Istanbul Passage

by Joseph Kanon

  “Yes?” he heard from inside. A rustling sound, maybe belting a wrapper.

  She opened the door, eyes widening. Her hair was down, brushed out, and she had taken off her makeup, her face still a little shiny from the cold cream, but flushing now, real color.

  “You came,” she said, surprised, then clutched the lapels of her bathrobe. “I didn’t think you would come.” Her voice slightly out of breath.

  “Is that all right?”

  She was still holding the door, and he felt as if he might pitch forward, the momentum that had carried him from the square suddenly stalled.

  “My hair—” she said, touching it nervously, a gesture so beside the point that he smiled.

  “Your hair?”

  She caught his eye but didn’t smile back. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say, come in.” He paused. “Unless you don’t—”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and opening the door wider.

  He stepped into the room. A small lamp by the bed, the lights of the Golden Horn through the window beyond.

  “I was reading,” she said, just to say something, closing the door and backing against it, as if he had pinned her there. “I’ve never done this before.”

  He kissed her, leaning his body into hers, warm. “No?” he said, kissing her again, hands on her now, feeling her body move against him.

  “No,” she said, breaking away for air.

  “So why—” he started, but she had reached up, pulling him down again, her mouth on his, and his head filled with the taste of her, new, not like anybody else.

  “I don’t know,” she said, the words in a gasp, near his ear.

  He leaned down and kissed her neck, smelling the last trace of perfume.

  “Just something. When we met. I thought—”

  “What?” he said, still kissing her.

  “Maybe it’s my last chance.”

  “For what?” he said, raising his head, caught by the words.

  “I don’t know.” She stared at him for another second, then reached over and slid his jacket off his shoulders. “Ask me later.”

  Then they didn’t say anything, kissing in a rush, their breathing louder, ragged, undoing his tie, buttons, still backed against the door, as if they were hiding in a closet, stealing the minutes. He slid off her robe, the shoulder straps of her nightgown, letting it fall from her breasts, then cupping them, bending down to kiss them. Not fleshy like Marina’s, just filling his hand, but nipples hard already, all of her taut. One touch and you felt the skin move under your fingers, a string vibrating, little gasps of air over your head.

  She pulled the nightgown the rest of the way down, crumpling the silk at her feet, and he reached behind, hands on her cheeks, pulling her toward him, kissing her mouth again, pulling the soft skin even closer, as if he could pull it inside of him. She moved a hand down between them, clutching at his prick, still in his pants, stroking the length of it until they both broke off, out of breath, and he threw off his shirt, starting on his belt, then kissing her again, backing her toward the bed, mouth still on hers, hands on her behind, and then laying her down, snapping off the light, shoes, socks, stepping out of his pants, standing next to the bed looking down at her, naked, just the light from the window. Her skin seemed to be rippling, not still, legs opening to the patch of hair, the lips beneath, already wet to the touch. He moved a finger over it, excited by the wet, some involuntary yielding, and then she reached up, grabbing him and pulling him to her, and he thought he might come then, her eagerness more erotic than anything Marina had ever done.

  He moved onto the bed, his prick still in her hand, drawing him into her, not waiting, wanting to hurry too, moving her hand away so he could put the rest in all at once, the skin inside slick with sex, one sliding motion, then the warm softness closing around him. He stopped, dropping to his elbows and kissing her, not wanting to move inside, just feel her holding him, but her skin had begun to ripple again, moving against him, and he started moving too, finding her rhythm, then moving with her, only the movement familiar, the feeling something new, sex with her, not anyone else. She let out a sound, the most private thing there is, something nobody else ever heard, and he put his head near hers, wanting to hear more, the sounds urging him on, making everything go faster, so that he could feel the sweat now, the heat of it, and hear himself panting, his prick swelling with sensation, almost apart from him. When she cried out, he could feel her clenching then going loose, the string snapped, then more sounds in his ears, the wonderful abandon, not caring who heard, still moving with him, as if each thrust set off another release, then another, until finally he could feel it racing up in him, faster, then spurting out, an explosion of pleasure, helpless, leaving every part of him exposed.

  He lay motionless for a second, and then he felt his weight on her, the sweat, and the world started seeping back. He rolled off onto his side, his heart still racing, then slowing down, waiting for the deflation that always came, embarrassed, back in himself. But she had turned to him, running her hand along his face, and it wasn’t Marina, something else.

  “Thank you,” she said, so quietly that he thought he might have imagined it.

  “No. You,” he said, moving his hand now, calming each other, like animals. “I didn’t mean to be so fast.”

  She smiled.

  He leaned forward and kissed her, hand at the back of her head. “Next time we’ll go slow.”

  She touched him below. “How much time do you need?”

  “Keep doing that.” Shifting slightly so that she could take all of him in her hand, hard again, then looking into her eyes. “Where did you come from?” he said, running his hand down her back, wanting to touch her everywhere, as if he could read her skin, know her with his fingers.

