by Eric Ambler
“So I should think. How much?”
“Five thousand lira, together with permission to sell them for foreign exchange, dollars or pounds sterling, at the official rate.”
For a moment I thought he must have made a mistake.
“Lira, Major? You mean dollars, don’t you?”
“I mean Turkish lira,” he said stiffly.
“But that’s only five hundred dollars-two hundred pounds!”
“Approximately. The fact that your suitcase and other personal belongings were lost has also been taken into consideration. In addition, arrangements are being made to have the various smuggling charges against you withdrawn. A favorable report on you will be made to Interpol. I think you will agree that you have been generously treated.”
A kick in the stomach couldn’t have been more generous.
I opened my mouth to tell him that I wished now that I had taken my chance in Rome; but then I gave up. These policemen are all piss and wind anyway. Why add to it?
“You were going to say something?” he asked.
“Yes. How do I get out of this country?”
“The Director has persuaded the British Consul-General to issue to you a travel document good for one journey from here to Athens. I may say that it was not easy. The Consul agreed in the end only as a personal favor to the Director. In addition, an air passage has been reserved for you on the five o’clock Olympic Airways flight to Athens. A representative from the Consulate-General will meet you with the travel document at the Olympic Airways office by the Hilton Hotel at three-thirty. If you will tell me in what currency you would like the bonus paid, a representative from the Bureau will also be there to give you the money.”
“I’ll take it in dollars.”
“Very well. That is all, I think. You do not seem as pleased as you should be.”
“What is there to be pleased about?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps you think you would have been better off in Rome. You wouldn’t, you know. If those jewels had left the country, we would have known enough to get them back, and you would have been the first to be arrested. Why not consider yourself lucky?”
“Aren’t you forgetting that Harper still has a certain letter of mine?”
“Why should he send it now?”
“To get his own back on me, of course.”
He shook his head. “You are forgetting. He can never be sure now how much you found out about them and how much you told us. Even I cannot be quite sure of that. As far as he is concerned, the less you see of policemen the better.” He smiled slightly. “You see, you both have an interest in common.”
“Very gratifying.”
“You might even consider becoming an honest man.”
Work, Simpson, for the night cometh.
I ought to have blown the smug bastard a raspberry; but I was afraid he might call off the bonus if I did. Even a crumb is better than no bread. So I just gave him an imitation of Harper’s most unpleasant grin, and tried to let him see how much I despised him. I don’t really think I succeeded. He had a hide as thick as an elephant’s.
There was a sergeant on duty this time to escort me back to the guard-room gate. He watched me all the time as if he thought I might try to steal one of the pictures. Then, when I got outside there were no taxis. You never can get a taxi from outside the Dolmabahce Palace. I had to walk a mile before I found one, and that made me angrier still.
The representative from the Bureau looked like a plain-clothes policeman. He watched me carefully as I signed for the money and kept his fingers on the paper all the time in case I snatched it away. There were no flies on him. He knew how careful you had to be when dealing with crooks.
The representative from Her Britannic Majesty’s Consulate-General in Istanbul was a snotty-nosed clerk who made me sign a paper saying that I understood that the granting of the travel document did not constitute recognition of any claim I had made or might make to United Kingdom citizenship. When I had signed it, I told him what he could do with it.
But on the way back to Athens in the plane, it gave me an idea.
I had been thinking about Nicki and wondering whether I would stop on my way to the flat and buy her a stone-marten stole. She’d been hankering after one for a long while, and I thought that with the American notes I had I might get a good fur really cheap-for thirty or forty dollars perhaps. I would be “papa” for at least a month. That is, if she hadn’t moved out while I had been away. I was deciding that I had better make sure of that first when the stewardess stopped by my seat.
“Your nationality, sir?”
“British,” I said.
She handed me a passport control card to fill in and moved on to the next seat.
I had said “British” without thinking. Why? Because I consider myself British, because I am British.
I took out the travel document and looked at it carefully. It, too, said I was British. And yet they had made me sign a paper which said in effect that I wasn’t. Therefore, the travel document could be considered an admission of my claim. The paper was unimportant because I had signed that under duress. You cannot take away a man’s nationality by refusing to recognize his right to it. The 1948 Act is quite clear. The only way you can lose British nationality is by renouncing it. I haven’t renounced mine at any time. Specifically, I did not renounce it by taking that Egyptian passport. Since the Egyptians say that my Egyptian naturalization is null and void because I made false statements, then it is null and void- all of it.
The British Government can’t have it both ways. Either I am Egyptian or I am British. The Egyptians say I am not Egyptian and never have been. I say that I am not Egyptian and never have been. My father was a British officer. I am British.
That is why I have been so completely frank and open. I am not asking to be loved. I am not asking to be liked. I do not mind being loathed, if that will make some pettifogging government official happier. It is a matter of principle. If necessary, I shall take my case to the United Nations. They caned the British after Suez; they can cane them again for me. Sheep I may be; and perhaps certain persons find my breath displeasing; but I am no longer merely indignant. I am angry now.
I give the British Government fair warning. I refuse to go on being an anomaly. Is that quite clear? I refuse!
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