CHAPTER FOUR

 

"YOU LOOK so beautiful," he said.

She was wearing a filmy pink dress and her streaked brown hair was pulled back in a chignon that showed off her classic features and tan skin to perfection. Two large, shiny silver clips held her hair in place, and now he stopped with his arm around her and looked into one of the clips, turning her slightly so that he could see what he wanted to see.

“Jason, I'm sure we're being followed."

"You have good instincts," he said. "We've been tailed ever since we left your house." "Why didn't you tell me?"

 "You'd say I was paranoid."

"They say even paranoids have enemies."

He studied the reflection in the hair clip of a burly, bearded man dressed in a long djellabah across the street. He was pretending to be waiting for a bus, but he was the same person who'd been in their vicinity for an hour.

"We'll make a fast exit to the right at the next alley," Jason said in a low voice.

Even though it was a gray afternoon with ominous clouds and heavy with the threat of rain, they'd had a very pleasant day until now—a leisurely morning, slightly hung over and amorous, and then some brunch with restorative sherry and almost no discussion of the scrolls, as Taylor insisted on showing him the great points of interest in the city.

Her attempts to arouse his interest in the great Agia Sophia amused him; he hadn't the heart to remind her that he'd been trotting in and out of museums and cathedrals around Europe for the past month. He had preferred walking along the Bosporus hand in hand alone with her until it was time to keep their appointment with Ali Reza. And now this—who was following him now?

They walked rapidly to the mouth of an alley. Once they were around the corner, Jason pushed her ahead and commanded, "Keep going!"

He flattened himself against the wall and didn't have many seconds to wait. The man in the caftan came around the corner at a rapid trot. Jason caught him unaware with both hands at the place in the garment where lapels would have been, had it not been a djellabah.

"Hold it, my friend!"

He held the popeyed, evil-smelling man tightly, lifting him up to his toes. He shook him hard once.

"Now, you bastard, do me the courtesy of telling me why you've been following us for an hour!"

The man answered in a stream of Turkish, the only words of which Jason understood were "Ali Reza”.

“Taylor!” Jason called.

She ran back to him and translated. "He says he is called Mustafa... one of Ali Reza's men. Says he was sent by him to see that we would not meet with any unpleasantness and also to make sure that we were not being followed by the junta. I think he's telling the truth."    

"Effendi... I take you Ali Reza!" Jason released his grip, and the man sighed and smiled a solid gold smile. Then he looked around and motioned for them to follow him. He set off fast down the alley, then turned down an even narrower path between two old buildings. Jason had to turn sideways to get his broad shoulders through. Then they went down some steep, almost vertical stairs and came out into a grimy courtyard. Under a laundry line, two children were playing a hopping game, between chalked squares next to some garbage cans, and a scabrous dog scratched and licked at an open sore. Though the courtyard was open, it looked as though the sun had never filtered down the entire length of the buildings that formed it. It was dark and dank, like the lives of the people who lived there.

Mustafa tousled the curly black hair of the little boy, who paid no attention, and walked on to a door that was unimposing except for a one-inch brass plate where a handle or a keyhole would normally be. From under his garment Mustafa drew what looked like a brass tuning fork, and he made an 'X' on the plate in one quick motion. The door slid to the right and Mustafa motioned them into what appeared to be an elevator. Once they were inside, the outside door glided shut.

A voice in Turkish came over the loudspeaker, and Mustafa answered briefly. The whole side of the cubicle slid back. Bowing deeply, Mustafa ushered them into one of the most beautiful rooms Jason had ever seen. In contrast to the seamy courtyard, this large area was white and light and elegantly decorated in eclectic and contrasting tastes, the whole blending with spectacular success.

They were standing on a museum-quality rug, and over by the piano an antique Isfahan was spread out. A Gobelin tapestry hung from one wall, a painting of a cathedral was on another, and French doors opened onto a small Japanese garden. The elegant effect was marred only by a pyramid of seven television sets in one corner.

"Who said crime doesn't pay?" whispered Taylor.

There came a chuckling voice from behind them. "Not I, my dear. Certainly not I!"

