Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train

by Maria Hudgins

  Her plan, if she could be said to have one at this point, was not to enter the hotel but to find Milo Dakin. She could start with the cab rank outside, since the drivers seemed to know Milo. Not certain she could trust him, she had to trust someone because she was stuck in a foreign country with no way out. She needed to either call home for help or somehow make it back to the dig. She also had to find out who the dead man in the green trench coat was, who this Jason person really was, and why he’d bound and gagged her and left her overnight in a deserted market.

  She plodded up the hill toward the hotel, wishing the aspirin would kick in. Her head throbbed even harder as the sun and her heart rate climbed. Could she trust Milo? Was it mere coincidence that he was at the hotel when she dropped by? Had he been waiting for her? If, as the cab driver told her, Milo was an author, he had to be okay. Anyone who could get a book published these days, had to be … well, maybe that wasn’t the best guarantee of honesty. Who could possibly have known she would show up there? Her pain-stressed brain kept trying to make sense of it all. Who knew about the Pera Palace Hotel napkin in the trench coat pocket? Gülden, of course, and the jandarma back at the station. She hadn’t mentioned it to Henry or Paul or anyone else at the dig site, but Gülden might have told them. Would she have? Lacy didn’t think so, because Gülden probably perceived that Lacy wanted to keep this to herself. Had she specifically told Gülden to tell no one?

  Someone had been following her. Must have. How else could one explain the timely appearance of Jason at the fish market? Wait. If the fishmonger had known someone was being held upstairs, and he very likely had ….

  Distracted, she unconsciously walked past the hotel and now found herself standing in the area where the cabs parked. Hoping to spot Mehmet among the drivers, she looked around but recognized no one.

  “Affedersiniz. Ben Mehmet arıyorum,” she said.

  The men looked at her as if she had leprosy. She kept forgetting she looked a fright. Mehmet wasn’t there and the tone of their voices said they wouldn’t tell her where he was even if they knew.

  “Ben Milo Dakin arıyorum.”

  A couple of the cabbies grinned and the atmosphere grew friendlier around that end of the street. Some of them, Lacy thought, might remember her from yesterday. One held up a cell phone. He called someone but Lacy couldn’t understand who or what the conversation was about. He ended the call and punched in another number. Talked. Handed her his phone.

  “Lacy? What the hell?” It was Milo. His cultured British accent sounded sweeter than any angel ever could. She felt tears ponding on the rims of her eyes. Salvation. “I’m at home, right now, but I’ll be there in ten minutes. Fifteen tops.”

  “Someone may be following me.”

  Milo’s voice dropped an octave. “Ring off now and walk down the hill to the tunnel entrance. Stay out in plain sight. I’ll meet you there.”

  Lacy thanked the cabbies and followed Milo’s instructions. Stay out in plain sight? Of course. If someone tried to nab her, make it hard to do without being seen. Milo obviously enjoyed this. Milo the spy-chaser. The Casper Milquetoast of international espionage. Suddenly, she felt her trust in Milo was not misplaced. He might be living in a World War II fantasy, but he was not a crook. Crooks needed a firm grasp on reality.

  * * *

  She chose a “plain sight” spot near the tunnel entrance and spotted Milo across the street, but it was a full five minutes before he ambled casually across, one hand in the pocket of his linen trousers, cigarette in the other. When he drew near, she noticed his cigarette was unfiltered. She imagined it was a brand sold in Turkey in the 1940s.

  He drew alongside her but didn’t look at her. Instead, he pretended to study a concert poster stuck to a light pole. “We’re going to get you some better clothes,” he said to the poster. “Follow me.”

  Her stolen scarf still tied under her chin, Lacy followed a couple of steps behind him, feeling like an absolute fool. With great relief, she followed him into a clothing store. Mannequins at the ends of aisles displayed every sort of dress, from the conservative to the avant garde. Milo struck up a conversation with a salesgirl, nodding toward Lacy but not including her, as if she were a faulty toaster he wished to return. The salesgirl eyed Lacy, then brought several abayas in summer weight fabrics. They were very pretty and Lacy found herself wanting to try on all of them. Milo, however, picked up a dark blue one with black embroidery at the neck and sort of shoved it at her, then inquired about a hijab to go with it. He whipped out a credit card, paid for the abaya and a two-piece hijab, and walked out.

