The light of day as-1

by Eric Ambler

  More to break the interminable silence in the room than because I wanted to know, I asked: “Is there a big airport at Edirne?”

  I spoke in French, but it meant nothing to him. I made signs, which he misunderstood.

  “Askeri ucak,” he said briefly.

  An army plane. That concluded that conversation; but I noticed that he kept glancing at his watch now. Probably, I thought, it was time for his relief and he was becoming impatient.

  Twenty minutes later there was the distant sound of a car door slamming. The guard heard it, too, and promptly stood up. I stared at him and he glowered back.

  “Hazirol!” he snapped, and then exasperatedly: “ Debout! Debout!”

  I stood up. I could hear approaching footsteps and voices now. Then the door was unlocked and flung open.

  For a moment nothing more happened, except that someone in the corridor, whom I could not see, went on speaking. He had a harsh, peremptory voice which seemed to be giving orders that another voice kept acknowledging deferentially- “Evet, evet efendim, derhal.” Then the orders ceased and the man who had been giving them came into the room.

  He was about thirty-five, I would think, perhaps younger, tall and quite slim. There were high cheekbones, gray eyes, and short brown hair. He was handsome, I suppose, in a thin-lipped sort of way. He was wearing a dark civilian suit that looked as if it had been cut by a good Roman tailor, and a dark-gray silk tie. He looked as if he had just come from a diplomatic corps cocktail party; and for all I know he may have done so. On his right wrist there was a gold identity bracelet. The hand below it was holding a large manila envelope.

  He examined me bleakly for a moment, then nodded. “I am Major Tufan, Deputy Director, Second Section.”

  “Good evening, sir.”

  He glanced at the guard, who was staring at him round-eyed, and suddenly snapped out an order: “Defol!”

  The guard nearly fell over himself getting out of the room.

  As soon as the door closed, the major pulled a chair up to the table and sat down. Then he waved me back to my seat by the bread.

  “Sit down, Simpson. I believe that you speak French easily, but not Turkish.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then we will speak in French instead of English. That will be easier for me.”

  I answered in French. “As you wish, sir.”

  He took cigarettes and matches from his pocket and tossed them on the table in front of me. “You may smoke.”

  “Thank you.”

  I was glad of the concession, though not in the least reassured by it. When a policeman gives you a cigarette it is usually the first move in one of those “let’s see if we can’t talk sensibly as man to man” games in which he provides the rope and you hang yourself. I lit a cigarette and waited for the next move.

  He seemed in no hurry to make it. He had opened the envelope and taken from it a file of papers which he was searching through and rearranging, as if he had just dropped them all and was trying to get them back into the right order.

  There was a knock at the door. He took no notice. After a moment or two, the door opened and a guard came in with a bottle of raki and two glasses. Tufan motioned to him to put them on the table, and then noticed the soup.

  “Do you want any more of that?” he asked.

  “No thank you, sir.”

  He said something to the guard, who took the soup and bread away and locked the door again.

  Tufan rested the file on his knees and poured himself a glass of raki. “The flight from Istanbul was anything but smooth,” he said; “we are still using piston-engined planes on these short runs.” He swallowed the drink as if he were washing down a pill, and pushed the bottle an inch or two in my direction. “You’d better have a drink, Simpson. It may make you feel better.”

  “And also make me more talkative, sir?” I thought the light touch might make him think that I was not afraid.

  He looked up and his gray eyes met mine. “I hope not,” he said coldly; “I have no time to waste.” He shut the file with a snap and put it on the table in front of him.

  “Now then,” he went on, “let us examine your position. First, the offenses with which you are charged render you liable upon conviction to terms of imprisonment of at least twenty years. Depending on the degree of your involvement in the political aspects of this affair, we might even consider pressing for a death sentence.”

  “But I am not involved at all, Major, I assure you. I am a victim of circumstances-an innocent victim.” Of course, he could have been bluffing about the death sentence, but I could not be sure. There was that phrase “political aspects” again. I had read that they had been hanging members of the former government for political crimes. I wished now that I had taken the drink when he had offered it. Now, my hands were shaking, and I knew that, if I reached for the bottle and glass, he would see that they were.

  Apparently, however, he did not have to see them; he knew what he was doing to me, and wanted me to know that he knew. Quite casually, he picked up the bottle, poured me half a glass of raki, and pushed it across to me.

  “We will talk about the extent of your involvement in a minute,” he said. “First, let us consider the matter of your passport.”

  “It is out of date. I admit that. But it was a mere oversight. If the post Commandant had behaved correctly I would have been sent back to the Greek post.”

  He shrugged impatiently. “Let us be clear about this. You had already committed serious criminal offenses on Turkish soil. Would you expect to escape the consequences because your papers are not in order? You know better. You also know that your passport was not invalid through any oversight. The Egyptian government had refused to renew it. In fact, they revoked your citizenship two years ago on the grounds that you made false statements on your naturalization papers.” He glanced in the file. “You stated that you had never been convicted of a criminal offense and that you had never served a prison sentence. Both statements were lies.”

