Assignment- 13th Princess Read online

  “Right,” Durell broke in. “And that accident could happen tomorrow—or tonight—or at any moment.” He added grimly, “But it won’t be an accident. They plan to kill him.”

  He got to his feet, and Dara rose beside him, straight and lovely. “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

  “Put you in a taxi for our safe house—I don’t trust the hotel. Then confront Sheik Zeid with this. He’s in Istanbul.”

  “But he’s after your head.”

  “I have to try to make him see the light,” Durell said.

  “If the Turks go in, the Arabs won’t tolerate it. The Mideast will go up in flames, with Israel right in the middle of the bonfire.” She took a short breath. “Sheik Zeid had better renounce that document, or. . ."

  “Or what?”

  Dara’s eyes narrowed. “Or I’ll find Princess Ayla—by myself, if necessary—and she won’t live to be regent.”

  It was almost ten o’clock when they parted, intending to meet later at K Section’s safe house in the gecekondu, workers’ slum, further up the Horn. The night was cool, the city quieting down even in the consulate section that was focused on Taksim Square and Istiklal Caddesi, Istanbul’s narrow, pulsing equivalent of Fifth Avenue. Down on the Bosporus searchlights played back and forth as ferries threaded among smaller craft.

  Durell left his taxi just before Galatasaray Square, in front of a small open-air market, and turned into a narrow passageway at No. 172. It reeked of fish restaurants. He walked deliberately, testing the air, holding back a sense of urgency that threaded through his pulse.

  These cramped spaces, now called Çiçek Pasaji, “Flower Passage,” once comprised the inner court and arcades of the old Pera City Hall, seat of the European community in Constantinople. They were crowded with beer halls and restaurants, and people, mostly men as usual, walked about munching kokerec, grilled lamb’s intestines. From a basement beer hall came an oriental drinking song, and Durell heard the wail and beat of a strolling duo on clarinet and drum.

  He paused, saw no evidence that he had caught anyone’s attention, moved on through the ebb and flow of the crowd, and passed out of the walls by way of the empty flower market where blossoms crushed on the stones perfumed the stale air.

  So far so good, he thought.

  He wished he knew where Volkan was.

  He did not know who had knowledge of Sheik Zeid’s presence in town. He suspected it was a well-kept secret, but there was a chance that his hotel was staked out.

  He decided to take a bath.

  The sign for a hammam was just down the street. He went inside and exchanged his shoes for a pair of rubber slippers, wrote a message on the back of the envelope with the broken seal, and gave the hovering shoeshine boy a fifty-lira note to deliver it to Sheik Zeid.

  He felt reasonably confident that Zeid would come.

  Then an attendant showed him to his cubicle. Someone snored beyond the partition, and he recalled that a steamed and scrubbed Turk usually returned to his cubicle for tea and a nap before going out to face the world again. It seemed a civilized tradition, he thought as he undressed and wrapped a towel about his waist. He peeked under the bandage, blew through tightened lips, and decided to leave the wound covered. He’d have to wash around it. He had never heard of a case of thievery in a Turkish bath. The ancient institution was too highly prized and zealously guarded to allow for that. Still, he took no chances and rolled the document into a towel that he carried with him as he went back down to the main floor and into the baths. He got accustomed to the heat in the first room, then moved on to the hottest chamber and lay down on one of the wooden pallets scattered about a marble platform. The marble glistened under the wet heat that opened his pores like floodgates. Aches and pains oozed out of his awareness. As his taut body relaxed, he realized how very tired he was— but he dared not sleep.

  An attendant came by, suggested a massage. Durell declined. The hammam was almost deserted this time of night, although there would be a surge of business after the clubs closed and the parties ended. It was quiet, except for the trickle of water, the dim clank of a copper bowl, or occasional shuffle of feet.

  His call from the bazaar earlier had gone to Rob Thawley, an intelligence officer at the U.S. Consulate, and Thawley had reported that General Abdurrahman’s division was scheduled for rotation back to the mainland. Durell had asked for National Reconnaissance Office satellite coverage to spot the division when it sailed. The sailing might warn that all hell was about to break loose. That would be confirmed if the transports turned south for Dhubar.

