Istanbul Passage

by Joseph Kanon

  “With your passenger? No, not advisable. If you want him alive. What’s in Cyprus?”

  “The British, not the Greeks. I can pass him on there. You must know a boat in Antalya. You got people out there.”

  “From people like him.”

  “Any boat. That doesn’t need a passenger list. We were never there. No one will know.”

  “And where were you all this time?”

  “Ankara. On business. The embassy will say so, if anybody asks. They’ll have to, if this works.”

  “If.”

  “Nobody’s expecting it. Nobody here. Nobody on Cyprus. Nobody’s looking for him there. Or in Antalya.”

  “No. Who makes such a trip? In winter?”

  “He’ll die if he stays here.”

  “That’s nothing to me.”

  “Then don’t do it.”

  Mihai looked over at him.

  “I’ll get another car.”

  “The element of surprise,” Mihai said, dismissive. “An overrated strategy. A car’s a valuable thing in Istanbul.”

  “You can have mine if I don’t bring it back.”

  “And you’ll be here to give it to me.”

  “I’d trust you with my life. You can trust me with a car.”

  “Oh, your life. When did I become such a person? That you’d do that?”

  “When,” Leon said, not worth answering. He waited. “It’s just a car.”

  Mihai looked at him for a minute, then began writing something on a piece of paper. “Don’t play that card too often,” he said, writing. “It loses value, you do that.”

  “Not if it’s life or death.”

  “His life.”

  Leon said nothing.

  “You know Üsküdar? Halk Caddesi. The first big intersection up from the ferry, where the road splits. On the right after the post office. The garage is in the first block. If you reach the mosque you overshot it. Give them this. In Antalya, the old port. The café across from the boat basin, the big one. Ask for Selim. I’ll make the call.” He handed him the paper. “Don’t ask again. For him. If he dies—” He waved his hand.

  They looked at each other for a second, not saying anything.

  “Take extra gas. In the mountains not so many pumps. Mules. If you get to the mountains. Agh.” He made a what’s-the-use sound and walked over to the window.

  “How long will they have to stay?” Leon said, looking over his shoulder to the ship.

  “Until I can pay. Aciman sends food, so they don’t starve, but the conditions—like vermin. We only have the ship till the end of the month. The lease. Then what? Tell them to go back to Europe? To that hell?”

  “You don’t own it?”

  “Nobody sells ships since the war. And who has that kind of money? So you lease. Not so cheap, either. Fifty-five thousand pounds—Palestinian, not Turkish. Sterling.”

  “Then pay the bribe. Tell your people it’s an emergency.”

  “Everything in Palestine is an emergency.” He moved away from the window. “Well.” He looked up. “The car’s an old Horch. Don’t stop in the villages. Everyone will want to look.”

  They had lunch at a fish restaurant underneath Galata Bridge, Kay facing the old city, the postcard view of slender minarets and domes behind a kite tail of circling birds. It was too cold to eat outside but they had got a window table, and Leon twisted in his seat to point out landmarks. The New Mosque, then Süleyman’s farther up the hill. They were drinking coffee, lingering, hoping the sun would come out, the water in the Golden Horn steel gray.

  “What else?” he said.

  “Well, this,” she said, indicating the bridge, low on the water. “How do boats get in and out?”

  “They swing it open at night. Four a.m., something like that, when there’s no traffic. All the boats pass through then.”

  For a second he imagined Mihai’s ship, limping in from Constancia before dawn, some tender guiding it to a dock to rot and wait, not even a minaret visible in the dark. People who’d been in the camps. Slop buckets.

  “What else?”

  “Tell me about you.”

  “That again. First you. What was your name? Before Bishop.”

  “O’Hara.”

  “Scarlett.”

  She shook her head. “Bronx Irish, not even lace-curtain. My mother was a maid. But my father was a cop, so there’s a step up, they thought. Until the war. The first one. He was killed a week after he landed. I think it broke her heart. Anyway, she had to go back to work. Stairs, all day. She said she never wanted to see another stair in her life. But she made sure I didn’t, so I owe her for that. She paid for the school.”

