‘The new destination of the cargo was put down as another neutral country — usually Spain, but sometimes, to vary the procedure, we used Genoa, with its pipeline up to Switzerland. The British didn’t at all like us using an Axis port, but there wasn’t much they could do about it, since the Swiss were being so very co-operative.’
‘Those bloody Swiss!’ Anna cried, ‘I bet they got a handsome cut from the Germans. All they’re interested in is money.’
Salak nodded, with his hideous smile. ‘They are not an attractive people. I rather like the comment by your Oscar Wilde — that they all look like waiters, including the mountains.’
They all laughed; the initial tension in the room had begun to dissipate.
Salak went on, ‘Then after the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943 things became more difficult. After the invasion, the Germans moved into Italy in force, and Genoa was blockaded. The Swiss had to get their fuel through Sweden, via Germany. That was another source, but it was not in my territory, so I do not know the details.
‘The southern Italian ports — Bari, Salerno, Naples — had fallen to the Allies. The only one left was Trieste, but by late 1943 it was being crippled practically every night by Allied bombers. Then the Germans — and their Western accomplices — hit on a rather ingenious idea. They decided to use Venice. Not so extraordinary, when you think about it. But the Allies did not think about it — for them Venice was just another old Italian city, popular with tourists.
‘They forgot that it had once been the greatest port in the world. It has a shallow lagoon but there is a modern harbour at Mestre, and when the bigger tankers couldn’t get into the port, the Germans devised pipelines out to sea to pump the oil ashore. With Trieste bombed impotent, the British Navy concentrated few of their efforts in the Adriatic, so there was little difficulty of passage.
‘But Venice had one other supreme advantage. The Allies, with touching aestheticism, had made it a policy not to bomb historic Italian cities. So as far as we were concerned, Venice became an open port.’
‘When you say “we”, you mean the Germans?’
‘Mr Hawn, do not try to trap me with semantic tricks. I was the citizen of a neutral country, remember. In the world’s marketplace, open to the highest bidder.’
‘Did you have no special sympathies about which way the war was going?’
‘Listen, good sir — the human animal has been going to war for thousands of years. You might as well ask me whether I supported the Romans or the Carthaginians. As a child I had seen my country humiliated after the First War — emasculated, with our great Ottoman Empire destroyed by the greed of the British and French. In the last war my only interest was that Turkey should survive — and that included me.
‘But that must be sufficient. The rest will have to wait until your banker’s order arrives. I do not ask from where, or from whom.’ He stood up.
At the door up to the deck Hawn turned. ‘Mr Salak, are you familiar with German?’
‘I have a practical knowledge of it.’
‘Have you read much German poetry? Goethe, for instance?’
‘Sir, you flatter me. No, I have not read Goethe.’
Hawn paused. ‘Mr Salak, someone died, or was killed, a few days ago, after leaving a note — two lines of Goethe’s poetry. Now, you probably know that there’s a rumour that all the files relating to this oil-smuggling disappeared at the end of the war. They were hidden. Would you perhaps know where?’
Salak smiled. ‘When I have my quarter of a million lire, Mr Hawn, I will tell you all manner of things. Now, my driver is ready to take you back into Istanbul.’
At the head of the gangway, as though by way of a prearranged ceremony, Mustafa returned their shoes.
As before, they said little on the drive back. It was only when they were in the hotel that Anna turned to Hawn. ‘You’re not honestly thinking of paying that big crooked bastard a quarter of a million lire — however much that is? Just to buy a lot of tittle-tattle we won’t be able to check out anyway, and perhaps a few names thrown in — mostly of people who are probably dead now, and the others will just sue us for every penny we’ve got!’
‘Why should we worry? We’re not punting with our own money, remember. We’re not even our own masters. Pol calls the tune. Pol wanted us to track down Salak and find out what he knows. And he’s prepared to pay the bill at the end of it.’
Up in their room Hawn lay down on the bed and lifted the telephone. He remembered that they had not eaten yet, and were hungry. The hotel restaurant was closed, so he ordered sandwiches, and, for good measure, a bottle of whisky. He felt they both deserved it.
