In back of me were four men in black suits and hats, their collars buttoned without neckties, each carrying a case for a musical instrument. They had come out of the house across from the restaurant. I slid my hand in my jacket and touched the Astras grip. The leader of the musicians opened his case and brought out a balalaika.
“Nervous about something, Mr. Senevres?” It was a husky voice, unmistakably female.
I turned around. The fashion model smiled quizzically, and for the first time I noticed that her table was set for two.
Obviously she wasn’t a model, but she was an unforgettably beautiful woman. In her early twenties, eyes wide set and dark in contrast to her golden hair, a high-bridged nose, full lips. Her Valentino dress clung to her full breasts and rounded hips. A sandal dangled from her tanned toes. Her smile grew and expressed amusement, intelligence, and eroticism.
I sat down and looked with frank amazement.
“You were expecting me, weren’t you?” she asked. Her accent was American, but with unusual poise, elegance, and a hint of Italian ripeness.
“I was expecting someone. Hardly you.”
“You don’t seem too upset, really,” she observed rightly. “I know how Turkish men are about women.”
“Do you?” I let that question hang in the air for a second, then added, “I also know how your people are about women. In business, I mean. I wonder if they are serious in sending you.”
She touched my hand lightly.
“My dear Mr. Senevres, do you think I would have come if they weren’t?” Behind us the musicians were tuning their instruments. “In fact, you can thank my interest that those men are carrying balalaikas instead of guns. Some of the people at the meeting thought you should simply be eliminated. What’s good to order here?” Her manner was smooth and confident.
I summoned the waiter and ordered stuffed grape leaves, white cheese, and a bottle of raki.
“Raki, that’s your name isn’t it? Or is it a nickname?”
“It’s what you can call me. What do I call you?”
“Vera Cesare.”
“Then I’ll call you Vera, like Americans do.”
“Oh, you’d never be American,” she laughed. “But I’ll find out what you really are.”
The grape leaves were tasty and tart, the cheese sharp, and the raki a powerful, licorice nectar. While we talked, the breeze picked up, ruffling the fine gold hair on Vera Cesare’s shoulders.
“There are some problems you may not be aware of. We will have to travel to different places, some large cities, and some small towns. There will be some labor and a small amount of danger. I had expected a man to be traveling with me, and it is too late to change plans now.”
“I assumed all that, Raki. The people who sent me assumed that, too. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of traveling with a woman?”
“I am afraid of weakness, cuteness, and stupidity. These are not necessarily female traits. But they are traits of most American women.” I watched her keenly for any blush of anger.
“You won’t have any cause for complaint,” Vera Cesare responded without a tremor in her voice.
The little band of musicians was in full swing now, serenading each table in turn. Miss Cesare and I might have been lovers. Only might have been. What we were discussing was a $20 million shipment of misery and death.
“And you can promise full delivery within two months, Raki? By boat or plane?” she pressed.
“You will see.”
“You don’t trust me, I can understand. But I must report something to the people who sent me. After all, you hold a $100,000 deposit of ours.”
“Not a deposit, payment for sale of shares, all very legal.”
“Shares in a little German company you use as your cover,” Vera corrected me. “We’ve checked into Hauffmann Ubersee Gesellschaft, of course. They sell gingerbread houses to the United States and South Africa. We aren’t interested in gingerbread houses.” There was an antique cameo ring on her left land. She rubbed her finger idly over it as she talked. “However, we understand how convenient a business cover can be, and we are willing to consider the $100,000 as a first installment on the $1 million we’ll pay you on delivery in New York. That’s quite an improvement on the $500 you’d get for 200 kilos here in Turkey, isn’t it?”
Beyond the beautiful face and body was the mind of an iron Mafioso. I’d see it many times later but this was my first experience.
“Vera, it would be a mistake to play games with me. I intend to put the Corsicans out of business, simply because I’m a better businessman. The price you’re proposing to give me is the price you pay for wholesale heroin in Marseilles. That price is doubled on delivery in New York. Your people will pay me $2 million, plus a bonus of another $100,000.”
“Why in the world should we do that?”
“Because I’m worth it. Because you have never had that much heroin brought to you in one shipment before. Because it is the best heroin. And because I’m growing tired of this awful music.”
We were surrounded by the four musicians plucking their instruments and wailing out of harmony.
“You don’t like Turkish music?” Vera Cesare feigned surprise.
“It’s only that the balalaika isn’t his best instrument.”
I reached out to the leader of the band and pulled his jacket back far enough to reveal the .45 in his belt. Then I stuffed a ten-lira note beside the gun and left more money on the table as I rose.
“Where are you staying?” I asked the girl.
She was taken aback but not dumbfounded.
“At the Buyuk Efes Hotel.”
“Be outside it in four hours with a nightbag, and be alone.”
“Raki,” she said as I started to leave.
“Yes?”
“I think we’ll work very well together.”
The band leader, in pulling out the money from his pants, dropped his balalaika. It made a mournful sound.
Four hours later I approached the expensive Buyuk Efes Hotel, off Ataturk Square. It wasn’t hard to spot Vera Cesare. Among the arguing cab drivers and pasty-faced tourists she stood out like Botticellis Venus. A Venus with a handgun, I mused, and I wondered what kind of ladylike weapon she carried, a Beretta or a Kit. With all the traffic, there was no point in my looking for unwanted company.
I brought my Citroën to a stop in front of her.
“Get in.”
She threw her bag onto the back seat and sat next to me. We pulled away from the hotel onto the modem sea-front boulevard that curves around the Gulf of Izmir.
“Where are we going? Or is that a stupid question?” she asked.
I gave her a look that said, “Yes.”
Occasionally, I glanced into the car’s side mirror. The roads of Izmir are like an automotive museum, except that all the old Buicks, Studebakers, Packards, Fords, and Plymouths are still rolling. A ’53 Olds goes for $3,000 in Izmir. The cab owners who drive them stuff so many passengers inside that Turks call them dolmus, the word for stuffed grape leaves. A dozen of the aged dolmus followed me, and it was impossible to make out any individual faces.
I drove for a mile along the boulevard before cutting through the gypsy section and heading for the mountain road. One cab peeled off from the others in my wake. We climbed past fig orchards and groves of wild azalea, with the cab still tagging.
“I thought you were coming alone, Vera.”
She looked behind.
“Damn. I told them to stay away,” she said with pique.
“They don’t take orders from you?”