  Durell worried and fretted about Sheik Zeid and Princess Ayla, and sweat crawled down his cheeks and ribs, tickling.

  Condensation dripped from the domed ceiling.

  The brutish smell of steam became cloying.

  He rose from the pallet, entered the washing room, was scrubbed down by an attendant using a coarse cloth mitten.

  “Qok pis! Qok pis! Very filthy! Very filthy!” said the attendant.

  “Just leave the leg that way,” Durell said.

  The attendant doused Durell in warm water, swashed him with a horsetail pulled out of a bucket of suds, then gave him a final rinse with gallons of cooler water. “Is done,” he said. “Is fine?”

  “Is fine,” Durell replied, and turned for the door where, a moment before, another attendant had waited to swath him against a chill with fresh towels.

  But the attendant wasn’t there.

  Sheik Zeid was.

  Pat McNamara stood behind and slightly to one side of him, showing his chopped .45 as if it were a full house, aces over. “Looks like we caught you with your pants down, old man,” he said. He smiled, then frowned.

  Durell made no reply but turned his gaze on the intense eyes of the emir. “Your Highness,” he said politely.

  “Mr. Durell.” Sheik Zeid did not move. Even in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks he had a regal manner.

  McNamara said: “Get your clothes on, Cajun. You’re going to Dhubar.”

  Durell spoke as if McNamara weren’t there. “Your Highness, I have something to show you. It may change the way you see things.” He bent for the rolled towel.

  “Touch that, and I’ll blow you away,” McNamara growled.

  “Then you get it,” Durell said.

  “All I’m getting is a chill, standing in this door,” McNamara said. His voice roughened. “I said get dressed. Get your ass moving.”

  Durell looked at the emir again. The man clearly was troubled and becoming annoyed with McNamara into the bargain. Sheik Zeid spoke barely above a whisper. “Bring the towel to me.”

  Durell complied, and the little emir unrolled the towel and found the folded document. He recognized the paper as he must have the envelope and glanced at Durell as he straightened it. When he saw what was written on it, he spoke with deadly calm: “Where did you obtain this?”

  “From the house of General Nezih Abdurrahman, here in Istanbul.”

  Zeid turned to McNamara. “Do we know this Abdurrahman?”

  McNamara’s sloped shoulders shrugged. “The name doesn’t mean anything to me, Your Highness.” He furrowed his brow at Durell. “Don’t put too much weight on what he says,” he told the emir.

  Puzzlement darkened Sheik Zeid’s sensitive face. “But this is authentic. It came from our archives.”

  “Ask him where that Israeli bitch is, Your Highness.”

  “What?”

  “The Israeli agent, the spy.”

  Sheik Zeid swung his eyes back to Durell, and they looked black as an arctic night. “Where is the Israeli woman?”

  Durell shook his head, scattering droplets of water. “It would only cloud matters if she were here.”

  “You’re hiding her, so she can do more mischief.”

  “You have bigger problems now.”

  They stared at each other. Durell sensed that the sheik was judging him. He knew with a throat-stiffening dread that one word and McNamara would blast h
im. He did not think the word would come, but you never knew. You seldom knew anything for sure in his business.

  Water dripped and gurgled.

  The baths seemed totally deserted, and Durell reasoned that Sheik Zeid had bought the place for the night. It would have been the sensible thing to do.

  Durell broke the silence. “Rest assured that the Israelis view you as the least of many evils, Your Highness. They believe you to be a reasonable and prudent man, and that’s the most they dare ask.” He took a short breath, and, since Sheik Zeid seemed disposed to listen, went on. “As for that document—I can’t prove how General Abdurrahman got it, but Prince Tahir paid him a call earlier today. He may have taken it to him.”

  McNamara spoke to Zeid. “Maybe he was afraid it would be destroyed if things got out of hand in Dhubar, Your Highness. He was probably doing you a favor.”

  “After all,” Zeid said with a nod, “it constitutes the legal basis for the regency in the event of my death. It should be protected.”

