The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [221]
An hour later he hailed a taxi and rode unhappily back to Emirgan. The Russian freighters in the harbor had been going about their business as usual with no extra guards or special precautions.
He sighed as he passed a restaurant, realizing he had not eaten in twenty-four hours. After telling the driver to take the route along the coast, he looked for a waterfront café. As they rounded the bend at Istinye, the great rust-red hull of the freighter the Leonid Brezhnev loomed in front of him. And at the top of the gangway were two heavily armed Spetsnaz troopers.
Valentin turned to stare at the big silent ship as the taxi drove on. He had stumbled across the very thing he was searching for. He was sure the special soldiers were there to guard a prisoner—Genie was on board the Brezhnev and if Boris was not already there, then he soon would be. Somehow he had to get her off. She would tell him who the “Lady” was—and he would do what he must do.
Ferdie Arnhaldt sat at a table by the large stone fountain in the courtyard of the Yesil Ev Hotel, sipping dry white Kavaklidere wine and waiting nervously for his contact. The man’s lateness grated like sandpaper on his raw nerve ends, and his foot twitched in an unstoppable nervous rhythm as he glared yet again toward the arched entrance.
He looked as if he were about to explode, and the waiter standing on the steps leading into the pistachio-colored clapboard hotel watched him anxiously. Arnhaldt drained his glass and the waiter hurried to refill it, but he shook his head, flapping his hand at the man, waving him away like an irritating fly. The boy shrugged as he walked, puzzled, back to his post by the kitchen. His customer had been there for three quarters of an hour, staring at the entrance to the courtyard as if expecting a miracle to happen. He guessed he was waiting for a woman, and he thought she must really be something to cause such tension.
But ten minutes later when the customer’s companion finally arrived it wasn’t a woman, it was a squat, overweight Turk with a large mustache and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. The Turk glanced at him coldly and demanded a raki.
“Well?” Arnhaldt asked, his face a mask of anger.
The Turk shrugged. “In Istanbul the traffic is always hell. It is impossible to be anywhere on time.”
He swallowed the raki in two gulps and nodded to the waiter to bring another. “This little exercise is costing you a fortune,” he added truculently. “I have a dozen men watching the airport, the Kazahn villas, and the yali. A day-and-night watch.”
“Get on with it,” Arnhaldt spat out. “And if it’s costing me a fortune you had better have results.”
“You can be sure I do.” He lighted another cigarette, enjoying his moment of power over this wealthy, important man. “Mr. Steel,” he called himself. He was sure that was not his proper name but he was not interested enough to find out his real one. He was paying good money and that was all he cared about. He intended to take him for every Deutschmark, especially now he could deliver the goods.
Arnhaldt’s foot beat its nervous rhythm again as the Turk sipped his raki and said, “The KGB agents were at Ataturk Airport yesterday, a dozen of them—a very large number, I thought, for such a small operation.”
Arnhaldt’s fist banged on the table, upsetting his glass, and the young waiter came running. “What operation?”
“Why, just to pick up one girl— a blond, pretty American.”
Arnhaldt frowned. He was in Istanbul to follow up the Kazahn connection, but now it looked like the KGB had beaten him to it.
“There were a couple of CIA guys there too,” the Turk said, blowing smoke rings