The Grab: A Classic Crime Novel Read online

  I nodded.

  He went on: “What guarantee have we that this won’t happen again? If we lose more time, there’s that forfeiture clause to reckon with if the job lags beyond the scheduled date.”

  We knew what that meant. For every day that we had to work on this project beyond a certain date, Gissenheim’s would have to forfeit a cool ten thousand bucks. A week behind schedule could take all the gilt off the gingerbread, in fact, quite apart from doing the firm’s reputation an appalling amount of harm.

  I said grimly to Dwight: “Don’t you worry about the future, brother. I started making plans an hour back.”

  Dwight grinned at the big taxi sitting in our midst, with that lovely girl reclining in the deep upholstery.

  He said: “I figured you’d got your mind on other plans.”

  I didn’t answer that. For one thing I could see she was terrified out of her wits, just having to sit there in that taxi, not knowing what was ahead for her. I knew, as I watched her nervous little gestures, and the way her eyes went quickly from place to place, apprehensively, that she had had a bad twelve hours of it.

  Marty lounged up, his red hair tousled, as if he had been helping with the repair work himself. He said: “We’re fixing the conveyor belts. But it means stripping them down and re-erecting them all over again. That’s a couple of days’ job before we can get them into operation and the trucks start moving with the spoil.”

  Dwight jerked out a cigarette and then tossed the packet over to us. “I was just telling Joe to watch out because whoever did this might like to give an encore.” Dwight took my proffered light, and then jerked his head towards a distant bunch of cheerful Turkish labourers. “These watchmen we’ve got here aren’t worth a damn.”

  Marty nodded. “I’m with you there, Dwight,” he said. “They told me a good yarn about how they fought against the attackers last night, but my guess is they got to hell out of it the moment they saw there was trouble coming. I reckon they figure they don’t get paid enough to have their faces knocked about.”

  Dwight turned to me. “You got that all figured in your plans?”

  I said: ”I’ve got it all figured.” And then I said, toughly: “I only hope to God they do make another attempt on Gissenheim’s stuff.” I had plans, and they weren’t nice ones for the saboteurs.

  And then I told them they didn’t need me any longer. I said I was clearing off for the day, because my work began after dark. They all looked at me then, and they all looked at the girl, and then they made cracks about my statement, and I realized it had been carelessly-chosen and invited their humour.

  B.G. came over, and asked me for a lift back into town if I was going in with my taxi. I wouldn’t take him all the way, because I didn’t want to go anywhere near Pera where I might be recognized. I had a feeling that that lawyer-man would connect me in time with Marie Konti’s disappearance, and would be jumping in top gear to do something about it.

  I’d got around to the significance of his statement in the foyer, finally. I’d remembered that if a serious charge is brought against a foreign national in Turkey, the foreigner is usually invited to clear out of the country pretty quickly in order to save a lot of bother. In other words, if that highly-placed politician wanted to, he could, in effect, get me deported by threatening civil court proceedings against me. And I knew that was just what he wanted—my abrupt deportation.

  I dropped B.G. at a place where he could quickly expect to pick up a taxi. He didn’t like being out in that hot sunshine on the construction job, and he wanted to get back to the hotel. His excuse was that he wanted to cable a full report to the Detroit office, but my guess was that he wanted to get his fat bulk on a bed and doze through the mid-day heat.

  I had other plans, much more pleasant. We drove down to the harbour, where I paid off that taxi driver, who became my friend for life. Marie Konti walked passively when I took her onto a steamer. She didn’t have any enthusiasm for anything, but she didn’t want to leave me. Wherever I took her seemed good enough for her. I knew the kid was scared stiff of things happening to her, and I suppose she felt that I could protect and defend her.

  We took a steamer out to one of the lovely islands in the Sea of Marmara. It was the largest, Büyükada.

  When we came ashore at sunlit, Prinkipol, the largest town on the island, she seemed to throw off some of her fears, and there was a greater liveliness to her step, and she even smiled at me quickly when she caught my eye.

