Istanbul Passage

by Joseph Kanon

  “And nobody in the café saw anything? How many there were?”

  “Just the car. It’s possible there was only one. Scared off, perhaps, before he could take the money.” Already preparing his Unsolved folder.

  “But if it wasn’t, then it’s something more serious.”

  “More serious?” Gülün said.

  Frank looked up, slightly alarmed, wondering where he was going.

  “A thief, that’s one thing.” Leon stopped, hesitating, looking down at the folder in his hand. “What I keep wondering is, what if it wasn’t accidental, what if there was a motive, some reason.”

  “Some reason,” Gülün said, a monotone.

  “It’s just an idea I had,” Leon said. “Do you know what Tommy actually did here?”

  Frank raised his eyebrows.

  “Commercial Corp. was set up by the Board of Economic Warfare.” He glanced at Gülün, already lost in the bureaucratic chart. “His job was to buy up things so the Germans couldn’t—chromium, mostly. A good thing for Turkey, by the way—he’d pay top dollar just to keep it out of German hands. And to steer American business to friendly firms. He could also embargo unfriendly ones,” he said, dropping his voice.

  “Embargo them,” Gülün said, waiting.

  “That’s right. Stop doing business with them. If he thought they were too cozy with the Germans. That could be tricky—companies wanted to sell to both sides. Sometimes they had to, to keep going. An Allied embargo could put you out of business.”

  “Ruin you,” Gülün said.

  Leon nodded. “What occurred to me was, what if it’s somebody Tommy put out of business, somebody with a grudge.”

  “I see,” said Gülün, familiar with grudges.

  “Or somebody he was going to—”

  “But the war is over, Bauer Bey.”

  “But not all the embargoes have been lifted yet. And now, who else is there to sell to? Somebody’s just getting by and Tommy wouldn’t— well, it’s just an idea.”

  “No, it’s possible.” Involving Turks, people Gülün was more comfortable investigating.

  “If you like, I’ll make a list for you.” He held up the folder. “Any business that was affected. Might have a grudge. Or maybe would find it convenient to get Tommy out of the way. Would that be useful?”

  “Very useful,” Gülün said, dipping his head. “A kindness.”

  “Well, we want to find out who did this. Anything to help—”

  For an instant, he felt ashamed of his own smoothness. Gülün and his force grilling hapless businessmen, piling up reports. But not just any businessmen after all—German sympathizers, people who still deserved a little police scrutiny.

  “I think we’re getting someplace here,” Frank said, a dismissal. “How long to put together a list?”

  “Give me a day or two,” Leon said to Gülün. “A preliminary anyway.”

  Gülün dipped his head again. He picked up his hat as Frank started for the door. “His files,” he said to Leon. “They’re for these businesses only? Nothing else?”

  “Like what?”

  Gülün took a second. “Personal business, perhaps. Some other business,” he said, floundering.

  Leon shook his head. “Just Commercial Corp. Tommy kept a very clean desk.”

  Gülün turned this over, then nodded and followed Frank out. Leon sat back on the edge of the desk, leafing through the folder. Export licenses. A political report on the company’s owner, vague enough to be gossip. Tommy’s cover work. An idle thought: did he favor businesses dealing with the Soviets? But he would have, then.

  “That was good,” Frank said, coming back. “The embargoes. That should keep him busy. Not poking around here.”

  “The Emniyet are already doing that. They talked to me. They know about—what’s his name?”

  “Jianu. Yes, we’re cooperating with them.” He looked up. “They’re everywhere. They might actually get him.”

  “What makes you think they’d turn him over to us?”

  “Politics,” Frank said, sure of it. “They’re afraid of the Russians. And they should be. Find anything, besides the embargoes?”

  “There’s nothing to find. Either Tommy played his cards pretty close to the vest or somebody’s been cleaning house. Not even payment records.”

  “I have those,” Frank said casually.

  “You have them,” Leon said. “I’m not supposed to see? What exactly do you want me to do here? Be like Gülün, spin my wheels?”

