Empire of Lies

by Raymond Khoury

  Which often didn’t sit well with the cops whose toes were being trampled.

  Kamal pulled back the sheet to expose the body.

  It was male, middle-aged. Unusually, the man was naked.

  “What do we know?” Kamal asked.

  “Seriously?” the lieutenant inspector scoffed. “You mean you haven’t divined it already?”

  Kamal gave him an impatient, withering look. “The sooner we can establish that this doesn’t concern us, the sooner we can get out of your hair.”

  “Although I, for one, will forever savor the memory of this delightful rendezvous,” Taymoor added.

  Kamal shifted his withering look to his partner.

  The lieutenant inspector nodded grudgingly. “Well, in that case…” He pointed at a man who was sitting on a bench closer to the bridge. A couple of cops were shadowing him. “That guy over there? He was fishing from the Osman Bridge. Saw the body floating by, half-submerged. Called it in. River patrol set up some nets by this bridge and snagged him.”

  Kamal got down on his haunches for a closer look. He noticed it immediately. The heavy bruising around the neck. There was no sign of cadaveric spasm either, not that it’s always there. But this was no swimming accident. It wasn’t a suicide either.

  “I assume he wasn’t carrying any ID?” Taymoor said. “I mean, you checked everywhere, right?” A raised eyebrow accompanied the “everywhere.”

  Kamal ignored him and asked, “What’s the coroner saying for time of death?”

  “Fresh,” the lieutenant inspector replied. “He hadn’t been in the water long.”

  Kamal nodded and glanced at the water. The current wasn’t strong at that time of year. The body hadn’t traveled far.

  “We need to find where he went in,” he said. “And what happened to his clothes.”

  “Genius,” the lieutenant inspector said. “Praise God that you’re here.”

  Kamal got up but didn’t rise to the jibe. Instead, he looked up, checking for cameras, then reached into his pocket, pulled out a card, and held it out to the cop with two fingers. “Let me know what your men find. We’ll hold off on filing our report until you do.” He gave him a pointed glance.

  The cop understood and snatched the card.

  Kamal nodded to Taymoor, and they walked away.

  * * *

  “Can you believe that dickhead?” Taymoor complained as he drove east on the boulevard that ran alongside the river. “As if we don’t have bigger fish to fry”—said with the smirk.

  Kamal slid him a sideways scowl. “Are you done? ’Cause I’m happy to walk back.”

  Taymoor laughed.

  In truth, Kamal hadn’t been any happier about being summoned out there than the cops were about seeing him. He and Taymoor did have, to use Taymoor’s cheesy words, bigger fish to fry. Terrorist whales, not civilian-homicide goldfish. He also empathized with the cops’ frustration at having him and Taymoor show up. If this was a murder, it would be something they’d be loathe to share for the simple reason that, in Ottoman Paris, murders were rare. The capital penalty for it under shari’a law was a major deterrent. There were crimes of passion, as well as honor killings—women murdered by male relatives who considered them to have dishonored the family, typically for eloping or getting pregnant out of wedlock. They had become a rarity in the big cities, where attitudes had changed after the previous sultan, the progressive Murad V, introduced legislation making them a crime. But honor killings were now on the rise again after his successor, Abdülhamid III, had given the imams more power and turned back the clock on many of Murad’s reforms. Far from the cities, though, it was as if the reforms had never happened. The commonly held credo of “my horse, my gun, and my woman are sacred” may have been updated to include a car instead of a horse, but the belief was still deeply entrenched in the patriarchal and tribal system of many of the empire’s provinces.

  But this was no honor killing.

  In terms of the recovered body, there wasn’t much more to be done. No one had filed a missing person report. Kamal had already called the Hafiye’s surveillance center and told a senior analyst he knew there to go through all the CCTV footage of the riverbank since that day’s first light, going back one fersah from where they’d fished the man out. He knew it wasn’t a long shot. With the security services installing more cameras every day, there was hardly a corner left in the city that wasn’t under constant watch.

  It was still the holy day of rest, which was why Kamal and Taymoor were soon seated across from each other on the sidewalk terrace of a kahvehane on the left bank. Separating them was a table with a backgammon set and an empty jug of mint lemonade. Two narguileh water pipes stood proudly on either side of the table.

