Istanbul Read Online Free PDF Page A

with no bathroom eating barley soup. My father owned a bank but now he is sitting in a basement cell in the Prefecture and I don’t have enough money to get him out. Sometimes I think I am dreaming this.’
    ‘I think I can get those visas for you.’
    ‘It’s too late now.’
    ‘Not for you.’
    She pushed open the door to the building and he followed her up the stairs. The stairwell was dark and he had to grip tightly to the iron balustrade, feeling his way up.
    The door to the apartment lay on the floor, splinters of the door frame still clinging to the hinges. She went inside, stepping over broken furniture, shattered glass crunching under her shoes. The greenshirts had been thorough, taken what they wanted and destroyed everything else.
    She fell to her knees and sobbed, her whole body shaking. He knelt down beside her, winced as a shard of broken glass pierced his knee. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. She allowed him to hold her for a moment, then shook herself free.
    He stood up, feeling helpless.
    ‘Daniela . . .’
    ‘Just go.’
    ‘What will you do?’
    ‘I’m staying here.’
    ‘It’s not safe.’
    ‘I’ve nowhere else to go.’
    ‘Perhaps I can find you somewhere.’ He helped her to her feet, felt her sag against him, beaten. He led her back down the stairs to the car. He gave his driver an address on the Boulevard Bratianu. He sat in the back with his arm around her, to hell with whoever saw him.
    He would not let her languish in that apartment alone. He knew just the man to help them out.
     
     
     

CHAPTER 8
     
    Ploesti was just thirty-seven miles north of Bucharest on the Danube plains. Europe’s premier oil reserve was a sad, grey industrial town where oil sometimes seeped out of the ground and stuck to the shoes. Nick saw the lights of the gantries long before they reached the outskirts.
    A brown leather suitcase lay beside him on the back seat. He rested one hand on it and stared at the back of his driver’s head, fascinated by the fleshy folds of skin that fell in scallops over the collar of his shirt. Extraordinary. He had no neck.
    His name was Ionescu, Ilie Ionescu, one of the drivers from the car pool at the Legation. Nick suspected he had talents other than driving, and that was why he had been assigned to him for his errand to Ploesti. A gorilla with car keys.
    He stared out of the window at the darkness. If he and Abrams could pull this off, it would be one of the greatest coups in the history of the intelligence service. It might not stop the bombs that were falling on England, but it would force that lunatic in Berlin to call off any planned invasion.
    Ionescu stopped at an army roadblock. The guards pocketed the banknotes folded inside Nick’s diplomatic passport and waved them through.
    They said the common language in Romania was French, but it wasn’t; it was money. It was why the plan just might work. If a few thousand lei could get him into Ploesti, a few million might get a squadron of engineers into the oilfields. But they had to do it now, before it was too late.
     
     
     
    Bendix lived alone in a two-storey house near the Gara de Sud. As they drove up, Nick felt a prickle of apprehension. The house was in complete darkness. Bendix should have been waiting for them. Ionescu stopped the car, turned off the engine and waited.
    The street was deserted. The clicking of the cooling car engine was the only sound.
    ‘Stay here,’ he said to Ionescu. He picked up the suitcase and got out of the car. He knocked at the door. No answer. He looked through window. No lightson anywhere.
    He went back to the car. Ionescu looked nervous. ‘It’s dangerous just sitting here, Monsieur Nick,’ he said in Romanian.
    ‘There’s a torch in the glove box,’ Nick said.
    Ionescu handed it to him.
    ‘Give me five minutes.’ He went around the side of the house. He tried the back door. It was open. Another bad sign.
    There was a Webley revolver in his jacket pocket. He took