Dead Secret

by Alan Williams

  ‘One thing I will say for all that,’ Hawn said, when they were inside. ‘After the first glass, that raki’s not bad stuff.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask about Salak?’ she said: and Hawn nudged her violently, noticing the drivers eyes watching them in the mirror.

  ‘We walk before we run,’ he muttered, then tried to distract the driver by kissing her with passion.

  She straightened up. ‘I don’t know about you, but I could do with a long cold drink.’ Back at the Pera Palace they ordered a bottle of Krug, non-vintage. It was the best the hotel could provide.

  As they had come back in, Hawn thought the keen-looking receptionist had eyed them both with more than usual interest. Perhaps it was because, beside the rest of the clientele, they were young and good-looking. Perhaps.

  CHAPTER 19

  Next day they decided to keep away from Kumkapi. It was one thing for a couple of foreigners to sample the city’s low life on a casual visit; it was another for them to make a habit of it.

  Hawn was an idle and indifferent sightseer; but Anna, with her precise academic nature, felt that if she did not always enjoy it, she must at least do it.

  They spent the morning making the statutory round of the Blue Mosque, the Sancta Sophia, the Hippodrome and the gloomy vaults of the Roman cisterns, through endless palaces and dungeons and fortresses, all blood-soaked in history, and now peopled by gawping, shuffling tourists and their rapacious guides.

  Exhausted, Hawn and Anna lunched away from the main street, Taksim, in a foul expensive restaurant where the only delicacies were the cheese and thick black coffee. In the afternoon they visited two palaces and three more mosques, and in one of the bazaars, after some exhilarating bargaining, he bought Anna a heavy silver bracelet.

  The only jarring incident of the day had been the obsequious intrusion of a fellow tourist — a middle-aged Austrian, alone, bespectacled, bald, and armed with a guidebook in which he made notes on the flyleaf in pencil.

  He had joined them in the Sancta Sophia, and at first had been quite useful in explaining some of the special architectural features of the church; and as they tramped between the colonnades of the Mosque of Suleymaniye, he padded along beside them like some lost dog from the Great Bazaar. His name was Otto Dietrich, he was an accountant from Vienna, and had recently been widowed.

  Hawn’s first instinct was to be suspicious of him: yet the man was such a stupendous bore that Hawn’s only reaction was one of exasperation, tempered with a grudging sense of pity for the man. He realized that such creatures were one of the penalties of tourism, and of sightseeing in particular.

  He and Anna made several attempts to rid themselves of him: but Otto Dietrich was no ordinary bore: he was both persistent and skilful. They only managed to shake him off finally at the entrance of the Pera Palace, where Dietrich’s farewell was accompanied by the threat that he would telephone or call round in the next few days. He kissed Anna’s hand and said, with awful sincerity, ‘I have so enjoyed myself today! I have not enjoyed myself so much for a long time. Thank you both so very much!’

  That evening, feeling free at last, Hawn went out and bought yesterday’s Herald Tribune. There was no further mention of Mönch’s supposed suicide. The Herr Doktor had disappeared as thoroughly as Norman French.

  Next morning, they took the precaution of telling Reception that if anyone called for them, they had gone for a day’s excursion up the Bosporus.

  They decided to leave their second visit to Kumkapi until after siesta. Hawn bought a pack of two hundred king-size American cigarettes, and this time the hotel ordered for them a different car, with a different driver — an older man who seemed to speak no English. He also had little feel for the traffic, and they were soon caught up in the same laborious crawl back over the river into the wooden slums of the southwestern area of the city.

  When they at last arrived, Hawn told the driver to wait in one of the narrow side streets off the square. The man obeyed impassively. Hawn and Anna got out and walked.

  Nothing had changed. The hippies sat like hungry crows at the foot of the mosque and fat green flies moved leisurely among the hanging meat. They came to the cafe. Hawn was relieved to see that their ferocious host of two days ago was not there. They found a table outside, and when the waiter came they ordered two rakis; then Hawn said casually, ‘Baka?’ with a wave towards the inside of the cafe.