  “Secretarial school.”

  “Well, it was that or the nuns. I didn’t see myself as a nun.”

  He looked at her. “No.”

  “I meant the calling.”

  He smiled. “Ah.”

  “Stop,” she said, but pleased, looking out again toward the water. “Tell me something. The truth. Did it matter it was me? Could it have been any—?”

  “It wasn’t. What kind of question is that?”

  She reached over, touching his fingers, barely meeting them on the tablecloth. “I mean, you can say. I would have anyway. I didn’t expect—”

  She stopped, looking past him, suddenly alert, her mouth open. A shadow moved over the table.

  “Mr. Burke,” she said, snatching her hand back, trying not to be noticed, like someone caught biting her nails.

  “I thought it might be you,” Ed said, disconcerted too, glancing at the hand. “Leon.” He nodded at him. “Showing Mrs. Bishop the sights?”

  “The Cook’s tour. Frank’s idea,” Leon said, but all of them awkward now, Ed looking from one to the other. “You? Late lunch?”

  “Galip,” Ed said absently, his mind back a minute ago. “Exports. Once a month. I don’t know why.” He made a show of checking his watch. “I’d better be getting back, though.” He looked at Leon. “I hear you’ve been requesting files,” he said, nervous, unable to hold back.

  Leon raised his eyes.

  “I was just curious. You know, if anything’s come up. Someone at the consulate. You know, what people say.”

  “I’m auditing payment reqs. Outside payments.”

  “Outside? Then you think—”

  “Ed, I don’t think anything. I’m just going through the books. Honestly.”

  “Well,” Ed said, backing off, literally taking a step. “It’d be nice to know. Before Barbara leaves.”

  “She’s leaving?”

  “Next week. They got her a priority rating for a flight. She doesn’t sleep.” He turned to Kay. “Well, you can imagine. She says the sooner the better. We’re giving a party at the club. If you can make it.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m going back tomorrow.”

  “Leon?”

  “I’ll try. I may be in Ankara.”

  “Ankara?” Ed said.

  Kay looked over, not saying anything.

  “Just for a few days.”

  “Oh,” Ed said, wanting to ask more. “Well,” he said, another minute, waiting. “I’ll see you back at the shop then.” A leave-taking nod. “Mrs. Bishop.”

  “Kay.”

  “Kay,” he said, awkward again, a glance down at her hand, the coffee cups, as if the tablecloth were a rumpled sheet.

  “Well, that was fun,” she said, taking out a cigarette after he’d gone, her hand shaking a little. “Christ, what am I doing?”

  “It’s just Ed.” He lit it for her. “We’re having lunch. That’s all.”

  “And that’s what he thinks?”

  “Nobody cares what Ed thinks.”

  “What was that about Ankara? I can’t see you there.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t, that’s all. Everybody’d know in five minutes.”

  “You can’t keep coming here.”

  “No.”

  “So how did you think—?”

  “I did
n’t. If I were thinking, I wouldn’t be here. Christ.” She drew on the cigarette. “When did you decide to go to Ankara? Last night?”

  “I’m not. I just want Ed to think I am.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s none of his business.”

  “Or mine?” She looked away. “Where are you going?”

  “Somewhere else.”

  She was about to speak, then looked down. “When?” she said, a different question.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “So we have today.”

  “What would you like to see? Haghia Sophia? The Grand Bazaar?”

  “Somewhere where we won’t run into anyone. I’m not good at this.” She looked again at the water. “I promised myself I wouldn’t think about what happens next and now it’s all I can think about.”

  Leon reached for her hand. “I’ll come to Ankara.”

  She moved it back, skittish. “And meet where? The Ankara Palas? With everybody and his uncle in the bar.” She made a wry face. “It’s funny. It’s just what my mother said would happen. When I moved out. ‘The next thing, you’ll be meeting some man in a hotel room.’ That was her idea of the worst thing that could happen to me. And here I am.”

