Topkapi (18 page)

The room to which he now showed me was at the side of the house on the bedroom floor. He pointed to the door of it.

“There is the room,” he said, and then pointed to another door along the corridor; “and there is a bath room. The car will be wanted in the morning at eleven.” With that he left, turning off the lights in the corridor as he went.

When he had gone, I turned the lights on again. The corridor had cream lincrusta dadoes with flowered wallpaper above. I had a look at the bathroom. It was a most peculiar shape and had obviously been installed, as an afterthought, in a disused storage closet. There was no window. The plumbing fixtures were German,
circa
1905. Only the cold-water taps worked.

The bedroom wasn’t too bad. It had a pair of french windows, a brass bedstead, a chest of drawers, and a big wardrobe. There was also a deal table with an ancient hand-operated sewing machine on it. At the time when women guests in big houses always brought their lady’s maids with them to stay, the room had probably been given to one of the visiting maids.

There was a mattress on the bed, but no sheets or blankets. I knew it would be unwise to complain again. Before I got my bag from the garage, I went back up to the servants’ quarters and took the blankets from the cubicle which Fischer had allocated to me. Then I returned to the room. The car radio transmission wasn’t due until eleven; I had time to kill. I began by searching the room.

I always like looking inside other people’s drawers and cupboards. You can find strange things. I remember once, when I was at Coram’s, my aunt had pleurisy and the District Nurse said that I would have to be boarded out for a month. Some people with an old house off the Lewisham High Road took me in. The house had thick laurel bushes all round it and big chestnut trees that made it very dark. I hated going past the laurel bushes at night, because at that time I believed (in the way a boy does) that a madman with a German bayonet was always lying in wait ready to pounce on me from behind and murder me. But inside the house it was all right. There was a smell of Lifebuoy soap and furniture polish. The people had had a son who had been killed on the Somme, and they gave me his room. I found all sorts of things in the cupboard. There was a stamp collection, for instance. I had never collected stamps, but a lot of chaps at school did and I took one or two of the stamps and sold them. After all, he was dead, so he didn’t need them. The thing I liked most though was his collection of minerals. It was in a flat wooden case divided up into squares with a different piece of mineral in each one and labels saying what they were - graphite, galena, mica, quartz, iron pyrites, chalcocite, fluorite, wolfram, and so on. There were exactly sixty-four squares and exactly sixty-four pieces of mineral, so at first I couldn’t see how to keep any of them for myself because the empty square would have shown that something was missing. I did take one or two of them to school to show the chemistry master and try to get in his good books; but he only got suspicious and asked me where I had found them. I had to tell him that an uncle had lent them to me before he would let me have them back. After that, I just kept them in the box and looked at them; until I went back to my aunt’s that is, when I took the iron pyrites because it looked as if it had gold in it. I left a small piece of coal in the square instead. I don’t think they ever noticed. I kept that piece of iron pyrites for years. “Fool’s gold” some people call it.

All I found in the room at Sardunya was an old Russian calendar made of cardboard in the shape of an icon. There was a dark-brown picture of Christ on it. I don’t read Russian, so I couldn’t make out the date. It wasn’t worth taking.

I had the windows wide open. It was so quiet up there that I could hear the diesels of a ship chugging upstream against the Black Sea current towards the boom across the narrows above Sariyer. Until about eight-thirty there was a faint murmur of voices from the terrace in front. Then they went in to dinner. Some time after nine, I became restless. After all, nobody had told me to stay in my room. I decided to go for a stroll.

Just to be on the safe side, in case anyone took it into his head to go through my things, I hid the radio on top of the wardrobe. Then I went down, out through the rear door, and skirted the front courtyard to the drive.

It was so dark there under the trees that I couldn’t really see where I was going, and after I had gone a hundred yards or so I turned back. Miss Lipp, Harper, Miller, and Fischer were coming out onto the terrace again when I reached the courtyard, and Hamul was lighting candles on the tables.

Along the side of the courtyard it was quite dark, and the weeds made it easy to move quietly over the gravel. At the entrance to the stable yard I stopped by the wall to see if I could hear anything they said.

