Istanbul (8 page)

‘That would be committing an act of war in a friendly country. It would violate Romania’s sovereignty.’

Max liked that. His belly laugh attracted stares from around the room. ‘Better to lose the war than have the Romanians think you were impolite.’

Nick gave him a look of forbearance. How did he know about the engineers? Clive Allen, perhaps. It didn’t matter now; with Bendix dead, the 54th Field Company had decamped and quietly sailed back to Egypt. Jordon had disappeared from the dingy office in the basement as mysteriously as he had arrived.

‘Well, it’s too late now. Whether it was a violation of Romanian sovereignty or not, it would have been a damned good idea. When the Germans attack Russia, they’ll need that oil for their tanks.’

‘I only carry out government policy, Max, I don’t make it.’

‘Well, at least I struck a blow for the cause last night.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Every night the Krauts leave their shoes outside their doors for polishing. So I got up at four this morning and switched them all around. When the Wehrmacht got out of bed, none of them could get their shoes on. You know how the Teutonic mind hates disorder.’

Nick laughed. He wished he had been there to see it. It was more than they had done to frustrate the Germans in the last six months.

He sipped his coffee, Turkish, very bitter and very strong. The small handle-less cups left little rings on the marble-topped table.

‘I suppose the Romanians don’t have much choice but to roll over for Hitler. If Chamberlain was still in Downing Street we might be doing the same thing.’

‘It won’t happen with Churchill there. He likes a fight.’

‘The Channel’s saved us.’

Max turned around and smacked several kisses into the air, in the local custom of calling the waiter. He hurried from the bar with two more
amalfi
, the copper-coloured cocktails of vermouth mixed with
tsuica
.

As he set down the drinks, Nick felt a stab of guilt. Russia’s invasion of Bessarabia had swollen the city with refugees, and inflation was out of control. Outside the hotel doors people were dying while he sat in a plush armchair drinking cocktails.

‘
Naroc
,’ Max said and raised his glass in a toast to the future.

‘
Naroc
.’

‘Got a cut on your lip.’

‘Cut myself shaving.’

‘Not what I heard, old boy. Not like you to get into a fight. Must have been hell to pay with the Minister.’

‘The other fellow was drunk. I tried to get out of it, he hit me first.’

‘Everyone’s been talking about it.’

‘And what have they been saying?’

‘That it was over a woman.’

Nick sighed. ‘That’s not true.’

‘Does Jennifer know it’s not true?’

‘You think I should tell her?’

‘If you do, wait for the right time.’

‘There’s a right time?’

‘Of course there is. That’s why they invented the deathbed.’

‘Nothing happened.’

A shadow moved behind Max’s eyes. ‘Something always happens.’

‘I’m just flirting, Max. Thought I’d forgotten how. All quite harmless.’

‘Nothing harmless when a woman’s involved. Just be discreet, old boy. Going to have an affair, use a little tact, little panache. Not fist fights in the lobby. Duelling at dawn, next. Good Lord.’

‘It’s not what you think.’

‘What about you and Jennifer?’

Nick shook his head. ‘What about her?’

‘Do you love her?’

‘We’ve been together a long time.’

‘Not quite the answer I was looking for.’

‘I’ve been thinking of a divorce, if we can make amicable.’

‘Amicable divorce? No such thing, old boy. Oxymoron. Like a peaceful war. Friendly fist fight. Military intelligence. Contradiction in terms.’

‘Just shoot me,’ Nick said. It was a joke, but then he remembered Bendix and Clive Allen. Careful what you wish for, especially in a war.

‘Sort out one mess before you start another,’ Max said.

At that moment, there was a sickening motion underfoot, and cups and glasses crashed to the floor. Women screamed and for a moment and then there was a hushed silence.

Finally everyone started to laugh. Just an earth tremor. As if the Bucaresti didn’t have enough troubles, they lived on a fault line.

‘One day there’s going to be a real earthquake,’ Max said, with his usual prescience.

CHAPTER 17

Istanbul

Nick met Jacob Ben-Arazi in a restaurant off Istiklal Boulevard and they rode the ancient elevator to the fifth floor. They sat at a corner table overlooking the Bosphorus and the lights on the Asian side. It was dark, a rendezvous for lovers.

But Nick did not anticipate holding hands over the
meze
.

He had picked Ben-Arazi as an arrogant bastard from the first. But he couldn’t let his personal feelings about the man get in the way of business. They discussed the weather, Istanbul and, of course, the war. Ben-Arazi lectured him all through the main course on Palestinian politics and British perfidy.

While they waited for the coffee, there was a difficult silence. Ben-Arazi drummed a tattoo on the table with his fingertips.

‘The Arabs have a saying,’ he said finally. ‘ “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” I don’t like the British. Nothing personal, Mr Davis, but I don’t like you either. But you are the enemy of my enemy.’

‘As we’re putting our cards on the table, then let me say I’m totally indifferent to what you think of me or my country. I want your help and in return, I may be able to help you.’

‘Let me anticipate you. You want to stop the Germans getting the oil from Ploesti. To do that you have to find a way to close the Iron Gates.’

The Iron Gates – the Portile de Fier – were close to the Hungarian border, a narrow defile where the Danube passed through steep cliffs on either side. Barges could pass through just at one time and then only with a specially trained pilot on board.