  This was such an unfair distortion of the facts that I could only assume that he had got it from the Egyptians. I said: “I have been fighting that decision.”

  “And also using a passport to which you were not entitled and had failed to surrender.”

  “My case was still sub judice. Anyway, I have already applied for restoration of my British citizenship, to which I am entitled as the son of a serving British officer. In fact, I am British.”

  “The British don’t take that view. After what happened you can scarcely blame them.”

  “Under the provisions of the British Nationality Act of 1948 I remain British unless I have specifically renounced that nationality. I have never formally renounced it.”

  “That is unimportant. We are talking about your case here and the extent of your involvement. The point I wish to make is that our action in your case is not going to be governed in any way by the fact that you are a foreigner. No consul is going to intercede on your behalf. You have none. You are stateless. The only person who can help you is my Director.” He paused. “But he will have to be persuaded. You understand me?”

  “I have no money.”

  It seemed a perfectly sensible reply to me, but for some reason it appeared to irritate him. His eyes narrowed and for a moment I thought he was going to throw the glass he was holding in my face. Then he sighed. “You are over fifty,” he said, “yet you have learned nothing. You still see other men in your own absurd image. Do you really believe that I could be bought, or that, if I could be, a man like you could ever do the buying?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to retort that that would depend on the price he was asking; but if he wanted to take this high-and-mighty attitude, there was no sense in arguing. Obviously, I had touched him in a sensitive area.

  He lit a cigarette as if he were consciously putting aside his irritation. I took the opportunity to drink some of the raki.

  “Very well.” He was all business again. “You understand
your position, which is that you have no position. We come now to the story you told to the post Commandant before your arrest.”

  “Every word I told the Commandant was the truth.”

  He opened the file. “On the face of it that seems highly unlikely. Let us see. You stated that you were asked by this American, Harper, to drive a car belonging to a Fraulein Lipp from Athens to Istanbul. You were to be paid one hundred dollars. You agreed. Am I right?”

  “Quite right.”

  “You agreed, even though the passport in your possession was not in order?”

  “I did not realize it was out of date. It has been months since I used it. The whole thing was arranged within a few hours. I scarcely had time to pack a bag. People are using out-of-date passports all the time. Ask anyone at any international airline. They will tell you. That is why they always check passengers’ passports when they weigh their baggage. They do not want difficulties at the other end. I had nobody to check. The Greek control scarcely looked at the passport. I was leaving the country. They were not interested.”

  I knew I was on safe ground here, and I spoke with feeling.

  He thought for a moment, then nodded. “It is possible, and, of course, you had good reason not to think too much about the date on your passport. The Egyptians were not going to renew it anyway. That explanation is acceptable, I think. We will go on.” He referred again to the file. “You told the Commandant that you suspected this man Harper of being a narcotics smuggler.”

  “I did.”

  “To the extent of searching the car after you left Athens.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet you still agreed to make the journey.”

  “I was being paid one hundred dollars.”

  “That was the only reason?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head. “It really will not do.”

  “I am telling you the truth.”

  He took a clip of papers from the file. “Your history does not inspire confidence.”

  “Give a dog a bad name.”

  “You seem to have earned one. Our dossier on you begins in fifty-seven. You were arrested on various charges and fined on a minor count. The rest were abandoned by the police for lack of evidence.”

  “They should never have been brought in the first place.”

  He ignored this. “We did, however, ask Interpol if they knew anything about you. It seemed they knew a lot. Apparently you were once in the restaurant business.”

  “My mother owned a restaurant in Cairo. Is that an offense?”

  “Fraud is an offense. Your mother was part owner of a restaurant. When she died, you sold it to a buyer who believed that you now owned all of it. In fact, there were two other shareholders. The buyer charged you with fraud, but withdrew his complaint when the police allowed you to regularize the transaction.”

  “I didn’t know of the existence of these other shareholders. My mother had never told me that she had sold the shares.” This was perfectly true. Mum was entirely responsible for the trouble I got into over that.

  “In 1931 you bought a partnership in a small publishing business in Cairo. Outwardly it concerned itself with distributing foreign magazines and periodicals. Its real business was the production of pornography for the Spanish- and English-speaking markets. And that became your real business.”

  “That is absolutely untrue.”

  “The information was supplied through Interpol in fifty-four by Scotland Yard. It was given in response to an inquiry by the New York police. Scotland Yard must have known about you for a long time.”

  I knew it would do no good for me to become angry. “I have edited and sometimes written for a number of magazines of a literary nature over the years,” I said quietly. “Sometimes they may have been a little daring in their approach and have been banned by various censoring authorities. But I would remind you that books like Ulysses and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which were once described by those same authorities as pornographic or obscene, are now accepted as literary works of art and published quite openly.”