‘But Salak’s so horrible,’ Anna persisted. ‘I think he’s perhaps the ugliest, most sinister man I’ve ever met. Did you notice how he hardly ever looked at me? He didn’t even speak to me, until I tried to bawl him out, and then he just treated me like an hysterical child. He’s obviously a misogynist.’
‘Salak’s as queer as a three-legged snake. Like a lot of Turks. Disciples of Sodom and de Sade.’ He smiled at her from the bed. She was pacing the room like a hungry cat.
‘Have you considered,’ she said, ‘that if he thinks we’ve already unearthed something really compromising about him, he may turn really nasty? As he said, Istanbul isn’t London. He may just be playing us along, pretending to want that quarter of a million.’
‘He’ll take the money if it’s offered him — after all, why shouldn’t he? And he’ll give us something in return. I don’t know much about the Turkish character, but I know they’re a very proud people, and they put great store on honouring their word. Salak said as much. If we don’t try and cross him, I don’t think he’ll cross us — or worse.’
There was a knock on the door, and the whisky and sandwiches were brought in. When he had poured a glass for each of them, Anna said, ‘Tom, what is all this stuff about poetry by Goethe?’
‘“Little birds are silent in the wood by the lake — soon you will be silent too.” Mönch didn’t strike me as a particularly humorous man — or frivolous. He wrote those lines for a purpose — to tell us something. A lake by some woods where birds no longer sing. Sounds German enough, doesn’t it? And a quiet lake would be a good place to dump a box of documents.’
‘And you propose dragging every lake in Europe?’
‘The trouble with you, angel, you’re too practical. We get a lead — a bloody obscure one, I agree — but I just thought I’d try it on Salak to see his reaction. He might come up with something — you never know.
‘Now, let’s continue this discussion in bed, before we’ve drunk too much.’
‘I want to drink. I want to drink myself silly.’ But she was already pulling her dress up over her head.
CHAPTER 21
Next morning Hawn walked up to the American Express offices, in the shopping arcade under the Intercontinental Hotel, on Taksim Square. Anna, in a rare moment of vanity, had gone to try and get her hair done. They were to meet back at the hotel at twelve.
Hawn sent a terse telegram to the enigmatic PO number in Annecy, demanding the immediate transfer of twelve thousand US dollars, to be cabled immediately to his name and passport number, c/o Amex, Istanbul. The sum was rather more than he had agreed with Salak, but he suspected that if things went well the old scoundrel might need the odd ‘sweetener’.
He arrived back at the Pera Palace just after midday. Since his key was not on the rack, he assumed that Anna had already returned. He also noticed that the keen-eyed receptionist gave him a courtly nod, but avoided looking at him, almost as if embarrassed.
Hawn clanked up in the ancient lift, walked down the spacious mellow corridor and reached their room. The door was locked. He knocked, then called Anna’s name. There was a pause; then the door was opened, but only a few inches. Anna stood facing him; she looked taut and pale. Behind her, in one of the armchairs, was the Austrian arch-bore Otto Dietrich. He nodded to Hawn, composed, benign.
Hawn looked a
t him in silence. ‘Hello, Otto. You should have warned us you were coming.’
‘I was perfectly prepared to wait.’
Hawn looked across at Anna. ‘Did you invite him in?’
‘He invited himself in. About a quarter of an hour ago. He’d been waiting down in the lobby.’ Her voice was not quite steady.
Hawn turned back to Dietrich. ‘So just what the hell are you doing here? I give you exactly two minutes to explain, or I shall call downstairs and have you thrown out.’
‘I must advise you to leave the telephone alone. Nobody wants trouble. All I want is to talk to you, Mr Hawn. Or, to be more exact, I have a friend who wants to talk to you. Would you agree to accompany me to the Hilton?’
‘Supposing I’m busy?’
‘Then I would suggest that you postpone what business you have.’
