And then, at last, the road took that curve to the right and moved closer to the water and then straightened.
Arshak and I glanced at each other. We both recognized the approach to Enver Pasha’s villa.
And now we saw a bright flare of electric light up ahead.
“Drive past into the dark,” I said.
We kept up our speed and approached the villa.
I watched carefully as we neared.
The villa’s second story and peaked roof were visible in the spill of electricity, and I focused on the entrance to the grounds. Two Germans were standing with rifles slung over their shoulders, one on each side of an open iron double-wide gate. They were confident. They were still expecting Ströder.
We flashed by and they hardly glanced our way.
And now we were in the dark.
Arshak slowed immediately.
“This is good,” I said, and we pulled off onto the side of the road in front of a stand of cypress.
Arshak shut down the engine and extinguished the lights.
We got out of the Unic and came around to the rear and stood shoulder to shoulder looking back at the villa, maybe seventy yards away.
I said, very low, “Hang back in the dark till I finish with the guards at the gate.”
I took one big breath of air and puffed it out.
I crossed the road to the tree line and approached the villa low and quick. Just before the penumbra of streetlight I drew back into the trees and eased up and took a good look.
Thirty yards away two armed men flanked the entrance. In order to silently take them both out I had a single-shot Winchester with a minimum of seven or eight seconds between rounds. And the guy on the left was only partially visible from my present angle. I could go deeper into the woods and come forward from tree to tree till I had a hidden, straight shot at both of them. Play the sniper. While the second Hun figured out why his comrade just fell down, I might be able to reload and take him out before he knew how to react. But maybe not. Maybe he’d throw off some generalized field-of-fire shots right away. Or he could duck out of sight.
I thought of a better way; better for Lucine.
I had an open, direct look at the guard on the right. I retreated into the dark and then out to the verge of the road. I collected the three largest manageably throwable stones I could find, ranging in size from chicken egg to baseball. I crept back to my previous just-out-of-the-light position, which was about even with the near end of the villa wall, and I waited for the two men to have their faces turned away from my direction. Then I stood up straight and squared around to the wall and I threw the middle-sized stone over and into the grounds, hoping to hit something that would make a sound.
I watched the two men.
They lifted their heads, but it wasn’t clear they’d heard anything.
I threw the egg-sized stone into the same general area. And then, immediately, the largest one.
This time I had their attention.
They looked back into the villa grounds.
They exchanged a quick word and the man on my left disappeared.
I pulled the hammer back on my Winchester and held my shooting arm straight down and I strode forward into the light, keeping the weapon out of sight.
I took two quick, long steps and a third before the remaining guard turned his face to me.
I was a German officer heading his way out of the night. The guard’s rifle was coming off his shoulder, but slow. I was fast now, striding. The guard was crazy confused, trying to figure me out. Should he salute or should he raise his rifle and stop me?
Another stride.
This would be an easy shot now.
I drew my hand from behind me and lifted the Winchester and the guard’s eyes went wide and he was rushing the rifle off his shoulder and I had the Winchester on him and I squeezed off a round and there was almost no kick at all and there was no recognizable sound, just a faint hiss and rush, and the center of the guard’s chest bloomed and sprayed and he flew back and his rifle clattered into the gate and already I was dodging to the left out of immediate sight—the other guard must have heard, was surely turning now and would soon be looking for me—and I grabbed the lug and slid the bolt and popped the cartridge case and I stuck a fresh round into the breech and I could hear the other guard running, he was almost at the gate, and I took two steps into the street so I could have an angle on him, as I closed the bolt and pulled back the hammer, doing this with my back to the entrance, the Winchester hidden from view, relying on my uniform and my back to delay the guard, and I heard the Hun scuffle into the open behind me and I lifted my left arm and pointed to the woods.
“It came from over there, Sergeant,” I said, looking at him over my shoulder, and he was hesitating, he was turning his face the way I was pointing and I kept my eyes on him and I was already swinging my right arm across my body and under my left arm and I squeezed off a round that caught him in the left side of the chest, maybe straight into the heart because he went down heavy, like he was gone instantly.
I squared around to the entrance. But I didn’t move. The two guards were very still. The two guards were dead. I breathed deep and I let it out. I reloaded the Winchester as if there was no one lying on the ground before me. As if I had nowhere to go. If I’d reloaded in seven seconds a few moments ago, this was a leisurely fifteen. And I wondered if other eyes had been watching the entrance, from inside the house.
Apparently not, as I waited there in the road. No sound whatsoever came from behind the wall.
I had to expect more resistance inside the villa, but I figured I could at least get to the front door without drawing fire.
I pulled my Winchester’s hammer and cocked it. I liked this tough guy who nonetheless knew how to keep his mouth shut when he chewed.
And Arshak appeared beside me.
He must have followed me to the edge of the light.
He didn’t say a word.
I didn’t say a word.
