“Then it must have been the meeting with Giulio they wanted to hear about,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
I told him of the feeling I had had on the way back that they had been impatient for a chance to talk privately.
“Then why are you not at the villa? Go back there immediately.”
“If they wish to have private talk there is nothing I can do to overhear it. Their part of the house on the ground floor is separate. I have not even seen those rooms.”
“Are there no windows?”
“Giving on to their private terrace, yes. I could have no excuse for being even near it, let alone on it.”
“Then do without an excuse.”
“You told me to take no risks.”
“No unnecessary risks. An important discussion justifies risk.”
“I don’t know that it is important. I just had a feeling. I don’t know that it’s a discussion either. Harper may just have wanted to pass on a piece of private information he had received from Giulio to the others. The whole thing could have been over in a minute.”
“The meeting at Pendik was obviously important. We must know why. So far all you have learned is gossip from a fool of a cook. What do these people with arms and ammunition hidden in their car and false passports discuss when they are alone? What do they say? It is for you to find out.”
“I can tell you one thing they say-‘Let the dogs be fed and clothed.’ I overheard it first last night. It seemed to be some sort of private joke.”
He was silent for a moment and I waited for another angry outburst. None came. Instead he said thoughtfully: “That is quite an interesting joke.”
“What does it mean?”
“When one of the old Sultans was preparing to receive a certain class of persons, he would always keep them waiting a long time, perhaps a whole day. Then, when he thought that they had been sufficiently humbled, he would give that order-‘Let the dogs be fed and clothed.’ After that, they would be admitted to the chamber of the Grand Vizier, given food, and robed in caftans.”
“What class of persons?”
“The ambassadors of foreign powers.” He paused. Obviously, he was still thinking about it. Then he dismissed me curtly. “You have your orders. Report as arranged.”
I went and got the car. The man at the garage who had the key to the petrol pump had gone home, and there was only the old man who had washed the car waiting for me. I wasn’t too pleased about that, as it meant that I would have to fill the tank in the morning. Opportunities for making telephone reports to Tufan did not seem particularly desirable at that moment.
When I got back to the villa it was almost dark and the lights were on in the terrace rooms. I put the car away and went to the kitchen.
Geven was in a jovial mood. Fischer had moved him to a bedroom near mine and told him to share my bathroom. Whether this was due to spite on Fischer’s part or a shortage of bathrooms, I couldn’t tell. Geven, through some obscure reasoning process of his own, had decided that the whole thing had been my idea. In a way, I suppose, he was right; but there was nothing to be done about it. I took a tumbler of brandy from him and beamed like an idiot as if I had earned every drop. He had cooked a spaghetti Bolognese for the kitchen. The spies were having canned soup and a shish kebab made with mutton which, he proudly assured me, was as tough as new leather. The spaghetti was really good. I had a double helping of it. As soon as the Hamuls arrived, I got away, giving as an excuse that I had work to do on the car. I went out to the yard.
The terrace ran along the front and right side of the house; I had noticed a door in the wall beside the garage. There was an orchard of fig trees beyond and I thought it possible that the side terrace might be accessible from there.
The door had no lock, only a latch, but the old hinges were rusty and I used the dip stick from the car to run some oil into them before I attempted to open it. It swung inward silently and I shut it behind me. I waited then, not only so that my eyes would get used to the dark but because the spies had not yet gone into dinner. I could hear their voices faintly. I knew that Tufan would have wanted me to go closer and hear what they were saying; but I didn’t. The ground was uneven and I would have to feel my way towards the terrace balustrade. I preferred to do that while they were well away from the terrace and trying to get their teeth into Geven’s shish kebab.
After fifteen or twenty minutes, dinner was served and I edged forward slowly to the terrace. As soon as I reached it and was able to see through the balustrade, I realized that it would be impossible for me to get close enough to the windows of the room they had been using to hear anything. There was too much light coming from them. I suppose one of these daredevil agents you hear about would have concealed himself in the shadows; but that looked too risky for me. Getting to the shadows would have been easy enough; but if Harper and Co. decided to sit outside, as they had done the night before, there would have been no way of getting back without being seen.
I walked on through the orchard until I came to the outer edge of the front courtyard. This was the side which overlooked the Bosphorus and there were no trees to obstruct the view. A low stone balustrade ran along the edge with a statue on a plinth at each end. The first of these statues was over thirty feet from the corner of the terrace, but it was the nearest I could get and still remain in cover. The top of the plinth was chest-high. Using the balustrade as a steppingstone, it wasn’t difficult to climb up. The statue, a larger than life-size Vestal virgin with bird-droppings all over her, seemed quite steady, and I was able to hold on to her draperies. From the plinth I could see over the terrace balustrading and through the windows of the corner drawing room. It was not much, but it was something. If they did decide to come out onto the terrace, I might even catch a word or two of what they said.
After about twenty minutes, they came back into the room. The bits of it that I could see contained an old leather-topped library table, part of a faded green settee, part of a wall mirror, a low round table, and one or two gilt chairs. The only person I could actually see at first was Miller, who took a corner of the settee; but he was talking nineteen to the dozen and waving his hands about, so he obviously wasn’t alone. Then Mrs. Hamul came in with a coffee tray, which she put on the round table, and I saw bits of the others as they helped themselves. Somebody gave Miller a glass of brandy, which he drank as if he needed it; he could have been trying to wash away the taste of his dinner. After a bit, he stopped talking and appeared to be listening, his head moving slightly as he shifted his attention from one speaker to another. Then, there was a flash of white in the mirror and his head turned. For a moment, I saw Miss Lipp. She had changed into a green dress, though; the white belonged to a large sheet of paper. Almost immediately it disappeared from view. Miller’s head lifted as he began to listen to someone who was standing up. A minute or so went by, and then the paper reappeared, as if put aside, on the library table. I could see now that it was a map. At that distance and at that angle it was impossible to tell what it was a map of, but it looked to me like a roughly triangular island. I was still staring at it when Harper moved in and folded it into four.