Istanbul Passage

Zusatztext "Reminiscent of the works of Graham Greene." Informationen zum Autor Joseph Kanon is the Edgar Award–winning author of Los Alamos and nine other novels: The Prodigal Spy, Alibi, Stardust, Istanbul Passage, Leaving Berlin, Defectors, The Accomplice, The Berlin Exchange, and The Good German, which was made into a major motion picture starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. Other awards include the Hammett Award of the International Association of Crime Writers and the Human Writes Award of the Anne Frank Foundation. He lives in New York City. Klappentext The "New York Times"-bestselling tale of an American undercover agent in 1945 Istanbul who must navigate a murky world of compromise and betrayal. Expatriate American businessman Leon Bauer was drawn into Instanbul, doing undercover odd jobs. As the espionage community packs up and a city prepares for the realities of postwar life, Leon is given one last routine assignment. 1 BEBEK THE FIRST ATTEMPT HAD to be called off. It had taken days to arrange the boat and the safe house and then, just a few hours before the pickup, the wind started, a poyraz , howling down from the northeast, scooping up water as it swept across the Black Sea. The Bosphorus waves, usually no higher than boat wakes by the time they reached the shuttered yalis along the shore, now churned and smashed against the landing docks. From the quay, Leon could barely make out the Asian side, strings of faint lights hidden behind a scrim of driving rain. Who would risk it? Even the workhorse ferries would be thrown off schedule, never mind a bribed fishing boat. He imagined the fisherman calculating his chances: a violent sea, sightless, hoping the sudden shape forty meters away wasn’t a lumbering freighter, impossible to dodge. Or another day safe in port, securing ropes and drinking plum brandy by the cast-iron stove. Who could blame him? Only a fool went to sea in a storm. The passenger could wait. Days of planning. Called by the weather. “How much longer?” Mihai said, pulling his coat tighter. They were parked just below Rumeli Hisari, watching the moored boats tossing, pulling against their ties. “Give it another half hour. If he’s late and I’m not here—” “He’s not late,” Mihai said, dismissive. He glanced over. “He’s that important?” “I don’t know. I’m just the delivery boy.” “It’s freezing,” Mihai said, turning on the motor. “This time of year.” Leon smiled. In Istanbul’s dream of itself it was always summer, ladies eating sherbets in garden pavilions, caïques floating by. The city shivered through winters with braziers and sweaters, somehow surprised that it had turned cold at all. Mihai ran the heater for a few minutes then switched it off, burrowing, turtlelike, into his coat. “So come with me but no questions.” Leon rubbed his hand across the window condensation, clearing it. “There’s no risk to you.” “Wonderful. Something new. You couldn’t do this yourself?” “He’s coming out of Constancia. For all I know, he only speaks Romanian. Then what? Sign language? But you—” Mihai waved this off. “He’ll be German. One of your new friends.” “You don’t have to do this.” “It’s a small favor. I’ll get it back.” He lit a cigarette, so that for a second Leon could see his grizzled face and the wiry salt-and-pepper hair on his head. Now more salt than pepper. When they had met, it had been dark and wavy, styled like the Bucharest dandy he’d once been, known in all the cafés on the Calea Victoriei. “Besides, to see the rats leaving—” he said, brooding. “They wouldn’t let us out. Now look at them.” “You did what you could.” A Palestinian passport, free to come and go in Bucharest, to beg for funds, leasing creaky boats, a last lifeline, until that was taken away too. Mihai drew on the cigarette, staring at the wat...

Product details

• Authors: Joseph Kanon, Kanon Joseph
• Publisher: Washington Square Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 16.04.2013
• EAN: 9781439156438
• ISBN: 978-1-4391-5643-8
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 210 mm x 28 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense