in, risk being seen. He could say good-bye from here. No one would hear him anyway. The room utterly still, a tomb’s quiet. And suddenly, disconcerted, he realized that this visit, all his visits, were really trips to a cemetery, paying respects at the grave, the way they had visited his father’s, flowers in hand, his mother solemn, Leon bored and uncomfortable, not knowing, as he did now, that she wasn’t visiting his father but some younger part of herself, what she used to be. He stood for a second, looking through the window, expecting the faint light to grow dimmer until the room was finally dark. Instead there was a quick shaft of light as the door opened, a nurse coming to check, behind her a man sitting on a chair in the hall reading a newspaper, another Manyas. Leon ducked behind the tree. Keeping watch. Anywhere he might go, even here, Gulun taking no chances. Kay’s hotel. Cihangir. Hunting for him. But not in the garden or he wouldn’t still be standing here. A car out front? The nurse smoothed out the blanket and left, taking the light with her.
He motioned Alexei toward the gate. “Police,” he whispered. “Careful.” A follow-me gesture.
Down the backstreets to the shore road. Still too early for the boat, the quay wide open, anybody waiting visible in the moonlight. They passed the steep road up to Robert College, and he thought of Tommy, barreling down, sure how things would go. They went into the cafe where he’d called Tommy the first rainy night, the same old men smoking. Come to the Park, Mehmet’s martinis.
“Finally a drink,” Alexei said when his raki arrived. He took a sip. “So what was that place.”
“Where my wife is.”
Alexei peered at him, but said nothing.
“A clinic.”
Another look, oddly sympathetic. “So, the good-byes.” He poured more water into the glass, watching the liquid cloud.
Leon shook his head. “She’s in a coma.” Not quite the truth, but just as good.
Alexei looked closely at him again. “And police there. It’s no good, you doing something like that. Save the good-byes for later. When we’re gone.” He sipped more raki. “So now it’s the Russian desk?”
Leon looked away, not answering. The Russian desk. The pale light of the window behind her. Something to think about. Another chance-maybe the only one he’d have. But what kind of life, once they left the hotel room?
He glanced toward the wall, looking for the clock, the ticking, but it seemed to be in his head. There was no time in a cafe, hours to dawdle. The ferry to the islands from Eminonu used to take an hour and a half, two to reach Buyukada. The fisherman wouldn’t be any faster. At least an hour to get to Eminonu, another hour as a cushion for any delays. They should be all right. But they had to be-the
If they were early, idling off Buyukada wouldn’t be a problem this time of year, the crowded port nearly empty, hotels shuttered. In the summer it was different, carriages and donkey rides and hikes to sandy coves in the south. They’d rented the house for August, on a spur off the road up to the monastery, looking down through the woods to the sea. At night the pines and wild roses and jasmine carried on the breeze. Before the war.
“You’re very quiet,” Alexei said.
“I’m thinking.”
Alexei grunted.
“I don’t think you were right about Manyas,” Leon said, to say something.
“Who?”
“The forger.”
“Take that chance with your life, not mine,” Alexei said. He signaled for another raki. “Anyway, what does it matter? A man in that work, something always happens.”
Leon looked at him, not saying anything. But it must have mattered to him once, before life had become this cheap, before the stacks of corpses. He’d had a wife, parents. Now dreaming of Florida. The ticking was louder, intolerable. Maybe the boat had come early. He pushed back his chair.
“It’s time?” Alexei said, then tossed back the rest of the raki, wincing.
They crossed the road onto the quay, the empty space outlined in police chalk marks in his mind-Rumeli Hisari looming up ahead, Alexei’s duffel being lifted out, Tommy’s car squealing in, Mihai and Leon pinned flat on the pavement. Now they stood waiting quietly near the edge, the water slapping, looking at a single light coming toward them out of the dark. Almost there.
They were on board before the fisherman could even tie up.
“It’s the same man?” Alexei said to Leon. “He works for-?”
“Me. A private deal.”
Immediately discussed. The Princes’ Islands were too far.
“It’s longer than you said.”
“No, it isn’t,” Leon said, his mouth thin, frustrated, all of them still at the quay.
“How much?”
Alexei stepped between them.
The fisherman stepped back, cowering, then retreated to the motor. Leon glanced over. Alexei’s eyes steady, capable of anything.
They stayed close to the shore, away from the cargo ships in the channel, retracing the walk from Ortakoy. The Bosphorus was calm except for the wakes of the freighters, and they made good time, passing the charred ruins of the Ciragan where Abdul Aziz had committed suicide, if he had, and Murat V had been locked away, the sort of things Georg used to tell them.
When there was a break in the cargo traffic, they crossed over to the Asian side, heading past Leander’s Tower, the lights of the city around them now on all sides. Only the usual water traffic, ferries and fishermen, no police boats. Haydarpasa’s Teutonic facade, where the trains left for Ankara. Nobody else came with him? Just the wife.
Kadikoy, Fenerbahce, then the open sea to the islands, shore lights fewer now, the water dark. Alexei kept hold of the side, looking front and back, his knit hat over his ears against the chill. When they pulled farther away from the shore, he went over to the steering cabin and grabbed the signal light. The fisherman yelled at him in Turkish.
“What are you doing?” Leon said. “He needs that to signal the ship.”
“Not yet.” He put it between his feet. “When he does, it’s here.”
Another wail from the fisherman, Leon mollifying him.
“For Christ’s sake,” he said to Alexei.
“How well do you know him?”
“He’s working for us.”
“He cheats at cards.” A long rainy night in some Black Sea hut, hurricane lamps.
“So now what? Do we break his neck?”
Alexei ignored this, focusing on the narrow funnel of light in front. Finally some window lights in the distance.
“Is that it?”
“Not yet.”
The boat chugged past Kinaliada, then headed south between Heybeliada and Buyukada, finally idling near the lower tip of the island where the
“Tell him to kill the light,” Alexei said, still alert, looking in both directions. No houses behind them, the empty stretch of the Marmara in front, city lights far in the distance, the boat hidden now in its own patch of watery darkness, rocking slightly with the waves.
“How much longer?” Alexei said.
“The bridge opens around three. Depends where they are in line.” A convoy pouring out of the Golden Horn, most of them hugging the European shore, then sailing straight for the Dardanelles, only the
“Another fishing boat?”
Leon shook his head. “A freighter. Was, anyway. Romanian.”
“And now?”