Romanian oil from the Ploesti oilfields would have to pass through the Gates on the way upriver to Germany. It had been suggested that the judicious use of explosives could bring down the cliffs and close the Danube for weeks or even months.

‘What do you have in mind, Mister Davis?’

Nick leaned forward. ‘Eight hundred Haganah soldiers. We bring them in to Romania in exchange for eight hundred Jewish refugees. We give the refugees visas for Palestine and help you get them out.’

‘And what will these eight hundred soldiers do?’

‘Your people are trained in guerrilla warfare. They will ensure the Iron Gates stay closed.’

‘Can you do this?’

‘Can
you
do it?’

Ben-Arazi raised his eyebrows. ‘Is this your idea or does it come from London?’

‘From me. I have to know if it’s possible before I commit this to London.’

‘You think you can persuade them?’

‘We’re all on the same side here.’

‘Mr Davis, if you think there are just two sides in this conflict, you are seriously deluded. The war has layers, like a good
halwa
. Perhaps
you
are fighting the Germans. For others the war is not about enemies, but about priorities.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Oh, you will find that out in good time.’ He finished his glass of
raki
. ‘I take it the British Government will pay the bill for dinner.’

Nick watched him walk away, a small man with a small man’s swagger. He wondered what he meant:
you will find that out in good time.
What did the Haganah know about British secret intelligence that he didn’t?

If the train had not been delayed for five hours by a derailment on the other side of the border, Nick would have been asleep in his Bucharest apartment at three o’clock that morning when the earthquake struck the city. Instead he was still sitting in a frigid railway carriage stalled just outside the city. Occasionally he got up to stamp his feet in the corridor outside to try to keep warm.

The train finally crawled into the Bucharest suburbs just after dawn. Nick stared out of the window in stricken disbelief. It was like a curtain lifting on an apocalyptic stage; greasy skeins of smoke rose from burst gas mains, and the streets were filled with rubble where houses and apartment blocks had crumbled like sandcastles.

A woman staggered down the middle of a street, covered in dust, blood caked onto her face. He saw a bedroom exposed, half the wall and floor gone, the bed and dresser still in place.

Those tremors they had felt for months, that they had joked about in the bar of the Athenee Palace Hotel had been harbingers of disaster.

The wheels squealed as the train came to a stop. They waited for what seemed like an eternity; after a time, passengers started jumping down onto the tracks. He realised the rails must be twisted and this was as far as they could go.

He pulled his suitcase down from the rack, opened the carriage door and jumped down, slipping in the mud and jarring his knee. He got up and limped away.

It was bitterly cold, the sky dark as pewter, and a vicious wind buffeted him, carrying with it the smell of leaked gas, concrete dust and death. Smoke drifted from a thousand cook-fires, the people of Bucharest were afraid to go back inside their houses, and were cooking their breakfasts on the streets.

He had no idea where he was, so he set off along the tracks, knowing they would eventually lead him to the main railway station. From there it was just a few minutes’ walk to his apartment. He wanted to hurry but his knee kept giving way under him. He felt as if someone was stabbing into the joint with a needle.

He heard the bells of fire engines and ambulances all over the city. On the far side of the tracks a six-storey apartment blocks swayed drunkenly over the street.He wondered what he would find when he got home.

The
piatsa
outside the Gara de Nord was normally packed with
trasuras
and taxicabs and trams, and he would to fight his way through a clamour of beggars and ragged children. This morning the square in front of the train station was eerily deserted; there were just two cars parked there, one of them a grey-black Humber. He felt a flood of relief when he recognized the driver.

‘Max, what are you doing here?’ he shouted.

‘Came looking for you, sport. Christ, the state of you! You’re limping. All right, old boy?’

‘It’s nothing. I’ve got to find Jen.’

‘Hop in.’

He threw his valise in the back of the Humber and climbed in the passenger seat. He rolled up his trouser leg. His knee was badly swollen and he could feel the fluid building up under the skin, stretching it taut. Christ.

‘What happened, Max?’

‘Three o’clock this morning, I woke up, felt the whole bloody room swaying, like being blown about in a gale.’

‘Is the hotel still up?’ Nick asked.

‘Hardly a crack. God does many terrible things but He wouldn’t take away the only place in this bloody awful city where a man can get a drink. They weren’t so lucky at the Carlton. Came down like a pack of cards.’

The Carlton was the tallest apartment block in the city. There would have been hundreds sleeping inside.

Max steered around a pile of cobblestones that had erupted as if a giant fist had punched its way through from underneath.

‘Can’t you drive any faster?’

‘Doing my best, old boy.’

There were fire trucks and cars abandoned everywhere, people milled about, afraid to go back inside their houses and flats. Others were digging desperately at the rubble and broken masonry with their bare hands.

They turned the corner. He held his breath.

The apartment was down.

The west wing had crumbled, only half the building was left standing. The rest was a pile of tortured stone and wirework. It was deathly quiet. There must be a hundred people buried under the building and yet there was not a sound. A crowd had gathered to watch as brigades of German soldiers set about methodically clearing the rubble. German staff officers in long black leather coats stood silently off to the side, supervising the work.

Nick got out of the car. He looked up and saw their living room, a blue upholstered armchair balanced crazily over the lip of the shattered balcony. The bedroom, where Jennifer would have been sleeping, was gone.