Hector more practically emphasized the fact they were tourists, and, anyway, he lived in a desert and the rugs, beautiful as they were, would clash.
The man wouldn’t take Hector’s no for an answer and instead focused all efforts on Vannina. After several moments of his hardsell, she finally squeezed in, “I don’t have a place of my own.” She smiled and shrugged and said, “No floor.”
The man looked defeated for perhaps three seconds, then beamed, showing two gold front teeth and produced a small mahogany box with a flourish. He opened the box to reveal a tangle of gold necklaces, broaches and rings.
They were clearly hand-made and Hector knew enough about precious metals to know they weren’t knocks-off of some kind. He picked through the offerings and held up a golden pin—a bucking horse. “I was a cavalry officer a lifetime ago. So this seems like luck to me. “You okay with this?”
Vannina held it in her hand and said, “A little too cowboys and Indians for me.” She seemed fascinated by a particular golden bracelet her hand drifted to more than once.
Hector picked it up and haggled a bit, eventually agreeing to the purchase.
She kissed him hard on the mouth and thanked him for the gift.
Hector took her arm and led her deeper into the Bazaar. He stopped to buy them both a Turkish tea, hoping to chip away at least a bit of his current mild state of intoxication. He really must cut back on the raki, he chided himself.
After they’d finished their tea, they linked arms and began to grope their way back toward the entrance, aiming for a return to the hotel.
Smiling up at him, she said, “Are you certain you don’t want to detour for a little boat ride on the Bosphorus first?”
“I’m sure,” Hector said. “We have other options, don’t we?” He pressed his fingertips more firmly and familiarly against the small of her back.
“Oh, yes, those.” A cunning smile.
They stepped back out into the light. There was immediately the returning sound of bustle outside the market. Their eyes struggled to adjust to the light.
A motorcycle gunned its engine, then there was a single loud crack that chased birds from the surrounding trees.
Vannina stumbled, then turned and placed both hands on Hector’s shoulders, nearly tripping him as he bumped against her, chest to chest.
She searched his face, her chin trembling.
Vannina tried to form a word—his first name perhaps, Hector thought, even as his hands wrapped around her trim waist to give her support.
Something slick and warm reached his hands. She looked down between her breasts, which prompted Hector to do the same. There was a spreading crimson stain.
She collapsed in his arms as he screamed out for somebody to call for an ambulance.
***
Vannina was dead long before any help arrived.
The police had been a different challenge and on several levels, of course—it took some time just to find an English speaking detective.
After three hours in police custody, Hector was at last released to Ian and Bob Shaw, whom he’d called when at last permitted the use of a phone.
It seemed the would-be actress had been killed by a single shot from a rifle, probably fired directly across the street from the entrance to the Grand Bazaar.
Ian said, “Who would do that? And why?”
Hector shrugged. “I have no idea as to who. And regarding the why?” He shared another shrug.
Bob shot Hector a look, but held his tongue.
***
When he at last returned to the Istanbul Hilton, it was a very lonely room and one filled with piercing reminders of Vannina: there sat her luggage; over there her other things, scattered carelessly across the bathroom countertop—lipstick and perfume. . .a never-to-be-needed-again toothbrush.
The phone rang. Hector scooped it up and said, “Yes?”
It was a male voice, with a slightly familiar accent. It said low and teasing, “It could as easily have been your heart that stopped its beating tonight, Mr. Lassiter. You might have been the one my sniper killed. If the microfilm should come into your possession, and if you fail to give it to me, it will most certainly be your heart, next time. Yours, and perhaps Mr. Fleming’s. . . Maybe the hearts of a few of your new moviemaker friends. Maybe the heart of Mr. James Bond himself. Imagine the sensation and hullabaloo that would spring from that audacious act.”
Biting his lip until he tasted blood, Hector said softly, “Finding the microfilm isn’t in the cards this trip. That’s ancient history. But let’s pretend some miracle somehow occurs to that end. How do I find you to let you know?”
