Istanbul (21 page)

But each time she left the illusion of their intimacy would shatter and jealousy worked in him like toothache. He envied Maier even though they were both deceiving him; his rival had her with him when he woke in the mornings and she was a part of his life each day.

He wanted all of her and he could never have all of her.

He was never sure what went on behind those enigmatic golden eyes.
I can’t get there with Siggi,
she told him once after they made love.

So what do you do? Do you pretend?

Of course, she said brightly, and all his own insecurities glowed like hot coals, and he wondered afterwards if she ever pretended with him. How would he ever know?

He would dream about her often, woke with a dull ache every morning when he reached for her and found she was not there beside him. He was at war with himself; a part of him wanted to find a way to take her away from Maier, while his profession and his duty demanded that he do everything possible to keep her under his enemy’s roof and in his enemy’s good graces.

Nick was working late in his study, reading through a file he had brought home from the consulate. Operation Cicero was Nick’s own plan; Jan Dumitrache now operated a communist cell in Dobruja and had made contact again through a Turkish businessman called Omar Kalmaz. He wanted the British to supply him with a radio and explosives. Special Operations in Cairo had sent a sabotage expert called Jordon – the man Nick had met in the basement of the Bucharest legation – and Nick planned to land him, with a trained radio operator, south of Constanza, so they could link up with Dumitrache’s cell.

He had not seen Daniela for weeks; she had sent a message saying she would come tonight. When he finally heard the sound of her footsteps in the alleyway, he abandoned his papers and went out into the garden to unlock the door. As soon as she was inside, they threw themselves at each other. He carried her up the stairs to the bedroom and they fell onto the bed.

They made love quickly, urgently, the separation and its unbearable physical longing overpowering them both.

It always felt like coming home.

He looked like a little boy when he slept. She watched him, overcome with a wave of sadness. They had this moment, and it was all they could ever have. But why can’t I have more? Does it have to be this way?

She kissed him on the forehead and got out of bed, his wetness leaking between her thighs. She wished it could one day be a part of him growing inside her. But that could never happen.

She put on one of his shirts and slipped out of the room.

He opened his eyes, wondered how long he had been asleep. ‘Daniela?’

She appeared at the bedroom doorway. ‘Nick.’

‘Where were you?’

‘I went to get some water,’ she said and handed him her glass. She lit the candle on the bedside table and sat down on the edge of the bed. She was wearing one of his shirts; the sleeves were too long and the shirttails reached almost to her knees. She looked adorable.

She climbed onto the bed and sat astride him, the fingers of one hand curled among the hairs on his chest.

‘I didn’t know where you were. Was I asleep long?’

‘Just a few minutes.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

They started to talk about England, as they often did; Guildford was as exotic to her as Bucharest was to him.

Their lives could not have been more different. She went to school down cobbled lanes and learned Hebrew and the Talmud, while greybeards chanted the Torah from dusty schoolrooms and local Romanian boys jeered and threw rocks at them from the other side of the street.

Nick grew up with canes and cold showers and muddy football fields, coming home only for Christmas and summer holidays.

She was incredulous, could not imagine it. Nick had thought that going to boarding school was normal until later, when he met people who had been inseparable from their families all their lives. What he had endured seemed mild compared to a world where you could be beaten for having another religion.

‘My family lived in the same house in the Jewish Quarter for over a hundred years,’ she said. ‘My father broke the tradition when we moved to the Boulevard Bratianu. It was a big family scandal.’

‘Your family were Orthodox?’

‘When I was a little girl my uncles wore kaftans with white stockings and fur-rimmed hats. My father was the first to change.’

‘I can’t imagine you as a little girl.’

‘I was as skinny as a pole and I had big teeth.’

‘I bet all the boys were crazy about you.’

‘There was only one.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘He was the first boy I ever kissed. I was fifteen years old and he took me into the doorway of a little bookshop on the way home from school. When he put his tongue in my mouth I thought I was going to suffocate. hated it. I did it because I wanted him to like me.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘I don’t know, he moved away. Let’s talk about something else. Tell me about London and the Houses of Parliament. I’ve seen pictures. There’s a big clock.’

‘Big Ben.’

‘Can you see it from all over London?’

‘No, it’s not that big.’

‘I’ve often imagined what it would be like to go there. My father went to the Sorbonne in Paris, he promised to take me with him to France and London but . . . perhaps I will still go. One day.’

‘When this is over –’

‘This war will never be over. It will go on forever.’

‘You don’t have to wait for the war to end. I told you, I can get you a passport and a visa, I can get them for you now if you want.’

‘You can get them for me but not for all those people on the
Struma
, and God knows how many since then.’ Her face softened and she took his hand in both of hers. ‘Don’t ever regret meeting me, will you?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Things happen.’

What did she mean by that? Sometimes loving this woman was like being in a room full of mirrors. She loved him but did not want to be with him, and she would never talk about the future.

She would never talk about Maier either.

In the past two years he had come to know a great deal about him. He knew, for instance, that his various business interests in the Balkans – the department store in Bucharest, the hotel in Sofia, the spice warehouse here in Istanbul – were genuine businesses, for Maier came from a wealthy and aristocratic Prussian family.

