“Tourisme?” he asked.
“Yes.”
We went back inside and he proceeded to stamp and validate the carnet for the car’s entry, and tear out his part of the counterfoil. He was just folding the carnet and handing it back when I felt a sharp tap on my shoulder.
It was the security man. He had my passport in his hand. I went to take it, but he shook his head and began waving it under my nose and saying something in Turkish.
I speak Egyptian Arabic and there are many Arabic words in Turkish; but the Turks pronounce them in a funny way and use a lot of Persian and old Turkish words mixed up with them. I shrugged helplessly. Then he said it in French and I understood.
My passport was three months out of date.
I knew at once how it had happened. Earlier in the year I had had some differences with the Egyptian consular people (or “United Arab Republic,” as they preferred to call themselves) and had allowed the whole question of my passport to slide. In fact, I had made up my mind to tell the Egyptians what they could do with their passport, and approach the British with a view to reclaiming my United Kingdom citizenship, to which, I want to make it clear, I am perfectly entitled. The thing was that, being so busy, I had just not bothered to fill in all the necessary forms. My Greek permis de sejour was in order, and that was all I normally needed in the way of papers. Frankly, I find all this paper regimentation we have to go through nowadays extremely boring. Naturally, with all the anxiety I had had over Harper, I had not thought to look at the date on my passport. If I had known that it was out of date, obviously I would have taken more trouble with the security man, kept him in conversation while he was doing the stamping or something like that. I have never had any bother like that before.
As it was, the whole thing became utterly disastrous; certainly through no fault of mine. The security man refused to stamp the passport. He said that I had to drive back to Salonika and have the passport renewed by the Egyptian vice-consul there before I could be admitted.
That would have been impossible as it happened; but I did not even have to try to explain why. The customs inspector chimed in at that point, waving the carnet and shouting that the car had been admitted and was now legally in Turkey. As I had not been admitted and was not, therefore, legally in Turkey, how was I, legally, to take the car out again? What did it matter if the passport was out of date? It was only a matter of three months. Why did he not just stamp the passport, admit me, and forget about it?
At least that was what I think he said. They had lapsed into Turkish now and were bawling at one another as if I did not exist. If I could have got the security man alone, I would have tried to bribe him; but with the other one there it was too dangerous. Finally, they both went off to see some superior officer and left me standing there, without carnet or passport, but with, I admit it frankly, a bad case of the jitters. Really, my only hope at that point was that they would do what the customs inspector wanted and overlook the date on the passport.
With any luck, that might have happened. I say “with any luck,” although things would still have been awkward even if they had let me through. I would have had somehow to buy an Egyptian consular stamp in Istanbul and forge the renewal in the passport-not easy. Or I would have had to have gone to the British Consulate-General, reported a lost British passport, and tried to winkle a temporary travel document out of them before they had had time to check up-not easy either. But at least those would have been the sort of difficulties a man in my anomalous position would understand and could cope with. The difficulties that, in fact, I did have to face were quite outside anything I had ever before experienced.
I stood there in the customs shed for about ten minutes, watched by an armed guard on the door who looked as if he would have liked nothing better than an excuse for shooting me. I pretended not to notice him; but his presence did not improve matters. In fact, I was beginning to get an attack of my indigestion.
After a while, the security man came back and beckoned to me. I went with him, along a passage with a small barrack room off it, to a door at the end.
“What now?” I asked in French.
“You must see the Commandant of the post.”
He knocked at the door and ushered me in.
Inside was a small bare office with some hard chairs and a green baize trestle table in the center. The customs inspector stood beside the table. Seated at it was a man of about my own age with a lined, sallow face. He wore some sort of officer’s uniform. I think he belonged to the military security police. He had the carnet and my passport on the table in front of him.
He looked up at me disagreeably. “This is your passport?” He spoke good French.
“Yes, sir. And I can only say that I regret extremely that I did not notice that it was not renewed.”
“You have caused a lot of trouble.”
“I realize that, sir. I must explain, however, that it was only on Monday evening that I was asked to make this journey. I left early yesterday morning. I was in a hurry. I did not think to check my papers.”
He looked down at the passport. “It says here that your occupation is that of journalist. You told the customs inspector that you were a chauffeur.”
So he had an inquiring mind; my heart sank.
“I am acting as a chauffeur, sir. I was, I am a journalist, but one must live and things are not always easy in that profession.”
“So now you are a chauffeur, and the passport is incorrect in yet another particular, eh?” It was a very unfair way of putting it, but I thought it as well to let him have his moment.
“One’s fortunes change, sir. In Athens I have my own car, which I drive for hire.”
He peered, frowning, at the carnet. “This car here is the property of Elizabeth Lipp. Is she your employer?”
“Temporarily, sir.”
“Where is she?”
“In Istanbul, I believe, sir.”
“You do not know?”
“Her agent engaged me, sir-to drive her car to Istanbul, where she is going as a tourist. She prefers to make the journey to Istanbul by sea.”
There was an unpleasant pause. He looked through the carnet again and then up at me abruptly.
“What nationality is this woman?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“What age? What sort of woman?”
“I have never seen her, sir. Her agent arranged everything.”
“And she is going from Athens to Istanbul by sea, which takes twenty-four hours, but she sends her car fourteen hundred kilometers and three days by road. If she wants the car in Istanbul, why didn’t she take the car on the boat with her? It is simple enough and costs practically nothing.”
I was only too well aware of it. I shrugged. “I was paid to drive, sir, and well paid. It was not for me to question the lady’s plans.”
He considered me for a moment, then drew a sheet of paper towards him and scribbled a few words. He handed the result to the customs inspector, who read, nodded, and went out quickly.
The Commandant seemed to relax. “You say you know nothing about the woman who owns the car,” he said. “Tell me about her agent. Is it a travel bureau?”
“No, sir, a man, an American, a friend of Fraulein Lipp’s father he said.”
“What’s his name? Where is he?”
I told him everything I knew about Harper, and the nature of my relationship with him. I did not mention the disagreement over the traveler’s checks. That could have been of no interest to him.
He listened in silence, nodding occasionally. By the time I had finished, his manner had changed considerably. His expression had become almost amiable.
“Have you driven this way before?” he asked.
“Several times, sir.”
“With tourists?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ever without tourists?”
