Istanbul Passage (31 page)

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“It is like that.”

He stopped, letting his tie hang from his collar. “Kay—”

“So it’s a mess.” She ran the cigarette around the rim of the ashtray, tapping off ash. “My god, I’m the other woman, aren’t I? In a hotel. My mother was right. Smoking. Half hanging out of my robe. Quite a sight.”

“Utterly depraved.”

She looked up, a small smile. “I’m glad you stayed the night. It makes it less like—”

“It’s not.”

“Then what is it?”

He finished his tie. “It’s what we have.”

She drew on the cigarette, looking at him, then stubbed it out. “All dressed. You’d better go. What do we say? I’m new at this.”

He walked over and took her chin in his hand, kissing her on the forehead. “Say, I’ll see you soon.”

She met his eyes, then moved back, shoulders slightly drooped.

He picked up his jacket, not really looking, so that he grabbed it upside down, the breast pocket hanging over the floor. A quiet thump, Tommy’s passports spilling out, then one of the consulate letters. He looked at the pile for a second, jarred, then scooped them back up. Nothing seen, no names, just the fact of them, obviously passports, more than one. Kay folded her arms across her chest, a protective reflex, then glanced up at him. He put on his jacket, sliding the passports back into the pocket.

“Don’t ask,” he said. “Remember?”

She kept looking at him. “What else don’t you tell me, I wonder. Maybe it’s the same. With us.”

He adjusted his collar, not answering.

“Maybe you like it this way. Secret. Like your work. Seeing me like this. It’s exciting for you.”

He looked over. “There are two of us in this room.”

She said nothing for a minute, then nodded. “All right. Yes. I like it too. I’m just not as good at it. I keep thinking it shows in my face.”

He moved closer, putting his hand on her neck. “It does. But nobody else sees it.”

She touched his breast pocket, not patting it, her hand still. “Whatever you’re doing with these—it’s safe?”

He nodded. “I’ll come to Ankara,” he said, and then before she could answer, “You can give Orhan the day off.”

She looked up. “All the details.”

The numbers turned out to be for safety deposit boxes, not accounts. No deposit slips, no transfers, no records at all.

“But you have the date when he took the box?”

“Yes, of course,” the Denizbank manager said, and referred to an index card in his hand. “May ’forty-four. The nineteenth. There’s some irregularity?”

“No, no, we need to audit his assets, that’s all, so we can settle the estate.”

“He’s dead? I’m sorry,” he said, Mr. Price clearly unknown to him. An American with a valid passport and money to pay for a box. “We would need to see a death certificate before we could release the contents. You understand.”

“Yes, naturally. We don’t want to close it out. We just need to know what’s in it. Any papers. His wife thinks there may have been bonds—she can’t find them at home. If you’d like to have someone from the bank present while I do the accounting—”

The manager brushed this aside. “Please. A consulate request. Is there anything you need? There’s a desk in the room. Only a signature here. To confirm the grant of access.”

“Do people sign every time they come in?”

The manager smiled. “No, not the box holders. One woman, you know, comes in every day. To look at her jewels. Imagine if we had to ask her.” He looked up, hesitant. “This is not a police matter?”

“No, nothing like that. A simple audit.”

Leon was shown into a vault room lined floor to ceiling with metal boxes. The manager drew one out and put it on the table, handing Leon a key. Leon put a notepad and pen next to it.

“Ergin will wait outside,” the manager said. “Leave the key with him. Now if there’s anything—”

“I can’t thank you enough.”

The manager bowed as he left, an embassy gesture.

Leon looked up as he turned the key. No Ergin, no mirrors, nobody
watching. He raised the lid, half expecting the shine of gold, some treasure chest effect, but there was only the dull gray-green of currency, several bundles of it, no identifying bank bands or other papers, just money. He flipped the corners of one bundle, counting. One-hundred-dollar bills in stacks of fifty, five in all, twenty-five thousand dollars. He stared at it. In dollars, something the Russians usually hoarded. Why not pay in Turkish liras? Not a fortune, but a lot of money. What had Tommy actually done to earn it? Copy cables? Sell names? But not accumulated in bits over the years, the stacks crisp and of a piece, a single payout.

Leon counted all of it, just to be sure, then closed the box again and locked it. A big house in Chevy Chase with a powder room, the one he’d told Dorothy about. He wouldn’t have to wire the money home, pay taxes, just carry it in his briefcase on the plane, nobody, not even Denizbank, the wiser. For what? Alexei might be worth twenty-five thousand dollars, a bounty hunter price. But the money had already been here when Tommy was killed, and it was unlikely the Russians would pay in advance. Anyway, why pay Tommy to kill Alexei when they could easily have done it themselves. If they’d had the information.

The manager at Akbank was more scrupulous, insisting on staying in the room while Leon opened the box, his only concession a discreet turning away as Leon raised the lid. One-hundred-dollar bills, the same plain stacking bands, a duplicate of the first box. More than enough now for the house. Or maybe another life, lived on another passport, nothing to link Tommy to either box. If anything went wrong. But what would?

“No one else can open this box?” Leon asked. “His wife?”

“I’m sorry. There is no countersignature. Just Mr. Riordan.” Again, someone clearly unknown. “Of course, if there were a court order the bank would be obliged—”

“Who could get that?”

“The police. The treasury. During the time of the wealth tax there were investigations. Undeclared assets. But Mr. Riordan is a foreign
national. Not, I believe, subject to Turkish taxes?” His eyebrows rose with the question.

