Robert Butler - The Star of Istanbul

A secret service special. A pistol crafted by the outside-Washington boys from a.22 calibre, single-shot, bolt-action, 1902 model Winchester rifle. It had a severely sawed-off barrel, trued up very nicely; the two original open sights and a folding peep sight; and a stock of black walnut replacing the Winchester’s varnished gumwood, curving down into a swell pistol grip. It fired a.22 Long rifle cartridge with real punch and tight-cluster precision. What turned it from a tough kid’s target pistol into a serious weapon for America’s on-the-sly warfare was the threaded coupling driven tight into the end of the barrel and the thing that screwed onto it: the black metal tube lying next to the pistol in the bottom of the valise. A Maxim Silencer. With the aid of the box of.22 Long heavies, specially made by the Maxim Silent Firearms Company, that lay next to it, this tough guy could plug a man between the eyes from a hundred yards and not make a whisper of a sound. Not just silent in the report; the Maxim’s special round even took away the whipcrack of a bullet in the air. Not to mention the device cut recoil to almost nothing. It was too bad you had to reload after each shot, but only single-shot weapons gave up their gases completely to the silencer’s mechanism. Not a big price to pay for that big benefit.

All of which I admired at the sight of Metcalf’s little surprise.

Admired too much. Admired so much — which was the point, of course — that I got itchy to use it.

And I understood Metcalf’s message clearly: this was how I was supposed to kill Brauer in his ship cabin without raising an alarm.

But I simply put the Brauer passport, along with Herr Traube’s, into the recess, as well as my own disguise items; I fit the lid back on top, and I packed the bag.

Metcalf still stopped short of giving me a direct order. It was my choice how I managed my identity on the way to Istanbul. And I chose at least to begin my journey as the Christopher Cobb I’d always been. The war correspondent. I’d ignore, for now, that I was carrying another kind of war in the bottom of my bag.

The Mecklenburg was a medium-sized ship, not quite half the length of the Lusitania, not spacious but not cramped, so I hung back on the pier, in the shadows of the terminal building, watching the first-class gangway till Bourgani in black led Brauer in tweeds up the first-class gangway.

I followed.

I once again knew the cabin numbers for the two people of interest to me. Metcalf had his sources at the British ticket agents, no doubt through his English counterparts.

My cabin was the portside equivalent of Selene’s on the starboard side, both of us at the aft end of the inner passageway. My windows looked out on the promenade, as did hers. Brauer’s cabin was just forward of Selene’s.

We were under way by half past midnight and I lay down on my bunk, intending to sleep, my Berlin jacket and waistcoat hung on the back of a chair, the pants folded on top. Whenever I knew I’d have trouble sleeping, I’d get very neat with my clothes. And I was right. I simply listened to the distant, forced-draft fans feeding air to the turbines and felt the vibration of the ship, prominent in the Mecklenburg but not terribly unpleasant. I hoped it would jiggle me to sleep. But still I didn’t sleep, even after we’d cleared the Thames and revved up to twenty-two knots for the long, dark run across the North Sea.

I finally gave up. I was restless in the way this job tended to make me restless. Following and snooping: I wasn’t very suited for that. So I dressed in all but my tie and went out of my room. Brauer and Bourgani weren’t going anywhere. And it was wise, when I knew where they were, to just stay completely out of their sight. So I headed forward along the corridor.

And I began to smell something.

There was just a whiff of it. It slid into me and then out again and I concentrated and there it was again. Maybe my recent stint in Escoffier’s joint had heightened my sense of smell, made me oversensitive in an often faintly fetid world. This had a whiff of way-too-fancy cookery. No. Not fancy food. Old food, rotten food. No. Not that but with a little taint of that maybe. But something more, something vaguely familiar, which made me interested.

I reached the first-class reception area, between the cabins and the smoking room. I stepped across to the smoker, and the place was empty but for a couple of gents in a far corner with their cigars diminished to butts and starting to doze. The air was permanently thick with the scent of old tobacco, and this other smell was hiding here. Masked now. I could still pick it up if I concentrated.

The nearly empty smoking room reminded me of something I’d noticed waiting for Selene and Brauer to board: the ship was only sparsely booked. I stepped back out into the reception hall and looked across to the staircase leading to the second-class deck below. I moved to it.

The smell I’d been following wafted more clearly up the steps. I entered the smell, descended into it, and it began to identify itself: sweat and grime and female smells; urinal smells and sick child smells and unchanged-clothes smells; long-on-the-road and living-in-communal-tent smells. I stopped on the landing. I didn’t need to go farther. I knew this smell from the wars I’d covered. It was the smell of refugees. Nine months into the war, going east from England, the Mecklenburg and its sister ships carried rarefied travelers in the direction of the war. Going west, the ships still occasionally carried a sanctioned mass of those who’d fled the Germans from Antwerp and Flanders, from Liège and Luxemburg, and who were still trying to find a final refuge.

I ascended the steps again.

The most recent westward passage of the Mecklenburg must have been a passage of the dispossessed. It would take some time at sea to exorcise the scent of these ghosts.

I needed air myself.

I turned toward the starboard side.

I was fully conscious that I did so. I would look carefully before entering the promenade. Surely Selene and Brauer were sleeping. It felt as if everyone was sleeping on this ship but me. It was all right simply to walk past her window, I thought.

I opened the door onto the deck.

I eased out, looking aft.

The promenade was empty. The windows in the last two cabins were lit. Selene’s and Brauer’s.

All the other windows were dark.

I should have stepped back in.

But it was time to snoop.

I crept aft.

And up ahead I began to hear their voices.

They were muffled. The windows were closed. But I heard them. Shouting.

I quickened my step.

They would be distracted. I would crouch beneath their windows and listen.

A few more steps; the voices were becoming clearer; then they abruptly stopped.

I strode on, expecting them to resume. The silence persisted.

And then I heard a muffled pop.

It was small caliber. But it was a gun.

I bolted the final few yards. The bastard had shot Selene. He’d confronted her about the bar near the London Docks. He’d discovered something. He’d shot her.

The first window now. No caution. I looked in. Brauer’s cabin. The electric light was burning. But it was empty. Of course. He’d sought her out in her own cabin to confront her.

The next window. I stepped to it.

Inside, Selene Bourgani was standing in the center of the floor, back to the door, but with her face angled downward. She held the pistol in her hand waist high, pointed slightly upward and slightly to her right. A small black purse was open in her other hand. I could well imagine she had not moved anything but her face in the few moments since she’d shot Walter Brauer.