by Alex Gerlis
He’d started in Kumkapi at the southern end of the European side, where the city looked out on the Sea of Marmara. From there he worked his way round to the mouth of the Bosphorus, past the Topkapi Palace and then under the Galata bridge before walking alongside the Golden Horn until it vanished into two small rivers, crossing over to its northern shore where there were a few docks, one or two of them even looking like possible places where chromium may be loaded. He took photographs and made a note to return. One dock in particular seemed promising, with a modern-looking crane loading a seagoing barge with what appeared to be coal. On the other side of the road from the dock was a bar and he decided to go in, but it was full of dock workers who fell silent the moment he entered. He doubted any visitor to the city, let alone a foreigner, had been in there before. He turned around and left.
On the Monday Prince continued his journey, heading northwards up the European side of the Bosphorus, where the grand buildings alongside the river and the gardens sweeping down towards it meant there was little if any scope there for the kind of port facility he was looking for. He carried on nonetheless, walking for an hour or two and then taking a taxi when the road was close enough to the shore for him to be able to look out for likely berths. As the city began to fade away the Black Sea came into view and he knew his journey was over. It was the Tuesday afternoon and he’d found nothing. For most of that day the banks of the Bosphorus had been steep and unfit for any ship to moor on it other than small fishing boats. When he reached Rumelifeneri where the Bosphorus disappeared into the Black Sea he could go no further.
Eventually he found a taxi to take him back to the hotel, spending the journey watching the mighty Bosphorus and the parade of large cargo vessels on it. Many were passing though, en route from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, but he knew many more – those with the Turkish ensign – would have embarked from somewhere around the Bosphorus.
He’d spent the last couple of days making notes for an article on the theme of the Bosphorus outside of the ancient centre of the city. He was aware he was perhaps allowing too long for the article but it did give him a good excuse for being where he was and for the photos he was taking. That evening he’d write another article, with the code probably hinting at some kind of unspecified progress. He’d file it on Wednesday.
And he had a plan.
He had two more places to visit.
* * *
The reception was at the Swedish Consulate in Beyoğlu and neither Bryant nor Stone could be sure what was being celebrated. It may have been the birthday of a member of the Swedish royal family, but that wasn’t the point. The point was this was an event at the consulate of a neutral nation and as such the building would be brimming with fellow intelligence officers from every side: the neutral ones, the Allies and the Axis powers.
And it was one of those neutrals who made a beeline for Bryant and Stone before they were quite over the threshold, before they’d even helped themselves to a drink from the tray held tantalisingly close to them by a pair of white-gloved hands.
‘Follow me – we’ll have a chat on the terrace.’
‘Perhaps we can get a drink first, Joe?’ Bryant didn’t want to sound too desperate.
‘They’re serving them out here, along with raw bits of animals. And it’s Joseph, not Joe. You know that, Stone.’
‘Bryant actually.’
‘Exactly.’
Joseph O’Brien – Joe to Bryant and Stone and most other people – was the Directorate of Intelligence’s officer at the Irish consulate in Turkey. He was, as Bryant and Stone would insinuate in slightly mocking tones, Ireland’s spy in Turkey. The Directorate of Intelligence was also known as G2, and Bryant and Stone said that meant Ireland had two spies.
Theirs was not a good relationship.
They found a space on the terrace, not too far from the German consul general who was pretending too hard to ignore them as he talked to someone from the Japanese consulate. Nearby a man they recognised as a Bulgarian spy stood on his own, looking nervous and lost, which somehow seemed to sum up his country.
‘Are you guys trying to fuck us up, eh?’
Stone looked shocked, but Bryant was made of sterner stuff.
‘I beg your pardon, O’Brien?’
‘That secret police officer – Uzun… you know him?’
‘Very well.’
‘He thinks we have a spy operating under cover as a journalist here.’
‘And what does that have to do with us, O’Neil? We’d be thrilled for you if you have managed to extend your espionage network beyond yourself.’
