by Eric Ambler
There was only one thing that I could see that was not quite right about it-the time factor. The villa had been taken on a short lease. The car had been imported on a tourist carnet. I didn’t know how long it took to set up a laboratory and process enough heroin to make a killing in the dope market; but, on the face of it, two months seemed a bit short. I decided in the end that, for safety, they might well want to avoid remaining for too long in any one place and intended to keep the laboratory on the move.
I think I knew, secretly, that it wasn’t a highly convincing explanation; but, at that moment, it was the best that I could think of, and until a better one occurred to me I was prepared to be uncritical. I liked my arms-for-opium theory. At least it held out a promise of release. When Tufan realized that, as far as the arms were concerned, Harper was only an intermediary, his interest must shift from the villa group to someone somewhere else. My usefulness would be at an end. Harper would accept my resignation with a shrug, return my letter, and pay me off. Tufan’s delighted Director would help me over my papers. A few hours later I would be back in Athens, safe and sound.
I remembered that I hadn’t yet written to Nicki. Before I went to bed, I bought a postcard from the concierge and wrote a few lines. Still on Lincoln job. Money good. Should last a few more days. Home mid-week latest. Be good. Love, Papa.
I didn’t put the villa address, because that would have made her curious. I didn’t want to have to answer a lot of questions when I got back. Even when I’ve had a good time, I don’t like having to talk about it. Good or bad, what’s over’s done with. Anyway, there was no point really in giving an address. I knew she wouldn’t write back to me.
The following morning I went out early, bought a dozen packets of cigarettes, and then looked for a shop which sold tools. If I were to make sure that the stuff had been removed from the car doors, I would have to look inside at least one of them. The only trouble was that the screws which fastened the leather panels had Phillips heads. If I tried to use an ordinary screwdriver on them, there would be a risk of making marks or possibly scratching the leather.
I could not find a tool shop, so, in the end, I went to the garage off Taxim Square, where they knew me, and persuaded the mechanic there to sell me a Phillips. Then I went back to the hotel, paid my bill, and took a taxi to the ferry pier. There was no sign of the Peugeot following.
A ferryboat came in almost immediately and I knew that I was going to be early at Sariyer. In fact, I was twenty minutes early, so I was all the more surprised to see the Lincoln coming along the road as the boat edged in to the pier.
Miss Lipp was driving.
6
As I came off the pier, she got out of the car. She was wearing a light yellow cotton dress that did even less to obscure the shape of her body than the slacks and shirt I had seen her in the day before. She had the keys of the car in her hand, and, as I came up, she handed them to me with a friendly smile.
“Good morning, Arthur.”
“Good morning, madam. It’s good of you to meet me.”
“I want to do some sightseeing. Why don’t you put your bag in the trunk for now, then we won’t have to stop off at the villa.”
“Whatever you say, madam.” I put my bag down and went to hold the rear door open for her, but she was already walking round to the front passenger seat, so I had to scuttle round to get to that door ahead of her.
When she was installed, I hurriedly put my bag in the luggage compartment and got into the driver’s seat. I was sweating slightly, not only because it was a warm day but also because I was flustered. I had expected Fischer to meet me with the car; I had expected to go straight to the villa, to be told where I would sleep, to be given a moment to orient myself, a chance to think and time to plan. Instead, I was on my own with Miss Lipp, sitting where she had been sitting until a few moments ago, and smelling the scent she used. My hand shook a little as I put the ignition key in, and I felt I had to say something to cover my nerves.
“Isn’t Mr. Harper joining you, madam?”
“He had some business to attend to.” She was lighting a cigarette. “And by the way, Arthur,” she went on, “don’t call me madam. If you have to call me something, the name’s Lipp. Now, tell me what you have on the tour menu.”
“Is this your first time in Turkey, Miss Lipp?”
“First in a long time. All I remember from before is mosques. I don’t think I want to see any more mosques.”
“But you would like to begin with Istanbul?”
“Oh yes.”
“Did you see the Seraglio?”
“Is that the old palace where the Sultans’ harem used to be?”
“That’s it.” I smiled inwardly. When I had been a guide in Istanbul before, it had been the same. Every woman tourist was always interested in the harem. Miss Lipp, I thought to myself, was no different.
“All right,” she said, “let’s go see the Seraglio.”
I was regaining my composure now. “If I may make a suggestion.”
“Go ahead.”
“The Seraglio is organized as a museum now. If we go straight there we shall arrive before it opens. I suggest that I drive you first to the famous Pierre Loti cafe, which is high up on a hill just outside the city. There, you could have a light lunch in pleasant surroundings and I could take you to the Seraglio afterwards.”
“What time would we get there?”
“We can be there soon after one o’clock.”
“Okay, but I don’t want to be later.”
That struck me as rather odd, but I paid no attention. You do get the occasional tourist who wants to do everything by the clock. She just had not impressed me as being of that type.
