Assignment- 13th Princess

by Will B Aarons

  There was something else his grandfather used to say— now, this was serious; how did it go? Volkan thought. He frowned below the black crescents of his mustache as he probed for the words: “You fight battles to win or be killed, God’s hand holding yours wherever you end—back tilling your field or in Paradise!”

  He would return to his village when this was over, when he’d seen it through, he decided. Perhaps he would be a school teacher—he had a university education, after all. He would spend his summers with his clan in the high pastures that remembered their nomad heritage, warriors come eons ago from Mongolia’s Tian Shan Mountains to conquer the Arabs and the Byzantines.

  A sickness of years was falling away from him, Volkan thought.

  Let Prince Tahir try to dishonor him.

  He would do the right thing—there was much, he realized now, that he might tell Durell. And then? Whatever Allah willed.

  “Volkan?” Sadettin spoke quietly through the door.

  “Yes?”

  “He is coming.”

  Volkan sat still, and his eyes shifted back and forth across the darkened room. “Tamam, okay. Go to the men on the roof and wait.”

  Sadettin replied hurriedly. “Are you sure, Volkan?”

  “What do you think? I’ll call you when I want you.”

  “But—”

  “Go!”

  Volkan had not felt so good in a long time.

  There was no sign of the lookout as Durell stepped with cautious care into the stone-floored lobby. The only light, behind the worn wooden grill at the reception desk, shone on a bald clerk who slumped dozing in his chair. A fitful fly crawled across his collar. Durell paused, surveyed the dim stairs ahead, glanced back at the street. The cinema out back made gunshot noises. Its music was a distant whirlwind of sound. Durell thought he heard applause.

  He worked his way up the narrow stairs slowly, a step at a time, testing his footing against squeaks and groans from the old wood. The staircase smelled like a basket of dirty laundry.

  He wondered who waited at the top.

  He worried that McNamara might get lost in the blind alleys and snarled passageways behind the street.

  He kept moving.

  The dusky corridor was empty. A window at the far end brought in darkness. Durell scented a fume-laden dankness that drifted in from the streets and chimneys, the factories and shipping channels of Istanbul.

  He thumbed back his coat and hefted the Marine .45 from his waistband, his flesh cooling at the belt where the heavy steel had sucked out sweat. The gun was down by his thigh, his breath light and easy, as he approached the door to his room.

  He had expected a show here in the corridor, but nothing happened; maybe they were all in his room.

  Certainly Volkan was not alone.

  He looked back at the dark window once more, then stood fronting the door. There was no way to be clever about it, he thought.

  His knee jerked up, and his heel slammed into the door near the old brass knob, and splinters flew and the door crashed inward with a rending, explosive bang. He crouched, darted, swung to the right, and dropped to a knee.

  There was a moment of jaw-clamped silence as he waited, gun ready over the dim space in front, his vision adjusting on the gloomy hulk of Volkan.

  “Don’t shoot, Durell Bey.”

  “Show your palms.” Durell spoke Turkish in a grating voice. He did not know what he had expected, but he had not thought it would be this easy. His nerves jangled at the thought of a trap closing behind him, and he slid side-wise to cover both the door and Volkan as the man gave a heavy breath and lifted his big hands. Seen through the window beyond Volkan’s mountainous shoulders, the lights of Asia gleamed across the Bosporus. Then the Turk rose from his chair, and his bulk blotted out the window. He kept his hands raised shoulder high as he spoke with a loose peculiarity:

  “You have nothing to fear from me.”

  “You didn’t come back,” Durell said through the gloom.

  “I was afraid, but that was before.”

  “You have other men here, somewhere.”

  “Yes. Don’t waste time, if you wish to evade them.”

  “Give me your gun. Easy.”

  Volkan’s right hand came down slowly and slid under the lapel of his jacket.

  Durell heard a thickness in his own voice, as he said: “I’m warning you.”

  “No need, Durell Bey.”

