Berlin Never Answers

0:00 The Money-Changer on the Landing

0:04 Narrator: Istanbul, the spring of nineteen forty-three. The money-changer Mardiros climbed to the rooms Kemal Arslan and I kept above the Péra arcade soon after dark, and would come no further than the landing. Come in, sir, before the Karaköy ferries blow you off the stair.

0:20 Mardiros: Thank you, Captain, no. I stay on this side of your door. Arslan: Mardiros of Galata. You change money for the Pera clubs.

0:29 Mardiros: For one club, Mr. Arslan. Madame Polyakova's. One is enough trouble. If I come in, I've come to a detective. Out here I'm only... delivering a letter.

0:40 Arslan: A letter you've carried inside your shirt. It's warm, and bent to your ribs. Mardiros: My waistcoat. Since noon. In Galata, never a pocket.

0:50 Arslan: One note, by the feel. Stiff. English, then. Lira goes soft in a month.

0:57 Mardiros: Five English pounds. One of the big white ones. Arslan: Ah.

1:02 Narrator: One note won't hang a— Mardiros: Not the money, Captain. What it carries.

1:07 Mardiros: Who is that? Who's— who's coming? Narrator: The tailor from the first floor, going home to his supper.

1:14 Mardiros: You see how I am. When money goes— when money goes wrong in Galata, nobody asks the Turk at the next table. Arslan: They ask the Armenian.

1:24 Mardiros: My father's scales, my father's door... thirty years of honest weight. One whisper, and they — they take the scales, they take the door, they take — Arslan: Nobody takes anything tonight. When does Madame's bag reach you?

1:37 Mardiros: At closing. Two o'clock, sealed, by her own boy. Open this only at my table, under my lamp.

1:44 Arslan: Then it stays shut, in my pocket, until closing. I'll be at your table. Mardiros: Thank you. Thank you.

1:53 Among English Uniforms at Madame's Bar

1:57 Narrator: Before midnight we were at the bar of Madame Polyakova's club in Pera, among English uniforms, with Tulay the dancer between turns and her Egyptian admirer, Lemke, holding the corner table. Polyakova: Gentlemen, I'm Polyakova, and this is my house. Vodka, or the English gin?

2:17 Narrator: Vodka, Madame. In Pera one drinks like a Russian. Polyakova: Then drink with one. To the German army, may it find the men who shot my father.

2:27 Narrator: Bold, with British officers at every table. Polyakova: They drink to their King. I drink to whoever kills Bolsheviks. Both pay.

2:38 Narrator: That's Morse, Madame. A letter D, and a fair fist. Polyakova: White Army, the Crimea. I was nineteen; I sent the last signals for the ships. My fingers still talk when I'm bored.

2:52 Narrator: Were you, now. Arslan: You sit where you see the door and the till together. You've had to leave a country in a hurry.

3:00 Polyakova: The till, my friend. The door I stopped watching long ago. Nobody comes for me here. Tulay, darling, your Egyptian wants another bottle for his Englishmen.

3:11 Tulay: Mr. Lemke wants everything, Madame. Tonight he wants me to dance with him. Lemke: And tomorrow night, and the night after. Good evening. Lemke, of Alexandria. Cotton, and an idle life.

3:28 Arslan: Kemal Arslan. Captain Demir. Lemke: Join us, gentlemen. The officers here have finished the war and started on cricket. Madame, the corner table's account.

3:39 Polyakova: Eleven pounds ten shillings. Lemke: Fifteen. The rest for the band. Merci, Madame.

3:45 Tulay: He tips like a pasha, this one. The band would follow him into the Bosphorus. Polyakova: English again. Half Pera pays me in pounds now. Officers, Greeks, Levantines. I stopped asking where it grows.

4:03 Arslan: You speak freely, Madame. German toasts, Morse on the glass, in an English room. Polyakova: You're police?

4:11 Arslan: No. Polyakova: Then a free lesson. Repeat nothing about me. I have no country. One complaint and I'm over the frontier.

4:21 Galata After Two, Counting-Houses Shuttered

4:25 Narrator: Galata's counting-houses were shuttered when we came down the hill after two; only Mardiros's lamp still burned, low over his table, beside Madame's newest bag. Mardiros: Forty, forty-one, forty-two... Sit, sit. Her seal was whole again tonight.

