The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [61]
From Uskudar I took the Ankara road, which is wide and fast, and drove for about eighteen miles before I came to the secondary road which led off on the right to Pendik. We arrived there just before one o’clock.
It proved to be a small fishing port in the shelter of a headland. There were several yachts anchored in the harbor. Two wooden piers jutted out from the road which ran parallel to the foreshore; one had a restaurant built on it, the other served the smaller boats and dinghies as a landing stage. The place swarmed with children.
I was edging my way along the narrow road towards the restaurant when Harper told me to stop.
We were level with the landing stage and a man was approaching the road along it. He was wearing a yachting cap now, but I recognized him. It was the man who had been waiting at the Hilton car park on the night I had arrived in Istanbul.
He had obviously recognized the car and raised his hand in greeting as Harper and Fischer got out.
“Park the car and get yourself something to eat,” Harper said to me. “Meet us back here in an hour.”
“Very good, sir.”
The man in the yachting cap had reached the road and I heard Harper’s greeting as the three met.
“Hi, Giulio. Sta bene?”
And then they were walking back along the landing stage. In the driving mirror, I could see a man from the Peugeot sauntering down to the quayside to see what happened next.
At the end of the landing stage they climbed into an outboard dinghy. Giulio started it up and they shot away towards a group of yachts anchored about two hundred yards out. They went alongside a sixty-foot cabin cruiser with a squat funnel. The hull was black, the upper works white, and the funnel had a single band of yellow round it. A Turkish flag drooped from the staff at the stern. There was a small gangway down, and a deck hand with a boat hook to hold the dinghy as the three went on board. It was too far away for me to see the name on the hull.
I parked the car and went into the restaurant. The place was fairly full, but I managed to get a table near a window from which I could keep an eye on the cruiser. I asked the headwaiter about her and learned her name, Bulut, and the fact that she was on charter to a wealthy Italian gentleman, Signor Giulio, who could eat two whole lobsters at a sitting.
I did not pursue my inquiries; Tufan’s men would doubtless get what information was to be had from the local police. At least I knew now what Giulio looked like, and where the boat which Miss Lipp had mentioned to Miller was based. I could also guess that Giulio was no more the true charterer of the Bulut than was Fischer the true lessee of the Kösk Sardunya. Wealthy Italian gentlemen with yachts do not lurk in the Istanbul Hilton car park waiting to drive away cars stuffed with contraband arms; they employ underlings to do such things.
Just as my grilled swordfish cutlet arrived, I saw that the Bulut was moving. A minute or two later, her bow anchor came out of the water and there was a swirl of white at her stern. The dinghy had been left moored to a buoy. The only people on the deck of the cabin cruiser were the two hands at the winches. She headed out across the bay towards an offshore island just visible in the distant haze. I wondered whether the Peugeot men would commandeer a motorboat and follow; but no other boat of any kind left the harbor. After about an hour, the Bulut returned and anchored in the same place as before. I paid my bill and went to the car.
Giulio brought Harper and Fischer back to the landing stage in the dinghy, but did not land with them. There was an exchange of farewells that I could see but not hear, and then they walked ashore to the car. Harper was carrying a flat cardboard box about two feet long by six inches wide. It was roughly tied with string.
“Okay, Arthur,” he said as he got into the car. “Back to the Hilton.”
“Very good, sir.”
As I drove off he glanced back at the piers.
“Where did you lunch?” he asked. “That restaurant there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good food?”
“Excellent, sir.”
He grinned over his shoulder