  She made a little gasp, responding to his hand, a shivering as it crept lower, then fell back, letting him kiss her everywhere, her nipples, then moving below, everything slower this time, unhurried, his mouth moving so slowly that she shuddered when he reached her sex, teasing and kissing it until she was open to his mouth, moving against his tongue, and he went deeper, tasting the inside of her, smearing, until she made a sound, a muffled cry, and reached down with her hands to stop his head. “No, in me,” she said, her voice shaking, and pulled him toward her, then in, and this time even that was slower, a rocking, so that when they came, both panting, it wasn’t an explosion but an overflowing.

  Afterward she lay with her head on his chest, both of them drowsy.

  “A chance for what?” he said.

  “Hm?”

  “You said, ask me later.”

  She was quiet for a minute. “To have something different, I guess.”

  “Why me?”

  “I liked you. The way you look. Your chin,” she said, putting a finger on it.

  “That’s it?”

  “And you’re here,” she said, leaving his chest, sitting up. “Not Ankara. No complications. Running into each other. Things like that.” She got up and went over to the table and picked up a cigarette, the match like a small flashbulb lighting up her naked body. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how people talk after. No clothes. No secrets. I think I know everything about you. And I don’t, really.”

  Leon said nothing, reaching for a cigarette of his own.

  “Why didn’t you want me to stay with you at the clinic?”

  “There was nothing you could do there. He was—he died. Another attack. You didn’t need to be there for that.”

  “Died?” she said, dismayed. “I’m sorry. You were fond of him.”

  “Yes.”

  “I could tell. The way you were with him. So that’s one thing I know about you.” She looked at him. “One layer.” She walked over to the window. “Altan said it was because your wife’s there.” She exhaled some smoke. “What’s wrong with her?” She waited a minute, then turned. “You don’t want to talk about her?”

  He looked at her bare skin, nothing covered.
The way people talked after. He drew on his cigarette, hearing the silence in the room. “She went mad.” Something he’d never said out loud before, admitted. Mad, not away.

  “Oh,” she said. “So what will you do?”

  “Do? There’s nothing to do. Wait, see if she gets better.” He leaned over and stubbed out his cigarette. “So that’s her. What else did Altan have to say?”

  “He didn’t tell me that—what was wrong. Just that she was there.”

  “Well, now you know.”

  “So you’ll never leave her,” she said, her voice neutral. “That makes it easier for me.”

  “What?”

  “I told you, no complications.” She was quiet for a minute. “You don’t have to worry about that. About anything.”

  She came over to the bed, sitting next to him.

  “So what did Altan talk about?” Leon said.

  “Talk about? Frank. He’s very interested in Frank. As if I would know anything. So it must be true, what he does. Secret work. He never says, and now a man like Altan asks, so what else could it be? And you, is that what he does with you? Secret work?”

  “I’m just filling in for Tommy. At Commercial Corp.”

  “And that’s an answer,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Never mind, I don’t care.” She reached up, brushing the side of his head. “But no secrets here, all right? I mean in this room. I don’t care what you do at the consulate. But not here.”

  “Frank never says anything?”

  “We don’t talk like this. It’s different.” She stopped her hand, dropping it. “Do you want to know about us?”

  “No.”

  “I was a secretary. Not his. When I was growing up, we never had any money, anything extra. And I thought, I won’t have to worry about that. I’ll be safe.”

  “And?”

  “And I am. Safe.” She looked at him. “And I’m here.”

  He touched her arm. “I should leave soon.”

  “You don’t want to stay?”

  “Someone might see.”

  “My reputation?” she said, amused. “Well. I never had to think about that before.”

  “Now you do.”

  “Like a farce? The maid comes in and—oops!” She covered herself with the sheet.

  “Not so funny when it happens.” He moved his hand to her shoulder, then ran it down to her breast. “You’re an embassy wife.”

  “Not here. Not in Istanbul.” She arched her back to the hand stroking her.

  “No,” he said, leaning his face close to hers.

  “No complications here.” She lowered her head. “There is, though. One. I didn’t expect.”

  “What?” he said, kissing her ear.

  “I said, we could just—walk away. But I don’t want to,” she said, her voice naked now too. “I thought I could. But I don’t want to.” She turned to him. “Do you?”

  He looked at her, a feeling of pitching forward, dizzy, then righting himself, sure-footed. “No.”

  5

  ÜSKÜDAR

  ENVER MANYAS NEEDED ANOTHER day, an unexpected delay, but now Leon did too. He’d been awake half the night at the Pera making a new plan, Kay sleeping next to him, one hand on his chest, the reflected lights on the ceiling like plotting points on a map of Turkey. Edirne, the most likely crossing, would have extra border checks now, too risky even with good papers. A boat from Izmir would go where the Greek police expected it to go. Trains were easy to check, the Orient Express like traveling in a spotlight, the overnight to Ankara the wrong direction. Where she would be, a complication. He felt her breathing next to him, something he’d almost forgotten, the peace afterward. One more day. His eyes moved over the map on the ceiling.

  In the morning, they were lazy with each other, sex a hotel luxury, like breakfast in bed. Then the moment of farce he’d predicted, the maid at the door, Leon hiding in the bathroom with his clothes. Later, please.

