Robert Butler - The Star of Istanbul

But at last the bird was gone.

I took the napkin from my face.

I looked at Metcalf. He was still covered.

I drank my cabernet. Too fast. Trying to wash the bird from my mouth. Another lesson perhaps. Something about a sensual thing that’s intense and delicious but goes on too long and then goes bad.

My glass was empty and I turned back to Metcalf and I started. He was unmasked and looking at me.

As soon as he knew he had my full attention, he leaned a little in my direction, as if I’d just been delivered to him on a plate. And he said very softly, “You may have to act again as you did last night.”

I knew what he was talking about. But I had the odd reflex to play dumb.

“How so?” I said.

He looked at me steadily and did not reply and I knew what was behind his eyes: I know you know what I’m talking about. Don’t play this game.

“The knack,” I offered.

“That’s the act I was referring to,” he said. “But perhaps a different context.”

Now I really didn’t know what he meant.

“Preemptively,” he said.

In my report to him I hadn’t written of the killing of the Hun in detail. There was already a preemptive taint to what I’d done, which I did not mention. As I chewed slowly on that, I stayed quiet. Metcalf thought I was being dense.

He leaned closer. He spoke even more softly.

“I’m thinking at the moment of Brauer,” he said. “You might find it necessary to kill him.”

I spoke with equal softness. “Gentleman Jim,” I said. “I thought you were among the least violent of men.”

“I am,” he said. “But I have absolutely no qualms about advising men of a different temperament.”

I said, “Knowing what’s necessary when the threat isn’t imminent. That’s a different knack.”

“For the good of our country,” Metcalf said, as if that clarified things.

I could have called him on that. But I didn’t. He seemed to read my eyes or, perhaps, to hear how he’d sounded. He said, “You should trust us and the work we give you. The good of your mission is the good of the country.”

“I understand,” I said. And I suppose I did. I had the sanction to kill.

And when I’d spoken these two words, something apparently shifted in my mouth, from between my teeth, and I felt a small, sharp pain in my cheek.

I turned my head away from Metcalf and reached into my mouth with forefinger and thumb, and I extracted a sliver of songbird bone.

The meal lingered on till past midnight.

When I was at last released from the tuxedo and ready to have a final night’s sleep in a good bed before heading off to an unknown number of nights’ sleep in unknown circumstances, I lay down in my bed at the Arundel and almost at once a knock came at my door. Three quick, firm raps.

I rose and moved quietly across the room, and as I did, my mind finally began to work properly and I anticipated what this was, the mention of it seeming to have been a very long time ago, with all that food in between. But I did not touch the doorknob; I turned my head to listen; and as if I’d been observed the whole time, a voice outside immediately said, “Cobb. It’s Smith.”

I opened the door.

He had his suit jacket on, but his tie was askew. I was willing to bet his shirt sleeves were rolled up under there as well.

He held a kit bag and an oversized, cabin-top leather valise.

“Come in,” I said.

He passed by me. “Sorry to disturb you in your union suit,” he said.

“It’s one in the morning,” I said, closing the door.

“The boss wanted this done before dawn.”

Smith was at the bedside. He closed the covers and laid the two bags on top.

“The boss has one hell of an expense account,” I said.

Smith turned to me and he shot me a sly little smile. “I told you it was good pudding.”

“I’m thinking the government didn’t pick up that tab.”

“He’s got serious family money, our Mr. Metcalf. As I understand it. He’s a bit secretive.”

“As we might expect.”

“As we might expect,” Smith said, turning his back on me, though he went on with his point. “He dines at the Carlton once a week. Often alone. Usually alone. You got his attention.”

“Did he give you the same treatment?”

“Nope.” Smith turned around holding a Mauser pocket pistol in his hand, sideways so I could see its lines, pointed toward the ceiling. “This is yours, I believe,” he said.

I extended my right hand and he put the pistol in it.

The last time I saw one of these it was coming out from inside a suit coat with the intent to kill me. I’d seen a similar one with a similar intent not too long before that. This little thing had begun to get my goat. I was happy to make its friendly acquaintance at last.

It rested easy and light in my hand, hardly more than a pound.

“Thirty-two caliber,” Smith said. “Magazine’s in, but empty. Shells in the bag.”

I wanted him to stop talking. This pistol and I were getting to know each other. I turned away from him and lifted the Mauser and settled the front post of its barrel in the rear V-sight, with the head of a rose in the wallpaper as the target. All through last year’s little adventure in Mexico, I’d carried a Colt 1911. A fine but large weapon that was now at the bottom of the North Atlantic, a loss that only just now fully struck me. Too bad. But this covert, diminutive Mauser, with a.32-caliber kick, seemed just fine too. Like going to a lighter bat to get around on a Walter Johnson fastball. Very nice.

I lowered my arm.

I looked at Smith, who was looking at me with an expression that seemed part respect, part fear, and part distaste.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe that was too much for a look and I was just under the spell of Escoffier putting a bunch of crazy things together onto a single plate. Or maybe I was just feeling all those things about myself.

“What is it?” I asked Smith.

“There’s no it, ” he said. “Just watching a guy who knows what he’s doing.”

“I hope,” I said.

“You got a tux for me?”

“In the wardrobe.”

“I’ll trade you for the three-piece wool suit in the kit bag,” he said, and he crossed to the wardrobe and pulled out the tux.

“What’s special about the suit?” I said.

“Berlin tailor. So in a pinch you don’t have to explain a British label.”

“This German with a tailor in Berlin. He’s got a name?”

“I didn’t look. It’s on documents in the portfolio. Including a diplomatic passport.” Smith was crossing back to the bed. “I’ll take the kit bag. You keep the valise. You’ve got a lot of stuff in there. Some alternate selves. Whatever doesn’t fit with who you are should go into the false bottom in the valise. The least whiff of your being a spy and any of the countries you’ll be passing through would walk you into the nearby woods and shoot you.”

“I get it,” I said.

“One thing you don’t need to hide. The ticket for your cabin on the Mecklenburg tomorrow night, heading for Vlissingen. The Brits call it ‘Flushing.’ You take a train from Charing Cross to Folkestone.”

I was going in through still-neutral Holland, my corridor to Germany.

Smith laid the German suit on the bed, and now he was pulling out more candy-store treats from the kit bag: a belt holster and a couple of boxes of.32 caliber bullets.

Smith stuffed the tuxedo into the kit bag, closed it, and turned and stepped to me, offering his hand. I went to tuck the Mauser in at my waist, to free my right hand to shake with him, but I found this didn’t work.

“You need trousers for that,” Smith said.