‘His name is Michael Eugene Doyle and he was born in Dublin in 1905. Uzun’s given me all his details – appears he lived for a while in England, went back to Ireland, became a journalist, and then moved to the United States where he now works for a magazine called Travelling and Travellers based in New York City.’
‘And Inspector Uzun thinks he’s a spy?’
‘He’s wondering if he’s a spy, and I told him he’s certainly not mine, but then I started to wonder if he’s in fact one of your spies and you’ve gone and given him an Irish passport, which would put us in an embarrassing position. Just to be clear, I’ve checked with Dublin and they don’t know him. They’re not sure about the passport.’
Bryant looked at Stone and both shook their heads. ‘He’s certainly not one of ours, Joe, I can assure you of that.’
‘And London, what about if they’ve sent him flying in solo or whatever Americanism you guys use?’
‘I very much doubt,’ said Stone, ‘London would do such a thing, not in Istanbul of all places. In any event, Joe, what evidence does Inspector Uzun have that this Mr Boyle is a spy?’
‘It’s Doyle, not Boyle – Michael Eugene Doyle. I’m not sure what evidence, he has to be honest – as far as I can gather he’s suspicious because this character is staying at the Hotel Bristol. I don’t think it amounts to any more than that. I’m simply raising it with you because if he is one of your guys and you’ve furnished him with false Irish papers then it puts me in an embarrassing position. Inspector Uzun seems to think because we share a language and fate has caused us to share the British Isles then somehow we’re allies.’
‘Perish the thought, Joe.’
‘Indeed. Shall we have a drink?’
‘I wouldn’t get too worried about Inspector Uzun, Joe – strictly between you and me we understand he’s having a hard time. Someone planted a woman on him, a rather buxom Egyptian girl who he thinks is Lebanese. She persuaded him to rent an apartment near here and the plan was for her to see what information she could extract from him as they shared a bed while his family was at the coast during August. It all went wrong when the good inspector became rather too – how should one put it, enthusiastic – something very unpleasant to do with a bottle I’m afraid. The young lady disappeared, I’m told.’
O’Brien nodded appreciatively, grateful to be the recipient of such good gossip.
‘And whose operation was it, Bryant?’
Bryant and Stone looked at each other and then at O’Brien as if they hadn’t a clue.
They waited until the Irishman had left, following an Italian diplomat into the consulate. Stone turned to Bryant. ‘You know what I’m thinking?’
‘Tell me.’
‘This rather corroborates what Buchan from The Times told us, doesn’t it? I think we certainly need to have a word with London.’
Chapter 15
Istanbul, Turkey
September 1943
In the end he filed his third article for Travelling and Travellers on the Thursday, 9th September.
The article itself was more colour than anything else, a meandering piece extolling the virtues of walking along the banks of the Bosphorus, with plenty of references – too many of them, on reflection – to the smells and sounds one encountered along the way, no references to his hopeless search for a hint of chromium, of course, though that would have made for a more interesting article. H
e’d waited until the Thursday to file the article because on the Wednesday he’d been to one of the two places he’d determined to visit.
* * *
He spent the Wednesday morning in the hotel, writing a first draft of the article, and had anyone been listening in on his room in the Hotel Bristol they’d have thought the occupant sounded somewhat demented. Prince had spent the morning talking to himself out loud. He felt the need to ensure he had the hint of an Irish accent.
Later in the morning he had a shave and a bath – his monologue barely pausing – and then set off, walking north-east from the hotel, through Galatasary to Taksim and from there turning in the direction of the river, up and down a couple of the improbably steep and narrow streets Istanbul throws at you. As he turned a corner, he found himself opposite the German consulate, an enormous building with a pillared entrance and huge swastika banners draped either side of it, running from the roof down to the ground.
His destination was separated from the consulate by a narrow road on a steep hill: the Park Hotel. Christine Wright had made the Park sound quite appealing, somewhere that ought to be high up on the itinerary of any spy visiting Istanbul.
