Istanbul Passage by Joseph Kanon Page B

happened,” he said, then hesitated. Too abrupt. “Are you warm enough?” he said, fidgeting. The nurse had opened the French windows, letting in a crack of air. He put a shawl around her shoulders. “I was thinking about you on the ferry. How you love the water.” But he hadn’t been. Her eyes stayed fixed on the garden. Just say it. “Tommy King’s dead. Shot. In a robbery, they think—”
    He stopped and sank into the other chair, falling again.
    “Am I doing that? With you? It wasn’t a robbery.” And then he couldn’t say anything more, not out loud. Instead he followed her gaze to the garden, the patch of sun on the bare Judas tree. “I was there,” he said softly. “He tried to kill a man we’re bringing out. He tried to kill me.”
    Anna stared ahead, not moving.
    “There wasn’t anything I could do. I had to.” Still not finishing it. “It didn’t feel like anything. Not at the time. It’s only later you— ButI can’t explain what happened, to anybody, until I get him out, the man we’re moving.” He took a breath, looking away from her. “And I don’t know if I can do it. Tommy was supposed to—” He stopped. “And then there he was, with a gun.”
    He heard her question in his head and nodded.
    “I’ve been going over it. All night. It has to be. Why else would Tommy have to kill him? I keep coming back to that. Why he’d have to. But think what it means. Tommy. It turns everything upside down. All these years working for— Christ. I worked for him. How long was he—”
    He stopped talking, the two of them sitting in silence.
    “Nothing was supposed to happen. Just a babysitting job. And now I’ve got him. He’ll be killed if I—” He looked down. “A man who would have killed you. Not even thinking twice.”
    He got up and walked over to the French window, careful not to step into her line of sight. A bed of late asters near the wall.
    “But if I don’t help him, the Turks’ll get involved. Then it’s murder. And Mihai—” He let the thought drift, his eyes following a bird fluttering between branches. “You know what I was thinking before? If I can do this, deliver him—it’s the kind of thing people notice. In Washington. It would be a chance to show them I could—” He stopped. “And then I thought, maybe it would have been better if Tommy had got him. They’d both be gone. Nothing to explain. Easier if he were dead too. And what kind of person thinks that? What kind of person.”
    A reflection in the glass, someone standing in the doorway. Obstbaum.
    “Doctor,” he said, turning, his voice changing. “I’ve just been telling Anna—” How long had he been listening?
    “Don’t let me interrupt.” Obstbaum held out his clipboard, a visual excuse.
    “No, no, please,” Leon said, then glanced down at his watch. “Anyway, look at the time. I’m seeing Georg,” he said to Anna. “I couldn’t put him off again.” Do all the normal things. “An old friend,”he said to Obstbaum. “She was very fond of him. Weren’t you? I’ll give him your love.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead, then looked back up at Obstbaum. What had he heard?
    “I hope it’s all right, talking like that,” he said at the door.
    “It’s good, your coming. The activity. And two days now. Last night too, I hear.”
    From whom? Why?
    “How is she?” Leon said, ignoring it.
    “No worse.” He caught Leon’s expression. “It’s something, you know, no worse. At least there’s no deterioration. It’s good, the talking.”
    “Sometimes I think it’s for me. Just sitting here. It makes me feel calmer.”
    Obstbaum nodded. “An oasis. It can have that effect. You know the shooting last night? Up the road? It was in the papers. All the patients so upset, you know what it’s like—just getting them to calm down. But for Anna it never happened.”
    Leon looked away. But now it had, his voice registering somewhere in her brain.
    “So that’s one good