  The waiter muttered and moved off. When he returned with the two drinks, he was accompanied by a tall man in a surprisingly smart oyster-white suit, who bowed and sat down.

  ‘You want to talk to Baka?’

  Hawn laid the carton of cigarettes on the table. ‘Two days ago I promised to give these to Baka.’ He smiled. ‘Baka is akadash.’

  ‘Akadash,’ the man repeated, without smiling. ‘You English friend of Baka.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘We met here two days ago. We had some drinks together. I promised him cigarettes.’

  The man gave Hawn a slow stare. ‘Baka not here.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  The man clasped his wrists together, as though in handcuffs. ‘Kemeret. Very bad place.’

  ‘Kemeret?’ Hawn frowned.

  The waiter arrived and placed a cup of coffee in front of the man. He sipped it delicately, licking the brown scum off his lips. ‘Kemeret is Istanbul Prison,’ he said at last.

  Hawn stared at him. The man had a cruel face that betrayed no change of expression. ‘What happened? What did Baka do?’

  ‘Contraband. Cigarettes.’ He looked threateningly down at the carton on the table. ‘You no friend of Baka. Baka do business with English. Americans. Now he is in Kemeret.’

  Hawn was aware that the whole cafe was now watching them. Their faces were as empty as that of the man at their table; there was also a sullen air of hostility.

  ‘I give you my word,’ Hawn said, ‘that I have never done any business with Baka. I met him for the first time the day before yesterday.’

  The man did not seem to be listening. He said, ‘Drink your raki. Then you come with me.’

  ‘Are you police?’

  The man laughed; it was a harsh sound, like a dog barking. Then he put his head back and shouted something, and the whole cafe laughed.

  ‘You finish your raki,’ he said to Hawn, without looking at Anna; ‘then you come with me.’

  Hawn’s hand closed round Anna’s under the table; he could feel her trembling. ‘Just don’t worry — I’ll handle this. They’re not going to risk any rough stuff with foreigners. They’re just being careful. A lot of stupid tourists come here and get caught up in the drug racket. So they want to make sure of us — probably taking us to their boss, where we can explain everything.’ He spoke with a good deal more coolness than he felt.

  Anna stood up, very pale. They were not asked to pay for their drinks. The man in the white suit led the way out, and two stocky men in overalls ambled after them. They crossed the square, into a dingy side street slippery with donkey droppings: out into a wider street where there were pavements, people walking, cars honking along, bumper to bumper.

  They came to a shop with an illuminated green cross above the door, over the word Eczane, and a red neon sign which read COLGATE. Inside was a sharp stench of disinfectant and cheap perfume. It was a well-stocked modern pharmacist’s. Two girls in white coats were serving behind the counter. The Turk said something to them, and one of them nodded to the back of the shop. Hawn and Anna followed him, down a narrow passage lined to the ceiling with dark bottles and phials. Hawn was still carrying the carton of cigarettes, not knowing whether it would count in their favour or against them.

  The two stocky men had stopped inside the shop. The Turk led the way up a dark wooden staircase, down a passage lit by a single naked bulb. There were no windows. He came to a door and knocked, then murmured something in which Hawn thought he detected the name, ‘Baka’. A voice from inside shouted back, and the Turk opened the door. He stood aside a
nd beckoned to Hawn and Anna.

  They walked past him into what might have been the set for some lavish production of ‘Scheherazade’. It was a long dim room with dark-stained panelling, blood-red damask curtains, and huge embroidered cushions arranged around the walls. Ornate lamps were suspended by chains from the ceiling and the floor was covered with a handsome carpet. There were two windows, small and heavily glazed, admitting little light and affording no view. A grandfather clock ticked noisily away in the corner, next to an antique desk.

  Plumped down on one of the great cushions was a man in blue-striped pyjamas. Hawn could see that he was well over six feet tall. His head was the size of a football, and as bald as a stone — lumpy and pitted and cracked like the head of a very old, unlovely statue. His eyes were small and creased up, black and crafty.

  But the thing about him that Hawn noticed most were his feet. They were bare — big feet with the soles horribly scarred, like corrugated brown paper, presumably as a result of the traditional Turkish torture of the bastinado.