‘You need to know about the Park Hotel, Mr Doyle, it’s important you do. Whether you choose to actually visit it is your call. You must make that judgement, Mr Doyle. It could be very helpful or it could be the opposite. In a nutshell, anyone who’s anyone in the world of espionage in Istanbul gathers at the Park, specifically in the bar on the fifth floor, the one with fine views of the Bosphorus, so I’m told. Now of course as a British agent the very last place one ought to be seen is in a place where spies congregate – after all, someone may then suspect you’re a spy!’
He’d giggled at that point but not for terribly long because he’d only done so in response to what he assumed was a joke made by her. She was, in fact, being serious and shot him the kind of admonishing look schoolteachers are trained to use on disruptive pupils.
‘However, Mr Doyle,’ she had spread her hands out in front of her, as if dealing cards, ‘journalists also congregate at the Park and they also do so in the fifth-floor bar. So you may wish to go there purely as a journalist. It may help your cover story, to be seen behaving as a journalist would. I suppose what I’m saying is it may seem odd if as a foreign journalist in Istanbul you don’t visit the Park at some stage. In a sense, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. It goes without saying you should be careful, but one never knows, you may find it a good place to pick things up, especially if one is running into a brick wall.’
Michael Doyle had certainly been running into a brick wall.
The room ran the width of the fifth floor, with dramatic views over the Bosphorus through the large windows at either end of the bar. There were wooden panelled walls and leather chairs clustered around circular tables, spaced well apart from each other. The bar itself was enormous, with a high marble top and a silvered mirror behind it. Art nouveau lamps were dotted around the room, on the bar and the tables.
When Michael Eugene Doyle entered he paused in the doorway, assessing the lay of the land. It wasn’t too hard: to his left the clientele were smarter dressed and much quieter, standing or sitting close to each other in groups of two or three and glancing around at the sight of anyone coming too near them. To his right it was an altogether different matter. There the clientele – all men, as on the other side – were dressed less smartly; he even saw someone without a tie – and it was much noisier.
Michael Doyle walked to the right and positioned himself at the end of the bar, next to a group of four men. He stood close to them as he ordered a beer and a whisky. They’d stopped talking and looked towards him, though not in an unfriendly way.
‘Can I buy you a drink?’
‘You’re offering to buy four journalists a drink? I hope you’re a wealthy man!’ The man who spoke did so with an American accent. He was tall, his tie barely done up, his collar undone.
‘Don’t worry, I’m a journalist myself – with an expense account, which I guess makes me a wealthy man, eh?’
The others laughed and Doyle proffered his hand. ‘Michael Doyle, Travelling and Travellers magazine New York.’
The tall man introduced himself. ‘Mike Silver, Los Angeles Times.’
The others stepped forward and introduced themselves.
‘Colin Alexander, the Globe and Mail, Toronto.’
‘Pierre Rochat, Le Courrier, Geneva.’
‘Buchan, The Times.’
Without being prompted the barman had placed drinks in front of each man.
‘You don’t sound American, Mike?’
‘It’s Michael actually. No, I’m Irish but have been in your country for quite a few years.’
‘Where are you from in Ireland?’
‘Dublin.’
‘Not a terribly strong Irish accent…’ Buchan, the man from The Times who’d not given his first name.
Doyle gave what he hoped was a satisfactory version of his life story: born in Ireland, much of his childhood in England and recent years in the US, which would account for his accent. None of the others seemed to be unduly suspicious. He was pleased with the casual way he’d recounted his story – not too much detail, just enough for it to be plausible. He thought Gilbey would have been pleased.
What, one of them wondered, was he up to in Istanbul?
Michael Doyle talked about the articles he’d already filed: the journey to Istanbul on the Taurus Express, the coffee shop and the area around it and his walk along the Bosphorus. Pierre Rochat said he thought the last one sounded interesting.
