Dead Secret

by Alan Williams

  ‘You’re green, Hawn. We have a lot of interests and a lot of secrets to protect. We not only have to protect ourselves against our business rivals — we have OPEC and the whole darned Middle East and Iranian fuck up to contend with. But now we also get people like you. Or does that make you sound too important? Well, let’s just say that people like you are worms in the woodwork. If necessary they have to be got rid of.’ He stood up. ‘I’ve done you at least one favour, Hawn. I’ve given it to you straight. Just don’t run yourself and your girl dead into the ground.’

  He called something and the man in the grey flannel suit opened the door from outside. As they left, again Robak just nodded. The door closed and they were alone in the corridor.

  ‘Not a very nice man,’ Anna said, as they stood waiting for the lift. ‘Did you take him seriously? Senior oil executives don’t usually behave like that, do they?’

  ‘I rather suspect some of them do.’

  The lift arrived; it was empty.

  ‘He was trying to scare us, Anna. He’s probably scared himself. He made a bad mistake in laying it on about Salak. He obviously knows that Salak is a fund of information, and he’s terrified that he’ll give it to us. Robak’s just a cog in a huge organization, and it’s my guess he’s been delegated to kill this story. If he doesn’t he’s in for the chop.’

  They reached the lobby.

  ‘Tom, do you think he’s bluffing?’

  ‘Not altogether. Only he’ll need a lot more to go on before he takes really drastic action. What worries me is the efficiency of his intelligence sources. He’s obviously having us thoroughly covered while we’re here, which is going to make it bloody difficult to contact Salak again without ABCO knowing.’

  CHAPTER 22

  ‘You realize, of course, that we’re in the classic squeeze — to use the poker expression? I’ve never asked you this before, angel. How brave are you?’

  Anna’s spoonful of crusty yoghurt stopped halfway to her mouth. ‘I don’t know. Not very, I don’t think. I hope I’ve done all right so far?’

  ‘So far the going’s been fairly smooth — except for young French, which you weren’t involved in, and which may have nothing to do with this business anyway — and that little trouble with the Spanish police.’ Hawn smiled. They were at a pavement-table outside a small restaurant near the Covered Bazaar. The crowds made it easy for them to be observed, which did not worry Hawn. He had chosen the place for this very reason.

  ‘But now that we’ve run into Salak, the stakes have got rather higher. Salak’s offered us a deal, and it’s probably already too late to go back on it. But while Salak may have a strong arm, I doubt it extends far outside Istanbul — whereas ABCO’s certainly does.’

  She took another spoonful of yoghurt. An old-fashioned hippy with a guitar sat watching them both lazily from a nearby table. He was eating bread and honey, She said, ‘You’re not suggesting we run out, are you? Like Salak first threatened to do to us — put us on the next plane?’

  ‘I haven’t suggested anything. I was just presenting the facts. Because you’re in this as deep as I am — don’t forget that. You came in at the very beginning. And if I go down, you go down with me.

  ‘The real point is, the story’s so obviously true. The files, statistics, Shanklin and Frisby, Mönch and Salak — Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, even Venice. It all hangs too well together. Otherwise why are ABCO getting so worried? Just what are they frightened of?’

  The waiter had banged down two plates of blackened shish-kebab, and for a moment they sat picking at the meat in silence. The hippy strummed the first three notes of a tune, then seemed to give up. Across the street, at the corner of a blind alley, an old Negro sat against the wall: gaunt and blue-black, before him a shabby carpet on which were spread carved wooden artefacts — effigies, tribal trophies, symbols of the power of darkness? What assiduous tourist, Hawn wondered, would visit Istanbul to haggle over the obscure relics of Black Africa? For that matter, what lone journalist and his innocent girlfriend would travel here, to take on a known criminal like Salak and the whole might of ABCO?

  ‘I think I know what they’re scared of,’ Anna said at last. ‘We know the Nazis got their oil from the West. We know that ABCO was involved, and we’ve got a pretty good idea how it was done. But I’d give you good odds, Tom, that it wasn’t just ABCO playing truant with the Nazis and finishing the war as rich men. I think it goes deeper than that — and a lot dirtier.’

