I Spy (19 page)

What had seemed like a very simple solution to his problems now took on a number of irritating complications. Like there were no saddles, as these good old boys looked like they were used to
pull things, and he’d therefore have to ride bareback. Plus, of course, he would be stealing a working animal, and probably from someone who didn’t have
that
much in the first
place. But, because he ab-so-
lute
-ly, completely, totally and definitely
had
to get one heck of a move on, what else was he supposed to do for crying out loud?

Having discovered a fairly crude bridle made out of rope, he coaxed the marginally smaller of the two horses out of the stable with a handful of oats, promising himself that the very first thing
he’d do – assuming everything went according to plan – was see that the horse got taken back home, toot sweet (“and the tooter the sweeter” he heard his gramps
saying). If he made sure that happened then what he was doing was merely
borrowing
, not thieving. Which, in his book, was an excellent, not to say entirely copacetic way of looking at the
situation.

“Over here, boy,” Trey whispered, leading the horse across to a low fence, which he climbed up. Using the great beast’s mane to haul himself onto its broad back, he grabbed the
reins and geed it forward. For a second or two the horse stayed exactly where it was, but then, with a snort and a toss of its head, it moved off...

Viktor Becht had joined the
Abwehr
two years ago and had worked for Reinhardt Gessler for almost all of that time. It wasn’t a bad job, except for when he was
stuck in a house out in the back of beyond, in a country where no one spoke a word of German. On his own. And then, when his boss finally turns up it’s with some kid for whom he has to act as
a
dumm
servant. What all this business had to do with army intelligence he couldn’t say, and it was definitely not his place to ask, that much he knew for sure.
Herr Oberst
Gessler gave orders – which he expected to be carried out to the letter – he did not answer subordinates’ questions.

And Viktor had a
lot
of questions. There was so much going on back home in Germany, but he was stuck here in Turkey, unable to get involved in anything, only picking up occasional bits of
gossip. Hardly the position for someone who wanted to be in the thick of things, catching spies, even doing a bit of spying himself. He’d be good at that; instead, here he was acting as a
waiter!

Climbing up the final flight of stairs, Viktor balanced the tray on one hand, unlocked the door and pushed it open. The morning sun was streaming through a big gap in the curtains and falling in
a bright slash across the bed. The boy was still asleep and the previous night’s tray was on the floor.

“
Wach auf!
Wake u...” Viktor stopped in the middle of putting the breakfast tray down. There was something not quite right about the shape in the bed, but he did
not
want to believe what his instincts were telling him. “
Verdammt
...”

Dropping the tray with a crash, Viktor ran across the room and pulled the sheet and blanket back to reveal...just pillows. No boy.
No boy!
Whirling round he swiftly checked the wardrobe
– nothing – and then moved over to the window and drew the curtains back, immediately noticing the scratched and gouged paintwork.

“
Verdammt
...
verdammt
...
verdammt
...”

Pushing the sash up with such force one of the panes of glass cracked, Viktor stuck his head out of the window, frantically searching left and right and left again in the vain hope that the boy
was, hope against hope, still there on the roof...knowing, in his gut, that he wasn’t.

“What happened, Viktor? I heard a noise...”

Viktor jerked backwards so fast he cracked his head on the edge of the window and saw stars as he attempted to stand to attention. “The boy has somehow escaped,
mein
Herr
.”

Reinhardt Gessler was a man used to making decisions under pressure and his mind clicked into gear, ranking the probabilities and the possibilities in order of likelihood, and what should be
done about each of them. “Get out on the roof,
now
, and check that he isn’t hiding...I shall go and see, if he did jump, whether his actions may have resulted in an
accident.” He turned to leave the room. “When you have had a
thorough
look around, come straight down. I will have the car out – I assume you have made sure to keep it in
good working order?”

“Absolutely,
mein Herr
, perfect working order.”

“Good.” Gessler marched out of the room, leaving Viktor, who now had a dull headache, to his assigned task.

