by Alex Gerlis
Scholz’s approach to the job was to interfere, to throw his considerable weight around and indulge his taste for food, drink and girls. He was incapable of running operations himself and in the few hours spent in the office – he arrived late and left early – devoted his efforts to claiming credit for anything that was going well and ranting at people when there was a problem. Every so often he’d come up with some hare-brained idea which his colleagues would be obliged to waste their time on.
The Kayseri was one such hare-brained idea and it had become a mess. Busch had never liked the idea of the Abwehr running the brothel in Unkapani. Everything about it felt wrong. He disliked Ulrich, the man Scholz had brought in to run it, whom he regarded as untrustworthy and incompetent. He felt they didn’t have enough control of what was going on there and he was appalled that Ulrich had allowed the place to be in hock to various criminal elements such as the Jew who controlled the prostitutes there and the Kurds supplying the alcohol. In Busch’s opinion the Kayseri was an amateur operation, there to give Scholz easy access to prostitutes rather than be a proper intelligence operation – little information of note had emanated from the place.
And as for Ulrich, he was just another of Scholz’s Nazis; from what Busch could gather Ulrich was an Austrian who lived in Switzerland for a while and had fled from there after killing a man. There was undoubtedly a degree of cunning about him but he was no Abwehr intelligence agent, and what had happened at the Kayseri the previous night was a perfect example of this.
At the end of August all the Abwehr operatives in Istanbul – the agents, the informers, the runners, the drivers – had been instructed to keep their eyes open for a man who’d been spotted in Baghdad with Martindale, a British agent in the city with a reputation for incompetence. The Abwehr agents who’d seen him in Baghdad hadn’t got a name for him – Busch reckoned there must be something in the air there to cause such general incompetence – but they said he’d suddenly appeared in the city, was looked after by Martindale for a day or two and had then left. They thought he travelled to Istanbul on the Taurus Express, possibly leaving Baghdad on the Thursday, 26th August. Naturally they hadn’t bothered to let their colleagues in Istanbul know this until the Tuesday, two days after he’d arrived in Istanbul. None of their contacts at the various hotels had an Englishman who’d arrived there on the Sunday.
Baghdad did have a description though: tall, possibly in his mid thirties – that kind of thing. So when Ulrich rang in from the Kayseri on the Thursday night, the description he gave of the new visitor to the club matched the one they’d received from Baghdad.
That was when Manfred Busch had let himself down. He’d told Ulrich to make sure the man didn’t leave the club and he’d come along with a couple of his agents. They’d be there in about half an hour, maybe slightly longer. ‘No, don’t bother… I can sort this myself,’ had been Ulrich’s response to that, and Busch’s big mistake had been to allow him to do so. He was still furious Ulrich had got away with killing another British agent back in February, slicing the man’s throat before Busch was given the opportunity to interrogate him. This time he should have known better.
But somehow Ulrich managed to allow the man to leave the Kayseri. Busch wasn’t quite sure how this had happened, but as far as he could gather the Jew who controlled the prostitutes there had intervened and escorted the man out and now both of them had disappeared.
‘At least this shows my instinct was probably right, Herr Busch.’
‘In what way, Ulrich?’
‘If he had nothing to hide he wouldn’t have left the club like that and then disappeared.’ Ulrich sounded as close to contrite as Busch had ever seen him.
‘It proves nothing, Ulrich, nothing whatsoever. It’s also possible he felt intimated by you and the Jew decided to help him leave. How many times have I told you how unwise it is you doing business with that Jew?’
‘Herr Scholz says—’
‘…Herr Scholz is currently in the Alps, no doubt concocting tales of his mountain climbing to regale us with on his return. We still need to find this man nonetheless. You say you think he’s English?’
‘Vasil thinks he is, though he’s not sure – he said he was Irish and Vasil said the English and the Irish are the same. He did tell Vasil he’s a journalist though, he’s sure about that.’