They turned to see coming at them from a side door a great gelatinous shape in a red silk caftan. Ali Reza looked like something out of The Arabian Nights, even to the turban and the rings on every pudgy finger. He seemed to undulate toward them in sections, like a quivering and gigantic red aspic, his eyes tiny black buttons in the dough of his face.

His hands were like two abalones, and he enveloped Taylor's small hand in his, then bent and kissed the air five inches over her fingers.

"So good to see you, luv," he said, his English accent was perfect. "And Mr. Van Cleve," he added;”

He gestured to two chairs and seated himself on an outsized ottoman behind a Queen Arine desk.

"I am so sorry, Miss Taylor, not to have been able to see you yesterday. Big troubles!" he sighed. "Never did I have trouble with the police in all the years. Now all this jiggery pokery. The police—they understand me, and I them. We respect each other's dishonor ability, you understand? But this ''military junta"—he made a retching noise indicating contempt—"one doesn't know where one stands. Simple bribery  they have no talent for. Violence is what they know and like best, but violence is what I have always abhorred and avoided. And yet—he shrugged—I must mete it out on their terms. It is like a chess game." He gestured toward a silver chess set. "Like a lethal chess game. Last week they took one of my men, one of my important pawns. Last night we had to, er... take one of theirs. But they are so many and we are so few. I must be careful. If I have one piece less than my opponent and I exchange pieces, I am certain to be the loser, eh? So I must avoid that, eh, Mr. Van Cleve? When my adversary has sixteen pieces and I have fourteen, I am only one-eighth weaker than he. But when we have exchanged thirteen pieces, he is three times as strong as I. Eh? You see what I mean?"

A costumed servant girl came in bearing a silver tray of baklava pastry and ayran, a buttermilk-like yogurt drink.

"So now how may I help you, dear, sweet lady?" asked Ali Reza as he stuffed an entire piece of baklava into his mouth.

"You once did me a big favor."

Taylor told him quickly about Phillips Taylor.

"And that is all the favor you want from me? To arrange a meeting with this well-known and despicable chameleon?" He was already picking up a gold French-style telephone from its cradle. "I was hoping you wanted a really big favor. My joy is doing favors—big favors—and receiving favors from my friends. But this, this is like... how you say?... falling off a stick."

"Log," Taylor corrected.

He spoke rapidly in Turkish for a few minutes, his mouth with its fat lips hard voice steely and with no evidence of the charm he had been displaying.

He hung up.

"Done," he said with a grin. "He will be in the Cicek Pasaji district tonight at six-thirty. At a bar called the Golden Sphincter.

“That is some name," Jason commented.

“You will see that it is some place” said Ali with a lewd wink

The Golden Sphincter was a sleazy cafe, located, appropriately enough, in the bowels of the city. When Jason and Taylor stepped off the street into it, they saw that it was patronized at six-thirty on this particular evening by a number of aging homosexuals, several seedy-looking men, and one dwarf. The only touches of class in the odoriferous place were two large, yellowed, and tattered Toulouse-Lautrec posters on one wall, which were nullified by a large reproduction of the Belgian statue of a urinating boy behind the bar, and the fly-embroidered sausages hanging from the ceiling.

Jason didn't like leaving Taylor alone, but he had to go to the bathroom. It was near the bar and was surprisingly large and clean. As he was urinating, a water-closet door opened and a lean Turkish man stepped out. He had a goatee, and from his fly protruded his giant organ, steel blue with its erection. The man smiled. "You like? C’ est beau?"

"Magnifique," replied Jason as calmly as possible.

Then, for the first time, he noticed a tall, thin man dressed in a business suit and leaning in the corner. Jason couldn't see his face because he was bent over lighting a cigarette, but he had red, spiky hair. Jason went back to Taylor quickly and sat at the table.

Phillips Taylor was only five minutes late, and he looked around cautiously as he came in. He went to Jason's round marble table and slumped into a chair without waiting to be asked.

"Aloha," he said.

"This is Mrs. Phillips," said Jason.

"We've met," she said.

The man looked startled when he recognized her, as though he might bolt. Pearls of sweat were on his forehead.

"Relax," said Jason.

