Kolchak's Gold

The wind kept a branch scratching on the side of the taverna: I was irritably aware of it until someone switched on a scratchy little radio and turned it up too loud—the heavy twanging racket that passes for rock-and-roll east of Brindisi: one of the many things like ouzo and kebab and olive oil which the Greeks and Turks deny they have in common.

A pulse drummed blood-red behind my closed eyelids. All my muscles were inflamed; my face was sore and scabbed from the glass cuts; my hands were ski

Someone shook me gently by the shoulder and I almost bolted out of the chair. It was the buxom woman: she had a dark crickety little man with her. “Pinar,” she said proudly, and went away.

One eyebrow went up disdainfully as he looked at me. “Yes, luv?”

“You’re Pinar?”

“Yes, luv. I have rooms, if that’s what you’ve come to find. Can you pay?”

“I’ve got money.” It penetrated that he’d taken one look at me, dishabille and all, and instantly spoken English. “I’ve just come through the border. Pudovkin told me to come to you.”

Pinar sat daintily down on the edge of the chair beside me. He perched on it nervously. His hands fluttered when he spoke. “Pudovkin, luv? What did he say about me, then?”

“Only that you could help me.”

“Help you do what?”

It stopped me cold, that question. I’d sustained myself with a goal: the goal was this place, this man; it had been a long time since I’d thought farther ahead than Turkey, which meant freedom, and Pinar, who meant help.

Finally I said, “I’ve got a Turkish visa. I suppose I’ll be all right here?”

“Of course, luv.” He touched a tear in the sleeve of my jacket. “What a frightful mess you are. We’ll have to get you cleaned up. Do you have a name, luv?”

“Bristow. Harry Bristow.”

His face changed.

Pinar had half a dozen boardinghouse rooms on the floor above the taverna. By the time I had bathed and attempted to shave around the wounds, the dark woman had brought clean clothes for me from somewhere and a pair of Arab sandals. The clothes were a poor fit but I managed; anything would have done.

I stretched out fully clothed on the bed and was unconscious before I thought to turn off the light.

Two days in that place and I slept almost all of it away. Once—the second afternoon—I walked through the inferior regions of the town and bought a pipe and a pair of oxfords for my feet. I sorted the handful of note cards I’d had in my pockets—I’d lost a good many with my coat, unthinkingly leaving them in the pockets when I’d abandoned the coat. Most of the rest had gone with the suitcase on the barbed wire. The ones I’d kept in my pockets were those tracing my search for Kolchak’s gold and I no longer needed most of them because the most likely hiding place was burned into my memory cells too brightly ever to be extinguished. Late that afternoon I took the cards downstairs and threw them into the black wood stove and watched them turn to ash.

Pinar caught me at it but concealed his curiosity. “Feel ready to talk, luv?”

“I think so.”

“Shall we have a drink then?” We had the place to ourselves. We took glasses of wine to a table and Pinar raised his drink in toast: “To your adventure.”

“I could do without any more of it.”

“Well, what now? Most of them I send straight on to Tel Aviv by way of Piraeus. I suppose I could arrange passage for you to the States, but you might find that more easily done at your own consulate in Ankara.”

“I’d rather not advertise my whereabouts to the consulate.”

“I see. Like that, is it, luv?” He had an insidious smile—as if we shared some clandestine purpose. Like an elbow nudge in the ribs. And always the single lifted eyebrow, the supercilious curl of lip. He reminded me a bit of Zandor, the aura of homosexuality; but Zandor was a mover. Pinar was only a co

He contrived to be dainty and motherly; he succeeded only in being somewhat sleazy and conspiratorial. “Well then. A ticket to the States, will that do it? Can you pay?”

I’d counted my remaining travelers checks; I could make it if I wanted to. For forty-eight hours I’d been asking myself about the next step. I hadn’t answered yet. “Let me stay a few more days and get it sorted out.”

“No rush, luv. My house is your house.”

On the following morning after a predawn rain I went down to the rocky shore and watched the gulls. Trying to decide. If I went home would MacIver leave it alone? Not bloody likely. They would put on all the pressures—everything from the revoked driver’s license and the IRS audits to the pressures on my publishers.

But if not home—where? Tel Aviv? Nikki?

I was a little old to run to a woman’s arms for succor; and Nikki was no longer mine. Or at least I was no longer hers. Indirectly it was Nikki who’d got me out of Russia alive but I still felt that a

What else was there? Bukov had said it: Exile—a blind wandering to an unknown destination.

I had to think about the rest of my life. Pla

What if I flew to Washington and walked into MacIver’s office and told him where to find the gold?

It would get them off my back. I was. sure of it.

But if I did that it would negate everything I’d done. Pudovkin would have died meaninglessly.

I recoiled at that reasoning: it was the justification all the fools had used for keeping the Indochina war going long after it had been patently lost. Don’t let the soldiers die in vain. It’s specious reasoning—contemptible.

And it had nothing to do with the issues. The facts hadn’t changed in a week: the reasons for my keeping the secret were the same now as they had been in Sebastopol. There was enough gold in the cache to inflate currencies to starvation levels or to slaughter thousands of people and I had refused from the outset to be the instrument of any such catastrophe and that fact was still the same. I’d believed it and I’d been willing to sacrifice Pudovkin’s life for that belief—and Bukov’s and several others’ along the way—if it had come to that—because at the time I’d been willing to sacrifice my own as well. This was what would have been in vain if I changed my mind now. And it was a guilt I couldn’t face.

Nor was I ready yet to face the only real alternative. I returned to the taverna still having made no decision for myself and feeling like some dreary imitation of Hamlet.

Coming along the street I looked more closely at the front of the taverna than I’d done before and saw that it had been covered with a new façade. Somehow that made it look worse than the old buildings around it: renovation hadn’t disguised its age, only shown someone wanted to disguise it.

It took a moment for my eyes to accommodate to the dimness inside. I was still by the door when Pinar greeted me there and led me through the room with the clandestine indifference of an arch headwaiter leading the way to an undesirable table. “I’ve got someone you’ll want to meet.” We went through the back door and past the foot of the stairs and he twisted the knob of a door which I had assumed led into some kind of office. I hadn’t been inside it before.

Pinar’s hand fluttered at me. His cowardly half smile warned me. When the door swung out of the way I saw a bookcase, two empty chairs, a scrofulous little desk and a man sitting behind it with a rowdy grin on his face.