Black Amber

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “Don’t think about things you’re ignorant of,” he said, suddenly angry. “Go wash off that smell and forget what you’ve stumbled on. Can you understand that much in simple language and get out of here? Go home, American. Go home to the Hilton at least!”

  Again he had made her furious, but she could think of nothing to say in the face of his determination to be rid of her. She wheeled abruptly and walked through the gate, following the path that led to the house. She walked with angry resolution. Not until she reached the point where the path turned, and the gate would be lost to sight, did she stop and look back. Miles had closed the gate and was strolling leisurely off in the direction of the ruined palace. To inspect the cache? To retrieve it? Uneasily she hoped that he would not linger there and be caught by Hasan, alone and away from the house. What that young man’s part in this affair might be was as much a question as everything else. She had half a mind to turn back, but she knew very well what he would say to her if she did.

  When she reached the yali, she obeyed one set of instructions at least. She drenched a handkerchief in Anabel’s perfume that Murat had given her, and thrust it into the pocket of her coat where the opium smell was strong. Then she went into the bathroom and by luck found water still hot in the tank so that she was able to have a thorough scrubbing at once.

  She got into the huge tub and worked with a brush upon her skin until she glowed and the sickly sweet odor was gone from her person. While she was scrubbing she remembered Yasemin. She had handled the cat and she wondered if the odor might have rubbed off on white fur. Perhaps she had better go in search of the animal when she was bathed and dressed.

  In the meantime she lay back in the tub and tried to think about her discovery and its significance. Into her wondering slipped the persistent ghost of Anabel. Was this matter, after all, apart from Anabel? Her sister must have been involved in some desperate and dangerous affair to sound as frightened as she had on the telephone. Was it this? Had she learned something of a boat that came along the Bosporus by the dark of the moon?

  A second question came to mind as well. Was Ahmet working with Hasan, if it was he who had hidden the box? Were they working together for someone else in this matter—someone in this house? Which of the’ three—Nursel, Murat, Sylvana? Or perhaps for two of them, or all working together?

  She did not want to think of Nursel, but she must. It was difficult to know whether the girl was for or against Ahmet. Nursel worried about him because of Hasan. Yet Ahmet apparently opposed her marriage to his son as strongly as Murat would have done. Why had Hasan been idly asleep there in the ruins?

  Or was Sylvana back of this? She would have no moral scruples, Tracy felt sure, and she had deliberately protected Ahmet. She would not have him discharged and she had dismissed as unimportant his tampering with Miles’s calligraphy piece. Perhaps this was because she valued Ahmet as a servant, as she claimed, or perhaps it was because she already knew very well what had happened during the night and was concerned lest he be unmasked. Of what significance was the change Ahmet might have made in Miles’s script? This question seemed especially baffling.

  The third person who might be involved was Dr. Erim, and here Tracy drew a blank. The man was an enigma. There were contradictions in him that left her always undecided. He might well be involved in some sort of intrigue, and he too had been tolerant with Ahmet. Murat had claimed an overnight trip to Istanbul last night. But if he had gone at all, he had returned early; when Tracy had gone outside she had seen his car in its place in the garage. And later he had come in from outdoors.

  Anything was possible—anything.

  When she left the tub and toweled herself dry, she felt no wiser than before. She wrapped herself in a woolly bathrobe and went into the hall just as Miles came up the stairs. They met at Tracy’s door and he regarded her grimly.

  “You smell a bit more wholesome, at least,” he said. When she would have opened her door, he put a hand on her arm, his voice low. “I had a look for myself and found the stuff. But this is only a fraction of the picture. The rest may be a good deal more frightful. And more dangerous. I meant it when I asked you to go home at once. Your work for me is over. There’s no point in your staying.”

  Stubbornly, she would not answer. She drew her arm from his touch and went into her room. There was nothing more she could say to Miles Radburn.

  When she was dressed she searched for Yasemin. The white cat was in none of her usual haunts, and Tracy could find her nowhere.

