Topkapi (9 page)

“That is unimportant. We are talking about your case here and the extent of your involvement. The point I wish to make is that our action in your case is not going to be governed in any way by the fact that you are a foreigner. No consul is going to intercede on your behalf. You have none. You are stateless. The only person who can help you is my Director.” He paused. “But he will have to be persuaded. You understand me?”

“I have no money.”

It seemed a perfectly sensible reply to me, but for some reason it appeared to irritate him. His eyes narrowed and for a moment I thought he was going to throw the glass he was holding in my face. Then he sighed. “You are over fifty,” he said, “yet you have learned nothing. You still see other men in your own absurd image. Do you really believe that I could be bought, or that, if I could be, a man like you could ever do the buying?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to retort that that would depend on the price he was asking; but if he wanted to take this high-and-mighty attitude, there was no sense in arguing. Obviously, I had touched him in a sensitive area.

He lit a cigarette as if he were consciously putting aside his irritation. I took the opportunity to drink some of the
raki
.

“Very well.” He was all business again. “You understand your position, which is that you have no position. We come now to the story you told to the post Commandant before your arrest.”

“Every word I told the Commandant was the truth.”

He opened the file. “On the face of it that seems highly unlikely. Let us see. You stated that you were asked by this American, Harper, to drive a car belonging to a Fräulein Lipp from Athens to Istanbul. You were to be paid one hundred dollars. You agreed. Am I right?”

“Quite right.”

“You agreed, even though the passport in your possession was not in order?”

“I did not realize it was out of date. It has been months since I used it. The whole thing was arranged within a few hours. I scarcely had time to pack a bag. People are using out-of-date passports all the time. Ask anyone at any international airline. They will tell you. That is why they always check passengers’ passports when they weigh their baggage. They do not want difficulties at the other end. I had nobody to check. The Greek control scarcely looked at the passport. I was leaving the country. They were not interested.”

I knew I was on safe ground here, and I spoke with feeling.

He thought for a moment, then nodded. “It is possible, and, of course, you had good reason not to think too much about the date on your passport. The Egyptians were not going to renew it anyway. That explanation is acceptable, I think. We will go on.” He referred again to the file. “You told the Commandant that you suspected this man Harper of being a narcotics smuggler.”

“I did.”

“To the extent of searching the car after you left Athens.”

“Yes.”

“Yet you still agreed to make the journey.”

“I was being paid one hundred dollars.”

“That was the only reason?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “It really will not do.”

“I am telling you the truth.”

He took a clip of papers from the file. “Your history does not inspire confidence.”

“Give a dog a bad name.”

“You seem to have earned one. Our dossier on you begins in fifty-seven. You were arrested on various charges and fined on a minor count. The rest were abandoned by the police for lack of evidence.”

“They should never have been brought in the first place.”

He ignored this. “We did, however, ask Interpol if they knew anything about you. It seemed they knew a lot. Apparently you were once in the restaurant business.”

“My mother owned a restaurant in Cairo. Is that an offence?”

“Fraud is an offence. Your mother was part owner of a restaurant. When she died, you sold it to a buyer who believed that you now owned all of it. In fact, there were two other shareholders. The buyer charged you with fraud, but withdrew his complaint when the police allowed you to regularize the transaction.”

“I didn’t know of the existence of these other shareholders. My mother had never told me that she had sold the shares.” This was perfectly true. Mum was entirely responsible for the trouble I got into over that.

“In 1951 you bought a partnership in a small publishing business in Cairo. Outwardly it concerned itself with distributing foreign magazines and periodicals. Its real business was the production of pornography for the Spanish and English-speaking markets. And that became
your
real business.”

“That is absolutely untrue.”

“The information was supplied through Interpol in fifty-four by Scotland Yard. It was given in response to an inquiry by the New York police. Scotland Yard must have known about you for a long time.”

I knew it would do no good for me to become angry. “I have edited and sometimes written for a number of magazines of a literary nature over the years,” I said quietly. “Sometimes they may have been a little daring in their approach and have been banned by various censoring authorities. But I would remind you that books like
Ulysses
and
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
, which were once described by those same authorities as pornographic or obscene, are now accepted as literary works of art and published quite openly.”

He looked at his papers again. “In January fifty-five you were arrested in London. In your possession were samples of the various obscene and pornographic periodicals which you had been attempting to sell in bulk. Among them was a book called
Gents Only
and a monthly magazine called
Enchantment
. All were produced by your Egyptian company. You were charged under the British law governing such publications, and also with smuggling them. At your trial you said nothing about their being literary works of art. You pleaded guilty and were sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment.”

“That was a travesty of justice.”

“Then why did you plead guilty?”

“Because my lawyer advised me to.” In fact, the C.I.D. Inspector had tricked me into it. He had as good as promised me that if I pleaded guilty I would get off with a fine.

He stared at me thoughtfully for a moment, then shut the file. “You must be a very stupid man, Simpson. You say to me: ‘I am telling you the truth,’ and yet when I try to test that statement all I hear from you is whining and protestation. I am not interested in how you explain away the past, or in any illusions about yourself that you may wish to preserve. If you cannot even tell the truth when there is nothing to be gained by lying, then I can believe nothing you tell me. You were caught by the British smuggling pornography and trying to peddle it. Why not admit it? Then, when you tell me that you did not know that you were smuggling arms and ammunition this afternoon, I might at least think: ‘This man is a petty criminal, but it is remotely possible that for once he is being truthful.’ As it is, I can only assume that you are lying and that I must get the truth from you in some other way.”