‘Well Ulrich, you’d better find him, hadn’t you? Just be careful the way you go about it and, if you find him, do me a favour and try not to kill him before I am allowed the opportunity to have a conversation with him, eh?’
‘Where do I start?’
Manfred Busch looked long and hard at Ulrich, shaking his head as he did so. ‘You want me to show you how to take a piss too? For goodness sake, Ulrich, get our Turkish drivers to help… they seem to have more sense than you!’
* * *
Prince had been driven back to the Hotel Bristol by David and two other men, both of whom he recognised as guards around the compound. As far as Prince could gather, both were Turkish and that was the language they spoke with each other. They drove past the hotel’s main entrance on Meşrutiyet, slowing down as they did so. The car carried on before turning left and then right into a narrow street Prince guessed must run behind the hotel. David told him to stay there with the driver, Salman, while he and one of the men went to check the hotel out. Ten minutes later David returned.
‘Everything seems fine. Follow me into the back entrance and then into the bar before going to reception. Make it appear you’ve been in the bar for a while. Ask for your key and go up to your room. I have a man already on your corridor, he’ll keep an eye on your room overnight – don’t worry, no one will have any idea he’s there. I’ll wait around the hotel too. There’s a telephone in your room, isn’t there?’
Prince said there was.
‘Good. I’ll make sure we call the hotel at five and ask to be put through to you. Make sure you are downstairs by six. Tell them you’ve had a telephone call and need to return home. Don’t say any more than that. Perhaps ask them to pass on your thanks to Ismet and say you’re sorry you missed him. We’ll ensure there’s a taxi waiting for you, one of ours. Salman here will be driving it.’
Prince hardly slept that night. When he reached the room he’d locked the door from the inside and wedged a chair under the handle. He checked everything carefully and removed the Minox camera from the case handle, wrapping it in a handkerchief and placing it inside his jacket pocket. He kept the jacket on the bed with him, as if it were a comfort blanket.
He lay propped up in the bed, the two plump pillows meaning he was more or less in a seated position, the drawn curtains allowing the room to be infused with a grey-blue light and the open window attracting every sound from miles around and filtering them into the room: the occasional shout, a car horn, the distant sound of a ship, dogs barking, of course, and the whistling of the wind.
Just after five o’clock the telephone rang. The hotel operator told him he had an international call. The person at the other end of the line spoke briefly in English. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid, you need to return home.’ Prince replied that he understood and would leave immediately.
The check out had been straightforward: he settled his bill, asked for his good wishes to be passed on to Ismet and said he hoped to return to Istanbul soon and would certainly stay again at the Hotel Bristol.
Salman was waiting in a taxi outside and twenty minutes later they were back in Alvertos’ compound. He was taken to a large bedroom on the first floor, any view through the barred window more or less blocked by a large palm tree. The room had a comfortable chair and a bathroom leading off it. David told him it would be safer if he stayed in the room. All his meals would be brought up to him. If he needed anything he just had to knock on the door. This was all for his own protection. Alvertos was away for a day or so; on his return he’d come and see him.
* * *
The Abwehr turned Istanbul upside down in their search for Alvertos and t
he Englishman who’d escaped from the Kayseri with him. Busch was convinced there was something to it, and the fact Alvertos had disappeared from his normal haunts only helped convince him of that.
He was desperate to have the matter resolved by the time Scholz returned from his holiday in Bavaria, so he put all of his agents in the city on the hunt for the two men. But without a name and with no more than a vague description it was a thankless task.
By the Wednesday of the following week – almost one week after the Kayseri incident – Busch’s misery was compounded by a telegram from Munich. Scholz was on his way back – he expected to be in Istanbul by the weekend. He hoped there were no problems for him to sort out!
