I sat on the bottom step wishing that I had an irrational anxiety like his to occupy my mind, instead of the real and immediate fears that occupied my lungs, my heart, and my stomach.
At five o’clock, bells were sounded in the courtyards and there were one or two distant shouts. The guards were herding everyone out and closing up for the night.
I started to light a cigarette, but Miller stopped me. “Not until it is dark,” he said. “The sun might happen to illuminate the smoke before it dispersed above the roof. It is better also that we talk no more. It will become very quiet outside and we do not know how the acoustics of a place like this may work. No unnecessary risks.”
That was what Tufan had said. I wondered what he was doing. He must, I thought, already know that he had lost everyone and everything, except Miss Lipp and the Lincoln. The Peugeot would have radioed in. The question was whether the surveillance people had remembered the Volkswagen van or not. If they had, there would be a faint possibility of Tufan’s being able to trace it using the police; but it seemed very faint. I wondered how many thousand Volkswagen vans there were in the Istanbul area. Of course, if they had happened to notice the registration number-if this, if that. Fischer began to snore and Miller tapped his leg until he stopped.
The patch of sky at the top of the staircase turned red and then gray and then blue-black. I lit a cigarette and saw Miller’s teeth gleaming yellowly in the light of the match.
“What about flashlights?” I whispered. “We won’t be able to see a thing.”
“There will be a third-quarter moon.”
At about eight there was a murmur of voices from one or other of the courtyards-in there it was impossible to tell which-and a man laughed. Presumably, the night watchmen were taking over. Then there was silence again. A plane going over became an event, something to think about. Was it preparing to land at Yesilkoy airport or had it just taken off?
Fischer produced a flask of water with a metal cup on the base, and we each had a drink. Another age went by. Then there was the faint sound of a train pulling out of the Sirkeci station and chugging round the sharp curve at Seraglio Point below. Its whistle sounded shrilly, like a French train, and then it began to gather speed. As the sound died away, a light glared, almost blinding me. Miller had a pen light in his hand and was looking at his watch. He sighed contentedly.
“We can go,” he whispered.
“The light a moment, Leo,” Fischer said.
Miller held the light up for him. With his good hand, Fischer eased a small snub-nosed revolver from his breast pocket, worked the safety catch, and then transferred the thing to a side pocket. He gave me a meaning look as he patted it.
Miller got up, so I stood up, too. He came down the steps with the tackle and looped it around one shoulder like a bandolier. “I will go first,” he said; “Arthur will follow me. Then you, Hans. Is there anything else? Ah yes, there is.”
He went and relieved himself in the corner by the fire hose. When he had finished Fischer did the same thing.
I was smoking. “Put that out now,” Miller said. He looked at Fischer. “Are you ready?”
Fischer nodded; then, an instant before the light went out, I saw him cross himself. That is something I don’t understand. I mean, he was asking a blessing, or whatever it is, when he was going to commit a sin.
Miller went up the stairs slowly. At the top he paused, looking all round, getting his bearings. Then he bent his head down to mine.
“Karl said that you may have vertigo,” he said softly; “but it is all quite simple. Follow me at three paces. Do not look sideways or back, only ahead. There is one step down from this ironwork. Then there is lead sheet. I will step down, go three paces, and wait a little so that your eyes can adjust themselves.”
I had been so long in the darkness that the intermittent glare of the pen light had been almost painful. Outside on the roof, the moonlight seemed to make everything as bright as day; too bright for my liking; I was certain that someone would see us from the ground and start shooting. Fischer must have had the same feeling. I heard him swear under his breath behind me.
Miller’s teeth gleamed for an instant; then he started to move forward past the three cupolas over the quarters of the White Eunuchs. There was a space of about five feet between the cupolas and the edge of the roof. Staying close to the cupolas and looking only ahead as Miller had instructed me, I had no sensation at all of being on a high place. For a while, my only problem was keeping up with him. Harper had compared him to a fly. To me he looked more like an earwig as he slithered round the last of the three cupolas and scuttled on, leaning inward over the slight hump in the center of the roof. He stopped only once. He had crossed the roof of the Audience Chamber, to avoid what looked like three large fanlights over the Gate of Felicity, and was returning to the Eunuchs’ roof when another fanlight appeared and the flat surface narrowed suddenly. The way across was only about two feet wide.
I saw the ground below and started to go down on my knees-I might just have been able to crawl across by myself, I suppose-when he reached back, gripped my forearm, and drew me after him. It was done so quickly that I had no time to get sick and lose my balance. His fingers were like steel clamps.
Then, we were level with the kitchens and I could see the conical bases of their ten squat chimneys stretching away to the right. Miller led the way to the left. The flat space here was over thirty feet wide and I had no trouble. There was a four-foot rise then, which brought us over the big room with the exhibition of miniatures and glass in it. Ahead, I could see the whole of one cupola and, beyond it, the top of another smaller one. The smaller one, I knew, was the one on the roof of the Treasury Museum.
Miller began to move more slowly and carefully as he skirted the big cupola. Every now and again he stopped. Then I saw him lower himself over a ledge. When his feet found whatever there was below, only his head and shoulders were showing.
I was following round the big cupola, and had started to move away from it towards the ledge, when Miller turned and beckoned to me. He had moved a yard or two towards the outer edge of the roof, so I changed direction towards him. That is how it was that when I came to the ledge I saw too much.
There was the vaulted roof of the Treasury, and the cupola with a flat space about four feet wide all around the base of it. That is where Miller was standing. But beyond him there was nothing, just a great black emptiness, and then, horribly far away below, the faint white hairline of a road in the moonlight.
I felt myself starting to lose my balance and fall, so I knelt down quickly and clung to the lead surface of the roof. Then I began retching. I couldn’t help it; I’ve never been able to help it. From what I’ve heard from people who get seasick, that must be the same sort of feeling; only my feeling about heights is worse.
I had nothing in my stomach to throw up, but that didn’t make any difference. My stomach went on trying to throw up.
Fischer began kicking me and hissing at me to be silent. Miller reached up and dragged me by the ankles down over the ledge, then made me sit with my back against the side of the cupola. He shoved my head hard between my knees. I heard a scuffling noise as he helped Fischer down off the ledge, then their whispering.
“Will he be all right?”
“He will have to be.”
“The fat fool.” Fischer kicked me as I started to retch again.
Miller stopped him. “That will do no good. You will have to help. As long as he gets no nearer the edge it may be possible.”
I opened my eyes just enough to see Miller’s feet. He was laying out the anchor rope round the cupola and presently he pulled one end of it down between my back and the part I was leaning against. A moment or two later, he crouched down in front of me and began knotting the rope. When that was done, he slipped on the upper block of the lifting tackle. Then he brought his head close to mine.
“Can you hear me, Arthur?”
“Yes.”
“If you didn’t have to move, you’d feel safe here, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You are safe now, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then listen. You can handle the tackle from here. Open your eyes and look up at me.”
I managed to do so. He had taken his coat off and looked skinnier than ever. “Hans will be at the edge,” he
