Little Lost Lambs at the Post

by Harold Lamb

  Squinting at the anchored gunboat, he found its aspect changed. The foredeck awning was cleared away. The 4.7 no longer showed in tranquil profile. It flashed, spurting vapor. The shell came short and to the right. A second ranging shot.

  McGowan laughed. There could be only one spotter for indirect fire, the admiral in his glass bay, telling the pilot what to radio to the gunboat.

  The effect on the raiders across the way was immediate. They seemed to know ranging shots when they saw them. But they could not know what artillery was searching them out. Shouts echoed, and black figures jumped from cover to run back to the forest screen. The third shell splintered the rocks around the machine-gun post. That, McGowan conceded, was shooting.

  The effect on the Turks was even greater. Loosing off their precious cartridges, they started down over the rocks like hunters sighting deer. When the fourth shell struck blind among the raiders, they turned up the valley toward the Caucasus.

  "Ee-yah!” yelled Turgut, hurtling empty-handed down the slide. "Shabuk gel!"

  "The crazy ginks,” said McGowan, with appreciation.

  Propped peacefully in his chair on the castle terrace, the admiral glanced at his watch and saw that it was 11:34 when the first detail of police appeared at the bridge over the ravine that had been the castle moat once upon a time. Soiled and limping, they still looked satisfied, escorting McGowan, slung on a stretcher between two horses.

  The admiral gave a sigh of relief and cocked an eye at Miss Susie. Politely she waved at the damaged Irishman. But when Lt. Turgut Nimet strode upon the bridge, sweating under an odd machine gun, her small face glowed. With a nod of approval, the admiral suggested, "Now, my dear, you can report to madame that the navy got rid of the hex in Kirik. And that is all,” he said firmly.

  For a long moment her brown eyes searched his. "No, Mickey,” she said decidedly, "that is not all. First you must tell me why you took me to the ship of war to order them to shoot what you call gunnery practice, for you to watch from up in the clouds. They ask by whose command was it done?”

  Around the admiral’s eyes old lines sharpened, and relaxed. "By no one’s command, Susie. I got to thinking about it last night. The word is 'commandment’ ... I’ve forgotten which one. It’s so old. The commandment says something like this about neighbors: thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s field, his manservant, his ox, or ass, or anything.’ And that is all.”

  The girl’s soft fingers slipped into his hand. She pointed at the castle. From the parlor window a woman’s scarf fluttered and waved in old-time greeting to warriors returning home.

  Thief Trap

  IT began when Admiral J. Michael (Mickey) Cater, senior naval officer of the American mission to Turkey, asked abruptly, "McGowan, what is wrong with me, exactly, on this job?” Whereupon Lieut. Comdr. Terence McGowan, his aide, cast a wary glance at the slender, stubborn, slightly deaf and elderly admiral, who had been at home on most of the seven seas, including the Slot off Guadalcanal, but found it difficult to function as technical adviser of the small, obsolescent Turkish navy upon the cramped inland waters around their station of Istanbul. " Nothing at all, sir,” he replied, "except you don’t mix enough with the Turks.”

  "Mix? In what way?”

  Having been a year longer than his superior on the Istanbul station, McGowan was aware that the specific directive given members of the American mission not to be influenced by local politics or personalities could not be obeyed literally. Not in Istanbul. So he took a chance. "I know you attend all their top-level parties. But if you could raise a little personal hell just once, they’d get to like you.”

  "H’m’m,” said the admiral, signifying that the matter was closed. But he made a mental note that Terry was right. It behooved Mickey Cater to display something of a new personality. Furthermore, he should do so at the first opportunity.

  That evening he was annoyed by an interruption during the half hour sacred to his repose when he stretched out under the Judas trees of the garden of his rented villa overlooking the Bosporus, and drank a quick brandy before dressing for dinner. A servant ushered in the old Turkish boatman, Ismet by name. Ismet owned a light skiff, a sandal, painted a neat sky blue and gold. Lately he had taken to waiting down at the water’s edge for the admiral to go out on the Bosporus in his boat—an excursion for which the American officer had no time. Now, the servant explained, Ismet had brought the admiral a present.

