The trip back across the Golden Horn to the apartment on Carik Street in the Beyoglu District, not far from Taksim Square, was complicated by the fact that Kelly changed cabs twice more. The friend who was arranging this pickup owed Kelly less than he was risking by going up against Pierrard. The least Kelly intended to do was to prevent fallout in that direction.
The apartment was one of a series of six-to-ten-story new constructions filling the block. The street level held a branch bank whose steel grating had been rolled down for the night, a jewelry store, and a rug shop with a silken Herike on display beneath concealed spotlights. There was a guard in the small elevator lobby, chatting with a policeman who probably found it worth his time to spend his entire shift right there.
Both men shifted to their feet with interest and hostile concern when Kelly stepped into the lobby. “I’m to pick up a case from Miss Ozel on the sixth floor,” Kelly said in Turkish. “For Nureddin.”
Mollified but still cautious, the civilian guard pressed buzzer six on the wall beneath the intercom grating while the policeman studied the taxi waiting outside.
“Yes?” a voice responded, its sex uncertain due to the distortion of the intercom.
“Lady, a man to pick up a package for Nureddin,” the guard explained.
“Oh – thank you. Could you send him up yourself, as a favor to me?”
The guard nodded obsequiously to the speaker grating, causing the policeman to laugh and wink at Kelly.
“Of course, lady,” the civilian said. He unlocked the elevator call button and gestured Kelly into the cage. Theoretically, someone from the apartment itself should have come down to accompany the visitor to the proper floor; but those who could pay for security like this could be expected to circumvent those aspects which caused inconvenience to themselves.
The sixth floor was a single suite. Its door was already ajar when the elevator stopped, and the woman waiting in the opening motioned Kelly within. “Robert – could not be here,” she said in fair English. “He say – he say that this is what you look for.”
What Kelly could see of the apartment was opulent with brassware and wall hangings, but a little overdone for his taste. The same could be said for the woman in a house-dress of multilayered red gauze over an opaque base. She had a fleshy Turkish beauty, with lustrous hair to her waist and breasts that would have been impressive on a much heavier woman … but there are no absolutes of taste, and only her smile was greatly to the taste of Tom Kelly.
“Thank you,” the American said, stepping to the travel-trunk set in the entranceway to await him. “And more than thanks to Bob. It – it’s just as well he’s not here now, but – tell him I’ll see him again. And I won’t forget.”
Kelly had met Bob’s wife, a slim blond of aristocratic beauty whose ancestry went back several centuries in Virginia. Very cool, very intelligent, very nearly perfect . . . and thinking of that as he reached for the case, Kelly could understand Miss Ozel more easily.
“It’s heavy,” warned the woman. “I can get – ”
“Thank you,” Kelly repeated, lifting the trunk by the central strap as if it were an ordinary suitcase. Bob could be depended on to make sure the load was balanced.
Danny Pacheco, who had died below decks on the White Plains, had been a friend of his as of Kelly.
“I guess I need a key to get down, too,” the American said apologetically. The weight of the case forced him into a counter lean as if he were thrusting against a gale.
The room beyond the entrance hall was furnished like that of a wealthy Kurdish chieftain of the past century: the floor not carpeted but overlaid by runners a meter wide and five meters long. Little but the edge of any single carpet showed beyond the edge of the next above; and so on, across the room, while stacked pillows turned the juncture of floor and walls into a continuous couch.