“No.”

“Then it would not concern him. In any case, you know, the law was repealed. Mr. Riordan took out the box afterward.”

“When exactly, do you know?”

The manager checked a card, similar to Denizbank’s. “Last year. May.”

“But technically the government could still get access?”

A good reason not to put everything in one account. Mr. Price. Mr. Riordan. Tommy spreading his bets again.

“Technically. But they have not done so. May I ask, is there some reason—?”

“No, just curious. When the will is executed, I’ll need to attest to the integrity of the assets. I just wanted to be sure that no one—”

“No one. Only Mr. Riordan.” He dipped his head to Leon. “Now his executor. The estate will be responsible for the box fees? I’m sorry to ask, but—”

Outside Leon stood for a few minutes watching the traffic snaking through Taksim, the air hazy with bus exhaust, trying to make sense of the money. What was worth fifty thousand dollars to the Russians? Or had Tommy been acting as paymaster, using the deposit boxes the way he had his consulate accounts, funding two networks. With the same currency. Why would the Russians waste precious foreign reserves on an Istanbul payroll? They wouldn’t. Maybe not even on Tommy. But there was the money, in AK and DZ, waiting for two Tommys to collect it.

A big ship had docked at the end of Enver Manyas’s street, and the noise of winches and
hamals
shouting drowned out the ping of the shop bell.

“Manyas Bey?”

“Efendi,”
he said, slipping out from behind the curtain like a cat, his tail still behind. “You’re early.”

“Too early?”

“A minute.”

Leon stared at the wall. Families posing stiffly against painted backdrops of Topkapi. Manyas came back with a passport and handed it over the counter.

“Nesim Barouh. Traveling to Greece.”

Leon flipped through the pages. “The seal is good.”

Manyas dipped his head. Leon took out an envelope. “And for what Mr. King owed you.” Another dip.

Leon pocketed the passport, then pulled out the two from Tommy’s desk. “I assume these were you?”

Manyas glanced at the inside covers. “Yes, last year.”

“The airport arrival stamp—yours, too?”

“Yes, everything.”

“Any others? For him, I mean.”

“Just the new one you paid for.” He turned the page. “No exit stamp. So he never used them?”

“Not for travel.”

Manyas waited, then ran his hand over the page, his slender fingers almost stroking it. “A valuable thing, an American passport.”

“Not if you’re dead.”

“As you say. Valuable to someone else then. The paper, it’s very difficult to copy. A shame to waste.” His eyes moved up. “Of no use to you now. Of course we would share. Like Mr. King.”

Tommy’s business partner. Something extra on the side. But how much could it have been? Windfall money, a few rounds for everybody at the bar. And suddenly for a second he was back at the Park, Tommy nostalgic for a room full of Manyases, everyone for sale. When Istanbul had been his playground, full of secrets like his own. Missing it already, as he planned to kill Leon.

“Tommy supplied you with passports? Real ones?”

“A few. Difficult to obtain. Sometimes one is lost, the consulate
issues a replacement. You might perhaps have a similar source there?”

“Perhaps.” Wanting to know now. “How much? Tommy’s cut.”

“Forty percent. The work, you understand, is mine.”

“Changing the picture.”

“Not as easy as you might think. Even for Turkish papers,” he said, nodding to the passport in Leon’s pocket. “And other services. Arranging the sale. Mr. King insisted on that. No involvement. No risk to you,” he said, looking now at Leon.

Leon stared back at him. A simple negotiation, part of the culture, a moment over tea.

“Fifty percent,” he said. “Tommy’s cut.”

Manyas said nothing for a minute, then nodded. “A worthy successor.”

“And how do I know what price you get?”

A faint smile. “
Efendi
. A certain amount of trust is required in business. Mr. King never complained. May I?” he said, reaching for the passports.

“Later,” Leon said, stopping them with his hand. “I need them for a little while.”

“Need them? With his picture?”

“Don’t worry, they’re not going anywhere. You can start looking for customers. Who would that be, by the way?”

“An American passport? Many buyers. But the best prices? During the war, the Jews. What price do you put on your life? Now still, I think. Still the best prices with them.”

Leon felt his stomach move. “You and Tommy sold passports to Jews?”

Manyas looked at him. “Who needed them more?”

The ship was being unloaded and Leon, his head somewhere else, followed the noise down the street. Gears and cranes, people shouting over them. He watched a load swinging up out of the ship and over the
pier, guided to its receiving area with furious hand signals,
hamals
rushing over to break it up. Some of it would simply disappear. Things had been falling off ships for thousands of years in Istanbul, heads turned, something slipped into the hand, as natural as breathing. Did Tommy skim the consulate accounts too? Fond of petty cash, payments to sources who were just initials. Doing business with Enver Manyas. Baksheesh was part of life here. A ship with missing cargo. Expense accounts with something added in. Everybody did it. And then drew their own personal lines. This, but not that. Where had Tommy drawn his? Fleecing Jews. The same desperate people who then crowded onto Anna’s ships. How much could it have been worth, crossing that line? Making them pay for their lives. While he was arranging their rescue, the last person anyone in the consulate would suspect. But you didn’t make fifty thousand dollars selling a few passports. What would he have done for that kind of money? If he’d already crossed a line for a few hundred. Something that valuable to the Russians. Leon frowned, watching another load being landed onto the pier, men carrying sacks away. Not just a piece of cargo. Fifty thousand. In dollars. Who had American dollars? Leon stopped, following the question, then not wanting to get there. Americans.