Chapter 1
Constantinople 1913
Malcomb Ridley peered carefully around the corner. He had met the informer at the corner of the French embassy near the French Tribunal of Justice building. He was standing in a doorway near the streetlamp on the corner. It was a hissing gaslit streetlamp that flickered and did little to dispel the gloom that crept in on little cat feet with the fog that rolled in off the Bosporus. A full moon played peek-a-boo behind the roiling threads of mist. Out on the water a foghorn bellowed mournfully.
The informant had gestured with the glowing end of his lit cigarette as he passed. This was not Ridley’s normal course or method of obtaining information. He gathered information of all kinds. But the kind that sold for the highest price was one that might be of interest to His Majesty’s government. Or any of the governments represented in embassy row.
Normally he could easily obtain juicy tidbits for resale to the highest bidder; or bidders if he could manage a double shakedown. Of course if the customer were a government, he had to give assurances that it was an exclusive sale. But that just meant he had to be a little careful who else he sold it too.
Sometimes he picked up snippets of gossip in a friendly card game at his club. The members included representatives of all three of the great embassies: English, German and French. The Italian and Russian embassies were close by as well. A happy little circumstance , he thought. After a couple of tumblers of whiskey and a good cigar, tongues would loosen; especially if he were careful to lose frequently enough. Which simply proved, that it could definitely pay to sit and listen to hedonistic bombast until your ears were aching with it.
At other times he could gather useful information by simply watching to see who emerged from whom’s boudoir and then blackmailing the participants. A bit unsavory of course, but highly lucrative.
But this opportunity was a little different. His informant was well aware that he was more than a card table gossip; he was passing on secrets and wanted compensation in cold, hard currency.
Ridley followed the informant around the brick corner and entered an alley that was redolent with the stench of sewage lying in an open gutter. A mangy dog nosed among refuse. Ridley hesitated before venturing any deeper into the ally. This sort of thing was definitely beneath the behavior of a gentleman like himself; going on for twelve years in this game. He was tempted to just walk away. He could not see the other man as he stopped and looked around. Hissing came from his left and he turned that way to see a shadow in a doorway. He moved over, hooking his umbrella over his left wrist. In his left hand was a roll of currency. In his right was a derringer, just in case.
In a low voice, he murmured, “You have the information, I presume?”
“As promised, Monsieur.” The informant held a flat buff envelope bulging with documents.
“How do I know this isn’t a ruse? Those letters could be anything. Your wife’s shopping list, for all I know.”
The shadowed face in the doorway evinced a pained expression. “Amatrices.” He said with poorly concealed disdain. With his thumb, he separated the flap enough so that Ridley could see the letterhead of the first document.
Ridley squinted fiercely in the piss-poor lighting, but could eventually make out the embossed seal of the German Reich on the letterhead.
“Good enough Monsieur?” his informant asked, amused. “Or do you also need my firstborn enfant as surity?”
Ridley let that pass. “If it doesn’t click I always know where to find you.”
“As I am sure you will, Monsieur.” The Frenchman replied smoothly.
After the exchange, he stuffed the envelope into his waistcoat pocket and rebuttoned the shawl lapel lounge jacket he wore over it. He crept out of the alley and continued down the Cadde Istlakal, considering possible customers for this new tidbit. If it was what he thought it was, some one was going to find it most interesting. It was well after midnight, but the Muezzin on his tower would not call for Fajr for some time yet.
A young lady of the night, obviously fresh off the Steppes with high cheekbones and kohl canted asian eyes accosted him. “Where you going sailor, in such a rush?” Her languid speech was Turkish, but strongly accented by the lingua of the Silk road. He replied in Tatar, complimenting her on the cathartic beauty of her face and hair, tipped his hat, and then hurriedly vanished into the mist. She lost her tongue and stood still, apparently totally amazed at being addressed in her native language; as he had intended.
After several blocks he turned west down a side street and made his way through back alleys to the Cadde Mesruteyet. He stopped to listen. Soft footsteps ceased almost instantly. He stood in a doorway and peered through the gloom back the way he had come.