4:42 Arslan: Then let's see what you've been carrying. Narrator: One English fiver, clean as a bishop's collar. What's wrong with it?

4:50 Mardiros: To the eye, nothing. I'd have passed it, Captain. Paper, watermark — beautiful.

4:56 Arslan: But something made you hold it to the lamp. Mardiros: Here. Low, flat across the light. Now look along it, not at it.

5:05 Narrator: Figures. Rows of them, across the white. Mardiros: Pencilled so faint my clerk would never see them. Only this lamp, at this slant. Then I looked again, and the paper is wrong. Too even. False.

5:19 Narrator: Good Lord. Arslan: And it came out of Madame's sealed bag. Mardiros: Last night's. Among her— among her English notes. I told nobody. Not Madame, not the bank, not my wife.

5:32 Arslan: A forger good enough to pass you, and you've sorted her bags for months. This note isn't the first. Mardiros: Months, yes. And since the English officers came, her pounds have tripled. That's what keeps me awake. How many have I... how many have I passed?

5:49 Narrator: Five figures, a gap, five more. Seven, two, nought, four, one... all the way down. Arslan: I'll copy them onto a card. The note goes back in your safe, Mardiros, here beside the lamp.

6:03 Mardiros: In the safe. Nobody touches it. Narrator: I sat six years in army signals. Five-figure groups, Kemal — that's wireless cipher.

6:14 The Inspector's Desk at Sirkeci

6:12 Arslan: Is it.

6:18 Narrator: Inspector Bilgin received us next morning in the Sansaryan Han at Sirkeci, behind a desk heaped with Public Order's buff sheets. Bilgin: Mr. Arslan, Captain Demir. An honour. A private gentleman asking after a nightclub. Curious.

6:33 Arslan: I drank there last night. The vodka made me curious too. Bilgin: The vodka, efendim. Of course. Then hear what Public Order hears. A secret set, calling Berlin.

6:46 Narrator: From here? From Istanbul? Bilgin: Every night, these seven weeks. Polyakova's club shuts, then the set calls, within the hour, regular as the Kadıköy ferry.

6:56 Arslan: And Berlin answers? Bilgin: Never. Not once. It calls into the dark like a dog at the moon.

7:03 Arslan: Then whoever it's isn't taking orders. Someone who calls nightly, unanswered, wants to be noticed. Narrator: Or the set's too weak to hear the reply. A small transmitter shouts better than it listens.

7:17 Bilgin: Either way, the hour is hers. A stateless Russian who toasts Hitler and boasts of Morse. Narrator: She tapped it on her glass for us, Kemal. A trained fist. That isn't nothing.

7:28 Arslan: Half that room is English officers, Greeks, Levantines. Any of them might keep a wireless. Bilgin: The English are our friends' friends. The Egyptian who buys their drinks has a king, an ambassador and a cotton crop. Madame has a Nansen paper. Whom do I put on the frontier train, efendim?

7:48 Arslan: And where's Madame Polyakova when her lights go out?

7:52 Dusk Above the Golden Horn

7:56 Narrator: At dusk Bilgin took us up the Galata Tower to the fire-watch gallery, with the Golden Horn going dark below us. Arslan: You brought us up here because your own office has ears, Inspector. Bilgin: Because the fire-watch keeps the tallest aerial in Galata, efendim. Ears also, perhaps.

8:14 Narrator: Charming. Arslan: Then take this. Figures, copied onto a card. I think they're your set's cipher.

8:21 Bilgin: Figures on a card, and not a word of where you found them. Arslan: Where they were found could ruin an honest man. The figures can't.

8:30 Bilgin: And for this card, you want something. Arslan: A week. Leave Madame Polyakova where she is for seven nights.

8:38 Bilgin: Seven nights of a Russian tapping Berlin under my — Narrator: Then let me listen with you. Give me the wavelength, and a corner up here for my receiver.

8:47 Bilgin: Forty-one metres, near enough. It drifts. The fire-watch will clear you a corner.

8:54 Narrator: The night band. From this height you'll hear a set anywhere along the water. Bilgin: Seven nights, efendim. Then the stateless Russian sleeps in my cells.

