Hawn and Anna hardly spoke. There was between them a kind of tacit tension, a sense of uncertainty which inhibited conversation. No one approached them; no one forced their attentions upon them or bought them unsolicited drinks; and no one could sensibly arouse Hawn’s suspicions, except perhaps the snoring man under the newspaper. But as the ferry began to draw into Usküdar, passing the tiny island with Leander’s Tower, the man awoke and Hawn saw that he was clearly Turkish, with a heavy black moustache and bleary eyes. He was drunk.
It was still raining hard and quite dark now, as they tied to at the concrete jetty at Salacak Iskelesi. They both stayed where they were, waiting until most of the passengers had disembarked. They watched the big drunk haul himself up from the bench, his astrakhan hat askew, and cross the saloon in a shunting roll as though they were in a heavy sea. He disappeared with the rest of the passengers into the night.
Hawn and Anna were the last to leave, except for two old men and a tiny woman in black, bent almost double under a quilted rucksack. Outside there was no shelter from the rain, which had formed huge blistered pools all the way up the jetty to the little square with the massive rococo Fountain of Ahmed III, looking like a great pile of artistically-arranged bird droppings. Behind it loomed the dome and two minarets of a mosque, lost against the black sky.
A bus had collected most of the passengers. There was also a dolmus, or communal taxi, waiting to make up its full complement of five. Otherwise, apart from the small crowd waiting to board the ferry back to Istanbul, the place was deserted, with almost no lights. No private cars, no glare of approaching headlamps. A shed stood in one corner, which might be a cafe. Hawn and Anna turned up their collars and ran towards it.
Four tables were arranged along a bar wall under a single unshaded light. There was music from somewhere — a woman’s shrill plaintive wail, muffled by the drumming of rain on the iron roof. Eventually a man appeared from the back, wiping his hands on his apron. Hawn ordered two raids; there was nothing else to drink, except coffee.
Anna said at last, ‘It’s not like Salak to be late, is it? He gave the impression of being so efficient.’
There was a dull boom from outside, signalling that the ferry was about to leave. When the proprietor returned with their drinks, Hawn asked him, slowly and deliberately, when the last ferry was due to leave. No good, the man spoke no English. After a moment, he made a sign to them and disappeared again into the back of the cafe. He returned a couple of minutes later, followed by the big shuffling figure of the drunk who had been on the ferry.
The man was no longer wearing his astrakhan hat. His hair was cropped short and square, growing in a straight line across his low forehead. He gave a short bow, jerked out a chair and slumped down between them; then snapped his fingers at the proprietor, who nodded and withdrew. ‘I speak English,’ he said, looking at Hawn with a leaky squint. He tapped Hawn’s glass. ‘You drink raki, huh? Very good.’
‘When does the last ferry leave for Istanbul?’
‘No more ferry from Iskelesi. You must go to Usküdar Iskelesi.’
‘I thought this was Usküdar,’ Hawn said, and reached for his map of Istanbul. The man leant forward and peered at it as if it were some puzzle, and finally laid a black-rimmed thumbnail on the edge of the map, showing the main port of Usküdar about a kilometre away.
‘When does that ferry leave?’
The man turned, as the proprietor brought him a tumbler of the yellowish raki. He swallowed half of it, put it down on the map and leant forward on both elbows, breathing heavily. Hawn waited, then repeated the question. The man’s eyes rose slowly, focusing with difficulty. Then he laughed. ‘Why you come to Usküdar? You want hotel?’
Hawn kept his voice steady, patient. ‘We want to return to Istanbul. Is it possible to find a taxi?’
The big man sat very still; then he groped in his trouser pocket, produced a khaki handkerchief and noisily blew his nose. ‘Why you not stay in Usküdar? Tomorrow the sun. Beautiful place, Usküdar.’ He leant back and very deliberately spat a huge gob onto the floor between his feet. Hawn was aware of Anna sitting beside him, watching the man with uneasy disapproval.
Hawn wanted to consult her, but could not be sure how good the drunk’s English really was. Again, the man seemed an unlikely candidate for one of Salak’s henchmen — but then Salak might believe in doing business in unlikely ways. And if this was Salak’s man, he would set the pace.
The pace he set was to finish his raki and yell for another. The only consolation was that he did not insist that they both join him. He drank three tumblers, one after the other, then grunted something, pushed back his chair, began to stand up, fell with a crash on his stomach, and lay still.
‘We leave him where he is,’ Hawn said. ‘But we can’t very well stay here. There must be a hotel somewhere.’
‘I’d sooner we tried to go back to Istanbul. I don’t like this place.’ The man on the floor had begun to snore with a noise like a bath running out. ‘It’s not like our friend not to keep an appointment — especially when there’s nearly five thousand pounds at stake. You’re quite sure we took the right ferry?’
They studied the map again, which showed several dotted red lines curving out from the Galata bridge, across the Bosporus, to join the Asian mainland at
