I Spy (18 page)

Circumstances had seen to it that father and son had absolutely no idea what the other had been up to. Baba Duan had already left the house when Evren came rushing back to tell him what had
happened to Trey, and he didn’t come home until some thirty minutes
after
Ahmet had dropped Evren off. Thinking that his father was at home, and still a little shaken that they’d
been shot at by the Russians, Evren had sneaked back into the house, silent as a moth. He’d gone straight to bed and not heard his father come home.

Even though Baba Duan had only managed a few hours’ sleep, he was up (as he knew the English liked to say) with the lark. Although, to be honest, he could not remember the last time
he’d seen one of those birds in Constantinople. He had a plan, and as anyone with any sense at all knew, a plan would remain nothing but hot air, speculation and guesswork until it was put
into practice. Whistling to himself, Baba Duan strolled into the kitchen, patting his recently-shaved cheeks, to find Evren already at the table and involved with a bowl of figs, a slab of bread
and a glass of tea.

“Ah...well, well,” Baba Duan looked slightly taken aback at finding someone else, albeit his adored first-born, in the kitchen. “Another early bird. Is it because of some job
that I’ve forgotten I have given you, or are you maybe going to see Trey?”

“Um, no, Baba...” Evren had been hoping to get out of the house without seeing anyone, so he didn’t have to answer any awkward questions...like where had he been when there was
work to be done (there was
always
work to be done), and what time had he
eventually
got back? But now that his father was standing there in front of him he knew he’d better come
clean about everything. “I cannot see Trey, Baba.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“At the Consulate, surely...no?”

“No, Baba.” Evren shook his head. He sat back in his chair, his appetite gone, and began telling his father what had happened the day before. He gave every detail that he could
remember of the events, like his father had taught him a good reporter should be able to do. When he’d finished, Baba Duan had also finished the figs, bread and cup of tea.

“You did well, Evren, very well. Although what might have happened if you had really gone in the house and been caught I do not know. Did the Russians
really
shoot at
you?”

Evren nodded. “But only because the car backfired. I think.” He got up and went to get some more food, his appetite having returned, now that he’d told the whole story and his
father hadn’t bitten his head off. “What can we do now, Baba? The same men who have his father have got Trey as well.”

“We don’t know that...”

While his son had told him
his
side of the story, chapter and verse, Baba Duan didn’t think it appropriate that he was as honest in return. When it came to information, he believed,
not
everybody
needed to know absolutely
everything
. “Even after your adventure with Neyla and the English boy,” Baba Duan continued, “we still don’t know
exactly who it is who has either of them. That is still a mystery which remains to be solved.”

“But
how
, Baba?”

“Let me put it this way,” Baba Duan took some more of the food his son had brought to the table, “I have some irons in the fire. Which is, in the present state of this and
that, the best I can be doing at the minute.”

Evren knew his father well enough to know that he had not been telling him the whole story. Baba Duan had a way of licking his lips when there was more to tell than he was
prepared to say. Or when he was being less than truthful. He remembered the first time he’d realized that Baba Duan was lying to him. It had been a shock to find out that his trusted parent
could do that, and he’d angrily confronted his father, demanding to know why he’d done it. “We should both treat this as a lesson,” Baba Duan had replied, seemingly not at
all put out that he’d been caught. “A wise man once said ‘Any fool can tell the truth, but it takes a shrewd and clever one to lie well’, and I believe he was right; I was
found out because I was careless, and you were cleverer than I gave you credit for.”

Evren heard the front door close downstairs and leaned out of the kitchen window just in time to see his father turn the corner and disappear. Evren still found it odd that he was wearing a
bowler hat, instead of his beloved red fez, but, for some inexplicable reason, the government had banned the wearing of fezzes the previous year (on pain of death...he
really
didn’t
understand that). Part of him wanted to drop everything and follow his father to see where he was going, but a sensible voice reminded him that he’d made an agreement with Neyla to meet early
and then go on up to Arthur’s house.

