Paradise Spells Danger

by George B Mair

‘You are sure?’

  ‘We left her near the land walls and she was alive. Your girl phoned the police. Remember?’

  Kemal became vaguely confused. ‘I have heard nothing of what the police found. Just a few thoughts came into mind, but I don’t like thinking. Better to be sure. It would be interesting if she had been found dead.’

  ‘Ask some more questions,’ said Grant. ‘They help me to think.’

  ‘I had another thought. You sent Harry to Pierre Loti on a very vague mission. I wondered if you really expected him to find Mr. Goodenough.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he? The man stays there.’

  ‘Just a thought. And as I explained, David, I don’t think much. Always it is better to be sure.’ He changed the subject. ‘Even Turkish newspapers say that you are now one of the world’s more wealthy men. Seventy millions is a lot of money. I often ask myself how many people I could trust if I had so much money.’

  Grant almost laughed aloud. Mustafa was one of the richest men in the Middle East . . . if Turkey was really in the Middle East. ‘Whom do you suspect?’

  ‘Of what? Kidnapping the ladies? Or killing your chief? Or making trouble within the white house? Or planning to steal your fortune?’

  ‘Mustafa.’ Grant’s voice was suddenly very soft. ‘Let me speak for a moment. Let us forget that I have been able to help you. Or that the debt has been long ago squared by the way you have helped me at different times. Let us remember only that we are friends. So tell me, old friend, why did you kill Gaspard, and why did you try to divert suspicion towards Harry?’

  Kemal sighed with exasperation. ‘Harry had moved into action and was holding him. He could easily have given him a shot of poison. It was a temptation to hope that you didn’t see me.’

  Grant pointed to Kemal’s index finger. ‘Harry has never worn a ring like that. Suicide rings don’t appeal to Harry.’

  ‘And they don’t appeal to me either,’ said Kemal. ‘But I prefer death to prison. So if the police ever came I would take the sensible way out for any old man who has had a good life with few regrets. But of course you are right. I used it first time I interrupted. The poison takes a little while to act but I had promised myself that one day I would personally destroy that young man. It was a kind of vendetta. He had annoyed me when I last saw him a few months ago. A private matter which doesn’t affect this situation. And I did give you time to question him before using my ring. He was just a small thug, but very vicious, and among other things he insulted one of my grand-daughters while she was working in one of my hotels. A question of honour, David.’

  ‘As for making you think again about this man Harry I felt it was in your interests to be on guard. He could be treacherous. And your money might tempt him into being stupid.’

  ‘Mustafa,’ said Grant slowly. ‘We live strange lives and we have both learned to be careful. But did you really believe that I could possibly expect you to forget the entrance to a passage like that thing we saw tonight? Men like us, Mustafa, don’t forget detail like the entrance to our tunnel. And since people in the white house couldn’t possibly use it without co-operation from Topkapi staff I keep wondering whether the men we left behind will manage the next step and find the second tunnel leading to the white house itself. I even wonder why you don’t want me to know the name of the man who lives there or why you take money from him.’

  Kemal pressed a bell and ordered breakfast for two. ‘I always eat early,’ he explained. ‘It is a privilege of age to be able to live well without much sleep. You young men are different, and soon you will go to bed. I think you will find the entrance to your second passage and I am sure that your women will be rescued. But now I must say something. When I was kidnapped by these Kurds a few years ago you saved my life. You also recovered the money paid by my family and you were responsible for me discovering where it would profit my family most to invest in land developments about which even I knew nothing. You say that this debt has been squared, but Turks don’t think that way. You are my friend. Though sometimes it is better when friends don’t know what their friends are doing. Politics and religion and women can destroy anything between men. The man you want is a sort of political. He preaches a sort of religion. And he has unusual interests with women. But I told you the truth. I do not know him as Marius Brandt. The name is nothing. To me he is Jon Zweig, a Middle European, naturalised British, and carrying a British passport.’

  Grant now accepted that Kemal would tell him exactly as much as was necessary and no more. ‘We meet unusual people.’