  The remainder of that day and all of the next passed slowly. The work on the shipment was completed, and with Ahmet’s help Sylvana took it to the airport. Afterward there was little for Tracy to do. Miles would not let her work on his files, or remain in his study. No further mention was made of her going home, but she was left so completely to her own devices that she began to wonder if staying could serve any useful purpose. If she were away from Miles, perhaps she could begin to forget him. Futile and foolish though her feeling for him might be, she could no longer hide it from herself. She had indeed followed Anabel. Yet she was no mooning schoolgirl to enjoy the pangs of unrequited love. It would be wiser to take a decisive step that would remove her from his too immediate presence.

  But even as she thought about this in sensible terms she knew with another part of her mind that leaving Turkey at this time was impossible. Her discovery of the hidden cache of opium had pointed to an involvement with far larger elements of danger than any she had hitherto suspected. Those who trafficked in drugs did not play nursery games. Miles was in possession of knowledge that made him vulnerable, and she knew that he waited only for the right moment to use it. If they gave him time. Feeling as she did, she could not turn her back and go home knowing the danger of his position. As long as she stayed she might be useful in some unexpected way. At least she would be one other person on his side, whether he welcomed the fact or not.

  On the third day after her discovery in the ruined palace, Tracy sat alone in her room. It was late afternoon and the day had been a lonely one. She wished for the white cat’s presence, but she was beginning to fear that it had run away.

  The wind had begun to rise, whining through window cracks and about the eaves, while gray clouds scudded overhead. A storm seemed to be blowing up.

  As she sat there idly, Nursel came tapping upon her door and looked in with an apologetic smile.

  “I may enter, please? We have neglected you. You are unhappy, that is clear. And Miles does not permit you to work for him. We have all seen this. But now I bring you something to make everything better for you.”

  Tracy put no trust in the girl’s apparent friendliness. Nursel bent with whatever wind was blowing and she was thoroughly under her brother’s thumb. Now she came into the room and laid something upon the table beside Tracy. The airline insignia on the folder was plainly in sight. Tracy stiffened in resistance.

  “Sylvana sends this,” Nursel said before she could speak. “Everything is arranged. Your flight to New York leaves tomorrow morning. If you like, I myself will drive you to the airport.”

  “I’m not going until Mr. Radburn sends me away,” Tracy said.

  Nursel moved graceful shoulders in one of her delicate shrugs. “Then let us not speak of it. I have done as Sylvana wishes. There is another matter that brings me to speak with you. I have kept silent because you have great love for your sister and I have respected this. But now you must know the truth—not only of Anabel, but also of her husband.”

  Tracy watched the other girl warily. She would listen, but she would not necessarily believe.

  Nursel seated herself on the edge of a chair and went on, speaking softly, as the story she told took shape. There had been a party in the kiosk on the day before Anabel died. One of Sylvana’s famous parties, with many important personages from government and diplomatic circles present. Always Sylvana cultivated friends in important positions. Miles had come alone to the affair. His wife was ill, he said, and was not able
to appear.

  “Nevertheless, Anabel came,” Nursel said. “We were standing about talking before dinner. I was not far from the stairs and I saw her first. But I could not reach her, I could not stop her. No one could have stopped her, I think.”

  In her telling’ Nursel omitted no detail. Anabel had worn a misty, gray-green gown that night, softly draped. Her arms were bare, her golden head rising on its slender, fragile neck, her green eyes huge and intense. Across the room Miles saw her and started toward her. Before anyone could reach her, she deliberately called the attention of the guests to herself. She flung out both slender arms in a gesture of entreaty, the soft inner flesh exposed.

  “Look!” she cried. “Look at what my husband has done to me!”

  A dreadful silence had fallen upon the room. Laughter and talk died, heads turned and eyes stared. Sylvana herself stood frozen and helpless, and for an instant not even Miles could move. The accusation was tragically clear. Where veins neared the surface of the skin were the betraying bruises left by a needle.

