I Spy (13 page)

The door opened, the space completely filled by Baba Duan’s impressive bulk. “A very fine and good morning?” Baba Duan said, staring inquiringly at the man, looking him up and
down.

“
Nicht unbedingt
...not, I think, necessarily,” the man replied curtly, his accent guttural and clipped. “I would like to come in.
Sofort!
Now!”

“I am so very much afraid that I was myself just on my way out – an errand of some small importance. I will naturally of course be back...” Baba Duan caught sight of the gun
barrel pointing out from under the raincoat the man had over his right arm. “Ah, yes...I can now see that I am about to be somewhat unavoidably delayed...”

“Correct.”

Baba Duan stood to one side and waved the man into the house. “
Kommen Sie herein
, as I recall that you say it in Berlin.”

“You have a good memory, Herr Hendek.” The man followed Baba Duan as he backed down the corridor towards his office. “I hope it is good enough.”

“Good enough for what, could I possibly ask?”

“You will find out, soon enough.” The man closed the office door behind them; putting down his briefcase and raincoat he locked the door and then waved the Luger automatic pistol at
Baba Duan. “Sit down.”

Doing as he’d been instructed, Baba Duan leaned back in his chair and, his eyes never leaving the man’s face, reached into a pocket of his capacious jacket.
“Cigarettes...” he explained, bringing out a packet. “For my nerves.”

“You are nervous, Herr Hendek?”

“Not precisely at the moment...” Baba Duan struck a match, his hand shaking slightly. “...But I very much believe quite firmly that prevention is better than needing a
cure.”

“A wise principle, to be sure.”

“Indeed,” echoed Baba Duan, failing, for the first time in a long time, to blow the perfect smoke ring. “What can I do for you, Mr. Herr Reinhardt Gessler?”

“Ah...” Gessler smiled thinly, touching his bearded chin. “You have seen through this, how shall I say, this
theatrical
disguise.”

Baba Duan raised his eyebrows. “You are, how shall
I
say, very close up to me.”

“And yet, as far as
I
know, we have never met.”

“True. But it is my job to have knowledge.”

“We are more the same than we are different, you and I...how did you get this knowledge – or was it a shot in the dark?” Gessler swung the Luger to and fro.

“As you say, we have similarities. I collect information, like you.”

“Except
I
have one master, and you have many.”

“That is where yourself and I have taken our own roads, Herr Gessler.”

“Correct.” Gessler pulled up a chair and sat right in front of Baba Duan, the pistol mere inches away from his stomach. “But our roads have now met and I require you to tell me
the answers to the questions I am about to ask.”

“And if I cannot find these answers?”

“If you have been doing your job as well as it appears you have, you will know enough about me to understand that I have the ways and the means,” Gessler paused and glanced at his
briefcase, “to give you whatever help you might need, Herr Hendek. Would you like me to go into more detail? I always carry a few pictures with me...”

Baba Duan smiled rather too broadly, extracting an off-white handkerchief from his trousers and dabbing his upper lip. “That will not, I think, under the circumstances, be at all
necessary.”

“I do hope not.” Gessler looked at his watch. “I do not have so much time.”

“What could I possibly know that you do not already?”

“Tell me about the American and his son. Tell me
everything
you know...”

“Would it not be quicker, if your time is of an essential nature, for
you
to tell
me
what you know, and I will do my absolute level best to fill in the spaces left
over?”

Gessler’s right hand whipped out like a snake, the barrel of the gun slashing across Baba Duan’s ear. “I obviously did not make myself as clear as I had intended: I said
‘tell me
everything
’, Herr Hendek.
Und schnell
– quickly!”

A bright redness grew on the handkerchief which Baba Duan held tightly to the side of his face. He licked his lips and fumbled for another cigarette, Gessler taking a lighter from his coat
pocket, leaning over and flicking it into life...

Hardly more than five minutes after arriving, Herr Reinhardt Gessler exited Baba Duan’s house. He strode quickly to his car and drove off at some speed, leaving behind a
sluggish cloud of oily exhaust smoke and dust.