  Lacy followed. “Thank you. Where are we going now?”

  “Public restroom in the tunnel.”

  At the entrance to the ladies’ restroom, he handed her the bag of new clothes. She took it inside, waited for a woman and her two children to leave, then slipped the abaya over her head, shedding her own shirt and cropped pants at the same time. The hijab had one stretchy part that covered her hair above her forehead and another that slipped over her head. She stepped back from the mirror and surveyed the result. Except for the boots, which didn’t exactly go with the rest of the ensemble, she thought she looked good until she looked at her face. No hiding the bruises and the world-class shiner. But she did feel as if she could now blend in on the street, and if her pursuers were out there they wouldn’t recognize her.

  Milo, nonchalantly studying a brochure, snapped to when she walked by, then led her to a café on the next block. Now they could talk. “No one is following you at the moment. While you were in the toilet I was able to conduct a thorough sweep. So, at least for now, you are safe.”

  Lacy told him the whole story. Milo, eyes darting left and right, was practically salivating over the details of her captivity and her escape, but his body language was a picture of nonchalance. “I’m so grateful to you for helping me. Have I interrupted something important?”

  “Not at all, dear child. I live with my sister in a flat near here. I was working on my photo album when you called.”

  “Mehmet, the cab driver you introduced me to yesterday, told me you are a published author.”

  “Assignment Istanbul was my first but now I’m working on another.” He threw one arm over the back of his chair, drummed his fingers on the table.

  “How very exciting.”

  “Your next step, Lacy, is to get out of Istanbul. You can’t possibly watch everyone in a city like this. You can stay with me and my sister until we figure a way to get you out of here.”

  “They swiped my passport. I can’t just hop on a plane.”

  “Correct. Or rent a car, or risk a train ride.” Milo looked at her through knitted brows. “That overnight one didn’t go well, did it?”

  “I need to call home, but they took my phone, too.”

  “No problem. Wait here.”

  The waiter brought the tea they ordered but Milo had left the café. He came back a few minutes later and slapped a phone on the table in front of her. “It’s disposable. Use it and toss it. When you need to make another call, get another disposable. You’re lucky they stole yours. They could track you with it.”

  “Do you think ‘they’ are that sophisticated?”

  “Oh, I do. Definitely. They have a hundred ways of finding you and you’ll never know how they do it.”

  Lacy kept her face straight. Apparently Milo thought he knew who ‘they’ were. Who was it? Smersh? The KGB? Whatever, he was her savior and she owed him. Lacy picked up the phone. “I’ve never used one of these.”

  “There’s no trick to it. They’re intuitive.” Milo sounded to Lacy like a cross between James Bond and Bill Gates. “I suggest you ask your parents to wire money to Western Union here.”

  “My parents? No.” Lacy didn’t feel like getting into the reasons why she’d rather starve than ask her parents to send money. Whom could she ask? A quick survey of folks back home brought up several possibilities, but when she thought of Joan Friedman, she felt she need look no
further. Not only could Joan, widow of Lacy’s former best friend and mentor Joel Friedman, spare a few hundred with no problem, she’d be delighted to have the chance. And she knew Joan’s number by heart. “What’s the international number for the U.S? Zero, zero, one?” Locating the power key, she started to make the call, then stopped. “Wait a minute. What time is it?”

  “Ten forty-five.” Milo looked down his beaky nose at his wristwatch, an art-deco affair with an actual winding stem and a reptile band.

  “So it’s three forty-five a.m. at home. I can’t call now.”

  “Let’s go to my place. We can walk.”

  Lacy paused. Should I go to his house? In terms of trust, this was a jumping off spot. A point of no return. If her earlier suspicions of Milo were founded, going to his house could be suicide. If she refused, how could she explain it to him? She obviously needed a discreet place to hang out for a while. Why not call Joan now? It would scare her to death, getting a call at this hour, but she’d get over it.

