“Oh, I don’t blame you. A telephone call, an invitation from a perfect stranger. I might want to lure you into some criminal scheme. Or I might be a foreign agent, a spy. These days they must swarm in every capital.”
Saygun chuckled. “Who would bother to subvert a little bureaucrat in the purely civilian archives? If anything, you would be the endangered one. Think. You have had your dealings with our bureaucracy. It is impossible not to, especially if one is a foreigner. Believe me, when we set our minds to it we can tangle, obstruct, and bring to a dead halt a herd of stampeding elephants.”
“Still, this is an uneasy time.”
Saygun turned grave. His look wandered out the window, nightward. “Indeed,” he said low. “An evil time. Herr Hitler was not content with engulfing Austria, was he? I fear Mister Chamberlain and Monsieur Daladier will let him work his will on Czechoslovakia too. And nearer home, the ambitions.of the Tsars live on in Red Russia.” He turned his attention back, took forth a handkerchief, wiped his narrow brow and sleeked down his black hair. “Pardon me. You Americans prefer optimism always, not so? Well, whatever happens, civilization will survive. It has thus far, no matter what changing guises it wears.”
“You are quite well-informed, Kyrie Saygun,” McCready said slowly. “And something of a philosopher, it seems.”
The Turk shrugged. “One reads the newspapers. One listens to the radio. The coffee shops have become a Babel of politics. I seek occasional relief hi old books. They help me tell the transient from the enduring.”
He drained his glass. McCready refilled it and asked, “Cigar?”
“Why, yes, thank you very much. That humidor of yours appears to hold promise.”
McCready fetched two Havanas, a clipper which he offered first to his guest, and a lighter. As he settled himself again, his voice shivered the least bit. “May I get to my business now?”
“Certainly. You would have been welcome to do so earlier. I assumed you, wished to become acquainted. Or, if I may put it thus, to feel me out.”
McCready’s grin was wry. “You did the better job of that, on me.”
“Oh? I simply enjoyed a pleasant conversation with an interesting person. Everybody is fascinated by your wonderful country, and your career as a businessman has been remarkable.”
McCready started his visitor’s cigar for him and became occupied with his own. “We went on at length about me, when talk didn’t ramble over ordinary matters. The upshot was that scarcely anything got said about you.”
“There was nothing to say, really. I am as dull and insignificant a man as you will ever find. I cannot imagine you maintaining any interest in me.” Saygun drank smoke, rolled it around his tongue, exhaled luxuriously, chased it with a taste of liqueur. “However, at the moment I am glad. Pleasures like this seldom come to a minor official in a routine-bounded department of government. Turkey is a poor country, and President Ataturk was rather ruthless about corruption.”
McCready’s tobacco kindled less smoothly. “My friend, you are anything but dull. You’ve proved yourself very shrewd, very skillful at hiding whatever you want to hide. Well, it’s no great surprise. People in our situation who don’t have those qualities, or can’t acquire them, probably don’t last long.”
Beady eyes widened. “’Our’ situation? What might that be?”
“Still cautious, are you? Understandable. If you are what I hope, that’s an old, old habit. If not, then you are wondering whether I am a confidence man or a madman.”
“No, no. Please. Your newspaper advertisement last year attracted me. Enigmatic, but somehow ... genuine. Indeed, wonderfully phrased.”
“Thank you. Though composing it was largely the work of my partner. He has a gift for words.”
“I take it you placed the advertisement in many places around the world?” McCready nodded and Saygun continued: “I suppose not only the language but the text, the message, varied according to region. Here—how did it go?—Those who have lived so long that our forefathers are like brothers and comrades to them—yes, that appeals to a Near Easterner, a citizen of an ancient land. Yet the average person who chances to see it gets the impression that a scholar is interested in meeting old people who have studied and meditated upon history, with a view to exploring whatever wisdom may be theirs. Did many respond?”
“No. Most who did were not quite right in the head or tried to cadge money. You were the only one in this country whom my agent decided I might care to follow up.”
“It has taken you a considerable time. I had begun to think your organization was not serious, perhaps a hoax.”
“I had to study a number of reports. Most I discarded. Then I started off around the world. This is my third interview.”
“I gather an agent of yours met those who answered the advertisements everywhere that they were placed. Clearly, you have substantial resources, Kyrie McCready. For a purpose you have yet to reveal to me and, I daresay, have told none of the agents.”
The American nodded. “I gave them certain secret criteria to apply.” Peering through the smoke: “The most important was that a respondent look young and in good health, even though the call seemingly was for old people. I explained that I don’t want the fact publicized but I am searching for natural-born geniuses, with knowledge and insight far beyond their years, especially in history. With minds like that from different civilizations brought into contact, we may found a real science of it, beyond anything that thinkers like Spengler and Toynbee have proposed. The agents doubtless consider me a crackpot on this subject. However, I pay well.”
“I see. Have the previous two whom you met proven satisfactory?”
“You know that isn’t what I am really searching for,” McCready said.
Saygun laughed. “In the present case, that is just as well. I am no genius of any kind. No, a total mediocrity. And content with it, which shows I am doubly dull.” He paused. “But what about those other two?”
McCready chopped air with his cigar. “Damnation,” he exclaimed, “must we shilly-shally all night?”
Saygun leaned back in his chair. The broad face and small bland smile could be a visor over wariness, glee, anything. “God forbid I repay your generosity with discourtesy,” he said. “Perhaps it would be best if you took the lead and made a forthright statement.”
“I will!” McCready sat half crouched. “If I’m wrong about you, you won’t take me for merely eccentric, you’ll believe I’m a raving lunatic. In that case, I suggest you go home and never speak of this evening to anybody; because I’ll deny everything and you’ll be the one to look silly.” In haste: “That’s not a threat. For the convenience of us both, I request your silence.”
Saygun elevated his glass. “From your viewpoint, you are about to take a risk,” he replied. “I understand. I promise.” He drank as if in pledge.
McCready stood up. “What would you say,” he asked softly, “if I told you I am not an American by birth—that I was born in these parts, nearly three thousand years ago?”
Saygun gazed into his drink a while. The city mumbled. A drape stirred ever so slightly to the first night breath off the plateau of Anatolia. When he raised his eyes, he had gone expressionless. “I would call that a most unusual statement.”
“No miracles, no magic,” McCready said. “Somehow it happens. Once in ten million births, a hundred million, a billion? The loneliness— Yes, I am a Phoenician, from Tyre when Tyre was new.” He began pacing, to and fro on the carpet. “I’ve spent most of all that time seeking for others, any others like me.”
“Have you found them?”
McCready’s tone harshened. “Three certain, and of them a single one is still alive to my knowledge, my partner whom I mentioned. He’s tracked down two possibilities himself. As for the other two, we don’t age, you know, but we can be killed the same as anybody else.” Savagely, he ground his cigar out in an ashtray. “Like that.”
“Then I suppose the two you have spoken with on this journey, they were disappointments?”
McCready nodded. He slammed fist into palm. “They’re what I am officially after, highly intelligent and thoughtful ... young people. Maybe I can find a place for them, I do have my enterprises, but—“ He stopped on the floor, legs wide apart, and stared. “You’re taking this very calmly, aren’t you?”
“I admitted I am a dull person. Phlegmatic.”
“Which gives me reason to think you’re different from them. And my agent did make a quiet investigation. You could pass for a man in his twenties, but you’ve held your present job more than thirty years.”
“My friends remark on it. Not with much envy; I am no Adonis. Well, some individuals are slow to grow wrinkled and gray.”
