“And you’re here,” she said, leaving his chest, sitting up. “Not Ankara. No complications. Running into each other. Things like that.” She got up and went over to the table and picked up a cigarette, the match like a small flashbulb lighting up her naked body. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how people talk after. No clothes. No secrets. I think I know everything about you. And I don’t, really.”
Leon said nothing, reaching for a cigarette of his own.
“Why didn’t you want me to stay with you at the clinic?”
“There was nothing you could do there. He was-he died. Another attack. You didn’t need to be there for that.”
“Died?” she said, dismayed. “I’m sorry. You were fond of him.”
“Yes.”
“I could tell. The way you were with him. So that’s one thing I know about you.” She looked at him. “One layer.” She walked over to the window. “Altan said it was because your wife’s there.” She exhaled some smoke. “What’s wrong with her?” She waited a minute, then turned. “You don’t want to talk about her?”
He looked at her bare skin, nothing covered. The way people talked after. He drew on his cigarette, hearing the silence in the room. “She went mad.” Something he’d never said out loud before, admitted. Mad, not away.
“Oh,” she said. “So what will you do?”
“Do? There’s nothing to do. Wait, see if she gets better.” He leaned over and stubbed out his cigarette. “So that’s her. What else did Altan have to say?”
“He didn’t tell me that-what was wrong. Just that she was there.”
“Well, now you know.”
“So you’ll never leave her,” she said, her voice neutral. “That makes it easier for me.”
“What?”
“I told you, no complications.” She was quiet for a minute. “You don’t have to worry about that. About anything.”
She came over to the bed, sitting next to him.
“So what did Altan talk about?” Leon said.
“Talk about? Frank. He’s very interested in Frank. As if I would know anything. So it must be true, what he does. Secret work. He never says, and now a man like Altan asks, so what else could it be? And you, is that what he does with you? Secret work?”
“I’m just filling in for Tommy. At Commercial Corp.”
“And that’s an answer,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Never mind, I don’t care.” She reached up, brushing the side of his head. “But no secrets here, all right? I mean in this room. I don’t care what you do at the consulate. But not here.”
“Frank never says anything?”
“We don’t talk like this. It’s different.” She stopped her hand, dropping it. “Do you want to know about us?”
“No.”
“I was a secretary. Not his. When I was growing up, we never had any money, anything extra. And I thought, I won’t have to worry about that. I’ll be safe.”
“And?”
“And I am. Safe.” She looked at him. “And I’m here.”
He touched her arm. “I should leave soon.”
“You don’t want to stay?”
“Someone might see.”
“My reputation?” she said, amused. “Well. I never had to think about that before.”
“Now you do.”
“Like a farce? The maid comes in and-oops!” She covered herself with the sheet.
“Not so funny when it happens.” He moved his hand to her shoulder, then ran it down to her breast. “You’re an embassy wife.”
“Not here. Not in Istanbul.” She arched her back to the hand stroking her.
“No,” he said, leaning his face close to hers.
“No complications here.” She lowered her head. “There is, though. One. I didn’t expect.”
“What?” he said, kissing her ear.
“I said, we could just-walk away. But I don’t want to,” she said, her voice naked now too. “I thought I could. But I don’t want to.” She turned to him. “Do you?”
He looked at her, a feeling of pitching forward, dizzy, then righting himself, sure-footed. “No.”
5
ENVER MANYAS NEEDED ANOTHER day, an unexpected delay, but now Leon did too. He’d been awake half the night at the Pera making a new plan, Kay sleeping next to him, one hand on his chest, the reflected lights on the ceiling like plotting points on a map of Turkey. Edirne, the most likely crossing, would have extra border checks now, too risky even with good papers. A boat from Izmir would go where the Greek police expected it to go. Trains were easy to check, the Orient Express like traveling in a spotlight, the overnight to Ankara the wrong direction. Where she would be, a complication. He felt her breathing next to him, something he’d almost forgotten, the peace afterward. One more day. His eyes moved over the map on the ceiling.
In the morning, they were lazy with each other, sex a hotel luxury, like breakfast in bed. Then the moment of farce he’d predicted, the maid at the door, Leon hiding in the bathroom with his clothes. Later, please.
“When do you go back?” he said, in bed again.
“Tomorrow night.”
“So we have today,” he said, the plan already decided, most of the pieces worked out in his mind.
“Don’t you have to work?”
“Yes.” He kissed her shoulder. “But I have to eat too.”
“Take me to your favorite place.”
He shook his head. “Too far. It’s up the Bosphorus.”
“Second favorite then. Don’t look at me-I mean like that, in the light. It’s different at night.”
“Mm. Harder to see. It’s like milk,” he said, stroking her belly.
“Tell me something about you.”
“I’m a good driver,” he said, his head still filled with cars, how to arrange one on the Asian side.
“No. Something about you.”
He leaned over her. “Ask me later.”
After Manyas, he went through the checklist he’d made during the night. An appearance at Reynolds to tell Turhan he might have to go to Ankara for a few days, the same story to Dorothy, not sure yet but don’t be surprised. Some file requests to look busy, Tommy’s payment reqs. Errands to run.
“Can you keep him another night?” he asked Marina.
“I have my Armenian. It’s his other day.”
“Put him off. I’ll pay you.”
“It’s all right. He paid me.” She nodded toward the bedroom.
Leon looked up at her.
“Maybe it means something to him. Pay his own way.”
“Marina-” he said, suddenly awkward.
“When was the last time he had a woman?”
“I don’t know.” He hesitated, not sure how to ask. “Anything wrong?”
She shrugged. “He’s hungry, that’s all.” A half smile. “The prisoner and his last meal.”
“He’s not a prisoner.”
