Robert Butler - The Star of Istanbul

To my right was an archway into the north end of the house, to my left an archway to the south end of the house. Either would do. I strongly suspected anyone else in the place was upstairs.

I lifted the Winchester. I looked at it for a moment. It seemed quite odd to my eye all of a sudden. Too long for a pistol, with the sawed-off rifle barrel and then the silencer. Quite long. But I did what I needed to do with it to prepare for whoever was next: bolt, breech, casing, shell, bolt, hammer. It was ready to fire.

And I found myself panting.

This also struck me as odd.

It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t about what I intended to do next.

Maybe not so odd: it was about what I’d been doing for the past few minutes.

It was about the knack.

It had been some months since I’d killed a man.

No, it hadn’t.

I’d killed in London as well.

Before that it had been some months.

And before that not at all.

And now I could do it four times in rapid succession with very little thought and no remorse.

Unless this was remorse, what I was doing now.

But these were soldiers I’d killed. And I’d seen worse. I saw it in Nicaragua and I saw it in Macedonia and Greece. Sanctioned by nations and cheered by the victors’ countrymen.

And I saw worse still: down a well in an empty village a few miles north of where I now stood.

Was I not killing for them, the slaughtered innocents? And for my own country? For Lucine? For her, of course. For Selene Bourgani. For that face ten feet high in a darkened auditorium. I was killing for the future of American cinema. For this odd and mostly remorseless thrill. What bullshit. Well, some of it wasn’t bullshit. Some of it was true. Maybe all of it was true.

It made no difference. This was my role.

So I chose the archway on the north and stepped through it, and in the darkness to my right was a staircase that ascended to a landing and then — out of my sight — turned toward the front of the house and continued up to the second floor.

I moved to the stairs. I began to climb.

And I wondered if the next man I killed would be the leader of the Ottoman Empire.

I was treading very lightly, my Winchester raised before me.

But not lightly enough.

Near the top of the stairs another uniformed guard appeared. He was raising his rifle.

He saw my peaked hat and my epaulets and my tunic first and only a brief moment later did he see the Winchester, which clicked and hissed and blew him backward to thump against the wall and down to the floor and I was on the top step, and the dim hallway was empty to the left and to the right. I looked back to the left again, and down the way was a splash of light from an open door.

The house was quiet, so this click and hiss and thump might have been heard. I bent and laid the Winchester quietly on the floor and I drew the Luger, flipped off the safety, and I strode forward to the light and pressed against the wall beside the door and then looked quickly in. I pulled quickly back.

And what I’d seen made me say in German, “I’m Colonel Vogel from the embassy. Don’t shoot. You’re in danger from an American agent who is on the grounds.”

I thought to holster the Luger, but I didn’t. I kept it behind my right thigh and I stepped into the doorway.

Across the room, behind a desk, framed by open doors onto a second-floor veranda, stood Enver Pasha.

He was not lowering his pistol.

I gently let him see my pistol.

“Your Excellency,” I said. “I have been tracking this man. Colonel Ströder, who asked me to come with him, has deployed your guards to search.”

I kept my eyes fixed on his but I let my face move slightly to the right so he could see the scar.

I watched his eyes flit to it. He was working hard to figure me out.

And I was still studying him. Swarthy. Black Kaiser Wilhelm mustache. He was thinner in the face than I remembered in the news photos, though by no means did I have a clear image of him in my mind. I thought: He’s gaunt from stress in this war; he could be twitchy with that pistol.

“This man Cobb could appear at any moment,” I said. “He may have come in from the water.”

I flipped my chin to the windows behind him.

He did not turn. But his head flinched just a little to the side and the muzzle of his own Luger dipped ever so slightly.

“I’m going to raise my pistol now,” I said, while doing it.

He refreshed his own aim abruptly but I now had a chest-shot zeroed on him. And he had a chest-shot zeroed on me. The Luger P08 has a two-stage trigger. I had taken up the bit of slack and moved to the second stage and I was sure Enver Pasha had too.

Neither of us dared to shoot.

Besides, I didn’t want to shoot him. Not yet. Gunshots still might imperil Lucine, if she was in the house. Which I was beginning to question.

I had to find her before anything else.

“Your Excellency,” I said. “I’m very sorry to have raised my weapon. But I had to give your own hand pause. Shall we lower our arms now? I’m Colonel Gerhard Vogel. I am here at your service. This man Cobb is dangerous and we are afraid he is very near.”

He did not move his pistol from his aim.

“Sergeant Schmidt,” he said loudly.

“Your Excellency,” I said. “We have been operating quietly for obvious reasons. Your excellent Sergeant Schmidt came downstairs at our small sounds. He is now helping to find Cobb. I’m here to protect you.”

He did not move his pistol.

I did not move mine.

We looked at each other hard.

“Colonel Vogel,” Enver Pasha said, “please step closer.”

I did. Carefully. One small step. Another. Not letting my Luger waver at all. A third step and I stopped. We were no more than ten feet from each other.

We studied each other’s face.

“I don’t know a Colonel Gerhard Vogel,” Enver Pasha said. His German was excellent.

Now that I’d heard a couple of full sentences from him, something odd was clicking in my head.

The tenor of his voice.

And there was something in his eyes.

Something familiar.

And then I felt like an idiot.

If Lucine was still in this house — and I was beginning again to think she was — and if they’d wanted to lure Christopher Cobb here to interrogate him and kill him, then Enver Pasha was not standing before me.

Der Wolf was.

He wanted to play the Pasha for me for a while. He liked dressing up, this guy.

Which was the familiar thing I’d sensed a few moments ago.

This was Squarebeard from the bookstore in London.

But I’d seen Squarebeard only from a distance. Now that I was close to him, his familiarity took an odd turn.

“Mr. Cobb, is it?” he said.

Our pistols both held very steady.

I didn’t answer.

And he said, in English, a flat midwestern English, “How simple things would be if it weren’t for the automatic reaction of the body’s flexor muscles.”

The words, the pedantry of them, were fitting into that familiar something. As was the sound of his voice.

He said, “It would then merely be a matter of who squeezes the trigger first. But alas, my bullet would reach you in what? Perhaps nine one-thousandths of a second, causing the eight flexor muscles in your forearm instantly to act on their own. Your bullet would reach me with a similar alacrity and we would both be dead.”

And things were suddenly clear.

“So it wasn’t simply personal after all, between you and Brauer,” I said.

He smiled. “I meant what I said about admiring your work.”

This he spoke in a Boston Back Bay accent.

This was Walter’s shipboard lover.

This was Edward Cable.

He resumed the Midwest accent, which was, perhaps, his own. “I’d dramatically strip off my mustache for you now, Mr. Cobb, as if we were in one of Miss Bourgani’s movies. But I’m afraid I’d abrade myself. I’ll take it off properly when you’re dead. Besides, I’d look a fright with my white upper lip in the midst of all this Turkish-tainted skin.”