  Durell watched as the hand came back into view, the pistol held carelessly. An oddly disturbing smile crossed Volkan’s lips. Then there was a swift motion behind him. A heavy thud shattered the smile, and Volkan’s head pitched forward with a gush of breath; his knees thudded massively into the floor, and he pitched onto his face.

  Durell’s surprised stare found McNamara’s snarling face. “That was unnecessary,” he said.

  “I didn’t know you had him covered. He had his gun out.”

  “He was surrendering it.”

  McNamara’s voice was apprehensive. “Where are the others?”

  “They’re here. Somewhere.” Durell glanced through the door, where it hung by a single twisted hinge, then he stooped to the fallen Turk and spoke quickly. “Let’s get him to the car.”

  “He’s too big to handle on the fire escape,” McNamara said.

  “We’ll drag him between us, like a drunk. Get a hold.”

  They draped Volkan’s arms over their shoulders, and the huge form sagged between them as they struggled through the doorway. The glistening dome of the man’s limply swaying head filled a corner of Durell’s vision, and his toes grated along the wooden floor of the corridor, thumped after them in the dim stairway, dropping from step to step. The sound of Durell’s breath clashed with that of McNamara’s and made harsh echoes against the walls of the narrow staircase.

  Durell kept expecting Volkan’s confederates, but there was no sign of them.

  “What did Volkan tell you?” McNamara gasped.

  “Nothing.” Durell sounded a bit puzzled. “But he seemed willing to cooperate.”

  “Do you think he knows where Princess Ayla is?”

  “Could be—or something more.”

  “There’s also the possibility,” McNamara puffed, “that he would sell you some cock-and-bull story to mislead you.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Durell said as they came to the bottom of the stairs. They hurried across the musty lobby, Volkan dragging between them. The clerk still was asleep. Outdoors, Volkan’s toes trailed a grinding noise across the rough paving stones.

  McNamara was soaked with sweat. He kept glancing down to where Volkan’s head swayed from his loose neck.

  The movie had ended, and a few of its patrons trickled into this street.

  A shout came vaguely from the height of the hotel roof.

  Everybody looked up.

  Durell saw no one, but he didn’t have to. “They’re up there,” he said. He felt McNamara loosen his grip on Volkan.

  “Let’s drop him,” McNamara said.

  “No.” Durell yanked toward the far side of the street and almost threw McNamara off balance. “Get him in the car.”

  The pedestrians strolled on, the shout forgotten, oblivious to the apparently drunken trio crossing the street.

  Durell clenched his teeth against the strain of Volkan’s weight, cursed under his breath, raised his eyes again to the roof. The men would be hurtling down the staircase by now, he thought, and felt a spurt of urgency. He heaved to speed up McNamara, and this time the swearing intelligence chief tripped and went down on all fours. Volkan rolled away from Durell’s shoulder and crumpled to the paving stones.

  Durell bent and grabbed—and abruptly checked himself, startled by the sight of the tires on the Toyota.

  All four had been slashed.

  “Someone took precautions,” McNamara said, on his feet now and hauling at the limp-jointed giant between them. His cheeks shone suddenly whiter in the pale radiance of the night He started to say something e
lse, but Durell cut him off.

  “Around the back way. Quick.”

  They slogged back across the street in staggering tandem, the awkward weight of Volkan in the middle, and entered the dark passageway that McNamara had used before. They came out in the deserted space of the cinema, and Durell pulled toward a canted marble doorway with carved lintel and jambs that might have been a thousand years old. He had no idea where it led, but it didn’t look like a dwelling entrance. Given the nature of the open area around them, which once might have been the courtyard of a palace or a caravanserai, it held out the hope of passages and chambers complicated enough to confuse pursuit.

  A rushing footfall echoed from somewhere.

  There were no more shouts.

  Durell judged that the men had no wish to arouse the neighborhood and risk questions; they would be spreading out to search the immediate area quickly and thoroughly.

  He wondered how many there were.

