Lace II (45 page)

Again, Judy and Pagan, now joined by Mark, were conducted through the labyrinthine Palace. They inspected the Armory, the Treasury, and the Sultan’s Robes. Some of the rooms were carved, some were gilded, some were tiled, and some were elaborately painted. They peered through pierced screens at the Valide Sultan’s apartments, and shuffled with the other tourists along the pillared façade of the Black Eunuchs’ barracks.

The self-important guide reformed his group near the Harem entrance and, as he launched into another singsong speech, Pagan nipped to the far side of the group.

Suddenly, Pagan clutched at the shoulder of a Japanese tourist, who buckled under her weight. Groaning, Pagan slid to the floor. The tourist party crowded around her lanky,
prostrate body. The guide said, “Get back, get back, everybody!”

As soon as Pagan’s prearranged diversion had attracted the attention of the group, Mark and Judy slid unnoticed into the wide, dark doorway to the Harem. Above one of the doorways they had noticed a decorated grille. Between the top of the grill and the bottom of the stone arch of the gateway was a very small gap. Judy pulled off her shoes and climbed on Mark’s shoulders. She could just reach the grill.

Quickly, she scrambled up to the gap and wriggled through, then dropped into the open alley on the other side.

Mark followed her. They landed on a pile of builder’s rubble and trash, and lay quiet, listening, as Pagan was carried to the first-aid room. In the hot sun, Mark and Judy lay on the stinking heap of rubble until the noisy band of tourists had moved on, behind the guide.

Then Mark took Judy in his arms and held her tightly against him, as slowly he kissed her mouth with his sun-blistered lips. And, lying on the rubble, Judy felt that, for the time being, nothing else mattered.

Eventually, Mark said, “Do I make myself clear? It’s you I love, not Lili. It’s you I want and nobody else. On a scale of one to a hundred, I shall probably feel something for every beautiful woman I see. So would any other man. But you’re the woman I want to spend my life with.”

A bit later he said, “Why didn’t you ever write back?”

“I never opened your letters. It would have hurt too much.”

“That’s what I guessed. That’s why I wrote to Lili. I asked her to explain things to you, I asked her to tell you how I felt about you. But she never once replied.”

“I expect your letters met with the same fate as the rest of her fan mail, darling. We can find out later. But right now, we should be looking for Lili.”

Judy opened her purse and pulled out her expensive guidebook, which included a map of the Palace. Mark took it from her and pulled out a pen. “This place in on a hill. We won’t get lost, so long as we remember which way is up.”

“Famous last words. There are supposed to be over three hundred rooms in this place.” Cautiously, Judy set off down a
dirty, stone-flagged corridor, dimly lit by an overhead skylight. Rusting iron bars braced apart the crumbling walls of the passage.

Gloomy corridors twisted through a maze of small rooms, linked by staircases and dark passages and tiny courtyards, where the sun scarcely fell. Sometimes a wall shone with blue or sea-green tiles, patterned with flowers. Through barred windows, Judy noticed dusty unlit lanterns hanging over the tiny rooms of long-dead concubines. She peered into the ornate, gilt, crumbling mirrors that still hung on the walls, dimly visible streaks of silver against the gray gloom. In some of the rooms they explored, the shutters of the windows were falling off, in others there were cobwebs, rotting sheets of rose velvet, and tattered canopies.

As they peered into each debris-strewn room, Mark methodically crossed it off their plan, but after half an hour, he slowly realized that the tourist plan wasn’t accurate. He checked his bearings, the corridor they were in, the rooms leading off it. Then he rechecked, and after that he was certain the map was inaccurate. But he didn’t tell Judy that the map was wrong. He merely walked beside her in silence, noticing the frantic, mounting anxiety with which she searched each room.

Some corridors led down half-broken flights of steps to yet more rooms on lower levels of the Palace. Some rooms smelled damp, others of urine or rotting hangings. One room was alive with rats, which swarmed over the carcass of a dead cat.

As the sunlight turned golden in the late morning, Judy said, puzzled, “I’m sure we’ve searched this room before. I remember those tiles with cypress trees on them.”

They were standing in the middle of a small, open courtyard. On all four sides, the walls were pierced by small, screened windows. Below the windows were two iron-studded closed doors, and two doors that gaped open.

