Authors: Joseph Kanon
“Yes.”
“In America?”
“No, here. And you?” The obligatory response.
“Magda. Like Lupescu. But not so lucky. She was killed.”
“In the war?”
Alexei nodded. “Partisans. In Bukovina. Three years now. It’s a convenience, sometimes. To have nothing to lose.” He drew on the cigarette. “That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it? Can they use somebody? Keep me on a leash.” He shook his head. “There’s nobody. Just me. You didn’t know this before?”
“Why would I?”
“That’s right. Not the interrogator. What, then? A wife here. So there’s a cover.”
“Businessman.”
“At Western Electric?”
Leon raised his eyes. How many of Tommy’s people did they know? All? Even the freelancers?
“No.”
“Where then?”
“Dried fruit. Apricots. Figs.”
“Apricots,” Alexei said. “It’s a good business?”
“Now you’re interrogating me.”
Alexei smiled. “Just talking. Like you. We do it differently. Maybe better.” He leaned his head to the side, still amused. “Yes, I think so.”
“That’s because you don’t know what I’m after.”
Alexei looked straight at him, no smile now at all. “No. So it’s an advantage you have. What do you want to know?”
Leon hesitated, trying to frame it. “How it was, at Străuleşti.”
A stillness, Alexei’s eyes locked on Leon’s, not blinking. After a minute he looked down at his hand, the cigarette burning to his finger. He rubbed it out, still quiet, a test of wills, his eyes neutral, sorting things out.
“We do that too,” he said finally. “Tell them you know the worst thing. So they think you know everything.”
Leon waited.
“Nobody asked me this before. Your people. So why now?”
“You were there.”
Another silence, calculating. “Your Romanian friend. He told you.”
Now it was Leon who was quiet.
“When did a Romanian not betray a Romanian? A national gift.” He reached for another cigarette. “Well, I’m one to talk.” He waited another second, then shook his head. “I had no part in that.”
“Just the rest of the Guard.”
He nodded. “That’s when I decided—”
“What?”
“That they were crazy.”
“They weren’t crazy before? Blood oaths?”
“But this. It was bound to call attention. Make them turn against us.”
“So you did.”
“That’s what you want to know? Why I turned against the Guard? That’s easy. Because I could see what was coming. The future was Antonescu.”
“For a while.”
“Yes.”
“And now he’s going on trial. But not you.”
“Trial for what?”
“You were there. That would be enough.”
Alexei nodded. “They’re not so interested now, what happened. They just want to shoot us. Then all these things can go away.”
“So you made a deal.”
“That’s right,” Alexei said, eyes on Leon. “With you.” He got up, clearing his cup. “You know what it’s like, a mob? Like water. You can’t stop it. They were going to ruin everything and who could stop them?”
“Not you.” Leon paused. “You knew what they were going to do.”
“No,” Alexei said, raising his voice. “Shoot them maybe. This was already happening. Dudeşti, all over the city. But this—” He stopped, his shoulders suddenly slumping. “Of course, you know in the end they were dead anyway.”
He shuffled over to the window and stood there for a minute, lifting his hand to part the shade, then letting it rest there, staring.
“When you have blood on your hands, does it matter how it got there?” he said.
Carcasses dripping.
He turned. “Is that what you’re asking? What’s on my hands?” He held one out. “Not so clean. Are yours? In this business?” He lowered his hand. “Do you know how easy it can be? Something you never thought you could do. Easy. Later, it’s harder. People forget, but you live with it, whatever you did.” He turned. “We penetrated
their military intelligence. That’s all that should matter to you now. You want to put me on trial with Antonescu? For what? The Guard? The camps? All of it my fault. Maybe even the war. My fault too.” He stopped. “Nobody cares about that anymore. Not them, not you. It’s in the past.” He looked up. “Except your Romanian friend maybe. So eager to tell you things. Maybe he’d like to tell someone else. A Romanian will sell anything. Maybe me.”
Leon looked at him, intrigued. A life revealed in a phrase.
“He can’t. He doesn’t know where you are.”
“Only you. If you weren’t followed,” he said, dismissive. “And what do we talk about? All these arrangements—the truck from Bucharest, the boat, this place—and now it’s what happened to the Jews? They died.” His voice final as a window being slammed shut.