  He was smoking a Western-style pipe and reading a local newspaper. He took the pipe from his mouth and gestured Anna and Hawn towards one of the cushions; then, still holding the newspaper, he said something to the man in the white suit. The Turk replied at some length. The huge man in pyjamas lay listening, looking faintly bored. Finally, he replied, briefly, and the Turk in the white suit bowed low and withdrew, closing the door without a sound.

  The huge man looked across at Hawn and Anna in silence. He took a pull at his pipe, found that it had gone out, knocked the ash into a brass bowl by his leg, and said in English, ‘What are your names?’ His voice was low and mellifluent, his English well-educated, with almost no accent.

  Hawn told him. The man took his time answering.

  ‘I hope I am doing you both an injustice,’ he said at last, ‘but recently I’ve been having a lot of trouble with foreign visitors. Mostly Americans. I don’t want to bore you with the details of my work, except to say that a degree of discretion is required. Recently several of my employees have been in trouble with the police through dealings with foreigners. I understand that two days ago you visited a certain cafe where you made the acquaintance of a man who calls himself Baka?’

  Hawn nodded. ‘It was an entirely accidental meeting. We were introduced to him by a complete stranger who insisted on buying us drinks.’

  ‘When did you arrive in Istanbul?’

  Hawn hesitated. ‘Two days ago.’

  ‘The very same day you visited the cafe?’ The man’s black eyes did not shift from Hawn’s. ‘Don’t you think that’s rather an odd thing for two tourists to do, on their first day in Istanbul? Our city has so many magnificent sights — yet you two choose to visit the poorest, the filthiest district in the city. It is not even as though you were seeking out the low life — prostitutes and belly dancers. You would find those off Taksim. Instead, you choose Kumkapi.’

  ‘I am not a conventional tourist.’ Hawn spoke with forced pride. ‘You seem to be talking about those busloads of camera-covered morons who trek through the bazaars and round the Blue Mosque like herds of cattle. We’re interested in the real Istanbul. And I don’t care if it is poor and stinking. It exists.’

  The man on the cushion gave a broken-toothed smile. ‘I congratulate you, my dear sir, on your eloquence. Unfortunately there is one small matter which rather spoils it. You are staying at the Pera Palace, are you not?’ He smiled again. ‘Do not look so surprised. You see, the day before yesterday you hired a car from there. You asked the driver specifically to take you to a certain cafe in Kumkapi. A cafe frequented by ex-wrestlers. You see, the driver of that car is a friend of mine. He thought your behaviour was odd, and he reported it to me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Please, my dear sir. Do not take me for a fool. I have already explained that my work requires discretion. I do not like foreigners who spy on me. I do not like foreigners who talk to one of my employees, and discuss contraband in cigarettes, and then next day that employee is taken away by the police.’

  ‘You’re mistaken. I had no illicit dealings with this man Baka at all. The fact that he has been arrested is a total coincidence.’

  ‘Is it a coincidence that on your first day in Istanbul you insisted on visiting the cafe where most of my employees spend their free time?’

  ‘We were looking for somewhere with atmosphere. As I said, somewhere well off the tourist beat.’

  The big man began to fill his pipe from a porcelain bowl. ‘Mr Hawn, why have you come to Istanbul?’

  ‘For a holiday.’

  He slowly shook his head. ‘I’m going to be gentle with you. Usually people like you are found in a backstreet so badly injured that they spend the next six months in hospital. There is a lot of robbery — what you call “mugging” — in Istanbul. You would not find yourself attracting much attention from the police. And our hospitals are not very good.

  ‘However, I will give you a chance. And besides, you have such a charming ladyfriend — I should not like to see her harmed. I will ask you again. What are you doing in Istanbul? Or shall I put it another way? What were you hoping to do?’

  Anna had been sitting silently beside Hawn, pale, her hands pressed together in her lap. Her voice now broke in with soft measured fury: ‘Just who the hell do you think you are? You’re behaving like some cheap gangster out of a 1930s B-movie. We come to Istanbul as tourists and happen to visit a cafe where we’re bought a few drinks by a stranger, and introduced to another stranger whom we agree to meet again, and just because he’s been arrested, your “heavies” pick us up and march us round to this shop and up into this ridiculous room. Who do you think you are? Sydney Greenstreet?’