In his office, blood still flowing from the gash on his ear, Baba Duan Hendek remained sitting in his chair, staring at his desk. He had never considered himself an especially brave man –
or a particularly bad one, either – but even he was surprised at how quickly threats of violence against his person had forced him to hand over everything he knew about the Drummond
MacIntyres, Two and Three. Well,
almost
everything he knew.

What had incensed Baba Duan was Gessler’s promise that he would return and reduce the house – and all who lived inside – to ashes if he discovered he hadn’t been told the
truth about anything. What had his family got to do with this business? Nothing! Except maybe for Evren, but he was only doing what he was told, so that didn’t count.

One of the phones rang in the other room and Baba Duan got a little unsteadily to his feet. The truth was that what he had failed to tell Gessler was not a fact – it was not something he
knew
, but a suspicion, a theory...a guess. And therefore, Baba Duan smiled thinly to himself, it was not something the German spy wanted to know, was it.

A
s Trey followed Evren and Neyla, he found himself going through narrow alleys (where the top storeys of some of the houses almost touched), across
wide, crowded boulevards and then, at a turn, into the awning-covered warren of a market. Here the intensity of colours – brilliant jewellery in one shop window, next to jewel-like fruit and
vegetables displayed as if they had all just tumbled, freshly picked, out of a “horn of plenty” – collided with the tapestry of aromas from fishmongers,
perfumiers
, spice
merchants, coffee houses and restaurants.

They were passing a bakery when Trey spotted a boy bringing a tray of sesame-covered bread sticks out into the shop; they looked so very tasty that Trey allowed himself a moment’s pause in
the mission and gave Evren the money to pay for some. Handed over and wrapped in a sheet of thin paper, they were still warm, and smelled and tasted as delicious as they looked. The sesame seeds
tumbling like large grains of sand to the ground, Trey chivvied his new friends to hurry up and get him to the American Consulate.

“So you have not been this place before?” Evren halted for a moment at a water fountain, its brass spigot turned a dark, mottled green by verdigris, cupped his hands and took a
drink.

“No...” Trey, who was too thirsty to care about all the warnings his mother had given him about drinking the water “on the Continent” before she left for Los Angeles,
waited for Neyla to finish, then took his turn. “My dad got some introductions when we were in London – to this English family, the Stanhope-Leighs?” Trey shrugged and sighed.
“They have kids kind of my age, and a tutor, and Ahmet – the guy driving the car in your photographs? – he took me over there a couple of times when my dad had to work. We did
this and that.”

“
‘This and that’
not good?” asked Evren.

“It was okay, I suppose.” Trey nodded to himself, having to allow that Arthur was not quite the
complete
milquetoast he’d first thought. “But I’d’ve
rather been with my father, this being a holiday and all.”

“The childs were not so nice?” Evren asked.

“Arthur and Christine? They were okay, like I said.” Trey saw Neyla staring at him, frowning like she couldn’t work him out. “Look, they were
fine
, I just
didn’t want to
be
there, that was all! I go away with my father and all I do is get to spend time with strangers...”

“We strangers.” It was Neyla’s turn to shrug.

Coming round a bend in the road, Trey’s spirits lifted when he saw “Old Glory”, the Stars and Stripes, waving from the top of a flagpole a couple of hundred yards up the street
– he was nearly home! Sort of. Trey stopped walking, aware that the adventure was almost over and that he probably wouldn’t ever see Evren and Neyla again; he looked up and saw that the
two of them were a little way ahead of him. He was about to catch them up and tell them that it was different with them, that he somehow didn’t think
they
were strangers, but he never
got the chance.

None of them saw the two-door Opel roadster coming. Seemingly from out of nowhere it just appeared from behind Trey, screeching to a halt just ahead of him, one of its front tyres up on the
pavement and its mud-splattered bonnet angled to create a barrier between him and the other two. A man jumped up from the passenger seat, making Trey think that the car looked like it was some kind
of giant mobile Jack-in-a-box and the man should be on springs.