I must have waited there for twenty minutes or more before I heard anything but an indistinct mumble. Then, one of them laughed loudly - Miller it was - and I heard him saying seven words as if they were the climax of a joke.

“Let the dogs be fed and clothed!” he cackled, and then repeated it. “Let the dogs be fed and clothed!”

The others laughed with him, and then the mumbling began again. I went on in and up to my room.

I made the bed as comfortable as I could with the blankets, and then shaved to save myself the trouble of doing so in the morning.

Just before eleven, I took the radio out of its case, opened the back, and turned the small switch. All I got was a hissing sound. I waited. I did not trouble to use the earphone, because I did not see any reason to then. I had not even shut the windows.

On the stroke of eleven, the set made a harsh clacking noise. A moment later, a voice crackled through the tiny loudspeaker at such a high volume level that I could feel the whole set vibrating in my hands. I tried to turn the thing down, but, with the V.H.F. on, the control seemed to have no effect. All I could do was stuff the set under the blankets. Even there it seemed like a public-address system. I scrambled to the windows and shut them. The loudspeaker began repeating its message.

Attention period report. Attention period report. New arrival is Leopold Axel Miller. Belgian passport gives following data: Age sixty-three, described as importer, place of birth Antwerp. Data now also received concerning Tekelek S.A., a Swiss corporation registered in Berne. Nominal capital fifty thousand Swiss francs. Directors are K. W. Hoffman, R. E. Kohner, G. D. Bernadi, and L. A. Mathis, all of whom are believed to have personal numbered and secret accounts at Banque Crédit Suisse, Zurich. Business of Tekelek said to be sale of electronic accounting machines manufactured in West Germany. Urgent you report progress. Attention period report...

I fumbled under the blankets, turned the V.H.F. switch off, and replaced the back on the set. Then I tuned in a Turkish station in case anyone had heard the noise and came to investigate.

Nobody did.

“Urgent you report progress.”

I had a cigarette packet with two cigarettes left in it. I lit one, put the other in my pocket, and went to the bathroom for a piece of toilet paper.

When I returned I locked the door and sat down to write my progress report. It was quite short.

Cook, caretaker, and local fishermen all believe suspects to be Russian spies.

I folded the toilet paper, put it inside the cigarette packet, crumpled the packet, and put the result in my pocket ready for disposal in the morning.

I felt I had done my duty for that day.

I WOKE UP very early in the morning and with that nasty sick feeling that I used to have when it was a school day and I hadn’t done my homework properly the night before.

I got the cigarette packet out of my pocket and had another look at my toilet-paper report. It really was not good enough. Unless I could think of something else to say, Tufan would think that I was trying to be funny. I went and had an extremely uncomfortable cold bath, collected some more sheets of toilet paper, and started again.

Period report heard. Attempts to check door contents frustrated. Will try again today,
I wrote.

I thought about the “today”. Fischer had ordered the car for eleven o’clock. With that instruction to rely upon, it would be perfectly natural for me to go and fill up the car with petrol without asking anyone’s permission; and, as long as I didn’t keep them waiting, I could take my time about it. If, when I got back, they objected to my having taken the car out by myself or wanted to know why I had been so long, I could say that I had been to buy razor blades or something, and be the injured innocent.

It was six forty-five by then and in a few minutes I would have to get ready for the seven o’clock radio contact. Two others things occurred to me that I might add to my report.

Will telephone you from garage after Inspecting if time and circumstances allow, or will add to this report. During conversation Lipp - Miller yesterday name “Giulio” was mentioned in connection with a boat. No other details.

Then I added the bit about the Russian spies. It didn’t look quite so bald and stupid now.

I hid the report under the lining paper of one of the drawers, shut the french windows tight, and got the radio ready with the earphone attachment plugged in. Promptly at seven the it began transmitting.

Attention period report. Attention period report. Advice received from Swiss source that no passports have been legally issued to Harper and Lipp. In view Miller contact and Tekelek papers with Harper, possibility must be considered that correct names of Harper and Lipp and Hoffman and Kohner or vice versa. Miller may be Mathis. Imperative you report progress.