Mark said, “I’m sorry Judy, but the map’s inaccurate. I hoped we might stumble on a way out, before I had to tell you. We’re going to have a problem getting back, Judy. And we’ve nearly run out of matches.”

Mark, this is hopeless, we’ll never find her.”

“Yes, we will.” Mark took her in his arms and pressed her
trembling body against his. She felt protected and consoled. Then, suddenly, she sniffed a scent that was familiar. There was nothing stale, moldy, or rotten about it; it was a fresh, rich, delicious smell; it was Lili’s carnation bath oil.

Judy pulled away from Mark, then raised her hand and put a finger to his lips. She sniffed, then so did he. He nodded, understanding. They looked around them. Nothing moved in the silence. Mark shook his head, they must have imagined it.

Then, suddenly, they smelled carnations again.

*   *   *

Outside, Pagan waited anxiously in the shade of the courtyard. Judy and Mark had been gone for ages. Pagan had just telephoned Colonel Aziz about her suspicions, but, as Judy had said, the Colonel obviously regarded them as a pair of interfering, “hysterical” women. Judy had been right to try to get proof, before speaking to Aziz.

Pagan decided that she’d try to get inside the Harem to look for Judy. She’d just look around for ten minutes and, if she found nothing, then she’d come outside again and telephone Abdullah. He would fix Colonel Aziz.

She’d had a brilliant idea for gaining entrance to the Harem. The official tour of the Palace included a brief visit to the roof. She’d wait for the start of the next tour and then hide on the roof. Then, when the rest of the party had gone on, she’d find her way across the roof to the Harem quarters, and try to gain access from above.

Making sure that it was a different guide from the one she’d fainted in front of, Pagan carried our her plan and, when the party was shown that part of the upper Palace which overlooked The Divan Council Chamber of the Imperial Ministers, Pagan hid in an adjoining room until the party had moved on, then she climbed out of the window and onto the wide parapet.

The roof of the Topkapi Palace, a forest of little gold-topped turrets and rounded domes, looks like a small, enchanted, deserted city. Pagan was easily able to get her bearings because she could see landmarks that she recognized, in the city and the water around the Palace.

Without much difficulty, Pagan picked her way around the domes and turrets until she judged that she was above the
Harem quarters. This part of the building had been uninhabited since 1909. Some of the windows that led onto the roof were rotting, some were only just hanging on their hinges.

Pagan picked the most decrepit window she could find, smashed the glass with the heel of her shoe, then carefully put her arm through the smashed pane, undid the latch, and pushed the window open.

It led onto a small staircase. Pagan followed it down until it ended in a foul-smelling, dusty passage, littered with mice droppings. Pagan picked her way along it, and turned the corner.

From behind, an iron grip grabbed her arms and pulled her to a panting male body.

Pagan screamed. Her arms were mercilessly twisted.

*   *   *

Half an hour later, Mark and Judy had still seen no trace of Lili. “Let’s just look in that last passage, then we’ll give up and grope our way to the entrance,” Judy suggested.

“It’s no use, Judy,” Mark said reluctantly. “We’ve run out of matches, and we may have a problem just getting back. Let’s concentrate on that, huh?”

As they moved on, at the foot of the passage that Judy had wanted to explore, a heavy iron door opened a crack, and a dark eye looked out at the departing couple.

*   *   *

“Thank God he’s taken our gags off,” Pagan hissed to Lili. Both women were lying on a dirty, green-striped mattress in the corner of a bare room. Light came from two window apertures on the far wall; the window frames had long since rotted away.

“He knows no one could hear us, even if we yelled for help,” Lili whispered back. “Any idea where we are?”

“In the Harem quarters of the Topkapi Palace.” Pagan wriggled into a new position. Her hands and feet were tightly bound with rope; Lili’s wrists were handcuffed and her feet were also tied. The room was filled with rotting furniture that stank of cats’ piss, rat-nibbled brocade bolsters, stained mattresses, and semidecayed hangings which had been arranged in a bizarre, conversational group around a brass table-tray.

Lili listened for sounds of Tony’s return. In her four days of
captivity, she had grown acutely aware of his whereabouts, and since he had left the room five minutes ago, she had tracked him mentally, listening to his fading footsteps. Now she could hear nothing.

