Istanbul Passage by Joseph Kanon Page B

can’t trust anybody now. Not here. Not in Ankara.” He put his hand to his mouth, thinking. “But we have one piece of luck.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Nobody’s looking for you. Or they’d already be here. They’ll think I’m running, not hiding. Who would be hiding me?”
    “Who would.”
    “And then they’ll think I’m gone. We can do it.” He paused. “If no one else knows. Just you.”
    “Do what?”
    “Get me out. Istanbul—it’s a trap now. We have to leave here.”
    Leon was quiet for a minute, then got up. “To save your skin.”
    “My skin? I saw your face, when I told you about Washington. A valuable chip, no? People will want to hear about him.” He looked up. “Always have something to trade.”
    Leon stood still for a second, as if he were balancing himself, testing his footing. Alexei’s eyes, gray and clear, insistent. Which hadn’t seen anything at the abattoir. He said. Holding up his bargaining chip.
    “Let’s start with the gun then,” Leon said. “One less complication. I’d better have it back.”
    “The gun?” Alexei said, not expecting this. “What are you going to do with it?”
    “Get rid of it,” Leon said, picking up the empty food bag.
    “And how do I protect myself here?”
    “Use the one you brought with you,” Leon said, looking at him. “You’d have to have one. You just wanted this for a little insurance. And maybe to see if I was dumb enough to give it to you.” He held out his hand. “It’s a murder weapon now. Evidence. You might use it to put me there. In Bebek. If things don’t go well. Right?”
    Alexei looked at the open hand, then reached into his pocket and took out the gun, smiling a little. “A quick learner.” He handed it over.
    “You’re right about the plane,” Leon said, putting the gun in the bag. “I’ll arrange something else.” He started for the door. “Just stay put. You’re safe here.”
    “And that’s my protection now,” Alexei said, nodding to the lock. “A door.” He looked at Leon. “And you.”
    Leon reached for the knob.
    “By the way, it matters to you? What happened at Străuleşti? I wasn’t part of that. What they did. If your friend says yes, he’s lying.” Making a case now, reassuring. “I wasn’t part of that.”
    Leon turned. “That must be a comfort.”
    On the ferry back, Leon stayed out on the lower deck, dropping the bag over the side halfway across, even the sound of the small splash covered by the grind of the motors. Ibrahim the Sot had drowned his whole harem here, sewn into sacks. The gun was easier. Just another secret in the Bosphorus. Nothing to connect him now to the quay, nothing to connect Mihai. Not even Alexei once he could pass him along the chain Tommy had tried to break. His new partner. He looked down at the dark water, uneasy again. The gun would be settling on the bottom, lodging itself in the silt, too heavy for the current. Except there were two currents in the Bosphorus, he’d read somewhere, the surface current flowing south and a deep undercurrent kanal flowing north, dense and saline, strong enough to drag a fishing boat by its net, pull someone off course.
    Inside the cabin, the tea man was handing a tulip glass to a man in a knit cap, the kind Mihai had worn. A dockworker? A thief? Who was anybody? Tommy ordering drinks at the Park, every second a betrayal. Years of it. You can’t trust anybody now, Alexei had said, asking Leon to trust him.

T HE FUNERAL WAS HELD at Christ Church, near the Galata Tower, with a reception to follow in one of the private rooms at the Pera Palas. It was the same service Tommy would have had however he had died—the same hymns, the same homily about a man taken too soon, the same teary handkerchiefs. But he hadn’t just died, released from illness. He’d been killed, the violence of it disturbing, somehow shaming, as if he’d been complicit in his own death. So people said comforting things to Barbara and fidgeted in their