The Light of Day by Eric Ambler Read Free Book Online

carnet out and checked the car's route. It had come from Switzerland, via Italy and the Brindisi ferry to Patras. The counterfoils showed that Fraulein Lipp had been with the car herself then. She, at least, did know about ferrying cars by sea. However, that only made the whole thing more mysterious.
    And then I remembered something. Harper had spoken of the possibility of a return journey, of my being wanted to drive the car back from Istanbul to Athens. Supposing that was the real point of the whole thing. I drive from Greece into Turkey. Everything is perfectly open and above board. Both Greek and Turkish customs would see and remember car and chauffeur. Some days later, the same car and chauffeur return. 'How was Istanbul, friend? Is your stomach still with you? Anything to declare? No fat-tailed sheep hidden in the back? Pass, friend, pass.' And then the car goes back to the garage in the Piraeus, for the man in the blue suit to recover the packages of heroin concealed along the inner recesses of the chassis members, under the wheel arches of the body, and inside the cowling beside the automatic transmission. Unless, that is, there is a Macedonian son-of-a-bitch on the Greek side who's out to win himself a medal. In that event, what you get is the strange case of the respectable Swiss lady's disreputable chauffeur who gets caught smuggling heroin, and Yours Truly is up the creek.
    All I could do was play it by ear.
    I got the Lincoln back on the road again and drove on. I reached Salonika soon after six mat evening. Just to be on the safe side, I pulled into a big garage and gave the boy a couple of drachmas to put the car up on the hydraulic lift. I said I was looking for a rattle. There were no signs of new welding. I was not surprised. By then I had pretty well made up my mind that it would be the return journey that mattered.
    I found a small comfortable hotel, treated myself to a good dinner and a bottle of wine at Harper's expense, and went to bed early. I made an early start the following morning, too. It is an eight-hour run from Salonika across Thrace to the Turkish frontier near Edirne (Adrianople as it used to be called), and if you arrive late you sometimes find that the road-traffic customs post has closed for the night.
    I arrived at about four-thirty and went through the Greek control without difficulty. At Karaagac, on the Turkish side, I had to wait while they cleared some farm trucks ahead of me. After about twenty minutes, however, I was able to drive up to the barrier. When I went into the customs post with the carnet and my other papers, the place was practically empty.
    Naturally, I was more concerned about the car than with myself, so I simply left my passport and currency declaration with the security man, and went straight over to the customs desk to hand in the carnet.
    Everything seemed to be going all right. A customs inspector went out to the car with me, looked in my bag and merely glanced in the car. He was bored and looking forward to his supper.
    'Tourisme ?' he asked.
    ‘Yes.'
    We went back inside and he proceeded to stamp and validate the carnet for the car's entry, and tear out his part of the counterfoil. He was just folding the carnet and handing it back when I felt a sharp tap on my shoulder.
    It was the security man. He had my passport in his hand. I went to take it, but he shook his head and,began waving it under my nose and saying something in Turkish.
    I speak Egyptian Arabic and there are many Arabic words in Turkish; but the Turks pronounce them in a funny way and use a lot of Persian and old Turkish words mixed up with them. I shrugged helplessly. Then he said it in French and I understood.
    My passport was three months out of date.
    I knew at once how it had happened. Earlier in the year I had had some differences with the Egyptian consular people (or 'United Arab Republic' as they preferred to call themselves) and had allowed the whole question of my passport to slide. In