Manfred Busch didn’t know whether this meant Scholz had caught wind of what was going on or whether it was just his boss’s heavy-handed manner. But Busch became convinced this was the end of his time in Istanbul. It had been such a promising posting, a high-profile station – all the neutral countries were – and he had every expectation of getting his own head of station job within a year. He rather fancied Paris and had even resolved to pinch his nose and join the Nazi Party to help achieve that. Now he’d be lucky to be demoted to a desk job in Berlin, where the atmosphere in Tirpitzufer was apparently a toxic mix of plotting and fear. He’d even have to live with his in-laws, a thought which caused him to shudder.
* * *
Alvertos’ day or so away turned out to be the best part of a week. During that time Prince was treated so well he didn’t feel like a prisoner – more like an honoured guest for whom nothing was too much trouble. The locked doors made him feel safe and David made sure he came to see him two or three times a day. If he wanted to leave the room he just knocked on the door and he’d be allowed to walk through the house and spend time in the walled garden. The house bustled with the sound of Ladino and Turkish and of women and children, all of whom treated him like a friend and something of a curiosity.
Alvertos returned on the Thursday, exactly a week after Prince’s visit to the Kayseri. It was late in the afternoon when he was summoned to the study in the basement, the first time he’d been in the room. There was one heavily shuttered small window, high up – probably at ground level – and the door was metal, the kind Prince recalled seeing in a bank vault.
Alvertos looked serious, his Beretta in its shoulder holster as he motioned for him to join him at a small table. David had brought Prince into the room but left as soon as the two other men sat down. There was no friendly chat from Alvertos now, no food on the table, not even a drink. He took a cigarette from a packet on the table and lit it, pushing the packet towards Prince.
‘You want to find out about chromium shipments to the Germans.’ It was more of a statement than a question, delivered behind a cloud of smoke.
‘Yes, please, I—’
‘…I can help you. I can get you all the information you need.’ Alvertos’ fierce eyes stared at Prince through the smoke. Not threatening, not hostile but deadly serious – purposeful.
‘Well, thank you… when—’
‘…but first, you do something for me, my friend. You see, I know you must be a British spy – why else would you want that information and why else did the Nazis react like they did at the Kayseri? You don’t need to answer me, but it is enough for me to know you’re a smart man and will be able to do as I ask. And of course, I’ll be helping the British. You do this job for me and when you get back to Istanbul I’ll help you – in fact, it will be my pleasure!’
Alvertos lit another cigarette and coughed.
‘Hang on, you say when I get back to Istanbul – where am I going?’
Alvertos placed his hand which had the cigarette in it on Prince’s arm, a thin plume of smoke drifting towards the Englishman’s face. Alvertos’ grip was quite tight.
‘I told you I had to leave Thessaloniki in a hurry two years ago. Unfortunately I had to leave my family behind – my wife, my two children, my mother…’ Alvertos paused, composing himself. ‘Thessaloniki was captured by the Nazis in April 1941, two or three months before I left the city. My intention was to bring my family here to Istanbul, but the Nazi occupation became worse and it became impossible. Then six months ago the Nazis forced all the Jews in the city into a ghetto and in the middle of March they deported all of them to these terrible camps they’ve set up in Poland. Around fifty thousand people apparently, including my family.’
Alvertos released his grip on Prince’s arm and lit another cigarette, his hands trembling as he did so. ‘I thought I’d lost all my family and I was beyond despair. In fact, I resolved to kill myself. Not only had I lost my family but I felt I was to blame – if I’d remained in Thessaloniki I could have saved them and I certainly ought to have rescued them, but I’d left it too late. But a few months later a messenger came from Greece, carrying a letter from my dear wife Perla. Receiving it was like receiving a message from heaven. There is no doubt the letter was genuine. It was in her writing and she also made references that only I would understand. She told me that although she, her mother and my mother and our daughter were going to be deported at any time, our son Moris was being rescued by a police officer in Thessaloniki who owed me a huge debt. In return for him and his wife rescuing Moris he wanted my assurance he would be free of that debt. The messenger also brought a letter from the police officer, assuring me Moris was well and safely hidden.’
