The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [84]
“Then,” Fischer broke in, “we take a little walk to where the Volkswagen will be waiting.”
I answered Miller. “Is Mr. Fischer to lower himself to the ground with one hand?”
“He will seat himself in the sling. Only one hand is needed to hold on to the buckles.”
“Even in the outer courtyard we are still inside the walls.”
“There will be a way through them.” He dismissed the subject with an impatient wave of his hand and looked about him for a place to sit down. There was only the iron staircase. He examined the steps of it. “Everything here is very dirty,” he complained. “That these people do not all die of disease is incredible. Immunity, perhaps. There was a city here even before Constantine’s. Two thousand years or more of plague are in this place—cholera, bubonic, la vérole, dysentery.”
“Not any more, Leo,” said Fischer; “they have even cleaned the drains.”
“It is all waiting in the dust,” Miller insisted gloomily.
He arranged the nylon rope so as to make a seat on the stairs before he sat down. His exuberance had gone. He had remembered about germs and bacteria.
I sat on the bottom step wishing that I had an irrational anxiety like his to occupy my mind, instead of the real and immediate fears that occupied my lungs, my heart, and my stomach.
At five o’clock, bells were sounded in the courtyards and there were one or two distant shouts. The guards were herding everyone out and closing up for the night.
I started to light a cigarette, but Miller stopped me. “Not until it is dark,” he said. “The sun might happen to illuminate the smoke before it dispersed above the roof. It is better also that we talk no more. It will become very quiet outside and we do not know how the acoustics of a place like this may work. No unnecessary risks.”
That was what Tufan had said. I wondered what he was doing. He must, I thought, already know that he had lost everyone and everything, except Miss Lipp and the Lincoln. The Peugeot would have radioed in. The question was whether the surveillance people had remembered the Volkswagen van or not. If they had, there would be a faint possibility of Tufan’s being able to trace it using the police; but it seemed very faint. I wondered how many thousand Volkswagen vans there were in the Istanbul area. Of course, if they had happened to notice the registration number—if this, if that. Fischer began to snore and Miller tapped his leg until he stopped.
The patch of sky at the top of the staircase turned red and then gray and then blue-black. I lit a cigarette and saw Miller’s teeth gleaming yellowly in the light of the match.
“What about flashlights?” I whispered. “We won’t be able to see a thing.”
“There will be a third-quarter moon.”
At about eight there was a murmur of voices from one or other of the courtyards—in there it was impossible to tell which—and a man laughed. Presumably, the night watchmen were taking over. Then there was silence again. A plane going over became an event, something to think about. Was it preparing to land at Yesilköy airport or had it just taken off?
Fischer produced a flask of water with a metal cup on the base, and we each had a drink. Another age went by. Then there was the faint sound of a train pulling out of the Sirkeci station and chugging round the sharp curve at Seraglio Point below. Its whistle sounded shrilly, like a French train, and then it began to gather speed. As the sound died away, a light glared, almost blinding me. Miller had a pen light in his hand and was looking at his watch. He sighed contentedly.
“We can go,” he whispered.
“The light a moment, Leo,” Fischer said.
Miller held the light up for him. With his good hand, Fischer eased a small snub-nosed revolver from his breast pocket, worked the safety catch, and then transferred the thing