  I took her by the arm, and she didn’t resist, and we went across and got one of the open horse-drawn carriages, and I told the old driver to take us to the bathing station. I felt that the safest place for that girl that day would be in the anonymity of a crowded bathing beach. Somehow you can never recognize anybody among a throng of undressed people. Besides, I wanted to get her into a state of mind when she would tell me of her own free will what was back of this mystery. I had a feeling that if I began to question her, she would shut up like a clam, and then I wouldn’t know and wouldn’t be able to help her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  INTERLUDE

  It turned out much as I planned. I was nice to the girl, and I didn’t ask her any questions, and in time she began to feel obliged to open up.

  I got towels and swim suits and hired a ‘family’ cabin. We changed in turn and then went and lay in the hot sun under the shade of some tall eucalyptus trees. The sea was within yards of our feet, gently lapping; the sky was a glorious blue, and the atmosphere heavenly. Everywhere around us were bathers and people lying in the sun, but there was a soporific quality about that afternoon which made them restrained in any merriment, so that there were few sounds, and they seemed to drift lazily and acceptably to our drowsy ears.

  We had iced drinks brought to us, and later we went to a beach café and had salads and coffee and lovely Turkish ice-cakes. Then we went for a stroll along the water’s edge as the sun declined and a gentle coolness came to temper the heat of the day. Our feet splashed in the warm shallows. I held her hand clasped in mine, and she leaned against me and I could feel the warmth of her arm against my own. When we were well away from the bathers, among some rocks which came to form a spit out to sea, she sat down, and I sprawled myself at her feet. She was framed against the glorious blue of that Marmara sky—her gleaming coils of black, wavy hair reflected the brilliant sunshine, and the warmth of the day had brought a flush to her lovely face, and her eyes were suddenly bright and eager and hopeful. She was looking at me, and those eyes were brimming with friendliness—with more than friendliness, I began to think.

  Suddenly she began to talk to me, and I was silent because I had waited for this. She said: “I must tell you about this affair. I’m in terrible trouble, and I don’t know how to escape from it. Worse than that, I’m afraid trouble might come to other people—to my parents in Ankara.

  “I’m sorry that I had to lie to you in the hotel foyer this morning. But I had no alternative.” Her head shook desperately, as if she were recalling the frustration of that moment, and the embarrassing scene that had followed it, when all eyes became centred upon Joe P. Heggy and herself.

  “That lawyer-man, as you call him, has a hold on me. He can blackmail me and my parents and I cannot do anything about it if I wish to remain in Turkey.”

  I looked up at her at that, but still kept silent, and she continued, and it seemed that her confidence in me grew so that her speech became less halting and more eager in her efforts to explain things.

  “You see, it all started when von Papen became Hitler’s ambassador to Turkey in 1943.”

  I nodded. I knew what that connoted.

  I found myself speaking then. “It’s something to do with your leaving this country? You’re not a Turkish national?”

  She shook her head, and her hair came across her bare, rounded shoulders and emphasised their soft whiteness.

  “My family have lived in Turkey for generations. My father is a prosperous merchant in Ankara, with big tra
de connections with Italy.

  “Before the von Papen law, as we still call it, was passed, he used to go regularly to Italy on business, and sometimes he would take his family with him. But now he is in this position, that he dare not go to Italy, because if he leaves this country he, an Italian subject still, for all his long residence in Turkey, will be refused right of re-entry.”

  Her shoulders shrugged helplessly. “We like Turkey. We’d like to remain here. And besides, we have a fine business in this country, so we don’t want to be refused the right to live and work here. However, there was nothing we could do about it, and my father hasn’t been to Italy for more than ten years, though at times his business really does require him to go there.