“No need for that. I’m watching. I still have eyes and ears, even here. If—no, let’s say when—the time comes, I will assuredly find you.”
The man at the other end of the phone hung up.
Hector racked the receiver and, cursing to himself, still numb from Vannina’s murder, walked to the picture window, staring out at the night lights of Istanbul.
He thought of Vannina even as he braced for another nocturnal visit from Brinke.
That, he somehow knew, was inevitable on this dark and bloody night.
Maybe they’d both come to him in dreams this night. Maybe they’d do that this night, and all his nights going forward.
10 / Brinke of Destruction
The street was the usual flurry of vendors, hawkers and shady characters.
The longer Hector stayed in the crumbling, cramped confines of the former Constantinople, the more he realized its deteriorating, shadowy streetscape stoked a festering sense of paranoia.
It was a city seemingly made for spies and intrigue.
Hector mixed in a little more water and sipped his anise-flavored raki while fitfully reading Ambler’s A Coffin for Dimitrios. He wasn’t sure why it had taken so long for him to get to this particular Ambler—particularly given its author protagonist and his similarities to Hector (God, even that surname. . .?).
But other factors conspired to disrupt his concentration upon what Hector thought to be a very fine novel and a clear inspiration for The Third Man.
The novelist looked up from the book about another novelist and at last spotted Bob Shaw making his way across the narrow, busy street.
Bob had a black attaché case gripped in his left hand. He might have been taken for some kind of European business traveler but for the fact he was dressed rather more like a London dock hand on this off-set day.
Hector stared at that case, his pulse quickening.
There couldn’t be very much in there, of course.
There would be the holograph of the novel whose existence the poet Mitsuharu Kaneko had confirmed to Hector.
Maybe there were would be two or three more journals or diaries—hardly more than that seemed possible. Although Brinke was certainly prolific—nearly as prolific as Hector—she hadn’t been that long in Japan for her last visit, after all.
Forcing his attention from the briefcase, Hector searched the streets for signs of anyone possibly trailing the pale-haired actor-novelist.
So far, nobody struck Hector as remarkably suspicious.
Indeed, for three days, Hector and Bob had established this exact pattern of meeting for lunch over drinks—bolstering a façade of having at last found a particularly pleasing restaurant they’d chosen to make their haunt.
Ian, dubious about the place, nevertheless dutifully tagged along each day with Hector.
Ian enjoyed talking with Bob about writing and his lonely time spent growing up with his alcoholic doctor father and nurse mother on Scotland’s blustery Isle of Orkney.
This time, Ian for some reason decided to at last remark upon Shaw’s briefcase. By design, Shaw had also carried the briefcase with him the past few days so it, too, wouldn’t seem anything particularly remarkable, this most important of times.
Only Bob and Hector knew that on those previous trips the case was empty by precaution.
This day, however, the a
ttaché case was supposed to contain “the bloody goods” as Bob described them.
Fixing a new smoke to his ebony cigarette holder, Ian said, “That damned attaché case again. My God, have you heard our thespian’s reasoning for toting the thing around constantly like that?”
Hector said softly that he didn’t.
“Well, I confronted him about it finally last night over some rather disappointing Çiğ köfte. It seems Mr. Shaw now always means to carry it about. When I called him on it last evening, he muttered something about staying in character—that horrid phrase. He said it’s Red Grant’s constant companion as he tracks Bond through Istanbul and so it must remain Shaw’s constant accessory in order to inform his ‘performance with the proper verisimilitude.’ I swear those were his exact words.”
Ian sniffed and looked dumfounded. “It’s rather too like your pretentious young American actors and their so-called ghastly ‘method’ approach to acting. I’m horrified to think that vogue might be taking hold among British actors, too. Haven’t you Americans done enough damage to Western culture already?”
“Appalling,” Hector said, distracted, hoping it would be taken as convincing commiseration. “Unthinkable, really.” Still no sign of any unfriendly sorts, at least not street-side.
So far, Hector had kept Ian in the dark regarding his hoped-for imminent retrieval of Brinke’s writings—the precious parcel that would also freight the malignant strip of microfilm so precious to all those evil sorts full of infernal and passionate intent.
