Paradise Spells Danger

by George B Mair

  ‘We have less than forty-eight hours in which to work. A man in that house must be captured or destroyed and two women rescued. Can you think of any other way, remembering that the police have already searched the house for possible secret hiding places?’

  Kemal laid down his hubble-bubble. ‘David, my friend, go you with this dead man in my car and come back here. When you return I may have further news. With Allah all things are possible.’

  Grant decided to drive himself and had less than twenty-five minutes in which to reach the Hippodrome. Gaspard was packed into the boot, and as an afterthought Grant checked on his wallet. ‘A last favour, Mustafa. Have you any hashish cigarettes? If so I would appreciate the use of one, together with two stubbed joints.’

  Mustafa’s wrinkled face creased into a beaming smile of genuine amusement. ‘Then drive carefully or you may spend longer in jail than you would for being arrested on a mere murder charge.’ He lifted a board in the floor and opened a combination lock. The safe was set in concrete and almost concealed by a layer of dust. He broke one cigarette into two and puffed heavily until only half an inch remained.

  ‘I was weaned on this, I think,’ he said at last. ‘We all used it in the old days. In fact Topkapi smelt only of horse dung, hashish, sweat, expensive perfumes and blood. And fear, of course. Especially fear. You smelt that everywhere. Anyhow there are your cigarettes ad now drive carefully. Alaha ismarladik.’

  ‘Gūle gūle,’ said Grant automatically and went to the car. He was beginning to work out a drill which might turn out to be important.

  Frank’s car was coasting past the Blue Mosque when Grant drew up beside the Snake Column and snibbed out his lights. He knew that scores of eyes might well be watching him from the darkness around and that even the police would be on patrol. Frank drew up behind and Grant explained the set-up for off-loading their cargo while they made a pretence of checking on tyre pressures. He then cut inland towards Liberation Square and on past the Aqueduct to the land walls and Adrianople Gate, slewed left and finally drew in to the shelter of the walls a hundred metres or so from the Fortress of the Seven Towers. The place appeared to be deserted, but Grant knew that even here there would be hidden figures dozing behind bushes or in the lee of nooks within the walls themselves. Even so he helped Frank to carry the cabin trunk holding the girl into the shadows, and while Frank returned to lift Gaspard across from the boot he opened the trunk lid, lifted the girl out and removed her gag. She was heavy with dope and still only semi-conscious, but he could not forget that she was a professional, a willing accomplice to murder with no motive other than a fee of two hundred dollars, and that she had been, on her own admission, willing even to allow a victim to make some sort of love to her before luring him outside to his death. He dropped one marihuana butt close by her side and rubbed the unlit cigarette against her lips until it was smeared with crimson. The other he left beside Gaspard and then he slipped a small card from his wallet. A few microdots of triple strength LSD had been brought from Paris by Frank and he put two inside her panti-hose, one inside the corner of her mouth and one inside Gaspard’s lips.

  ‘Turkey has a mandatory sentence of ten years for drugs,’ he explained to Frank, ‘and we’ll tip off the police from the next call box. It is about the sentence she deserves really.’

  ‘So what now?’ Frank nodded towards the trunk. ‘Better get that back on the car.’

  ‘Bed for you,’ said Grant. ‘I’ll do the phone call and go back a little later. No point in even the hotel people connecting us. Kemal’s tomorrow morning at around ten o’clock. And travel solo. You got the address.’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Busy. Looking for a line on Goodenough.’

  ‘You don’t say much, David boy.’

  Grant turned to his own car. ‘Tomorrow we find that tunnel. Nothing else to say.’

  The call to the police was put through from Mustafa’s café by a woman whom the old man would have trusted with his life. Tea was laid on in the living-room and Grant had sipped all of his first cup before the old man turned to business. ‘I have arranged that we shall visit Topkapi before dawn. Two masons who helped to restore the Coach House and parts of the area we spoke of will also be there and we shall see how things may have changed. I have also remembered where the secret entrance to the underground corridor may be located. The rest is with Allah. We shall see what we shall see.’

  ‘How do we get in?’

  ‘To the palace? By the usual way. We are expected and not even the police will ask questions if they see me enter Topkapi in the company of one or two quite important people. ‘You see,’ he explained, ‘in Turkey important people are not always politicians or policemen. Turks have different, what is the word, standards of value, from many other countries. Just believe that my friends are important to Turkish people and say no more. Questions are always so tiresome. It is better just to do things because friends trust friends and know that friends don’t ask questions. Life is so much more simple that way.’

  ‘One other thing is on my mind, Mustafa. You remember how one government closed one of the streets of a thousand houris?’

  ‘And they went to the other street to make it the street of two thousand houris. I remember very well.’

  ‘The man I am hunting has kidnapped two women friends. He has threatened to make them work in a low class brothel if he has reason to believe that I am in Istanbul. Since I have no way of knowing whether he suspects what I am doing or not it is always possible that he has carried out his threat. Would it be possible to find out if a very beautiful woman in her late twenties, half-caste, honey-coloured skin and called Krystelle, or a small, petite, Siamese girl who looks about seventeen have arrived, either singly or together, in any Istanbul brothel during the last few days.’

