Istanbul Passage

against the wall. The stairs themselves were easier, shadowy but catching light from the ground floor. He could hear a radio in the desk clerk’s office, loud enough to muffle any creaking steps. Alexei barely touched the banister, the duffel on his shoulder, not making a sound, someone used to going out the back. No one at the desk when they reached the ground floor. Audience laughter on the radio. Just the hallway now, past a utility room, then the back door, not even locked. In the street behind, no wider than an alley, Alexei stumbled into a trash bin but caught the lid before it could fall off, holding his breath for a second. Leon nodded toward the streetlight at the end. No one was out, all the mihanye customers farther down the hill.

“Which way?” Alexei said when they reached Ordu Caddesi, turning away as a half-empty tram passed.

“Just across. A few blocks.”

Small, quiet streets, then a larger one looking down toward the sehzade Mosque. A modern building with a buzzer entry system, not a courtyard with a nosy kapici. Leon opened the front door with a key. More timer switches on the stairs, but at least everything working, the lobby clean, smelling faintly of disinfectant.

“One more floor,” Leon said when they reached the landing.

“Who lives here?”

“University people. It’s nearby.”

“Students?”

“No, they couldn’t afford it.”

“So I’m a professor?”

“You’re not anything. You don’t go out. You’re not here.”

The flat was no more than functional, but a pleasant step up from the hotel.

“I stocked the fridge,” Leon said. “You should have everything you need. At least for the next few days.”

“Few days?”

“Or sooner. Depending on the plane.”

Alexei threw the duffel on the bed, then walked over to the bottle on a side chest. “So now the raki.”

“Not for me. I have to go.”

“We don’t talk tonight?” Alexei said, surprised, thinking Leon was Tommy, not just the babysitter. “No questions?”

“Later.”

“Well, join me anyway. A welcome toast.” Alexei poured the drinks, then raised his. “To safe journeys.”

“Safe journeys,” Leon said, feeling the heat as it slipped down, finally something real.

“You don’t stay here?” Alexei said. “The watchdog?”

“It’s safe.”

“Safe,” Alexei said, his voice neutral.

“No one followed us here.”

“I know. I worked in the field too. So, now the only risk is you.”

“Me?”

“When you come back. Or is someone else coming tomorrow? Either way, a visitor leaves a trail. Like Hansel and the pebbles. So perhaps it’s better to stay.” Again trying to be light. He poured more raki in his glass. “I haven’t talked to anybody in two days. Dominoes, it’s not the same thing. A game for simpletons. You see them in the mountains. Every village. Sitting in the cafes, click, clack. Two days of that.”

Leon smiled a little. “You’ll be all right now. Just stay put.”

“Where would I go?” He walked over to the window. “Where are we? What part?”

“The old city.”

“Constantinople,” Alexei said, playing with it for effect, a student reciting homework. “And that?” He pointed to a hulking shadow beyond the mosque.

“Valens Aqueduct.”

“Aqueduct? From Romans?”

“Byzantine. Fourth century.” A fact he’d picked up from Anna on one of their walks.

“Fourth?” Alexei said, genuinely impressed, a tourist. “They still use it?”

“Not anymore. Not for fifty years or so.”

“So nothing is forever.” He turned to Leon, a half smile. “But of course that’s why we’re here. The new order. Another one. Yours, this time.”

Leon drained his glass. “I have to go.”

“Let’s hope this one lasts for a while,” Alexei said, turning to glance again at the aqueduct. “I can’t change sides again. You’re the last.”

Leon looked at him for a moment. Not what he expected, not a rescue, one of ours, someone buying his life with betrayal.

“I’ll be back tomorrow. Do you need anything?”

“Something to read maybe,” Alexei said, nodding to the empty shelf. “Not even dominoes now. What should I do? Think about my sins? That’s what the priests used to recommend.”

“When was this?”

“When I was young.” He smiled. “Before I had any.”

“Lock up behind me,” Leon said, turning.

“One more thing? The gun?” He held out his hand.

“You’re safe here.”

“Then I’ll be safer. A precaution,” Alexei said, staring him down until Leon reached into his pocket and handed it over. “Thank you.” He looked at the gun, then around the room. “Very trusting, Americans. No guard.”

“You’re not a prisoner. You came to us, remember?” Leon said, improvising, a guess.

“What if I changed my mind?”

“Changed it to what?”

Alexei made a wry smile. “Not so many choices left, you mean. No,” he said to himself, then shrugged.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

Alexei raised his head. “I’ll look forward to that.”

Outside, Leon crossed the street heading toward Suleyman’s Mosque, then ducked suddenly into a doorway catty-corner from the building. A few minutes, just to be sure. No one in the streets. He felt the same tingling, the caffeine alertness he’d felt on the quay. He should have arranged for someone to watch the building. But there hadn’t been any reason for that. Not a few hours ago. A simple pickup, just slipping someone in and out of the country, a kind of card trick. Not shoot-outs, someone lying in a pool of blood. Or carried away by now, tossed into the Bosphorus, another secret in the water.

Leon looked up at the lighted window, remembering Alexei’s face, wary and then tired, gone to ground. But there must have been other times, eyes confident, standing tall in his uniform. Romanian, it turned out, not Wehrmacht, whatever that looked like. Probably the same peaked hat, padded shoulders. Fighting alongside the Germans, all the way to Stalingrad. And now in the Russians’ crosshairs, Mihai taking the bullet instead. Luck just a matter of turning a few inches, a hand on the duffel where his head should have been. He thought of himself, flat on the damp concrete of the quay, waiting, afraid to breathe.

He moved away from the doorway, through the dark streets around the mosque, then the even darker ones below the Grand Bazaar, just an occasional light through shutters or a radio playing, streets as dark as they must have been when Valens was building his aqueduct. The timeless city, houses with bay overhangs, cobbles slick with peels and rinds. Leon had never been afraid on the streets in Istanbul, not even in the back alleys of neighborhoods like Fatih, full of headscarves and long stares, but tonight every movement, every faint rustling, put him on edge. In one street, two dogs raised their heads to watch him pass, some of Istanbul’s roaming wild dogs, fed on scraps.

He kept going east, through Cagaloglu, where all the newspaper offices were. Had they heard about the shooting yet? Pages being made up, lines of type. Murder in Bebek. Mysterious shooting on the Bosphorus. No witnesses. Never suspecting the witness was outside their windows right now. Not just a witness, the killer. And looking at the swirl of lights down at Sirkeci, he knew the sudden shortness of breath, doubling over, was about this, not about Alexei or Mihai, how the job had gone wrong, but about this, killing a man, a line he’d never