He went to get more tea, refilling Leon’s glass, Leon watching him, not saying anything. Alexei raised his eyebrows, waiting.
“All right,” Leon said. “The American working for the Russians. Let’s talk about him.”
Alexei stared at him.
“I need to know.”
Alexei held his gaze, sipping some tea, calculating, as if he were running his finger over a chess piece, not yet ready to move.
“How long have you been doing this?” he said finally. “This work. Maybe you’re new to it. Maybe that’s it. So let me explain something to you. If I knew such a thing, would I tell you? We talk in Bucharest—enough information so you know it’s real. The rest? When I’m out, safe. If I tell you here? You squeeze a lemon, what’s left? So you throw it away.”
“We don’t do that.”
“Everybody does that,” he said flatly. “Everybody. So you can wait.”
“Not anymore. I need to know. For your sake. If he had anyone else here.”
“Here? An American here?” Alexei said, a little surprised, relieved. “Well, you wouldn’t have to wait for that. It’s not such a bargaining chip.” He stopped. “I mean—”
Leon looked at him, turning this over. “Not worth a trip to the States. But someone in Washington would be.”
Alexei met his glance. “Yes, he would be. But we’re here. Wasting time. These questions. I don’t know anyone here.” He sipped more tea. “You’re so sure there is such a person.”
Leon nodded.
“How?”
“I shot him last night. On the pier.”
At first there was only a flicker of movement in Alexei’s face, the composure still fixed, then his eyes began darting, as if they were involuntarily following his thoughts, leaping from point to point.
“They identified the man,” he said, leading. “Not a Russian.”
“No. One of us. Who knew you were coming out. And who tried to kill you. Why would he do that? In the open? Take that chance. Unless you were someone he had to stop. He couldn’t give you back to the Russians—he’d expose himself—so he’d have to kill you.”
“Expose himself?”
“He was running this operation, getting you out. Which makes for some complications.”
“Running—”
“This piece of it anyway. So the trip had to end here. Things go wrong, but he’s safe, no one blames him, and the Russians get their rat. But then I shot him and I got you instead. So I need you to tell me. Are there others? Am I wrong?”
Alexei put the tips of his fingers together in a pyramid, pressing them against his lips, almost prayerlike, thinking. “No,” he said finally, then hesitated, as if he were eliminating more possibilities. “They had a man in Ankara. Why not here.”
“Ankara,” Leon said dully, seeing himself at Karpić’s, leaving an envelope on the banquette.
“During the war. Now I’m not sure. You understand, it’s only GPU I know, not the other agencies. But you see what this means. The Russians know. The whole operation. We have to leave this place. It’s not safe.”
“He never knew about the flat. So they don’t know, either. We’re back where we started.”
“No. Everything is compromised now. The plane—that’s still your plan?”
“I don’t see why not—if there is one.”
But Alexei was shaking his head. “They must know. If I show myself there they’ll kill me. We have to start over. Everything. I’ll help you. We’ll work together.”
Leon looked up, caught off guard. His new partner.
Alexei started coughing, a smoker’s hack. “Amateurs. It’s my life, and the man in charge is working for them.”
“Was.”
“And now it’s you,” Alexei said, peering at him. “The new
gazi
. And who else?”
Leon shook his head. “I only knew Tommy.”
“So,” Alexei said. “And you had no idea. What he was.”
“Not until he shot you.”
“Not even me. The Romanian. Amateurs.” He started coughing again, his face getting paler. “Istanbul,” he said, choking on the word, still trying to stop the cough. “Maybe it ends here. I always wondered, what would that be like. When they finally get you.” He looked up. “So. We make a new plan.”
“We,” Leon said.
“You can’t trust anybody now. Not here. Not in Ankara.” He put his hand to his mouth, thinking. “But we have one piece of luck.”
“What’s that?”
“Nobody’s looking for you. Or they’d already be here. They’ll think I’m running, not hiding. Who would be hiding me?”
“Who would.”
“And then they’ll think I’m gone. We can do it.” He paused. “If no one else knows. Just you.”
“Do what?”
“Get me out. Istanbul—it’s a trap now. We have to leave here.”
Leon was quiet for a minute, then got up. “To save your skin.”
“My skin? I saw your face, when I told you about Washington. A valuable chip, no? People will want to hear about him.” He looked up. “Always have something to trade.”