9:04 Backstage, Where the Band Comes Through the Wall

9:08 Narrator: We caught Madame Polyakova the following night in the narrow passage behind her stage, where the band came through the wall like weather. Arslan: One small question, Madame. When your lights go out at two, who's still in the house?

9:22 Polyakova: My staff. The barman. My boy with the bag. The old woman who sweeps.

9:28 Arslan: You had that list ready before I'd finished. Someone has asked you already this week. Polyakova: A policeman who drinks lemonade at my bar every night. He asks with his eyes.

9:41 Narrator: And you, Madame? After the old woman— Polyakova: Sweeps? I count, I go up to my room, and I'm nobody's business. You told me you weren't police.

9:50 Arslan: I'm not. Police would ask you at the station. Polyakova: Then ask somebody with a passport. Ask my star.

9:58 Polyakova: Tulay! Here, darling. These gentlemen want to know what you whisper to my officers.

10:04 Tulay: Whisper, Madame? I sing to them. Whispering costs extra.

10:10 Polyakova: Between turns you hang on their sleeves and whisper about permits and passage south, like a girl with a suitcase under her bed. Tulay: Madame hears through a whole— Polyakova: Walls are nothing to Madame. It's my house.

10:24 Tulay: Evidently. Narrator: Passage south, in wartime, means a ship or the Taurus Express. Neither comes cheap.

10:33 Tulay: Captain, look at me. What would I do in the desert? Dance for camels?

10:40 Arslan: Mm. Tulay: I ask the English about their sweethearts, that's all. I ask— their sweethearts. I swear it on my mother.

10:50 Shutters Thrown Open on Pera at Ten

10:54 Narrator: I slept till ten after a night at my receiver, and woke to find Kemal at our window with the shutters thrown open on Pera. Madame shut her doors at two, Kemal. By ten to three the set was calling. I heard it myself. A good fist, steady, a little vain. And Berlin as silent as Bilgin promised.

11:14 Arslan: You built something up there in the night, Haluk. Let me see it. Narrator: The set wakes when her club shuts. A forged fiver carrying cipher comes out of her bag. She sent Morse for the White Army, she toasts the Germans, and after two she's upstairs alone, by her own account. One woman, four ways.

11:33 Arslan: Two things, side by side. The calls are hers by the clock. The note is hers by the bag. But her bag is sealed every night and opened every night. So that note went into her till on one night only, the night before Mardiros climbed our stair.

11:51 Narrator: And she stood behind that till all night.

12:02 Arslan: Two things on one table, Haluk. That doesn't mean they're— Narrator: Tied? Then find the string. And Bilgin's seven nights have already begun.

12:11 Feathers and Powder Under the Back Stair

12:15 Narrator: Tulay's dressing room was a cupboard of feathers and powder under the back stair, and an hour before her first turn we found Madame already in it, holding a ring of keys. Polyakova: My till keys, Tulay. One hour. I go to the Russian church in Karaköy, to light my father's candle.

12:33 Tulay: Your till, Madame? Last night I was a whisperer. Polyakova: Last night you were. Tonight I need hands. Officers' tabs in the book, Greeks pay cash, and give Mr. Lemke his change in lira, always. He tips the band out of it.

12:48 Tulay: He tips the whole street out of it. Polyakova: Then the whole street loves my house. Gentlemen, she's yours until I come back.

12:57 Arslan: She doesn't think you're a spy, Tulay. She thinks you're leaving her. Tulay: Madame thinks everyone leaves her. Once, everyone did...

13:07 Arslan: Sweethearts don't need permits and passage south. Tulay: The English have sweethearts in— Arslan: Cairo. And you'd like a stage there.

13:15 Tulay: A cabaret on the Nile wants me. Top of the bill, Mr. Arslan, and paid in gold, not lira. Narrator: Well, well.

13:26 Tulay: But nobody reaches Egypt without a British permit. So I ask. A major knows a man at the consulate. A lieutenant knows the Taurus Express: Aleppo, Haifa, then Cairo.

13:38 Arslan: You never asked Mr. Lemke, and Egypt is his country. So it isn't a man you're running to. Tulay: Mr. Lemke wants me here, at his table. He'd buy my contract and keep me in it...