‘Is that an order?’
The Austrian folded his hands in his lap, like two plump napkins. ‘I had hoped that that would not be necessary. My friend is most interested to meet you. I would advise that you accept his invitation.’
‘If he’s that keen, why didn’t he come here with you? Sorry, Otto, I’m going to call reception. Unless you prefer to leave of your own accord?’
Otto Dietrich’s dull bespectacled face had a pained expression, ‘Mr Hawn, please. Please try to be more co-operative.’
‘Not until I know what this is all about. Who is this friend of yours?’
‘I would prefer that you met him first. I have to maintain a certain discretion.’
Hawn looked again at Anna. ‘What do you think, angel?’
Her voice was small and hushed: ‘Tom, get rid of him.’
‘Has he threatened you?’
‘I don’t like him. Get him out of here. Please!’
Dietrich made a little clucking noise with his tongue. ‘Mr Hawn, the young lady is not being very polite. The other day, during our most pleasant excursion, I had thought you such a charming pair.’
‘Otto, I’m touched. I’m also puzzled. As I said, what’s so special about your friend that he couldn’t have sent a note over, or just telephoned — instead of sending an unlikely chaperon like you?’
The Austrian nodded. ‘Perhaps he should have done. But then he could not have been sure that you would have accepted. And my friend is most insistent. He has a very tight schedule. He wants to see you today — now, at once.’
‘Supposing we say no?’
‘I do hope you will not. I so dislike scenes.’
Hawn nodded towards Anna. ‘Does your friend want to see Miss Admiral as well?’
‘He wishes to see you both.’
Hawn stood thinking for a moment, then turned to Anna: ‘Let’s see what this gentleman wants. The Hilton’s a civilized place. The worst that can happen to us is to get pitched out of a window on the seventeenth floor.’
Dietrich smiled and stood up. ‘I am so happy that you are being sensible. I have a car waiting downstairs. Taxis are impossible in Istanbul.’
They left, with Dietrich walking several paces behind them. In the lobby the receptionist pretended not to notice them. Hawn wondered how soon Salak would hear of this encounter.
It was a fifteen minute drive up the edge of the Bosporus, where the Hilton stood like a freshly polished headstone with a commanding view of the city. They entered in the same formation, although Hawn sensed that Dietrich had become less at ease: when the lift did not arrive at once, he grew uncharacteristically irritable.
They rode up to the twelfth floor. Dietrich knocked gently at a door at the end of the corridor. It was opened by a man in a grey flannel suit and a short executive haircut. He held the door open, without a word.
It was a large, two-roomed suite, with the appearance more of an office: telex, several telephones, recording machine, a lot of papers and documents littered about on tables and desks. In an armchair in the centre of the room sat the American, Don Robak; his thatch of grey-blond hair looked even more rumpled than last time. He was in his shirtsleeves and smelt of aftershave. He did not rise or shake hands.
‘Sit down, Mr Hawn, Miss Admiral. We’ve all met before, haven’t we?’
Hawn and Anna sat down opposite him.
‘But I didn’t think we’d meet again so soon, Mr Hawn.’
‘It’s a small world, Mr Robak — from the Gritti, Venice to the Hilton, Istanbul. Where next, one wonders. The Hotel of the Heavenly Flowers, Peking?’
‘I’ll come to the point. I’m a busy man. I don’t like wasting my time or anyone else’s. When we met in Venice you were talking about some crazy idea about ABCO having traded with the Nazis. I didn’t take you entirely seriously. I don’t have much respect for newspapermen — in my experience they’re either lazy or drunk, or both, and even when they do get hold of a good story, they usually screw it up. But you seem to be rather more persistent. You obviously not only believe this theory of yours, but you’re prepared to invest time and money in following it up.
‘Now ABCO’s a big organization and it can look after itself. But like all big organizations it has an image to protect. We get a certain amount of stick from time to time — usually from the eco-mob, when there’s a spillage — and lately we’ve had to lie down and stick our tongues up a few Arab arses, but on the whole we keep our noses clean.