  The man, who had lain listening impassively, looked puzzled. ‘Greenstreet?’

  ‘Never mind. He was an actor. And a lot better one than you are. You say you spoke to the chauffeur who drove us to the cafe. Did he tell you that we specifically wanted to go somewhere where wrestlers meet?’

  ‘You are interested in wrestling?’

  ‘We thought the place might have atmosphere. But we’ve explained all this already. Now will you call your bodyguard outside and let us go.’

  The man began to light his pipe. The only sound in the room was the heavy ticking of the grandfather clock. He looked up at last with his cracked smile.

  ‘I congratulate you, too, young lady, on your little speech. Unfortunately much of what you have said is true. We Turks so often behave like the films. The cinema is very popular here — more popular even than wrestling. People think of Turkey as an exotic, even romantic country. But apart from a few mosques and palaces that have been turned into museums, and the traditional dancing put on for the tourists, we are at heart a coarse primitive people.

  ‘I myself had the advantage of being educated at your excellent Trinity College, Cambridge. People tell me I speak like a true English gentleman — though I hardly look like one. I am not a gentleman. I am an uncivilized Turk, and my methods of business are also uncivilized. It is useless to lose your temper with me. I do not even mind being abused, providing you do not insult the memory of my father or my mother.’

  He settled back into his cushion and drew on his pipe. ‘But we are straying from the point. I asked you what you were hoping to do in Istanbul, and you persist in telling me that you are innocent tourists. It may interest you to know that after your chauffeur had reported back to me. I checked with the Pera Palace Hotel. I discovered that you, Mr Hawn, are described in your passport as a journalist. While you, Miss Admiral, are a researcher. Might I inquire into what you research?’

  ‘Economics.’ Her voice was still stiff with anger.

  ‘And Mr Hawn is perhaps a journalist who specializes also in economics?’

  ‘I’m on a sabbatical, writing a book about medieval Italy. Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘Mr Hawn, I am never satisfied until I am sure. I have only your word for what you say.’

/>   Anna broke in: ‘Well, you’ll just have to be satisfied! If you think you can kidnap us, then intimidate us, you’re wrong. At least they might have taught you some manners at Cambridge.’

  The big man held up his hand. He sounded bored. ‘Please, please, no more histrionics. Unless absolutely necessary, I like to think of myself as a peaceful man. Now I tell you what I propose to do. I am going to give you two simple choices. Either you tell me what you are doing in Istanbul — in the interests of “journalistic research”. Or I shall insist that you leave the city on the first available plane. And don’t think it will help you by going to the police. They would probably prefer not to believe your story — but even if they did, I have influence in high places, and I could no doubt persuade them that it was in the national interest that you were both declared personae non gratae. I will give you two minutes to make up your minds.’

  Hawn decided, reluctantly, that they had little to lose now by being frank. Pol had warned them to treat their assignment circumspectly: although Pol had perhaps not bargained for quite these circumstances.

  Hawn spoke with care: ‘We’ve come to meet a man called Imin Salak. By all accounts, a very brave man. We’re writing a book about the wartime activities of the Special Operations Executive, and part of the book involves British espionage and counter-espionage in Turkey. An old friend of mine — a veteran of British wartime Intelligence — recommended that we try to talk to Salak.’

  The man’s black eyes watched him, without blinking. ‘You are foolish not to have mentioned this before. Salak is a very proud man — proud of his war exploits, which have never been chronicled. He will be delighted to have a book written about him. Why did you not tell me this at once?’

  ‘If your methods hadn’t been so heavy-handed,’ said Hawn, ‘we might have done.’

  The man raised both hands as though in prayer. ‘That is the uncivilized Turk in me. As Miss Admiral so truly said, they taught me no manners at Cambridge. Besides, I have my business interests to protect — and in my business one sometimes becomes unnecessarily suspicious.’ He stood up, with a smooth swift movement, and walked across the room to a telephone on the desk. He walked very straight, on his scarred bare feet, like a soldier.