He was entering the Beyoglu district and the classical neighborhood known as Pera. Here he stopped again and looked around. The British embassy was just down the street and next on his list. But he had another stop to make first. The American embassy was lit at the front, though dimly. The Pera Palas Hotel across the street, however, was brightly lit on all levels, and he could hear music mingled with the sound of laughter and the clatter of carriage wheels in the cobbled street.
The American Embassy was housed in a beautiful Neoclassic structure known locally as the Pallazo Corpi. The flickering street lighting from the Cadde Mesruteyet shown upon two stories of arched stone columns soaring above a grand marble stairway entrance. A stone image of the American Eagle in base relief crowned the cornice in the entrance portal gable.
Ridley stopped a couple of buildings away, as he considered the embassy and the most stealthy way to approach it. Rumor had it that the whole property had been won by the American Ambassador in a crooked card game under dubious circumstances. An acquaintance at his club had breathed it out in a cloud of brandy, merely as an aside. Rumors were naturally rumors, and not worth the spit of a reptile, but this one seemed to persist and he wondered if there might not be a grain of truth to it. Definitely worth looking into; when he was less occupied.
However they got it, the Americans had acquired a beauty. Not as large as the British, German or French embassies, it was nevertheless, quite grand; and the entrances were well exposed, unfortunately.
He crept around to the side entrance of the embassy, near the chancery, which was quieter and in darkness except for the gas lamp hissing on the corner, which flickered fitfully in the sultry early morning.
He was about to step out of his hiding place to dart across to the shadowed side entrance. He caught a whiff of strong Turkish cigarette smoke of a local brand like Fatima or Murad.
Turning his head as slowly as possible, not daring to breathe, he perceived the glowing end of a cigarette a few meters to his left. He froze and continued to watch. The mustachioed man wore a fez and was looking at the entrance he had been about to try for. He suppressed his breathing and continued to be a hole in the night. He turned the whites of his eyes away and listened very carefully.
Farther to his left he heard a cough but could see nothing in the damned fog. He edged along the wall to his right and stopped when he sensed someone standing there not moving.
He suspected they were there for him. Information of this type would attract many, and he was far from being the only player. He withdrew a pebble from the gutter and tossed it towards the street light. It banged up against the side of the wall next to an adjacent door and three men from three different directions converged quickly on the spot. The side door of the embassy opened slowly and a man in military uniform peered out into the gloom. His contact. The three men dispersed quickly, and after looking about, the uniformed man closed the door gently.
Ridley slipped along the wall past the spot where the one to his right had been standing. His shoe turned on a stone and it skittered across the cobblestones. Ridley froze. All three men turned silently and charged in his direction. He turned to run and slipped on the slick cobblestones again, nearly sliding onto his knees. Springing up hastily on the uneven surface, he twisted his knee. He cursed, and then ignoring the agony in his knee, took off running. He limped along as fast as he could, his breathing ragged. Each breath was soon torture and his knee felt as if it was about to give out. He ran through garbage strewn alleys and heaved himself over wooden fences.
Eventually he stopped and stood breathing as quietly as he could behind a fountain in the secluded peristyle of a colonnaded courtyard. He heard feet pounding down the pavement on the other side of a stone wall.
As quietly as he could he pulled himself back over the wall and crept back the other way, sticking to the shadows and copious covered archways wherever he could.
He made his way to a recessed corner booth, still open near the flickering streetlight. A street vendor was selling woven smoking rugs and hookas. Leaning next to the stall in an arched brick cubby was a bicycle. When the vendor turned away to hawk his wares to a passing couple Ridley climbed on the bike silently and pedaled away in the opposite direction, quickly becoming lost in the fog.
He reached the broad avenue bordering the Golden Horn and turned right toward the new Galata bridge, the Eski Copru. Pausing a block away he studied the entrance to the bridge closely before venturing further. It was sandwiched between two tall brass Imperial Ottoman stanchions cast with the Caliph’s patents of office.
