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ISTANBUL PASSAGE
A neutral capital straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul survived the Second World War as a magnet for refugees and spies. Even expatriate American Leon Bauer was drawn into this shadow world, doing undercover odd jobs and courier runs in support of the Allied war effort. Now as the espionage community begins to pack up, and an apprehensive city prepares for the grim realities of post-war life, Leon is given one last assignment, a routine pick-up job that goes fatally wrong, placing a potential war criminal in his hands, and plunging him into a tangle of intrigue and moral uncertainty.
Played out against the bazaars and mosques and faded mansions of this knowing, ancient Ottoman city, Leon's conflicted attempt to save one life leads to a desperate manhunt that will ultimately put his own in jeopardy. Rich with atmosphere and period detail, Istanbul Passage is the unforgettable story of a man swept up in the dawn of the Cold War, of an unexpected love affair, and of a city as deceptive as the calm surface waters of the Bosphorus that divides it.
Read on for a look at Joseph Kanon’s
Istanbul Passage
Available from Atria Books
Excerpt from Istanbul Passage copyright © 2011 by Joseph Kanon
1
BEBEK
The first attempt had to be called off. It had taken days to arrange the boat and the safe house and then, just a few hours before the pickup, the wind started, a poyraz, howling down from the northeast, scooping up water as it swept across the Black Sea. The Bosphorus waves, usually no higher than boat wakes by the time they reached the shuttered yalis along the shore, now churned and smashed against the landing docks. From the quay, Leon could barely make out the Asian side, strings of faint lights hidden behind a scrim of driving rain. Who would risk it? Even the workhorse ferries would be thrown off schedule, never mind a bribed fishing boat. He imagined the fisherman calculating his chances: a violent sea, sightless, hoping the sudden shape forty meters away wasn’t a lumbering freighter, impossible to dodge. Or another day safe in port, securing ropes and drinking plum brandy by the cast-iron stove. Who could blame him? Only a fool went to sea in a storm. The passenger could wait. Days of planning. Called by the weather.
“How much longer?” Mihai said, pulling his coat tighter.
They were parked just below Rumeli Hisari, watching the moored boats tossing, pulling against their ties.
“Give it another half hour. If he’s late and I’m not here—”
“He’s not late,” Mihai said, dismissive. He glanced over. “He’s that important?”
“I don’t know. I’m just the delivery boy.”
“It’s freezing,” Mihai said, turning on the motor. “This time of year.”
Leon smiled. In Istanbul’s dream of itself it was always summer, ladies eating sherbets in garden pavilions, caïques floating by. The city shivered through winters with braziers and sweaters, somehow surprised that it had turned cold at all.
Mihai ran the heater for a few minutes then switched it off, burrowing, turtlelike, into his coat. “So come with me but no questions.”
Leon rubbed his hand across the window condensation, clearing it. “There’s no risk to you.”
“Wonderful. Something new. You couldn’t do this yourself?”
“He’s coming out of Constancia. For all I know, he only speaks Romanian. Then what? Sign language? But you—”
Mihai waved this off. “He’ll be German. One of your new friends.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“It’s a small favor. I’ll get it back.”
He lit a cigarette, so that for a second Leon could see his grizzled face and the wiry salt-and-pepper hair on his head. Now more salt than pepper. When they had met, it had been dark and wavy, styled like the Bucharest dandy he’d once been, known in all the cafés on the Calea Victoriei.
“Besides, to see the rats leaving—” he said, brooding. “They wouldn’t let us out. Now look at them.”
“You did what you could.” A Palestinian passport, free to come and go in Bucharest, to beg for funds, leasing creaky boats, a last lifeline, until that was taken away too.
Mihai drew on the cigarette, staring at the water running down the windshield. “So how is it with you?” he said finally. “You look tired.”
Leon shrugged, not answering.
“Why are you doing this?” He turned to face him. “The war’s over.”
“Yes? Nobody told me.”
“No, they want to start another one.”
“Nobody I know.”
“Be careful you don’t get to like it. You start enjoying it—” His voice trailed off, rough with smoke, the accent still Balkan, even now. “Then it’s not about anything anymore. A habit. Like these,” he said, holding out his cigarette. “You get a taste for it.”