  Anabel had laughed then, mockingly, laughed in Miles’s face as he came toward her.

  “You know I will die of this!” she cried. “In the end I will die of it. Then you will be rid of me and free to do as you please.”

  There had been hysteria in her voice and she would have said more, but Miles reached her and picked her up bodily. She did not fight him, but lay limply in his arms, as if the effort she had made had exhausted her. He carried her down the stairs and back to their rooms in the yali.

  Nursel broke off and covered her face with her hands. Tracy could only stare at her in horror.

  “The next morning Miles went away,” Nursel said. “He abandoned his wife in her time of greatest need and disappeared. She could not face what had happened, what she herself had done to condemn him in public. Yet she was the victim, not the one who had committed this wickedness. Afterward she must have known there was no hope for her anywhere and she dissembled that day. She fooled us all. We knew she was ill, suffering from a withholding of the heroin he had been giving her, but we did not think she would take such action. She slipped away in the early evening and managed to get the small boat out on the water with no one knowing. She did not want to live.”

  “But why?” Tracy said. “Why would he do a thing like that? I don’t understand—”

  “Nor I,” said Nursel bitterly. “He is a man I have never understood. I have not wanted to tell you this thing which can bring you only grief. But he has drawn you also under his spell. You must know the truth and escape him.”

  “What if you aren’t telling me the truth?” Tracy asked bitterly. “What if I say I don’t believe you? You aren’t your own woman, you know.”

  Nursel regarded her curiously. “What is this—I am not my own woman? What do you mean?”

  Tracy found herself speaking out of her own pain and despair, seeking to discount anything Nursel might say.

  “You talk about independence for Turkish women!” she cried. “But you act like those women who hid behind veils and scampered for the haremlik at the sight of a man. You never stand up for yourself. You never stiffen your spine and go your own way. Because you don’t know how to be yourself, I can’t believe anything you say.”

  Nursel rose and went quietly to the door. “I am sorry for you,” she said. “If he blinds you in this way, the end is foreseen. But you may ask him, if you like. Tell him what I have told you and ask him for the true answer.”

  She slipped out of the room and went softly away. Her steps were light upon the stairs and left behind a ringing silence.

  16

  Tracy did not know how long she stayed where she was, unable to think clearly. She felt ill to the point of nausea. The room about her seemed tight and close, the air stifling.

  Hardly knowing what she did, she put on her coat and went into the hall. Miles’s doors stood closed across the salon. She could not bear to face him now. What had Nursel told her—the truth or a fabrication of lies?

  There was no one in sight as she went downstairs and through the lower corridor to the garden. She wanted to be outside in fresh air where she could walk vigorously and be alone. Physical action might stop the whirling confusion of her thoughts. Wind from the Black Sea blew sharply cold as she followed the path through graying light. The treetops were whipping now with the threat of coming storm. She did not care. She would welcome a storm. She would stand in it and let it quiet her, let it quench the rising of an anguish she could not bear to face.

  The side gate was unlocked and she went through. It was not likely that she would meet anyone in the ruins today. Not with a storm coming up. She could not walk slowly and she began to run along the road. Once a car went past and she glimpsed astonished faces staring. She ran headlong, stumbling more than once, nearly falling, picking herself up to run on. The first drops of rain struck across her face with stinging force and she put her head down as she ran.

  It was because she scarcely looked where she was going that she ran full tilt into him there on the road. He had heard her coming and turned so that she ran straight into his arms. He held her, steadied her for a moment, then set her on her feet and she raised startled eyes to the face of the man she wanted least of all to see—Miles Radburn.

  She wrenched herself away from him. “Let me go! I don’t want to talk to you. Leave me alone!”

  He took his hands from her arms. “Where are you going?” There’s a storm coming up.”

  “I don’t care!” she cried and ran from him down the road.