“Lili, how did he get hold of you?” Pagan wriggled until she was sitting more or less comfortably against the cobwebcovered wall.

“It was ridiculously easy. I went to the Bazaar, bought a carpet, then took a cab back to the hotel. Tony was waiting in the vestibule. He carried my carpet up to my suite. He said that Judy had sent for him to look after the baggage. I wasn’t surprised, because it had already been lost twice. Then Tony said Judy had asked him to tell me that she wanted me to meet her at the Saguchi Tea Room. He said she was seeing a diamond merchant there. He said she wanted to buy me a present. As we’d had that row, I thought Judy was trying to say that she was sorry.” Lili gave an exasperated sigh. “I’m so used to Tony acting as Judy’s hired muscle I never suspected there was anything wrong, until he laid me out in the taxi. With chloroform, I think. Anyway, some chemical on a pad that he shoved over my nose. And I woke up here.” She shivered. “He’s got guns, hand grenades, and God knows what in the next room. So, act obedient, Pagan, don’t give him anything to worry about. Who knows, maybe he’ll untie us.”

Suddenly, Lili jerked her head up and listened. She could hear Tony’s footsteps in the corridor outside. “I think something’s gone wrong with his plan, because he seems to be panicking and he’s reacting aggressively, like a cornered man.”

The rusting, iron-bound door crashed open and Tony glared at them. Gently, Lili smiled at him, in a way that she hoped was friendly without being seductive. “Won’t you please free our feet, Tony. I can’t feel my toes, the circulation has gone.”

“Maybe I’ll untie you later.” Tony walked toward the window, turning golden rose in the late afternoon sun. As soon as it was dark, they’d have to leave this place.

Pagan tried her luck. “Could we please have water, Tony?”

Tony grabbed a brass jug from the tray-table and walked over to Pagan. He drank from the jug himself, then held it
roughly to her mouth and carelessly jerked her head back, as if she were a rag doll. Pagan spluttered as the water ran down her face and stained her now grubby, black-and-white striped suit.

“Maybe you want something to eat, as well, Lady Know-It-All Swann?”

Tony moved to the low circular brass table, where a box of Turkish delight lay unopened. He ripped off the wrapper and took a piece of green, sugar-covered jelly out, walked back to Pagan and held it out.

Pagan said, “But I hate Turkish delight, Tony.”

“Open your mouth!”

“No, Tony, it’s okay, Pagan doesn’t want any.…”

“I said, open your mouth, Pagan.”

Reluctantly, Pagan parted her lips and Tony jammed a piece of candy into her mouth. Before she had time to chew and swallow the sickly sweetmeat, Tony rammed another piece into her mouth, then another, then another. Pagan gagged but he roughly held her mouth shut until she swallowed the Turkish delight.

“And now, some pastry.” Tony picked up a honey-soaked baklava cake off the dirty brass tray-table and stuffed it whole into Pagan’s mouth. She widened her eyes in helpless terror as he stuffed it down her throat, leaving her face smeared with honey and covered with flakes of pastry. Tears of anger began to dribble out of Pagan’s blue eyes.

Suddenly, Tony jumped up and listened. He grabbed the submachine gun from the corner of the room and ran to the glassless window.

*   *   *

As Mark and Judy dejectedly left the Topkapi Palace, they saw Gregg, Colonel Aziz and four minibuses packed with Turkish police, followed by armored cars.

“Thank God Pagan has called the police,” said Mark as they moved forward to meet Colonel Aziz.

Colonel Aziz clearly believed himself to be on a wild goose chase but, as he had been summoned by the friend of the King of Sydon, he knew he would have to give a perfunctory search.

The small group marched briskly through the gardens surrounding the Palace buildings, until Mark pointed to the
corner of the building behind which, according to their map, the courtyard lay.

“I thought we’d never get out of there alive,” Judy muttered to Mark as she looked up at the ancient stone walls. Above, she could see the amazing roof of the Palace: dozens of breast-shaped domes were crowned by gilt spires, while, between them, needlelike red and white turrets stabbed the sky. As she looked up, for one instant, Judy saw a face she recognized. “There he is! Look! Tony’s at that window!”