The man recovered his poise and tried to say jauntily, "Actually, I believe I owe Mrs. Phillips a debt. At one point I needed a fancy new name. I heard hers and just turned it. In fact, I even thought I might call myself E. Phillips Taylor the Third, but maybe that would be de trop."

"Maybe," agreed Jason. "We'd like to ask you a few questions."

"And if I don't choose to answer them?"

"We've just come from Ali Reza. Would he be pleased to know that you didn't choose to answer them?”

The man winced a little. "So—what do you want to know?”

"Everything about Nestor Lascaris.”

The man hesitated. "Everything?"

"Everything," said Jason emphatically.

The man put on a midwestern accent. "Well, there's folks round here who seem to wish me to be quiet.”

"But some who wish you to talk," said Jason. "Quick."

"Well now," the man said slyly, quite expertly slipping into a cockney dialect, "As the

vicar's woife said at the choir boys' picnic oi' don't roightly know which way to turn!" "Ali Reza!" warned Jason sharply. 

 The man's face went serious. "Ah, yes, Mr. Reza," He sighed, hesitated a moment, and then started to talk.

"Lascaris knew I had acquired a passport for the guy that used to work for him, so he figured that for some dough I could put him in touch with a writer. He wanted only an Englishman or an American. I've got a connection in the travel business. He gave me the Royal Viking list of VIPs, so I got him—you. Okay, so why didn't we come back? Well, that very day the old man joined the turf club, you might say."

"How?”

"Not of old age," he said. "Nor of hemorrhoids."

"How, then?"

The man shrugged and smiled grimly. "Mysteriously."

"How?" Jason persisted.

"I don't know! He said he wanted to take a nap, and that I should come back. He was supposed to have called me. He didn't. Went on his own, apparently. Next thing I knew, they said he was dead. They said he swallowed the key to the handcuffs before he died, but they cut off his hand and the briefcase."

Taylor sucked in her breath and closed her eyes.

"Who's 'they'?" Jason asked.

"I don't know. I only heard through the grapevine... they name names."

Jason blew out a breath and glanced at Taylor.

"That's all you can tell us about him?"

The man shrugged noncommittally. Jason extracted a five-hundred-lira bill from his wallet and put it on the table.

"Come on... anything at all... any little detail."

The man gazed at the ceiling and wrinkled his brow in an exaggerated attempt at recall, while at the same time his fingers deftly removed the bill and slipped it into his trousers.

"Yes... there was something. When I was driving him down to the ship to see you, he insisted that we go out of our way to a small photographic shop on the outskirts of Izmir. Stayed there about five, ten minutes. Gotta go!"

"What was the name of the shop?" Taylor asked. "Where was it? And you'd better tell the truth."

"Shit, the address? Who knows? Poseidonos Street, maybe."

He took out a pen and started to draw on a paper napkin. "Here's a map showing where it is—more or less. I think it was called Photography Pandora or something like that."

Jason noticed that the tall thin man with red hair whom he'd seen in the bathroom was now at the bar, with his back to them.

Phillips Taylor also saw him.

"Sayonara," he said.

He quickly shoved the napkin toward Jason, got up, and quietly oozed out of the Golden Sphincter. The red-haired man immediately left the bar also, not far behind him.

"Our friend is a jumpy one," said Jason. "And I'm sure with good reason."

"I take it the next stop is Izmir and the camera shop?"

"You can't go! I don't want you to get involved in this."

"But I alreadyam. Terribly." She pressed his hand. "And you get lost in Izmir, remember?"

"No," he said.

"Yes,” she said.

"Phillips Taylor" slunk out of the bar at a normal pace but once out in the cobbled street he broke into a sprint. He wasn't quite sure who or what he was running from, but he'd spent a lifetime running from something or someone and he knew instinctively when he was marked or being tailed, and for some days now he'd seen that redheaded, thin-faced man in his vicinity too many times.

The street was crowded, but he blended into the crowd, who paid no attention to the fact that he was running while they were walking. This was, after all, Istanbul. After three blocks he stopped and looked back. The man was nowhere to be seen.