The horse had a mind of its own. While it seemed perfectly happy to go wherever Trey wanted it to, no matter how nicely he asked it wouldn’t speed up faster than a fairly
gentle trot. Which was, true enough, quicker than he could walk, but he had kind of imagined travelling at more of a gallop. But even though the sedate pace allowed him to occasionally consult the
map as he rode, he still had no more than the
roughest
idea where he was.

The sun was now well up, which he estimated meant that it was probably around about seven o’clock and his disappearance may well have been discovered by now. If they’d
also
discovered that he’d got hold of the map (as well as the gun) then they
must’ve
figured he was on his way back to Constantinople. Which also meant that they might already be in
hot pursuit. He had seen the odd person since dawn had broken, but no cars; so far not one, going north or south. So if he heard an automobile coming from behind him there was a fair chance it
would belong to the man he now thought of as “The Enemy”. It made him sound like one of the villains that the tough-but-good-guys, like Trent Gripp, were regularly pitted against. Trent
always
beat the bad guys. And so would he.

Although Trey knew he must cut a pretty strange sight, a bedraggled boy riding this jumbo of a horse, he ignored the few quizzical looks that came his way, looked straight ahead and acted as if
everything was completely as it should be. While the nag trotted on at its own sweet pace it occurred to Trey that his erstwhile captors would likely assume he was on foot and keeping fairly close
to the road, which pretty much followed the shoreline. So, maybe, it would be a good idea if he got off it.

Up ahead Trey saw that there was a fork in the road and thought this might to be the time to take a detour. He swung the briefcase round onto his lap, got the map out and had another go at
trying to match the real world around him with the two-dimensional representation on the printed cloth, with not a lot of success. Taking another route would keep him safer, but there was a risk
that, even with a map, he might get lost. Except that this race wasn’t all about speed, but mostly just about getting there and not getting caught. So, if he went right at the junction, and
that way still basically went south, he would eventually end up where he wanted to go. Hopefully.

Trey tried egging the horse on, pressing in with his heels again (what he would give right now for a pair of proper cowboy spurs, like he had at Gramps’s ranch!), but to no avail. This
animal, who more than likely spent his days hauling a plough, or something equally laborious, was obviously not about to speed up for anyone, let alone some upstart Yankee boy.

Then, somewhere behind him, he couldn’t tell how far away, he heard the sound of a car being downshifted, like his father did when he was taking a corner. It was going fast, the driver
revving the engine and changing back up as the way straightened out. Just like his dad would do.

It was him, The Enemy!

Trey’s empty gut clenched and he felt sick to his stomach. What was he going to do? He was about to be caught right out in the open, stuck up on a horse that refused to move faster than a
snail
, and with nowhere to hide! A sense of failure, mixed with dread at what was going to happen next, began to sink through him and he drooped, his shoulders sagging under the weight of
his imminent defeat.

And then, just as suddenly as the cloud had settled over him, there was a burst of mental sunshine as an idea occurred to him. Quickly sliding to the ground Trey took his shoes and socks off and
rolled his trousers up to just under his knees; he then liberally rubbed his legs with dust from the side of the road. This was a
big
horse. Big enough for him to hide behind, or at least
hide the recognizable top half of himself. If he played his cards right, and the horse played ball, the only person The Enemy would see, if he paid him any attention at all, would be some shoeless
farmer’s boy going off to work.

The car was getting louder and nearer by the second. Trey grabbed the reins and held tight, talking calmly to the horse, who was getting a tad twitchy.

“It’s okay, boy, it’s okay...” he whispered as he stroked the animal’s neck, praying that he wasn’t just kidding himself as well. “He’ll be gone
soon.”

Trey glanced back the way he’d come and there was the car. He moved so that the horse blocked any view the driver might have of him and held his breath as The Enemy got closer and closer.
Was he slowing down? Had the man spotted him? He
was
slowing down! Trey forced himself to move so he kept the horse between him and the oncoming motor...and then, in a cloud of dust, the car
was gone.

It was all over.

