Читать книгу Deadline Istanbul (The Elizabeth Darcy Series) - Peggy Hanson - Страница 27

CHAPTER 23

“Indeed you are mistaken. I have no such injuries to resent. It is not of peculiar, but of general evils, which I am now complaining.”

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I want to see the restaurant where Peter missed the party,” I told Andover. At Beşiktaş wharf, the car slowed and nosed its way into line with other vehicles dropping off ferry commuters.

“That can be arranged.” Andover reached for the door handle on his side.

“And where did Peter live?” I grabbed my purse and my own door handle. Bayram could give me that information, but I wanted my own government to tell me.

“He lived up the Bosphorus from here, in Yeniköy.”

We were out of the car now and Andover walked around to my side to extend a gentlemanly arm. Yeniköy. I’d go soon.

The driver drove away. Saying we’d take the scenic route to his house, Andover led the way across the rain-slick road to the wooden building where he bought two coin-like jetons. We waited on hard wooden benches for the next ferry. The wait was made more interesting by a basket of multi-colored kittens in a corner of the room. The calico mother cat watched warily as I petted her offspring, but when I found a cookie in my bag and offered it, she accepted with grace, watched indulgently by other passengers.

Should I have waited a day or two before accompanying a stranger to an unknown address in the evening dark? Especially on a rainy night. I breathed that thought back.

It turned out the ferry ride made sense. Andover’s old wooden yali was across the Bosphorus from the ferry pier at Beşiktaş, in Ҫengelköy, a village on the Asian side. Ҫengelköy. I’d run across that name before.

During the twenty-minute passage, blurred lights of fellow ferries crossed our path in the dusk, sounding their combination whoops and wails to warn small boats with no lights. Once in a while came the deeper boom of a Russian tanker plying its careful way past hidden obstacles in the narrow waters that comprise the northern giant’s only all-weather escape by sea.

When I’d been here last, the Soviet Union was the big enemy of the West. Now Islamist terrorists filled that role. Turkey’d had its own share of terrorism, often aimed at intellectual, secular Turks. Most of it was rightly blamed on Kurdish separatists, but terrorists often weave spider-web networks that are hard to trace.

Inside the smoke-filled ferry cabin, Andover and I exchanged the usual small talk of the wandering expatriate: Who was posted in Dubai or Karachi in which years? Did you know the Ambassador in Tashkent? Over the years, I’ve found that almost everyone I encounter outside America knows at least one person I do. The global world of professional expatriates is small.

“Did you know Peter Franklin before Istanbul?” It was a natural question given our conversation.

Andover looked thoughtful. “Well…yes, come to think of it, I guess we overlapped a little in Cairo. Back in the ‘80s, it would be. Didn’t know him well until we both came here, though.” He had an air of sad reminiscence.

My feelings, exactly.