The Light of Day (8 page)

I did not know anything about this Second Section which the Commandant had mentioned; but it was not hard to guess what it was. The Turks have always been great borrowers of French words and phrases. The Ikinci
Büro
sounded to me like the Turkish counterpart of the
Deuxième
Bureau. I wasn't far wrong.

I think that if I were asked to single out one specific group of men, one type, one category, as being the most suspicious, unbelieving, unreasonable, petty, inhuman, sadistic, double-crossing set of bastards in any language, I would say without any hesitation 'the people who run counter-espionage departments.' With them, it is no use having just one story; and especially not a true story; they automatically disbelieve that. What you must have is a series of stories, so that when they knock the first one down you can bring out the second, and then, when they scrub that out, come up with a third. That way they think they are making progress and keep their hands off you, while you gradually find out the story they really want you to tell.

My position at
Edirne
was hopeless from the start. If I had known what was hidden in the car
before
the post Commandant had started questioning me, I wouldn't have told him about Harper. I would have pretended to be stupid, or just refused to say anything. Then, later, when I had finally broken down and told all, they would have believed at least some of what I had said. As it was, I had told a story that happened to be true, but sounded as if I thought they were half-witted. You can imagine how I felt as I waited. With no room at all for
manœuvre,
I knew that I must be in for a bad time.

The sun went down and the window turned black. It was very quiet. I could hear no sounds at all from other parts of the jail. Presumably, things were arranged so that there they could hear no sounds made in the interrogation room —screams etc. When I had been there two hours, there were footsteps in the corridor outside, the door was unlocked and a new guard came in with a tin bowl of mutton soup and a hunk of bread. He put these on the table in front of me, then nodded to his friend, who went out and locked the door. The new man took his place on the bench.

There was no spoon. I dipped a piece of bread in the soup and tasted it. It was lukewarm and full of congealed fat. Even without my indigestion I could not have eaten it. Now, the smell alone made me want to throw up.

I looked at the guard.
'Sul?’
 
I asked.

He motioned to the washroom. Evidently, if I wanted water I would have to drink from the tap. I did not relish the idea. Indigestion was bad enough; I did not want dysentery, too. I made myself eat some of the bread and then took out my cigarettes again in the hope that the new man might be ready to give me a match. He shook his head. I pointed to a plastic ash-tray on the table to remind him that smoking was not necessarily prohibited. He still shook his head.

A little before nine, a twin-engined plane flew over the jail and then circled as if on a landing pattern. The sound seemed to mean something to the guard. He looked at his watch and then absently ran his hand down the front of his tunic as if to make sure that the buttons were all done up.

More to break the interminable silence in the room than because I wanted to know, I asked: 'Is there a big airport at Edirne?'

I spoke in French, but it meant nothing to him. I made signs which he misunderstood.

'Askeri ucak,'
he said briefly.

An Army plane. That concluded that conversation; but I noticed that he kept glancing at his watch now. Probably, I thought, it was time for his relief and he was becoming impatient.

Twenty minutes later there was the distant sound of a car door slamming. The guard heard it, too, and promptly stood up. I stared at him and he glowered back.

'Hazirol!'
he snapped, and then exasperatedly,
'Debout
!
Debout!
'

I stood up. I could hear approaching footsteps and voices now. Then the door was unlocked and flung open.

For a moment nothing more happened, except that someone in the corridor, whom I could not see, went on speaking. He had a harsh peremptory voice which seemed to be giving orders that another voice kept acknowledging deferentially—
'Evet, evet efendim, derhal.'
 
Then the orders ceased and the man who had been given them came into the room.

He was about thirty-five I would think, perhaps younger, tall and quite slim. There were high cheekbones, grey eyes and short brown hair. He was handsome, I suppose, in a thin-lipped sort of way. He was wearing a dark civilian suit that looked as if it had been cut by a good Roman tailor, and a dark-grey silk tie. He looked as if he had just come from a diplomatic corps cocktail party; and
f
or all I know he may have done so. On his right wrist there was a gold identity bracelet. The hand below it was holding a large
manila
envelope.

He examined me bleakly for a moment, then nodded. 'I am Major
Tufan,
Deputy-Director Second Section.’

‘Good evening, Major.'

He glanced at the guard, who was staring at him round-eyed, and suddenly snapped out an order:
'Def
oi!'

The guard nearly fell over himself getting out of the room.

As soon as the door closed the Major pulled a chair up to the table and sat down. Then he waved me back to my seat by the bread.

'Sit down, Simpson. I believe that you speak French easily, but not Turkish.’

‘Yes, Major.'

‘Then we will speak
m
French instead of English. That will be easier for me.'

I answered in French. 'As you wish, sir.'

He took cigarettes and matches from his pocket and
tossed them on the table in front of me. 'You may smoke.'

Thank you.'

 
I was glad of the concession, though not in the least reassured by it. When a policeman gives you a cigarette it is usually the first move in one of those 'let's-see-if-we-can't-talk-sensibly-as-man-to-man' games in which he provides the rope and you hang yourself. I lit a cigarette and waited for the next move.