  Clattering dice, gurgling water, and boisterous conversation reverberated all around them as men of all ages filled the curved bamboo chairs of the coffeehouse while indulging in their age-old love of all three pastimes. Around them, waiters in dirty white aprons flitted among the tables, precariously balancing tiny cups of strong coffee, glasses of heavily sweetened Arab tea, and tongs holding the heated tobacco coals for the water pipes. There were no women around: this kahvehane didn’t have a separate “family area” where women could sit with other women or with their husbands, brothers, and fathers. Most coffeehouses in Paris didn’t have such sections either.

  “Come on,” Taymoor hissed, “du shesh”—two sixes. Holding the small ivory dice with three fingers, he kissed them, then flicked them onto the elaborately carved game board.

  The dice tumbled, spun, and finally settled. Sure enough, two sixes showed up.

  “Allez,” Taymoor rasped as he pumped the air with his fist.

  Oddly, people across the empire still called out the dice rolls using Persian numbers, a tradition that was as old as the game itself. Taymoor’s last outburst was another linguistic anomaly, this one a leftover from the eyalet’s French history.

  Taymoor didn’t have to move any of his checkers. His victory was now numerically unavoidable. He took a celebratory pull from his mouthpiece, causing the water pipe to gurgle so loudly it seemed to be heckling his opponent, then sat back with a big, smug grin on his face. “Had enough? Or are you feeling particularly masochistic tonight?”

  Kamal frowned at him—then he flicked both sides of the board upward, slamming it shut like a vertical clamshell. “Hasiktir,” he cursed. “Your dice are impossible today.”

  The outburst startled everyone around them. Bad sportsmanship at backgammon was a major faux pas in Ottoman circles, but no one was going to scowl at them tonight.

  “Go easy on him, Taymoor Agha,” a man sitting at the next table laughed. “Today, you are both champions.” He raised his glass to him. A wave of others joined in his toast.

  Taymoor raised his own glass, smiled, and bowed his head in thanks.

  “For our heroes,” the jovial coffee shop’s owner bellowed as he wobbled over with a tray of fresh drinks. “You’ve never tasted anything like it, trust me,” he said as he laid down the two tall glasses of pomegranate and plum khoshâb. “I’ve made it for you with a touch of amber, musk, and my secret ingredient.” He paused, then leaned in with a wink and whispered, “Wisteria.”

  Taymoor nodded his thanks as the man retreated from the table. Then he turned to his partner. “Would you stop already?”

  “What?”

  “Look at you. All glum on one of the biggest days in our—hell, in anyone’s—life. Come on, brother. Live it up.” He leaned in and gave Kamal a big slap on the shoulder.

  Kamal raised his glass half-heartedly. “You’re right.” He took a sip.

  Taymoor frowned. “Your sister-in-law chose to be friends with an enemy of the state, all right? That’s her problem, not yours. She’s an adult. There’s only so much you can do.”

  Kamal nodded. “I know, I know.”

  “You need to talk to Ramazan,” Taymoor told him. “He needs to set her straight before she gets caught up in a bad situa
tion.”

  Kamal scoffed. “Set her straight? Are you kidding me? No one sets Nisreen straight. No one ever has. Except her father.”

  “So talk to her father.”

  “It’s a bit complicated, given that he passed away two years ago.”

  Taymoor took another long pull. “Well, someone’s got to talk to her.” He edged in, lowering his voice. “I don’t want to see you get into trouble because of her.”

  “Me, or us?”

  Taymoor looked at him askance. “That’s not fair, brother.”

  Kamal’s face scrunched with remorse. “I’m sorry. It’s just … the way things are going, it feels like we’re all going to get sucked into some kind of trouble, doesn’t it?”

  Which threw Taymoor. “What are you talking about?”