  Frank adjusted his owl glasses. “Don’t get excited. I didn’t want things sitting around in Tommy’s office. Somebody might take a look. I’ve got them all here.”

  “What’s ‘all’?”

  “The other files. Operations.” A half smile. “You come up once in a while.”

  “You’ve been through them.”

  Frank nodded. “But I don’t always know what I’m looking at. Who the people are.” He opened the desk drawer, pulling out several folders. “Two sets. Regular Expenses, Special Funds. Some of those are in code, so we may never know.”

  “Why would he do that? I mean, here. At the consulate.”

  Frank turned. “Well, what occurred to me was that he didn’t trust people here. One of them, anyway. That’s why you’re here, remember?”

  They went through the expense books together, Leon identifying names when he could. Mehmet at the bar, Tommy no doubt one of several paymasters. A Turk in the Customs House. A few names from Robert College. He stopped. F. Gülün.

  “What’s our detective’s first name?”

  “Farid. I know. I thought he’d have a special interest. Try to get this wrapped up before anyone got too far into the books.”

  “Several payments,” Leon said, still looking at the sheet.

  “You know what these people are like. They’re all on the take over here.”

  “No more than anywhere else,” Leon said. Beat cops in Chicago, aldermen in South Boston, but only foreigners corrupt.

  “No offense. I didn’t know you’d gone native,” Frank said lightly, trying to ease out of it. “Just part of the culture, isn’t it? A little baksheesh?” A Groton drawl, rubbing his fingers together.

  “And what about us? We’re the ones paying.”

  Frank looked over his glasses. “Point is, he took it.”

  “All right, but what did he do for it?”

  Frank shrugged. “Parking tickets. Maybe some off-duty surveillance. Who the hell knows? Ask him.”

  Leon shook his head. “He’ll think he’s a suspect. He’s easier to play this way.”

  “If he thinks we don’t know.”

  “He’s in a spot. He knows what Tommy was doing—he worked for him. So he knows the embargo list is bullshit. But he’s not going to say anything, just keep his head down. They don’t like crooked cops over here, either, believe it or not. He’d be out.”

  Frank raised his head to say something, then let it go and turned back to the expense sheet. “Here’s one of the codes. Twelve-two. A date?”

  “No, the date’s in the left column.” Two hundred and fifty liras. Same cost as the boat he’d hired last September. Another look at the date. “It’s me.”

  “Twelve-two?”

  Leon looked at it, a crossword clue. “L.B.,” he said finally. “Twelve in the alphabet. Like a kids’ game. Christ, Tommy. See if it works for the others.”

  “And then what?” Frank said. “The question is, who the fuck’s J.M.? Or any of them?”

  “Let me look at it,” he said, tracing his finger down the column, looking for whoever had supplied Alexei’s papers. Probably no more than a month ago. When had the operation started on the Romanian side? Somewhere between a hundred and two hundred dollars would be about right, in Turkish liras. He looked at the coded entry. Not initials he recognized, a delivery he’d made. How could he do this without the Jianu file?

  “Where’s the operation file on our guy?”

  Frank looked at h
im, not saying anything.

  “There must be one. Do you want me to do this or not? I need to check a date.”

  Frank waited another minute, then got up and went to his desk. “It stays here. You can take the others, but this stays here.”

  Leon opened it. All laid out. The contact number Tommy must have called when the storm hit. The army transport landing permit, with a routing from Istanbul to Casablanca, so no one in Greece had been involved, a plus. An address in Tophane for Enver Manyas, photographer, presumably the forger, consistent dates.

  “Are you going to read over my shoulder or let me do this?”

  Frank moved away. “Who else knew Jianu was coming? That’s what we’re looking for.”

  And anything that might need to be taken out, references to twelve-two. But there weren’t any, not here. Tommy was supposed to be the pickup. So why ask Leon? But then two people wouldn’t have been dead, Leon’s body what the police would need to close the case.

  “And the codes,” Frank said. “Just to keep things neat. So we know where we’re spending our money.”

  Leon nodded. “I’ll need the payout sheets. I’ll bring them back.”

