Eric Ambler - The light of day

She sat up at that. “That’s very good, isn’t it?” And then, inevitably, she saw my face. “What have you done to yourself?”

“I had a bit of an accident. Some fool in a Simca. I had to stop suddenly.”

“Did the police come?”

She had a tiresome habit of assuming that, just because I was once accused (falsely) of causing an accident through driving while drunk, every little traffic accident in which I am involved is going to result in my being prosecuted by the police.

“It wasn’t important,” I said. I turned away to hang up my suit.

“Will you be long away?” She sounded as if she had accepted the accident.

“Two or three days. I shall come back suddenly by air and surprise you with a lover.”

I thought that would amuse her, but she did not even smile. I got into bed beside her and she put the light out. After a few moments she said: “Why does a man like Mr. Harper want to go to a house?”

“Probably because he is impotent anywhere else.”

She was silent for a time. Then she put up a hand and touched my face.

“What really happened, papa?”

I considered telling her; but that would have meant admitting openly that I had lied about the accident, so I did not answer. After a while, she turned away from me and went to sleep.

She was still asleep, or pretending to be, when I left in the morning.

Harper kept me waiting ten minutes; just long enough for me to remember that I had forgotten to disconnect the battery on my car. It did not hold its charge very well anyway, and the electric clock would have run it down by the time I returned. I was wondering if I would have time to telephone Nicki and tell her to ask the concierge to disconnect the battery, when Harper came down.

“All set?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“We’ll get a cab.”

He told the driver to go to Stele Street out in the Piraeus.

As soon as we were on the way, he opened the briefcase and took out a large envelope. It had not been there the night before; of that I am certain. He gave it to me.

“There’s everything you’ll need there,” he said; “ carnet de tourisme for the car, insurance Green Card, a thousand Greek drachma, a hundred Turkish lira, and fifty American dollars for emergencies. The carnet has been countersigned authorizing you to take it through customs, but you’d better check everything out yourself.”

I did so. The carnet showed that the car was registered in Zurich, and that the owner, or at any rate the person in legal charge of it, was a Fraulein Elizabeth Lipp. Her address was Hotel Excelsior, Laufen, Zurich.

“Is Miss Lipp your friend?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“Are we going to meet her now?”

“No, but maybe you’ll meet her in Istanbul. If the customs should ask, tell them she doesn’t like eight-hundred-and-fifty-mile drives, and preferred to go to Istanbul by boat.”

“Is she a tourist?”

“What else? She’s the daughter of a business associate of mine. I’m just doing him a favor. And by the way, if she wants you to drive her around in Turkey you’ll be able to pick up some extra dough. Maybe she’ll want you to drive the car back here later. I don’t know yet what her future plans are.”

“I see.” For someone who had told me that I wasn’t to ask questions, he was being curiously outgoing. “Where do I deliver the car in Istanbul?”

“You don’t. You go to the Park Hotel. There’ll be a room reservation for you there. Just check in on Thursday and wait for instructions.”

“Very well. When do I get that letter I signed?”

“When you’re paid off at the end of the job.”

Stele Street was down at the docks. By an odd coincidence there happened to be a ship of the Denizyollari Line berthed right opposite; and it was taking on a car through one of the side entry ports. I could not help glancing at Harper to see if he had noticed; but if he had he gave no sign of the fact. I made no comment. If he were simply ignorant, I was not going to enlighten him. If he still really thought that I was foolish enough to believe his version of Fraulein Lipp’s travel needs and arrangements, so much the better. I could look after myself. Or so I thought.

There was a garage halfway along the street, with an old Michelin tire sign above it. He told the cab driver to stop there and wait. We got out and went towards the office. There was a man inside, and when he saw Harper through the window he came out. He was thin and dark and wore a greasy blue suit. I did not hear Harper address him by any name, but they appeared to know one another quite well. Unfortunately, they spoke together in German, which is a language I have never learned.

After a moment or two, the man led the way through a small repair shop and across a scrap yard to a row of lock-up garages. He opened one of them and there was the Lincoln. It was a gray four-door Continental, and looked to me about a year old. The man handed Harper the keys. He got in, started up, and drove it out of the garage into the yard. The car seemed a mile long. Harper got out.

“Okay,” he said. “She’s all gassed up and everything. You can start rolling.”

“Very well.” I put my bag on the back seat. “I would just like to make a phone call first.”

He was instantly wary. “Who to?”

“The concierge at my apartment. I want to let him know that I may be away longer than I said, and ask him to disconnect the battery on my car.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. You can do it from the office.” He said something to the man in the blue suit and we all went back inside.

Nicki answered the telephone and I told her about the battery. When she started to complain that I had not wakened her to say good-by, I hung up. I had spoken in Greek, but Harper had been listening.

“That was a woman’s voice,” he said.

“The concierge’s wife. Is there anything wrong?”

He said something to the man in the blue suit of which I understood one word, Adressat. I guessed that he had wanted to know if I had given the address of the garage. The man shook his head.

Harper looked at me. “No, nothing wrong. But just remember you’re working for me now.”

“Will I see you in Istanbul or back here?”

“You’ll find out. Now get going.”

I spent a minute or two making sure that I knew where all the controls were, while Harper and the other man stood watching. Then I drove off and headed back towards Athens and the Thebes-Larissa-Salonika road.

After about half a mile I noticed that the taxi we had used on the drive out there was behind me. I was driving slowly, getting used to the feel of the car, and the taxi would normally have passed me; but it stayed behind. Harper was seeing me on my way.

About five miles beyond Athens I saw the taxi pull off the road and start to turn around. I was on my own. I drove on for another forty minutes or so, until I reached the first of the cotton fields, then turned off down a side road and stopped in the shade of some acacias.

I spent a good half hour searching that car. First I looked in the obvious places: in the back of the spare-wheel compartment, under the seat cushions, up behind the dashboard. Then I took off all the hub caps. It’s surprising how big the cavities are behind some of them, especially on American cars. I knew of a man who had regularly smuggled nearly two kilos of heroin a time that way. These had nothing in them, however. So I tried the tank, poking about with a long twig to see if any sort of a compartment had been built into or onto it; that has been done, too. Again I drew a blank. I would have liked to crawl underneath to see if any new welding had been done, but there was not enough clearance. I decided to put the car into a garage greasing bay in Salonika and examine the underside from below. Meanwhile, there was an air-conditioner in the car, so I unscrewed the cover and had a look inside that. Another blank.