  But there were other problems she needed Milo’s help with. How to get away from here was one. She could go back to the Consulate and ask about a new passport, although it might take days to get one. As soon as she had a passport and enough money for a plane ticket, she could fly home. But she still wouldn’t know who the man in the green trench coat was, or why he was killed. She wouldn’t know why she’d been followed or who the hell Jason was, why he tied her up with duct tape, or what he would’ve done with her if she hadn’t escaped. Surely he’d discovered her missing by now. All in all, she figured she’d better go with Milo.

  * * *

  Milo told her his sister was at work. They entered a second floor walk-up flat in one of the wood-frame buildings from the late Ottoman Empire that had gone through a period of decay in the late 20th century but were now in vogue again. Builders were renovating them by the hundreds. Inside, all was modern but Lacy wouldn’t have been surprised to find a corner where Milo kept his short-wave radio, his matchbox camera, and his Enigma message decoder.

  “My sister comes home for lunch. I want you to meet her.” Milo may have been saying this so she’d feel more comfortable in the apartment of a relatively strange man. What if his sister shows up and she has bright orange hair and strange pale brown eyes? Lacy looked around for an escape route and decided the small patio outside a window on the street side would do in an emergency. It couldn’t be more than a fifteen-foot drop.

  “Well, Lacy! From the cast of characters you’ve described, I’d say you have several obvious suspects.” Milo settled himself in an upholstered chair in the living room. He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair and tented his fingers.

  “I’d say I have none, other than that guy, Jason, whose last name I don’t know and whose motive for taping me up makes no sense at all.”

  “Someone must have told him you found their secret room.”

  “The woman with orange hair?”

  “But who told her to follow you? Who is she working for?”

  This conversation was teetering on the brink of absurdity. Lacy pictured the “Spy vs Spy” cartoons in Mad magazine. “You think this is some sort of vast conspiracy?”

  “We have no way of knowing at this point, do we?”

  “So. Who are my suspects?”

  “Think about that guy, Henry Jones. He was a close friend and employee of Maxwell Sebring, now deceased. He gave you a ride to the airport in Adana. In fact, he even suggested you fly rather than take a bus or train. As soon as you land in Istanbul, there’s a woman tailing you.”

  “I’m not sure about that, though. The woman tailing me might not have been the same one I bumped into at the airport.”

  “But the woman in the shuttle bus and the woman you’ve seen hanging around your hotel are definitely the same.”

  “Well … yes, but she could be staying at a hotel near mine. I got off the bus before she did.”

  “Okay. Next suspect. Elbert MacSweeney.”

  “What? He’s a sweet old man and I already knew him before any of this ever happened.”

  “So what? Think, Lacy. Maxwell Sebring bought a rug from him. They’ve been emailing back and forth for a year. They made personal contact in a little burg outside of town a couple of weeks ago. You told MacSweeney you were looking for a man who was wearing Sebring’s trench coat. And think about this!” Milo leaned forward in his chair, his elbow on one thin knee. “How long was it between the time you left MacSweeney and the time Jason showed up at the Spice Market?”

  “Not long.” Lacy got a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. She searched for a reason to eliminate Elbert MacSweeney as a suspect. “MacSweeney didn’t know I was going to the Spice Market. I never mentioned it. I didn’t even know it myself until Mehmet let me out near there.”

  “You may have been followed from the time you left the museum. MacSweeney could have followed you as far as the tram stop, then boarded a different car and waited until he saw you get off. He would’ve had plenty of time to call a cohort and let them take over the tail.”

  “But Jason showed up within minutes of when I walked into that upstairs room. Someone had to know where I was going and I didn’t even know it myself until the last minute. Going up there was a spur-of-the-moment impulse.”