‘But that doesn’t mean that we can afford, to have guys like you running round Europe spreading dirty stories about us. Unsubstantiated stories. Vicious, baseless lies. ’Course, if you tried to print anything, we’d have our lawyers on to you before the ink was dry. But by that time some of the dirt might have smudged off. You follow me?’
Hawn took his time answering: ‘I think I get the general drift of things. You’re warning me off. But you’re doing it in a pretty clumsy way. When we met at the Gritti, you pretty well laughed in my face and told me to get proof. Now, when I’m getting proof, you have me tailed by Otto here — who, by the way, is much too old for that sort of thing, surely? You may be warning me off, Robak. But you’re also whetting my appetite.’
Robak’s smooth square face showed about as much expression as the hotel furniture. ‘Hawn, I don’t often make mistakes. But it seems I made a mistake about you. Back in Venice I was interested to hear just how hard your theory was, and I decided it was pretty damn soft. I didn’t think you’d go through with it. I was wrong.’
‘How much do you know that I know?’
‘That’s why I have asked you up here. I want to find out. I know you’ve contacted a man called Salak. I don’t know how you got on to him, but it must mean that you’ve been doing some pretty deep digging.’
‘It wasn’t so difficult.’
There was a pause. Robak put a cigarette in his mouth, without lighting it. ‘Salak’s a tricky and expensive man to deal with. He wouldn’t talk to you for nothing. This must be costing you money. Who’s backing you?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘The hell it’s not. When you start investing in a smear campaign against ABCO, it’s all my business. You’re not a rich man, are you? I never met a newspaperman who was.’
‘I borrowed some money from a friend. Not an investment, just a loan,’ Hawn lied. ‘If Salak turns out to be that expensive, I’ll just have to cut my losses and go back to London.’
‘What’s Salak already told you?’
Hawn thought for a moment: Robak was certainly no man’s fool, and with the resources of ABCO behind him he could no doubt call on a highly sophisticated intelligence network. It was just a question of how much he already knew. Hawn’s experience had taught him that in a touchy situation like this it was always better to tell as much of the truth as possible; and even the most experienced interrogator knows that every question he asks gives away what he doesn’t know.
‘He said he worked for both the British and Germans during the war. And that there was a certain amount of dirty play with tankers calling into Istanbul from the Middle East. It seems his job was fixing false
Bills of Lading and bribing the captains. He didn’t give me any details, and he didn’t mention ABCO.’
‘How much did he charge you for this information?’
‘Nothing. He seemed to treat it as though it were common knowledge.’
There was a long silence. Robak took the unlit cigarette from his mouth, tossed it away, shook out another, which this time he lit. ‘All crap. The same sort of crap you were shooting me at the Gritti. But I’ll give you a useful tip. Salak’s a hard and dangerous man. He swings a lot o’ lead in this city — on both sides of the fence. People who cross him don’t usually get the chance to apologize.
‘And I’ll give you another tip. The America-Britannic Consortium doesn’t like being crossed either. Our methods are rather more subtle — and they’re usually a good deal more effective. If you can persuade Salak — if you haven’t done so already — to give you facts and figures, you might find us on your back. And when that happens, you’re in trouble. Both of you. Keep out of this, Hawn.’ He looked at Anna. ‘Keep out of it, if only for her sake. You’re a couple of kids playing with a rattler. Not a toy,’ he added, smiling. ‘The kind that bites.’
‘Are you ordering us out of Istanbul?’
‘That would be the most sensible thing for you to do.’
‘And supposing we want to stay and see the sights?’
‘I understood you saw most of the sights the other day with Herr Dietrich here? But just as you like. Only remember this. If you contact, or make any attempt to contact Salak, I shall know about it. He may have a pretty good organization here, but so have I.’
Otto Dietrich yawned. Hawn glanced at him, then back at Robak. ‘I must say, it’s the first time I’ve heard of a senior oil executive running his own Secret Service. Do the stockholders know about this?’
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