  “But I went there early this year. I found that if you put a bribe in the right place, it was possible to have your passport manipulated so that it doesn’t show any exit declaration. It’s expensive, but this year it became necessary for me to go to Italy. My sister is married and lives there, and she was very ill. So we paid the bribe, and I flew to Italy. It worked beautifully, and seemed worth the money, because there was no trouble at all when I returned to Istanbul.”

  Her eyes looked beyond me, out to the distant rolling waves of the sea. There was pain and worry returning to them now. “The trouble began a few weeks after I returned. A man came to me and said it was a mistake—that I should have paid twice what I had paid for that passport manipulation. I told him that there was no mistake, and I refused to pay the money.”

  I stirred. “Good for you, baby. That’s the way to treat blackmailers.”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t good for me. I had to pay him in the end, because one day he came with photographs, and those photographs showed me getting onto an aeroplane, they showed me walking the streets of Rome, and they showed my passport in the hands of the Immigration Officer at Rome airport.”

  My eyes lifted and met those brown ones. They were frantic again as she recalled the helplessness of her situation.

  She went on: “It was no good fighting against the blackmailers. My father had to pay them, and, go on paying them. He wanted his daughter with him here in Turkey, and when they threatened to turn those photographs over to the Turkish Immigration Department, he knew they would keep their threat.”

  She shrugged. “He kept on paying them, and for six months he has never been free from their demands. Now we realize that the risks they took to get my passport manipulated was only in order to put me in a position to be blackmailed.”

  Now she looked at me, and her hands seemed to wring with the panic and concern that gripped her. “Oh, God, what can I do?”

  I said: “But you did finally refuse their demands?”

  “I did.” She nodded. “Finally, I decided I couldn’t see my father bled in the way they were bleeding him. So I thought that if I just disappeared, it would end their hold on my father. I intended to return when it seemed safe to do so. I came to Istanbul, intending to hide out somewhere, but they were smart, and almost the moment I arrived at this hotel they were here to meet me. They came to my room, and they told me not to try to go into hiding—they ordered me to go back to my father, so that they could resume their blackmailing. I told them I wasn’t going back, that I was going to hide myself where they would never find me.”

  The girl shivered. “I went to bed early that night, filled with this resolve next day to go into hiding. Soon after I got to bed I saw the door opening, and then two big men came rushing into my room. One of them said: ‘You’re coming with us. Don’t shout, because that’ll be so much the worse for you. If you do, the police will just get to know you have forfeited your residential qualification in Istanbul.’ They dragged me into the elevator, which the hotel clerk operated. Then they took me outside into a car—”

  I nodded. “That’s where I came in.” I was remembering that scene, the first time I had seen Marie Konti. And I was remembering her frantic, silent fear as she struggled helplessly in the grasp of those two brutal men. I remembered that policeman in the shadows, and I suddenly thought: “In spite of what that Turkish officer said, the big grafter had bribed one of his men.”

  “They took me to a big house on the outskirts of Istanbul. I don’t know whose house it was, but they brought my clothes, and they were intending to drive me back to my father’s place today, with fresh demands for money because I had become awkward. But things began to go wrong, apparently. The telephone kept ringing, and those men with me appeared to become increasingly agitated.”

  I let out my breath in a deep, gratified sigh. “I guess Joe P. Heggy was getting into their hair right then!” It was just very unfortunate for them that I had been attracted to the window overlooking that deserted alley just when I did. And then my report to the police must have caused further alarm.

  The girl went on with her story. “I heard them give panicky instructions for some girl they knew to go and take my place in the hotel in case the police came to ask awkward questions.” I nodded, but I didn’t tell Marie Konti of the not unpleasant encounter I’d had with that slim, rather heavy-browed substitute.

  “This morning, though, they seemed to get in a very great panic, and suddenly that lawyer-man, as you call him, came on the scene. The situation must have seemed dangerous for him to show himself as he did, because it became obvious to me at once that he was the man behind this passport manipulating and the blackmail that followed. He was very rough with his tongue. He told me that whatever I suspected, I couldn’t pin onto him. And he told me that if I was the slightest way uncooperative, he’d see that I was sent out of the country and my father’s business would be smashed. Oh, I knew he wasn’t making idle talk! In this country such men are very, very powerful.