Until, that is, The Enemy realized that he’d driven further than one boy on foot could possible have got, and came back to look more carefully.

Watched by an incurious old man who had appeared from somewhere, Trey put his shoes and socks on, rolled his trousers down and made something of a meal of remounting the horse. Kicking harder
than he really meant to, he urged the animal on towards the fork in the road.

B
aba Duan sat on a really quite uncomfortable leather upholstered chair in a sparsely furnished, rather stuffy room. On the wall opposite him was a
large, ornately framed portrait, a black and white photographic print of a bearded man, dressed in a highly decorated ceremonial uniform, who looked not unlike one of the old sultans –
without the turban, of course. This man, whom Baba Duan knew was His Majesty George V (by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond
the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India, as it explained underneath the picture), appeared ill at ease as he stared, pale-eyed, out of the picture. Quite often, Baba Duan mused, as
he waited to be seen by Mr., the Honourable Stanhope-Leigh, being a king or a sultan was not a matter of choice but of birth; it was a job you got, whether you wanted it or not.

“Mr. Hendek?”

Baba Duan looked round at the sound of his name to see a man he’d not met before beckoning him. “Mr. Stanhope-Leigh?” he asked as he stood up.

“No, no...I’m his secretary.” The man smiled, one eyebrow raised. “Please come this way, he will see you now.”

Baba Duan buttoned his jacket and smoothed it down, checked his reflection in the glass covering King George’s portrait, made a final adjustment to his bowler hat, and went after the man.
The room he was ushered into wasn’t all that much bigger than the one he’d just come from, and the man with greying temples and a dark mustache getting up from his chair behind a quite
plain, leather-topped desk looked the same as any other civil servant he’d ever seen. Which was exactly as Baba Duan had expected. In Mr., the Honourable Stanhope-Leigh’s business, it
would pay to appear unexceptional.

“Thank you, Jenkins.” George Stanhope-Leigh nodded at his secretary, who left the room. “Do sit down, Mr., um, Hendek. What exactly can I do for you?”

“For me? Nothing.”

“Nothing? I see...” George Stanhope-Leigh couldn’t hide his surprise as he picked Baba Duan’s business card up from the desk and turned it over. “Why, then, did you
ask for this to be given to me, along with the information that you knew where this
particular
person was? Why would you think
I
would be interested?”

“Because I am pretty much sure that
you
have this
particular
person –” Baba Duan made inverted commas with his fingers – “Mr. Trade Secretary. You,
and not the Russian, or anyone else you might have tried to make people believe. And I also know that T. Drummond MacIntyre
Three
is missing and most probably in the hands of a certain
Herr Oberst
Reinhardt Gessler.”

“You seem to know a lot of things, Mr. Hendek...” George Stanhope-Leigh got up and closed the door his secretary had left slightly ajar. “Although I thought people in your line
of work normally negotiated the fee for divulging information
before
they divulged it. I don’t quite understand what you want from me. In my position as Trade Secretary, that
is.”

“I think, here in this room,” Baba Duan waved his hand rather elaborately, “you and I can understand
everything
, no? Most especially that I am not here wishing for
money, or to talk to you about trade.” Baba Duan sat back in his chair frowning. “I am telling you because I am unfortunately quite responsible for the young Trey being where I am
almost entirely positive he is. I am not a bad man, Mr. Stanhope-Leigh, but fear I am not so good a one when threatened.”

“Herr Gessler has, ah,
kidnapped
this person’s son?”

“Indeed.” Baba Duan took out a packet of oval cigarettes, lit one and blew three concentric smoke rings. “I am informed that yesterday Herr Gessler himself flew up to his
yali
, the villa he has taken in Rumeli Kavagi. I think I am most sure he has the boy, Trey, with him.”

“And why do you think
I
have Trey’s father?”

“Oh I don’t
think
that, Mr. Stanhope-Leigh.” Baba Duan’s eyes twinkled as he smiled broadly. “I am entirely, one hundred per cent confident in this
matter!”