promptly stood up. I stared at him and he glowered back.
“Hazirol!” he snapped, and then exasperatedly: “ Debout! Debout!”
I stood up. I could hear approaching footsteps and voices now. Then the door was unlocked and flung open.
For a moment nothing more happened, except that someone in the corridor, whom I could not see, went on speaking. He had a harsh, peremptory voice which seemed to be giving orders that another voice kept acknowledging deferentially- “Evet, evet efendim, derhal.” Then the orders ceased and the man who had been giving them came into the room.
He was about thirty-five, I would think, perhaps younger, tall and quite slim. There were high cheekbones, gray eyes, and short brown hair. He was handsome, I suppose, in a thin-lipped sort of way. He was wearing a dark civilian suit that looked as if it had been cut by a good Roman tailor, and a dark-gray silk tie. He looked as if he had just come from a diplomatic corps cocktail party; and for all I know he may have done so. On his right wrist there was a gold identity bracelet. The hand below it was holding a large manila envelope.
He examined me bleakly for a moment, then nodded. “I am Major Tufan, Deputy Director, Second Section.”
“Good evening, sir.”
He glanced at the guard, who was staring at him round-eyed, and suddenly snapped out an order: “Defol!”
The guard nearly fell over himself getting out of the room.
As soon as the door closed, the major pulled a chair up to the table and sat down. Then he waved me back to my seat by the bread.
“Sit down, Simpson. I believe that you speak French easily, but not Turkish.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then we will speak in French instead of English. That will be easier for me.”
I answered in French. “As you wish, sir.”
He took cigarettes and matches from his pocket and tossed them on the table in front of me. “You may smoke.”
“Thank you.”
I was glad of the concession, though not in the least reassured by it. When a policeman gives you a cigarette it is usually the first move in one of those “let’s see if we can’t talk sensibly as man to man” games in which he provides the rope and you hang yourself. I lit a cigarette and waited for the next move.
He seemed in no hurry to make it. He had opened the envelope and taken from it a file of papers which he was searching through and rearranging, as if he had just dropped them all and was trying to get them back into the right order.
There was a knock at the door. He took no notice. After a moment or two, the door opened and a guard came in with a bottle of raki and two glasses. Tufan motioned to him to put them on the table, and then noticed the soup.
“Do you want any more of that?” he asked.
“No thank you, sir.”
He said something to the guard, who took the soup and bread away and locked the door again.
Tufan rested the file on his knees and poured himself a glass of raki. “The flight from Istanbul was anything but smooth,” he said; “we are still using piston-engined planes on these short runs.” He swallowed the drink as if he were washing down a pill, and pushed the bottle an inch or two in my direction. “You’d better have a drink, Simpson. It may make you feel better.”
“And also make me more talkative, sir?” I thought the light touch might make him think that I was not afraid.
He looked up and his gray eyes met mine. “I hope not,” he said coldly; “I have no time to waste.” He shut the file with a snap and put it on the table in front of him.
“Now then,” he went on, “let us examine your position. First, the offenses with which you are charged render you liable upon conviction to terms of imprisonment of at least twenty years. Depending on the degree of your involvement in the political aspects of this affair, we might even consider pressing for a death sentence.”
“But I am not involved at all, Major, I assure you. I am a victim of circumstances-an innocent victim.” Of course, he could have been bluffing about the death sentence, but I could not be sure. There was that phrase “political aspects” again. I had read that they had been hanging members of the former government for political crimes. I wished now that I had taken the drink when he had offered it. Now, my hands were shaking, and I knew that, if I reached for the bottle and glass, he would see that they were.
Apparently, however, he did not have to see them; he knew what he was doing to me, and wanted me to know that he knew. Quite casually, he picked up the bottle, poured me half a glass of raki, and pushed it across to me.
“We will talk about the extent of your involvement in a minute,” he said. “First, let us consider the matter of your passport.”
“It is out of date. I admit that. But it was a mere oversight. If the post Commandant had behaved correctly I would have been sent back to the Greek post.”
He shrugged impatiently. “Let us be clear about this. You had already committed serious criminal offenses on Turkish soil. Would you expect to escape the consequences because your papers are not in order? You know better. You also know that your passport was not invalid through any oversight. The Egyptian government had refused to renew it. In fact, they revoked your citizenship two years ago on the grounds that you made false statements on your naturalization papers.” He glanced in the file. “You stated that you had never been convicted of a criminal offense and that you had never served a prison sentence. Both statements were lies.”
This was such an unfair distortion of the facts that I could only assume that he had got it from the Egyptians. I said: “I have been fighting that decision.”
“And also using a passport to which you were not entitled and had failed to surrender.”
“My case was still sub judice. Anyway, I have already applied for restoration of my British citizenship, to which I am entitled as the son of a serving British officer. In fact, I am British.”
“The British don’t take that view. After what happened you can scarcely blame them.”
“Under the provisions of the British Nationality Act of 1948 I remain British unless I have specifically renounced that nationality. I have never formally renounced it.”
“That is unimportant. We are talking about your case here and the extent of your involvement. The point I wish to make is that our action in your case is not going to be governed in any way by the fact that you are a foreigner. No consul is going to intercede on your behalf. You have none. You are stateless. The only person who can help you is my Director.” He paused. “But he will have to be persuaded. You understand me?”
“I have no money.”
It seemed a perfectly sensible reply to me, but for some reason it appeared to irritate him. His eyes narrowed and for a moment I thought he was going to throw the glass he was holding in my face. Then he sighed. “You are over fifty,” he said, “yet you have learned nothing. You still see other men in your own absurd image. Do you really believe that I could be bought, or that, if I could be, a man like you could ever do the buying?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to retort that that would depend on the price he was asking; but if he wanted to take this high-and-mighty attitude, there was no sense in arguing. Obviously, I had touched him in a sensitive area.
He lit a cigarette as if he were consciously putting aside his irritation. I took the opportunity to drink some of the raki.
“Very well.” He was all business again. “You understand your position, which is that you have no position. We come now to the story you told to the post Commandant before your arrest.”
“Every word I told the Commandant was the truth.”
He opened the file. “On the face of it that seems highly unlikely. Let us see. You stated that you were asked by this American, Harper, to drive a car belonging to a Fraulein Lipp from Athens to Istanbul. You were to be paid one hundred dollars. You agreed. Am I right?”
“Quite right.”
“You agreed, even though the passport in your possession was not in order?”
