Elaine Turtle was standing at the back of the building, beyond the low barrier that separated incoming passengers from those waiting to greet them.
She wore a long-sleeved blue dress today, with ruffles at wrists and throat and a belt of light gilded chain. It had been three days since Kelly last saw her, and his recognition now was not instantaneous. Partly it was the beret that covered the rich curls of her black hair, partly that Tuttle carried a large purse on a shoulder strap for the first time since he had met her. In large measure, Kelly did not recognize Elaine because the physical reality of her was so different – so much less threatening – than memory suffused with the woman’s personality.
He did not dream, about her, but he had begun to dream – and if the strange landscapes he remembered on awakening were not nightmares, they would do till worse came along.
Kelly stopped at the barrier and rested his suitcase on it while he buckled the straps over the latches. None of the soldiers paid him any particular attention. There were enthusiastic greetings in half a dozen languages, chiefly Turkish and German – a Turkish Airways flight from Frankfurt had just disgorged its load of ‘guest workers’ from West Germany. Kelly had to wait for a large family reunion at the nearest opening in the barrier, but he wasn’t in such a hurry that he would attract attention by scissoring his legs over it instead.
Elaine, who had not moved while Kelly meandered through the entry building, stepped to his side as he began to walk out the door. “It’s a long way to the car,” she said, nodding toward the parking lot set off from the terminal area by barbed wire and cyclone fencing. There were more troops outside, and an armored car painted blue to match the berets of the paramilitary police. “Do you want to wait for me to bring the car around?”
“No sweat,” said Kelly, swinging the suitcase at arm’s length in front of him to prove that he could handle the weight. He continued to saunter toward the pedestrian gate at which Elaine had gestured. “You know, I was afraid you people were going to walk me through Customs and make a fuss. I should’ve said something before. Glad you had better sense than I – gave you credit for.”‘
“Given the present political climate,” Elaine said with her eyes on where they were going, “with Ecevit using America as a whipping boy for all the troubles of his administration, I don’t know that we could have done much. Not in the Istanbul District, at any rate.”
She looked up sharply at the man beside her. “Not that you seemed to need help very badly.”
“You wanted somebody who was comfortable in Turkey,” Kelly said. “That much you got.”
He shifted the case from one hand to the other as she led him through a row of parked cars and, on the other side, wrapped his arm around her shoulders in a hug. “Hey, Elaine,” he said, releasing her almost before her light frame began to stiffen beneath the dress, “I’m pumped, but right for the moment I’m feelin’ good.”
He grinned across at her as they continued to stride along, switching the suitcase back to his right hand to prove that the hug had been no more than a friendly gesture. “Look,” he explained, “going – back to work’s – my equivalent of riding the roller coaster, I guess. It’ll be a rush while it lasts, and you don’t have to worry about how I’ll get along with you so long as we’re on the same side, okay? And you handle your end the way I’d want to be able to handle it if it was my job.”
“Rather than handle it like you, you mean?” Elaine asked with the beginning of a smile.
“Right,” agreed Kelly with a broader one, dodging a little Ford Anadol that was being backed from its parking space with more verve than discretion. “Rather than by getting the admin types so mad that they insist on fucking with the operation, which is exactly what I’d do if anybody were silly enough to put me in that slot. I never had a lotta tact, and when things get tense for one reason’r the other – “