Leon stood still for a second, as if he were balancing himself, testing his footing. Alexei’s eyes, gray and clear, insistent. Which hadn’t seen anything at the abattoir. He said. Holding up his bargaining chip.
“Let’s start with the gun then,” Leon said. “One less complication. I’d better have it back.”
“The gun?” Alexei said, not expecting this. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Get rid of it,” Leon said, picking up the empty food bag.
“And how do I protect myself here?”
“Use the one you brought with you,” Leon said, looking at him. “You’d have to have one. You just wanted this for a little insurance. And maybe to see if I was dumb enough to give it to you.” He held out his hand. “It’s a murder weapon now. Evidence. You might use it to put me there. In Bebek. If things don’t go well. Right?”
Alexei looked at the open hand, then reached into his pocket and took out the gun, smiling a little. “A quick learner.” He handed it over.
“You’re right about the plane,” Leon said, putting the gun in the bag. “I’ll arrange something else.” He started for the door. “Just stay put. You’re safe here.”
“And that’s my protection now,” Alexei said, nodding to the lock. “A door.” He looked at Leon. “And you.”
Leon reached for the knob.
“By the way, it matters to you? What happened at Străuleşti? I wasn’t part of that. What they did. If your friend says yes, he’s lying.” Making a case now, reassuring. “I wasn’t part of that.”
Leon turned. “That must be a comfort.”
On the ferry back, Leon stayed out on the lower deck, dropping the bag over the side halfway across, even the sound of the small splash covered by the grind of the motors. Ibrahim the Sot had drowned his whole harem here, sewn into sacks. The gun was easier. Just another secret in the Bosphorus. Nothing to connect him now to the quay, nothing to connect Mihai. Not even Alexei once he could pass him along the chain Tommy had tried to break. His new partner. He looked down at the dark water, uneasy again. The gun would be settling on the bottom, lodging itself in the silt, too heavy for the current. Except there were two currents in the Bosphorus, he’d read somewhere, the surface current flowing south and a deep undercurrent
kanal
flowing north, dense and saline, strong enough to drag a fishing boat by its net, pull someone off course.
Inside the cabin, the tea man was handing a tulip glass to a man in a knit cap, the kind Mihai had worn. A dockworker? A thief? Who was anybody? Tommy ordering drinks at the Park, every second a betrayal. Years of it. You can’t trust anybody now, Alexei had said, asking Leon to trust him.
PERA
T
HE FUNERAL WAS HELD
at Christ Church, near the Galata Tower, with a reception to follow in one of the private rooms at the Pera Palas. It was the same service Tommy would have had however he had died—the same hymns, the same homily about a man taken too soon, the same teary handkerchiefs. But he hadn’t just died, released from illness. He’d been killed, the violence of it disturbing, somehow shaming, as if he’d been complicit in his own death. So people said comforting things to Barbara and fidgeted in their seats, wondering.
Leon sat to the side, watching people take their places. Ed Burke was next to Barbara as chief mourner, with the staff of Commercial Corp. filling out the pew behind. The business community had come out and most of the consulate, an almost official gathering, except for a sprinkling of unknown faces, part of Tommy’s wide social net. Near the back were a few Turks secular enough to risk being in a church and two burly men Leon assumed to be police, scanning the crowd, their faces expressionless.
Frank Bishop had come from the embassy in Ankara, stiff and formal in a black suit and owlish horn-rimmed glasses. He had brought his wife, a woman Leon hadn’t met, his dealings with Frank
usually a drink at the Ankara Palas or an early dinner at Karpić’s, just long enough to leave papers. She kept her head half bowed, so Leon had to crane slightly to see her face, or the part of it not shadowed by her hat. Pale skin, just a hint of makeup, reddish hair, younger than Frank. Next to them, the Liggett & Myers rep was handing out candy to his restless children. A committee from the club had sent a wreath. Barbara wept during the reading of the Twenty-third Psalm. The minister spoke of Tommy’s open heart and concern for others. No one in the solemn, drafty room, Leon realized, had known him at all.
Afterward, they clustered at the door, hugging or shaking hands, then started the steep climb up. A taxi had been ordered for Barbara, its width almost filling the narrow street, but everyone else went on foot, wives clinging to their husbands’ arms, careful of their heels on the paving stones.