  “I was ordered to return to the hotel and declare that I had been there all the time and flatly contradict everything you said.” Her soft, rounded shoulders lifted in the tiniest of shrugs. Her eyes brooded upon me. “That’s my story. Now you know everything. But I was glad when you suddenly pulled me into that taxi, because right from the moment I saw you I felt you could help me if anyone could.”

  I put my arms round her then. You know how it is. You get a big, brotherly feeling and you put your arms round the girl. And then you stop feeling like a brother, but you go on keeping your arms round her, at any rate if she’s a wow of a girl like Marie Konti.

  And she didn’t object in the least. Evidently I inspired her, and she wanted inspiration badly at that moment.

  So we lay in the hot sand under the declining sun for a long time, and we talked about the plight she was in, and sometimes we didn’t talk at all. It was as nice an afternoon as any trouble-buster could wish.

  We swam in the soft, warm water of that sparkling sunlit sea, and while we romped in the water she seemed to forget the menace that still hung over her, and she was as merry and laughing-eyed as probably she had ever been. But I wasn’t free from thought. I knew that this blackmailing situation had got out of hand....

  When a man as big as that politician found himself involved in a risk of exposure, you can expect anything to happen....

  I expected it....

  They had tried to kill me; and now I knew they would try to kill both of us. I looked at that lovely young face, and I thought: “Not on your life. Heggy likes faces like Marie’s. She’s going to be around for quite a while!”

  So as I swam I planned, and because my job is trouble-busting, I planned to bust this other piece of trouble....

  We changed and then took a carriage back to the harbour across the island. As we lolled on the slippery, smooth-leather upholstery, with that jogging pair of horses in front of us, I brought the subject round again to our problems. I said: “Marie, why should your blackmailing friends try to put us behind schedule on the construction job?”

  I didn’t believe that myself, but I threw the thought in the air to see if Marie had some oddment of information, which might tie her troubles with Gissenheim’s.

  She shook
her head, wonderingly. “Did they do all that damage?” she asked innocently. So evidently she didn’t know of any connection between the two affairs.

  I’d been thinking along those lines myself, although there is a tendency to feel that all things are related when those things the happening to yourself. I was thinking:

  “It wasn’t those blackmailers. Some others, quite apart from them, are on the loose, and did it.”

  And anyone’s guess as to their identity was as good as mine.

  Still, I had got plans made to cover any further attack on the construction site. I was rather chuckling about those plans, because I thought what eye-popping there would be from Marty and Dwight and Gorby and the other boys when they saw what I had thought up.

  As we neared the wharf where the old steamers tied up, the girl’s fears began to return to her. She whispered: “Couldn’t we stay on this island? I—I feel safe here.”

  I looked at her and thought: “Boy, would I like to stay on this island with you!” But aloud I said: “Nope. They’d soon find out you were here. The thing to do is, to go out and attack them. That’s the only way to break up trouble—you go out deliberately to attack it.”

  She asked me: “And can you attack it?”

  I nodded. I didn’t tell her she was going to be the bait to bring the trouble down within attacking distance.

  I wasn’t being unscrupulous in making that my plan, either. I didn’t want any harm to come to this girl, but I could see only one way of smashing this menace so that she was never again affected by those blackmailers.

  As we paid off our driver and started to walk along the short, crowded pier, with its bustling, gay throng of young people eternally promenading in the sunshine.

  I thought I saw someone familiar ahead. It was just a glimpse, and then he had gone, and I thought, surely I must have made a mistake! We went aboard the ship, and as we left the firm shore of Büyükada it seemed that a cloud descended upon that girl. Her fears returned anew, and she was holding onto my arm now as if terrified to let go of it.