Istanbul (20 page)

‘You killed him,’ Daniela said, her voice flat.

He didn’t answer. He was angry with her for putting herself in such danger that he had been forced to do this. He straightened and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

He dragged Haller into a doorway, propped him there. No-one would disturb the body until the morning. By then he would have arranged for it to disappear.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

Knowing how to kill a man was one thing; doing it close hand, instead of through the bomb sight of an aeroplane, or through a periscope, or even through the sight of a rifle, was something quite different.

He wondered what she thought of him now, if she was repelled or frightened. This was not the first time she had seen him standing over a dead body; but that day in the Jewish Quarter he had not killed as coldly or as deliberately.

He led her by the arm and within minutes they were back on Istiklal. Laughter and music came from the restaurants and bars, and lovers strolled arm in arm on their way to warm beds and undisturbed sleep.

They did not speak until they reached Taksim Square. Finally, he said, ‘What will you do if he’s there?’

‘I will have to go in.’

‘That’s suicide. I can’t let you do that.’

‘There’s no choice.’

‘He’ll kill you. He’ll have no choice either.’

‘I’ll find a way to get these papers back without him knowing.’

‘No,’ he said. They walked faster. Maier’s apartment was just two blocks from the German Consulate. He looked at his watch. Close to eleven.

‘This was my fault,’ she said.

‘It was no-one’s fault,’ he lied.

They reached Maier’s townhouse. There was no sign of Maier’s dark blue Mercedes saloon and Nick felt a flood of disappointment. He did not want her to go back to him. If he was there, it would be her opportunity to get away, and to hell with Abrams and the rest of SIS, to hell with the war.

She started across the street but he grabbed her hand. ‘Don’t go back. I’ll get you a visa. I’ll protect you.’

‘Why?’ she said.

If Abrams could hear him, he would turn blue with apoplexy. Daniela was one of the most promising agents they had in Istanbul and what she had shown him tonight was political dynamite.

He was trying to end her career before it had really started.

‘Because I love you,’ he said and could not believe he had said the words.

She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’ She pulled free and ran away from him across the street. She went down a laneway at the side of the house. She would let herself in through a gate in the back garden and go up the back stairs, so the servants did not see her.

He wondered if he would ever see her alive again.

CHAPTER 44

‘You look awful,’ Abrams said.

Nick sat down. He hadn’t slept, and he had been unable also to keep his breakfast down. Flurries of snow settled on the windowsill. The coldest winter Istanbul had seen in years. The porcelain stove in the corner of the office laboured hopelessly against the chill. Abrams blew on his hands to warm them.

‘I heard what happened.’

Nick shrugged.

‘You had no choice, Davis. What did Trojan want with you at that hour of the night?’

‘She took some typed papers from Maier’s safe. She wasn’t able to photograph them.’

‘And?’

He took a breath. ‘I had only a minute or two to thumb through it.’

‘Not much help then.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. What I had in my hand was a blueprint for the takeover of the German Government from the National Socialists. It assumed Hitler’s death and the arrest of all of Hitler’s high party officials. It also outlined terms for a negotiated peace settlement with Britain. It was basically a briefing document, unsigned and unattributed.’

Abrams just stared at him.

‘As you said in Bucharest, Herr Maier is a very interesting man.’

‘You think the document was genuine?’

Nick shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

Abrams tapped a fountain pen on the edge of his desk and stared over Nick’s head. It was as close to an expression of shock that he had ever seen from him.

‘What are we going to do? Do we pass this on to Whitehall?’

Abrams shook his head. ‘Nothing they can do with it. And it just puts Maier in danger when he might be useful to us later.’

‘You said in Bucharest that you had a particular interest in Maier.’

‘Well, as you now know some of it, you might as well know the rest. Maier’s father is a close family friend of the head of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris. Canaris is from one of Germany’s foremost aristocratic families and he hates the Nazis, won’t recruit fascists into any of his intelligence units. This is why we wish to stay close to Herr Maier. This war does not necessarily have to be resolved by military means, Davis. There are men in London and in Berlin who think there might be another way.’

‘So you
do
think the document was genuine?’

‘There are rumours that some of the German elite want to eliminate Hitler and end the war. This is something we need to stay close to.’ He realised he was fidgeting with the pen and tossed it onto his desk. ‘What happened to Haller’s body?’

‘I called in Special Operations. Apparently he went over the side of a fishing boat in the Marmara Sea just before dawn. The body was well weighted and it won’t resurface to embarrass us. Maier will assume he’s dead, but he won’t know why or how.’

‘Won’t it throw suspicion on Trojan anyway?’

‘I know a Hungarian dancer in one of the clubs off Taksim. This morning she told all her fellow workers how she took Haller back to her apartment last night but he was drunk and started hitting her, so she threw him out. The story will get around Taksim pretty fast. That will confuse things without making it sound like too neat a story. Maier will think Haller went whoring and drinking, instead of doing his job. It’s not entirely out of character. He might have suspicions but he won’t ever be able to confirm the truth either way.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

So do I, Nick thought. But he didn’t say so.