  Hawn had stopped eating. ‘Could we be thinking along the same lines?’

  ‘I think there may have been people high in the Allied Governments who were in on it. But we still have to prove it. In a box of documents, perhaps, hidden in a lonely lake? You’re right, though, ABCO aren’t worried just for themselves. As Robak said, they’ve got an image to protect — and they hire buffoons like Hamish Logan to protect it. But when things start getting hot for them, their methods become pretty unsophisticated. They believe in bullying people. That’s how oil companies do business.’

  ‘I should have thought the easiest way out for them would have been to try and buy us off.’

  ‘Maybe they will. We might even finish up rich.’

  Anna was thinking that they might just as easily finish up dead; but at this late stage she saw no point in saying so. She knew too well that once Tom Hawn had set his mind on something, he would go through with it, come hell or high water.

  Having left Anna in the hotel, Hawn walked the short distance from the Pera Palace to the Intercontinental.

  After waiting in a queue for ten minutes, he presented his passport at the bureau de change desk. It was received with instant reverence, even awe: a fussy little man in a black suit came out of the back and dealt with the transaction himself. It was not every day that an English tourist drew out a quarter of a million Turkish lire. By evening the news would be all round the Istanbul business community; Robak would know without having to leave his hotel suite.

  Hawn returned again on foot, down the crowded street, without hurrying, pausing every few minutes to glance into some shop window. By a quarter to five he was back at the Pera Palace. Anna was asleep. There had been no calls, no messages.

  He let her sleep, and ordered a whisky. He drank it slowly, almost neat. He had a bath, put on a clean shirt, but deliberately wore the same trousers and jacket as before. It was out of idleness, rather than caution, or even cowardice, that at six o’clock he rang down to reception, asked for another whisky and for the times of the next planes out to London or Paris. The last flight to London had already left, but there was one at eight to Paris, via Rome.

  He was just asking the clerk to make a provisional booking for two seats, when the floor waiter arrived with his whisky. There was also an envelope, addressed to MISTER HAWN, in typed capitals. Inside, a sheet of plain buff paper, without heading or date. On it was typed: ‘1730 hours. Ferry Bogaz Iskelesi — Salacak Iskelesi.’

  It took him a moment of studying the city map before he understood. He lifted the phone, cancelled his airline booking, woke Anna, and showed her the note, together with the map. Bogaz Iskelesi was the crossing point, at the end of the Galata Bridge, across the Bosporus to Usküdar.

  ‘There’s no bloody way of warning Salak that Robak’s on our tail. I’ve given them God knows how much opportunity to show themselves today, but I wasn’t able to spot anyone — unless it was that hippy at lunch, or the African across the road, but they somehow didn’t look as though they were on ABCO’s payroll. But I still don’t believe that at this stage Robak would be using team work. And Dietrich’s blown his cover for a start.’

  Anna yawned, still sleepy. ‘I don’t see what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Just that it’s not far across the Bosporus and I don’t suppose the ferry is much more than a step-on step-off job. There’ll be no cover there for anyone following us.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why he’s chosen it?’

  ‘Perhaps. If Salak knew about Robak. Bu
t how could he?’

  ‘He seems to know quite a lot about what goes on in Istanbul.’ She got up, wearing only her loose French knickers, and picked up her dress.

  Hawn stared absently at the shape of her breasts as she leant down. ‘If his idea is to meet us on the ferry and Robak is still tailing us, we’re going to be in the shit. Salak could probably fix something for us — if only he knew.’

  ‘Isn’t there some way we can get a message to him?’ She stood buttoning up her dress without putting on a bra. ‘We could try going down to Kumkapi and finding that chemist shop.’

  ‘There’s not time. It takes nearly an hour to get there, and he’ll have certainly left. Anyway, what about Robak? If he’s still having us tailed, Salak’s hardly going to thank us for leading them straight to his doorstep. That’s no doubt why he’s not made the rendezvous at his shop.’

  ‘Which means you think he does know about Robak? Tom, you must make up your mind.’