  “When do you go back?” he said, in bed again.

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “So we have today,” he said, the plan already decided, most of the pieces worked out in his mind.

  “Don’t you have to work?”

  “Yes.” He kissed her shoulder. “But I have to eat too.”

  “Take me to your favorite place.”

  He shook his head. “Too far. It’s up the Bosphorus.”

  “Second favorite then. Don’t look at me—I mean like that, in the light. It’s different at night.”

  “Mm. Harder to see. It’s like milk,” he said, stroking her belly.

  “Tell me something about you.”

  “I’m a good driver,” he said, his head still filled with cars, how to arrange one on the Asian side.

  “No. Something about you.”

  He leaned over her. “Ask me later.”

  After Manyas, he went through the checklist he’d made during the night. An appearance at Reynolds to tell Turhan he might have to go to Ankara for a few days, the same story to Dorothy, not sure yet but don’t be surprised. Some file requests to look busy, Tommy’s payment reqs. Errands to run.

  “Can you keep him another night?” he asked Marina.

  “I have my Armenian. It’s his other day.”

  “Put him off. I’ll pay you.”

  “It’s all right. He paid me.” She nodded toward the bedroom.

  Leon looked up at her.

  “Maybe it means something to him. Pay his own way.”

  “Marina—” he said, suddenly awkward.

  “When was the last time he had a woman?”

  “I don’t know.” He hesitated, not sure how to ask. “Anything wrong?”

  She shrugged. “He’s hungry, that’s all.” A half smile. “The prisoner and his last meal.”

  “He’s not a prisoner.”

  “Yet.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing. He doesn’t have to say a word. There’s a smell, when you run.”

  “What’s going on?” Alexei said, coming out of the bedroom, dressed, neat and shaved, nothing rumpled.

  “There’s a hitch. One more day.”

  “Some trouble?”

  “No. We just need a day.” He turned to Marina. “All right?”

  “But tomorrow it’s finished. I don’t care—”

  Leon nodded. “How much for the Armenian?”

  She made a brushing motion with her hand. “It’ll be all right. There’s a room upstairs. He doesn’t take long. What’s wrong with you?” she said to Alexei, catching his expression.

  “Nothing,” he said, turning back to the bedroom.

  “Where do you think you are?” Marina said to Alexei’s back, her voice flat, a kind of apology. She watched him go into the bedroom. “They all want to think it’s something else,” she said. “Even with the money in their hands, they think it’s something else.”

  Mihai was yelling into the phone in what Leon took to be Hebrew, getting nowhere. An eruption of words, then silence, finally a grunt.

  “What?” he said to Leon, hanging up. “I thought you weren’t coming here anymore.”

  “I wasn’t followed.”

  “The expert.”

  “I need something. Two things.”

  “Two, why two? Why not seven? Four hundred. See down there, by the Koç docks? Four hundred waiting. All with passports. End visas. Everything paid for. And the boat sits.”

  “What happened?”

  “Quarantine. Suspicion of typhus.”

  “Is there?”

  “My friend, do you think if there was typhus the Turks would keep them here? They would tow them to sea. Let them die out there. Anywhere. But not here.”

  “So what—”

  “What is it always? Something for the harbormaster, the public health inspectors. Then a miracle recovery. We’re still buying Jews out. Still. But I don’t have so much here, so it has to come from Palestine. We wait. And meanwhile they’re taking turns to go on deck, just to breathe. S
o how long before dysentery, a real disease? Bastards.” He stopped, looking up. “What do you want?”

  “A car. On the Asian side.”

  “What’s wrong with yours?”

  “I can’t put it on the ferry. They might be watching.”

  Mihai grunted. “More games.”

  “Doesn’t your cousin have one? In Kuzguncuk?”

  “I don’t involve family.”

  “He’ll get it back. A few days.”

  “A few days? You’re driving to Palestine maybe? Take a few of my Jews. The overland route.”

  “I’d pay him.”

  “Pay me. Ten thousand dollars, so I can get them out.”

  “That’s what they want? Christ—”

  “It’s explained to me, a fair price. Twenty-five dollars a head. During the war it was more. Now practically a tip. A little baksheesh, to help speed things up. So much work to examine the ship.” He made a noise in his throat. “When do you need it?”

  “Tomorrow. Can you do it?”

  “There’s a garage in Üsküdar that maybe has a car. Not family. Nobody, in fact. No registration. If you get stopped, it’s your problem, understood?”

  Leon nodded.

  “What’s the second thing?”

  “A contact in Antalya.”

  Mihai took a minute, turning this over. “You’re going to drive all the way to Antalya,” he said calmly. “Over the mountains. On those roads. And stay where on the way? The Ritz, maybe? Might I ask, what’s in Antalya? Dates? This time of year? Oranges?”

  “A boat to Cyprus.”

  “Cyprus. Where they send the Jews who don’t make it to Palestine. Back to camps.”

  “I’m not trying to get to Palestine.”