The night before Ahmet had apologized for not being able to join them, because, he’d said, he had a family to feed and had to get back to work. So, whatever they decided to do next, they
were going to have to do it without the aid of a car and driver. Which Evren was all too aware was going to severely limit any course of action they might come up with.

Arthur and his sister were barely on speaking terms. Christina could not
believe
that her brother had gone out with the others and left her behind! And she particularly
didn’t like his claim that when he’d left she’d been snoring. The absolute truth was that he’d sneaked out and left her behind on purpose because he
never
liked to
take her
any
where with him. And the only reason she was saying anything at all to him was because she knew that the perfectly
rotten
boy would quite prefer it if she actually
didn’t
say anything.

Somewhere outside a dog barked twice. Christina noticed her brother look up from his desk, where he was sitting squirting oil onto parts of one of his silly trains. She saw him stop what he was
doing and listen, his frown turning to a smile when the dog then barked three more times, and then twice again. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him put the green liveried train and red oil
can down, absent-mindedly wiping his hands on his trousers (if Miss Renyard had caught him doing
that
he’d have been in trouble!) and make for the playroom door.

Christina beat him to it and stood, blocking his way. “Where are you going?”

“Mind your own beeswax.” Arthur attempted to dodge round his sister. “Nosey parker.”

“I am
not
!”

“
Are!
”

“
Not!
”

Outside the dog barked again, in exactly the same way, and Arthur’s face took on an extremely agitated expression.

“That isn’t a dog, is it?” Christina smiled in a way she knew would
really
annoy her brother, and was pleased to see that it did. “It’s Evren and Neyla,
isn’t it, Arthur?” Arthur looked like he’d just swallowed a spoonful of particularly vile cough mixture. “If you don’t let me come with you I shall tell. Just you see
if I don’t.”

“But that’s
black
mail!”

“I know.” Christina opened the door. “Shall we go?”

Baba Duan tipped his hat and smiled at the gardener as he walked up to the building and rapped on the front door of the British Consulate. He was eyeing up his reflection in
the glass and thinking that, even though the bowler hat was undoubtedly smart, he would still prefer to wear a fez, when the door opened. A young man in a suit that appeared to be rather too tight
for him (and who definitely looked like he should sharpen his razor before he used it again) stood looking at him questioningly.

“Yes?”

“Mister, the Honourable George Archibald Stanhope-Leigh, His Majesty’s servant and Trade Secretary.”

“Excuse me?’

“I should very much like to have the distinct pleasure of a meeting. With him.”

“Really...” The junior assistant secretary looked at the large, obviously Turkish man, dressed in a pin-striped suit and wearing a bowler hat, and frowned. “And you would
be?”

“I would be the Mister Duan Hendek, journalistic reporter of foreign correspondence for several various international newspapers of much repute...” Baba Duan dug two fingers into one
of his waistcoat pockets. “My card!”

“Ah...thank you...” The young man was just about to take the small piece of off-white pasteboard when it was summarily whisked away from him.

“Apologies!” Baba Duan smiled broadly as he drew out another card (one that actually had “Duan Hendek” printed on it, rather than one of his alternative identities), and
handed it over. “This one, somehow
nicer
.”

“Mister...” the junior assistant secretary glanced curiously at the card, “...Hendek. Well, I’m afraid you will need an appointment if you want to see the Trade
Secretary, and I’m sorry to say that his diary is
rather
crowded at the moment. It
is
possible he might have some time available next week – would you like me to
check?”

“Excuse me.” Baba Duan reached out and plucked the card out of the young man’s hand; taking a small, stainless steel propelling pencil from the breast pocket of his jacket he
wrote something on the blank reverse side and handed it back again. “Give this to the Honourable Mr. Trade Secretary, and I think maybe it will be sure that his diary can find enough space
for me. Today.”

“I really don’t think...” The junior assistant secretary peered at what was written on the card. “Excuse me, but what does that say?”

“It
say
‘T. Drummond MacIntyre Two’. Tell it to Mr. Leigh.”

“
Stanhope
-Leigh, it’s Mr. Stanhope-Leigh...and what exactly do you want me to tell him?”