  “Here you are.”

  She looked at him, then smiled. “And we have the day. You pick. Somewhere you like. I don’t care who sees.”

  They went up to the Eminönü piers and caught the ferry for Üsküdar, standing outside, her hair flying back in the breeze. At the landing, men in cloth caps drinking tea looked up at her, foreign women a rarer sight on this side. There were more headscarves, even veils, overcoats almost touching the ground, noisy motorbikes weaving around idling buses, the air heavy with diesel. A taxi took them out of the square, past the food market, and up the long hill.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The Çinili Camii, the Tiled Mosque. You’ll like it.”

  “Can women go in?”

  “Mm. Just cover your head. A woman built it. One of the great valides—she was mother to two sultans.”

  The gate to the courtyard was open, but the mosque itself was closed, so Leon went to the teahouse next door to find the caretaker. A small mosque, with a small adjacent medrese, the courtyard simple, just an ablutions fountain and a shade tree that seemed older than the buildings. Kay walked around the courtyard, the only sounds her own heels. When Leon finally came back he brought the imam, a bearded man in a long white robe carrying a heavy key ring, grumbling at being disturbed. He frowned, seeing Kay, then peered at her closely and smiled, turning to Leon with a stream of Turkish.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “Your hair is the color of the red in the mihrab tiles. He’s never seen it in hair before. He says I’m lucky. To have a wife like an Iznik tile.”

  Kay laughed. “That’s a compliment, right?”

  “From him? They were the most beautiful tiles ever made. Nobody knows how to duplicate the colors now. Leave your shoes out here.”

  The imam was fumbling with the key.

  “It’s freezing.”

  “There’s a carpet.”

  Almost the entire floor, in fact, was covered with intricately designed carpets, but the eye scarcely took them in, drawn instead to the walls covered in turquoise and blue tiles, not one color but a series of shades, like a musical exercise in blue. In the mihrab, there were lines of green and the rust of Kay’s hair, but everything else was blue and white, even the corners of the ceiling tiled.

  “It’s like being inside a jewel,” Kay said, staring, shivering a little, the room cold despite the carpets.

  “It’s the size, partly. In the big mosques all you see is how big they are. Here you really see the tiles.”

  Kay stepped forward. “It’s allowed?”

  The imam bowed, extending his hand.

  “Don’t worry. I told him I’d like to make a donation. You can go up to the gallery too, it’s okay.”

  Twisting narrow stairs, then a railed balcony barely wide enough to hold a single line, but the whole room visible now, vines and flowers and abstracted patterns, repeating themselves, flowing into each other, blue into blue. She smiled at the room, then at him. Downstairs the imam stood in a corner, pleased, as if someone had praised his children.

  Afterward they sat on a wall under the courtyard tree in a small patch of winter sunlight.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “And no one ever comes here. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

  “You do, though.”

  “Once in a while. When the weather’s nice. Just to sit.”

  “Alone? I mean, you don’t bring—”

  “Anna? Not anymore.”

  She looked away, toward the fountain. “So what do you think about, when you sit here?”

  “Nothing. That’s the whole idea. The patterns, on the tiles, you’re supposed to get lost in them, let your mind drift. Not think.”

  “You? I thought there was always something going on in there.”

  He smiled. “Not when I’m here.”

  She was quiet for a while, scanning the courtyard. The imam appeared again on his way back to the teahouse, dipping his head to them as he passed.

  “But it can never be yours,” she said.

  He turned to her.

  “I mean, you probably know more about it than he does,” she said, a nod toward the imam. “Who built it. Where everything comes from. All that. But it’s not yours.”

  “What difference does that—?”

  “Oh, I know. It’s wonderful.” She waved her hand to the mosque. “But what about the rest? When do I take off my shoes? Cover my head? The looks people give you. It’s not a real life here. I mean it is for them, but we’re—just visiting.” She paused. “I am, anyway.”