  “I have another idea,” Durell said. “Maybe Prince Tahir and Princess Ayla stole the document and hid it for fear you might change your mind about who should be regent.”

  Sheik Zeid’s cheeks hardened like desert bricks. His eyes went angry above tired blue smudges. “The prince and my wife have my fullest confidence, sir.”

  “There must be a reason why the commander of a Turkish armored division had that document,” Durell persisted. “It could have gone to a bank vault for safe keeping.”

  “Surely there is a reasonable explanation.”

  “Don’t count on it. I smell a conspiracy. McNamara lied to you when he said that I kidnaped Princess Ayla. Why did he do that?”

  McNamara answered in a tone that was furious—a bit too furious, Durell thought. “It was a natural mistake, Your Highness, given the knowledge that Durell’s so-called wife was a Jewish agent.”

  Durell spoke to the emir. “Here’s something else to think about, then. McNamara attempted to have me killed in London.”

  “We knew the Israelis had reserved that room,” McNamara replied. “Durell just happened to walk into a trap set for them.”

  “I don’t buy that,” Durell said.

  “You don’t have any choice,” McNamara said, his sunburned face smug.

  Durell looked at Sheik Zeid. “I have no liking for the ruthless world in which you men operate,” the sheik said. “I prefer the contest of open arms. As undercover operatives, you men become like animals, preying on each other, trusting no one.” He frowned. “There are many unanswered questions. My only interest at the moment is in finding my wife and assuring myself of her safety.”

  “Then you’re a lovesick fool,” Durell snapped.

  “How dare you speak to me in that manner!”

  “I’m being frank, because I want to help you. Has Princess Nadine told you where her daughter is?”

  “She is a confused woman.” Sheik Zeid sighed. “In time. . ."

  “There may not be much time.” Durell’s voice was grim. “If you go after Princess Ayla, you could get killed—for all you know, you’re being led into a trap.”

  “What’s to be done?” Sheik Zeid asked.

  “More information would help,” Durell said. “I know where we may get it.”

  The emir looked once more at the document of regency, then heaved a breath and said: “Very well. Colonel McNamara will accompany you.”

  “I don’t need him.”

  “It pleases me to send him,” Sheik Zeid said with a stubborn glare.

  Durell thought of the oil the emir commanded, oceans of it, and every quart critical to the U.S. He made his tone bland. “All right,” he said, “if you’re willing to risk his neck.”

  Chapter 17

  “You think Volkan is at your hotel?” McNamara asked.

  “He could be, waiting to spring a trap,” Durell said.

  McNamara’s shoulders were slumped beneath his brown suit jacket, hiding their strength the way he hid everything about himself, as he drove from the hammam. Traffic was thin now, the air cool and damp as it came off the Sea of Marmara. Ships’ lights made ribbons on the water down by the mouth of the Golden Horn, where vessels were fined up to await the early morning opening of Galata Bridge.

  McNamara spoke dubiously. “I don’t know—if he’s really with Turkish Security, why would Volkan do that?”

  “Because he’s in Prince Tahir’s pocket.”

  “But you don’t have anything on Tahir.”

  “I don’t yet.”

  A dissatisfied snort sounded from McNamara’s blunt nose. His pale blue eyes showed an assertive self-confidence that hadn’t been apparant in Dhubar. Durell sensed that he had overcome his earlier insecurity and found his footing with Sheik Zeid. He seemed to think he had everything under control—and maybe he did, Durell thought as they crossed the Horn and wound through the glowing tumble of old Istanbul on their way to Durell’s hotel.

  He was a highly competent man, all the more dangerous because you could never be sure what went through his mind.

  McNamara broke the silence. “I regret our differences in the past, Cajun. I hope we can put that behind us.”

  “Do you?”

  “Sheik Zeid was right to put us in harness together. We’ll make a good team.”

  “You think so?” Durell said in a flat voice.

  “I just wish I could say that about the pretty little chick you run around with.” He cleared his throat. “You could show your friendship for Sheik Zeid by turning her over to us.”

