Istanbul Passage (40 page)

They sat in the niche by the bridge.

“He’s the one told you about Străuleşti.”

Leon nodded.

“So why does he take me?”

“I paid him.”

“That one? No. Something else. Maybe it’s a trap.”

“He’s not doing it for you. Get some sleep.”

“In this?” He opened his hand to the wind. The boat had begun to creak.

One of the blanketed figures shuffled over, a man with a shaved head, and said something in what Leon took to be Polish, answered with an I-don’t-understand hands up. Another language, probably Yiddish. Finally, German.

“Who are you, that they stop the ship for you?”

“Nobody,” Leon said. “We were late.”

“No. People are late on the dock, not out here. Haganah? You’re Haganah, yes? What else? An honor,” he said, extending his hand. Alexei shook it, Leon watching, his eyes fixed on the numbers inked on the man’s forearm.

The man made a lips-sealed gesture and started back to his bench.

A sudden thud below, then a grinding, the whole frame of the boat shuddering, but moving again, the few lights on Büyükada beginning to recede.

“Maybe your friend’s pushing,” Alexei said, sitting back, enjoying himself, the movement of the boat like a promise. In a few hours, the Aegean.

“You never saw him before. You understand?”

“I heard you the first time.” He opened his eyes. “Why?”

“He’s not part of this.”

Alexei looked at him, then around the deck, the glance its own comment. The boat lurched again. Faint noises came from below, groans. There would be crammed bunks, slop buckets spilling over.

A woman staggered out of the door to the hold, hand over her mouth, and ran to the railing, stretching as far as she could, hoping her vomit would clear the side, disappear in the water. A painful heaving, loud, the people on the bench unconsciously moving away from her. Sputtering, then more retching, only thin streams of bile now. The first of many, if the water stayed rough. She wiped her mouth with the end of her shawl, eyes toward the benches, too sick to apologize, her breath taken now by a hacking cough. Another woman got up and held her by the shoulders, steadying her until the coughing stopped. Some words, probably a thank-you, carried off by the wind. She nodded, gulping air, then started back, looking over toward Leon and Alexei. A frozen moment, silent, too stunned to speak.

“Voi,”
she said finally, to herself, trying to make sense of what she was seeing, walking now in a kind of determined stagger, through water, a waking dream.

“Voi.”
Closer now, making sure, then trembling.
“Măcelar!”
A sudden scream, heads lifting on the benches.
“Călău! Călău!”
People getting up, her finger pointing to Alexei now, then a scream, piercing, people coming up behind her.

Alexei said something in Romanian, the tone of a denial.

Another scream, her whole body vibrating, about to explode.
“Măcelar!”
The language now part of the nightmare, the people on the benches not sure what was being said, responding to pure sound.

“Butcher,” someone yelled, explaining.

Another stream of Romanian, the force of hysteria, someone murmuring “her sister” in the background, the finger again.
“Călău! Călău!”
And then she lunged for him, her fingernails on his face,
reaching for his eyes, feral. Alexei grabbed her arms, trying to hold her away, but she had the strength of the mad, scratching and pulling at him, hands turned to claws. Alexei gasped with pain, pushing himself off the bench, so that she now had to reach up to rake his face, still screaming, the people behind her excited, their shouts swirling around Leon’s head in a frenzied Babel, everything happening in a second.

“Stop!” He grabbed her arms from behind, amazed at her strength as she yanked away, everyone around them shouting, the whole ship seeming to have come awake, the feel of people moving below. Ruining everything.

Alexei shielded his face with his arms, still trying to quiet her in Romanian, duck away, but they were surrounded now, the crowd surging like a mob.

“Stop!” Leon tried holding her again.

She’d break down soon, the rage turning to uncontrollable sobbing, draining her strength away. But not before she could lunge at him one more time, tearing at his skin, hate spilling out of her.

“Călău!”

“Executioner,” someone echoed, translating.

People coming closer, a wave of them, then something slicing through.

“What’s going on?” Mihai shouted, breathless, grabbing the hands that had broken away from Leon.

A gush of Romanian from the woman, Mihai looking pained, a quick glance at Leon, people around them still shouting. “What is it?” “He’s a Nazi.” “How could he be a Nazi?” “A Romanian Nazi.” People coming up from below, the air crackling like radio static. More Romanian. “He put them on a
hook
.” Mumbling, then yells, the woman finally breaking down the way Leon had imagined, wailing that scraped on the nerves, not stopping. “Mihai! What’s going on here? We have a right—”

“Yes, yes. Calm, please. You want to have a riot before we’re safe?”