  ‘Because we ourselves are unusual people. And so is your man in the white house. Though I was a little silly tonight. When I suggested that someone on Topkapi must be involved with those who use that passage I made only a clumsy effort to divert your thoughts from myself, because, on the whole, I would have preferred that you knew nothing of this part of my business. Nor, I must confess, did I expect you actually to discover the secret entrance. As a friend I felt that I had a moral duty to give you a clue as to where it might be found. But I never expected you to find it. So now I am in a slightly difficult situation.’

  Grant continued with his breakfast and wondered what would happen next. Mustafa might, even now, find the bonds of friendship too much of a drag. Much would depend on what sort of relationship he might have developed with the man in the white house. ‘The wisdom of Allah can solve all difficulties,’ he said. It was the least controversial comment he could think up!

  Kemal smiled sourly. ‘Sometimes I think that you are more than half a Turk yourself, David. You do things our way better than any other foreigner I know. Allah, however, seems to tell me that it would be wise to lift the curtain just a little on one of my own more private activities. In a nut-shell I receive and dispose of many of the more important gems or precious metals taken from jewel thefts throughout much of Europe and the Middle East. It is easy for me to filter the gold through the bazaar and I have methods for dealing with stones. It is a family business, but unfortunately that man Gaspard whom I killed tonight blundered into the secret, because one of my grand-daughters, who is a courier, was a little careless. He seems to have told his superior in the organisation. Probably the man Goodenough, and in any event news got through to your man in the white house. So he has been blackmailing me. His price is co-operation in using this underground passage and any other help he may demand from time to time. It is most tiresome.’

  He became almost embarrassed. ‘It is the first time in my life that any creature has ever put me into such a situation, and I can do nothing about it because he had been efficient. I have arranged with the key people in Topkapi that Zweig or Brandt may come and go as he pleases. Though it is understood that the passage will be used only for emergencies. My organisation has to provide him with girls when he orders. From time to time he demands a considerable supply of one sort of drug or another. And again we must give it to him in return for his silence. He undertakes that he will require co-operation from myself for about another two years and that thereafter I shall be “free.” As if that could ever be possible! Blackmailers never let up. But at least so long as I do as this man orders my third wife’s second daughter and my favourite niece will remain alive.’ He looked at Grant with eyes which were cold as a cobra’s.

  ‘He finds, I gather, that women are not only useful toys but valuable weapons. My girls are living as prisoners in a place which not even I have been able to locate. I had heard of it, of course, but thought it was only used in books. I never imagined that people like yourself could actually act upon information received from a sleeping victim. So now we know what must be done.’

  Grant rose to his feet. ‘Bed, I think. Harry and Frank will be here in less than four hours. But one last point. Is this man living at present in the white house?’

  Mustafa nodded with slow emphasis. ‘He has been followed everywhere he has gone for over eight months now. I could give you an hour by hour account of his movements and he is in the white house.r />
  ‘A bath will be ready in good time, David. And a girl to give massage. You must be strong and think clearly.’

  ‘Can you have a word or two before we meet the others? I’d like to work out a few details.’

  ‘While you are having the massage,’ said Kemal. ‘The other two will be given refreshments in the club.’

  Grant had trained himself to fall asleep almost at will. His room was dark and warm and he awoke to find one of Mustafa’s men serving an English breakfast. He was pale-faced with a small dark moustache, black hair plastered against his skull and kindly dark brown eyes. ‘Bath ready in quarter hour, sir.’ The grapefruit was sharply sweet, the porridge made with salt, and both eggs had been turned while frying. The bacon was fat-free and the marmalade branded ‘Old English.’ Bread had been home made and the porcelain tea-set bore the crest of a sultan. The thought crossed Grant’s mind that during years before Topkapi had been ‘restored’ it was long odds that at least some of the treasures had found their way into Mustafa’s hands. And who could have blamed him? The old man would have rated it as back pay with interest for a childhood and youth passed as a slave of the Black Eunuchs.

  Mustafa joined him while he was recovering from a round of deep massage given by a fat Circassian girl with the most perfect complexion and powerful fingers Grant had ever known. She disappeared as Mustafa snapped his fingers and Grant felt himself begin to switch on. ‘As I see it there is bound to be an advance warning system built into that passage. The last stretch I mean. Linking with the house. Probably a beam which triggers an alarm when broken. But it might even be linked to the second entrance door . . . which you say we shall find when we go back. Has the house a private generating machine?’

