The light of day as-1

by Eric Ambler

  “You look as if you’ve wet your pants,” he complained. “Can’t you walk more naturally?”

  “The hooks keep hitting one another.”

  “Well, wear one higher and one lower.”

  After further adjustments, he was satisfied and we went downstairs to be inspected by Miss Lipp. She had fault to find with Miller-he had developed the same trouble with the blocks as I had had with the hooks-and while they were putting it right I managed to transfer the cigarette packet from my hip to my shirt pocket, so that it would be easier to get at when the time came.

  Fischer was getting edgy now. The bandages prevented his wearing a wrist watch and he kept looking at Miller’s. Miller suddenly got irritated.

  “You cannot help, so do not get in the way,” he snapped.

  “It is time we were leaving. After four-thirty, they count the people going in.”

  “I’ll tell you when it’s time to leave,” Harper said. “If you can’t keep still, Hans, go sit in the car.”

  Fischer sulked, while Miller returned to his bedroom for final adjustments. Harper turned to me.

  “You’re looking warm, Arthur. Better you don’t drive with all that junk under your shirt. You’ll only get warmer. Besides, Miss Lipp knows the way. You ride in the back.”

  “Very well.” I had hoped that I might be able to drop the packet while I was making a hand signal; but I knew it was no use arguing with him.

  At three-thirty we all went out and got into the car. Miller, of course, was first in the back. Harper motioned me to follow, then Fischer got in after me and Harper shut the door. So I wasn’t even next to a window.

  Miss Lipp drove with Harper beside her.

  From where I was sitting, the driving mirror did not reflect the road behind. After a minute or two, and on the pretext of giving Fischer more room for the arm that was in the sling, I managed to make a half turn and glance through the rear window. The Peugeot was following.

  Miss Lipp drove steadily and very carefully, but there wasn’t much traffic and we made good time. At ten to four we were past the Dolmabahce Palace and following the tramlines up towards Taxim Square. I had assumed that the garage Harper had spoken of would be the one near the Spanish Consulate, and within walking distance of the Divan Hotel, which I had heard about from the surveillance man. It looked at that point as if the assumption were correct. Then, quite suddenly, everything seemed to go wrong.

  Instead of turning right at Taxim Square, she went straight on across it and down the hill towards Galata. I was so surprised that I nearly lost my head and told her she was going the wrong way. Just in time, I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to know the way. But Miller had noticed my involuntary movement.

  “What is the matter?”

  “That pedestrian back there-I thought he was going to walk straight into us.” It is a remark that foreigners driving in Istanbul make every other minute.

  He snorted. “They are peasants. They deny the existence of machinery.”

  At that moment, Miss Lipp turned sharply left and we plunged down a ramp behind a service station.

  It wasn’t a large place underground. There was garage space for about twenty cars and a greasing bay with an inspection pit. Over the pit stood a Volkswagen Minibus van. In front of it stood a man in overalls with a filthy rag in his hand.

  Miss Lipp pulled the Lincoln over to the left and stopped. Harper said: “Here we are! Out!”

  Miller and Harper already had their doors open, and Harper opened Fischer’s side as well. As I slid out after Miller, I got the cigarette packet from my shirt pocket into the palm of my hand.

  Now Harper was climbing up into the driver’s seat of the van.

  “Move yourselves,” he said, and pressed the starter.

  The other door of the van was at the side. Miller wrenched it open and got in. As I followed, I pretended to stumble and then dropped the cigarette packet.

  I saw it land on the greasy concrete and climbed on in. Then the door swung to behind me and I heard Fischer swear as it caught him on the shoulder. I leaned back to hold it open for him, so I was looking down and saw it happen. As he put out his good hand to grasp the handrail and climb in, his left foot caught the cigarette packet and swept it under the van into the pit. It wasn’t intentional. He wasn’t even looking down.

  Miller shut the door and latched it.

  “Hold tight,” Harper said, and let in the clutch.

  As the van lurched forward, the back of my legs hit the edge of a packing case and I sat down on it. My face was right up against the small window at the back.

  We went up to the top of the ramp again, waited a moment or two for a bus to go by, and then made a left turn on down towards the Galata Bridge. Through the window I could see the Peugeot parked opposite the garage.

  It was still there when I lost sight of it. It hadn’t moved. It was waiting, faithful unto death, for the Lincoln to come out.

  10

  For a minute or two I couldn’t believe that it had happened, and kept looking back through the window expecting to see that the Peugeot was following after all. It wasn’t. Fischer was swearing and massaging his left shoulder where the door had caught him. Miller was grinning to himself as if at some private joke. As we bounced over the tramlines onto the Galata Bridge, I gave up looking back and stared at the floor. At my feet, amid some wood shavings, there were torn pieces of an Athens newspaper.

  Of the six packing cases in the van, three were being used as seats. From the way the other three vibrated and slid about they appeared to be empty. From the way Miller and Fischer were having to hold on to steady themselves on the corners, it looked as if their cases were empty, too. Mine was more steady. It seemed likely that the case that I was sitting on now held the grenades, the pistols, and the ammunition that had come from Athens inside the doors of the car. I wished the whole lot would blow up then and there. It didn’t even occur to me, then, to wonder how they were going to be used. I had enough to think of with my own troubles.