Alvertos bowed his head, his shoulders slowly heaving, and he used the back of his hands to wipe his tears.
‘Do you mind if I ask how old Moris is?’
‘He’s six. The Jewish community in Istanbul is large, my friend, it is well informed. There have been so many reports of what happens to the Jews taken to these camps… that they are murdered there, thousands of them at a time…’
He lit another cigarette and looked directly at Prince with his glistening eyes. ‘I was utterly convinced I was alone in this world – apart from my family here – and to receive this message saved my life. For a while I thought it would be best to leave Moris where he was, that it would be too dangerous to do anything else. But then a few weeks ago I received another message from the police officer, assuring me Moris was well and being looked after in a farm outside Thessaloniki. But he also asked for money. I’m very concerned.’
‘I’m not sure what it is you want me to do, Alvertos.’
Alvertos stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and looked at Prince as if he’d failed to understand him.
‘I want you to go and bring Moris back here. Once you’ve done that, I’ll help you.’
Chapter 19
Istanbul and Thessaloniki, Greece
September 1943
He could have refused of course. Gilbey had made it very clear he wasn’t to leave Istanbul. Travelling to Greece would be out of the question. He could have said it was completely ridiculous, that travelling to Nazi-occupied Greece posing as an Irish journalist was bound to attract attention. He could have asked Alvertos how come he – the all-powerful black marketeer – couldn’t find someone more suitable to rescue his son.
All this was alluded to, indirectly of course, in the conversation that followed that afternoon in the study. Prince was left with the very clear impression that he could refuse and leave the compound and if he did so then Alvertos would be of no help in revealing the chromium trail to him.
But Alvertos was more than reasonable. He told Prince, who he knew as Michael Doyle, that he quite understood this was a lot to ask. ‘Have a think about it.’
Prince asked when he needed to know by.
‘Maybe this time tomorrow.’
Prince ate dinner with Alvertos, David and other members of the family. An enormous oval-shaped platter had been placed in the middle of the table and people helped themselves to the chicken and rice piled high on it. It was a noisy and friendly occasion, the mood quite relaxed, and afterwards Prince sat in the small garden with Alvertos drinking Greek brandy and sharing a bowl of dates. Alvertos didn�
��t mention the proposition he’d made just a few hours earlier, but if he’d bothered to press Prince, obliging him to give an answer there and then, Prince would have declined.
He’d have been apologetic and sympathetic but his instinct was that travelling to Greece would be too dangerous and he’d rather give himself another couple of weeks on his own in Istanbul to find the chromium trail.
But Alvertos said nothing. Later, Prince lay in bed, the window wide open and sleep an unlikely prospect. He remembered pondering the strange shapes the shadows made on the wall in front of the bed, giving the appearance of birds in confused flight. That was his last conscious memory until the call of the muezzin woke him a few hours later.
He awoke with a start and a vivid dream from that night flooded the room. He was in the Blue Mosque, a place he’d visited in his first week in Istanbul. Prince was not a religious man; he always took the view that he’d managed fine without a spiritual dimension to his life. Religion was, in his opinion, an indulgence – a distraction. And he didn’t believe in fairy tales, which he felt was a requirement for believing in religion.
But in the dream he was overwhelmed by the magnificent Blue Mosque, touched by the power it seemed to hold over him as he slowly walked through its vast interior, the reflection from the blue Iznik tiles, which gave the mosque its name, creating an ethereal atmosphere which seemed to envelop him.
In the dream, he followed the same route he’d taken when he’d visited the mosque. But in the dream he appeared to float through the mosque until he found himself close to the mihrab by the pulpit. Ahead of him, sitting on the uneven stone floor were two boys with their backs to him. They sat quite still, their shoulders touching, one shorter than the other.
As Prince approached them he paused, as if an unseen barrier was holding him back, and at that moment the two boys turned round to face him. The shorter one was his own son, Henry, who smiled and placed his arm round the shoulders of the older boy.