Hector drew a deep breath of relief as Bob at last entered the kebapcı. Now the zone of risk was limited to the inside of the establishment. Hector had already scoped his fellow diners and detected nothing to give any kind of pause.
As Bob closed the door behind himself, nobody rose or rushed to intercept the blond actor—there was no scramble by anyone to clutch at the case he carried.
Smiling and nodding as he spotted Hector, Bob weaved through tables to their booth and placed the case on the floor between his feet, gripping it between the toes of his shoes, then sat down and eyed Hector’s drink with a kind of covetous drinker’s glare that Hector had seen in the eyes of so many writer friends in bars and taverns the world over.
Smiling, Hector said, “I took the liberty of ordering up a fresh round of raki for three. Should be arriving momentarily, buddy.”
Grinning, the actor clapped Hector’s shoulder and said, “You’re one of the really good ones, Hec. But hell, you already know that, don’t you?”
As the actor said that, something bumped the tip of Hector’s shoe. He realized that Bob had toed the attaché case under the table to Hector. Shifting his feet, Hector closed both toes of his shoes against either side of the attaché case and completed its journey under his chair. He clasped his ankles tightly against it.
It required a real act of will on Hector’s part to refrain from settling the tab on the spot—from making his excuses and bolting off to the Istanbul Hilton to hole-up with Brinke’s writings.
Then Hector remembered the kind of energizing and sustaining force that single slim journal given him in Japan had seemingly instilled in succubus Brinke.
What would several new volumes result in when it came to her potency to cost him sleep and peace of mind?
Suddenly, some time spent slumming with his fellow writers and some raki or kırmızı şarap—red wine—to wash down some iskender kebap, seemed strangely appealing.
What did that imply?
And did he really care what it meant as he frankly feared for himself because of phantom Brinke’s deepening hold upon him.
The fresh round of raki and a pitcher of water—su, as Hector now knew it was called here—arrived.
Going a bit stingy on the water, Bob raised his glass and said, “Şerefe!” and shot-gunned his first drink. He nodded at Ian and said, “Or, in deference to your recently revealed to be half-Scottish spy, Slàinte.”
Ian just smiled thinly. It was left for Hector—who’d frequently spent a month or two most years since the last war vacationing the Highlands and fishing its lochs to respond, “Do dheagh shlàinte.” Ian said, “As a matter of fact, I intimated Bond’s Scottish roots all the way back in Live and Let Die. You may remember I wrote—”
There was a commotion at the door of the restaurant.
Five men dressed in matching black pants, long-sleeved turtlenecks and black ski masks crowded in, brandishing Kalashnikovs.
Hector groaned as a sixth man, dressed in the same manner but taller and thinner than the rest, strode in behind them. He carried a simple forty-five in his black-gloved right hand.
Three of the men with the automatic rifles ordered all of the diners but Hector and his companions to rise and move to a rear party room where they would be held “without harm if cooperation is offered.” The wait staff and bartender were also ordered into the back.
Most rose to comply. A lone pregnant woman at a corner table didn’t do that. She had raggedy red hair and wore thick-lensed glasses. Something about her spoke to Hector, but he couldn’t put his finger on it, beyond vague memories of Vannina speaking of having been paid by a portly—perhaps actually a pregnant?—woman to approach Hector on the train to Istanbul.
The pregnant woman moved to join the men.
It clicked suddenly as some straggling or infirm diners, all of them tutting, some of them weeping in fear, moved to the back room to be held hostage.
Ian cursed sharply. Robert Shaw looked to Hector and said, “We’ve cocked it up good. God, but I’m truly sorry for this.”
Ian looked puzzled. Hector’s mind was racing, reaching for angles, strategies. He eyed the tall man with the forty-five gripped in his hand and said, “So, who the hell are you, Stretch?”
The stranger said, “I’m the man you thought you killed several months ago,” the stranger said quietly. “You murdered my strong right arm and strategic doppelganger, so to speak. A hard man to replace, but not the real article, Mr. Lassiter.”
