“Now it’s taking Jews to Palestine.”
Alexei looked at him for a long minute, his face moving from one thought to another. “We’re going to Palestine?”
“Cyprus. They’re dropping us.”
“Jews to Palestine,” Alexei said, turning it over. “No one will think of that.” Raising his eyes, a compliment.
“No,” Leon said, feeling pleased, then embarrassed to have felt it.
Alexei snorted, a kind of laugh with himself. “Jews to Palestine.”
The boat dipped, then rocked harder, the wind picking up. Alexei clutched the gunwale.
“What’s wrong?” Leon said.
“Nothing. I don’t like boats, I told you.” Almost a child pouting, vulnerable, something Leon hadn’t seen before.
And then they waited. The fisherman had cut the motor, so there were only sounds of buoys now, soft tinkles, and the wind blowing things on deck. The Byzantines had exiled people here, where they couldn’t be heard. He thought of the whistles and screams when Anna’s boat had gone down, sirens on the shore, his own rescue boat blowing horns, the air shaking with noise. Closer to the city, just past Yanikoy, which should have made it easier and in the end didn’t matter. Children without life jackets, panicking, taking water every time they shouted, clutching. An endless night. A few even saved, the others slipping under, so close they could see the shore. And then the awful questions after-had the harbor boats come fast enough, had they wanted to come at all?
“There,” the fisherman said.
Leon looked out. A bright beam slicing across the water, then the glow of the bridge, followed by a thin string of mast lights, hung like flags. The portholes dark, the boat moving like a shadow, no faster than a ferry. Leon imagined the engine below, creaking and hissing, but turning, getting them there. A miracle, bought with Tommy’s money.
The fisherman waited a few more minutes then started up the boat, signaling the ship. The waves were rougher now, Alexei pale. From the water, the
Leon gave him the envelope with the money, watching him tuck it into his shirt.
“You’re not going to count it?”
“I trust you,” the fisherman said, smiling. “And now it’s quick. Here.” He handed Leon a grappling hook.
They pulled alongside. A rope ladder was dropped, and Leon tried to hook it, bringing the fishing boat up against the
“Leon?” Mihai’s voice through a primitive megaphone, shining down a light.
Leon waved.
“Can you reach?” he said to Alexei. “I’ve got it hooked. Jump for it.”
Alexei looked at him, whiter.
“I’ll be right behind.”
“Some trouble?” the fisherman said, a sneer he couldn’t resist.
“How do you say, go to hell?” Alexei asked Leon.
Alexei cocked his head to it, not repeating it, and lunged for the bottom rung, grunting as he pulled himself up, grabbing on to the next, another, then finally a foothold.
“Let’s go,” Mihai shouted from on deck. The engines had idled, but the ship was still moving, drifting, pulling the fishing boat with it.
“Hold this,” Leon said, handing the fisherman the hook. “Go back tonight. Not a word, right? And thanks.”
The fisherman looked away, embarrassed.
Leon lifted his arms. Not quite high enough. “Steady,” he said to the fisherman, then bounced, grabbing the step, slick with cold water, his arms straining as he pulled himself up to the next, and again, until his feet could take his weight. “You okay?” he shouted up at Alexei, who didn’t answer, clinging to the ladder.
The fishing boat slid out from the hull, then sputtered and roared away while they were still on the ladder, nothing below now but water.
Mihai and another man hauled them over the top, Alexei landing like a flapping fish, winded, trying to pick himself up.
“Tell David to start,” Mihai said, then turned to Leon. “You made it.” Not looking at Alexei, someone not there.
“Any trouble?” Leon said.
“After the dollars? No. A leap into health. Now it’s just the engine to worry about. But at least we’re moving.”
Buyukada, however, seemed just where it had been, any change of speed unnoticeable. A long night.
“Over here,” Mihai said. “It’s out of the wind.” Looking at Alexei now, his face deliberately blank, indicating a short bench near the bridge.
“Where is everybody?” Leon said, expecting to see people lining the rails, jubilant.
“Sleeping. If they can.”
Or hunkering in blankets on benches, the way they’d been before, indifferent to Istanbul, saving their strength, heads drooping on shoulders next to them, the few still awake staring at Alexei and Leon, wondering, but more interested in the uneven throb of the engines below.
“Thank you,” Alexei said.
“Thank him,” Mihai said, brusque.
“There’s a boat,” David said, coming out of the bridge.
“Signaling?”
“No. Maybe putting into Buyukada. But we’re just sitting here. Go see what’s happening down below, will you? We’d make better time rowing.”
A sudden wave rolled the boat, pitching Mihai forward, onto Alexei’s chest. He pulled away.
“Right back,” he said to Leon. “Stay over there.”
“Your Romanian friend,” Alexei said.
“You never saw him.”
“I never see anybody.” He grabbed on to a rail, the boat rocking again with a wave. “It’s getting rough.”
They sat in the niche by the bridge.
“He’s the one told you about Straulesti.”
Leon nodded.
“So why does he take me?”
“I paid him.”
“That one? No. Something else. Maybe it’s a trap.”
“He’s not doing it for you. Get some sleep.”
“In this?” He opened his hand to the wind. The boat had begun to creak.
One of the blanketed figures shuffled over, a man with a shaved head, and said something in what Leon took to be Polish, answered with an I-don’t-understand hands up. Another language, probably Yiddish. Finally, German.
“Who are you, that they stop the ship for you?”
“Nobody,” Leon said. “We were late.”
“No. People are late on the dock, not out here. Haganah? You’re Haganah, yes? What else? An honor,” he said, extending his hand. Alexei shook it, Leon watching, his eyes fixed on the numbers inked on the man’s forearm.
The man made a lips-sealed gesture and started back to his bench.
A sudden thud below, then a grinding, the whole frame of the boat shuddering, but moving again, the few lights on Buyukada beginning to recede.
“Maybe your friend’s pushing,” Alexei said, sitting back, enjoying himself, the movement of the boat like a promise. In a few hours, the Aegean.
“You never saw him before. You understand?”
“I heard you the first time.” He opened his eyes. “Why?”