  ‘Any other clues?’

  ‘The older woman has an operation scar down her left side breast. Also a bullet scar on her shoulder. The Siamese girl is also half white, though her skin is tan, but she isn’t typical Thai. She has a small black mole on her right thigh and a very thin scar above her left elbow. Both girls have their pubis shaved to leave a heart-shaped design.’

  ‘Like the sultan’s favourites in the old days,’ he sighed. ‘They used to pass so many hours making themselves beautiful down there! But I shall try to find out. My men will explore but ask no questions. Come to think of it,’ he added slowly, ‘I saw a new girl two nights ago in a private establishment. They said she was Chinese, but she was certainly a new-comer. Though new girls are always coming in Istanbul. And going too. Just like in the old days. Always coming and sparkling for a second, and then going. It is the will of Allah.’

  Grant forced himself to be off-hand. ‘Check up on it, Mustafa. I’d quite like to know.’

  Chapter Nine – ‘I never expected you to find it’

  Grant was never impressed by ‘secret’ doors. If a man could make a trick device then another man could figure how it worked . . . a simple philosophy which helped to focus priorities.

  He hadn’t even worried about how the party would enter Topkapi, and during the run to the palace had allowed his mind to wander around the problem of how a non-visible door could be worked into a wall. Especially in a private area within a palace ruled by tyrants to whom life meant absolutely nothing.

  The answer became obvious. It couldn’t be done at all except with connivance from the rulers. And the secret would be well kept. Turks have eyes at the backs of their heads and almost supra-sensory perception. During the old days at Topkapi not even a wall crack would be unremarked. And sooner or later someone would risk headsman or hangman by using it.

  One thing seemed certain. Any secret entrance would be so well contrived that not one single suspicion line or crack would landmark the place. Which was probably why the police had failed.

  On balance it seemed more probable that an underground passage would be reached through floor or corridor. Or even from a staircase. It would open easily once one
had the trick, and chances were that there was some system of poise and counter-poise.

  The car swept through the outer, Imperial Gate to the first court and drew up near the Central Gate giving to the second court. Two men wearing cloth caps guided the party half left to the smaller Carriage Gate which had already been opened. Grant made no comment. It was enough that Mustafa knew the right people. It was even more comforting to remember that not one of the men involved would talk out of turn.

  The two masons, he gathered, had no bright ideas about hidden doors but Mustafa still felt that they might prove useful. Kemal was using a carefully screened torch and flashed it around the magnificently tiled chamber. An alleyway led from a smaller door on the left of this room and Grant heard Mustafa explain that they were now walking along the corridor leading towards the Shawl Gate. The wall was broken by no windows, but towards the far end the old man explained that on the other side stood the ‘restored’ stables and Coach House. He was certain that access to the secret passage was reached at or very near to the little Shawl Gate itself, but outside the building.

  Grant still tries to forget the next hour. He pressed, squeezed, inspected and pushed against every suspect knob or projection until his fingers were aching. Somehow he had convinced himself that a seized-up spring or lever could be forced to work through brute strength. Yet he had an unreasonable conviction that something could still be found if only he persevered and was given just a little bit of luck.

  He turned at last to the step below his feet. The stone was worn but finely masoned. One of the watchmen scrubbed it with a metal brush and then Grant felt it systematically with fingers quivering for the slightest suggestive clue until he found a tiny plug of earth and dirt, seemingly part of the stone itself. He slowly worked it clear with the brush, and pointed. A tiny hollow, like the nick on the lid of a child’s pencil box, had been deliberately cut in the actual tread of the step, almost flush with the edge and a few inches from one lintel.

  ‘Mason’s chalk,’ he said to Mustafa, and rubbed a thin layer over the surface of the stone. His eyes lit with excitement as he pointed to an oblong of hair-line marks. ‘A panel, I think,’ he said and gently tapped the area with a wooden hammer brought by one of the two master masons who were watching. After gentle pressure on the ‘nick’ the surface began to slide, revealing a cube-shaped hollow about three inches square surrounding a vertical metal ring which seemed to be part of a bar or bolt anchored into the stone below. It reminded Grant of a ‘bolt’ used in his grandmother’s coal cellar when he was a boy. He even remembered how it had worked in that eighteenth-century house back home and wasn’t surprised when he had managed, with the help of one of the men, to pull it out of its socket, to feel the step unsteady beneath his feet. He stepped gently off and kicked backwards with his heel against the rise. The whole step revolved as he had half expected and revealed an opening broad enough to enter.

