Robert Butler - The Star of Istanbul

“Why was he following you?” Arshak said.

I wanted his account first. But I said, “It’s possible he’s working for the Germans.”

“We spoke English. He sounded like an American.”

“Brauer sounded like an American,” I said.

“Why was he following you?”

“To kill me. If it’s who I think it is. Lucine probably didn’t get around to telling you I’d done likewise to a German agent in a doorway in London.”

“If she did, I might actually be liking you by now,” Arshak said.

“Look,” I said. “This could involve Lucine. Tell me what he said.”

“Small talk.”

“What about? Where you were from?”

“Yes.”

“And you said?”

“London. He was from Philadelphia.”

“Did he notice your accent?”

“Yes. Greek, I told him. I’m not stupid.”

“Was he looking at you closely when he talked?”

“Yes.”

“Brauer was also at the Block and Tackle when you met Lucine.”

Arshak stiffened. No more trying to slough this off.

“He stayed outside,” I said. “But he saw you leave. He had a good look at you. He knew you were doing something on the sly with Selene Bourgani. You went to a room around the corner.”

“It’s a safe place for us. It’s clean.”

“How long were you there?”

“I left by dawn.”

“Long enough for them to put somebody outside to follow you.”

Arshak looked away, his mouth pinched in a thin line. I’d felt like that a few minutes ago. Then he looked back to me. “Did he see us in the taxi?”

“He saw something,” I said. “I’m not sure how much.”

Arshak thought hard about this a moment.

“You’re a theater man,” I said. “Did you believe the muttonchops?”

This took him off guard. Arshak tried to figure this question out.

“The man’s muttonchops,” I said.

“I didn’t look at them closely. Maybe not, now that you mention it.”

“We need to ride,” I said. “If he puts you and me together, even if he believed Lucine’s disguise — and he’d be the one to see through it — she’s still linked back to me through you.”

He called out something in Armenian. Probably “Stop pissing, put your dicks away, and let’s go.”

And we all rode away at full gallop.

It was not easy to catch a taxi from the ghetto in Ortakiöi and so Arshak led me down the hill and we took the covertly Armenian Unic to get me back to the Pera Palace as fast as possible. Arshak drove, expecting trouble, leaving the young man with his mother. But I convinced Arshak to let me off before the hotel. For now it was best that he stay in the background. We were jumping to a lot of conclusions. And if the Germans were suspicious but had missed the direct connection between Arshak and me at the quay — which was quite possible — it was best not to give them a chance to see us together. They might still be playing this out slow. I’d drop out of the Unic in a side street a block or so from the hotel. We set up a time to meet later tonight after I’d been able to make sure Lucine was safe. We’d meet at the coffeehouse of the yellow dog.

We stopped a block down the hill and a block south of the Pera Palace.

I’d ridden beside him in the front and I opened the door.

We did not shake hands at the parting. Didn’t even think to. But before I could step out, he said, “I trust you.”

“Thanks,” I said.

And then, with a slightly overplayed earnestness in his voice, he said something in Armenian that either meant “May God be with you” or “Don’t fuck this up.”

I simply nodded and I was out of the taxi and striding up the hill.

I entered the Pera Palace, crossing the lobby, heading for the marble steps up to the entryway of the Kubbeli Salon, keeping my eyes more or less forward but carefully noting everyone — not just forward but in my periphery as well — eliminating the locals and the uniformed Germans, though Der Wolf could have traded in his muttonchops for something else. But I saw no one I could take as particularly suspicious as I moved quickly into the Kubbeli and across the parquet floor.

The piano was playing ragtime and I looked at the drinkers and diners. A table near the doorway to the elevator had three German junior officers with pistols on their belts. They all three gave me a glance as I went by.

The elevator door was open and I went in and I told the operator in what was surely the new lingua franca of this hotel: “ Der fünfte Fußboden. ” He knew exactly what floor I meant. We started to rise.

There were tall, slender windows in the three walls of the elevator, side and rear. I stepped to the rear and craned my neck to focus on the fifth floor and I picked up the balustrade at once. But of course he wouldn’t be cooling his heels outside my room, if he’d come for me. He’d have the key or he’d have picked the lock and he’d be inside, waiting.

I got off the elevator and I stepped quietly to the end of the passageway that led to my room. I let the elevator clank and grind its way back down to the bottom floor. I waited. I waited longer. If he were listening for me, he’d think I hadn’t been the passenger this time. And while I waited, I played over the worst scenario, the one that ground inside me with the sharpest edges. The Germans were waiting for me but they’d already decided Lucine was a danger and they’d grabbed her.

It was time now. I started down the hall, treading lightly on the carpet. I reached Lucine’s door and I stopped. I knocked. Softly.

There was no answer.

Behind me the elevator chains jangled into life.

I knocked again, louder, and I even put my hand into my coat to touch my lock-picking tools. I’d left them in my room.

Lucine wasn’t answering.

I put my mouth near the door. “Selene,” I said, loud enough to be heard inside.

Nothing.

She wasn’t there.

The elevator was rattling its way upward.

I moved on down the passageway. Quickly now. Perhaps she’d left a note for me.

I arrived at my door. I put the key in the lock. I opened the door.

At the open French windows a man was standing with his back to me, wearing a feldgrau German officer uniform, blending into the darkening sky beyond him. The nightstand light was on. His peaked field cap lay on the foot of the bed. I restrained my hand from going to the Mauser, even as he was turning, even as I was beginning to recognize this man.

Colonel Martin Ströder, Enver Pasha’s aide-de-camp.

“Hello, Mr. Brauer,” he said. He had a Luger in a holster strapped around his waist. I didn’t remember that from his first visit to me.

“Colonel,” I said, closing the door behind me.

“I have come to take you to Enver Pasha.”

He and I both kept standing where we were, he by the window, I by the door.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” I said. “I thought you told me it would be tomorrow.”

“So,” he said. “The plan has changed once more.”

I still didn’t know how to deal with Enver Pasha, given that he was a friend of Brauer.

“Please come with me,” Ströder said, taking a step in my direction.

I was thinking quick and hard about the room. He wasn’t explaining why he was inside. Everything incriminating was in the false bottom of the valise. But things were already decided anyway, I suspected. He hadn’t even asked where I’d been.

“I’ve been horseback riding,” I said. “I’m not presentable.”

He stopped.

“Can I have a few minutes?” I said.

He gave me a once-over look. “Time is more important to the Pasha,” Ströder said. And then he smiled a little, flipping his chin slightly upward. “The Turks are not so scrupulous as we Germans in those matters.”