  ‘I’m trying to.’ Hawn remembered the whisky which had come up with Salak’s note, and took a grateful gulp of it. ‘All I do know is that if we go through with this deal with Salak, we’ve got to play it by his rules. Otherwise, there’s a plane at eight to Paris. We could still make it, if we hurried.’

  ‘No. We talked this all over at lunch. We go on the ferry.’

  A tepid rain was falling, and it was fast getting dark when the hotel car dropped them at the far end of the Galata Bridge, under the vaulted mass of the Yeni Camii Mosque. In the heavy stream of evening traffic, it was impossible to know whether they had been followed or not.

  There was a small crowd at the landing stage — local people, nearly all men, grubby-jowled, in shabby Western clothes, carrying bundles of luggage. Hawn and Anna were the only foreigners to buy tickets. The ferry itself was less decrepit than Hawn had expected: it was painted almost white, with a covered promenade deck and sundecks fore and aft, lined with sodden deckchairs. There was also an upholstered saloon and a bar.

  They left punctually at 7.30. The Bosporus was flat and calm under the asphalt sky. Hawn and Anna stood for a time on the promenade deck, watching the necklace of lights sliding away behind them; then the rain began to come down hard, splashing off the deckboards and seeping into their shoes. They went inside to the bar, where a row of men were lined up drinking thimbles of black coffee.

  Hawn ordered two rakis and carried them over to a table by the wall. On a bench opposite, a big man in an astrakhan hat and knee-high boots lay sprawled out with his face covered with a local newspaper, snoring above the pounding of the engines.

  Hawn and Anna hardly spoke. There was between them a kind of tacit tension, a sense of uncertainty which inhibited conversation. No one approached them; no one forced their attentions upon them or bought them unsolicited drinks; and no one could sensibly arouse Hawn’s suspicions, except perhaps the snoring man under the newspaper. But as the ferry began to draw into Usküdar, passing the tiny island with Leander’s Tower, the man awoke and Hawn saw that he was clearly Turkish, with a heavy black moustache and bleary eyes. He was drunk.

  It was still raining hard and quite dark now, as they tied to at the concrete jetty at Salacak Iskelesi. They both stayed where they were, waiting until most of the passengers had disembarked. They watched the big drunk haul himself up from the bench, his astrakhan hat askew, and cross the saloon in a shunting roll as though they were in a heavy sea. He disappeared with the rest of the passengers into the night.

  Hawn and Anna were the last to leave, except for two old men and a tiny woman in black, bent almost double under a quilted rucksack. Outside there was no shelter from the rain, which had formed huge blistered pools all the way up the jetty to the little square with the massive rococo Fountain of Ahmed III, looking like a great pile of artistically-arranged bird droppings. Behind it loomed the dome and two minarets of a mosque, lost against the black sky.

  A bus had collected most of the passengers. There was also a dolmus, or communal taxi, waiting to make up its full complement of five. Otherwise, apart from the small crowd waiting to board the ferry back to Istanbul, the place was deserted, with almost no lights. No private cars, no glare of approaching headlamps. A shed stood in one corner, which might be a cafe. Hawn and Anna turned up their collars and ran towards it.

  Four tables were arranged along a bar wall under a single unshaded light. There was music from somewhere — a woman’s shrill plaintive wail, muffled by the drumming of rain on the iron roof. Eventually a man appeared from the back, wiping his hands on his apron. Hawn ordered two raids; there was nothing else to drink, except coffee.

  Anna said at last, ‘It’s not like Salak to be late, is it? He gave the impression of being so efficient.’

  There was a dull boom from outside, signalling that the ferry was about to leave. When the proprietor returned with their drinks, Hawn asked him, slowly and deliberately, when the last ferry was due to leave. No good, the man spoke no English. After a moment, he made a sign to them and disappeared again into the back of the cafe. He returned a couple of minutes later, followed by the big shuffling figure of the drunk who had been on the ferry.

  The man was no longer wearing his astrakhan hat. His hair was cropped short and square, growing in a straight line across his low forehead. He gave a short bow, jerked out a chair and slumped down between them; then snapped his fingers at the proprietor, who nodded and withdrew. ‘I speak English,’ he said, looking at Hawn with a leaky squint. He tapped Hawn’s glass. ‘You drink raki, huh? Very good.’

