‘They forgot that it had once been the greatest port in the world. It has a shallow lagoon but there is a modern harbour at Mestre, and when the bigger tankers couldn’t get into the port, the Germans devised pipelines out to sea to pump the oil ashore. With Trieste bombed impotent, the British Navy concentrated few of their efforts in the Adriatic, so there was little difficulty of passage.
‘But Venice had one other supreme advantage. The Allies, with touching aestheticism, had made it a policy not to bomb historic Italian cities. So as far as we were concerned, Venice became an open port.’
‘When you say “we”, you mean the Germans?’
‘Mr Hawn, do not try to trap me with semantic tricks. I was the citizen of a neutral country, remember. In the world’s marketplace, open to the highest bidder.’
‘Did you have no special sympathies about which way the war was going?’
‘Listen, good sir — the human animal has been going to war for thousands of years. You might as well ask me whether I supported the Romans or the Carthaginians. As a child I had seen my country humiliated after the First War — emasculated, with our great Ottoman Empire destroyed by the greed of the British and French. In the last war my only interest was that Turkey should survive — and that included me.
‘But that must be sufficient. The rest will have to wait until your banker’s order arrives. I do not ask from where, or from whom.’ He stood up.
At the door up to the deck Hawn turned. ‘Mr Salak, are you familiar with German?’
‘I have a practical knowledge of it.’
‘Have you read much German poetry? Goethe, for instance?’
‘Sir, you flatter me. No, I have not read Goethe.’
Hawn paused. ‘Mr Salak, someone died, or was killed, a few days ago, after leaving a note — two lines of Goethe’s poetry. Now, you probably know that there’s a rumour that all the files relating to this oil-smuggling disappeared at the end of the war. They were hidden. Would you perhaps know where?’
Salak smiled. ‘When I have my quarter of a million lire, Mr Hawn, I will tell you all manner of things. Now, my driver is ready to take you back into Istanbul.’
At the head of the gangway, as though by way of a prearranged ceremony, Mustafa returned their shoes.
As before, they said little on the drive back. It was only when they were in the hotel that Anna turned to Hawn. ‘You’re not honestly thinking of paying that big crooked bastard a quarter of a million lire — however much that is? Just to buy a lot of tittle-tattle we won’t be able to check out anyway, and perhaps a few names thrown in — mostly of people who are probably dead now, and the others will just sue us for every penny we’ve got!’
‘Why should we worry? We’re not punting with our own money, remember. We’re not even our own masters. Pol calls the tune. Pol wanted us to track down Salak and find out what he knows. And he’s prepared to pay the bill at the end of it.’
Up in their room Hawn lay down on the bed and lifted the telephone. He remembered that they had not eaten yet, and were hungry. The hotel restaurant was closed, so he ordered sandwiches, and, for good measure, a bottle of whisky. He felt they both deserved it.
‘But Salak’s so horrible,’ Anna persisted. ‘I think he’s perhaps the ugliest, most sinister man I’ve ever met. Did you notice how he hardly ever looked at me? He didn’t even speak to me, until I tried to bawl him out, and then he just treated me like an hysterical child. He’s obviously a misogynist.’
‘Salak’s as queer as a three-legged snake. Like a lot of Turks. Disciples of Sodom and de Sade.’ He smiled at her from the bed. She was pacing the room like a hungry cat.
‘Have you considered,’ she said, ‘that if he thinks we’ve already unearthed something really compromising about him, he may turn really nasty? As he said, Istanbul isn’t London. He may just be playing us along, pretending to want that quarter of a million.’
‘He’ll take the money if it’s offered him — after all, why shouldn’t he? And he’ll give us something in return. I don’t know much about the Turkish character, but I know they’re a very proud people, and they put great store on honouring their word. Salak said as much. If we don’t try and cross him, I don’t think he’ll cross us — or worse.’
There was a knock on the door, and the whisky and sandwiches were brought in. When he had poured a glass for each of them, Anna said, ‘Tom, what is all this stuff about poetry by Goethe?’
‘“Little birds are silent in the wood by the lake — soon you will be silent too.” Mönch didn’t strike me as a particularly humorous man — or frivolous. He wrote those lines for a purpose — to tell us something. A lake by some woods where birds no longer sing. Sounds German enough, doesn’t it? And a quiet lake would be a good place to dump a box of documents.’
‘And you propose dragging every lake in Europe?’
‘The trouble with you, angel, you’re too practical. We get a lead — a bloody obscure one, I agree — but I just thought I’d try it on Salak to see his reaction. He might come up with something — you never know.
‘Now, let’s continue
