The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [31]
“No. No questions.”
With a nod, he turned away and walked up the ramp to the street. I put my bag in the back of the car again. Ten minutes later I was clear of Edirne and on the Istanbul road.
After a few miles I identified the surveillance car as a sand-colored Peugeot two or three hundred yards behind me. It kept that distance, more or less, even when trucks or other cars got between us, or going through towns. It never closed up enough for me to see the driver clearly. When I stopped at Corlu for lunch he did not overtake me. I did not see the Peugeot while I was there.
The restaurant was a café with a few shaky tables under a small vine-covered terrace outside. I had a glass or two of raki and some stuffed peppers. My stomach began to feel a bit better. I sat there for over an hour. I would have liked to stay longer. There were moments like that at school, too; when one bad time has ended and the next has not yet begun. There can be days of it also, the days when one is on remand awaiting trial—not innocent, not guilty, not responsible, out of the game. I often wish that I could have an operation—not a painful or serious one, of course—just so as to be convalescent for a while after it.
The Peugeot picked me up again three minutes after I left Corlu. I stopped again only once, for petrol. I reached Istanbul soon after four.
I put the Lincoln in a garage just off Taxim Square and walked to the hotel carrying my bag.
The Park Hotel is built against the side of a hill overlooking the Bosphorus. It is the only hotel that I know of which has the foyer at the top, so that the lift takes you down to your room instead of up. My room was quite a long way down and on a corner overlooking a street with a café in it. The café had a gramophone and an inexhaustible supply of Turkish caz records. Almost level with the window and about fifty yards away was the top of a minaret belonging to a mosque lower down the hill. It had loudspeakers in it to amplify the voice of the muezzin, and his call to prayer was deafening. When Harper had made the reservation, he had obviously asked for the cheapest room in the hotel.
I changed into a clean shirt and sat down to wait.
At six o’clock the telephone rang.
“Monsieur Simpson?” It was a man’s voice with a condescending lilt to it and an unidentifiable accent. He wasn’t an Englishman or an American.
“This is Simpson,” I answered.
“Miss Lipp’s car is all right? You have had no accidents or trouble on the journey from Athens?”
“No. The car is fine.”
“Good. Miss Lipp has a pressing engagement. This is what you are to do. You know the Hilton Hotel?”
“Yes.”
“Drive the car to the Hilton at once and put it in the car park opposite the entrance to the hotel and behind the Kervansaray night club. Leave the carnet and insurance papers in the glove compartment and the ignition key beside the driver’s seat on the floor. Is it understood?”
“It is understood, yes. But who is that speaking?”
“A friend of Miss Lipp. The car should be there in ten minutes.” He rang off abruptly as if my question had been impertinent.
I sat there wondering what I ought to do. I was certainly not going to do as he had told me. The only hope I had of my making any sort of contact with the people Tufan was interested in was through the car. If I just let it go like that I would be helpless. Even without Tufan’s orders to carry out I would have refused. Harper had said that I would be paid and get my letter back when the job was done. He, or someone in his behalf, would have to fulfill those conditions before I surrendered control of the car. He must have known that, too. After what had happened in Athens he could scarcely have expected me to trust to his good nature. And what had happened to all that talk of driving for Miss Lipp while she was in Turkey?
I hid the carnet under some shelf lining paper on top of the wardrobe and went out. It took me about ten minutes to walk to the Hilton.
I approached the car park briskly, swinging my keys in my hand as if I were going to pick up a car already there.