  This proved to be a nicely polished gold coin bearing the likeness of a Byzantine emperor, and on the reverse a fine dromond, or ancient war galley. Admiral Cater collected Greek and Phoenician coins—those with ships on them— although how the boatman had discovered that, he did not know.

  Thinking that Ismet wanted to make a sale, he asked how much it was. The grizzled old boatman would take no money; the coin was a gift.

  Then, knowing the Oriental custom of expecting payment in kind, the American asked what Ismet would like in exchange.

  Ismet would like nothing, it seemed, except for the admiral to come take a row with him on the sea buried beneath the city of Istanbul. Now the admiral had reason to know that Istanbul, like Venice, was a city of the waters. Daily he drove to his office across the bridge over the twisted harbor of the Golden Horn, passing beneath an ancient aqueduct, still functioning; the window of his office by the old palace overlooked the tranquil Marmara. But he knew of no such body of water buried under the city.

  "Nonsense," he grated. "Ask him what he really wants."

  Refusing to take back the coin, Ismet went away obviously disappointed. The more the admiral studied the beautifully designed gold piece, the more he wanted it. He had never seen one like it. And when he drove down to the boulevard and sighted Ismet waiting each day on the water front, he had a twinge of conscience.

  The next thing that happened was the underage girl who tried to put the finger on Terry McGowan. Terry had sneaked off from his desk to look at a nice item of jade behind the closed door of the shop of Messrs. Ashraef and Lut near the Bab Ali gate of the Great Bazaar. Most of the Americans collected curios of one kind or another, and Terry's particular yen was for fine jade, about which he know very little. But he had discovered that Messrs. Ashraef and Lut could come up with the really fine stuff, the "gold” goods—anything from the missing nude paintings of the late Herman Goering, to stolen Armenian religious manuscripts or eye-catching jewels that could be cashed in anywhere from Cairo to Buenos Aires. With paper currencies fading in value in most of Europe, shrewd speculators were buying up these gold goods. Naturally, customers at Ashraef and Lut's asked no questions and paid in good hard money, American dollars or Swiss francs.

  So Terry was at the counter, fingering a miniature jade dragon, while big Emil Ashraef prodded him in persuasive English, telling how the dragon was from Tibet, and Terry should at least take it home to look over, when the underage girl interrupted them by staring in at the window.

  "Bir kiz,” Ashraef muttered, meaning, "That girl.” He slid the safe door shut and hissed at his lookout, who watched for the coming of police or spies of rival establishments. The girl vanished. "For you,” Ashraef whispered to Terry, "I will take your personal check. One hundred and sixty dollars. All right? I take no profit from a friend.”

  But the spell of the pale green dragon was broken by the interruption.

  Reluctantly Terry handed it back, saying truthfully that he couldn't afford it.

  When Terry emerged from the labyrinth of the bazaar, he found the kibitzer girl waiting his parked car.

  "Will you please help me,” she asked in careful English, "as an officer who is also American."

  With the clogs she wore, the top of her bobbed head almost came up to Terry’s shoulder. She might be, he conjectured, fourteen yearn old, and dressed for an occasion in black kid gloves and snappy red jacket.

  "Sister," he said, "in what way?" Her dark eyes oversize in a thin face gleamed with excitement. "This way. Come tomorrow morning to the antique fountain by
the Aya Sofia where you pass in the car of his excellency the commander of the American Navy. I will wait at the fountain to show you how to help. Then you can find what my family stole—I mean," she corrected hastily, "was robbed by the gang." Watching his face, she added, by way of assurance, that she was Miriam Karabak, freshman at the American College for Girls, and he could call her Mary.

  Now, Terry McGowan had learned in his stay at Istanbul to disbelieve most of what he heard and even something of what he saw. He did not believe that the daughter of a respectable Turkish family would solicit the aid of a foreigner for altruistic reasons.

  "Mary, I don't think Americans could be any help in solving a robbery." he responded gravely. "Why not tell tie police about it?”

  "Because my family has no money,” she explained confidently, "and my father has no power politics. Also, the police do not yet know what is stolen.” She looked around and came close to whisper, "It is the greatest treasure in our Turkish republic."

