Mission: Earth "Disaster" (14 page)

We passed through the summer countryside of Turkey, but I saw none of it. We battled traffic through Uskudar on the Asian shore of the metropolis, but I gave it no heed. We crossed the Bosporus, but I was unmindful of the thick traffic below us on the water. We honked our way along Kemeralti Street in Beyoglu and still I cringed. We threaded a passage across the Golden Horn on the Galata Bridge and, wending through the hundreds of towers and minarets, were all too soon in front of the Piastre National Bank. I was exhausted from nearly three hundred miles of dread. It was going to get worse. Mudur Zengin said he would see Faht Bey, but when we all trooped into his office and he saw me, he looked like he was going to throw us out. Heller took the initiative. He looked around the ornate room and pulled three chairs up to the carved desk. "Do you mind if we sit down?" he said.

"I have no business with this man!" said Zengin, looking hard at me.

Heller pushed me into a chair and sat down himself. Faht Bey took the third.

Mudur Zengin still stood. He was shaking angrily.

"We're trying to straighten out his affairs," said Heller.

"The devil couldn't do that!" Mudur Zengin said. He only sat down so he could support his elbow and shake a finger at me. "Do you have any idea what this man has done?" He waited for no answer. "He had a princely allowance: He squandered it all and ate into the capital. He let a concubine run wild with credit cards and never said a word. He left the bank responsible for paying those bills and then he even bought a yacht. He went sailing gaily across the seven seas, having a marvelous time. We financed the yacht, we paid for all its expenses – we even helped him sell it for five times its value – and then he went running off and let the deal fall through."

"I think there's some possibility of straightening all this out," said Heller.

"You do?" said Mudur Zengin. "But not with this one! He committed the highest, greatest crime you could commit!" He sat back, disdain curling his lips. "When he mortgaged his property, HE WENT TO ANOTHER BANK!"

Heller said, "Certainly there is some way – "

"After an insult like that?" said Mudur Zengin. And he made a gesture like he'd gotten something nasty on his hands.

"I think," said Heller, "that you know Faht Bey."

"Yes, we do business with the companies he represents. I am very sorry and surprised to see him mixed up with such a man as And he indicated me.

"Well, Faht Bey and I are his family advisers," said Heller. "We came in just a little late on the scene."

"You certainly did!" said Mudur Zengin.

"Could you answer a question?" said Heller. "Could you tell me why your bank went on advancing money to pay his bills?"

"That is very simple," said Mudur Zengin. "Down in his safety-deposit box, this fool has stacks of gold certificates just lying there, losing money every day, drawing only a small percent. He wanted to leave them there. But someday he would have to come in and open that box and we would be waiting there with a claim. And if he died, its contents would have gone to probate and we would have collected."

I groaned. I had not thought Heller would learn of that box!

"Now, that is very interesting," said Heller. "I'm afraid that this Sultan Bey neglected to mention it to us. Now, you spoke of a mortgage. What if we were to obtain evidence that it was forged and produce the confession of the person who forged it?"

Mudur Zengin shrugged. "It would be typical of the Grabbe-Manhattan Bank in their international dealings. If you produced such proof, the mortgage would be declared null and void and Grabbe-Manhattan would be hauled up for conspiracy to defraud if they knew it was forged."

Heller glanced at his watch. "It is 11:30 now. In the interests of your own bank, could we ask for an interview with you after lunch?"

"Only for the sake of my other directors," said Mudur Zengin.

We left and he didn't stand or see us to the door.

"Well, Soltan," said Heller when we got outside, "I see that you have not been entirely frank with us."

The car was parked in a lot now. Heller pushed me in and told Ters and Ahmed to go take a walk. He shut the door and got an instrument from under the bar. It was a viewer-phone with tape. He pushed the buttons.

"Right here," said the Countess Krak, as her face came on the viewer.

