‘They must never be spoken of again. These things that were done were to secure the future of our homeland, which we hold more sacred and dear than our very lives. But others will not be able to understand. Our own wives and children will not be able to: because actions that are taken in war are beyond the interpretation of ordinary people. You see that, do you not?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Nevertheless, our work is not finished. The enemy lives in our very city, in our houses, drinks in our coffee shops, leers at our women. You know, I suppose, that some of them are even marrying Ottoman women?’
He thinks of his sister, the day he followed her, the English officer.
‘It is horrible to contemplate. But we must face up to the realities of our circumstances if we are to bring change.’
‘How?’
‘They won’t be here forever. Soon they will pay for every indignity they have made us suffer. An army is coming for them; even now a rebel government is being formed at Ankara. But there is an army working from within, too. This war has not ended quite yet. There is no glory in it, other than one’s own pride in doing a good, and necessary job. Are you interested?’
‘What would it involve?’
‘Well. Some use words. Several of the men here write for the rebel press for example. You have seen how much they like to talk, how well they use words. But sometimes I think those words conceal a certain lack; that it is all they know how to do. I do not believe some of them even fought in the war at all, or if they did it was with pens and paper, from behind the safety of their desks. Others are the opposite, merely brutes, with no finesse. You and I are different. What we really need are deeds. Acts.’
‘What sort of acts?’
‘The sort that show the occupier that we are not afraid, that we have not been cowed yet. The sort that reminds him what it is to live in fear of his enemy.’
George
He has been in a suite at the hotel, treating a Very High Up for a nasty bout of enteritis. On his way downstairs he decides to stop in at the bar for an aperitif. In the early evening the Pera Palace bar crackles with intrigue and – unmistakably – sex. Also the mingled scent of Italian cigars, Turkish cigarettes, English pipes. If Constantinople seems to contain the world in all its heterogeneity, then here is a distillation of the world’s seediness and glamour.
As he enters he sees four Italian officers at one table, gossiping like old women. At the next sits a Greek Orthodox priest, black-robed, luxuriously white-bearded, taking tea with two elegant women in beautifully tailored Parisian suits. Just beyond them, on the carpet, is a dark, reddish stain. Fainter now than it was when the blood was first spilled. It has been diluted, by the ministrations of some poor member of staff, from a puce exclamation to a rusty insinuation.
Bill saw it; he had been having a nightcap here when it happened. One minute the man was sipping his drink, he said. The next, calm as you like, another man – suited, bespectacled, ordinary in every degree save for the fact that his outstretched arm had ended in a handgun – had walked up and shot him. Dead. Clean, in the centre of the forehead, so there could be no mistake about it. The lack of fuss. Despite, or perhaps because of, four years of war. Bill said that some in the room hadn’t even started at the retort of the gun, and had barely glanced in the direction of the fallen man. He had been a Bolshevik spy, they claimed. The other man was a once lofty White Russian. Or … had it been the other way around? George had heard both versions of the story.
‘Afterward he disappeared, like smoke.’ Perhaps, George thought, being so unremarkable, he had merely taken off his spectacles, flung his gun beneath the nearest armchair (it was found there, later) and sat down to order himself a drink. Perhaps he is here at this very moment. Stranger things, here, might be believed.
In this very salon, no doubt, there are men becoming rich, some from the very pockets of the refugees who arrive at the Tophane quay. The idea that they sell – a new life, a fresh beginning, an existence free from poverty and persecution – as irresistible as it is false.
‘Monroe – I thought it was you.’
He glances behind him to see Calvert. He goes over, takes a seat. Calvert, he notices, is most of the way through a bottle of very fine white wine, and beginning to show the effects of the alcohol so markedly that George suspects it may not be his first. He checks his watch – six p.m.
‘Goodness, man – what is this in aid of?’
‘Nothing.’ There are two livid spots of colour on the man’s cheeks. ‘Damned nothing. But I say, Monroe, it does gall … when a man makes a smart gesture and has it refused.’
George looks about the bar. He finds the culprits quickly enough; there are so few women here, and these are the only two, somehow, that seem eligible. ‘Don’t look at them.’ Calvert sinks a little lower in his seat. ‘I do not want them to think I care a fig for their poor manners.’
George covers his mouth and coughs. Behind the shield of his hand, he grins.
Perhaps Calvert sees him. He is sharper than George remembers to give him credit for, even after the good part of a bottle of wine.
‘But you don’t have these problems,’ he says, his tone ominously light. ‘Do you, old chap?’
‘Calvert, as ever I fear you are too subtle for