  “You understand, it’s not that I don’t—”

  “One other thing? Some of the operations that went wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Operations that didn’t work out. This one didn’t. I want to see if there’s a pattern. Somebody who crops up.”

  Frank stared at him. “Somebody here,” he said, a trace of excitement in his voice, the hunt that interested him. Suspecting everyone now, except Tommy.

  Leon kept leafing through the file, hoping for a match, but most of the initials stayed unclaimed, Tommy’s secret. Manyas had been a lucky exception, mentioned because he’d already done work for the unit before Tommy arrived. Passports in several names. Leon memorized the address.

  Messages from Bucharest sent by diplomatic cable, part of the chain that got Alexei to the coast for the handover to Tommy. Leon traced the route in his mind. Just as Alexei had said. Infinitely easier for the Russians to snatch him on the coast, if they had known. Which meant they hadn’t. And impossible once he was on army transport. Istanbul would be the last chance.

  There was a brief bio in the file, Alexei’s time with Antonescu, juggling the Soviets after he was deposed, finally running and hiding, the first approaches to the Americans, the story Leon already knew. Nothing about Străuleşti, either still not known or scrubbed from the file, our butcher now.

  Number 15 was the second shop down from the hamam near the Kiliç Ali Pasa Mosque in Tophane. The street was flat, behind the shipping terminals, and the shop was scarcely wide enough to fit a door and a display window. The dusty framed photographs covered the usual rituals of family life: soldiers stiff in new uniforms, secular weddings, solemn young circumcision boys in round hats and white satin cloaks. In some of the older pictures the men still wore fezzes, steamed and pressed for the camera, already artifacts. According to a small sign, Enver Manyas offered a choice of backdrops—a garden pavilion, Seraglio Point, Bosphorus views—but most of his customers seemed to have opted for less expensive plain canvas.

  A bell tinkled when Leon opened the door, bringing out a short, round-shouldered man with wire-rimmed glasses. At first a look of surprise, then a guarded dip of his head.

  “Efendi.”

  “Merhaba. Manyas Bey?”

  The man nodded, still wary.

  “I have some work for you. For Mr. King,” Leon said in Turkish.

  Manyas stared at him, keeping his face composed, noncommittal.

  “We’re alone?” Leon said.

  Another nod, waiting. Leon reached into his pocket, pulling out Alexei’s passport.

  “Mr. King is dead,” Manyas said.

  “Yes. I’ve taken his place.” He held out the papers. “Are you interested? Same price.”

  Manyas glanced at the passport. “He didn’t use it.”

  “Change of plans.”

  “Romanian. Traveling through Turkey. You have a new picture?”

  “Same picture. Now a Turk. Traveling to Greece.”

  Manyas looked up at him, putting this together, the man in the picture still here.

  “How long will it take you?”

  Manyas examined the picture, fingering the raised seal. “Still a Jew?”

  “If that makes it easier for you.”

  “It’s of no consequence to me. It’s a matter of the spacing. The length of the name. A Turkish Jew. Barouh. Sayah,” he said, offering names.

  “Barouh,” Leon said, ordering up an identity.

  “First. Izidor. Nesim. Yusuf.”

  “Nesim, I guess.”

  “So. Nesim Barouh. Going to Greece. Same everything else?” He looked up. “Same man?”

  “Same everything else,” Leon said. “How long?”

  “The seal has to be matched. On the photo.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “There is some hurry?”

  “Half now? Half tomorrow?” Leon said, taking out his wallet.

  “And the other one?” Manyas said, watching him count out the bills.

  Leon looked up at him.

  “Of course, I understand now it’s not— But the work was done. You’ll pay me for the work? Two hundred liras outstanding. If I hadn’t done the work, but as it is—”

  Leon waited.

  “A moment,” Manyas said, going to the back room and returning with an envelope. “I thought, you know, when I heard, there’s no money now. But it’s special paper for these, an expense. And the black market—it’s not possible for this one. Not now.”

  Leon took the passport out of the envelope. American.

  “You can see the engraving is excellent—no difference.”