  He looked at his papers again. “In January fifty-five you were arrested in London. In your possession were samples of the various obscene and pornographic periodicals which you had been attempting to sell in bulk. Among them was a book called Gents Only and a monthly magazine called Enchantment. All were produced by your Egyptian company. You were charged under the British law governing such publications, and also with smuggling them. At your trial you said nothing about their being literary works of art. You pleaded guilty and were sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment.”

  “That was a travesty of justice.”

  “Then why did you plead guilty?”

  “Because my lawyer advised me to.” In fact, the C.I.D. Inspector had tricked me into it. He had as good as promised me that if I pleaded guilty I would get off with a fine.

  He stared at me thoughtfully for a moment, then shut the file. “You must be a very stupid man, Simpson. You say to me: ‘I am telling you the truth,’ and yet when I try to test that statement all I hear from you is whining and protestation. I am not interested in how you explain away the past, or in any illusions about yourself that you may wish to preserve. If you cannot even tell the truth when there is nothing to be gained by lying, then I can believe nothing you tell me. You were caught by the British smuggling pornography and trying to peddle it. Why not admit it? Then, when you tell me that you did not know that you were smuggling arms and ammunition this afternoon, I might at least think: ‘This man is a petty criminal, but it is remotely possible that for once he is being truthful.’ As it is, I can only assume that you are lying and that I must get the truth from you in some other way.”

  I admit that “some other way” gave me a jolt. After all, five minutes earlier he had been pouring me a glass of raki. He meant to put the fear of God into me, of course, and make me panic. Unfortunately, and only because I was tired, upset, and suffering from indigestion, he succeeded.

  “I am telling you the truth, sir.” I could hear my own voice cracking and quavering but could do nothing to control it. “I swear to God I am telling you the truth. My only wish is to tell you all I can, to bring everything out of the darkness into the light of day.”

  He stared at me curiously; and then, as I realized what I had said, I felt myself reddening. It was awful. I had used those absurd words Harper had made me write in that confession about the checks.

  A sour smile touched his lips for an instant. “Ah yes,” he said. “I was forgetting that you have been a journalist. We will try once more then. Just remember that I do not want speeches in mitigation, only plain statements.”

  “Of course.” I was too confused to think straight now.

  “Why did you go to London in fifty-five? You must have known that Scotland Yard knew all about you.”

  “How could I know? I hadn’t been in England for years.”

  “Where were you during the war?”

  “In Cairo doing war work.”

  “What work?”

  “I was an interpreter.”

  “Why did you go to London?”

  I cleared my throat and took a sip of raki.

  “Answer me!”

  “I was going to answer, sir.” There was nothing else for it. “The British distributor of our publications suddenly ceased making payments and we could get no replies from him to our letters. I went to England to investigate, and found his offices closed. I assumed that he had gone out of business, and began to look for another distributor. The man I eventually discussed the possibility with turned out to be a Scotland Yard detective. We used to send our shipments to Liverpool in cotton bales. It seems that the customs had discovered this and informed the police. Our distributor had been arrested and sent to prison. The police had kept it out of the papers somehow. I just walked into a trap.”

  “Better, much better,” he said. He looked almost amused. “Naturally, though, you felt bitter towards the British aut
horities.”

  I should have remembered something he had let drop earlier, but I was still confused. I tried to head him off.

  “I was bitter at the time, of course, sir. I did not think I had had a fair trial. But afterwards I realized that the police had their job to do”-I thought that would appeal to him-“and that they weren’t responsible for making the laws. So I tried to be a model prisoner. I think I was. Anyway, I received the maximum remission for good behavior. I certainly couldn’t complain of the treatment I had in Maidstone. In fact, the Governor shoook hands with me when I left and wished me well.”

  “And then you returned to Egypt?”

  “As soon as my probationary period was up, yes. I went back to Cairo, sir.”

  “Where you proceeded to denounce a British businessman named Colby Evans to the Egyptian authorities as a British secret agent.”

  It was like a slap in the face, but I managed to keep my head this time. “Not immediately, sir. That was later, during the Suez crisis.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  I didn’t know what to say. How could I explain to a man like that that I had to pay back the caning they had given me. I said nothing.

  “Was it because you needed to prove somehow to the Egyptian authorities that you were anti-British, or because you didn’t like the man, or because you were sincerely anti-British?”

  It was all three, I suppose; I am not really sure. I answered almost without thinking.

  “My mother was Egyptian. My wife was killed by a British bomb in the attack they made on us. Why shouldn’t I feel sincerely anti-British?”

  It was probably the best answer I had given so far; it sounded true, even though it wasn’t quite.

  “Did you really believe this man was an agent?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And then you applied for Egyptian citizenship.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You stayed in Egypt until fifty-eight. Was that when they finally decided that Evans had not been a British agent after all and released him?”

  “He was convicted at his trial. His release was an act of clemency.”