The Light of Day by Eric Ambler Read Free Book Online Page A

fact, I had made up my mind to tell the Egyptians what they could do with their passport, and approach the British with a view to reclaiming my United Kingdom citizenship; to which, I want to make it clear, I am perfectly entitled. The thing was that, being so busy, I had just not bothered to fill in all the necessary forms. My Greek permis de séjour was in order, and that was all I normally needed in the way of papers. Frankly, I find all this paper regimentation we have to go through nowadays extremely boring. Naturally, with all the anxiety I had had over Harper, I had not thought to look at the date on my passport. If I had known that it was out of date, obviously I would have taken more trouble with the security man, kept him in conversation while he was doing the stamping or something like that. I have never had any bother like that before.
    As it was, the whole thing became utterly disastrous; certainly through no fault of mine. The security man refused to stamp the passport. He said that I had to drive back to Salonika and have the passport renewed by the Egyptian vice-consul there before I could be admitted.
    That would have been impossible as it happened; but I did not even have to try to explain why. The customs inspector chimed in at that point, waving the carnet and shouting that the car had been admitted and was now legally in Turkey. As I had not been admitted and was not, therefore, legally in Turkey, how was I, legally, to take the car out again? What did it matter if the passport was out of date? It was only a matter of three months. Why did he not just stamp the passport, admit me and forget about it?
    At least that was what I think he said. They had lapsed into Turkish now and were bawling at one another as if I did not exist. If I could have got the security man alone, I aid have tried to bribe him; but with the other one there was too dangerous. Finally, they both went off to see some superior officer and left me standing there, without carnet or passport, but with, I admit it frankly, a bad case of the jitters. Really, my only hope at that point was that they would do what the customs inspector wanted and overlook the date on the passport.
    With any hick, that might have happened. I say 'with any luck’, although things would still have been awkward even if they had let me through. I would have had somehow to buy an Egyptian consular stamp in Istanbul and forge the renewal in the passport—not easy. Or I would have had to have gone to the British Consulate-General, reported a lost British passport and tried to winkle a temporary travel document out of them before they had had time to check up—not easy either. But at least those would have been the sort of difficulties a man in my anomalous position would understand and could cope with. The difficulties that, in fact, I did have to face were quite outside anything I had ever before experienced.
    I stood there in the customs shed for about ten minutes, watched by an armed guard on the door who looked as if he would have liked nothing better than an excuse for shooting me. I pretended not to notice him; but his presence did not improve matters. In fact, I was beginning to get an attack of my indigestion.
    After a while, the security man came back and beckoned to me I went with him, along a passage with a small barrack-room off it, to a door at the end.
    ‘What now?' I asked in French.
    'You must see the Commandant of the post.'
    He knocked at the door and ushered me in.
    Inside was a small bare office with some hard chairs and a green baize trestle table in the centre.   The customs inspector stood beside the table. Seated at it was a man of about my own age with a lined, sallow face. He wore some sort of officer's uniform I think he belonged to the military security police. He had the carnet and my passport on the table in front of him.
    He looked up at me disagreeably.
    ‘This is your passport?' He spoke good French.
    'Yes, sir. And I can only say