As the voice began repeating I switched off. When I had packed the set away, I got the report; out and added five words.

Hoffman, Kohner, and Mathis names noted.

At least, I ought to get an “E” for Effort. I put the new report in the cigarette packet, burned the earlier one, and started to get dressed. As I did so, I heard the Lambretta start up and then go whining off down the drive. About twenty minutes later, I heard the sound of it returning. I looked out of the window and saw it disappearing into the stable yard with a bundle of partially wrapped loaves strapped to the rear seat.

Geven was back in the kitchen when I went down. He gave me a sullen look and did not answer when I said “good morning.” He was probably hung over as well as disgusted with me; but he looked such a mess anyway that it was hard to tell.

There was a pot of coffee on the range and I looked from it to him inquiringly. He shrugged, so I got a cup and helped myself. He was slicing the bread by hacking at it with a heavy chopping knife. From the neat way the slices fell I knew that the chopping knife was as sharp as a razor. As I had no desire to lose any fingers, I waited until he had put it aside before taking a piece of bread.

The coffee did not taste much like coffee, but the bread was good. I considered attempting to heal the breach by offering him the use of my bathroom; but I only had one towel and the thought of what it would look like by the time he had finished with it kept me silent. Instead, I offered him a cigarette.

He took it and motioned to a basket of apricots on the table. I don’t like apricots, but it seemed as well to accept the offer. Soon he began to mutter about the breakfasts which had to be served, each on a separate tray to the four “lords and ladies” above. I offered to lay the trays and, although he waved away the offer, friendly relations seemed to be re-established. After a while, Mr. and Mrs. Hamul arrived and were introduced. Mrs. Hamul was a small, stout, sad-looking old woman with the black dress and head scarf of the conservative Turkish matron. As neither she nor her husband spoke a word of anything but Turkish, the formalities were brief. I lingered there, though, and had another piece of bread. The best time to leave without attracting attention, I had decided, would be while Harper and the rest were having their breakfasts.

As soon as the trays started going up, I told Geven that I had to buy petrol and asked if there was anything I could get for him while I was in town. At once he wanted to come with me. I got out of that by saying that I had to go immediately in order to be back at the time for which the car had been ordered. I left him, sulking, picked up the Phillips screwdriver from my room, and went to the garage.

The Lincoln was a quiet car, and I knew that all they would probably hear of my going would be the sound of the tires on the gravel of the courtyard; but I was so afraid of Harper or Fischer suddenly appearing on one of the bedroom balconies and yelling at me to stop, that in my haste to reach the drive I almost hit the basin of the fountain. As I went on down the drive I broke into a sweat and my legs felt weak and peculiar. I wanted to stop and be sick. That may sound very stupid; but when you are like I am, the bad things that nearly happen are just as hard, in a way, as the bad things that actually do happen. They are certainly no easier to forget. I always envied those characters in Alice who only felt pain before they were hurt. I seem to feel things before, during, and after as well; nothing ever goes completely away. I have often thought of killing myself, so that I wouldn’t have to think or feel or remember any more, so that I could rest; but then I have always started worrying in case this afterlife they preach about really exists. It might turn out to be even bloodier than the old one.

The Peugeot was back on duty again. I drove towards Sariyer for about half a mile, and then turned left onto one of the roads leading up to the forest. It was Sunday morning and families from Istanbul would soon be arriving at the municipal picnic grounds to spend the day; but at that early hour the car-parking areas were still fairly empty, and I had no difficulty in finding a secluded place under the trees.

I decided to try the same door again. I had scratched the leather on it once already; but if I were very careful it need not be scratched again. In any case, as I drove the car, scratches would be less noticeable on that door than on the others. The earlier attempt had taught me something, too. If I removed all the screws on the hinge side of the door first and only loosened the others, I thought it might be possible to ease the panel back enough to see inside the door without taking the whole panel and electric window mechanism completely away.