Istanbul (27 page)

The man from Whitehall put his hands behind his back and went on:

‘RAF and US bombers are flying sorties every day over Germany. The High Command are looking for reliable targets. Jerry’s factories, rubber, oil, gasoline, aircraft and ball bearings are top of the list. That’s why we took notice when we saw this last relay from Trojan, about the Messerschmitt factories near Vienna. Harris is eager to go after them. But what if this information is wrong? It could be a trap and a lot of our young flyers will pay for our mistakes with their lives. You see what I’m getting at?’

‘We broke up a major spy ring in Iraq based on the information we got from Trojan,’ Abrams said.

‘Well, we don’t know how effective those Iraqis were. It’s good practice to spice lies with truth. You give up a little to get a lot. We all know those games.’

‘What are you saying, sir? Do you think Nick here is wrong about his agent’s reliability?’
His
agent. Already Abrams was distancing himself.

‘Why would Maier have so much sensitive information from outside the Balkans in his possession? That’s the question.’

Donaldson’s secretary knocked on the door. The Consul General was free to see the visitor now. ‘To be continued,’ the man from Whitehall said. ‘Perhaps you chaps would like to think about what I’ve just said.’ He nodded cheerfully and breezed from the room.

After he had gone, there was a long silence. ‘I hope this isn’t going to turn into a fiasco,’ Donaldson said eventually.

‘I trust her,’ Nick said.

‘Yes, but can Bomber Command?’ Abrams said. It wasn’t the bomber crews he was thinking about, it was his career.

That night he stood at the window looking at the little garden with its lonely Judas tree. The drizzle had turned into a soaking downpour and rain dripped steadily from the eaves. He would not believe she had betrayed him; but then he could not afford to. That was the problem. He had too much invested in his own version of the truth to ever believe that he might be wrong.

CHAPTER 63

10 miles west of Moscow

Feoderev stared out of the window of the Zil limousine at the tall stands of birches either side of the road, their branches dusted with white. The ground was diamond hard and frost glittered on the brown earth. He kept his hand on the leather briefcase at his side, the numbness that he had felt since Natasha died finally dissipated.

The limousine raced along Kuzotovskiy Prospekt and the grim sweep of the western suburbs. They crossed the Moskva River at the Borodinskiy Bridge and headed towards the Kremlin.

He supposed by this time tomorrow his name would be broadcast on radio stations all around the world. He had never wanted fame and that was not really on offer, just the kind of notoriety all assassins of famous people achieve after their death.

His chauffeur went through a barred gate on the other side of Red Square and drove across the cobbles to a small courtyard with a private entrance. He got out and opened the door for him. Feoderev hesitated for a moment, to catch his breath. He hoped Natasha would be proud of him today.

He went in the usual way, to his office overlooking the armoury. The war cabinet meeting was not for another forty-five minutes. He planned to have a large shot of vodka before he went in.

He got into a cage lift and wrenched the gate closed. The lift rattled and groaned as it ascended to the third floor. He got out and strode down the carpeted hallway towards his office.

He stopped. There were half a dozen NKVD officers standing outside the door, holding automatic weapons. He turned around. Behind him was Beria himself, surrounded by three more uniformed NKVD guards.

So, he had been betrayed.

He knew what he had to do. He reached into his pocket, and the guards shouted a warning.

The safety was off. He brought the pistol straight to his mouth and placed the muzzle against the palate. He knew all along it might come to this.

He pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER 64

Walking through the massive armoured doors of the spice market was like walking into a fortress. The bazaar was an assault on the senses: a rich fog of smells, the shouts of merchants hawking to their customers, the dazzling mounds of yellow tumeric and golden cinnamon and pink saffron.

He was carried along in the crush of people and escaped up some worn stone steps by one of the gates. The steps led to a barred wooden door. His knock was answered by a robed Turkish servant and he led the way to Maier’s office.

He felt a blast of heat as he entered, the room warmed by two charcoal burners. It was opulent; thick green and russet-brown Anatolian rugs on the floor, tiles of blue Izmir faïence on one wall. A fretted window looked down into the bazaar.

‘My Englisher friend,’ Maier said, rising to his feet from behind a heavy walnut desk. There was no smile. He looked haggard.

‘Herr Maier.’

He reached into his drawer and brought out a bottle of
raki
and two glasses. ‘It’s a little early in the morning,’ he said.

‘I could do with one.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘So could I. Sit down, please.’

He pushed a glass across the desk. Nick added a little water, turning the clear liquid the colour of milk. It tasted of aniseed.

‘You wanted to see me?’ Nick said.

Maier lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. He seemed relaxed, but his hand was shaking. ‘You know who I am, don’t you?’

‘Tell me.’

‘I am a colonel in the Abwehr. I am sure you know this.’

‘You invited me here to tell me this?’

‘You know I did not.’

‘Then what is it you want?’

‘I want to get away from this war.’

‘You want to defect?’

‘They have left me no choice.’

The defection of an Abwehr colonel would be a stunning coup. Nick found it hard to contain his excitement. ‘When?’

‘That is yet to be decided.’

Nick wondered if this was another game. He drank some of the
raki
and considered. ‘Should we agree, you will of course be expected to share with us everything you know.’

‘Why not? It makes no difference now. The war is lost. I shall need time to get my family out of Germany.’