  Mustafa looked puzzled. ‘I think not. Difficult to be sure. Why?’

  ‘Well, I think we should have a break down in electricity supplies while we are busy. Can you arrange?’

  ‘It would be impossible to cut supplies off from a whole district without people asking questions and being difficult. I think I shall send a few men down with suitable uniform and cut the wires or something. For what time?’

  ‘If you are sure of finding the entrance let’s say noon. And continuing for at least thirty minutes. Then I want you to keep these and give them to your men when I say the word.’ He handed over a handful of nostril plugs. ‘Tell them to slip them far into their nostrils and breathe normally. But I would also like each man to carry his favourite weapon and we will restrict the assault party to yourself, Harry with Frank and myself. The others will be divided into two groups, one covering the front of the white house and the others arranged between the Shawl Gate and the second tunnel: I mean the one I haven’t seen yet. After that we play things by ear, but the object is to capture our man and later question him under Pentothal.’ Grant wrote the name on a piece of paper and gave it to the old man. ‘Get four or five packs of this and a few needles with syringes. And now the last detail. I take it that letters, telegrams and the like are delivered direct to the house.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Grant had already divided his Quiky-Shave supply of Spielman’s maxi-strength stink-bomb mixture between several small bottles and handed one to the Turk. ‘Fix one of your men up as a postman and have his nostrils plugged. Give him a letter and tell him to soak it with this fluid immediately before coming in sight of the white house. Have him post it through the letter-box, or more suitably, get him to push it under the door and organise timing for noon plus five minutes. With a bit of luck it will help to disorganise the household.’

  Mustafa slipped the bottle into a fold within his capacious pockets. ‘But now we join the others. They may be a little restless.’

  Harry was chewing a cigar and drinking raki while Frank was still busy with Cosmopolitan when Grant joined them in Kemal’s private room inside the club. ‘Hi!’ he said briefly. ‘Any news of Goodenough?’

  Harry laid down his cigar. ‘Did you figure there would be?’

  ‘Why not? He lives in Pierre Loti.’ Grant looked across the Bosporus for a moment, and at the friendly little black boats scuttling across the surface like so many important beetles. The sun was shining and the view magnificent. ‘Anyhow we found the entrance to a tunnel. Things move.’

  ‘This guy Goodenough,’ said Harry briefly. ‘I don’t get it. What for crissake did you expect me to do last night?’

  ‘Locate him,’ snapped Grant. ‘That was your job wasn’t it?’

  ‘Suppose I tell you I did locate him?’ Harry ‘was suddenly menacing. ‘But with a knife in his back and a letter tied round his neck. What would you say?’

  ‘I’d be surprised. What was in the letter and where did you find him?’

  ‘Then answering your questions in bloody reverse,’ said Harry, ‘I found him in my room at the Divan when I got back this morning around dawn. And the letter was kind of snappy. No mistake about the meaning.’ He handed over a piece of paper. “Tell Grant his women started work tonight.” ‘Easy to remember. So how come?’

  Grant felt that his voice seemed to come from a long way off.

  ‘How long had he been dead?’

  ‘Maybe six or seven hours.’

  ‘So what did you do with the body?’

  ‘There was blood on the sheets so I drew the blinds, put up the “Do not disturb” notice on the door, slept on the floor till after nine and left the joint by a back door. The guys in Reception didn’t see me and I aim to return like any other law-abiding citizen later this afternoon.’

  ‘The police will want to know why you left by a back door.’

  ‘They can ask. No one saw me.’

  Mustafa suddenly interrupted. ‘Don’t be so confident. In Turkey someone always sees everything. But I want to know how you travelled here.’

  ‘Taxi to Galata from Taksim. Walk to Dolmabahçe. Second cab to Gordon’s College Gates and a third to Kemal.’

  ‘You can’t easily be traced?’

  ‘That is my belief.’

  Frank interrupted for the first time. ‘What happened to that dame we dumped last night? Someone was going to phone the police.’

