put a hand around Daniela’s shoulders and smiled through a wreath of smoke. First Paris, then Dun-kirk; they got everything they wanted.

Haller watched with naked jealousy from a corner table. He was not as drunk as the night Nick had first seen him; he was at least able to sit unsupported, a significant improvement.

‘Do you have a light?’ a voice said in German.

Nick turned around. The man was short and stocky, with greying hair. He had a Nazi lapel pin. Nick produced a lighter.

‘You are an Englisher.’

‘What gave me away?’

‘You do not have a girl with you,’ he said with a low chuckle. ‘Siegfried Maier. At your service.’ He gave a slight bow and clicked his heels in the Prussian manner.

‘Nicholas Davis. I’m with the British Legation.’

‘Ah, a diplomat. I have never met so many diplomats since I have been here in Bucharest.’

‘It’s a place that requires a lot of diplomacy. What do you do, Herr Maier?’

‘I have business interests,’ he said easily.

Nick could imagine what those interests were. For months now the government had been closing down Jewish-run businesses and arresting the proprietors. Now German and Italian businessmen were rushing to Romania to buy banks and department stores and newspapers for a fraction of their value.

‘How long have you been in Romania, Herr Davis?’ Maier asked.

‘About a year.’

‘Do you like it very much?’

‘It’s wonderful, if you like
tsuica
and fascists.’

‘You should not grow too fond of the city. You will not be here for very long.’

‘A shame. The fascists were starting to grow on me.’

‘Of course, we may all be friends again very soon. The war will be over quickly, and by next Christmas everyone will have forgotten all about it. Still, a pity for you if you have to leave. The women here are very beautiful.’

‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘Just as well, they seem to prefer German boys. Anyway, I am sure we will meet again sometime in the course of our duties. For as long as you remain.’

‘I shall anticipate that pleasure.’

A soft smile and he moved off. Nick looked around for Daniela. She had disentangled herself from the Panzer division that had been following her around the bar and gone out to the lobby. He followed her, saw her walk into the breakfast room, and then out through the French windows into the little courtyard where he had taken her the evening he helped her escape from the greenshirts.

He stood for a moment in the doorway, watching her. She was staring up at the night sky. Suddenly she looked around and saw him. She slipped on her smile as easily as putting on a cardigan against the chill. ‘I think I’ve drunk too much vermouth,’ she said.

‘You should slow down. It’s only early.’

‘I try but the boys keep filling up my glass.’

‘The boys? You mean the Nazis.’

She made a face. ‘You’re in a bad mood. Perhaps I should leave you alone.’

‘Haller’s been watching you all evening.’

‘Haller?’

‘The young man who vomited in the aspidistra.’

‘I don’t remember that part. All I remember is that I met this beautiful blue-eyed Englishman and he was very gallant and took me home. I think I might have kissed him in the
trasura
.’

‘He’s a very lucky man.’ He took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders.

‘If he knew all about me, he would have run away as fast as he could.’

‘What were you thinking about when I came out?’

‘I was thinking that life can be a strange thing. A year ago I was living on the Boulevard Bratianu and I had the next ten years planned perfectly. Now look at me.’

‘What was in your plan?’

‘Oh, you know, the usual things. A husband who loved me and treated me well. Children. All those things you already have,
monsieur
.’ She gave him a look that he could have construed as reproach.

‘I never planned it like you. It just happened. Another funny thing that life does. I feel like I’ve been sleepwalking through my life until now. Where are you living now?’

‘In the Quarter.’

‘I’ve been looking for you. I think I can get you those visas.’

‘The visas?’

‘I imagine you’ll just be wanting one now.’

A flicker of pain in her eyes.

‘You can go to Palestine. Perhaps even Britain.’

‘But I can’t, not without . . . Simon. He’s still in prison.’

Dead by now, Nick thought.

‘Come to the embassy, make a proper application, bring a photograph. I can organise everything.’

‘Thank you. But I can’t, not now.’ She shivered. ‘It’s cold out here.’ She was standing too close. ‘I remember the first time I saw you in the bar. I felt something for you the very moment I saw you: I knew you were different.’ She handed him back his jacket. ‘Thank you,
monsieur
. Did I tell you that you look very handsome tonight?’

‘I thought you preferred men in uniform.’

‘Compared to an Englishman with blue eyes and a cream tussore jacket? Never.’ She reached up and kissed him on the lips. ‘I’ll never forget you,’ she said, then turned away and went back inside. He stared after her, wished he had met her a long time ago. But then he would not have been the man he was now and she would have been too young. Perhaps this was the perfect time, though time alone would tell if anything would come of it.