"Phillips Taylor," a. k. a. Michael Swenson Redmon, as well as a dozen other aliases, took a deep breath. Then he doubled back on his tracks to an alley he knew. He knew every alley in Istanbul, since he'd been born here, the illegitimate son of a British consul general by a Turkish whore, some forty-five years ago.

The alley was narrow, long, and cool, and it would lead to the street where he lived in a cheap boardinghouse. Whatever money he made, and by whatever means, he did not spend on housing, but rather on clothes, as part of his professional wardrobe for appearances for his varied scams.

As he walked down the alley, trying to avoid letting his new cordovan shoes come into contact with the many piles of animal and human feces, he thought of Nestor Lascaris and how lucky it was he'd been paid something in advance by the old man before his unexpected demise. What the hell was in those papers, that people would kill for them? Maybe it was some kind of treasure map that showed where to find some buried —

Suddenly a thin, dark shadow appeared out of a doorway in front of him.

"Oh, God!" he gasped involuntarily.

"No," said the man. "It's just me— Melnick."

"What do you want?" he whispered, and he could feel the sweat pouring down his face as he looked into the muzzle of a pistol with a silencer on it. "How'd you get — "

“What’d you tell him?”

'"Who, Van Cleve? Nothing. I had nothing to tell him! Except about Lascaris's death."

"I know about that," said Melnick. "All about that. What was all that writing on the napkin?"

"Did you kill Lascaris?"

"What did you write down for Van Cleve?"

"Oh, that..." He looked down at the pistol leveled at his stomach. "Christ, you're not going to kill me, are you?"

"'Course I'm not going to kill you," said Melnick. "Not if you tell me what was on the napkin."

"Photography shop... P-Pandora," he stuttered. "Pandora Photography... or vice, versa. Izmir! 'Near the movie house on

Poseidonos Street

.' Something like that. C-can I go home now?" He pointed down the alley.

"What's in the shop?"

"Pictures of some scrolls or something. Can I go home now?"

"Yes, you can go home now."

The pistol went spunt-spunt-spunt...

And Phillips Taylor looked down at his stomach in amazement as he convulsed and then sagged slowly to the cobble stones.

The assassin glanced around him, put the pistol inside his jacket, and looked at his watch. He had to get to Izmir before Van Cleve did. He was a helicopter pilot, but it would take too long to rent an aircraft. Luckily he had a very speedy car and was an excellent driver.

He stepped over the body and walked rapidly down the alley.

It was dark on the drive to Izmir, -and the otherwise colorful towns of Osmaneli, Bursa, and Susurluk were quiet and pale and mysterious in the moonlight. They bought sandwiches and some rich, thick Turkish coffee at Balikesir, and ate in the car. It was after midnight when they drove into the outskirts of Izmir. Jason had to shake Taylor.

“Time to go to work. You're the navigator on this mission."

She snapped awake almost at once. She knew the complex city well, having once been stationed in Izmir as vice-consul, but it was difficult to make out the hastily drawn map. Nevertheless, they finally found the street and then they saw the photographic store.

"There!"

Incredibly, they saw a fire truck in front of it and another was pulling up, and people were crowding around, many of them in their nightclothes. Smoke was rolling out of the front and billowing up under the yellow Kodak logo, which was larger than the old faded sign: FOTOGRAFIA PANDORA.

"Someone beat us to it!" breathed Jason. "What a funny, funny coincidence."

They parked and got out, and Jason took the napkin the sandwich had come wrapped in and soaked it in the dregs of the coffee. Taking Taylor by the hand, he sprinted for the store. As they came to the entrance, a policeman held out his arms to stop them.

Taylor took out an old calling card that identified her as a vice-consul of the United States, and began to rattle away in Turkish, keeping the policeman distracted as Jason ducked under one of the man's arms and stepped through the open door into the shop.

Taylor's hysterical account of how she thought her father might be in the blazing building enlisted the policeman's sympathy, and her feigned efforts to enter the building herself in search of her father kept him fully occupied.