  As Harper drove past Aya Sophia and headed towards the gate in the old Seraglio wall, he began to talk over his shoulder to us.

  “Leo goes first. Hans and Arthur together a hundred yards behind him. Arthur, you pay for Hans so that he doesn’t have to fumble for money with those bandages on. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  He drove through into the Courtyard of the Janissaries and pulled up under the trees opposite St. Irene.

  “I’m not taking you any nearer to the entrance,” he said. “There’ll be guides hanging around and we don’t want them identifying you with this van. On your way, Leo. See you tonight.”

  Miller got out and walked towards the Ortakapi Gate. He had about a hundred and fifty yards to go.

  When he had covered half the distance, Harper said: “Okay, you two. Get ready. And, Arthur, you watch yourself. Leo and Hans both have guns and they’ll use them if you start getting out of line in any way.”

  “I will think of the two thousand dollars.”

  “You do that. I’ll be right behind you now, just to see that you make it inside.”

  “We’ll make it.”

  I wanted to appear as co-operative as I could just then, because, although I was sick with panic, I had thought of a way of stopping them that they couldn’t blame on me-at least in a dangerous way. I still had my guide’s license. Tufan had warned me against attracting attention to myself as a guide in case I was challenged and had to show it. He had said that, because I was a foreigner, that would cause trouble with museum guards. Well, trouble with museum guards was the one kind of trouble I needed at that moment; and the more the better.

  Fischer and I began to walk towards the gate. Miller was within a few yards of it, and I saw a guide approach him. Miller walked straight on in without a glance at the man.

  “That’s the way,” Fischer said, and began to walk a little faster.

  The hooks began to thump against my legs. “Not so fast,” I said; “if
these hooks swing too much they’ll show.”

  He slowed down again immediately.

  “You needn’t worry about the guides,” I said. “I’ve got my license. I’ll be your guide.”

  As we got near the Gate, I began to give him the set speech, all about the weekly executions, the block, the fountain, the Executioner who was also the Chief Gardener.

  The guide who had approached Miller was watching us, so I raised my voice slightly to make sure that he heard me and knew what I was up to. What I hoped was that he would follow us and complain about me to the guard at the gate. Instead, he lost interest and turned away.

  It was disappointing, but I had another plan worked out by then.

  Just inside the gatehouse there is the counter where you pay to go in. When I got to it, I handed the man three separate lira and said: “Two tickets, please.” At the same time I showed him my guide’s license.

  From his point of view I had done three wrong things. I had shown a guide’s license, and yet, by asking for two tickets, revealed that I didn’t know that guides were admitted free; I had given him three lira, which a real guide would have known was enough to buy six tickets; and I had spoken to him in English.

  He was a haggard man with a small black mustache and a disagreeable expression. I waited for trouble. It never came. He did absolutely nothing but glance at the license, push across one ticket, take one of the lira, and give me sixty kurush change. It was maddening. I picked the change up very slowly, hoping he would start to think, but he was gazing into space, bored to death.

  “Let’s go,” Fischer said.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Harper approaching the gate. There was nothing for it but to go on. Usually there are one or two guides touting for customers inside the Second Courtyard. In fact, it had been there that I had been challenged three years previously. That episode had ended up in my being jailed for the night. I could only count on the same thing happening again.

  Of course, the same thing did not happen again. Because it was the last hour of the museum day, all the courtyard guides were either out with parties of suckers completing tours of the palace or cooling their fat arses in the nearest cafe.

  I did my best. As we walked on along the right side of the Second Courtyard, I gave Fischer the set speech on the Seraglio kitchens-all about the Sung, Yuna, and Ming porcelains-but nobody as much as looked at us. Miller had already reached the Gate of Felicity and was standing there gawking at it like a tourist. When he heard our footsteps behind him, he walked through into the Third Courtyard.

  I hesitated. Once we were through the gate, the Audience Chamber and the Library of Ahmed the Third would screen us from the buildings across the courtyard that were open to the public. Unless a guard came out of the manuscript library, and there was no reason why one should, there would be nothing to stop us from getting to the door to which Miller had the key.

  “Why are you stopping?” Fischer asked.

  “He said that we were to stop here.”

  “Only if there were guides watching.”

  There were footsteps on the paving stones behind us. I turned my head. It was Harper.

  “Keep going, Arthur,” he said; “just keep going.” His voice was quite low, but it had an edge to it.

  He was only about six paces away now, and I knew suddenly from the look on his face that I dare not let him reach me.

  So I went on with Fischer through the Gate of Felicity. I suppose that obedience to Harper had become almost as instinctive with me as breathing.

  As he had said, the walk was exactly sixty paces. Nobody stopped us. Nobody noticed us. Miller already had the door open when Fischer and I got there. All I remember about the outside of the door was that it had wood moldings on it arranged in an octagon pattern. Then, with Fischer behind me, I was standing in a narrow stone passage with a vaulted ceiling and Miller was relocking the door.