I started up and drove back along the coast road. I looked for the Peugeot, but it wasn’t there that day. Instead, there was a gray Opel with three men in it. When we got to the old castle at Rumelihisari, I stopped and told her about the blockade of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmet Fatih in 1453, and how he had stretched a great chain boom across the Bosphorus there to cut off the city. I didn’t tell her that it was possible to go up to the main keep of the castle because I didn’t want to exhaust myself climbing up all those paths and stairs; but she didn’t seem very interested anyway, so, in the end, I cut the patter short and pushed on. After a while, it became pretty obvious that she wasn’t really much interested in anything in the way of ordinary sightseeing. At least that was how it seemed at the time. I don’t think she was bored, but when I pointed places out to her, she only nodded. She asked no questions.
It was different at the cafe. She made me sit with her at a table outside under a tree and order raki for us both; then she began asking questions by the dozen; not about Pierre Loti, the Turkophile Frenchman, but about the Seraglio.
I did my best to explain. To most people, the word “palace” means a single very big building planned to house a monarch. Of course, there are usually a few smaller buildings around it, but the big building is The Palace. Although the word “Seraglio” really means “palace,” it isn’t at all like one. It is an oval-shaped walled area over two miles in circumference, standing on top of the hill above Seraglio Point at the entrance to the Bosphorus; and it is a city within a city. Originally, or at least from the time of Suleiman the Magnificent until the mid-nineteenth century, the whole central government, ministers and high civil servants as well as the Sultan of the time, lived and worked in it. There were household troops and a cadet school as well as the Sultan’s harem inside the walls. The population was generally over five thousand, and there was always new building going on. One reason for this was a custom of the Ottomans. When a new Sultan came to the throne, he naturally inherited all the wealth and property accumulated by his father; but he could not take the personalized property for his own personal use without losing face. Consequently, all the old regalia had to be stored away and new pieces made, a new summer palace had to be built and, of course, new private apartments inside the Seraglio, and a n
ew mosque. As I say, this went on well into the nineteenth century. So the Seraglio today is a vast rabbit warren of reception rooms, private apartments, pavilions, mosques, libraries, gateways, armories, barracks, and so on, interspersed by a few open courtyards and gardens. There are no big buildings in the “palace” sense. The two biggest single structures happen to be the kitchens and the stables.
Although the guidebooks try to explain all this, most tourists don’t seem to understand it. They think “Seraglio” means “harem” anyway and all they are interested in apart from that is the “Golden Road,” the passage that the chosen girls went along to get from the harem to the Sultan’s bed. The harem area isn’t open to the public as a matter of fact; but I always used to take the tourists I had through the Mustafa Pasha pavilion at the back and tell them that that was part of the harem. They never knew the difference, and it was something they could tell their friends.
Miss Lipp soon got the idea, though. I found that she knew something about Turkish history; for instance, who the Janissaries had been. For someone who, only an hour or so earlier, had been asking if the Seraglio was the old palace, that was a little surprising. At the time, I suppose, I was too busy trying to answer her other questions to pay much attention. I had shown her the guidebook plan and she was going through all the buildings marked on it.
“The White Eunuchs’ quarters along here, are they open?”
“Only these rooms near the Gate of Felicity in the middle.”
“The Baths of Selim the Second, can we see them?”
“That is part of the museum now. There is a collection of glass and silverware there, I think.”
“What about the Hall of the Pantry?”
“I think that building has the administration offices in it now.”
Some of the questions I couldn’t answer at all, even vaguely, but she still kept on. Finally, she broke off, swallowed her second raki at a gulp, and looked across at me.
“Are you hungry, Arthur?”
“Hungry? No, Miss Lipp, not particularly.”
“Why don’t we go to the palace right now then?”
“Certainly, if you wish.”
“Okay. You take care of the check here. We’ll settle later.”
I saw the eyes of one or two men sitting in the cafe follow her as she went back to the car, and I noticed them glancing at me as I paid for the drinks. Obviously they were wondering what the relationship was-father, uncle, or what? It was oddly embarrassing. The trouble was, of course, that I didn’t know what to make of Miss Lipp and couldn’t decide what sort of attitude to adopt towards her. To add to the confusion, a remark Harper had made at the Club in Athens, about Nicki’s legs being too short, kept coming into my mind. Miss Lipp’s legs were particularly long, and, for some reason, that was irritating as well as exciting; exciting because I couldn’t help wondering what difference long legs would make in bed; irritating because I knew damn well that I wasn’t going to be given the chance to find out.
I drove her to the Seraglio and parked in what used to be the Courtyard of the Janissaries, just outside the Ortakapi Gate by the executioner’s block. As it was so early, there were only two or three other cars besides the Lincoln. I was glad of that because I was able to get off my piece about the gate without being overheard by official guides with other parties. The last thing I wanted at that moment was to have my guide’s license asked for and challenged.