  “You’re out of bounds,” Durell said. “I’m not that friendly.”

  “Don’t get emotional. It’s just business.”

  “You won’t get the girl.”

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  Durell ignored the question. They were almost to the hotel. “Better park here,” he said quietly.

  McNamara slipped his little Toyota up against a curb, switched off the ignition. The immediate neighborhood was still, except for heavy mood music from the Italian western showing in the garden cinema behind the hotel. An old man in baggy Turkish trousers that drooped between the legs shuffled by. Ships whooped and honked down below.

  McNamara hadn’t finished with Dara. “You know you’ve got to cut loose from her. I can’t work with an Israeli; my people are her sworn enemies.”

  “You won’t have to.”

  “If that’s your answer, I’m not going any further,” McNamara said flatly. “I’ll have to return to Sheik Zeid and tell him you insist on sheltering that assassin.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Didn’t you know?” A slow grin spread across McNamara’s cheeks. Then his face went angry. “She’s been a member of a Mossad assassination team for four years.”

  Durell was stunned and dismayed. He wanted to reject McNamara’s contention, but it added up.

  Ever since London the thrust of her arguments had been that Princess Ayla was best eliminated. A cold sense of betrayal grew in him, but he was not convinced yet. “I was ordered to save the princess,” he said. “It makes no sense for me to be teamed with an assassin.”

  “Maybe the Israelis had other ideas.”

  “Give me tonight. I’ll talk to her.”

  “You’d better. Princess Ayla won’t live ten minutes, if she gets to her first.”

  Durell felt a stab of anger, mostly at McFee for getting him into such a situation. He scanned the hotel from the car, blew an exasperated breath, and said: “Are we going to find out what Volkan has to tell us, or not?”

  “Let’s go,” McNamara said.

  The cramped little hotel was as dingy and scruffy as Durell remembered. They got out of the car, and the movie music heightened among baffling walls. As they crossed the street, Durell glimpsed the shadow of a man break away from the wall and twist soundlessly into the hotel doorway. He halted, flagging McNamara back, eyes plastered to the poster-framed entrance. Nothing more happen
ed.

  “He brought some help with him,” Durell said.

  “Looks that way.” McNamara slid his gaze up and down the street. “Is there a back way?”

  “Through that passage over there.” Durell pointed to a narrow notch of deeper night.

  “See you upstairs,” McNamara said and faded into the darkness.

  The twisting little street had no lighting. Its facades flashed as a trolley bus hissed past and threw sparks overhead. Shutters sealed away shops that heard, spoke and saw no evil, as Durell moved toward the hotel entrance.

  The movie music rose in tempo and volume until it seemed to shake the stars.

  Volkan normally was imperturbable, but tonight was different in many ways, and the music out there and the white shadows thrown by the cinema screen bothered him.

  He wondered if he was doing the right thing—for he had reconsidered once again and decided to help Durell.

  It had been a long time since he’d had to think for himself.

  His mind returned to the summer yayla, where morning mists washed away down the valleys, and a nubbed sapling driven into the stony earth bore the crescented red flag of Turkey above his grandfather’s tent.

  In spite of his troubled spirit, Volkan’s broad face smiled as he remembered his grandfather who told stories of the cunning Nasreddin Hodja, with a moral for everything. They had sat around the sparking campfire in the thin, chill air of a mountain night and consumed enormous quantities of rice and mutton wetted with yoghurt so that it squished between the fingers. They drank creamy ayran and had cheese pastries and grapes and melons.

  Then, when the men were full with food and good humor, the adventure in their souls raised by wild stories, one, perhaps his uncle Kasin, would leap to his feet and perform a lunging, slashing sword dance while the others chanted.

  Ah, thought Volkan, for the old days of youth and irrepressible courage and innocence.

  To be a Turk. . . .

  To fear nothing. . . .

  How it must have thrilled, Volkan thought as he sat and waited in the darkened hotel room, to have heard with your own ears the Ghazi Pasha himself, as he commanded you to die for him, and to die willingly, eagerly.