"All set," said Heller. "Put a helmet on that Russian spy and get a confession that he forged that mortgage. Get it witnessed by available Turks. Put him back in detention for future trial data on Gris and then transmit the whole confession through to me here as a valid document. Then put a helmet on that black-jowled Forrest Closure, blank him out about the existence of the base and tell him that Grabbe-Manhattan will find itself in criminal court if it pushes the matter further. Got it?"

"Yes, dear," said the Countess Krak.

Lucky them. Lucky me. I wasn't at the base where my head installation would cancel those helmets. It was a close call. My own future plans depended utterly on keeping that fact secret. They must not know that Lombar controlled Voltar.

Faht Bey had found a restaurant and he came and collected Heller. They went off and left me with the guards, who made me eat some junk they brought, sitting in the base car.

Heller and Faht Bey came back about 1:30 and Heller went to the Daimler-Benz and tore off the transmission facsimile sheets and had another word with Krak.

Pushing me ahead of him, Heller took me to the bank. But he didn't take me up to the office. He took me down to the safe-deposit section. I tried to balk. I intended to come back to this planet in a blaze of glory. I certainly did not want to be without funds!

We stood in front of the guard and clerk. "He wants his box," said Heller.

They shoved a card at me to sign.

Never did a hand and arm go so dead. If I signed it, I would be broke!

Heller was looking at me curiously. Did he suspect a hypno-helmet was inoperative on me? My life depended on keeping that fact hidden.

"Well, sign it!" said Heller.

It was very painful. I had to sign the card.

The clerk opened the bank's side of the box and left. The bank guard edged up watchfully. I opened my side of the combination. I plopped the cover back.

All those lovely gold certificates!

But Heller reached past me. He picked up a slip that was lying on top. He read it, the receipt for gold. "Aha!" he said. "Contraband gold from Voltar! Absence of proofmarks noted. Just like those on the tug. This gives me, as a Fleet officer, authority to seize the lot. And this receipt will look just great at your trial." He put it in his pocket.

I felt physically ill.

He reached over and emptied the box. He made a hurried count. He whistled. "Nearly a quarter of a billion dollars! So this is why Apparatus officers don't squawk about low pay. Contraband drugs, illegal gold–"

"You were going to make some yourself!" I snarled.

"Ah, but that is the operative word: make some. From these weights, those ingots are straight from Industrial City, Voltar. But I shouldn't bait you, Soltan. You may just have solved a lot of problems."

I contemplated seizing the certificates and trying to run. But the bank guard was standing there. And outside, the two armed men would shoot me in the legs, painfully.

Heller was propelling me with a certain grip on my elbow.

Shortly we were again in the office of Mudur Zengin. He was no less frosty than before.

Heller handed him the confessions. There were two of them.

We sat and Mudur Zengin read the first with increasing interest. Then he looked at Heller with amazement.

"This is incredible," said Mudur Zengin. "A Russian spy received orders from Rockecenter himself via Moscow to forge a mortgage to the best opium-growing property in Afyon!"

"That's what he says," said Heller. "And Faht Bey can produce said Colonel Boris Gaylov at any time with his full KGB credentials if it comes to any trial."

"Good heavens!" said Mudur Zengin. He leaned back. "I see why he is confessing. Russia is no more and he has no place to go. Why, that's almost worth the hurricane of wind and earthquake we had here the other day."

He picked up the other confession and read it with his eyes going rounder and rounder. "Good heavens! This confession by Forrest Closure, head of their International Mortgage Division, states that he received direct orders from Delbert John Rockecenter himself to forge a mortgage to that prime opium land, and that the Russian and he cooked up a cock-and-bull story about a mountain there containing an extraterrestrial base for flying saucers to get Rockecenter interested. Why, heavens, if this got out, Rockecenter would be the laughingstock of the whole banking community. Oh, this is rich!"

"So what do we do?" said Heller.

"Well, young man, that would all depend on whether I decided to cooperate."

Heller laid the gold certificates on the desk. I noticed the bank guard had followed us up to make sure we didn't leave the building with them.

Mudur Zengin shrugged. "We would have come into possession of our rightful share of these anyway," he said, letting them lie there.