“Tell him the information that I know where this America gentleman is.”

“So we really are back to square one.” Arthur kicked disconsolately at a stone, sending it tumbling off towards Evren. The four of them were at the back of the
small garden, out of sight and, Arthur hoped, out of Miss Renyard’s mind. Quite how long it would be before she came looking for Christina and him he had no idea, but the moment she did Evren
and Neyla were going to have to skedaddle pretty quickly.

“My baba say that he is doing something.” Evren flicked the stone between his shoes.

“But that doesn’t help us, because we
still
don’t know where Trey is, we don’t know where his
father
is
and
we don’t have any way of getting
round any more – I say, Tina, how much pocket money d’you have saved? Maybe we’ve enough to hire Ahmet ourselves.”

“Even if we have money –” Evren hooked the stone in Neyla’s direction; she took one look at Christina’s delicate shoes and passed straight to Arthur –
“it wouldn’t be a useful thing.”

“Why not?”

Evren held his hands out, palms up, and shrugged. “Exactly
where
to go?”

Arthur’s shoulders slumped. “I hate to say it, old chap, but I think you’re right. I quite fancied getting to the bottom of all this as well, finding out what was what and all
that sort of thing...”

“Look here, Arthur...there’s something I’ve been
meaning
to tell you.” Everyone looked at Christina and she blushed, her pale cheeks almost glowing red.

“What would that be, then, old thing?”

“Because
I
wasn’t at
all
tired,
not
having been out all night,” she sniffed and twisted a curl round one of her fingers, “
I
got up quite a lot
earlier than
you
did this morning.”

“What’s
that
got to do with the price of eggs?”

“I overheard something.” Christina looked at her highly polished shoes. “Something I should
probably
have told you before...”

T
rey had been keeping up a steady pace for the last he didn’t know how long (it seemed like
hours
, but as he had no way of knowing now
that his watch was kaputski, it could have been just
an
hour, or even less). The exercise regime meant that his clothes and shoes were no longer soaking wet, just uncomfortably damp, and
he’d kind of warmed up. Or at least he wasn’t as cold as he had been. He knew he’d so little chance of getting back to the city and finding his father that he positively
had
to keep looking on the bright side or else it was likely he would quit walking, sit down and wait to be caught.

But that was
not
going to happen.

The leather briefcase bumped against his hip as he walked (he’d thought of getting rid of it, but he was still wet enough to damage the map and possibly the gun, so it wasn’t worth
the risk), adding up the pluses of his situation. Choosing to ignore the very large minus that he was now quite hungry, and couldn’t see much chance of food any time soon, he ticked off the
fact that he hadn’t encountered any more wild pigs, so far, that it wasn’t raining and that there were trees lining the sides of what passed for a road. Somewhere to hide if any cars
– he assumed the Germans must
have
a car and didn’t fly everywhere – should come either way.

Rounding a bend in the road he saw he was about to go through the middle of a small hamlet. In the gloom he checked the map and it didn’t look like anything more than a handful of
buildings, but something made Trey stop and look for a way to skirt round the place. Better safe than sorry being his motto for the foreseeable future.

The unforeseen detour, which took him past a small, ramshackle building, turned out to have a silver lining.

Trey would have crept on straight past the place had one of the occupants not chosen that moment to whinny softly, the sound stopping him dead in his tracks, then sending him off to investigate.
So long as there wasn’t some weird Turkish animal that he’d never heard of which sounded
exactly
like a horse, his luck had just changed. With a horse he could make mincemeat of
the distance between him and Constantinople!

Slipping into the stables Trey stood quietly in the darkness, breathing in the familiar scents and odours as he waited for his sight to adjust, and also to let the horses get used to the idea
that someone they didn’t know was there. In his mind’s eye he had imagined the horses would be something like the small, sturdy mustangs Gramps had on the Topeka ranch back home, but as
he finally began to make sense of the ghostly, moonlit shapes he saw that here were horses of a very different type. They were rather bigger than the ones he was used to riding, or at least two of
them were, as the third “horse” turned out to be a donkey.