They waited for Amos in his study while Daniela sipped orange tea and Nick got drunk on gin and tonic. He tried several times to start a conversation with her but she seemed too distracted to talk. They lapsed into silence.

Around nine Nick heard a car pull up outside. He went to the window and looked down into the street. It was the police. An officer opened the back door and a thin angular young man in a crumpled suit got out, clutching a battered cardboard suitcase.

‘He’s here,’ he said.

She stood up, smoothing down her dress.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Shall we go down and meet him?’

‘Nick?’

He turned.

‘Forgive me.’

‘Forgive you for what?’

The police rapped on the door. He went downstairs to meet them. A Turkish police captain saluted him and the young man with the suitcase stepped out of the shadows. He was tall, pale and gaunt, and plainly terrified.

‘Amos,’ Nick said. ‘
Bienvenu
. Welcome. Come in.’

Nick thanked the police captain who saluted again, got back into the car and drove away.

The young man stood just inside the door, switching the suitcase from one hand to the other and looking around him with quick, nervous movements.

Daniela came down the steps and they stared at each other. Nick waited for them to embrace.

‘Who’s this?’ Daniela said.

CHAPTER 45

The young man gratefully accepted Nick’s offer of food and wolfed down several plates of eggs and cheese. He held the tumbler of
raki
Nick had given him as if it was a Fabergé egg. ‘The night you came on the
Struma
, I was curled up asleep in the cabin on the deck.’ He spoke in a low monotone, unable to look Nick in the eye. ‘The captain woke me up, asked me how old I was. Then he told me to stand up and asked me if I could speak English. I said I could. He asked me if I wanted to get off the
Struma
. I said of course I did. Then he said I was the luckiest Jew in the world and that if anyone asked me I was to say my name was Amos Simonici.’

‘He said that?’

‘Yes. I just had to say I was Amos Simonici until I got ashore and after that I should hope for the best.’ He looked up at Nick. ‘You’re not going to send me back to that boat, are you?’

Nick looked at Daniela but she had already turned away, was staring out of the window at the distant lights of Pera. She was crying.

He could hardly condemn the captain of the
Struma.
He wanted to save one of his passengers, and if he could not save the real Amos Simonici, then he had decided to create one.

‘What’s your name? Your real name?’

‘Solomon. Solomon Leibovici.’

‘Well, Solomon. Tomorrow I’m going to put you on a train to Haifa. The captain was right. You are the luckiest Jew in the world right now.’

He stood up and put his hands on Daniela’s shoulders.

‘Why isn’t he on the
Struma
?’ she whispered.

‘Perhaps he tore up his ticket,’ Solomon said. ‘A lot of my friends tore up theirs when they saw the state of the ship. Maybe he’s in Constanza waiting for another boat.’

Daniela shivered, rubbing her bare arms. ‘Thank you, Nick,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for trying.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She kissed him tenderly on the cheek. ‘Perhaps he’ll write again,’ she said.

But he never did. She never heard from Amos again.

CHAPTER 46

Nick stood on the docks and watched a red and white tugboat tow the
Struma
away from her berth and past the Rumeli fortress, and out towards the Black Sea. The Turks had given them no warning about this. The British Ambassador was still negotiating for the children to be removed from the boat.

When it was out of sight Nick turned away with a sense of dread. He knew she was doomed.

The seven hundred souls packed on board never saw the dirty brown coasts of Palestine. The tug
cut the rope to the
Struma
on calm waters twelve miles off the Black Sea coast. The engine was useless and the
Struma
started to drift. The next day, just before dawn, she erupted into a ball of flame. Although she was flying a Panamanian flag, she was torpedoed by a Russian submarine.

It was winter. Those that did not die in the initial blast soon succumbed to hypothermia in the icy waters of the Black Sea.

There was only one survivor.

BOOK THREE

CHAPTER 47

Istanbul, August 1943

She came late at night, there were footsteps in the alley outside, then he heard a knock at the wooden door, two short taps and a longer one. He edged it open and she slipped inside in a rush of perfume.

It was a Byzantine game; to maintain the deception that she was spying on him, it was necessary to manufacture disinformation that she could take back with her, in order to justify her late night visits.

Nick and Abrams were meticulous in their planning, as it had to appear plausible. Nick gave her false documents that she copied out in her own careful, spidery writing. He would time her with his wristwatch, never allowing and her more than half an hour. She told Maier that Nick brought papers home with him from the consulate, which was actually true, though it was strictly against protocols.

She told Maier she copied them out while he was asleep.

While she mimicked his lies, he memorized everything of her.

Nick had come to know exactly the shape of her hips, so that just by holding out his arms he could remember her; he could close his eyes and instantly summon the feel of her hair on his cheek as she leaned over in bed to kiss him. He knew how she slept, one arm tossed carelessly above her head, her face as petulant in sleep as a fractious child; he knew how she tossed and kicked at night, tortured by her dreams. He knew her perfumes, and her breath, and her musk.