Istanbul by Colin Falconer Read Free Book Online Page B

just a rather quirky place on the edge of Europe; from today it was a very, very dangerous place to be.
     
     
     
    Daniela hurried through the cobbled streets of the Jewish Quarter, and thought about her Englishman. He would never know how much he meant to her. He was that rarest of treasures, a man who treated her kindly and wanted nothing from her.
    He had saved her twice, and found her places to stay when she had nowhere else to go, and had not demanded sexual favours in return. From the moment she had seen him she knew she could trust him. Was that what they called love at first sight?
    But she was no good for him. He was married and soon he would be leaving Bucharest. Men like him did not have affairs and she was not about to take him away from his wife. And there was so much he did not know about her, that she had not told him, and it made anything between them quite impossible.
    She had lied to him about so much, but those lies would never hurt him, because she would never see him again, despite what she had written in the letter. Perhaps in another lifetime they could find each other again.
     
     
     

CHAPTER 14
     
    Two days later Clive Allen was at the Piatsa Universitatea, reporting on an Iron Guard demonstration. A gang of young students chased him because he was a foreigner. They cornered him in an alleyway off the boulevard and beat him with fists and iron bars. Another journalist from Havas, a French agency, managed to get away and drove back to the Athenee Palace to get help.
    When Max and a handful of other journalists went back to the square in Max’s Humber, they found Clive lying face down on the pavement, his head surrounded by a pool of blood. A crowd had gathered around him.
    He had been so badly beaten one of his eyeballs had removed from its socket and all his teeth were broken. He was mercifully unconscious. His head was so swollen that Max only recognised him from his suit.
    They picked him up and took him to the nearest hospital, where a Romanian doctor left him lying on a gurney for two hours. The next day Hoare, the Minister, arranged for him to be evacuated on a ship back to England but he died halfway between Constanza and Istanbul.
    Nick never mentioned the incident to Abrams. But he often wondered about it. In his experience, there were few coincidences in his profession.
     
     
     
    That same evening Nick saw Daniela Simonici in the American Bar.
    She was surrounded by three Wehrmacht officers. The broken and dishevelled girl he remembered was gone. The transformation was astonishing.
    She must have sensed his gaze, for her eyes moved from her companions to him, and when she saw him the dazzling smile dropped away.
    One of the Wehrmacht officers saw Nick staring. He put a hand around Daniela’s shoulders and smiled through a wreath of smoke. First Paris, then Dun-kirk; they got everything they wanted.
    Haller watched with naked jealousy from a corner table. He was not as drunk as the night Nick had first seen him; he was at least able to sit unsupported, a significant improvement.
    ‘Do you have a light?’ a voice said in German.
    Nick turned around. The man was short and stocky, with greying hair. He had a Nazi lapel pin. Nick produced a lighter.
    ‘You are an Englisher.’
    ‘What gave me away?’
    ‘You do not have a girl with you,’ he said with a low chuckle. ‘Siegfried Maier. At your service.’ He gave a slight bow and clicked his heels in the Prussian manner.
    ‘Nicholas Davis. I’m with the British Legation.’
    ‘Ah, a diplomat. I have never met so many diplomats since I have been here in Bucharest.’
    ‘It’s a place that requires a lot of diplomacy. What do you do, Herr Maier?’
    ‘I have business interests,’ he said easily.
    Nick could imagine what those interests were. For months now the government had been closing down Jewish-run businesses and arresting the proprietors. Now German and Italian businessmen were rushing to Romania to buy banks and