  The passage was about twenty feet long and ended in a blank wall with a coiled fire hose inside a glass-fronted box fastened to it. The spiral stairway to the roof was of iron and had the name of a German company on it. The same company had supplied the fire hose. Miller walked to the bottom of the staircase and looked up at it appreciatively. “A very clever girl,” he said.

  Fischer shrugged. “For someone who interpreted air photos for the Luftwaffe it was not difficult,” he said. “A blind man could have seen this on the enlarged photo she had. It was I who had to find the way to it, and I who had to get a key and make all the other arrangements.”

  Miller chuckled. “It was she who had the idea, Hans, and Karl who worked out the arrangements. We are only the technicians. They are the artists.”

  He seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly, and looked more wolfish than ever. I felt like being sick.

  Fischer sat on the stairs. Miller took off his coat and shirt and unwound the tackle from about his skinny waist. There didn’t seem any point in being uncomfortable as well as frightened, so I unbuttoned, too, and got rid of the sling and anchor rope. He attached them to the tackle. Then, he took a black velvet bag from his pocket. It was about the size of a man’s sock and had a drawstring at the top and a spring clip. He attached the clip to one of the hooks on the sling.

  “Now,” he said, “we are ready.” He looked at his watch. “In an hour or so Giulio and Enrico will be on their way.”

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Friends who will bring the boat for us,” said Miller.

  “A boat? How can a boat reach us?”

  “It doesn’t,” said Fischer. “We reach the boat. You know the yards along the shore by the old city wall, where the boats land the firewood?”

  I did. Istanbul is a wood-burning city in winter. The firewood yards stretch for nearly a mile along the coast road southeast of Seraglio Point, where the water is deep enough for coasters to come close inshore. But we were two miles from there.

  “Do we fly?”

  “The Volkswagen will call for us.” He grinned at Miller.

  “Hadn’t you better tell me more than that?”

  “That is not our part of the operation,” Miller said. “Our part is this. When we leave the Treasury we go quietly back over the kitchens until we come to the wall of the Courtyard of the Janissaries above the place where the cars park during the day. The wall is only twenty feet high and there are trees there to screen us when we lower ourselves to the ground with the tackle. Then…”

  “Then,” Fischer broke in, “we take a little walk to where the Volkswagen will be waiting.”

  I answered Miller. “Is Mr. Fischer to lower himself to the ground with one hand?”

  “He will seat himself in the sling. Only one hand is needed to hold on to the buckles.”

  “Even in the outer courtyard we are still inside the walls.”

  “There will be a way through them.” He dismissed the subject with an impatient wave of his hand and looked about him for a place to sit down. There was only the iron staircase. He examined the steps of it. “Everything here is very dirty,” he complained. “That these people do not all die of disease is incredible. Immunity, perhaps. There was a city here even before Constantine’s. Two thousand years or more of plague are in this place-cholera, bubonic, la verole, dysentery.”

  “Not any more, Leo,” said Fischer; “they have even cleaned the drains.”

  “It is all waiting in the dust,” Miller insisted gloomily.

  He arranged the nylon rope so as to make a seat on the stairs before he sat down. His exuberance had gone. He had remembered about germs and bacteria.

  I sat on the bottom step wishing that I had an irrational anxiety like his to occupy my mind, instead of the real and immediate fears that occupied my lungs, my heart, and my stomach.

  At five o’clock, bells were sounded in the courtyards and there were one or two distant shouts. The guards were herding everyone out and closing up for the night.

  I started to light a cigarette, but Miller stoppe
d me. “Not until it is dark,” he said. “The sun might happen to illuminate the smoke before it dispersed above the roof. It is better also that we talk no more. It will become very quiet outside and we do not know how the acoustics of a place like this may work. No unnecessary risks.”

  That was what Tufan had said. I wondered what he was doing. He must, I thought, already know that he had lost everyone and everything, except Miss Lipp and the Lincoln. The Peugeot would have radioed in. The question was whether the surveillance people had remembered the Volkswagen van or not. If they had, there would be a faint possibility of Tufan’s being able to trace it using the police; but it seemed very faint. I wondered how many thousand Volkswagen vans there were in the Istanbul area. Of course, if they had happened to notice the registration number-if this, if that. Fischer began to snore and Miller tapped his leg until he stopped.

  The patch of sky at the top of the staircase turned red and then gray and then blue-black. I lit a cigarette and saw Miller’s teeth gleaming yellowly in the light of the match.

  “What about flashlights?” I whispered. “We won’t be able to see a thing.”

  “There will be a third-quarter moon.”

  At about eight there was a murmur of voices from one or other of the courtyards-in there it was impossible to tell which-and a man laughed. Presumably, the night watchmen were taking over. Then there was silence again. A plane going over became an event, something to think about. Was it preparing to land at Yesilkoy airport or had it just taken off?

  Fischer produced a flask of water with a metal cup on the base, and we each had a drink. Another age went by. Then there was the faint sound of a train pulling out of the Sirkeci station and chugging round the sharp curve at Seraglio Point below. Its whistle sounded shrilly, like a French train, and then it began to gather speed. As the sound died away, a light glared, almost blinding me. Miller had a pen light in his hand and was looking at his watch. He sighed contentedly.