‘And who were our gallant “police” escort from Istanbul?’
‘Ah, there you were privileged, mon chèr! One of the gentlemen, until recently, was the most wanted man in France, until he turned informer. Now I protect him, like a son. The other — your driver — was a Lieutenant-Colonel of the Dixième Régiment Parachutiste. One of Massu’s men, until I took him under my wing.’
Hawn felt warmed by the brandy, lulled by the swift smooth motion of the car. ‘Why did you kill Salak?’
‘Salak received the justice which he deserved,’ Pol said, with gravity. ‘His crimes were immense and he was lucky to have lived so long without receiving a bill for them. He paid tonight, in full.’
‘You tortured him first,’ Hawn said. ‘Was that also part of the payment?’
‘Salak had certain information which I wanted. Information which you want, too. But while you were prepared to pay him, and accept what you received in good faith, I preferred a simpler approach. I wanted to make sure that our friend Salak was telling the truth. The whole truth.’ He patted the side of his vicuna coat; the heater was on and he had begun to sweat. ‘I have it here — five pages, all beautifully hand-written by Monsieur Imin Salak himself.’
‘Are we allowed to see these pages?’
‘But certainly! When we get to Salonika — and you will have had your roles explained to you.’
‘What was our role in Istanbul? To sniff out Salak, so that your boys could move in and deal with him in your own refined way?’
‘You both have been invaluable,’ Pol said, and passed the hip flask to Anna.
‘How many men have you had working on us?’ Hawn said.
‘Enough. Enough to ensure that I knew your every movement in Istanbul from the moment you arrived. You see, my men have not only been chosen because they look conveniently Turkish — one of them even has Turkish blood — but because they are top operatives in the French underworld — mostly in the Marseille area — together with some senior ex-officers from the Secret Army, left over after Algeria. They do their job better than most policemen, I assure you!’
Hawn closed his eyes and nodded in the darkness. So Pol’s elect troop of idealists, of Resistance heroes pledged to avenge their maimed and murdered comrades, were after all no more than a bunch of off-the-peg heavies and hitmen from the sump of the Riviera and the waterfront of Ajaccio, together with a ‘respectable’ corps of soured turncoats from two disastrous colonial wars, who still saw it as their abject duty to kill at a mere nod of command.
‘Did you write the note from Salak — telling us to take the Usküdar ferry this evening?’
‘Let us say that Salak wrote it, under my instructions.’
‘So what was the point of sending us all the way to Usküdar in that pissing rain?’
‘Two points. I wanted to be absolutely sure that Salak had agreed to make a deal with you. If he hadn’t, you wouldn’t have gone on the trip so readily. But I had another, more important reason. You forget your little visit to a certain American gentleman who has been staying at the Istanbul Hilton. We know that you were brought to see him earlier today — under a certain duress, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Go on,’ Hawn said wearily. ‘I suppose you’ve got the interview on tape?’
‘That was not necessary, mon chèr. You instead will provide me with the full account of your conversation with Monsieur Robak. No — my purpose in sending you to Usküdar was to see how efficient this Monsieur Robak is. For it might amuse you to know that his employee, a certain Otto Dietrich, is also a full-time member of the BND — the Federal German Security Service.
‘Now, you may well ask, what is a senior executive of the America-Britannic Consortium doing in the company of the West German secret police? And in Istanbul, of all places? I cannot give you the precise answer, although I can draw inferences. ABCO is anxious to cover its tracks in Turkey. And it follows that the organization will be even more anxious to cover them in Germany — for it is in Germany that the real truth lies. The truth that was buried there some time at the beginning of May 1945 — the complete documentation of a world-wide conspiracy, known as “Operation Bettina”.
‘However, I digress. In the event, you were not followed by Robak’s men to Usküdar. There is even a chance that they do not yet know of Salak’s death. And that will be useful — it will give us time to breathe, to make plans.’
‘Always assuming that we get over the frontier,’ said Hawn. ‘There was our driver from the hotel, remember. Then the girl from the shop whom your gorillas threw out of the car a few miles back. What sort of story do you think they’re both going to tell the police? And Anna here hasn’t even got a passport.’
Pol cooed happily in the dark, and fumbled under his mighty coat, from which he produced a pair of slim dark blue documents; then gave an order and the driver switched on the interior light. The two passports were neither new nor old. They had both been issued a year ago, in the married name of MARZIOU. Hawn’s described him as JEAN-PAUL LAURENT MARZIOU, PROFESSION: PROFESSEUR D’ECOLE, NE: 1938, REIMS. Anna was now YVETTE, NEE NALBE, and described as Maitresse de Maison.
The only items which were obviously new were the photographs. Hawn guessed that these had been taken with a zoom lens sometime in the last four days — probably while they were sightseeing, or sitting in a pavement cafe. The background had been shaded out, and the rest was bad enough to make a