He seemed in no hurry to make it. He bad opened the envelope and taken from it a file of papers which he was searching through and rearranging, as if he had just dropped the whole lot and was trying to get it back into the right order.

There was a knock at the door. He took no notice. After a moment or
two the door opened and a guard came
io
with a bottle of
raki
and two glasses.
Tufan
motioned to him to put them on the table, and then noticed the soup. 'Do you want any more of that?' he asked. 'No thank you, sir.'

He said something to the guard, who took the soup and bread away and locked the door again.

Tufan
rested the file on his knees and poured himself a glass of
raki.
The flight from Istanbul was anything but smooth,' he said: 'we are still using piston-engined planes on these short runs.' He swallowed the drink as if he were washing down a pill, and pushed the bottle an inch or two in my direction. 'You'd better have a drink, Simpson. It may make you feel better.’

'And also make me more talkative, sir?' I thought the light touch might show that I was not afraid.

He looked up and his grey eyes met mine. 'I hope not,' he said coldly; 'I have no time to waste.' He shut the file with a snap and put it on the table in front of him.

'Now then,' he went on, 'let us examine your position.
Fürst,
the offences with which you are charged render you liable upon conviction to terms of imprisonment of at least twenty years. Depending on the degree of your involvement in the political aspects of this affair, we might even consider pressing for a death sentence.'

'But I am not involved at all, Major, I assure you. I am a victim of circumstances—an innocent victim.' Of course he could have been bluffing about the death sentence, but I could not be sure. There was that phrase 'political aspects' again. I had read that they had been hanging members of
 
the former government for political crimes. I wished now that I had taken the drink when he had offered it. Now my hands were shaking, and I knew that, if
I
reached for bottle and glass, he would see that they were. Apparently, however, he did not have to see them; he knew
what he was doing to me, and wanted me to know that he knew. Quite casually, he picked up the bottle, poured me half a glass of
raki
and pushed it across to me.

'We will talk about the extent of your involvement in a minute,' he said. 'First, let us consider the matter of your passport.'

'It is out of date. I admit that. But it was a mere oversight. If the post Commandant had behaved correctly I would have been sent back to the Greek post.'

He shrugged impatiently. 'Let us be clear about this. You had already committed serious criminal offences on Turkish soil. Would you expect to escape the consequences because your papers were not in order? You know better. You also know that your passport was not invalid through any oversight The Egyptian Government had refused to renew it. In fact they revoked your citizenship two years ago on the grounds that you made false statements on your naturalization papers.' He glanced in the file. 'You stated that you had never been convicted of a criminal offence and that you had never served a prison sentence. Both statements were lies.'

This was such an unfair distortion of the facts that I could only assume that he had got it from the Egyptians. I said: 'I have been fighting that decision.'

'And also using a passport to which you were not entitled and had failed to surrender,'

'My case was still
sub judice.
Anyway, I have already applied for restoration of my British citizenship, to which I am entitled as the son of a serving British officer. In fact, I
am
British.'
                                                                 
^‘
The British don't take that view. After what happened you can scarcely blame them.'

‘U
nder
the provisions of the British Nationality Act of nineteen-forty-eight I remain British unless I have specifically renounced that nationality. I have never formally renounced it.'
              
                                                     
'That is unimportant. We are talking about your case
j
here and the extent of your involvement. The point I wish to make is that our action in your case is not going to be governed in any way by the fact that you are a foreigner. No consul is going to intercede on your behalf. You have none. You are stateless. The only person who can help you is my Director.' He paused. 'But he will have to be persuaded. You understand me?’

‘I have no money.’

It seemed a perfectly sensible reply to me, but for some reason it appeared to irritate him. His eyes narrowed and for a moment I thought he was going to throw the glass he was holding in my face. Then he sighed. 'You are over fifty,' he said, "yet you have learned nothing. You still see other men in your own absurd image. Do you really believe that I could be bought, or that, if I could be, a man like you could ever do the buying?'

It was on the tip of my tongue to retort that that would depend on the price he was asking, but if he wanted to take this high-and-mighty attitude, there was no sense in arguing. Obviously, I had touched him in a sensitive area.

He lit a cigarette as if he were consciously putting aside his irritation. I took the opportunity to drink some of the
raki.

'Very well.' He was all business again. "You understand your position, which is that you have no position. We come now to the story you told to the post Commandant before your arrest.'

‘Every word I told the Commandant was the truth."

He opened the file. 'On the face of it that seems highly unlikely. Let us see. You stated that you were asked by this American, Harper, to drive a car belonging to
a Fräulein
Lipp from Athens to Istanbul. You were to be paid one hundred dollars. You agreed. Am I right?'

'Quite right.'

"You agreed, even though the passport in your possession was not in order?'

'I did not realize it was out of date. It has been months
i
since I used it. The whole thing was arranged within a few hours. I scarcely had time to pack a bag. People are using out of date passports all the time. Ask anyone at any international airline. They will tell you. That is why they always check passengers' passports when they weigh their baggage, do not want difficulties at the other end. I had
no
check. The Greek control scarcely looked at the passport. I was leaving the country. They were not interested.'

I knew I was on safe ground here, and I spoke with feeling.