“He’s a Nazi? On this ship? Are you crazy?”

“Get him to the bridge,” Mihai hissed at Leon, his eyes sharp knives of reproach.

“Not so fast!” The man with the shaved head. “What’s going on? He’s not Haganah?”

More Romanian. “They hung them like meat,” someone translated.

A second of quiet, taking this in. Alexei said something in Romanian, another denial, “It wasn’t me,” Leon guessed, then the woman shrieked back. The crowd now got louder, splashes of words, unsettled. Leon moved in front of Alexei.

“Enough!” Mihai said, barking it.

“So who is he? What’s going on?”

“He’s cargo on this boat. For Cyprus. Not Palestine.”

“Cargo? What do you mean, cargo?”

“Everybody go back. Sit down. I’ll explain later.”

The Romanian woman crumpled into a heap, crying, pulling at the air, as if she were rending it, a grief too large to contain.

“No. Now!” someone shouted. “It’s a trick! Maybe he warns the British. Not until the last Jew—”

Mihai raised his hands. “Please. This is crazy talk. He’s a help to us.”

“A help? How?”

The woman lifted her head and yelled something at Alexei, a curse with a raised fist. Again, a denial. Leon glanced at him. What was he saying? I wasn’t there? I wasn’t part of it? I couldn’t stop it? Some version of what he’d said to Leon. But was it true? Did the sister know? Had anybody actually seen him? And for a fleeting second, his stomach sinking with the dip of the boat, he didn’t want it to be true, wanted Alexei not to have been there at all, wanted him at least to claim the fragile innocence of those who just let it happen.

Mihai was speaking Romanian to the woman, gathering her up, his arm around her.

“Go back,” he said to the others. “It’s a mistake.” The woman didn’t hear this, inside herself now, only Leon catching his eye, dismayed. Lying for him. But what was the alternative? No right thing to do. He steered Alexei toward the bridge, the crowd still milling on the deck, confused.

“How a mistake? How could she make such a mistake?”

But they had all been on the long marches, crammed in refugee trucks, and they knew how minds finally snapped, pointing out of windows at everybody because everybody had done it.

Mihai handed the Romanian woman over to another woman, then turned to the crowd. “Go back now. There’s no time for this.”

“Who are these men? You stop the boat for them, so who?”

“Nobody. Cargo. I told you—” The rest drowned out by the siren, so loud it cut through everything—the people shouting on deck, the lumbering motor, tarps flapping in the wind—a giant
whoop
, meant to startle. A loudspeaker rasped something garbled in Turkish. The crowd rushed over to the railing. A police boat approaching the side, signal lamps flashing, searchlights sweeping up toward the railing.

“We have to stop,” David yelled from the bridge. “They’re signaling.”

Mihai said nothing, looking down.

“They can shoot if we don’t.”

Guns already drawn on the police boat. But how did they know? Lurking in shadows since Bebek? But not in the broad stretches where they would have had to be seen. The deal made with Mihai, no one else. Blood money.

Mihai nodded to David, then looked at Leon, face strained.

“Prepare to board.” The loudspeaker, still in Turkish, so the passengers, already rattled, began to panic.

Mihai held his hands up to them for quiet, then leaned over the
side with a megaphone. “What do you want? We’re the
Victorei
. Our papers are in order.”

Leon leaned forward to hear, keeping his face out of the light. Maybe a routine check, another bribe, not given away after all.

“Police. Your new passengers.”

A quick turn of his head, Mihai meeting Leon’s eyes. Any police, David puts you off. It’s understood? It’s not for you, this ship. Endgame. And for an instant Leon felt an odd light-headed release, the clock stopping. Mihai looked from Leon to Alexei, then turned back to the rail.

“What new passengers? We are only ourselves.”

“Yes, yes.” A cocky gravelly sound on the loudspeaker. Gülün. “All right. Passenger search. A ladder?” A second’s pause, Gülün drawing his gun. “Now.”

Mihai nodded to two sailors to lower the ladder, then turned to the crowd again. “Listen to me. Do you want to go to Palestine?”

A shocked nod of heads.

“Then do what I say. Go back. Say nothing. Nothing.”

“But what—”

“Nothing! Or I leave this ship. They’ll take me away.” He waited.

A silence, only the police boat still shrieking.