13:53 Narrator: And how long does Madame hold you? Tulay: Two more years. Please, Captain. Mr. Arslan. Not a word to— not a word to Madame. She owns my contract.

14:05 A Midnight Bottle, Poured by Madame's Own Hand

14:09 Narrator: By midnight Lemke had us at his corner table whether we liked it or not, with Tulay at his elbow and Madame pouring for us with her own hand. Lemke: Back again, gentlemen! Tulay, they come for you, not for my champagne.

14:24 Tulay: Everyone comes for me, Mr. Lemke. Only you pay. Polyakova: Vodka, Mr. Arslan, from me. Drink it slowly. It's the last I pour you.

14:36 Tulay: Oh dear. Lemke: Mon Dieu, Madame. What has he—

14:40 Arslan: Asked when she goes to bed, which no lady forgives. Besides, I'm drinking to console a friend. He's at Public Order, with some spy's figures on his desk and no spy to go with them.

14:52 Tulay: A spy, in Pera? I'd hoped for one with better shoulders. Lemke: Figures and no spy! I read the thrillers, I know these fellows. Your spy wants a harder pencil; on a forged fiver it barely shows, and he drinks it away at the bar.

15:10 Polyakova: Forged money does not drink in my house. Tulay: Oh, Madame. Lemke: A joke, Madame, a joke! Your money is— it's the best in Pera.

15:22 Tulay: He tells the band that too. Arslan: Upstairs, and nobody's business, you said. That sounds like a lady who isn't alone.

15:30 Polyakova: My ledger and my father's icon, Mr. Arslan. Neither of them will speak for me. Lemke: Our tango, Tulay. Gentlemen, the bottle is yours.

15:41 Polyakova: Excuse me. I have a till. Narrator: Not one soul to vouch for her after two, Kemal. Not one.

15:49 Arslan: Fetch Bilgin. At closing, she's his.

15:53 The Shutter Comes Down at Two

15:57 Narrator: At two the shutter came down behind us, and Inspector Bilgin ducked in under it among the upturned chairs, to where Madame stood at her till and Tulay waited in her furs. Bilgin: Madame Polyakova. Good morning, efendim. Your coat, if you please.

16:12 Polyakova: My bag goes down the hill at two. Who carries it, if I sit in your— Bilgin: Your boy, as always. I want you, Madame, not your money.

16:20 Polyakova: And the charge? Or does a Nansen paper need no charge? Bilgin: A clock. For seven weeks my sheets have said one thing: Polyakova's club shuts, then the set calls. So tonight the club shuts with Polyakova in my cells. If the set keeps quiet, I have my spy.

16:39 Polyakova: Your spy. Ha. Arslan: And if it doesn't?

16:43 Bilgin: Then she has a friend at a key, efendim, and I find the friend. Polyakova: A friend! I have a till, a dancer and debts. Ask the dancer what she whispers.

16:54 Bilgin: I was coming to the dancer. My man drinks lemonade at your bar, Madame, and he hears talk of ships. A troopship, and a—

17:02 Tulay: A day? Not from me! I never— I never asked a sailing day in my life! They said it themselves! At the corner table, between the cricket and the champagne. I was dancing, I just— it went past me.

17:16 Bilgin: The day? Tulay: I don't remember days, Inspector. I remember who can dance.

17:23 Arslan: You ask as though you already had it, Inspector. Has your man the day? Bilgin: No. No day, efendim. But a sailing day said out loud in a cabaret... somebody gets buried for it. Tulay's given me a table. That's all.

17:37 Narrator: If we're testing the clock, Inspector, I want my receiver warm by half past. Bilgin: Go up, Captain. Madame, your coat.

17:45 Polyakova: You asked who is in my house when the lights go out, Mr. Arslan. Tonight, nobody. They knocked politely, like that. Told him to bring a coat. And I— I held it for him.

17:59 Polyakova: The Bolsheviks came for my father at night too.

18:04 Black Water Beneath the Tower Gallery

18:07 Narrator: In the tower gallery, with the water black beneath us, I nursed the receiver while Bilgin and Kemal sat behind me on a coil of fire hose. Bilgin: Twenty to three, efendim. She has sat in my cells since a quarter past two. Your night band is very quiet.

