Joseph Kanon - Stardust

“I have to go soon. Tommy wants to have a drink at the Park. On a night like this. Not that rain ever kept Tommy from a drink. Still. You know what occurred to me? He wants to bring me inside. Run my own operation. I mean, a job like this tonight, it’s not messenger work anymore. There’d be money in it. It’s about time he-” Babbling, filling time. “Do you have everything you need?”

He got up and went over to the bed, putting his hand on the dark hair fanning out beneath her. Lightly, just grazing it, because there was something unreal about physical contact now, touching someone who wasn’t there. And there was always a moment when he flinched, apprehensive, expecting her to reach up and snatch at his hand, finally mad. He passed the back of his hand over her forehead, a soothing motion, and she closed her eyes to it, looking for a second the way she used to after they made love, drifting.

“Get some sleep,” he said quietly. “I’ll be back.”

But not tomorrow. In the beginning he’d come every night, a kind of vigil, but then days slid by, filled with other things. Because the worst part was that, without even wanting to, he’d begun to leave her too.

Outside, he walked through the village to the shore road, glancing at parked cars. But he wouldn’t see them, would he? Not if they were any good. After a while you developed an instinct. The Turkish police had been clumsy when Anna worked with Mihai. They’d park someone in the lobby of the Continental, where Mossad had its office, a bored policeman in a business suit who must have thought himself invisible behind the cigarette smoke. The work had been open- arranging visas for the weekly train to Baghdad, the overland route to Palestine. Just a trickle of refugees, but legal. The police watched Anna go to the Red Crescent offices, watched her check the manifest lists at Sirkeci, watched the transfer to Haydarpasa, a pattern so familiar they never thought to look anywhere else. When the illegal work began, Mihai’s boats, they were still following Anna to Sirkeci, still smoking in the lobby.

Later, her work became a cover for Leon too. It was the Jewish wife working for Mossad who needed watching, not her American husband. Once he’d been playing tennis at the Sumer Palas in Tarabya when a man he assumed to be police wanted a quiet word. His wife. No doubt well meaning, but her activities were attracting attention. Turkey was a neutral country. They were its guests. It was a husband’s duty to watch over his household. Nobody wanted to be embarrassed. Not the R.J. Reynolds Company. Not the Turkish government. Leon remembered standing speechless in front of the old hotel, staring at the famous hydrangea bushes, a silence the man took for alarm, trying not to smile, to savor the unexpected gift. Anna suspect, not him.

But that had been the locals. The Emniyet, the security police, were something else, never obvious, part of the air everyone breathed. Playing the home advantage. When Macfarland had been station head he was convinced they’d planted somebody inside, which would mean they might know about Leon too. Even unofficial, off the books. Tommy didn’t just pull the money out of his pocket. Where would they find him? Miscellaneous expenses? Jobs Tommy wanted to freelance out, like tonight.

The square was empty, no tram in sight, just two women huddled under umbrellas waiting for a dolmus. And then, improbably, there was a single taxi, maybe out here on a run from Taksim. Leon stopped it, glancing over his shoulder as he got in, half expecting to see headlights turning on, a car starting up. But no one followed. He looked out back. Only a thin line of traffic, everyone chased inside by the rain. In Arnavutkoy a car pulled in behind, then went off again, leaving them alone. No one. Unless the taxi was Emniyet. But then the driver started to complain about something, the details lost in the swoosh of the windshield wipers, and Leon gave that up too. So much for instinct. Maybe he hadn’t had to do any of it- sneak out of the clinic, meet Mihai in the road. Maybe no one watched anymore. Maybe Mihai was right. It had become a habit.

Tommy had already had a few by the time Leon got to the Park, his face red, cheeks shining with it. His broad shoulders still had the strong lines of someone who’d once played for Penn, but the rest of him had gone slack, pudgy from years of sitting and extra helpings.

“Christ, you’re soaking. What’d you do, walk? Here, take the chill off. Mehmet, how about two more of the same? We’ll have them over there,” he said, lifting himself off the stool with a little grunt and heading for a small table against the wood-paneled wall.

There were more people than Leon had expected, probably hotel guests who didn’t want to go out, but still plenty of empty tables. The long outside terrace, with its view of the Stamboul headland, had been closed for weeks. Leon remembered them both full, waiters with trays darting in and out like birds, people talking over each other, looking around to see who was there. What the Stork must be like.

“Sorry about tonight,” Tommy said. “Didn’t know myself till I got the message. There won’t be any problem about the place, will there?”

“No, I’ve got it for the month. I didn’t know how long he’d-”

“The month? How much is that going to run us?”

“It’s in Laleli. Cheap. You can afford it.”

“Laleli. Where the fuck’s that? On the Asian side?”

Leon smiled. “How long have you been here?”

Tommy shrugged this off. “And what do we do with it after we move him?”

“You could take your women there. Nice and private.”

“Yeah, just us and the fleas. Ah, here we are,” he said as the drinks arrived. “Thank you, Mehmet.” He raised his glass. “Blue skies and clear sailing.”

Leon raised his glass and took a sip. Cold and crisp, a whiff of juniper. Mehmet put down a silver bowl of pistachios and backed away.

“Christ, imagine what he’s heard,” Tommy said, watching him go. “All these years.”

“Maybe he doesn’t listen.”

“They all listen. The question is, who for?”

“Besides us?”

Tommy ignored this. “They used to say every waiter in this room got paid twice. And sometimes more. At the same time. Remember the one used to send little love notes to von Papen, then turn around feed the same thing to the Brits?” He shook his head, amused. “Six months he pulls this off. You have to hand it to him.”

“What good did it do? Anybody ever say anything at the Park that you wanted to know?”

Tommy smiled. “You live in hope. You live in hope. Anyway, that wasn’t the point, was it? Point was to know. What they were saying, what they weren’t saying. Might be useful to somebody. Who could put the pieces together.”

“You think there was somebody like that?”

“Christ, I hope so. Otherwise-” He let it go. “I’ll tell you something, though. It was fun too, this place. Goddam three-ring circus. Everybody. Same room. Packy Macfarland over there and that Kraut who kept pretending he was in the navy right next to him. Navy. And the Jap, Tashima, remember him, with the glasses, a spit of fucking Tojo. At first I thought it was him. And Mehmet’s listening to all of them.”

“The good old days.”

Tommy looked up, caught by his tone.

“Come on, Tommy. It’s a little early for last rites at the Park. Mehmet’s still listening. God knows who else. For what it’s worth.”

Tommy shook his head. “It’s finished, this place.”

Leon looked around, feeling the drink a little. “Well, the Germans are gone. And Tojo. That’s what we wanted to happen, right?”

“I mean the whole place. Neutral city in a war- everybody’s got an interest. Turks coming in? Staying out? What’s everybody up to? Now what? Now it’s just going to be Turks.”