There was not a great deal of light in the murk. If he could get across the Galata bridge it was only a short block or two to Sirkeci Station where he could board a train to somewhere less popular, and less dangerous. With luck he could lose himself completely and confuse the hunters.
The toll house that stood at the escarpment leading onto the bridge had a corbelled copper roof with an awning of weathered brass sticking out from the front. He could faintly see a shadowy form lounging against the closed ticket window under the awning. There was little traffic across the bridge, only a stray pedestrian now and then. The figure moved a little closer to the edge of the roof lamp, and Ridley could see it was another Turk, dressed as the others had been. He could not afford to assume the Turk was anything other than one of his pursuers.
He thought about making a break past the figure lounging under the awning. He was talking to the toll taker who was dressed in a white uniform. They would be expecting a man on foot and surely he could slip past them on the bicycle before they could raise an alarm or take proper aim with a pistol.
But, if there was a lookout here on this side there would be one on the other as well. The commotion would surely attract their attention, and there would be more enemies than he could deal with.
Suddenly something punched him in the gut. He gasped as the world spun dizzily around him. He let go of the bicycle and fell to one knee. Pain followed quickly on the heels of vertigo, sharp prickling heat inflaming every inch of his skin. He froze for a moment trying to regain his breath. Where had this malady come from? He had not been sick in years and was disdainful of those who were.
A man such as himself who filled his lungs with pure ocean air every morning and exercised regularly was rarely ill. He could not afford weakness or ill health now. When he recovered his strength Ridley turned the bicycle around quietly and began to pedal back up the avenue under the side lined with overhanging palm trees spaced with bougainvillea and hibiscus. Unaccustomed to fear, it accompanied him now as lovingly as a close companion. He had no explanation for the sudden attack of nausea and weakness and it spooked him.
He passed brick buildings on his right, lonely shop fronts set into the rococo style facade. Their windows were shuttered for the night. The next block held wine shops, brothel houses and pawnshops, a saloon spilling bright raucous cheer out onto the sidewalk through open double doors. He yearned toward it futilely, but knew that it was a sanctuary that would not hide him for long. Someone in there would sell him out in a second, given the chance.
He pedaled on. The gloom closed in about him again. He passed an Ottoman structure to his left, deep shadows lying in the stone Roman arches. He regarded them warily.
He reached the end of the avenue at the fluted dome of the Azap Kapi Cesmesi. It was a covered street fountain that had been there since Byzantine times, and he paused in it’s shadow. He watched the entrance to the Cisr- i Atik, the old bridge, his only avenue of escape now. He felt a warm breeze redolent with brine and flowers of the sea on his left.
However there was another scent there as well. Leather and gun oil. He whirled to his left to see a figure coming at him from the murk. He lashed out at it with his foot and spun quickly back to his right, knowing there was more than one. He yanked out his derringer, but the quick turn was too much for his injured knee and it failed, spoiling his aim.
The prickly burning sensation returned to his skin and the bottom fell out of his world. A sap crashed down on the back of his neck but he was already falling, completely helpless to defend himself. The inexplicable malady was upon him once again.
The last thing he saw was a hugely mustachioed Turk with a long bloody knife. And a gentleman in an embroidered blue smoking jacket. He wore a winged collar on a white shirt with knotted kravat. There was something about him vaguely familiar. A monocle rested in his left eye as the man stared down at him beside the tinkling fountain.
The gentleman spoke quietly with a burry purr to his voice and said in Turkish with a German accent. “Search him thoroughly then roll him into the water.”
Two Turks in fez groped about his body and searched all of his pockets. One of them held up the envelope of documents that he had just purchased. The gentleman snatched the envelope from him and lifted the flap long enough to make sure of the contents. His monacle gleamed as his lips curved into a thin smile. The gentleman flicked ash from the smoke that he held vertically between his thumb and index finger, turned on his heel and moved off. Big ugly, bloody knife outstretched, the mustachioed Turk reached for Ridley as his vision faded to black.