18:23 Narrator: It kept me waiting till ten to three last time. Patience, Inspector. There. Forty-one metres, drifting high. The same call, the same fist.

18:34 Bilgin: A fist is a fist. Hers is in my cells, so this is her friend, her— Narrator: Two fifty-one, for the log. Polyakova's locked up, and still it calls.

18:43 Bilgin: That's— no. Arslan: A friend would sit on his hands tonight, Inspector, and let your cells keep her. Whoever's at that key doesn't know where she is, or doesn't care what it does for her.

18:57 Narrator: And Berlin sends nothing back. Same as every night. Bilgin: Then who in God's name is tapping?

19:04 Home over the Galata Bridge at Seven

19:08 Narrator: Kemal and I walked home over the Galata Bridge at seven, between the fishing boats, with no sleep in either of us. Arslan: You're walking faster than a tired man, Haluk. You've settled on someone.

19:21 Narrator: The dancer. Madame walked out of Bilgin's door at dawn, and the girl's still loose. She hangs on the officers, she wants passage south, and after closing she vanished into the dark.

19:32 Arslan: Then build her case properly. Start at the tower. What did Bilgin get from me?

19:38 Narrator: Rows of figures on a card, in your hand. You wouldn't even tell him which shore they came from. Arslan: And who knows they were on a banknote?

19:46 Narrator: You, me, and the man with the lamp. He'd sooner swallow his scales. Arslan: Now the corner table. What did I tell them?

19:55 Narrator: That a friend at Public Order had a spy's figures. Gossip, between two glasses. Arslan: And what came back?

20:02 Narrator: Our cotton prince, laughing. The spy wants a harder pencil, it hardly shows on a bad five-pound note. Arslan: I've had that line in my ear since midnight. And I let it go, because I was watching the clock, and the clock said Madame.

20:17 Narrator: Mind the tram, Kemal. Kemal? Arslan: I told that table figures, Haluk. Only figures. Then how did he know it was a fiver?

20:28 Narrator: Good Lord.

20:30 Back at the Club as Bilgin Crosses the Floor

20:34 Narrator: At midnight Kemal and I were back at Lemke's corner table, Tulay beside him, when Bilgin came across the dance floor in his overcoat. Bilgin: Miss Tulay. Good evening, efendim. Forgive me for stopping the music.

20:47 Tulay: Inspector? You let Madame go at dawn. All Pera knows it.

20:52 Bilgin: Madame, yes. You danced past the English while they spoke of a troopship, then left alone at twenty past two. Tulay: I went home! Behind the Tünel, to my aunt and her— her canaries. Ask the canaries!

21:07 Lemke: Ask her everything, Inspector. Better I know tonight, before I buy her— Tulay: Buy my contract? Mr. Lemke!

21:14 Lemke: A troopship, a pretty girl, Englishmen at my table. It reads like one of my thrillers. Bilgin: It reads like a funeral, efendim. Miss Tulay, your coat.

21:26 Arslan: Before the coat, Inspector, here's a line Mr. Lemke gave this table last night. I mentioned a friend holding a spy's figures. Mr. Lemke advised the spy to buy a harder pencil, because figures barely show on a forged fiver.

21:42 Lemke: And Tulay laughed. A bad joke, I admit it, a very— Bilgin: Pencil. At the tower you put numbers in my hand, written on a card, efendim, with not a word of where. No pencil. No banknote. Nothing forged.

21:59 Narrator: And the Inspector is the man paid to know such things. Bilgin: I carry Public Order's sheets, and I didn't know it. Who told you, Mr. Lemke?

22:08 Lemke: Nobody tells— nobody tells an idle man anything, Inspector. I guessed. Tulay: You guessed the pencil, and the money, and that it was false? You never once guessed which way I'd turn in a tango.

22:23 Arslan: And every bill at this table, Inspector, is paid in English notes into Madame's till. Lemke: Tulay, chérie, tell them I'm a cotton heir with nothing to do but— Bilgin: Your king, your ambassador, your cotton crop, efendim. They may all visit you in my cells.

22:39 Lemke: Then keep my table warm, Tulay. I'll be back before the band learns a new tune. Bilgin: Of Alexandria. Your coat. You are under arrest as a spy.