  The torch showed a flight of narrowish stairs dropping below and Grant led the way. The angle was gentle and the rise of each step not more than four inches, but he counted seventy-five before finding himself in a well-ventilated and cleanly cut passage broad enough for two people to walk abreast. There was hardly any dust and even Mustafa was surprised. ‘Someone must use this.’ He spoke rapidly with the others and coughed apologetically. ‘They agree it has been used. But how do people use it? Topkapi is quite a private place unless you are known. The masons say that the machinery at the beginning has been kept in working condition. I don’t like this very much, my friend. Have you any ideas?’

  Grant carried a small pocket compass and was taking bearings. He was working from memory, but he had memorised every detail of what he knew must be the streets above. He had even estimated distances in metres during his visit to the Alai Kiosk and figured that they were now within a few paces of the outer gate of the ruined Grand Vizier Palace. Nine paces further on the passage began to slope upwards and to veer towards the right. If memory was accurate Grant figured that the house he wished to enter must lie to the left. It seemed likely that the same sort of mechanism would operate at the further ends of the tunnel as had been devised for the beginning. He glanced at his watch. It was time to wind up operations and return to the surface. ‘But before we go, Mustafa, may I show what I have in mind?’

  He outlined the points with diagrams drawn in Kemal’s own pocket diary. A second corridor was bound to have been built and directly entered from the main passage where they were standing. It would be the mason’s job, and that of any other person Mustafa cared to call in, to find the secret entrance. Once found it could be opened to check that the passage beyond led in approximately the right direction, but rising rather more steeply. Grant preferred that no one continued to explore more than the first fifty or sixty yards, and on no account was anyone to go within twenty metres or so of the end. If his guess was right and his rough calculations justified, the end would be flush with the wall of the little white house above. And less than a metre away from the study of a man Grant had travelled far to kill.

  ‘But I must get at least a little sleep,’ he finished, ‘and I can save time if I could stay with you, old friend. Can do?’

  Kemal nodded. ‘My house is your house.’ His eyes were very thoughtful. ‘I still do not understand how they can use this place. Unless a man inside the palace is helping. And I thought I knew them all.’

  ‘Forget it. Just lay on the drill I’ve outlined and fix to come back after closing time this coming afternoon. The time factor is getting tight.’

  Grant walked alone back to the Shawl Gate and waited beside the opening in the step for Mustafa to return. He studied the handle of the bolt. It had been well polished There wasn’t even a trace of rust, but grease in the socket showed that someone had used oil within the last few weeks.

  Both men were very quiet on the way back to Kemal’s house and talked only after a girl had lit the old man’s hubble-bubble and brewed tea. ‘You are very clever, David Grant.’ Kemal eased himself on a divan. ‘My bones are getting a little old, but my brain is still good.’

  ‘Have you any news of the two girls?’ Grant was playing the cards close to his chest.

  ‘Sixteen of my men have been busy while we were working. It is possible that they are in a private house used by my countrymen.’

  ‘And have they been “working”?’

  ‘Probably not. It is usual to have medical tests carried out on new girls before they are used by anyone.’

  ‘Are they safe?’

  Mustafa puffed his pipe with unusual care. ‘Much depends upon what is meant by “safe.” I am sure that they won’t escape.’

  ‘Can we rescue them?’

  ‘My friend, you and I can rescue almost anyone in Turkey. We are both good at rescuing. It is more a question of when. Before or after you capture your man?’

  ‘It is my understanding that he may be the owner of this brothel. What do you think?’

  ‘In matters like this I don’t think. I prefer to find out and be sure.’

  Grant was never quite sure how to direct conversation with people like Mustafa who had such a built-in regard for the privacy of others and who never asked questions which could be avoided. ‘Dear old friend,’ he said at last, ‘by this time you will have caused your staff to find out everything known about that affair in the white house. You know what happened, that two men went in and that only one came out. But came out to die. You know that the owner and his housekeeper were taken to hospital with food poisoning and that while they were out of circulation the “authorities” went over the place with a fine tooth-comb. You probably think that they were looking for the body of the man who disappeared, or else you know that they were certain to explore for hidden passages or secret recesses. But you don’t know why the owner may be important to myself, and for sure you don’t know why I mean to kill him.’ He paused. Kemal was smoking peacefully and smiling with approval.

  ‘You also know that since I came here with a w
ig and in semi-disguise I am working, and you will have connected the deaths of my chiefs with this work. All that I understand. I know that your people have an ear close to the ground in every street of the bazaar and in every bar throughout the city. What I do not understand is why you have never seen the man who owns the white house. Nor do I understand why the name Marius Brandt means nothing to you. Finally I most certainly don’t understand how that passage we saw tonight can be used by anyone not known to at least several people in Topkapi. When I can understand these things I shall sleep. Harry and Frank will be here in only a few hours and I want to be fresh.’

  Kemal’s eyes became more serious. ‘How did the man Gaspard die?’

  Grant shook his head. ‘Even young men can die of heart attacks.’

  ‘But you had given him a drug. Who bought the drug?’

  ‘Frank.’ Grant lit his first cigarette since Topkapi. ‘He bought two packs. One was used on a girl, the other on Gaspard.’

  ‘And the girl didn’t die?’

  ‘No.’