“I’m going to check with the indigs, see if I can pull a favor or two,” the sergeant continued. “If it was just you, sir” – he spread his hands – “maybe we could stick you in the rear seat of something. Two of you, that’s a bit of a problem – not anything to do with you, you understand, ma’am.”
Kelly had been sitting on the arm of one of the office chairs along the wall. Now he stood up but faced the plastic relief map of Anatolia instead of the sergeant to avoid making a threat by his posture. “Ah, look, Sergeant Atwater,” he said, getting his voice back under control after the first few syllables, “that card really means what it says, absolute priority. If that means stranding the ambassador in Kars, that’s what it means.”
He turned carefully, thrusting his hands in his hip pockets and looking at the desk before he added, “And if there’s a Logistics Support aircraft handy, it means that too.”
Gisela had judged the conversation perfectly. She sat as still as the chair beneath her, examining her nails. Because she so perfectly mimicked a piece of furniture, the two Americans were able to hold the necessary discussion for which she should not have been present.
“Yessir, I sorta figured that,” said Sergeant Atwater with a grimace. He rubbed his forehead and thinning hair with his palm, then returned the card to Kelly. “There’s a bird here, you bet; only, you see, I don’t dispatch ’em, exactly.”
The hefty noncom spread his hands again. “It’s not Logistics Support, it’s Communications Service. For this week at least. But I won’t BS you, it’s just the situation that’s the problem.”
“Well, you’ve got the codes, haven’t you?” the veteran asked in amazement. “I know it’s got to be authorized stateside, but it has been. Just punch it in and the confirmation’ll be along soonest. This signature” – he raised the card so that the back was to Atwater – “ain’t a facsimile, friend.”
“Right, Colonel, didn’t think it was,” the sergeant said.
He was sweating profusely, though his manner was one of angry frustration rather than fear. Atwater was within a year of retirement and he knew that if he did his job by the rules, his ass was covered no matter how hacked off anybody got about it. But that wasn’t the way to do a job right; and, like most members of most bureaucracies, the sergeant really liked to do his job right.
“Look, the way it is, I can’t get stateside on a protected line to check those codes,” he said, gesturing with a crooked finger at the card Kelly held. “I can’t even get Rome, which’d be good enough. All the secure lines’re locked up with priority traffic. Somebody’s really dumped manure in the blender” – he nodded to the silent Gisela and a drop of perspiration wobbled off his nose – “if you’ll pardon me, ma’am. It don’t seem to be Double-you Double-you Three from anything BBC or Armed Forces radio say, they’re talking progress in Geneva … but it’s a flap and no mistake.”
“I think,” said Tom Kelly, looking at the woman who was as still as a blond caryatid, “we’d better get to Diyarbakir.”
Gisela raised her head and nodded.
“Right,” said Atwater, sucking his lips inward so that his moustache twitched. “We’ll go talk to the man, and if he’ll fly you, I’ll log it as authorized pending confirmation.”
The sergeant led the way down the hall. The next room had a Dutch door, both halves closed, with the legend Messages on the top portion and a counter built out from the lower one. Kelly’s face stiffened as he strode past and he felt the weight of the tape recorder in his attache case. “Hang on,” he said, though part of him knew he ought to wait until he was wheels-up from Istanbul. He rapped on the door.
The upper panel was opened at once by an American airman. Behind him a partition baffled the remainder of the room from the hallway. “Look, Don,” he said, looking past Kelly to Sergeant Atwater, “it’ll go when it goes. What can I say?” There was a muted clatter of static and machinery from behind him.