‘Is that possible?’

‘Everything is possible.’

‘What about your mistress?’

His eyes were suddenly hard and very bright. ‘What about her?’

‘Would you expect sanctuary for her as well?’

He smiled. ‘That would largely depend on you, Herr Davis.’

‘On me?’

‘Of course. We both know the reason.’

‘You have taken me by surprise,’ Nick said.

‘I should hate to be predictable.’

‘I will have to talk to my superiors.’

‘Of course you will. And your superiors will fall over themselves to help me.’

He was right. To have the head of the Abwehr’s Istanbul section defect would be a body blow to the Germans.

Nick finished his
raki
and stood up. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

Maier offered his hand. Nick hesitated, then shook it. ‘There is something you should know, Herr Davis. There is someone inside your consulate working for the Russians.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Recently we captured one of the top NKVD agents here in the Balkans. I have seen the transcripts of the interrogation.’ He handed Nick a brown manila envelope. ‘These are copies. But you should be careful who sees them. Take them straight to Herr Abrams.’

‘How do I know these are genuine?’

‘You don’t. But Abrams will.’

‘I’ll see he gets these. Good day, Herr Maier.’

‘’
Wiedersehen
.’

Maier’s servant showed him to the door and he descended once more into the bedlam of the market. He wandered the bazaar aimlessly for almost an hour, ignoring the imprecations of beggars and hawkers, sorting the pieces of the puzzle in his mind, planning his future with Siegfried Maier’s former mistress.

Abrams was a different man outside the consulate. At work he was austere, almost bloodless. Away from his office he appeared surprisingly ill at ease.

He lived in a vast and well-ordered house of dark mahogany furniture and book-lined shelves in the old quarter of Istanbul. The windows looked out over the Sea of Marmara. The parquet floor shone like glass and there was a pianoforte in the bow window. Nick wondered if it had ever been played.

The invitation to dine took Nick by surprise. It was a summons Nick could not readily refuse. The dinner conversation was stilted and painful; they had kept to the well-worn parameters of work, war and politics.

While Abrams droned on, Nick looked around the room and tried not to appear too distracted. He noted that the leather-bound books on the bookshelves had been arranged in alphabetical order by the author’s surname. There was a gold-framed portrait of King George V and several stern-faced photographs of a man and woman who were perhaps Abrams’s parents. He also noticed something he had not expected; a sepia photograph of a young woman. It was yellowed with age and the features were indistinct. It had been posed in a photographer’s studio with a pastoral scene painted on the backdrop.

‘Your sister?’ he asked him.

‘She was my fiancée.’

‘Your fiancée?’

‘She broke it off two days before the wedding. Never saw her again.’

‘How long ago did this happen?’

‘Long time ago, Davis,’ he said with a flash of irritation, bringing the subject to a close. But then he added, unexpectedly: ‘I knew I could not feel the same affection for a woman again. So what is one to do?’

What is one to do, indeed? Passion sounded quaint when it was couched in the formal language of the diplomat. So, the cold fish had a heart, after all.

What is one to do?

What will I do when Daniela leaves me?

It was after they had withdrawn to the drawing room and a servant had brought them coffee that Abrams finally raised the spectre that had hovered over them all evening; Maier’s allegations about a Russian spy inside the embassy.

‘Do you believe him?’ Nick asked.

‘It’s feasible.’

‘Did you read the documents he gave me?’

‘It’s impossible to verify them. Of course the contents disturb me. I am more concerned these days about our Russian friends than our German enemies.’

‘They wouldn’t want to hear that in Whitehall.’

‘That’s why they sent me to Istanbul.’ A petulant crease appeared between his eyebrows. ‘Your Mr Arazi from the Haganah once quoted me an Arab proverb, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. But he’s wrong, Davis. When this war is over you’ll see. The enemy of our enemy is no friend of ours. But no-one in Whitehall or Washington will listen.’

He had made himself too angry to sit still. He got to his feet and went to the sideboard, opened a silver cigarette case and took out one of the strong Turkish cigarettes he favoured. ‘Germany’s not our enemy; Hitler is. If we could help the Germans throw him out, it would all be over. We need a strong Germany to keep the Russians out of Europe.’

‘Can’t we help Maier then?’

‘Well. We have to find a way. Don’t we, Davis?’

CHAPTER 65

Nick had been to lunch with Donaldson and the United States military attaché at a restaurant on Son of the Slave Street. They were walking back along Istiklal. Nick turned up the collar of his coat against the biting wind. He stopped to light a cigarette and let Donaldson and the attaché go ahead. When he looked up, he saw a well-dressed Turk heading towards them from the opposite direction, holding a large briefcase.

There was something about the man that troubled him, something he could not define. He remembered Jordon and that sixth sense he’d spoken of just before they reached the beach at Dobruja.

He heard someone shouting his name from the other side of the street and turned around. Daniela was waving to him from outside a bank on the other side of the boulevard. He called to Donaldson but he and the attaché were already fifty yards ahead. He would catch them up.

The man with the briefcase had stopped.

‘Nick!’ Daniela screamed. ‘Nick, please!’

He turned towards her, fought his way across the chaos of trams and cars on Istiklal. ‘Daniela?’

The expression on her face scared him.