Istanbul Passage (5 page)

He draped an afghan over his shoulders and sat next to the electric fire. One of your new friends, Mihai had guessed. Now on a VIP ticket to Washington. What would Anna have said? Who else would have reconnaissance pictures? A Nazi or a thief. Your new friends. Not what he imagined doing when it had started. An innocent train to Ankara, then dinner at Karpić’s to leave the papers. No need to go to the Embassy, just in town on business. And then Tommy had other things for him.

“You have a gift for languages,” he’d said. “Who picks up Turkish?
And
Kraut.” Leon’s grandfather’s legacy—English at school, German at home. “You should be proud—the language of Schiller.” But of course he wasn’t, hiding it from his friends, an embarrassment, until one day it got him a job, not Paris, where he wanted to go, but still overseas and paid in dollars. One job to another, Hamburg then Berlin, where he met Anna.

After that the trips home became less frequent and then, when his mother died, there was no reason to go. They stayed in Berlin until Kristallnacht when Anna’s parents, in a panic, pleaded with him to take her to New York. They would follow, as soon as things could be arranged. But when would that be? An ocean between them, something final. And then, almost a fluke, the Reynolds job came up, somewhere safe but still close enough to help get them out. You could take a train there, Vienna-Sofia-Istanbul, twice a week.

But they never did, delaying until no one got out unless they were
rescued, unless Anna and Mihai somehow got them on one of their boats. Anna never stopped trying, even after they couldn’t be found, two more who had disappeared. And Leon had started working for Tommy, his own way of helping. Fighting Nazis. And now he was hiding them.

He looked at the window, still blurry with water. What if it hadn’t rained tonight? What if John Doe had made it through? Would Tommy have told him about the pictures? Any of it? Just do your piece. While I make plans. It wasn’t the money, there were always ways to get more money, but the end of things. Just like that. He shivered again, now a chill that wouldn’t go away, but something else too, an uneasiness. About what? Maybe just the quiet. With the windows closed, there were no sounds—no foghorns on the water or even cars grinding up the steep streets below. When he struck a match he could hear it, a loud rasp. He pulled the afghan tighter, an old man huddling in front of the fire. But not exactly a fire, and not really old yet, either. Too old to be asked back to Washington? Tommy was going. Nagging at him. Take a pill and get into bed, under Anna’s old duvet, always warm.

He went into the bathroom, about to open the medicine chest, and stopped. The same mirror he used every morning, but someone else in it. When had that happened? It wasn’t the gray hair or the tired eyes. He looked the same, more or less. Something worse, a sense of time running out. Why hadn’t Tommy ordered a backup? That was one of the rules. Not even ask for the safe house address? Careless, his mind already on the plane, leaving Leon behind to mop up. I’m not invisible here. Then why have a drink in the most visible place in Istanbul? To tell Leon he was leaving? But he could have done that after. Why even make contact before the job was finished? To be in Mehmet’s report. Somebody’s. Tommy King spent the evening getting soused with a business colleague at the Park, not waiting for a boat in the rain. Covering himself, the way he did. One step ahead.

He was restless all morning, moving papers and fidgeting with pens, sending Osman out twice for coffee. He glanced at the telephone. Tommy wouldn’t call today, he’d keep his distance until after the pickup. Outside, Taksim Square, scrubbed almost clean by the storm, was sunny. Perfect sailing weather. There was nothing to do now but wait out the day. But the clock barely moved.

He was always anxious before a job. Simple, but you never knew. And today was Thursday, his afternoon with Marina, and that anticipation had already begun, a prickling all over his skin, his mind filled with how it would be—the afternoon sun through the curtains, catching the dust, the thin silk wrapper she called a kimono, loosely belted so that it came apart at a touch, his breath getting shorter on the stairs, almost there, not wanting her to see how eager he was, but already hard when she opened the door. The way it always was. And then, afterward, the sudden deflation, embarrassed at wanting it so much, something he shouldn’t be doing. Only once a week, so that it wouldn’t feel like cheating, more like a medical appointment, just a time you set aside. An affair would have meant one of the European wives, unpredictable emotions, a betrayal. This was a simpler transaction—if you paid, it didn’t mean anything.

He had never bought sex before, but what other choices were there in Istanbul? The houses in the alleys on the water side of Galata Hill, waiting downstairs with sailors and stevedores for ten minutes upstairs and months of disease? The apartments over the clubs near Taksim, fading red wallpaper and businessmen, the risk of meeting someone you knew? Then he had overheard a man talking about her in the bar at the Pera Palas, a girl with her own place, and he
had gone once, nervous, almost drugged with the thought, his first woman in a year, and then it was every week.

What he hadn’t expected was that sex itself would be different, not what he had known with Anna, but something furtive and heady, the way it had been in adolescence. He knew that if he saw her more often everything would change, that strings would begin to attach themselves, guilt, the afternoons no longer just physical, just pleasure. He thought she felt it too, a kind of relief that he only wanted her body, leaving the rest of her to herself. They had sex, that was all. They didn’t want to touch anything else.

Once he offered to keep her, pay for the room.

“No, I don’t want that. Just pay me like always.”

“Why not? It would make things easier for you.”

“Oh, for me. And why would you do that? So I wouldn’t see anybody else. That’s what it means. Just you. But I would, and then I’d lie to you. Let’s just stay as we are.”