  “The psychos hoping to get their seventy-two virgins by blowing themselves to smithereens? I’m all in. Find them, take them out, every last one of them—absolutely. That’s what I signed up for. White Rose subversives and anarchists like Azmi plotting to topple the Divan? They need to be stopped, no question. But the rest of it? They’ve got a radio DJ in the dock for insulting the beylerbey’s son by questioning his real estate dealings. A university professor was fired for giving a seminar about the merits of solar power. They even locked up two puppeteers for ‘incitement to anarchy’”—using air quotes around the words—“just because their puppet show linked the sultan’s ripping up of environmental controls and the grand vizier’s factories to poisoning a town.”

  “It’s not conclusive. The Environment Department’s still looking into that.”

  “It’s a puppet show, brother.”

  Taymoor shrugged. “That’s not us. That’s Z Directorate. It’s their business.”

  “We’re on the same team.”

  “Our job is to get the killers. That’s what we do. It’s not complicated.”

  “Yeah, but … you don’t think this is going overboard? Everyone seems to be guilty of something these days. It’s getting so that people are scared to think.”

  “Maybe they should be.” He edged closer. “Some thoughts can be more dangerous than explosive vests. We’re at war, brother. It might not be a war in the old sense of the word, but it’s a war. We’re under attack from all sides, and we’re vulnerable. And if we let some cracks set in, then everything could fall apart.”

  Just then, Taymoor’s phone beeped with an incoming text. He picked it up with a grin. “Saved by the bell. That’s way too heavy a conversation for today, brother.” He glanced at the screen, and then his grin widened.

  “Hot date?” Kamal asked.

  “Care to rephrase that without limiting yourself to the singular?”

  Kamal played the game, kept up the pretense, and rolled his eyes as Taymoor got up.

  “I’m out of here,” Taymoor said. “Take a breath and kick back a little, brother. Or I just might have to find myself a new partner.” He gave him a playful, pointed look.

  Kamal gave him a nod. “New me. Tomorrow. Promise.”

  “Good. See you at the castle, bright and early.” Taymoor wagged a finger as he stepped away through a wave of congratulatory pats. “No rest for the vigilant: remember, bad guys are waiting.”

  6

  By sunset, once the maghrib prayers were done, enough time had passed since the mystery patient had walked into the hospital for him to be operated on safely.

  There were still a lot of unknowns, especially for Ramazan, who would be administering the anesthetic. The man’s medical history was an empty file. This was far from ideal, dangerous even, but he had no choice. The surgery—open heart, not exactly a minor procedure—was unavoidable. He would just have to be overly cautious and monitor his vitals like a hawk during the operation, which would last several hours.

  But that was easier said than done, given the questions swirling through Ramazan’s mind concerning the man’s bizarre tattoos. He’d never seen anything like them, and the few words he’d managed to read had awakened an unusually clingy curiosity inside him.

  They were in the pre-op chamber, preparing the man for surgery. A nurse was standing by the bed jotting down the readings from the monitors onto a chart while Ramazan prepared the drugs that he would feed into the man’s IV drip.

  As he worked, Ramazan couldn’t help but glance at him, and each time he did, the man was staring back at him with that same inscrutable, hard look. Which was unusual—and disturbing. Normally, while waiting to go under the knife, patients were nervous. They were about to put their lives in someone else’s hands and cede control over their bodies and minds to a total stranger. Worse, the anesthetist could be the last person they ever spoke to. This usually made them overly talkative, and they mostly discussed their fears: what if they don’t ever wake up? Or, worse, what if they wake during surgery? They were usually desperate for reassurance, of which Ramazan would offer plenty. Then he’d distract them with small talk.

  This patient didn’t need reassurance or seem nervous. If anything, he seemed coiled up, on edge, watching, studying. Confrontational. And all of it in that unsettling silence.

  What’s his story? Ramazan kept wondering, although he wasn’t sure he really wanted to find out.

  Anbara came in and said, “They’re ready for you.”

  Ramazan nodded to the nurse and turned to the patient, noticing from the monitor that the man’s heart rate spiked up at her words—which was not uncommon. But it was unusual in that the man had appeared to be totally undaunted until then.

  “I’m going to give you a short-acting sedative now,” Ramazan told him. “Then we’ll wheel you in.”

  He was about to squeeze the plunger into the intravenous feed when the man’s arm suddenly lashed out and grabbed Ramazan’s wrist. He held it firmly in place, his grip so tight it hurt Ramazan. His eyes narrowed with menace as, with his other hand, he moved his oxygen mask off to one side, exposing his mouth. Then he spoke for the first time.