  Terry had had some experience with juvenile notions of crime. "Mary, you go to the movies ... the cinema, don’t you?"

  "Oh, yes. Especially about the FBI and Bugs Bunny. They are nylon.”

  "They are what?"

  "Nylon. Slick and new, American. Please come. I can show you proof of the gang robbery."

  Hurriedly and unguardedly, he explained. "Mary, I’d like to help, but we naval officers can only operate on navigable waters."

  "What is navigable?”

  When Terry elucidated, the child beamed. "Then it’s nylon, and you can help, sir. Because where I shall be taking you is on a boat, as you say, on water flowing from the river into the lake buried beneath us, here where we are standing.” With that, the freshman Mary Karabak ran off into the crowded alley, waving happily and calling, "Tomorrow I'll be waiting all morning!"

  In the crowd Terry noticed the stooge from Ashraef and Lut's, undoubtedly waiting to see if the child sold him anything.

  To Terry's surprise, his senior officer took a serious view of the incident when he saw him the next morning. "McGowan, it appears to me that you led the young woman to believe you wanted to help her, with your Irish charm. Members of this mission have been warned against making promises to these Turks they can’t back up.”

  Unperceived by his aide, the admiral fingered the coveted gold coin in his vest pocket. Frowning, he reflected that the old boatman had wanted him to inspect a buried sea while the young girl mentioned navigable waters, both beneath the city. An odd coincidence. Nothing of the kind, of course, could exist. "I'll look into it,” he remarked, "now."

  To Terry's relief, Mary Karabak was waiting as she promised, down the block by the dry fountain. She wore a green beret with a Mickey Mouse bangle, and at sight of the elderly admiral in his blue civilian suit, she hesitated, then beckoned them when a caretaker unlocked a door in the ancient wall behind her. Then Mary led the American officers into a deepening and darkening passageway.

  When he had descended fifty-three steps, by his count, the admiral whistled softly. He stood on a marble-paved landing, contemplating the black surface of motionless water. The water stretched as far as he could see by the light of the lantern the caretaker produced. From its surface uprose rows of ancient pillars with ornate capitals supporting the masonry overhead. By the landing floated a small boat equipped with a pole instead of oars.

  "McGowan,” demanded the admiral, "what is this, a water subway?”

  Hastily, Terry ransacked his memory, to no effect. Istanbul, or Constantinople, he declared, was a couple of thousand years old, and the modern city was built on a network of forgotten palaces, dungeons, and passages.

  "Please, sir, and your excellency," intoned Mary suddenly, aware of the distress of the lieutenant commander, "this is artificial lake made by Byzantine Emperor Justinian, A.D. five-four-oh, to keep drinking water for his people when enemies attacked the city. Will you please navigate it with me?”

  With Mary holding the lantern in the bow and directing Terry, who operated the pole at the stern, the three of them navigated the boat across the incredible cistern.

  When the admiral started to count off the pillars to estimate the area of the cistern, Mary informed him it was called The Thousand and One Pillars.

  "Like The Thousand and One Nights?" suggested Terry, who was enjoying himself. By his reckoning, they had arrived under the sprawling palace of the late sultans, now converted into a museum, when their craft neared the far side of the cistern and Mary held up the lantern to a cavity in the damp stone wall.

  "Here is the place,” she informed them, "where the gang escaped with their loot. Tie the boat and please follow me."

  Balancing the lantern, she scrambled agilely into the opening. It gave into a large brick conduit, which the officers had to ascend by painful squatting. After several minutes the conduit ended in a traverse wall of marble blocks cracked with age. The upper half of the wall had been pried loose. Sitting on the scattered blocks, the excited girl thrust the lantern through the hole, revealing a compartment beyond, with marble walls and a metal door sealing the far end. This door seemed to be bronze, green with age.

  On the floor, dust-coated and also dull with age, lay a pile of coins in the fragments of a box. This recess, said Mary, was the mezer, or locked place, from which the real treasure had been looted.