“How many do you see?”

“You’re jealous? If you want a virgin, go somewhere else.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere else.”

“You know when I was a virgin? When I was twelve. So it’s too late to be jealous.”

“You like them, the others?”

“Everyone wants to know that. Now you. Some yes, some no. I like it with you—that’s what you want to know, yes? Nobody really cares about the others, just ‘how is it with me?’ But they ask anyway. What are they like, the men who see you? They want to hear stories.”

“Do you tell them stories about me?”

She shook her head. “What could I tell them? Thursday afternoon—that’s all I know about you. Somebody who doesn’t ask me questions. Until today. And now what? Pay for the room. I pay for it.
I told myself, if you ever get out of that place, you’ll have your own room, just yours, not in some house with people walking around. It’s mine,” she said, looking at the room. “I pay for it.”

“But this is how you pay for it,” he said, nodding at the bed, the tangled sheets.

“Yes.”

“Then I’m paying anyway.”

“Not for the room.”

Which is when he realized someone else was keeping her, their Thursday afternoons just extra cash, something to tuck away under the mattress. All the others just pin money too. Did the man know about him? The afternoons, the most private thing he had, seemed suddenly invaded, no longer safe. It became important to know. He even watched the building for a while, curious to see the others. Europeans, always in the afternoon, like him. Only one at night, a Turk who showed up at odd times, as if he never knew when he could manage to get away. Someone she kept her evenings free for, just in case.

“Why do you want to know?” she said when he pressed her.

“Does he know about me?”

“No. I told you that.”

“Or the others?”

“You think there are so many?”

He waited. “Does he know?”

She belted her robe tightly, reaching for a cigarette. “No. Why? Do you want to tell him?”

“You said you didn’t want to lie to me. But you lie to him.”

“Maybe I have feelings for you.”

“Now you are lying to me.”

She glanced over at him, then smiled wryly, and drew on the cigarette. “I’m a whore. That’s what we do. You’re surprised?”

“Tell me.”

“Oh, tell what? Leave me alone. He’s rescuing me. That’s how he sees things, a fairy story. He gives me this room. So I’m like a princess, somebody in a window. In a drawing.”

“And he’s the prince?”

She smiled again. “The pasha. He stole the building. An Armenian owned it. Remember the
Varlik Vergisi
, how they taxed the Jews and the Armenians and when they couldn’t pay they sent them to camps and took what was left? He got the building. So he gives me this room. No rent. But I pay for it with him. Is that what you want to know?”

“And he thinks you’ve given it up? The others?”

“He thinks I’m grateful. I am grateful. But I have to think of the future too. He gets tired of me. Anything can happen. He’s a simple man. A business in Şişhane. He never thought he could have anything like this, a girl in a room, waiting for him. But now he’s a big landlord. Rents. So it was the tax, maybe, that got me out of that place. Strange how things work.”

“Why strange?”

“I’m Armenian. He steals from an Armenian and he gives the room to another. I don’t think he knows. A woman—it’s all the same to him. So I lie to him. I don’t lie to you.”

“Why not?”

“I know who he is. A man who steals. You—I’m not so sure. You never tell me anything.”

He touched her wrist. “I don’t come here to talk.”

“Everyone else—I think that’s why they come, to tell me their troubles.”

“Maybe I don’t have any troubles.”

She raised her eyes, meeting his, and held them for a second, a sudden connection, not saying anything, not having to.

He met Ed Burke for lunch in one of the restaurants in the Flower Passage, a table out in the arcade, under the belle époque globes. Ed had ordered wine and drank most of it himself, Leon sipping a little for show, barely touching the stuffed mussels, his mind somewhere else.

“So when are you going home?” Ed said.

“What’s the hurry?”

“You don’t want to wait too long. The import business is finished. Where are they going to get the hard currency? Another year, it’ll be strictly domestic here. You should get out now.”

“I’m buying, not selling. They’re still open for business.”

“Until the fucking Russians get their hands on the place. What they always wanted.” He looked down the arcade to the Istiklal Caddesi, busy with trams and old cars. “Be a hell of a thing, won’t it, to see all this go.” He looked again to the street. “You know when I first got here, they still had the women in veils.”

Had Marina worn one, as a girl? But she was Armenian, so a Christian, something he hadn’t known before, another piece, like filling in an outline. What did she look like when she went out? He had never seen her in anything but her silk kimono, a swishing sound as she moved, smooth to the touch, like the soft flesh of her inner thigh. He looked up, aware again that Ed was talking.

“You hear about Tommy? It’s all over the consulate. Back to Washington.”

“Really?” Leon said, noncommittal.

“I thought you two were thick as thieves.”

Leon shook his head. “I helped him out with a deal once, that’s all.”

“What kind of deal?” Ed said, suddenly curious.

“Chromium. I knew some people in Ankara.”

“Well, that always helps, doesn’t it?”

“Always,” Leon said, looking more closely for something behind the words. But Ed’s face was the same, long and droopy, like Fred Allen’s, pouches now under the eyes.

“Board of Economic Warfare. That’s where he’s going. Except there’s no more warfare,” Ed said.

“So they change the name. It’s the government. You’re in the government.”

“Not where he’s going.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, you never thought Tommy might be doing something extra on the q.t.?”

“Like what?”

“Hush-hush stuff. You never suspected?”