In fact, O’Gilroy had great difficulty in not finding several cabs, along with porters, guides, half a dozen boarding-house touts, several things to eat or drink, and some offers he could only guess at. Any idea of standing there and taking stock of his new surroundings vanished. He could only stride off purposefully, like trying to out-run a cloud of midges on a beach.
The Customs exit was at the side of the station. After a hundred yards or so, he had worked his way round to the front, end-on to where all the lines – only four of them – terminated. The crowd there seemed more concerned with its own purposes, and he found a table on the outskirts of the station buffet and sat down.
The first thing he saw was a shop sign – probably. But it wasn’t that he couldn’t read the words, the very letters meant nothing. In the twilight a few electric lamps had wavered on, but far more oil lamps were flaring up, lighting alien faces in strange clothes, jabbering incomprehensibly. And behind that, the jingle, clatter and yells – the Turks shouted in deliberately low-pitched voices – of horse-drawn traffic, and behind that the rumble of unseen ships’ sirens. Shapeless, rowdy and menacing, the world tried to engulf him. He clutched the familiar pistol in his pocket for reassurance-
A waiter stood looking at him impatiently. O’Gilroy managed to croak: “Cafe, please,” and the waiter nodded and went away. He had spoken to this world, and it understood! He leaned back, nestling in a surge of confidence, lit a cigarette and set to watching the crowd more calmly. Almost all were men: the very occasional women wore black from head to foot, held a fold of cloth across their faces and generally looked as unmysterious as a bag of washing. But even allowing for it being a cold evening, the men were barely less drab, except that most wore the scarlet flowerpot of a fez. So much for the “colourful East”.
But they were still different, and in so many aspects of clothing, mannerism, movement, that he stood no chance of blending into any crowd. He needed something to do, besides sit and look. So after he had drunk what they seemed to think was coffee he moved on.
On the opposite side of the station from where he’d first come out, a dark road lined with warehouses ran parallel to the lines of the goods yard. There was nowhere to loiter inconspicuously, so the most O’Gilroy could do was confirm that there was a gate into the yard – there was, and it was guarded – then see if the road led anywhere else. It dissolved into a tangle of alleyways with the loom of bare trees and a barracks-like building beyond, so he turned back.
It would be an outrageous compliment to call the road surfaces here cobblestones: they were just vari-sized rocks hammered into the half-dry mud. The idea of pavements hadn’t occurred to anyone yet, so he had to squeeze himself against a wall as a procession of three ox-carts lumbered by. They were empty, but with enough men on the driving seats to form a work-party and as they passed he heard a snatch of conversation – and was sure it was German.
He saw them turn into the yard gateway and walked back to the front of the station. There he bought a four-day-old London newspaper and a handful of postcards, then found another cafe. Now he could pick one not obviously overlooking the goods yard road since a convoy of ox-carts would be slow and highly visible. Here also they had the idea that coffee meant a thimbleful of sandy sour treacle, so perhaps it was a common Turkish delusion. He dried the tabletop with his sleeve and began to write postcards.
* * *
The immediate lobby of the Pera Palace hotel – built by the Wagons-Lit Company specifically to house its Orient Express passengers – was quite small and a little austere.
“Has my man Gorman got here yet?” Ranklin asked, and was told, of course, No.
“Silly ass,” he grumbled. “Went looking for some bit of baggage he’d misplaced . . . Get someone to unpack for me, would you? I’ve got to tog up for dinner at the Embassy, but right now I want a cup of tea. You do make a decent cup of tea, I trust?”
And having established Snaipe’s character yet again, he drifted up a few steps and turned into the public rooms, where things got more palatial. High-ceilinged, chandeliered and most overlooking a park and the ships gliding up the Golden Horn, the idea was obviously to give you the feeling that you were experiencing Constantinople without getting your shoes muddy or your back stabbed. The furniture and decor blended Eastern patterns with European comfort without satisfying either the discriminating eye or backside, but got high marks for trying.
There he had to order tea, even though he’d have preferred coffee, and face up to the fact that he could run into Corinna at any moment. He felt . . . That was the trouble: he didn’t know and had, so far, avoided trying to find out.
Ranklin took the mature and reasonable view that the world was crowded with women who adored him. To start with, those whom he had left behind must obviously still yearn for him, while those who had given him the push would now be bitterly regretting it. And others who, once they got to know him . . . So all he had to do was get over what he felt for Corinna.
Then just what did he feel for her? He had known from the start that it was hopeless to fall in love with her – but neither had he fallen in hopeless love with her. Hopeless love was a special condition that suited some people very well, being very stable and requiring minimal effort. Men who locked up their private lives in cabinets marked Hopeless Love had the energy to go out and build empires.
Ergo, he was not in any sort of love with Corinna. Therefore it only remained to get over. . . let’s say, his annoyance that she was going to marry this ghastly French banker. He just wished . . . But set aside what he wished: there was the practical problem that they could bump into each other – she was probably staying at this hotel – and she might address him as Ranklin. She should know better, but to be fair (reluctantly) to her, she wasn’t a trained agent. Not even British, among her other faults.
He could ask at the desk who was staying here – that would be unsuspicious – but he daren’t pretend that Snaipe would know her. If O’Gilroy were back, he could be sent with a discreet note . . . He wondered how he was getting on.
* * *
The Army had used similar wagons in South Africa and O’Gilroy knew that oxen were creatures with just one speed. The wagon-drivers made plenty of noise, but mostly to warn other traffic that they were coming through, unhurried but virtually unstoppable. Now that the wagons were loaded (and with tarpaulins tied over the top, to baffle snoopers) the work-party ambled alongside. There were about a dozen of them, half Turk and half German, with Albrecht and the guard from the train staff among them. Because of that, O’Gilroy stayed well back, stopping to admire the view or consult his map to keep from catching up.
They were now, he reckoned, halfway across the Galata Bridge, low, wide and long, that led to the Pera side. Anyway, in front lay a hillside sparkling with lights brighter and more numerous than the area they had left. And the crowd on the bridge seemed to overflow onto the water. Lights, on small steamers, ferries, sailing ships and rowing-boats, weaved their way to, apparently, one massive impending collision. Yet somehow a clamour of hoots, clangs and shouts kept them apart. Or perhaps drowned the sounds of drowning, for all he could tell.
One other thing he remembered from the war was that oxen might not be fast but they kept going indefinitely. So these buggers might have begun a hike of thirty or forty miles . . . Him, too?
* * *
It could have been a diplomatic drawing-room almost anywhere in the world and identifiable as British only by the royal portrait on an end wall. But its rather cluttered elegance was a comfortable contrast to the outside of the building which, apart from the size of the windows, had the style of a prison block, right down to a high wall and gatehouse. Ranklin had bowed over the hands of His Excellency the Ambassador and his wife, who claimed to be delighted, grinned at Lady Kelso, the guest of honour, and been whisked away by Jarvey, looking even more Death-like in white tie and tails.