The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [39]
I had some dinner and went down to the café beside the hotel. A man with a porter’s harness on his back followed me this time.
Tufan did not moan at me as a matter of fact; but when I had finished my report he was silent for so long that I thought he’d hung up. I said: “Hullo.”
“I was thinking,” he said; “it will be necessary for us to meet tonight. Are you in the café in the street by the hotel?”
“Yes.”
“Wait five minutes, then go up to the hotel and walk along the street past it for about a hundred yards. You will see a small brown car parked there.”
“The Peugeot that’s been following me?”
“Yes. Open the door and get it beside the driver. He will know where to take you. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
I paid for the telephone call and bought a drink. When the five minutes were up I left.
As I approached the Peugeot, the driver leaned across and pushed open the door for me to get in. Then he drove off past the hotel and down the hill towards the Necati Bey Avenue.
He was a young, plump, dark man. The car smelled of cigarettes, hair oil, and stale food. In his job, I suppose, he had to eat most of his meals sitting in the car. There was a V.H.F. two-way taxi radio fitted under the dash, and every now and again Turkish voices would squawk through the loudspeaker. He appeared not to be listening to them. After a minute or so he began to talk to me in French.
“Did you like driving the Lincoln?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s a good car.”
“But too big and long. I saw the trouble you had in the narrow streets this afternoon.”
“It’s very fast though. Were you able to keep up with him when he drove back to the villa?”
“Oh, he stopped about a kilometer up the road and began looking at the doors. Did they rattle?”
“Not that I noticed. Did he stop long?”
“A minute or two. After that he did not go so fast. But this little …”
He broke off and picked up a microphone as a fresh lot of squawks came over the radio.
“Evet, effendi, evet,” he answered, then put the microphone back. “But this little machine can show those big ones a thing or two. On a narrow hill with corners I can leave them standing.”
He had turned onto the Avenue and we were running parallel to the shore.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I am not permitted to answer questions.”
We were passing the state entrance to the Dolmabahçe Palace now.
It was built in the last century when the sultans gave up wearing robes and turbans and took to black frock coats and the fez. From the sea it looks like a lakeside grand hotel imported from Switzerland; but from the road, because of the very high stone wall enclosing the grounds, it looks like a prison. There is about half a mile of this wall running along the right-hand side of the road, and just to look up at it gave me an uncomfortable feeling. It reminded me of the yard at Maidstone.
Then I saw a light high up on the wall ahead, and the driver began to slow down.
“What are we stopping here for?” I asked.
He did not answer.
The light came from a reflector flood and the beam of it shone down vertically onto an armed sentry. Behind him was a pair of huge iron-bound wooden gates. One of them was half open.
The car stopped just short of the gates and the driver opened his door.
“We get out,” he said.
I joined him on the roadway and he led