“Turkish rugs.”
“Turkish Delight!”
“Wait a minute,” Stanton protested. “Is that something sexual?”
“Of course not, stupid! They’re flavored candy cubes dusted with sugar.”
“Sort of like Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock?”
“Nothing like that. Brighton Rock is a stick of hard candy.”
“Well, they’re both candies,” Stanton insisted as the plane landed none too gently on the tarmac.
They were seated near the front of the flight from London’s Heathrow, where they’d had to change planes. As they left the plane and made their way up the Jetway, he tried again. “Turkey trot.”
“It has to be Turkish, Stanton. That’s an American dance, named after the bird.”
“But the bird was named after the country, wasn’t it?”
“Only through some confusion. It’s a long story.”
“You can tell me on the way home,” he decided. “Let’s check in at our hotel and go see the client.”
They’d booked a room at the Pierre Loti, a modern luxury hotel whose only drawback was its location in a rather noisy part of the city. But they’d just be there two nights and it seemed they deserved a bit of luxury after their recent journey to rural China.
Stanton & Ives was a worldwide courier service for companies and individuals who needed instant, guaranteed delivery or pickup anywhere on earth. They’d started the company after graduating from Princeton together, and thus far the business had been mildly profitable. They maintained a small office across from the Strand Bookstore on lower Broadway, and employed a secretary to handle business when they were away on assignments, usually together.
When she saw the massive bed in their hotel room, Ives suggested they spend both days in bed and forget about the assignment, but Stanton was more practical. Admiring her long legs as she stretched out on the counterpane, he reminded her they’d be meeting with the client first thing in the morning.
The assignment this time was to pick up a prime example of Ottoman calligraphy and transport it to Berlin, where a wealthy German collector had recently purchased it for just under one million dollars. “Calligraphy?” Ives had questioned at the time. “You mean like handwriting?”
“I suspect it’s more than handwriting,” Stanton told her. “We’ll see.”
As they left the hotel in the morning they were accosted by a street vendor selling bread rings. His grizzled face showed the nicks and scars of a hard life, but not a shy one. “Whatever you need,” he told them in accented English. “Bread rings, fresh fish, spices, and more. I can supply hashish, opium balls—”
“Not interested,” Stanton told him as they tried to move past.
“Perhaps a woman to keep you two company.”
“No,” Ives told him emphatically.
“Do you need a gun, a dagger? My name is Ersu and you can usually find me on this corner, from morning till midnight.”
“I’ll remember that,” Stanton said as they moved on.
“Persistent, isn’t he?” Ives muttered as they hurried on their way.
The seller of the calligraphy was an art dealer named Bruno Tranle. He had a gallery not far from the famed Topkapi Museum, and was an astute gentleman in his sixties who showed them into his private office. His English was perfect and he explained he’d been educated at Cambridge. “Let me get you some tea,” he offered.
Ives demurred, noting the early hour, but Tranle scoffed. “Nonsense! Tea from the Black Sea region is our national drink, served at any hour of the day. Tea-makers even do the rounds of offices in many buildings here.”
“Oh, very well,” she relented, knowing it always pleased Stanton when she was cordial to clients. “I thought people drank Turkish coffee here.”
Tranle shook his head. “Too expensive for most tastes.”
He made the tea with great care and served it with pride, entertaining them with little stories about life in Istanbul. After about twenty minutes he decided to get down to business. He walked to a large safe and twirled the combination dial with the confidence of familiarity, carefully removing a slender canvas tube and unrolling its contents. “This is the item to be transported by courier to Germany.”
Stanton and Ives gazed at the painting, a wall hanging some two feet wide and four feet long on which the graceful Arabic calligraphy had taken on the shape of a person. The body, legs, and arms were a swirl of green, while the face was done in red with a white cap on top. “It’s beautiful,” Ives whispered in awe. “Are these Arabic words?”
“They are indeed. It is a verse from the sacred Koran, rendered in the shape of a man. The verse is painted on calfskin and may date from the sixteenth century. It could even be the work of Sheik Hamdullah, the founder of Ottoman calligraphy, but we cannot be certain.”
“You sold this to a German collector?”
“A businessman, really. Turks are admitted to Germany as guest workers and often decide to remain there. This man, Rudolph Meinz, is purchasing it for display in the reception area of his plant, which employs many Turks. It is a goodwill gesture, and an expensive one.”
“Surely you could hire a courier in this country to transport it to Germany,” Stanton said.
Bruno Tranle sighed and poured them some more tea. “The situation in the Middle East is well known. There are terrorists everywhere, including Istanbul. As you may know, Turkey is mainly made up of Sunni Muslims, with about twenty percent Kurdish in the eastern part of the country. But hiring a courier or a package-delivery company in Turkey is gambling that they side with your beliefs and not with another faction. The Kurds are in open revolt against our government, and terrorists could purchase a great many weapons with the money from this sale. I’ve heard good things about Stanton and Ives, and decided you were my best option.”
“You won’t be sorry,” Ives promised him. “And we’re fully bonded, of course. We have seats on an early flight to Berlin tomorrow morning.”
“As soon as we make delivery we’ll call you,” Stanton assured him.
“All right. Here’s half your fee now, as agreed. The remainder will be wire-transferred to your bank account after a successful delivery to Rudolph Meinz.” He stood up to shake hands with them. “You’ll be spending the night in Istanbul?”
Stanton nodded. “The morning flight is best for us.”
“You should see some of our night life. I can especially recommend Turkish Delight.”
“A candy shop?” Ives asked.
“No,” Tranle replied with a smile. “She’s a belly dancer at the Bosphorus Cafe, the best in the city at this moment.”
“Oh,” Ives replied, glancing at Stanton.
They secured the tube with its calligraphic painting in the hotel’s safe since it was too large for the mini-safe in their room. Then Stanton and Ives spent the afternoon touring the Grand Bazaar, a network of covered arcades containing more than seventeen hundred businesses. Here they found jewelers, shoemakers, tailors, and furniture and rug merchants, along with a variety of eating places. The maze-like marketplace soon sorted itself into some sort of order. Not wanting to buy anything so large it would have to be shipped home, they confined themselves mainly to the jewelry shops and a book market that featured vast quantities of second-hand volumes in virtually every language.
“You’d need a day or two for this place alone,” Ives marveled.
“I wish we could get to Topkapi,” Stanton said, “but I guess there’s no time before dinner.”
Ives gave him one of her famous looks. “You don’t want to miss your belly dancer.”
“How can I resist her with a name like Turkish Delight?”