‘Geneva want news every day but I tell them sometimes there are days when there’s no news. They don’t seem interested in my feature ideas. Maybe I’ll try the Bosphorus walk on them.’
There was then a general discussion, fuelled by a further round of drinks, about how difficult news desks were to work with – too demanding, too unrealistic. On the one hand they wanted a steady stream of stories but then became hard to please when the reporter in the field offered them.
‘Sometimes I think,’ said the Globe and Mail, ‘that life would be so much easier if one was just doing features. Do you have a free hand in choosing your stories?’
Prince said he had, though obviously he needed to check them with his editors.
‘And what are you working on now?’ It was more or less the first time Buchan from The Times had spoken. It was a familiar upper-class drawl, a familiar disdainful look from under hooded eyelids, the familiar patronising tone used when addressing someone not of his social standing, accompanied by the smell of alcohol on his breath.
Prince reckoned this was the opportunity he’d been hoping for. Travelling and Travellers, he told them, wanted something that was a bit more current, about Turkey during the war but not about the war itself, if they saw what he meant. Mike Silver said he didn’t know what he meant, so Prince explained that the idea New York had mentioned was maybe doing something on trade: Turkey was traditionally a great trading nation, Istanbul was perfectly placed between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Maybe he could do something on how trade continued during the war? He thought this was a good idea and he was beginning to look at it, perhaps doing something on goods being shipped to the different sides. He was especially interested in goods being shipped through the Black Sea.
‘Why the Black Sea, Doyle?’ It was Buchan again. He now had a cigar in his hand and was going to some effort to light it.
‘It just seems, I don’t know… romantic? I think I could make it rather appealing for the readers of my magazine.’
‘I read Travelling and Travellers, Michael, are you sure this is something your readers are interested in? I’d have thought they read it now as an antidote to war,’ said Mike Silver.
‘The war makes writing about trade very difficult,’ said Pierre Rochat. ‘There’s plenty of it going on – especially with the Germans, but the Turks are very sensitive about it. It is not
something they’d want publicised.’
‘What kind of trade is going on with Germany, Pierre?’
The four men all looked round and the Canadian moved closer to him. ‘Keep your voice down, Michael. This room is full of people you wouldn’t want to hear what you’re saying. You see the man over there, the one with a high collar and wire-framed spectacles? He’s Manfred Busch, deputy head of the Abwehr – that’s German Intelligence – here in Istanbul – he’s talking to the Italian consul general. The man just along the bar, slightly nearer us – the one wearing dark glasses? We don’t know his name but Pierre thinks he’s Swiss German. He’s always watching people.’
Michael Doyle promised to keep his voice down and repeated his question to Pierre: ‘So what kind of trade is going on with Germany?’
The Swiss shrugged and looked at the others; the American and the Canadian shrugged too, Buchan remained impassive. ‘Who knows? Anything and everything would probably be the answer. Why do you ask?’
‘I’m digging around for material for my article. For instance, what docks along the Bosphorus are shipments to Germany likely to go from?’
‘If you find out, Michael, please share it with us,’ said Colin Alexander. ‘The Turks tend not to advertise these things, they don’t hang banners outside them. But my guess is that anything heavy and sensitive would be shipped from one of the docks on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Do you agree, Pierre? You spend more time on that side than we do.’
‘You may be right. Did you have any specific cargo in mind, Michael?’
Prince hesitated; the question was too direct to avoid, the opportunity too good to miss. He finished his glass of beer and toyed with the whisky.
‘I’m not too sure, but raw materials I guess. I hear Germany imports quite a lot of these from here. I don’t know really, coal… chrome? Do those ring a bell maybe?’
Prince was aware of a silence and of heads shaking, three of them, Buchan remaining quite still. Eventually Mike Silver placed his hand on Prince’s arm, as if to stop him drinking. ‘It’s dangerous territory, Michael, I warn you. Far be it from me to stop a fellow journalist chasing a story but if you do, you need to be very careful and you certainly don’t want any of those guys over there knowing what you’re doing.’