But he wasn’t. And the half-smile was wiped off Trey’s face as the man leaped to the pavement and he started to lunge towards him. But the fact that this was not an accident –
that it was actually
all about him
– was something Trey figured out too late to do anything about. Momentarily rooted to the spot, he finally turned to make a run for it as a bearded
man, wearing dark glasses and a hat, dashed from the driver’s side; he said something in a language Trey could have sworn was German.

The next thing Trey knew was that some thick, coarse cloth had been tied over his eyes and someone had grabbed him from behind, picking him up as if he weighed next to nothing. Then a rope or a
belt was pulled tight around him, pinning his arms down, and whoever was carrying him dropped him like a brick. Lying, dazed and in complete darkness, Trey heard a slamming noise right above his
head. They’d put him in the trunk! The car rocked as the two men got in and, as the driver hit the throttle, it roared off down the street.

It had all happened so fast neither Evren nor Neyla
could quite believe what they’d just witnessed – Trey was actually in the back of the car they could now see skidding sideways and disappearing from sight!

The only signs that anything had happened, apart from the fact that Trey really was no longer with them, were the skid marks on the pavement and the nose-pricking smell of overheated rubber. The
street was oddly silent, almost as if the buildings, and everyone in them, were holding their breath, shocked by what had occurred.

Evren looked around, waiting for someone who had witnessed the incident to react; there were a scattering of other people on the street, but by the way they were acting none of them appeared to
have seen or heard anything. He looked at Neyla, wondering how that could possibly be, and shook his head. “That man, the one with the beard...he was foreign, but what kind?”

Neyla shrugged. “Baba Duan’s not going to be pleased we didn’t get him safely to the Consulate...”

“We shan’t tell him.”

“No?”

“No, this is
our
job and we must finish it!”

“What
can
we do?”

“We must tell the Americans.” Evren pointed up the road at the Consulate.

“They will listen to
us
?” Neyla looked down at her threadbare, workaday clothes, her grubby hands and scuffed shoes.

“You’re right...” Evren thought for moment, chewing on a nail. “But there are other people, people they
will
listen to.”

“People
we
know?”

“We don’t know them yet.”

“You mean the English?” Neyla frowned. “How?”

“We have to find the driver first: Ahmet, the one who took Trey to the house. He knows where these people live.”

“How many Ahmets must there be in Constantinople who drive cars, Evren? How many?”

Evren took something out of his trouser pocket and held it up. “Only one who looks like this,” he said, showing Neyla one of the photographs he’d taken of Trey’s father
and his chauffeur...

Tied up and blindfolded in the boot of the car, Trey tried to somehow wedge his shoulders and legs against something in an attempt to stop himself from being thrown about like
a sack of potatoes. Something, he had to admit, he was not able to do with any great success.

It felt as if the driver was succeeding in an attempt to find every single pothole in Constantinople as the car bounced like crazy – and Trey bounced with it – down hills, round
bends and across what felt like rutted fields. None of this in any way helped Trey collect his thoughts and try to understand what had happened to him; he’d never seen either of the people in
the car before and could only imagine they must have something to do with The Bald-headed Man. Which meant that he
could
be being taken off to the same place his father was being kept.

Maybe.

But what if it was someone else, someone working
against
The Bald-headed Man? What if he was being used as a bargaining chip? Give us the father, or we’ll kill the kid, that kind of
thing? Or...Trey forced all the “what if” thoughts away and concentrated on hoping that Evren and Neyla were doing something to help him.

When the car did screech to a halt, flinging Trey backwards and forwards so fast he actually did see stars, he was sure he could hear the sort of sounds you’d kind of associate with boats:
the slapping of water against wood, the creak of taughtened ropes, the discordant yell of seagulls. They hadn’t, he realized, actually driven
that
far, the journey had just seemed
never-ending. Did that mean they were either down by the Bosphorus, or over on the northern side of the Golden Horn? It could only be one or the other, if he recalled the map in the guidebook
correctly. Then the trunk was opened and all the sounds got louder and a small amount of light seeped through the coarse weave of the sacking.