  ‘When does the last ferry leave for Istanbul?’

  ‘No more ferry from Iskelesi. You must go to Usküdar Iskelesi.’

  ‘I thought this was Usküdar,’ Hawn said, and reached for his map of Istanbul. The man leant forward and peered at it as if it were some puzzle, and finally laid a black-rimmed thumbnail on the edge of the map, showing the main port of Usküdar about a kilometre away.

  ‘When does that ferry leave?’

  The man turned, as the proprietor brought him a tumbler of the yellowish raki. He swallowed half of it, put it down on the map and leant forward on both elbows, breathing heavily. Hawn waited, then repeated the question. The man’s eyes rose slowly, focusing with difficulty. Then he laughed. ‘Why you come to Usküdar? You want hotel?’

  Hawn kept his voice steady, patient. ‘We want to return to Istanbul. Is it possible to find a taxi?’

  The big man sat very still; then he groped in his trouser pocket, produced a khaki handkerchief and noisily blew his nose. ‘Why you not stay in Usküdar? Tomorrow the sun. Beautiful place, Usküdar.’ He leant back and very deliberately spat a huge gob onto the floor between his feet. Hawn was aware of Anna sitting beside him, watching the man with uneasy disapproval.

  Hawn wanted to consult her, but could not be sure how good the drunk’s English really was. Again, the man seemed an unlikely candidate for one of Salak’s henchmen — but then Salak might believe in doing business in unlikely ways. And if this was Salak’s man, he would set the pace.

  The pace he set was to finish his raki and yell for another. The only consolation was that he did not insist that they both join him. He drank three tumblers, one after the other, then grunted something, pushed back his chair, began to stand up, fell with a crash on his stomach, and lay still.

  ‘We leave him where he is,’ Hawn said. ‘But we can’t very well stay here. There must be a hotel somewhere.’

  ‘I’d sooner we tried to go back to Istanbul. I don’t like this place.’ The man on the floor had begun to snore with a noise like a bath running out. ‘It’s not like our friend not to keep an appointment — especially when there’s nearly five thousand pounds at stake. You’re quite sure we took the right ferry?’

  They studied the map again, which showed several dotted red lines curving out from the Galata bridge, across the Bosporus, to join the Asian mainland at several points along the coast of Asia.

  Hawn had unfolded the note in his pocket. ‘Salacak Iske
lesi — it’s written here, and it was written up at the end of the jetty.’

  ‘That dolmus should be back soon. Can’t we take it to the main port?’

  Hawn paused. ‘This whole thing could be a set-up. Or a test to find out if we’ll go through with it or not — and perhaps to see if we’re followed.’

  ‘Do you think we’ve been followed?’ she said; and they both glanced down at the man on the floor.

  ‘As I told you, I haven’t spotted anyone all day. But that’s only because I’ve been looking out for Westerners. I just assumed they wouldn’t use a Turk. Because I was assuming that they were ABCO people.’

  ‘But who else would follow us? Salak’s men?’

  Hawn cut her short with a quick gesture, got up, went to the door and stared out at the spears of rain, returned to the table and swallowed the rest of his raki. ‘If only there was somewhere else we could wait. It’s like being in a rabbit-hutch, waiting for the snakes.’

  At that moment they heard the clatter of a very old diesel motor. He sprang back to the door and saw the headlamps of a car swinging into the square. It was the dolmus. It drew up outside the cafe with a great splash, and the driver came in, wearing leggings and a dripping leather jacket. He shouted something, and the proprietor hurried from the back, stepping over the drunk, and handed the driver a glass of brandy.

  Hawn stood up and began to negotiate.

  The driver said he was finished for the night and demanded an exorbitant sum to drive them to the Usküdar port. Hawn was in no mood to argue about money. When he agreed to the sum, the man looked faintly disappointed, even contemptuous, as though he had challenged Hawn to an honourable contest and had been rebuffed.

  Hawn paid for the rakis and they left. The drunk had not moved. Five minutes later they arrived at a well-lit square which led to the port, where there were already several boats waiting. One of them was the ferry for Istanbul.