22:51 Mardiros Opens an Hour Early

22:55 Narrator: Mardiros opened an hour early next morning for Bilgin and his parcels, for us, and for Tulay, whom Kemal had told to bring her savings. Bilgin: From the Egyptian's yali at Kandilli, efendim. Inside his gramophone cabinet, where the records should be.

23:10 Narrator: Short-wave, tuned near forty-one metres. There's our nightly caller, Inspector. Bilgin: And beside it, an English novel with its spine broken, and English notes in a cigar box.

23:23 Mardiros: Show me. Twenty, forty, sixty... Too even. Every one too even.

23:30 Bilgin: A German, raised in Alexandria. He came ashore at Şile off a Bulgarian fishing boat with four thousand pounds of these, efendim, and boasts of it to anyone who'll listen. Mardiros: Weeks of his pounds through my hands, and I— I passed them. Inspector, my name, my door...

23:50 Bilgin: Your name I never had, efendim. Mr. Arslan saw to that. Today I have it, and it stays in my pocket.

23:57 Arslan: You passed them because they're good, Mardiros. You stopped at one only because something was written on it. Tulay: Mr. Arslan said to bring my savings. Lira, Mr. Mardiros, into English pounds for Cairo. Real ones.

24:13 Mardiros: Real ones, mademoiselle. I've had my fill of the other kind. Now, the safe.

24:19 Mardiros: Under my lamp, Captain. Low and flat. Narrator: Seven, two, nought, four, one. Page seventy-two, line four, first word... "Ship."

24:32 Narrator: The next group... "sails." And the third... "Thursday."

24:37 Bilgin: A troopship, Thursday. My lemonade man never had the day. Mardiros: Pencilled so faint... and there's a whole ship on it. I nearly sent it to the bank.

24:49 Tulay: Thursday! Now I— yes, I heard it at the corner table. A lieutenant said it into his gin while I danced past.

24:58 Arslan: And a yard from that lieutenant sat the man with the book waiting at home. Tulay: Our talk. The corner table's talk. He took it home, worked it out in pencil on one of his own fivers, and the next night, careless... he paid his bill with it.

25:17 Evening in the City of a Thousand Listening Rooms

25:21 Narrator: Istanbul, the city of a thousand listening rooms, went about its evening as Kemal and I followed Bilgin in under Madame's lowered shutter, to where she sat over her ledger. Bilgin: Your Nansen paper, Madame. Stamped, signed, and yours again, efendim.

25:37 Polyakova: Yesterday, a Russian for the frontier train. Tonight, Madame efendim. Did the weather change, Inspector?

25:46 Bilgin: The Captain's log changed it. Narrator: At two fifty-one I wrote that Polyakova's locked up, and still it calls. The Inspector signed beneath my line.

25:56 Polyakova: So a wireless I never touched gets me out of a cell I never earned. Well. I thank the wireless.

26:04 Arslan: You've had that ledger open since we came in, Madame, and never turned the page. Something's caught you. Polyakova: Seven weeks of Mr. Lemke. Eleven pounds ten shillings— he gives me fifteen, and I count him his change.

26:21 Narrator: Madame? Polyakova: I gave the girl the order myself: his change in lira, always. Paper pounds in. Good Turkish lira out, every night, from my drawer. And the band... the band loved him...

26:37 Polyakova: His tips! The famous pasha's tips, out of my till! I paid my own band to love him!

26:45 Narrator: Madame. Let me pour, for once. Polyakova: I left the Crimea with a coat and a key. Twenty years I've built this house. And I pour for him, I pour—

26:56 Arslan: One link for your notebook, Haluk. That first night in Galata we heard her pounds had tripled since the officers came. A good part was never the officers' money. It was his, and paper.

27:08 Narrator: Seven weeks of calling, Kemal, and Berlin never once answered. Why go on? Arslan: I said it in the Inspector's office, the first morning. A man who calls every night into silence wants to be noticed. Berlin never noticed. Pera did.

27:25 Polyakova: And I poured his champagne. Leave me that much. I poured it well.

27:31 Bilgin: Lemke goes before the court as a German spy, efendim. And Madame keeps her papers. Narrator: Lemke went before the court as a German spy, and Berlin never answered him there either. The ferries were blowing for the last boats; the city went home and kept the rest to itself.