“Do you understand? You saw nothing. No one. Take her down below,” he said, looking at the Romanian woman. “Give her something. The rest, tell them to stay in their bunks.”

“Ladder’s down,” the sailor shouted, a kind of alert.

“They’ll send us back,” Mihai said. “Understand?”

People began to move.

“And then maybe you’ll explain—”

“You can take over this ship any time you want,” Mihai said, then held out the megaphone.

The man looked down, then turned and headed for the stairs.

“Anyone else?” Mihai said.

Leon looked at him. Confronting everybody, spending what was left in his account, no reserves.

“Good.” He glanced over the rail. “Get ready,” he said, waving people back to their places, then went over to Leon and Alexei, suddenly at a loss, as if he’d forgotten about them. Shouts from the water, climbing feet banging against the hull.

“I’ll take him below,” Leon said, almost afraid to look at Mihai, the debt too great now.

“No. People know. Or they will. They’ll kill him. I don’t know how long I—”

“You want to give us up?” Leon said.

Mihai flicked his hand, brushing this off, then glanced around the deck, breathing in sharp intakes, finally beginning to panic.

“Is there another ladder? The other side?” Alexei said, thinking out loud.

“Ladder to what? There’s no boat.”

“To hide. We’ll hang on. Nobody’s going to look outside the boat.”

Mihai looked up at him, a kind of reluctant salute, then nodded.

They hurried across the deck, heads following them, and lifted the clump of ladder and flung it over the side, the anchor ropes barely noticeable in the coiled piles near the railings. The lifeboats, refuge for stowaways, were overhead, a different search area. From the other side of the ship, a shrill whistle, some signal to the search party that triggered involuntary cries on deck, the sound of roundups, whistles and boots. A woman started crying, burying her face in a man’s shoulder.

“I won’t sacrifice the ship,” Mihai said to Leon. “These people deserve—”

“I know.”

“Just pull us back up when it’s over,” Alexei said, a gruff familiarity.

Mihai stared at him. More noise from the police party, almost at the top, like a wake-up hand on his shoulder. “Quick,” he said, turning, putting his body between them and the police.

Alexei looked at the rope, then at Leon, suddenly nervous again.

“All right,” Leon said, going first.

He climbed over the railing and started backing down the rope steps, feeling for them, his last sight of the deck a row of heads watching him. One signal was all Gülün would need, one finger pointing. But the row didn’t move, huddling into itself, turning to Mihai now. Leon looked up. Nobody.

“Come on!”

Then a foot, another, working their way down until Alexei’s head was below the rail too, both of them dangling on the side of the ship, the wind slapping the bottom of the ladder against the hull. Leon kept going, past a row of portholes, his weight steadying the ladder. If this were a building he could make his way along the ledge to the window, climb in out of sight. To people who’d be waiting for them, the story everywhere now. Some rag in the mouth to muffle the sound, everything quick, no noise, then the splash of water, maybe not even heard on deck, another wave.

“Where are you going?” Alexei whispered, his hands gripping the rope.

“Out of sight.”

“Where, in the water?”

“A little further. Okay, here. Hang on.” The rough sisal began cutting into his palms. He shifted more weight to his legs, feeling the wind press into his back.

He could hear loud voices up top. Gülün bullying, eyes peering at him from under cap brims and shawls. Just one. But no one spoke. Do you want to go to Palestine? Worth everything.

A wave broke against the hull sending jets of spray upward, wetting the bottom of his pants, spattering drops on his neck, hands. A sudden light from the porthole to his right, maybe a flashlight going through the hold. Seeing the bodies stacked in bunks, a photograph from the war. Would the police ask them to get down, look behind
everyone, or hurry through, anxious to get out of the smell before any hands could touch them. A baby started crying, wakened by the light.

Another wave sprayed icy water as the ship listed slightly. The rope ladder swung out from the hull. Leon looked down, a black void, then braced for the swing back, making his shoes take most of the impact. How long could they hang here, wet hands clutching rope? He shifted his weight again, feeling the strain in his arms. Not thinking anymore, not having to decide anything, just holding on. He had even stopped wondering what they were saying on deck, what Mihai would do if Gülün ordered the ship to turn around. But why would he? Unless he was sure Leon was on board. Not any ship, this ship. He thought of the
hamam
, the tram ride, but no one had been hovering behind, not even in his imagining. What had he said to Kay? More voices, closer to this side of the ship.