I admit that “some other way” gave me a jolt. After all, five minutes earlier he had been pouring me a glass of
raki
. He meant to put the fear of God into me, of course, and make me panic. Unfortunately, and only because I was tired, upset, and suffering from indigestion, he succeeded.

“I am telling you the truth, sir.” I could hear my own voice cracking and quavering but could do nothing to control it. “I swear to God I am telling you the truth. My only wish is to tell you all I can, to bring everything out of the darkness into the light of day.”

He stared at me curiously; and then, as I realized what I had said, I felt myself reddening. It was awful. I had used those absurd words Harper had made me write in that confession about the cheques.

A sour smile touched his lips for an instant. “Ah yes,” he said “I was forgetting that you have been a journalist. We will try once more then. Just remember that I do not want speeches in mitigation, only plain statements.”

“Of course.” I was too confused to think straight now.

“Why did you go to London in fifty-five? You must have known that Scotland Yard knew all about you.”

“How could I know? I hadn’t been in England for years.”

“Where were you during the war?”

“In Cairo doing war work.”

“What work?”

“I was an interpreter.”

“Why did you go to London?”

I cleared my throat and took a sip of
raki
.

“Answer me!”

“I was going to answer, sir.” There was nothing else for it. “The British distributor of our publications suddenly ceased making payments and we could get no replies from him to our letters. I went to England to investigate, and found his offices closed. I assumed that he had gone out of business, and began to look for another distributor. The man I eventually discussed the possibility with turned out to be a Scotland Yard detective. We used to send our shipments to Liverpool in cotton bales. It seems that the customs had discovered this and informed the police. Our distributor had been arrested and sent to prison. The police had kept it out of the papers somehow. I just walked into a trap.”

“Better, much better,” he said. He looked almost amused. “Naturally, though, you felt bitter towards the British authorities.”

I should have remembered something he had let drop earlier, but I was still confused, I tried to head him off.

“I was bitter at the time, of course, sir. I did not think I had had a fair trial. But afterwards I realized that the police had their job to do” - I thought that would appeal to him - ”and that they weren’t responsible for making the laws. So I tried to be a model prisoner. I think I was. Anyway, I received the maximum remission for good behaviour. I certainly couldn’t complain of the treatment I had in Maidstone. In fact, the Governor shook hands with me when I left and wished me well.”

“And then you returned to Egypt?”

“As soon as my probationary period was up, yes. I went back to Cairo, sir.”

“Where you proceeded to denounce a British businessman named Colby Evans to the Egyptian authorities as a British secret agent.”

It was like a slap in the face, but I managed to keep my head this time. “Not immediately, sir. That was later, during the Suez crisis.”

“Why did you do it?”

I didn’t know what to say. How could I explain to a man like that that I had to pay back the caning they had given me. I said nothing.

“Was it because you needed to prove somehow to the Egyptian authorities that you were anti-British, or because you didn’t like the man, or because you were sincerely anti-British?”

It was all three, I suppose; I am not really sure. I answered almost without thinking.

“My mother was Egyptian. My wife was killed by a British bomb in the attack they made on us. Why shouldn’t I feel sincerely anti-British?”

It was probably the best answer I had given so far; it sounded true, even though it wasn’t quite.

“Did you really believe this man was an agent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then you applied for Egyptian citizenship.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You stayed in Egypt until fifty-eight. Was that when they finally decided that Evans had
not
been a British agent after all and released him?”

“He was convicted at his trial. His release was an act of clemency.”

“But the Egyptians did start to investigate you at that time.” It was a statement.

“I suppose so.”

“I see.” He refilled my glass. “I think we are beginning to understand one another, Simpson. You now realize that it is neither my business nor my inclination to make moral judgments. I, on the other hand, am beginning to see how your mind works in the areas we are discussing - what holds the pieces together. So now let us go back to your story about Mr. Harper and Fräulein Lipp.” He glanced again at the file. “You see, for a man of your experience it is quite incredible. You suspect that Harper may be using you for some illegal purpose which will be highly profitable to him, yet you do as he asks, for a mere hundred dollars.”

“It was the return journey I was thinking of, sir. I thought that when he realized that I had guessed what he was up to, he would have to pay me to take the risk.”

He sat back, smiling. “But you had accepted the hundred dollars
before
that possibility had occurred to you. You would not have searched the car outside Athens otherwise. You see the difficulty?”

I did. What I didn’t see was the way out of it.

He lit another cigarette. “Come now, Simpson, you were emerging very sensibly from the darkness a few minutes ago. Why not continue? Either your whole story is a lie, or you have left something of importance out. Which is it? I am going to find out anyway. It will be easier for both of us if you just tell me now.”

I know when I am beaten. I drank some more
raki
.

“All right. I had no more choice with him than I have with you. He was blackmailing me.”

“How?”

“Have you got an extradition treaty with Greece?”

“Never mind about that. I am not the police.”

So I had to tell him about the traveller's cheques after all.

When I had finished, he nodded. “I see” was all he said. After a moment, he got up and went to the door. It opened the instant he knocked on it. He began to give orders.

I was quite sure that he had finished with me and was telling the guards to take me away to a cell, so I swallowed the rest of the
raki
in my glass and put the matches in my pocket on the off chance that I might get away with them.

I was wrong about the cell. When he had finished speaking, he shut the door and came back.

“I have sent for some eatable food,” he said.

He did not stop at the table, but went across to the telephone. I lit a cigarette and returned the matches to the table. I don’t think he noticed. He was asking for an Istanbul number and making a lot of important-sounding noise about it. Then he hung up and came back to the table.

“Now tell me everything you remember about this man Harper,” he said.