The Ortakapi Gate is a good introduction to the “feel” of the Seraglio. “It was here at this gate that the Sultans used to stand to watch the weekly executions. The Sultan stood just there. You see the block where the beheading was done. Now, see that little fountain built in the wall there? That was for the executioner to wash the blood off himself when he had finished. He was also the Chief Gardener. By the way, this was known as the Gate of Salvation. Rather ironic, don’t you think? Of course, only high palace dignitaries who had offended the Sultan were beheaded here. When princes of the royal house were executed-for instance, when a new Sultan had all his younger brothers killed off to prevent arguments about the succession-their blood could not be shed, so they were strangled with a silk cord. Women who had offended were treated in a different way. They were tied up in weighted sacks and dropped into the Bosphorus. Shall we go inside now?”
Until Miss Lipp, I had never known it to fail.
She gave me a blank stare. “Is any of that true, Arthur?”
“Every word of it.” It is true, too.
“How do you know?”
“Those are historic facts, Miss Lipp.” I had another go. “In fact, one of the Sultans got bored with his whole harem and had them all dumped into the Bosphorus. There was a shipwreck off Seraglio Point soon after, and a diver was sent down. What he saw there almost scared him to death. There were all those weighted sacks standing in a row on the bottom and swaying to and fro with the current.”
“Which Sultan?”
Naturally, I thought it was safe to guess. “It was Murad the Second.”
“It was Sultan Ibrahim,” she said. “No offense, Arthur, but I think we’d better hire a guide.”
“Whatever you say, Miss Lipp.”
I tried to look as if I thought it a good idea, but I was really quite angry. If she had asked me right out whether I was a historical expert on the Seraglio, I would have told her, quite frankly, that I was not. It was the underhand way in which she had set out to trap me that I didn’t like.
We went through the gate, and I paid for our admissions and selected an English-speaking guide. He was solemn and pedantic, of course, and told her all the things I had already explained all over again; but she did not seem to mind. From the way she bombarded him with questions you would have thought she was going to write a book about the place. Of course, that flattered him. He had a grin like an ape.
Personally, I find the Seraglio rather depressing. In Greece, the old buildings, even when they are in ruins and nothing much has been done in the way of restoration, always seem to have a clean, washed look about them. The Seraglio is stained, greasy, and dilapidated. Even the trees and shrubs in the main courtyards are neglected, and the so-called Tulip Garden is nothing but a scrubby patch of dirt.
As far as Miss Lipp was concerned though, the place might have been Versailles. She went everywhere, through the kitchens, through the museum rooms, the exhibition of saddles, this kiosk, that pavilion, laughing at the guide’s standard jokes and scuffing her shoes on the broken paving stones. If I had known what was going on in her mind, of course, I would have felt differently; but as it was, I became bored. After a bit, I gave up following them everywhere and just took the short cuts.
I was looking forward to a sit-down by the Gate of the Fountain while they “did” the textiles exhibition, when she called me over.
“Arthur, how long will it take us to get to the airport from here?”
I was so surprised that I must have looked at her a bit blankly. “The airport?”
She put on a slight heaven-give-me-patience look. “Yes, Arthur, the airport. Where the planes arrive. How long from here?”
The guide, who hadn’t been asked, said: “Forty minutes, madame. ”
“Better allow forty-five, Miss Lipp,” I said, ignoring him.
She looked at her watch. “The plane gets in at four,” she said. “I tell you what, Arthur. You go get yourself a sandwich or something. I’ll meet you where you parked the car in an hour. Right?”
“As you wish, Miss Lipp. Are we meeting someone at the airport?”
“If that’s all right with you.” Her tone was curt.
“I only meant that if I knew the line and flight number I could check if the plane is going to be on time.”
“So you could, Arthur. I didn’t think of that. It’s Air France from Geneva.”
I was in the sunshine of her smile again, the bitch.
There was a restaurant of sorts near the Blue Mosque, and when I had ordered some food I telephoned Tufan.
He listened to my report without comment until I had finished. “Very well,” he said then, “I will see that the passports of the Geneva passengers are particularly noted. Is that all?”
“No.” I started to tell him my theory about the drug operation and its necessary link with a raw-opium supplier, but almost at once he began interrupting.
“Have you new facts to support this?”
“It fits the information we have.”
“Any imbecile could think of ways of interpreting the information we have. It is the information we do not have that I am interested in. Your business is to get it, and that is all you should be thinking about.”
“Nevertheless…”
“You are wasting time. Report by telephone, or as otherwise arranged, and remember your listening times. Now, if that is all, I have arrangements to make.”
The military mind at work! Whether he was right or wrong (and, as it happens, he was both right and wrong) made no difference. It was the arrogance of the man I couldn’t stand.
I ate a disgusting meal of lukewarm mutton stew and went back to the car. I was angry with myself, too.
I have to admit it; what had really exasperated me was not so much Tufan’s anxiety-bred offensiveness as my own realization that the train of thought which had seemed so logical and reasonable the previous night, was not looking as logical and reasonable in the morning. My conception of the “student” Miss Lipp as a laboratory technician was troublesome enough; but speaking again with Tufan had reminded me that the villa, which I had so blithely endowed with a clandestine heroin-manufacturing plant, also housed a elderly married couple and a cook. So that, in addition to the time-factor improbability, I now had to accept another: either the plant was to be so small that the servants would not notice it or Harper counted on buying their discretion.
