It suddenly occurred to me I hadn't left yet. I had better get going. I started out the door. Then I realized I was not dressed for travel. I came back. I got into a business suit. I couldn't find any shoes so I put my military boots back on. I started out the door again and saw I had forgotten my bag. I went back. I needed something to discourage pursuit. I saw a pile of plunger time-fuse bombs in the gun case. I stuffed them in my pocket.
Wait a minute. My documents were in the grip. I needed a passport. The Achmed Ben Nutti diplomatic passport from the United Arab League was on top of the pile. It would get my guns and money through to wherever I was going. I put it in my pocket. Money. I didn't have any money. I must avoid Afyon: they would be waiting for me with a pile of lethal rocks and stones. I had it. I must get to Istanbul. Mudur Zengin would welcome the chance to give me money.
As an afterthought, working fast, I closed and locked my safe and secret compartments. I must get out of here. They might come for me at any minute.
I picked up my grip. I forced myself to stop shaking. I walked across the patio and into the yard.
With a surge of purest hate, I saw the taxi driver. He was polishing the new Mercedes-Benz.
Apparatus training makes one rise to any emergency. The hate distilled into the purest cunning. I determined then and there to kill two jailbirds with one bomb. They would learn in one last agonizing flash the penalty for grabbing women before I could get at them.
Cunning. Cunning. Cunning. I must concentrate on that. I went over and threw my bag carelessly into the Daimler-Benz. I did not even let my eyes dart under every bush to see if they were waiting for me, ready to spring out and stone me to death.
In an offhand voice, I called, "Oh, Ahmed. Would you like to come to the bank with me to get some money?"
He sprang gladly upright. I knew he would. He yelled for Ters and then raced around and got in the front seat of the big car. Ters ran out of the kitchen, putting on his old soldier's cap. He slid under the wheel.
We were off. I scrunched way down so nobody could see I was riding in the back.
We went tearing up the road to Afyon, scattering camels all over the place.
I could tell from the gay, insouciant manner of both Ahmed and Ters that they had no slightest inkling that this was their last day on Earth.
We entered Afyon and started down the street toward the Piastre Branch Bankasi.
"No, no," I said smoothly from the back. "You misunderstood me. I was talking about BIG money. I meant the Piastre Bankasi in Istanbul. Go there."
Happily, without the least suspicion they were driving their own hearse, they turned and we began to roar along the main highway to Istanbul.
Glancing backward from time to time, I detected no pursuit. I had been too fast for them. I might get away with this yet.
Several camels looked at us suspiciously, however, and some of my anxiety returned. Never trust a camel.
Ters was not driving very fast. But that was just as well. High speed would alert people that I was escaping.
The afternoon and the bleak February countryside moved along. Dusk came. We drove in the darkness. Our headlights flicked now and then upon the ruins of the ages. I was leaving Asia. Let it rot. It wasn't worth conquering anyway. Alexander's adventures had been but a waste of time.
We crossed the Bosporus into Europe about ten. We finally crossed the Galata Bridge over the Golden Horn and wove our way through the dying streets of Istanbul. We came at last to the Piastre Bankasi. The car came to a stop.
I intended to have the inevitable night watchman call Mudur Zengin. I had gotten this far and I was safe. But this was the end of the line for Ters and Ahmed. I slipped a time bomb with a plunger fuse under the cushion of the rear seat. I depressed the plunger. Ten minutes from now, this car and its villainous occupants would spatter all over the landscape in bits of dismayed and burning flame. Bye-bye, you woman grabbers.
I tossed my grip out onto the sidewalk. I got out. I said casually, "You can go home now. I won't be needing you."
"Don't you want us to take you to the airport?" said Ahmed.
"Airport?" I said. "What gave you the idea I was leaving Turkey? I'm just going to be in town three or four days, attending a convention of drug pushers at the Istanbul Hilton. You didn't think I would pay to keep you two in a hotel all that time, did you? So bye-bye. You're homeward bound," to whatever Hells they reserve for criminals who grab women first and then threaten to testify that it was all at my orders.
Ahmed shrugged. Ters gave his evil laugh. And away they went. I watched their taillights fade out of sight. It gave me a great deal of satisfaction. There wouldn't even be enough left of them to bury, for that was a Voltar maximum-destruction pocket bomb.
A moving shadow called my attention suddenly back to my own peril. But it was just the watchman.
"Phone Mudur Zengin for me," I ordered. "Have him come down to the bank. Say Sultan Bey wants to see him."
The watchman shined a flashlight in my face. Then he pointed to an upper window. It was lighted. "He's already here," the watchman said. "Came in half an hour ago and said he was expecting you."
A chill went through me. Then I realized it was true. The credit companies kept an accurate, to-the-minute check on the whereabouts of the paying man. They had told Zengin.
I must be fast. I raced inside. I entered his office.
Coldly, Mudur Zengin remained at his desk eyeing me. He did not rise. He did not even say hello. He just sat there and looked at me. I stopped in the middle of the room.
"I've been requested to detain you," Mudur Zengin said.
Terror surged through me. They knew. They were after me!
I went down on my knees. "Look, you were the boyhood friend of my father. Please don't turn me in! You've got to help me. I need money!"
"I can't give you any money. The vaults are closed."
"Then let me into the safe deposit boxes."
"I can't. They're closed tight. Nothing will be open until 9:00 A. M. tomorrow."
Too late. Too late! They would have dragged me halfway back to Afyon by then.
"I need dollars!" I begged.
"Dollars?" he said coldly. "Why don't you ask your concubine for dollars?"
"Mudur, please hear me. I need dollars and I need them right now. Tonight. FAST!"
He fixed me with his cold banker's eye. "The only dollars available at this time of night are not the bank's. They are my own. I keep some in my personal safe."
"Give them to me," I begged, my ear cocked for any sound of footsteps on the stairs. "Quick!"
"It would only be enough to tide you over," he said. "And it would have to be at regular terms: 30 percent interest per month."
He pushed a piece of paper at me. I swiftly signed it.
He went to his safe, opened it and took out some packets of U. S. dollars, counted off a hundred thousand and then tossed them on the floor and pushed them toward me with his foot.
I bent to grab them. I stuffed them in my pocket. Then I saw the contempt in his eyes. It struck me that he was certainly behaving in an unfriendly way. Rushed as I was, I still said, "What have I done?"
"What you have done," he said, "is between you and Allah. It is not given to a mere mortal to comprehend the actions of such as you."