  “Make sure you don’t screw this up, hakeem,” he said in a low hiss. “Make sure. Because you and all the rest of you, all of you—you owe me.” He pointed a threatening finger at Ramazan’s face. “None of you would be here if it wasn’t for me. None of this—none of you would even exist if I hadn’t done what I did. So get it right. You understand me?”

  Ramazan couldn’t breathe. He just stood there, nailed to the spot, paralyzed. Then his free hand came to life and he squeezed the plunger, sending the sedative on its way—the whole lot, in one go. The drug was fast-acting, and within seconds Ramazan felt the man’s grip loosen. He pulled his hand free and, trying to recover his poise, placed it by the patient’s side. He glanced nervously at Anbara and saw his mystified, rattled look reflected in her face.

  She didn’t say anything. He didn’t either. He just held her gaze for a second, then dropped his eyes back to his patient.

  The man’s gaze was still fixed on him, but it had softened.

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Ramazan told him, trying to sound unfazed by what had just happened. “I’m going to give you a painkiller along with the anesthetic, and inshallah”—if God wills it—“this will all be over before you know it.”

  The man’s eyelids had drooped down, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. His mouth was bent in a disturbing half smile. “Make sure, hakeem,” he muttered, the words coming out slurred. “You owe me. All of you. Even the sultan. He knows.”

  Even in this half-gone state, his scowl was still unsettling. Then his words faded into a low mumble, and he drifted off into a stupor.

  Anbara replaced the breathing mask over his mouth as his eyelids shuttered. She looked up at Ramazan, her expression one of confusion tinged with fear.

  “Let’s wheel him in,” he said.

  * * *

  Throughout the surgery, Ramazan was in a cloud.

  Fonseca carried out the valve replacement calmly and expertly, as he had countless times before. Ramazan, however, had to struggle to st
ay focused. He was still unsettled by the stranger’s weird outburst.

  He hadn’t mentioned it to Fonseca. He would, of course—but he didn’t want to do it just before the surgery. He needed some time to process it himself.

  Ramazan had enough experience to know that people’s true nature generally did come out under heavy sedation and, to an even greater extent, anesthesia. He’d seen it before surgery, as they spiraled into unconsciousness, and even more strongly after, when it took hours for the drugs to get out of their systems. In that twilight zone between consciousness and unconsciousness, natural tendencies and true temperament were unmasked. Kind, relaxed people were often giggly; aggressive people, hostile. Kids woke up crying for their mothers. Truths were also sometimes revealed, but they were often nothing more than truths that had left their mark on their victims’ bodies as well as their psyches: unwanted pregnancies, cancers, physical abuse. Outwardly brave-faced people confessed their terror at the prospect of never waking up; others shared secrets as if they were in a confession booth, perhaps seeking absolution before possible death.

  After the drugs wore off completely, patients generally forgot what they had said.

  Somehow, and regardless of how absurd or senseless the stranger’s words had sounded, he’d sensed a puzzling honesty in them. He had a nagging sense that the patient thoroughly believed what he’d said. Which could mean nothing more than that the man was mentally unstable. A nut.

  But it wasn’t just what he’d said. Far more perplexing was how he’d said it.

  The man spoke in a very strange dialect. Ramazan couldn’t place it. It wasn’t the vernacular Turkish he was used to, the language that had supplanted French as the lingua franca of the region but that, over the centuries, had become infused with an abundance of French words. Instead, it was Ottoman Turkish, the complex imperial language whose use was nowadays limited to bureaucratic documents, scholarly works, and the pretentious conversations of the highly educated elite. Ramazan had rarely heard it spoken in casual conversation. And it wasn’t even the normal Ottoman-Turkish Ramazan knew: the man’s syntax and vocabulary were highly unusual; his manner of speech, formal and rigid. Ramazan considered himself a well-traveled man and had ventured as far as Istanbul and Cairo, but he’d never heard it spoken that way before. It was thoroughly bewildering, and reminded Ramazan of some of the old classical texts he’d read as a student.