  She did not look back or stop running until she reached the gate of what had once been the palace of the Sultan Valide—that place of ill-omen to which Anabel had come so often. Perhaps she could find something of her sister here that would help her. Something that would restore her to belief in both Anabel and Miles, help her to refute Nursel’s terrible words.

  She scarcely heard the rumble of thunder and did not mind wet slashes of rain as she stumbled through the garden and up marble steps. Within the house faded flowers bloomed dimly, tranquilly, barely discernible upon the wall in the stormy light. Toward the rear of the big salon a portion of the upstairs floor and the roof above were intact. There the rain could not reach her. She took care at least to walk carefully across the broken floor. As she passed the hiding place near the door, she bent to look in, but there was no obstruction visible. The parcel of opium was gone. When she reached the sheltered corner of the room, she stood against the wall and listened to the storm crash about her. The wind made a dreadful sound, howling through the broken house. Its intent was surely to flatten the whole structure into final kindling wood and tumble the very blocks of marble. A corner of the remaining roof, two stories above, lifted and flapped as though it would ride off upon the wind at any moment. Perhaps this was the time when the whole haunted building would topple and crash into the waiting black waters of the Bosporus.

  Yet so great was Tracy’s inner anguish that she could not be physically afraid. Even when lightning flashed and she saw its forked tongue strike downward toward the water, she was not afraid of the storm.

  At least its fury prevented her own feelings from rising and engulfing her. The very uproar numbed her, kept her from thinking. With all the trembling and creaking, the thrashing of tree branches against paneless windows, she could only endure mindlessly, without ability to reason and think.

  Then, through the storm clamor, a sound close by reached her—a faint creaking nearer at hand. It was like the squeaking of a rope that held a boat to dock or shore. The sound focused her attention, and she began to search idly for its source. It came from inside the house apparently, and across the vast room. Her eyes searched the far side where rain pelted in and found the cause of the faint, rhythmic squeaking. Something lay upon the floor, just inside what had once been a balcony door. Something she had never seen there before. It was a large rock, and about it had been tied a length of rope that stretched tautly from rock to balcony, di
sappearing over the rail. It was this rope, moving slightly against the rail, that caused the sound. As though a small boat might lie in the water beyond, tossed by the waves, its swaying weight bringing about a slight movement of the rope that held it.

  She left her dry corner and stepped into the roaring wetness. Lightning flashed brilliantly and the thunder that followed marked it as very near. She reached the rope and felt the wet tautness of it in her hands, felt the weight beyond. Something fairly heavy had been tied here in this curious place. Rain drenched her hair and ran in rivulets down her face and into her collar. Her hands were slippery wet. She followed the rope to the rail and looked over. In the dim light she could see no small boat in the roiling water below. A wave splashed her as she leaned upon the rail, and she saw that something hung there over the balcony, something heavy that did not pull up easily when she began to haul on the rope.

  She leaned closer, bending toward the water, trying to make out the thing that moved toward her up the side of the balcony. Suddenly she saw the wet white head, the ears that were no longer pricked in wary listening, the drowned eyes with the green no longer showing. A cry of horror choked in her throat and she pulled fiercely on the rope until the bundle came over the rail and fell onto the floor with a heavy clatter.

  In that instant lightning brought everything vividly sharp for a fraction of time and the terror that lay at her feet was fully revealed. It was not only that poor Yasemin was dead—it was the terrifying, heart-shaking way in which the little cat had died. What had been done was more cruel, more horrible than anything Tracy could have imagined.

  In the full revelation of the lightning flash she had seen the face of ultimate evil. Vicious evil that could place a small white cat in a sack weighted with rock, a sack tied beneath the chin in the old, dreadful way, leaving it to hang over a balcony rail till Yasemin had drowned in surging black Bosporus waters.

  Tracy put both hands to her mouth to keep from screaming. Terror engulfed her—as it was meant to do—and she fought against the sickening waves of it.