Haller was waiting in the lobby. He was drunk, it was almost ten o’clock and he clearly found it indecent to be sober after eight. Nick wished all the Germans were like Haller: the Panzers would have driven into ditches and trees before they left the Rhineland.

‘What were you doing out there?’ Haller said, in heavily accented English.

‘Go away.’ Nick tried to push past him but Haller grabbed his shoulder.

‘We’re going to kick you out of Bucharest.’

Nick wasn’t in the mood for this. He could smell the drink on Haller’s breath. People were staring. This was the kind of floorshow they came to the Athenee Palace for.

‘You’re drunk.’

Haller pulled back his fist and hit Nick on the jaw with a wild, drunken swing. Nick saw it coming but was too astonished to duck out of the way.

He immediately sat Haller on the seat of his pants. It took only a single punch and afterwards he regretted it, Haller might have vomited on his polished Oxfords.

Maier appeared. He grabbed Haller by the arm, stood him up and hissed something in his ear. Haller stumbled away.

Maier turned to Nick with a slight bow of the head. ‘My apologies, Herr Davis.’

‘Don’t apologise. I won.’

‘A new experience for an Englishman. Your lip’s bleeding.’

‘It’s nothing.’

Nick saw Daniela watching from the door of the American Bar. The expression on her face was indecipherable. He left, feeling a little ashamed, the taste of his own blood salty in his mouth.

CHAPTER 15

Jennifer was waiting up when he got home. She was in her nightgown, sitting in her favourite chair, reading a book. The lamp threw a yellow pool of light on the pages.

She looked up at him over the top of her reading glasses. ‘You’re bleeding.’

‘I started a second front.’

‘In the hotel?’

‘It’s our bridgehead into the Balkans.’

‘Tell me you’re joking.’

‘Some young Nazi hothead took a swing at me.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do you think? We’re at war.’

‘In Europe. Not in the lobby of the Athenee Palace.’

‘He was drunk.’

She closed her book with a snap. ‘How many more times are you going to come home covered in blood, Nick? You’re supposed to be a diplomat not a gladiator.’

‘I suppose I haven’t been feeling diplomatic lately.’

‘Has something happened?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. You’re not the same anymore.’ He stared at her. Had she not heard a single thing he said to her in Cina’s? ‘Is there another woman, Nick?’

He felt something tighten in his chest. ‘No, of course not.’

‘Good.’

‘I’m going to bed,’ he said.

But he couldn’t sleep. He lay in the dark, staring at the yellow light that spilled through a gap in the curtains, knew it came from the Athenee Palace Hotel, where Daniela Simonici was laughing and flirting with drunken German officers.

Well, he wouldn’t be tormented by this much longer. As Maier had said, soon he would be gone, this was a German city now.

CHAPTER 16

The large table in the lobby of the Athenee Palace Hotel was a barometer of the war. All the foreign newspapers were laid out there: the
Voelkische Beobachter
and
Boersenzeitung
were yesterday’s; while the headline on the battered copy of the
London Times
reported the French retreat across the Marne on June 12, and was so limp and worn it was impossible to hold it upright. For a casual guest of the hotel, the dates and condition of the newspapers would have told them all they needed to know about who had the upper hand.

The Germans had taken over the hotel. The management had cleared guests from several floors for the exclusive use of Wehrmacht officers. There was a hush about the place this morning, knots of men and women whispering about their assignations of the night before or talking politics and bartering prices for secrets real and imagined. It was so quiet that shoes squeaking on the parquet floors between the wine-red runners sounded like the screech of hydraulic brakes.

Nick and Max sat together in a salon just off the lobby, on one of the plush cherry-red settees, drinking
tsuica
and searing Turkish coffee. A gold-framed portrait of Antonescu had been propped against the French windows on an easel where an oil painting of King Carol had rested a few weeks before.

The King is dead. Long live the King.

Many staff from the British Legation had been sent home; Jennifer had refused to leave, of course. Most of the foreign journalists had left too; Max King was among the few who had decided to stay. He had seen it all before; he had interviewed Hitler and Lenin, and covered the Chinese civil war, and the massacres in Shanghai. The only thing that would drive him out of Bucharest was if the bars closed.

‘There’s talk the Germans are preparing to march into Greece,’ Max said. ‘They’re going to launch the invasion from here.’

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ Nick said. ‘I’m just the assistant military attaché.’

‘Of course, I forgot.’ Max put three spoons of sugar in his coffee cup. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t know about the other story I heard either.’

‘What story was that?’

‘That there were plans to send in a regiment of Royal Engineers to sabotage the Ploesti oilfields.’