The Star of Istanbul Read Free Page B

their empire.”
    â€œWhat’s he doing over here?”
    â€œThat’s the question.”
    â€œHis family?”
    Trask shrugged. “The ones who stayed are dead. He arrived in Washington a week ago. We always watch the Huns on Thomas Circle pretty closely, and Brauer went straight to the embassy. But somehow he slipped out again without us seeing him. We don’t know what he did here. But we do know he’s booked passage back to Britain. That gives you a week to get ready to sail. You’ve got a first-class cabin right near his. First of May. The Lusitania .”
    A form loomed suddenly out of the murk, almost upon me, a man, a big man, and I jumped back and to the side, throwing myself against the deck wall, but the man did not lunge for me, he kept striding on past, too fast, given the fog, just a fool with a British accent, throwing a “Sorry, old man” over his shoulder, taking his after-midnight constitutional. Why didn’t Trask just expose Brauer to the Brits and let them handle him? Because they were like this guy, rushing in the dark. They had their own agenda. If the world is going to blow up on us, we need to know for ourselves what we’re dealing with. And Wilson still wanted to keep us out of the fighting. The way they were all digging in over there, maybe he was right. And maybe I was trained now for this work. I knew how we were supposed to think: figure it out for ourselves, keep to it to ourselves, do what we need to protect ourselves.
    My beard was wet. My left cheek beneath was cold except for the curve of the impervious scar tissue. The fog had etched my Schmiss into my mind.
    And now my eyesight was clearing, as if I were waking from a heavy sleep. The teak deck was rapidly appearing beneath me, before me, stretching forward into the clarifying dark; the lifeboats shaped sharply into themselves all along the way; the electric light glowed nakedly on the deck wall. We were moving faster. I could feel the subtle new vibration beneath my feet. Full ahead.
    I was beginning to shiver.
    I moved down the promenade to the forward door and I went in. I turned at once into the portside corridor and ran both hands over my beard and through my hair and wiped away the condensing mist on my coat and I moved forward. As I passed Selene Bourgani’s door I spoke aloud—louder perhaps than I would have if there actually were someone else in the corridor with me, which there wasn’t, but I spoke as if there were—I said, “We’re out of the fog now. Any danger is passed.”
    I felt instantly stupid. I pressed on down the corridor. I thought she might be awake and worried inside. We all remembered the Titanic . And we all knew there was a war. For our ship to be bellowing through the night, blindly rushing, this could be a worrisome thing even for a woman who says she is afraid of nothing.
    I passed on and I neared the turn of the corridor—I would soon be safely out of sight—but behind me I heard the opening of a cabin door, and I had no choice but to stop, which I did. I would turn. After all, this possibility was also why I’d spoken.
    I turned.
    She was standing just outside her door, in a beam of electric light from the wall, her hair twisted up high on her head. I took a step toward her, and another. I stopped. She hadn’t invited me, but I took this much of a liberty by reflex from the hammer thump of her beauty. Her eyes were as dark as the North Atlantic. She was wearing a crimson kimono with twin golden dragons plunging from her breasts to her knees.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “I hope I didn’t disturb you.”
    She looked over her shoulder, as if preparing to sneer: So where is the person you spoke to?
    But she quickly turned back to me.
    How the hell do I know what a woman is about to say? Perhaps she’d looked to make sure we were alone together.
    â€œAny danger is passed,” I said, feeling even