The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [60]
“I’ve heard the name. On the other side somewhere, isn’t it? There’s supposed to be a good restaurant there, I think.”
“That’s the place. On the Sea of Marmara.” He spread the map out and pointed to the place. From Uskudar, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, it was twenty-odd miles south along the coast. “How long will it take us to get there?”
“If we have luck with the car ferry about an hour and a half from here, sir.”
“And if we don’t have luck?”
“Perhaps ten or twenty minutes more.”
“All right. Here’s what we do. First, we go into town and drop Miss Lipp and Mr. Miller off at the Hilton Hotel. Then, you drive Mr. Fischer and me to Pendik. We’ll be there a couple of hours. On the way back we stop off at the Hilton to pick the others up. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who paid for the gas?”
“I did, sir. I still have some of the Turkish money you gave me. I have the garage receipt here.”
He waved it aside. “Do you have any money left?”
“Only a few lira now.”
He gave me two fifty-lira notes. “That’s for expenses. You picked up a couple of checks for Miss Lipp, too. Take the money out of that.”
“Very well, sir.”
“And, Arthur—stop needling Mr. Fischer, will you?”
“I rather thought that he intended to needle me, sir.”
“You got the room and bathroom you asked for, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well then, cut it out.”
I started to point out that since I had been shown to the room the previous night I had not even set eyes on Fischer, much less “needled” him, but he was already walking back to the house.
They all came out five minutes later. Miss Lipp was in white linen; Miller, draped with camera and lens attachment case, looked very much the tourist; Fischer, in maillot, white jeans, and sandals, looked like an elderly beach boy from Antibes.
Harper sat in front with me. The others got into the back. Nobody talked on the way into Istanbul. Even at the time, I didn’t feel that it was my presence there that kept them silent. They all had the self-contained air of persons on the way to an important business conference who have already explored every conceivable aspect of the negotiations that lie ahead, and can only wait now to learn what the other side’s attitude is going to be. Yet, two of them seemed headed for a sightseeing tour, and the others for a seaside lunch. It was all rather odd. However, the Peugeot was following and, presumably, those in it would be able to cope with the situation when the party split up. There was nothing more I could do.
Miss Lipp and Miller got out at the door of the Hilton. A tourist bus blocked the driveway long enough for me to see that they went inside the hotel, and that a man from the Peugeot went in after them. The narcotics operation suddenly made sense again. The raw-opium supplier would be waiting in his room with samples which Miller, the skilled chemist, would proceed to test and evaluate. Later, if the samples proved satisfactory, and only if they did, Harper would consummate the deal. In the meantime, a good lunch seemed to be in order.
We had to wait a few minutes for the car ferry to Uskudar. From the ferry pier it is easy to see across the water the military barracks which became Florence Nightingale’s hospital during the Crimean War. Just for the sake of something to say, I pointed it out to Harper.
“What about it?” he said rudely.
“Nothing, sir. It’s just that that was Florence Nightingale’s hospital. Scutari the place was called then.”
“Look, Arthur, we know you have a guide’s license, but don’t take it too seriously, huh?”
Fischer laughed.
“I thought you might be interested, sir.”
“All we’re interested in is getting to Pendik. Where’s this goddam ferry you talked about?”
I didn’t trouble to answer that. The ferryboat was just coming in to the pier, and he was merely being offensive—for Fischer’s benefit, I suspected. I wondered what they would have said if I had told them what the sand-colored Peugeot just behind us in the line of cars was there for, and whose orders its driver was obeying. The thought kept me amused for quite a while.