Before the war he had served in the navy under Canaris and he held a doctorate in Balkan studies from Heidelberg university. He had been sent to Istanbul under cover by Canaris himself as a hemp buyer.

It was the best kind of cover, to have a paying job and to be seen doing it. The trouble was, Maier did not look like a hemp buyer. Those patrician features, the grey wings of hair at his temples and the ice-blue eyes gave him away. They made him look every inch what he was, an autocrat, a man accustomed to wealth and power.

Nick knew he travelled frequently between Berlin and Istanbul, taking sensitive documents by hand to Canaris himself at Abwehr headquarters. He knew, also, that he had safe houses in Taksim and Istiklal, and agents in Bulgaria, Istanbul, Ankara, Baghdad, Palestine and Damascus.

But of Siegfried Maier himself he had learned very little. Daniela would not talk about him. ‘It does not help the war,’ she said, ‘and it will only hurt you.’ He learned nothing of their life together. He knew that Maier had a birthmark on his right hip, that he liked to drink beer with his dinner and that he preferred Turkish cigarettes to German. But what did they talk about, how did they live, did they ever laugh together?

‘What’s it like?’ he asked her. ‘With him.’

‘Why do you ask me these questions? What do you want from me?’

‘You never talk about him.’

‘What do you want me to say? It only upsets you. Why do you want to torture yourself?’

‘I just want to know, that’s all.’

‘He’s kind to me, and he’s gentle. Of course I feel something for him. What do you think I am?’

‘Does he ever ask about me?’

‘Of course.’

‘And what do you tell him?’

‘I tell him you love me.’

‘And what does he say to that? Does he ever suspect you’re playing a double game?’

‘Whatever lies you’re making up for him in those envelopes are too good.’ And then she had kissed him, as she always did when she wanted to distract him. ‘I have to go.’

He hated those words. There was a trick he played on himself whenever they were together, he would imagine they were lovers without the countries and complications that stood between them. But as soon as she said those four words the ephemeral nature of their love affair would plunge him back into cold reality.

He already loved her far too much.

‘Do you have to go?’

‘Siggi will be furious if I stay out all night.’

‘You’re only doing your job,’ he said, bitterly.

‘If I sleep with you, I’m doing my job. If I don’t get back until morning, he may think I’ve fallen in love with you.’

‘Have you?’ he said and held his breath.

She did not answer. She leaned over the bed and kissed him on the mouth. He reached up and caught her around the waist, tried to pull her back down onto the bed. She laughed and pulled away, replacing the strap of her brassiere over her shoulder.

‘I really have to go.’

‘Stay,’ he said, and the way he said it, she could not make a joke of it. She pulled on her silk stockings.

‘I can’t.’

‘You don’t have to go back.’

‘If I don’t, who will spy on the Abwehr for you?’

She slipped out of the moonshadow, and his mistress was revealed in her underwear and silk stockings. He watched her, tried to preserve this moment, keep it indelibly in his memory for those times when it was over.

‘Does he think you have me completely fooled?’

‘He says that women are your weakness,’ she said.

‘Not all women. Just you.’

He sighed at the sinuous line of her spine as she shrugged her dress over her head. Watching her dress was both an erotic and a depressing experience, for each time was a small departure, a rehearsal for the final goodbye.

‘Be careful,’ he said.

‘He doesn’t suspect a thing.’

‘If he ever finds out you are spying on him, he’ll hurt you.’ He couldn’t bring himself to say:
He’ll kill you.

She tossed her mane of hair, smiling. ‘I’m always careful.’

‘What if he comes home one day and the safe’s open and you haven’t had time to put away his papers?’

‘I can hear his car drive up outside. I always have time to put things away.’

‘What if one of the servants walks in?’

‘I always lock the door.’

She finished dressing and he followed her downstairs. Outside, a crescent moon floated in a cold star-bright sky. The night had passed too quickly; there was never a way to hold back the night.

He walked with her down the hill towards the station. Soon the fruit market would come alive; the vendors were already setting up their stalls in the darkness. A lorry passed, piled high with melons, its headlights flickering on the walls as it bounced over the cobblestones.
Hamals
passed them, headed for another long day of back-breaking labour, bent double under towers of wicker panniers.

He found her a taxi outside the spice market. The driver was asleep on the front seat and Nick leaned in and shook him by the shoulder to wake him. ‘When will I see you again?’

‘Soon.’

She climbed got into the taxi.

He leaned in the window. ‘When will I see you again?’

‘I love you,’ she said and kissed him. He stared after the red tail lights long after they had disappeared over the Galata Bridge. It was the first time she had ever said that to him. Or had he imagined it?

He walked back up the hill, the mosque of Süleyman crouching atop the hill like a great beast. The scent of her stayed on his clothes all day.

CHAPTER 48

The fishing boats rolled on the swell below the quay, but the fishermen never lost their balance, arranging their catch on wooden trays on the deck. Passers-by shouted down their orders and tossed down their coins and a bag containing a live or filleted fish would be throw back up.

If there were not enough customers the skipper, Constantin, would put a live fish in a tin can and throw it on the deck where it bounced and clanged, causing a little crowd of onlookers to gather at the rails.