"Well," said Heller, "our misguided friend here has certain debts." He handed over a list.

Zengin looked at it. "Well, a small amount of these funds invested could provide a kaffarah out of the interest and feed the poor of the named villages. The dowry is simply covered with cash. The antidisease campaign could be handled through a trust of invested funds to do that. I'm not surprised at all about the mosque. The Squeeza credit-card bills were paid by our bank and he owes us, all told, something above five million dollars."

"How much would be left?" said Heller.

Zengin counted my precious gold certificates. He waggled a pencil around. He hit a calculator a few licks.

"About 232 million," said Zengin.

"And if I turned this over to your bank," said Heller, "to make it into a trust fund, could you turn the money earned by it over to Faht Bey here so he could run his businesses?"

"Well, you make it very attractive. That much money under our control would let us dominate Istanbul banking and even drive Grabbe-Manhattan out of our operating area. It would give Faht Bey here about four million a month free and clear to run his businesses, and that's far more than he has ever run through his accounts. But I don't know." And he was looking with a frown at me.

"Mr. Zengin," said Heller. "Faht Bey, whom you know, would have this young man's power of attorney in perpetuity to regulate all these funds and to have all contact with your bank about this money."

Zengin was frowning at me. "Powers of attorney can be revoked."

"Possibly I have not been entirely frank with you," said Heller. "I did not give you my identity."

"No, you did not," said Zengin.

"I," said Heller, "am an officer of the Crown. The matter is completely secret. But I am taking Sultan to a country very far away. He will be tried and, with the evidence we have, he will be sentenced for life or executed. I can assure you that you will never lay eyes on him again."

"Really?" said Mudur Zengin, his jaw dropped. He looked at Faht Bey.

"He is just what he says," said Faht Bey, indicating Heller. "He is a very capable and trusted officer. As a matter of fact, Sultan Bey is under arrest right this minute. We are not troubling Turkish authorities with the matter, but Sultan will be gone from this country in a matter of days, never to return."

Mudur Zengin began to smile. Then he began to laugh. Then he reached forward and grasped Heller by the hand and rose, pumping it. He put his arm around Heller's shoulders. "Sir," he said, "consider me your lifelong friend!" Emotion choked his voice.

An hour later, practically awash with Turkish coffee and their pockets full of cigars of the finest blend, Faht Bey and Heller paused by the car. The time had been taken up by clerks and bank attorneys drawing up all sorts of papers that Heller had made me sign. They hadn't given me any coffee and Zengin's praises or Heller were acid in my ears. Heller was making sure Faht Bey had all the papers in his stuffed briefcase. "There you go," Heller said. "Now you've got ten times the finance you ever had, and all without even touching filthy drugs."

Faht Bey was looking at him with worshipful eyes. He gave him

a crossed-arm salute. It was sickening!

Heller, in the car, before he called our drivers, buzzed the viewer-phone. The Countess Krak's face promptly showed.

"Business all went well," he said. "The confessions turned the

tide."

"What are they going to do with them?" said the Countess

Krak.

"Mudur Zengin is putting the copies of the confessions in his vault. He's just going to show a corner of them if the matter ever comes up. There won't be another whisper about flying saucers." He laughed. "Oh, you dear, you really are the most. Implicating Rockecenter himself was the master touch."

"Now, Jettero," she said, "you are inferring that you have a dishonest future wife. It just so happens that every scrap of those confessions is the living truth. I even have Rockecenter's orders in his own handwriting here, and copies of all of Forrest Closure's files, in case it ever comes up again."

"It won't," said Heller. "And forgive me for doubting you. You always do so splendidly. Do you want anything from Istanbul? An emerald necklace or something?"

"I don't want anything from this planet," said the Countess Krak.

"All right," said Heller. "We're coming home."

I sat seething in the car. He had taken my base, he had taken my car, he had taken my gold certificates. Before he left Istanbul he bought her an emerald necklace in spite of her refusal. And it was only because he didn't think of it that he didn't take the money for it out of my wallet.