Tremor of Intent

And then to wait. Breakfast, the first raki of the day, fried fish or kebab for lunch, raki going all the time. Sleep or a restless wandering of the city, cocktails at the Kernel or the Hilton, a European dinner, then a raki-crawl and early bed. Istanbul disturbed him with its seven hills, as though Rome had tried to build herself on another planet. The names of architects and sultans rang in his mind in dull Byzantine gold – Anthemius, Isidorus, Achmet, Bajazet, Solyman the Magnificent. The emperors shrilled from a far past like desolate birds – Theodosius, Justinian, Con-stantine himself. His head raged with mosques. The city, in cruel damp heat, smelt of wool and hides and skins. Old filth and rusty iron, proud exports, clattered and thumped aboard under Galata's lighthouse. Ships, gulls, sea-light. Bazaars, beggars, skinny children, teeth, charcoal fires, skewered innards smoking, the heavy tobacco reek, fat men in flannel double-breasteds, fed on fat.

In the early evening of the third day, Hillier arrived back at the Babi Humayun from a trip to Scutari. He was damp and tired and his head ached. His pulse raced when he saw in the entrance-hall a small pile of good leather luggage. Someone had arrived from somewhere. Who? He did not dare ask the squinting bilious-skinned porter. He took the lift (old iron for export) to his floor, went to his room, stripped, and checked the Aiken and silencer before loading. He hid the weapon among his few remaining clean shirts in the top drawer of the dressing-table. He drank raki from the flask by the window. Dressing-gowned, towel round his neck, he went out to the bathroom, feeling slightly sick, eyes focusing badly; he noted the tremor of intent in his fingers as they reached for the bathroom door. He knew what he would see inside.

Miss Devi stood under the shower's cold trickle. He surveyed her nakedness as coldly as she suffered his gaze. Fronds and dissolving islets of water flowered and fell upon the baked skin; the tar-black bush glistened. She had hidden her hair in a plastic cap; her face seemed more naked than her body. The nipples were pert after the shock of the douche; like eyes they met his eyes. 'Well,' he said. 'Is he here?'

'Later. He has things to do. He found your message very mysterious. He will not trick you, of course. No tape recorder. But his memory is very good.'

Mine too, thought Hillier. His flesh crawled as it remembered that night in her cabin. Was it proper now to feel desire? That past desire had been used to betray him; this time it would be different. Shatter that child's body; those scents that lingered in his nostrils and the feel that was stitched into the whorls of his hands could only be exorcised by the ranker contacts of a knowing, mature, corrupt routine. Hillier said: 'Would you now? I take it there is time.'

'Oh, there's time. Time for the vimanam and the akaya-vimanam. Mor and the taddinam and the Yaman.'

'Yaman? That's the god of death.'

'It's just a name. My room is 47. Wait there.'

'Let's go to mine,' said Hillier.

'No. I have the instruments of the Yaman. Wait for me there. I must perform the triple washing of the vay.' Hillier noticed that she had a little waterproof bag on the chair by the bath. There would be other engines there than those of the Yaman. He went to her room. It was as seedy as his own, but her presence rode it strongly, sneering at the accidents of decay. He washed himself in cold water from her basin and briskly dried himself. Then he got into her bed (the sheets must be her own: crisp black linen) and waited. In five minutes she came to him, plunging into bed naked from the very door.

'It's no good,' said Hillier, after the simple movements of the vimanam. 'I want something too direct and easy and tender for you. I want a simple tune, not a full orchestra. It's just the way I am.'

She went cold and stiff beneath him. 'A little English girl,' she said. 'Blonde and trembling and talking about love.'

'She never talked about love,' said Hillier. 'She left that to me.'

With a swift muscular convulsion she rejected him. He uas not sorry to be rejected. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

'You'd better go.' The voice was glacial. 'Mr Theodor escu said something about business first, dinner after. He'll see you in your room as you requested. He asked me to see that you have drinks sent up. Not raki. It can go on his bill, he told me to tell you. And now get out of here.'

Hillier sat in his room waiting. The marine sky insinuated itself, through phases of pink and madder, into a velvet transformation. Stars over the Golden Horn, its gold in darkness now like the gold of Byzantium. On the table by the balcony were whisky, gin, cognac, mineral water, ice, and a box of cigarettes whose paper was like silk and whose tobacco tasted like burnt cream. Hillier checked his gun once more and placed it in the right-hand pocket of his moygashel jacket. He waited.

Theodorescu entered without knocking. He was in a lounge suit and silk shirt; he smelled of an ideal Orient, not the gamy real Asia that started here east of the Bosporus. He was huge; his baldness was massive smoothed stone; he was urbane, genial, saying: 'I'm sorry you've had to wait, my dear Hillier. There were things in Athens that had to be seen to. Miss Devi entertained you, I take it? No? You seem very serious, glum almost. This is not the naked Hillier I knew and respected on shipboard.' There were chairs on either side of the drink-table. Theodorescu took a whole gill of whisky; ice clinked in with the tones of a tiny celeste.

'You respect me no longer?' said Hillier. 'Now that I'm going to give you something for nothing? Now that I'm going to give you everything for nothing?'

'My trade is a crude one. I'm used to buying and selling only. I doubt if anybody's ever genuinely given me something for nothing. Presents, bribes – those are different. There's a tag, isn't there, about dona ferentes? You say you have things to give me. What do you want in return?'

'Release,' said Hillier. 'I've a burden to jettison. A general confession that justifies my staying alive. Do you understand me?'

Theodorescu shone both eyes full on him. 'I think I do. You're turning me into a priest. I'm honoured, I suppose. And now I have to take the burden over. I see. I see. I see why you wanted no mechanical recorders. Well, go slowly – that's all I ask.'

'A confession,' said Hillier. 'But also a gift horse. I'll take my own time.'

'Begin, then. Bless me, father, for I have sinned-' Hillier did not answer his smile; Theodorescu ceased smiling.

'That's not for you. But this is, these are.' And he started. 'The identity of Avenel is H. Glendinning of Seyton House, Strand-on-the-Green, London. Abu Ibn Sina, known to the Baghdad police, runs the radio station known as Radio Avicenna. The three international saboteurs who call themselves the Adullamites are Horsman, Lowe, and Grosvenor; you will know the names, I think.'

'Indeed. Hypocrites.' He took another gill of whisky. 'Pray continue.'

'Operation Aegir is to be mounted near Gellivare six months from now. H. J. Prince, at Charlinch near Bridg-water, Somerset, England, is in charge of a training school for subversion called Agapemone. A pocket television transmitter called, for some reason, Nur-al-Nihar, is in process of development at a station near El Maghra, southwest of Alexandria. Twin missiles named Aholah and Aholibah are near completion on the Jordan border, east of Beersheba. The assassin of Sergei Timofeyevich Aksakov is in retirement at Fribourg; he goes under the name of Chichikov-a pretty touch. T. B. Aldrich, an importer, runs our station at Christinestad; he is in radio contact with GRT, as it's called, which is in the Valdai Hills, south of Staraya Russa. The scheme known as Almagest is already being mounted at Kinloch on Rhum Island. Escape route Gotha starts three miles north-west of Cöpenick. Barlow, Trumbull, Humphreys and Hopkins, a so-called pop-group named the Anarchists, have plans of the San Antonio installations in a villa outside Hartford.'