Eric Ambler - The light of day

“They can be arrested in Rome. You can extradite them.”

“Not without a case strong enough to justify extradition proceedings.”

“You have it. I’ve told you what happened.”

“And what do you think your evidence would be worth in an Italian court?” he demanded. “You smuggled the explosives in. Who is there to confirm your story of the subsequent robbery? They would have your record from Interpol to discredit you. Is the court to extradite four persons on your unsupported word that you have told the truth? They would laugh at us!”

“What about Giulio and Enrico?”

“Very sensibly, for them, they are saying nothing useful. They chartered a yacht. They decided to go for a night cruise. They were hailed by some men in a caique who said that their motor had broken down. They took them to Serefli and put them ashore. Is that a crime? Tomorrow the police will have to let them go. There is nothing we can do. Your mistake, Simpson, was in not carrying out orders.”

“What orders, for God’s sake?”

“The orders I gave you in this very room. You were told to report. You failed to do so. It was unfortunate that the packet you dropped in the garage was overlooked, but you had other opportunities. You could have reported at Serefli. You could have dropped your guide’s license at the guard post as you were taken through. There was want of imagination. We have no choice but to abandon the inquiry.”

“Including the inquiry about the attack on the guard post?”

He looked like a man who, having just realized that his fly is undone, has decided that he can only ignore the fact. “That,” he said loftily, “has already been described officially to the newspapers as an unsuccessful attempt by dissident elements to blow up a train.”

There was no polite comment I could make on that one, so I just shrugged and looked over his head at the picture of Abdul Hamid being deposed.

He stood up, as if to end the discussion, and smoothed down the front of his tunic. “Luckily for you,” he said, “the Director is not entirely dissatisfied with the affair. The Bureau has recovered the proceeds of a serious robbery which the Criminal Police did not even know about. It shows that we are not at the mercy of events, but in charge of them, that we anticipate. You were not entirely useless to us. As a result the Director has authorized the payment to you of a bonus.”

“So I should think. How much?”

“Five thousand lira, together with permission to sell them for foreign exchange, dollars or pounds sterling, at the official rate.”

For a moment I thought he must have made a mistake.

“Lira, Major? You mean dollars, don’t you?”

“I mean Turkish lira,” he said stiffly.

“But that’s only five hundred dollars-two hundred pounds!”

“Approximately. The fact that your suitcase and other personal belongings were lost has also been taken into consideration. In addition, arrangements are being made to have the various smuggling charges against you withdrawn. A favorable report on you will be made to Interpol. I think you will agree that you have been generously treated.”

A kick in the stomach couldn’t have been more generous.

I opened my mouth to tell him that I wished now that I had taken my chance in Rome; but then I gave up. These policemen are all piss and wind anyway. Why add to it?

“You were going to say something?” he asked.

“Yes. How do I get out of this country?”

“The Director has persuaded the British Consul-General to issue to you a travel document good for one journey from here to Athens. I may say that it was not easy. The Consul agreed in the end only as a personal favor to the Director. In addition, an air passage has been reserved for you on the five o’clock Olympic Airways flight to Athens. A representative from the Consulate-General will meet you with the travel document at the Olympic Airways office by the Hilton Hotel at three-thirty. If you will tell me in what currency you would like the bonus paid, a representative from the Bureau will also be there to give you the money.”

“I’ll take it in dollars.”

“Very well. That is all, I think. You do not seem as pleased as you should be.”

“What is there to be pleased about?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps you think you would have been better off in Rome. You wouldn’t, you know. If those jewels had left the country, we would have known enough to get them back, and you would have been the first to be arrested. Why not consider yourself lucky?”

“Aren’t you forgetting that Harper still has a certain letter of mine?”

“Why should he send it now?”

“To get his own back on me, of course.”

He shook his head. “You are forgetting. He can never be sure now how much you found out about them and how much you told us. Even I cannot be quite sure of that. As far as he is concerned, the less you see of policemen the better.” He smiled slightly. “You see, you both have an interest in common.”

“Very gratifying.”

“You might even consider becoming an honest man.”

Work, Simpson, for the night cometh.

I ought to have blown the smug bastard a raspberry; but I was afraid he might call off the bonus if I did. Even a crumb is better than no bread. So I just gave him an imitation of Harper’s most unpleasant grin, and tried to let him see how much I despised him. I don’t really think I succeeded. He had a hide as thick as an elephant’s.

There was a sergeant on duty this time to escort me back to the guard-room gate. He watched me all the time as if he thought I might try to steal one of the pictures. Then, when I got outside there were no taxis. You never can get a taxi from outside the Dolmabahce Palace. I had to walk a mile before I found one, and that made me angrier still.

The representative from the Bureau looked like a plain-clothes policeman. He watched me carefully as I signed for the money and kept his fingers on the paper all the time in case I snatched it away. There were no flies on him. He knew how careful you had to be when dealing with crooks.

The representative from Her Britannic Majesty’s Consulate-General in Istanbul was a snotty-nosed clerk who made me sign a paper saying that I understood that the granting of the travel document did not constitute recognition of any claim I had made or might make to United Kingdom citizenship. When I had signed it, I told him what he could do with it.

But on the way back to Athens in the plane, it gave me an idea.

I had been thinking about Nicki and wondering whether I would stop on my way to the flat and buy her a stone-marten stole. She’d been hankering after one for a long while, and I thought that with the American notes I had I might get a good fur really cheap-for thirty or forty dollars perhaps. I would be “papa” for at least a month. That is, if she hadn’t moved out while I had been away. I was deciding that I had better make sure of that first when the stewardess stopped by my seat.

“Your nationality, sir?”

“British,” I said.

She handed me a passport control card to fill in and moved on to the next seat.

I had said “British” without thinking. Why? Because I consider myself British, because I am British.

I took out the travel document and looked at it carefully. It, too, said I was British. And yet they had made me sign a paper which said in effect that I wasn’t. Therefore, the travel document could be considered an admission of my claim. The paper was unimportant because I had signed that under duress. You cannot take away a man’s nationality by refusing to recognize his right to it. The 1948 Act is quite clear. The only way you can lose British nationality is by renouncing it. I haven’t renounced mine at any time. Specifically, I did not renounce it by taking that Egyptian passport. Since the Egyptians say that my Egyptian naturalization is null and void because I made false statements, then it is null and void- all of it.