  Then they were inside the marbled entrance, where they stumbled down worn, slippery stone stairs. The stairs twisted to the left, descended a bit more, halted in dank lightlessness. Durell felt chilled. The subtle fragrance of water touched his nostrils. He tried his penflash, but its tiny beam was too narrow and weak to be of much help, so he dug for a box of matches he always carried. The match sparked and flared, and its orange radiance was dimly reflected by water and marble columns.

  “The place is flooded,” McNamara said in a disgusted tone.

  “No, it’s an old cistern.”

  It was similar to the larger Yerebatan and Binbirdirek cisterns, both with hundreds of columns, the latter built during the Fourth Century in the reign of Constantine the Great, Durell remembered.

  He thought he heard the men in the courtyard above as he surveyed as best he could the flat black water and twenty-odd columns that rose out of it to a vaulted brick ceiling. Where the walls were in reach were graffiti in numerous languages from countless epochs of history.

  As he swung the diminishing match around, he saw that he stood on a clay floor that had been patterned with footprint on footprint.

  McNamara spoke nervously. “They’ll be in the courtyard by now.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Durell whispered.

  “We’re at a dead end.”

  The match singed Durell's fingertips. He dropped it, struck another. He was aware of his thumping pulse, a dull ache in his wounded leg, as the slim flare trembled slightly in his fingers. He turned and regarded Volkan, who was sprawled on the wet earth. They had taken him as far as they could, he decided.

  “Let’s try to wake him up,” he said. He cupped water in his hand and splashed it on the broad, mustached face.

  There was not a stir.

  He bent closer, pushed back an eyelid, felt a prod of anxiety that abruptly turned to rankling anger.

  “He’s dead,” he said.

  “After all of that?”

  “You killed him, you son of a bitch.”

  McNamara’s sweaty face went wooden, and his gaze probed Durell’s eyes briefly before he spoke. Then he said in a flat voice: “You don’t think I did it on purpose, do you?”

  Durell felt the back of Volkan’s head. Beneath the bruised flesh there, shattered bone felt like soggy straw. He considered McNamara’s face by the light of the dying match. “You crushed his skull,” he said.

  “So—I’ve been deskbound. I’m rusty, lost my touch.”

  Durell said nothing, just stared at him.

  “Why would I kill him?” McNamara protested. A chill drop of sweat fell from his round chin. “Maybe you thought I didn’t want him to talk.” His words quickened. “Maybe you think I’m in with Prince Tahir on some crazy scheme to—”

  “To what, McNamara?” Durell’s voice was low and even.

  McNamara frowned. “You’ve got rocks in your head, Cajun,” he growled. “He set a trap for you. Your first guess was right—what do you think those bozos are doing out there now? Waiting to shower us with rose petals?”

  “They weren’t in the room; he had them out of the way.”

  “Out of sight, you mean.”

  “It started as a trap, but I think he had changed his mind.”

  “Then you’re a sucker.”

  Durell’s left hand snapped his .45 from his waistband and pointed it at McNamara’s gut. The match flame burned low and hot in his right.

  The muscles lumped in McNamara’s jaws. “What’s that for?”

  “We seem to be on different wavelengths.”

  “We can still be partners.”

  “Sure. I’m the partner that gets out of here alive.”

  McNamara’s eyes widened a bit, then narrowed. “You’re going to wipe me?”

  “Maybe I should. I don’t think you messed up Volkan’s head like that by accident. But I need you.” Durell gazed up at him, from where he crouched beside Volkan’s corpse. The pistol felt heavy and awkward in his left hand.

  “I thought you’d come to your senses,” McNamara said.

  “You’ll have to provide a diversion, so I can get away.”

  McNamara’s face fell. “You can’t ask me to do that!”

  “Better you than me. Get up those stairs and run for it.”

  With biting quickness the match seared against Durell’s fingertips, and there was a split second of pained astonishment.

  It was all McNamara needed.

