The Laughter of Carthage Read Online Free PDF Page A

the front hall. I had been of great help to the British. They had been able to arrest a master spy on my information. I had a wife in England. I had served with the Australians. All this was explained to those soft-faced boy-policemen who backed my path. Yelling over the imploring din outside, I outlined my predicament: I had been involved in valuable espionage in Anatolia. I had more names to link with Siniutkin. But now my life was in danger. I was carrying plans, I said, of great importance to the British Government. By the time I stopped, my brown suit was drenched with sweat and impassively they told me to submit my request in writing. I began to demand to see someone in greater authority. It was at this stage that one of the soldiers said I should piss off back to whatever rathole I came from. Now I was not only insulted by officials, but was being set upon from behind by desperate Russians and foreigners close to hysteria. In their efforts to secure some privilege they made revolting beasts of themselves. There was nothing for it but to go down to the docks and look for my Armenian friends. I was seeking a person whom I had already met. They directed me to a certain grubby coffee house near the Quarantine Harbour.
     
    After I had trudged up and down hundreds of alley steps, passed under scores of lines bowed with threadbare washing, avoided the droppings of dogs, donkeys and Turks, I eventually reached a shop in the half-basement below a great tottering wreck of wood and brick which had once been painted green. In French its faded lettering boasted housing Alfasian’s Famous Tropical Bird Emporium. From within, the occasional squawk or mutter of a parakeet echoed in an emptiness suggesting Alfasian’s was not a thriving concern. The broken planks of the steps down to the coffee house were slippery and rotten. In my haste, I almost fell into the basement area. The interior was packed with Armenians and Albanians smoking their long meerschaums and staring up at me from dreamy, suddenly cautious eyes. At the oilcloth-covered counter I asked for Captain Kazakian. A large, thickset man wearing a filthy American navy cap rose in the shadow of a cubicle and motioned with his cigarette. I recognised him and went to join him at his table. ‘You’re the Greek who fixed my boat so well,’ he said in Russian. ‘Well, friend, what can I do for you?’
     
    I told him I remembered his mentioning how he frequently took tourists back and forth to Venice; that he would sometimes carry the odd passenger who perhaps did not have all his proper documents for entering Italy. Noncommitally, he nodded. ‘You have a friend in trouble, Mr Papanatki?’
     
    ‘Myself and my sister. We must leave at once. When do you next plan to sail?’
     
    He sighed. ‘The competition has been terrible this season. And before that was the damned War. The bigger people are taking all the tourist trade from me. I’ll only be able to return from Venice with, say, half-a-dozen passengers. They will scarcely pay for the running costs.’ He looked miserably at me. ‘Therefore, it would have to cost, for the two together, a hundred.’ By the figure he meant gold. I had that in sovereigns. ‘You can take our trunks and so on?’ I asked him. ‘Of course,’ he made a generous gesture with his hand. ‘Trunks. Suitcases. Cats and dogs. No extra charge.’ He laughed as he saw my relief. ‘I’m not short of space on board. At the moment I’m half empty.’ We agreed where we should meet and what procedure I should follow. It was to be at the ‘Little Quay’ near the Tephane Docks. I left the coffee house beginning to feel I had accomplished the most important part of my escape. The streets stank of damp and decomposing spices. I was oddly intoxicated by the time I reached my next destination, a grog shop near the Tower, behind which my Bulgarian forger had his office. Another fifty pounds bought me crude exit visas as well as reasonably made