  “Who says the room you found had any significance at all? If Jason was tailing you through the Spice Market, he’d have watched you go into that alley, waited a couple of minutes for you to come out, and when you didn’t, asked the fishmonger where that alley led. Said, ‘Hey, I saw a woman go in there and she hasn’t come out. I think I know her. She’s mentally unstable. Mind if I go up there and check it out?’ Five minutes later, she’s lying on the pavement, out cold as a frozen cod. Jason comes running down and says, ‘I tried to stop her, but she jumped before I could reach her.’”

  Lacy nodded. “And I told you she was mentally unstable.”

  Milo’s phone rang. He mumbled, grunted a couple of times, and hung up. “My sister. She can’t come home for lunch.”

  A small shiver ran up Lacy’s back. She eyed the patio door and wondered if it was locked. Act normal. “Speaking of late enough,” she said, “I think it is. Would you excuse me?” She pulled out her new phone and dialed Joan Friedman’s number in Virginia.

  Milo stood and walked to the kitchen.

  She still woke Joan up, but after she explained her dilemma, Joan went into a tizzy.

  “Oh God, Lacy! Do you want me to come there? I don’t mind. My passport is up to date and I can help you straighten everything out. I know a man who works at the American Embassy. No wait. That’s in Greece.”

  “Can you wire me some money?”

  “Of course. How much?”

  Lacy had no idea. What did she need the money for, anyway? There was her hotel room, currently charged to her MasterCard, but was the card any good now? She should definitely call and cancel all the cards in her wallet. Might she need to rent a car? Stay in Istanbul for days, until she could get a new passport? She wished she’d thought this through before calling Joan. “I don’t know. Could you spare three hundred?” That number came out of her mouth from nowhere.

  “Of course. I’m sending you five hundred and if you need more, let me know.”

  Five hundred sounded good. Lacy didn’t argue.

  “How do I send it? I’ve never wired money before. Where do I go to send it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done this either.”

  “Tell her to send it to me. Milo Dakin.” Milo stood in the kitchen doorway, a knife in his hand.

  Lacy’s voice came out in a squeak. “Joan?”

  “Are you still there, Lacy?”

  Oh, God, don’t hang up!” “Yes!”

  “Western Union asks for identification before they hand you money,” Milo said. “Do you have any ID? I do.” He turned and tossed the knife away.

  Lacy heard a faint tinkle as if the knife landed in a sink. She inhaled deeply, mentally laughing at
herself, and dictated Milo’s name and address into the phone.

  “Wait, Lacy! Don’t hang up. How can I reach you? What’s your number?”

  “That’s a bit of a problem, I’m afraid. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”

  “Is there anyone else you want me to call?”

  Lacy thought about it. “No. Not now.”

  “You can give her the number here,” Milo called out from the kitchen.

  “I can’t put Joan in a position of knowing something that might put her at risk.”

  “Smart girl. You’d make a good spy.”

  Yeah, right. Nerves of steel. She turned to the glass patio door and touched the pulse point in her neck with two fingers. How close did I come to jumping out that door?

  Milo served tuna salad sandwiches on pretty tulip plates with a slice of dill pickle on the side. Seating Lacy gallantly at the kitchen table, he folded two paper napkins diagonally and handed one to her.

  The sandwich tasted good. Lacy wiped mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth and said, “Are you retired, Milo? I mean, you’re too young to be retired, but …” she let her voice trail off rather than saying, “but you don’t seem to have any gainful employment.”

  “You flatter me. I’m probably older than you think.” He stuffed the last of his dill pickle in his mouth and licked his fingers. “I was employed as a cartographer for MI6. I made maps.”

  Lacy raised her eyebrows to show she was impressed, but the muscle movement echoed painfully through her head.

  “I had a, uh, a health crisis and retired early. They pensioned me off.” Milo paused, studying his empty plate. “But I have enough to live on.”

  Lacy helped him with the dishes. Running a sink of hot water, she rolled up the sleeves of her new abaya and dunked their glasses and plates into the suds.

  Milo applied a dishtowel to a glass, held it up to the window light and, in an off-hand sort of way, he said, “Suspects. Let’s not forget your friend, Paul. He who invited you to Kheta Tepe in the first place.”