Smoke was billowing up to the ceiling. Jason tied the wet napkin around his face and bent low as he looked around the room. He could make out enlargements of photos of babies and brides on the walls, and on the counter was a cash register and in the vitrine were rolls of Agfa and Kodak film in their respective blue and yellow boxes. An enviously useless fire extinguisher lay on the floor. Jason pushed open the door to the back room and then dropped to his knees as the smoke poured through the opening. He saw where the actual fire was, for the darkroom and storeroom were flickering with tongues of flame that sprang through the smoke like electric serpents from various places around the room. He could dimly see the firemen attacking the blaze from behind the store, where it had probably originated.

He looked around quickly as he pressed the napkin tight against his mouth and nose. Above the enlarger and the sinks were shelves, and on them were rows of files in cardboard boxes. They were arranged in alphabetical order, and the flames had already burnt some of the boxes toward the back of the room. The fire had consumed the "H-I" file and was leaping toward the "J-K" box. Jason reached up and pulled down the box that had the letters "L-M" on it.

He started out the back door, but a large flaming beam crashed down from the ceiling, barring the way. He looked over his shoulder toward the front entrance. Now it was a wall of flame. He turned back to the burning beam. Quickly he put down the box and picked up the spent fire extinguisher. Using it like a sledgehammer, he slashed and hacked at the charred beam. On the third blow the wood broke. Jason tossed aside the extinguisher, picked up the box, made a running leap over the flames to the door, and stumbled outside.

Hugging the box to his stomach and trying to conceal it as best he could with his jacket, he ran around the corner until he could see the place where Taylor was still continuing her harangue with the policeman. He whistled once and ran for the car, threw the box in, and got behind the wheel. He started up the Citroen and spun it around in the street as he saw Taylor running to meet him, followed dutifully by the outraged policeman, waving his stick and looking ridiculously like something from a silent movie.

The thin-faced, red-haired arsonist saw neither of them. He had watched Jason go in, but did not know that he had come out the back.

Jason reached across the seat and opened the door, and Taylor jumped in. He jammed his foot down on the accelerator and they roared down the narrow street.

"You okay?" she panted, looking at Jason with concern.

"A little smoky, otherwise okay, thanks."

"You were a fool to do that. I hope it was all worth it. It seemed to me you were in there forever!"

"Thanks for entertaining the Keystone Kop back there. Couldn't have pulled that caper without you."

"Well, don't count on me for any more things like this."

Jason looked up at the rearview mirror. “l think we may have something else for you to worry about," he said. "What do you make of that car behind us?”

"Could be the police. It has red lights."

"I'm not as afraid of the Turkish police as of..."

"As of what?" Taylor looked at him searchingly.

"I really don't know." Jason shook his head. "You think that fire back there was an accident?"

Her face turned serious as she replied, "Yes, it was a bit of a coincidence."

"But how in hell did they know to set that thing just minutes before we got there? The man at the bar? I noticed he left right after Phillips Taylor did.”

"He probably offered my reverse namesake another piece of change for the same information he gave us."

"Or saved the money and got it out of him with a gun."

"Maybe Mr. Phillips Taylor is no longer with us. Maybe he too has joined the 'turf club’”

"I wonder," said Jason grimly, "how much longer we are going to be with us, if we keep after the scrolls."

Taylor said, "Well at least the car that was tailing us is no longer with us. It turned off at the last intersection."

"Good," said Jason. "Back to Istanbul?"

"Back to Istanbul," she said.

"I just had a not-so-good thought," said Jason.

"What?"

"Supposing what's in that box is just something like bills, invoices...”

She quickly took the lid off and in the illumination of a streetlight they were passing under she could see the contents.

"Whew!" she said. "We've got good news tonight. They were meticulous—each in its own carefully recorded envelope.”

Four-by-five-inch negatives, dozens of them, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands of them, going back decades and decades, depicting the social lives of Izmir citizens whose names began with L or M. Weddings, births, graduations, funerals, and, occasionally, documents—important documents.

"Now for the bad news," she said. "Ready?"

“Yes?”

“The bad news is that each envelope is not under the name of the client."

"So how are they filed?"

"By number."

“Number?" he repeated.

"In other words, there's a corresponding card file with the name of the people that the photos belong to."

"Which is back in the Pandora," said Jason numbly.

"Burning," added Taylor.