He nodded.
I moved off quick, crossing to the entrance and stepping between the dead guards and through the open gate. The villa was done in a toned-down Italian style with no Renaissance frills. The basics but tasteful: two stories elevated on a terrace with a low-pitched, wide-eaved tile roof, a central court, and an arcaded, ground-floor loggia. The place was all white stucco tainted yellow in the electric light like dog piss in snow.
I went up the steps and across the courtyard, moving quietly and with my Winchester held low. I passed into the shadow of the loggia and approached the front door, which showed light within, and now it was time—since I’d not caught anyone’s attention—for me to act a little suspicious.
I crouched and spanked past the first set of windows to the left of the door. I pressed back against the wall and then gave just enough of my face to the glass to see inside.
I was looking down a wide, central grand hall that stretched from the front door to a far set of veranda doors. The hall was lit by dim-burning electric faux-torches on sconces, and outside, at the far end, I could dimly see the columns and arches of a corresponding Bosporus-side loggia.
I looked to the right, closer to the door, and I flinched back.
But they did not see me and I needed to watch them: two more German guards, one tapping a cigarette halfway out of a pack and letting the other take it. The second soldier said something and headed for his post at the rear of the villa.
The first German began to turn in my direction and I pulled back. I waited a few moments. I peeked again. He was sitting on a stool, just inside the front door. I glanced the length of the hall. The second guard was outside, closing the veranda doors behind him.
I kept low and crept away from the window and moved a couple of paces out of the loggia. Then I turned and approached the
house again, doing nothing to muffle my steps.
I was a German officer. And as far as these house guards knew, I’d been admitted by the entrance guards.
I stood before the door, and I lifted my left hand and knocked very lightly.
I heard a stirring inside.
Perhaps they knew to expect someone.
The door began to open and I backed two steps away and raised my right arm.
I told myself that if there were any way to reliably knock this man out and keep him out till I rescued Lucine, I would do that.
The door opened and the guard’s face was shrouded in shadow and I was glad for that and he had not unshouldered his weapon—they were indeed expecting visitors and they were not expecting trouble—and I squeezed the Winchester’s trigger and he flew back and landed hard on the floor, his body thumping and his rifle clattering.
I stepped out of the sight line of the door and reloaded the Winchester and cocked the hammer.
I did not put my body in front of the door but leaned and looked inside.
The guard was silent, though his feet were moving ever so slightly, as if he were having a dream about running. Perhaps he was. He would soon arrive.
The far veranda doors were shut.
No one was in the hall.
I moved forward, sidestepping the body, and I walked quickly along, vaguely aware of oil paintings and divans along the walls, but I kept my eyes forward and my Winchester behind my thigh.
I arrived at the veranda doors and opened one and stepped out, staying in the spill of electric light so I could clearly be seen and identified as an officer. As far as this last guard knew, I’d been certified by three of his comrades.
He was emerging now from the shadows to my left. He stopped and straightened and he clicked his heels and saluted.
I brought my right hand up and across my body and shot him in the center of his chest, and as he was going down I turned and strode back through the veranda doors and toward the front of the villa. I stopped in the middle of the grand hall.
To my right was an archway into the north end of the house, to my left an archway to the south end of the house. Either would do. I strongly suspected anyone else in the place was upstairs.
I lifted the Winchester. I looked at it for a moment. It seemed quite odd to my eye all of a sudden. Too long for a pistol, with the sawed-off rifle barrel and then the silencer. Quite long. But I did what I needed to do with it to prepare for whoever was next: bolt, breech, casing, shell, bolt, hammer. It was ready to fire.
And I found myself panting.
This also struck me as odd.
It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t about what I intended to do next.
Maybe not so odd: it was about what I’d been doing for the past few minutes.
It was about the knack.
It had been some months since I’d killed a man.
No, it hadn’t.
I’d killed in London as well.
Before that it had been some months.
And before that not at all.
And now I could do it four times in rapid succession with very little thought and no remorse.
Unless this was remorse, what I was doing now.
But these were soldiers I’d killed. And I’d seen worse. I saw it in Nicaragua and I saw it in Macedonia and Greece. Sanctioned by nations and cheered by the victors’ countrymen.
And I saw worse still: down a well in an empty village a few miles north of where I now stood.
Was I not killing for them, the slaughtered innocents? And for my own country? For Lucine? For her, of course. For Selene Bourgani. For that face ten feet high in a darkened auditorium. I was killing for the future of American cinema. For this odd and mostly remorseless thrill. What bullshit. Well, some of it wasn’t bullshit. Some of it was true. Maybe all of it was true.
It made no difference. This was my role.
So I chose the archway on the north and stepped through it, and in the darkness to my right was a staircase that ascended to a landing and then—out of my sight—turned toward the front of the house and continued up to the second floor.
I moved to the stairs. I began to climb.