  Leon opened it. Russell Brooks, born Pennsylvania, an engraved stamp over the man in the picture. Tommy. Leon stared at it, trying to keep his face blank. Something Tommy had ordered for himself. He could feel the quiet in the shop, suspended, like dust.

  “Two hundred?” he said, to say something.

  “It was agreed. No studio work, so a saving. Duplicate prints. If we hadn’t been able to use the same picture—”

  “The same picture?”

  “As the others. The other two.”

  “The other two,” Leon said slowly, feeling his way. “Different names?”

  “Yes, of course, different.”

  “Tommy had three passports?” Leon said, thinking out loud.

  “It’s useful, no?” Manyas said simply. “In his work.”

  Leon looked back at the passport. “Does he owe for them too?”

  “No, no, that was last year. Just this one now. If you want—as a favor, no charge, since he’s dead—I can change the picture. The passport is good work. A shame to waste—”

  “I’ll let you know,” Leon said, putting it back in the envelope. “I’ll bring the two hundred tomorrow. I don’t have that much on me now. That all right?”

  “Of course,” Manyas said, bowing his head, his voice formally polite, like a dealer in the Bazaar. “And whom do I have the pleasure of serving now?”

  “It’s still Tommy. It’s still his account.”

  He stood outside for a few minutes clearing his head. Why did anyone need another passport? To be someone else. To cross a border as someone else. But Tommy was going home, as himself. Unless something went wrong at Bebek. Prepare for the unexpected, an ace up your sleeve if you had to get out fast. As someone else. But he hadn’t picked it up yet, so he’d have had to use one of the old ones. Which meant they were still around somewhere, more Tommys. Not in his office desk. At home, then, with Barbara? He wondered if she knew. But no passports had been made for Barbara. If Tommy had needed to bolt, get out of Turkey, he was planning to do it alone.

  Leon took a taxi to his bank in Taksim and drew out enough money to cover Manyas and the trip to Edirne, then walked down Tarlabaşi Caddesi to a garage he’d used
before. His car needed a tune-up. If he brought it in did they have another he could use for a day or two? Who had cars to spare these days? But somehow, for a fee, they could. He thought of Frank, smug, the land of baksheesh after all.

  He walked back uphill to the consulate, feeling the passport in his breast pocket. Why an American passport, something conspicuous? But what else could Tommy be? A Bulgar in a fleece hat? Jianu could shift nationalities in a minute, a chameleon. Tommy could never be anything else. A hopeless defector, if it came to that. Where would he go, Russell Brooks?

  At first, a jarring second, he thought it was Alexei leaning over Tommy’s secretary’s desk—the same cropped gray hair and straight military back, the jacket in fact a uniform, how Alexei must have dressed once. Voices pitched low, private. It was only when they heard him at the door and turned that Leon could see his face, fleshy, almost without definition, not like Alexei at all, except for the gray.

  “Mr. Bauer,” Dorothy said, jumping a little, flustered.

  A closer look now, navy jacket filling out at the waist, too old for active duty, but evidently not for making a pass. Dorothy was in her thirties with glasses and hair rolled up on top, maybe glad of the attention.

  “My husband,” she said.

  “Jack Wheeler,” he said, offering a hand. “Didn’t mean to— Just got in from Ankara so thought I’d stop by.”

  Leon nodded.

  “Jack’s Naval Attaché,” Dorothy said, explaining.

  “In Ankara?”

  “I know,” Wheeler said, a familiar question. “Not too many ships. But lots of admirals. You have to be where the orders are cut. But I get to go back and forth, so we pass in the night once in a while,” he said, head toward Dorothy, who looked away at this, flustered again. “Navy wives. At least I’m not at sea. And once they wrap things up here at Commercial Corp.—how long’s your brief?” What everyone in the consulate wanted to know.

  “They didn’t say.”

  “One thing when the war’s on. You do your part. But now they’ll be bringing new girls over, let the wives go home. You’ll be in Ankara before you know it.”

  “Yes,” Dorothy said evenly.

  Wheeler smiled. “She says you might as well be in Omaha. But at least the streets are safe. Hell of a thing, a man getting shot like that. An American.”