  His toe smashed into Durell’s chest, and Durell went back over his heels and sprawled into the rattling, ringing water. The black liquid filled his eyes and nose and brought a moment of near-panic when he was powerless to sense in the flat darkness of the chamber whether his face was above or below the surface. He harnessed his wits, rolled face down and gave an echoing kick that sent him diving as he jammed his .45 back into his waistband. He did not know if McNamara would try to shoot him, but he could take no chances, even in this utter darkness. Then he bumped into a stone column, embraced it to the surface, and took in a long, sweet breath. Water rolled down his taut cheeks, and his heart beat against his rib cage. There was nothing to show McNamara’s presence.

  Slowly he scanned the blackness above and toward the rear of the room.

  McNamara’s harsh whisper came from his right. “Hey, Cajun! Where are you?” A stifled breath of anger.

  Durell kept his silence and twisted his face back and forth in hopes of catching the slightest radiance from some hidden source of light. The water was curiously sweet on his lips. He felt it dribble around his eyes and down his face.

  Another whispered shout. “You’re making waves in more ways than one, Sam. I’ll let bygones be bygones if you will.”

  Durell lowered himself soundlessly into the water, aware that his wet .45 probably was useless, and stroked silently away from the direction of McNamara’s voice until he found another column to grab.

  “Sheik Zeid isn’t going to be pleased,” McNamara said.

  Then Durell glimpsed a dim glow further back in the cistern and a few yards to his left. He studied it, ignoring McNamara’s words. It had been simple enough to deduce that a cistern would have an inlet for its water supply. It could have been bricked over, of course, even buried beneath the foundation of some old building. But if that were the case, Durell had concluded, then the cistern should have dried up, its waters soaked into the soil over the centuries.

  He felt reasonably certain that the faint radiance back there marked the water inlet.

  He worked his way back, paddling quietly from column to column.

  McNamara was still calling him, exasperation growing in his voice.

  He reached the source of the glow and looked up and saw a steeply inclined brick tunnel just big enough to worm his way through. The scant illumination that came down from the street made glowworm-like marks on the eroded old bricks. A grating barred the far end.

  Finding a handhold in the crumbling mortar, he pulled himself up, his shoulders popping with the effort. He swung free from the chest down for
a long moment, and water splashed and gurgled out of his sodden clothing.

  McNamara’s voice became threatening. “What are you doing. You’d better get back here.”

  It was the last thing he heard McNamara say, as he took a breath, bunched his muscles, and heaved until he was in the brick pipe to his waist, with his feet still in the water. Another grip on the corroded bricks and he was fully inside, pulling himself up by bruised and skinned fingertips, pushing himself with toeholds gained in niches and hollows. When he scented the raw, rank odor of the streets above it was with a sense of gratefulness.

  Bolts that had held the grating in place had long since rusted away. A couple of determined shoves and the grate clattered over, out of the way.

  He crawled into the night. He was inside a low stone box that was open to the sky. A brick sluice came into the box from over two arches—all that remained of a Roman aqueduct. Houses built of trash and junk had been thrown up in the arches, homes of the poor in this forgotten, twisting alley.

  His leg stiff and aching, Durell squished and sloshed away to find a taxi.

  In spite of everything, he had a moment of misgiving about leaving McNamara to the dogs. But he put it aside. The importance of K Section’s mission overrode all other considerations. And he had enough to think about as it was.

  There was the possibility, however slight and incredible it might seem, that Turkish troops would invade Dhubar.

  And that someone was attempting to lure Sheik Zeid to his death.

  The thought of killing brought Dara to mind—had he been harboring the assassin of the very woman he was pledged to protect?

  Had that been the Israeli plan all along?

  Chapter 18

  The safe house was on a lane that led from Gazi Muhtarpasa Caddesi, beyond the Eyup Sultan Mosque with its bones of Mohammed’s standard bearer and a footprint of the prophet himself.

  Durell guessed enough people were looking for his footprints and glanced back as he followed the lane through a rocky defile.

  Houses were plastered to the hillsides and filled the dells, jammed and crammed together like pieces of a puzzle, facing every which way in static disorder. Durell blew from his nose to clear the fetid odor of decaying garbage and untreated sewage.