  “Give it some time. It takes a while.”

  “What?”

  “To live here.”

  “But now that the war’s over, you could—”

  “Go home?” he said, looking around. “I can take care of her here. The clinic. I don’t know if I could do that there. So I live here. It is home.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “I know. You just want to know more about me. See if I’m the guy in the hotel. The one your mother warned you about.”

  She looked up, her eyes meeting his. “You are,” she said. “You must be. When you said that I wanted to be there.”

  He felt the blood flow to his groin, as if she had touched him there.

  “I should be ashamed, shouldn’t I? For thinking that.”

  “Yes,” he said, pulling her to her feet.

  They caught the ferry back to Eminönü and wandered through the spice market like tourists, looking at the tall cones of ground spices and piles of dates. At a nougat stall he thought he saw Sürmeli, the landlord, tunic stretched tight across his back, so broad he blocked the aisle. Who gossiped to Georg, maybe to everyone. But then the man turned, eating candied pistachios, just another fat man, and Leon realized he’d been staring and looked away. They went out the side exit, past the bird market, cages noisy with song and fluttering.

  “Look at the wicker ones,” Kay said. “So elaborate. I’ll bet they hate them anyway.”

  “We had a parakeet when I was a kid. We’d let it out and it would come right back.”

  “It didn’t—?” she started, looking at him, then cocked her head, smiling.

  “What?”

  “You as a boy. I’m trying to picture it.”

  “It was a while ago. Do you want to go up to the Grand Bazaar? You can’t come to Istanbul and not—”

  “Let’s go back.”

  “To the hotel?”

  She put her hand on his neck and his skin jumped, the talk irrelevant. The day no longer lazy, stretching out ahead of them, suddenly running out of time.

  “We could stay in,” she said. “Get room service.”

  On Frank’s bill, the Pera Palas waiters winking at each other. Over h
er shoulder, the fat man was coming out of the market.

  “I have a better idea,” he said.

  They took the tram up the hill and out to Laleli, not circling back from the stop as he usually did but heading straight for the flat, his arm around her shoulders. So fat Sürmeli could see them, watching at his usual window drinking apple tea, his suspicions finally confirmed, Leon with a woman, the reason he’d taken the flat. But there was no movement as they passed his building, no curtain twitching, maybe out collecting rents.

  They were luckier at the flat itself. Two men carrying books came down the hall as Leon put the key in Alexei’s door. Nods and muttered greetings, curious. A foreigner and a woman, something they’d remember. Not Alexei, quiet as a mouse.

  “What is this place?” she said inside. “Is this where you bring your women?”

  “It belongs to a friend. He asked me to keep an eye on it while he’s away.” Lies now to her, but harmless.

  “They thought it was,” she said, nodding her head back to the hall. “Did you see the way they looked at me?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Somebody really lives here?” she said, looking around the almost empty room, not even the duffel bag to suggest a presence anymore, just the lingering smell of tobacco. Had anyone heard Alexei coughing?

  “It’s more a pied-à-terre. For when he’s at the university.” The story growing. He touched her arm.

  “It’s not like a hotel, is it?” she said, mischievous, surprised at herself. “Somebody else’s sheets.” She looked at the bed. “Is there a woman who comes? To change them? I mean, what would your friend think?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, pulling her to him. “Let’s do it on top.”

  Afterward, adding more smoke to the stale air, they watched the light turn gray at the window.

  “Now what?” she said, leaning over to stub out her cigarette, then noticed his face. “I don’t mean it that way. I promised I wouldn’t say that.” She looked away. “I meant, really, now what. We can’t stay here.”

  “Now we get dressed,” he said, but pulling her down to him, her face resting against his chest. “And you go back to the hotel. After all the sightseeing. And tell the clerk how much you like Istanbul. Then have dinner in the dining room. So they’ll all notice. Alone. Bring a book.”

  “And after?”