  While the admiral examined one of the coins curiously, he questioned her, and learned the following facts, according to Mary. During the late war the most valuable possessions of the Saray Musée, tho Old Palace Museum, had been stored away for safety. No less a person than the director of antiquities had carried down two unique rarities himself to this ancient but serviceable vault. The director had locked the bronze door upon his treasures and had sealed the crack with wax impressed with his own signet ring. Not until long after the war was the museum restored to use, and he had left these particular things to the last, to be returned to their cases. In opening the door, he had found his seals intact, and the rear wall broken down, and the treasures gone.

  "H’m’m,” said the admiral. "What were these stolen treasures?"

  Mary refused to explain. That, she told them, was the secret of the director who had put the things there.

  Terry drew his finger over one of the fallen marble blocks and found it coated with the dust of months. The story sounded fishy to him.

  "Mary, you told me it was your family that had been robbed,” he reminded her.

  Sensing his doubt, the girl grew tense. "Please, it was my family. My father is the director of antiquities.”

  The admiral tossed back the ancient coin. He did not believe in dodging issues. "Then your father must report tho matter to the police.’’

  "Please, after tomorrow it will be too later. I —I wanted ——” The girl choked. Snatching up tho lantern, she stopped, wiping tears from her eyes.

  For a moment, the admiral surveyed her. "Mary," he asked, "who put you up to telling us this yarn—this story?"

  p> The girl blinked up at him. "No one except me. My brother said how you gave radar to submarines to find objects under the water. My grandfather said how the robbers could be tracked by following their trail in the water. So, when I saw this gentleman in the shop, I ——” Her voice trailed off.

  Clearing his throat, the admiral said distinctly, ”Uh-huh. Mary, I'll do what I can to help you.”

  Gratefully she smiled. "That is nylon of your excellency.”

  Safely isolated in their official car, Terry grinned. "The female of the species," he murmured. "That’s a whale of a promise to back up, to the Turks."

  "McGowan, I am not thinking of the tactics of this case. Last week you reminded me that I was attending only top-brass functions, like issuing the prizes at this Technical What’s-it School. Now here’s a chance to lend a personal hand to a Turkish family.”

  Whereupon the admiral wasted no time in exploring the situation. When he had taken his place on the dais of the Naval Junior Technical School and had
presented the prizes of silver ship models to the students with the highest marks, he proceeded to question the donor of the prizes, the wealthy importer. Mansur Bey. in the seat beside him. Had Mansur Bey heard anything of a robbery at the museum?

  For a second, Mansur Bey looked startled. He was easy to talk to, having acquired his English at Oxford. He was a good neighbor to tho Americans.

  “Why. yes, Admiral Cater." he admitted. "I have heard something from the police. You know how police are like. Everywhere. They say they have a clue, and presently they will arrest a suspect. Why do you ——”

  "What was stolen?”

  After considering, Mansur Bey shook his head. "That they did not say.”

  As they were leaving, one sixteen-year-old cadet in immaculate gray uniform stepped before the American officer. ignoring his companion.

  "Cadet Piri Karabak.” announced the lad, saluting with precision, "requests permission to speak."

  Cadet Karabak explained that his sister reported the American officers interested in the navigation of the Thousand and One Pillars. The cadet's father. Dr. Osman Karabak, had made a survey of the cistern, and a chart. Therefore the cadet wished to guide the admiral to the office of his father, to obtain the chart.

  Admiral Cater told the boy to wait at his car, and proceeded to say bis farewells to the school heads, with the aid of the jovial Mansur Bey.

  "I wish you would tell me why you concern yourself with the Thousand and One Pillars," protested that gentleman.

  It was a personal matter, the admiral explained.

  "Quite." Mansur Bey hesitated, no longer jovial. "Then perhaps I should warn you, in confidence, sir, that this boy's father is Karabak, the museum director, who is also under police observation and possible arrest.”

  During the ride to the museum the admiral reflected with misgivings upon the directive given his mission not to be influenced by local politics or personalities. Too late, he began to see clear evidence of a conspiracy, from old Ismet softening him up with a rare coin, identical with those in the rifled lockup. For what reason? American officers, not being Turkish detectives, could serve in only one way, to act as unimpeachable witnesses—perhaps to find planted evidence.