  ‘No hard information yet,’ said Kemal. ‘My men say that a police waggon stopped near where you left them and carried things away. But everything has been happening very quickly and we have all been busy. I shall know later today. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just a thought,’ said Frank. ‘I’m kinda worried. Krystelle’s my sister. Every separate fact helps to paint a picture.’ He lit a cigarette and sipped some more raki. ‘Other people got brains. But I got instinct. Know something? I got an instinct there ain’t nobody in that white house. I got an instinct this set-up stinks. I got an instinct the guy David was after got himself knocked off and that some other guy has taken over. The thing don’t add up.’

  Mustafa seemed suddenly interested. ‘When did you get that feeling?’

  Frank detested having to explain himself. ‘If David’s got the facts right it makes no sense knocking off Goodenough and trying to frame Harry. And that other guy, the Frenchman! He copped it while David was giving the truth routine. I got a hunch he didn’t die natural. Maybe someone fixed his drink and it took a while to act.’ He jabbed a finger towards Grant. ‘You couldn’t have bumped him because you were trying to make him sing. Or that’s your story for the moment. But you’re such a goddam liar.

  ‘And you, Harry boy.’ He leaned back and laughed. ‘For why would you eliminate Gaspard? Or did someone write a cheque?’

  He slumped back into his chair and scowled. ‘Mustafa’s our host so I got to be polite, but he’s as crook as a ram’s horn and runs a smart line of patter. And I got instinct. Gaspard didn’t die natural.’

  Mustafa became very bland. ‘What do you think, David?’

  ‘He died natural,’ said Grant. ‘Want a certificate, Frank? Or have you other names in mind?’

  ‘That Austrian doctor who happened to live handy where the snatch-gang off-loaded David. Maybe he got
round to using a truth drug on his latest house-guest and figured he’d try to lay hands on a coupla million towards his old age.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ said Grant. ‘How could the Austrian possibly do anything to Gaspard?’

  ‘For a big enough cheque,’ snapped Frank, ‘anybody’ll do anything to anyone. So either Harry, Mustafa or you knocked off Gaspard and that’s instinct.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘You just got brains.’

  Grant had never seen Frank in this mood before and he didn’t like it. There was more to Frank than a gun. ‘Suppose we quit talking and get along to Topkapi. Things begin to happen around noon.’

  ‘And you’d like us along?’ Harry was unexpectedly formal.

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘No briefing first?’

  ‘The tunnel situation’s been cleared up. We should be able to get into the house.’

  ‘And the girls?’ asked Frank.

  ‘If we find the man we’re after we do a Pentothal routine and get their address.’ He handed over two pairs of nostril plugs. ‘Stuff these up each side of your nose when I give the signal. A sort of mini-gas-mask. But they work.’

  ‘And if there’s nobody in the joint?’ Frank was unusually obstinate. ‘I got an instinct.’

  ‘Someone will be there,’ said Grant at last.

  ‘Like who?’ Frank was genuinely interested.

  ‘We’ll all be there, won’t we?’ said Grant. ‘Maybe that’ll be enough.’

  Chapter Ten – ‘So you lied’

  Topkapi was busy with visitors and tourists, but even with the Director in his office and official guides on duty Mustafa’s people managed to divert parties for long enough to enable the party of ten to slip down the staircase from the secret entrance. Neither Frank nor Harry made any comment, but Grant guessed that they were impressed.

  Just beyond the spot where Grant had turned back during the first visit Mustafa pointed to a well-worn stone apparently morticed into the wall on the left and checked his watch. Two cigarettes later, and at three minutes after noon, he leaned down, pushed the stone firmly and smiled at Harry’s surprise when a cavity came into view similar to what they had seen the previous evening. The ring, however, was larger, and lifted easily. Mustafa then leaned heavily against the further side of the wall and a whole panel began to rotate. The effect was to close the passage behind and divert traffic towards the left. The panel was exactly twice the width of the main passage, but so perfectly balanced that even a child could have moved it once he had the knack. In effect, however, it meant that there was now direct communication between the white house and the palace of the Grand Vizier. Communication with the outside world would be easy for anyone living in the white house, and Grant guessed that the man who had disappeared when working for the Admiral and Mr. Alvis would have been taken that way. The Grand Vizier’s Palace was a ruin. Few people showed interest in it and it was a natural escape route more preferable than any which led to the mysteries of Topkapi where guards were suspicious even of their own shadows.