Ian said softly, “Béla Herczog. . . .”
“Just so,” the tall, masked man said bowing ever so slightly.
Hector turned his attention to the pregnant woman. “This medusa with you—I have a theory. “Why don’t you shed the wig, sugar? It is Haven under all that war paint and rouge, right?”
Haven slid off her wig, revealing her black hair and said, “Just so, darling. I am very sorry, Hector, but you know what this means to me. Turn over the case, and we’ll find the film and let you keep your wife’s precious writings. I promise if you cooperate and do that you’ll leave here with all you really came for.”
The real Herczog shot her a look. “No. No, that is not how we proceed. I have no way of knowing if there’s been subterfuge. We take it all. If this man resists, shoot the actor first. If he still resists, kill the English thriller writer. God knows he’s not long for the world anyway.”
Hector looked at his friends, dry-mouthed, his big and usually steady hands trembling.
Shaw was bearing up well enough. Ian seemed not to have registered the death threat. Instead, his eyes accused Hector. He said venomously, “Are you telling me you were here to receive the Flea Bug manuscript and you were going to do it under my very nose, Hector? I thought we were friends! I thought we were allies.”
A soft, sad chuckle. Her gun pointed between Hector and Ian, Haven Branch said, “Poor, poor raggedy old Ian. I have real affection for you, I really do. But based on intercepts, I’ll tell you what Hector never would. To his credit, he would do that precisely because he’s your true friend, but also every bit as much a loyal, proud American as you are English, Mr. Fleming.
“Hector’s under orders to keep the Flea Bomb out of British hands with the same zeal he’d keep it from Russia or Red China,” Haven continued. “The so-called ‘special relationship’ is on the rocks if not outright dead. Burgess, Maclean and now Kim Philby—yes, the former head of British Intelligence once based in this very city in the 1940s—is a
defector, too. They are only the tip of a terrible iceberg, dear Ian. MI5 and MI6 are a Soviet sieve, and the Americans well know it. From the Americans’ point of view, handing the Flea Bomb to you is the same as handing it straight to Russia. I’m saying that so that Hector doesn’t have to.” Another sad smile. “I’d hate to come between old friends.”
Ian was left desolate at a stroke.
Hector glared at Haven. His gaze strayed from her smoldering black eyes to her torso. He said, “That bump part of the disguise, too?”
Haven shook her head with a mocking smile. “No, it’s all too real. How’s your math, Hector?”
He grew cold all over, inchoately and immediately accepting the unmistakable implication of her statement. Their child was inside her. He tried to get his head around that and found he really couldn’t.
Well, anyway, he could hardly kill her now, could he? But the others? They were a different story, if he could only find the opportunity.
Béla Herczog held up a gloved hand. He said to Hector, “Your friend’s lives hang in the balance, Lassiter. Hand over briefcase now, please. If you cooperate, and if you do so cheerfully, perhaps I will see about having the Devlin woman’s writings sent ’round to you eventually—through channels, of course—once I’m convinced they hold no secrets of value to me.”
Hector nodded. He held up his hands and said, “I’m going to reach into my right pocket now, very slowly. Just getting my lighter, and some cigarettes.”
Haven said, “It will calm his nerves. Let him do that.” As if to bolster her position in vouching for him, she moved her aim from between Ian and Hector, pointing the barrel of her gun squarely at Hector’s forehead. “We can trust him to do that much.”
Not waiting for Herczog to assent, Hector reached into his pocket and pulled out his pack of Pall Malls and both of the lighters in his pocket. He obscured the one given him so long ago by Burton in his left hand while lighting his cigarette with his Hemingway gifted Zippo that he then placed on the table in full view of the armed men.
Hector said to Herczog, “You said that one-armed man I pitched in the fumarole last year was your stand-in. You said he was your kind of second-in-command. I assume, therefore, he spoke for you back in Japan? That he accurately articulated your own arguments and thoughts as much as one man can for another?”
Death in the Face Page 22