And I wondered if the next man I killed would be the leader of the Ottoman Empire.
I was treading very lightly, my Winchester raised before me.
But not lightly enough.
Near the top of the stairs another uniformed guard appeared. He was raising his rifle.
He saw my peaked hat and my epaulets and my tunic first and only a brief moment later did he see the Winchester, which clicked and hissed and blew him backward to thump against the wall and down to the floor and I was on the top step, and the dim hallway was empty to the left and to the right. I looked back to the left again, and down the way was a splash of light from an open door.
The house was quiet, so this click and hiss and thump might have been heard. I bent and laid the Winchester quietly on the floor and I drew the Luger, flipped off the safety, and I strode forward to the light and pressed against the wall beside the door and then looked quickly in. I pulled quickly back.
And what I’d seen made me say in German, “I’m Colonel Vogel from the embassy. Don’t shoot. You’re in danger from an American agent who is on the grounds.”
I thought to holster the Luger, but I didn’t. I kept it behind my right thigh and I stepped into the doorway.
Across the room, behind a desk, framed by open doors onto a second-floor veranda, stood Enver Pasha.
He was not lowering his pistol.
I gently let him see my pistol.
“Your Excellency,” I said. “I have been tracking this man. Colonel Ströder, who asked me to come with him, has deployed your guards to search.”
I kept my eyes fixed on his but I let my face move slightly to the right so he could see the scar.
I watched his eyes flit to it. He was working hard to figure me out.
And I was still studying him. Swarthy. Black Kaiser Wilhelm mustache. He was thinner in the face than I remembered in the news photos, though by no means did I have a clear image of him in my mind. I thought: He’s gaunt from stress in this war; he could be twitchy with that pistol.
“This man Cobb could appear at any moment,” I said. “He may have come in from the water.”
I flipped my chin to the windows behind him.
He did not turn. But his head flinched just a little to the side and the muzzle of his own Luger dipped ever so slightly.
“I’m going to raise my pistol now,” I said, while doing it.
He refreshed his own aim abruptly but I now had a chest-shot zeroed on him. And he had a chest-shot zeroed on me. The Luger P08 has a two-stage trigger. I had taken up the bit of slack and moved to the second stage and I was sure Enver Pasha had too.
Neither of us dared to shoot.
Besides, I didn’t want to shoot him. Not yet. Gunshots still might imperil Lucine, if she was in the house. Which I was beginning to question.
I had to find her before anything else.
“Your Excellency,” I said. “I’m very sorry to have raised my weapon. But I had to give your own hand pause. Shall we lower our arms now? I’m Colonel Gerhard Vogel. I am here at your service. This man Cobb is dangerous and we are afraid he is very near.”
He did not move his pistol from his aim.
“Sergeant Schmidt,” he said loudly.
“Your Excellency,” I said. “We have been operating quietly for obvious reasons. Your excellent Sergeant Schmidt came downstairs at our small sounds. He is now helping to find Cobb. I’m here to protect you.”
He did not move his pistol.
I did not move mine.
We looked at each other hard.
“Colon
el Vogel,” Enver Pasha said, “please step closer.”
I did. Carefully. One small step. Another. Not letting my Luger waver at all. A third step and I stopped. We were no more than ten feet from each other.
We studied each other’s face.
“I don’t know a Colonel Gerhard Vogel,” Enver Pasha said. His German was excellent.
Now that I’d heard a couple of full sentences from him, something odd was clicking in my head.
The tenor of his voice.
And there was something in his eyes.
Something familiar.
And then I felt like an idiot.
If Lucine was still in this house—and I was beginning again to think she was—and if they’d wanted to lure Christopher Cobb here to interrogate him and kill him, then Enver Pasha was not standing before me.
Der Wolf was.
He wanted to play the Pasha for me for a while. He liked dressing up, this guy.
Which was the familiar thing I’d sensed a few moments ago.
This was Squarebeard from the bookstore in London.
But I’d seen Squarebeard only from a distance. Now that I was close to him, his familiarity took an odd turn.
“Mr. Cobb, is it?” he said.
Our pistols both held very steady.
I didn’t answer.
And he said, in English, a flat midwestern English, “How simple things would be if it weren’t for the automatic reaction of the body’s flexor muscles.”
The words, the pedantry of them, were fitting into that familiar something. As was the sound of his voice.
He said, “It would then merely be a matter of who squeezes the trigger first. But alas, my bullet would reach you in what? Perhaps nine one-thousandths of a second, causing the eight flexor muscles in your forearm instantly to act on their own. Your bullet would reach me with a similar alacrity and we would both be dead.”
And things were suddenly clear.
“So it wasn’t simply personal after all, between you and Brauer,” I said.
He smiled. “I meant what I said about admiring your work.”
This he spoke in a Boston Back Bay accent.
This was Walter’s shipboard lover.
The Star of Istanbul Page 34