An Evil Eye: A Novel

by Jason Goodwin

  “Someone who wished me harm,” Fevzi Ahmet added. “In the circumstances, I imagine it was you.”

  Yashim blinked. “Me?”

  “‘Me’! You can do better than that, Yashim. But I don’t have time to listen to your outraged innocence. You wouldn’t think it, ambassador, would you?” Fevzi Ahmet called over his shoulder. “Yashim sold my little girl to your old friends. Quite Galytsin’s confidant, I hear.”

  “You should have stuck to rowing,” Palewski said glumly.

  Fevzi Ahmet’s face twitched as he faced Yashim. “You will bring my daughter here. Hyacinth will find a way.”

  “Hyacinth is dead,” Yashim said.

  The pasha looked pale. “It is happening …” he muttered. He sprang to his feet and went to the door. “That complicates things—for you. For the sake of your friends, I imagine you can find a way.”

  “A way?”

  “To get my daughter out of the harem.”

  Yashim shook his head. “I can’t just walk out of the sultan’s harem with a little girl.”

  Fevzi Pasha whistled into the dark, and two men entered the room: caïquejees both, to judge by their swinging gait.

  “These men are going to take you to your cellar, ambassador. Marta—is it?—will accompany you. I’m afraid it won’t be very comfortable, but it depends on your friend how long you will remain there. Tie them.”

  The last words were spoken to the caïquejees. They lifted Palewski’s hands and bound them behind his back.

  Palewski kept his eyes on Marta, and she on his, even when they tied her hands behind her back. Neither of them spoke.

  The door closed behind them. “I don’t know how you plan to get away with it,” Yashim said.

  “Interesting, isn’t it? Neither of us can tell how the other will lay his plans. I only hope, for your sake, that yours will be as effective as my own.”

  “I’m afraid you overestimate my talents,” Yashim said. “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

  “So you say. It doesn’t matter, does it? You know now—and your friends downstairs.” He stood up. “You will bring her here. If not I will kill the ambassador, and his woman. And I will kill you, too.” He paused, and flung back his head. “For you, however, I actually have a little gift. An incentive, if you like.”

  118

  KADRI saw the drawing room door open, and the two caïquejees go in.

  He was about to go down and find out what was going on when the door opened again, and the men came out holding candlesticks. Between them came Marta and Palewski. Kadri could see that something was wrong; he checked his impulse to call out, but moved noiselessly down the stairs to the half-landing.

  He heard the cellar door open, and close.

  Frowning with anxiety, he darted down the second flight of steps and listened by the door.

  He recognized Yashim’s voice, and another one he didn’t know.

  119

  “THERE’S nothing I could possibly want that you could ever give me, Fevzi Ahmet.”

  The pasha smiled. “No? Think of your father, Yashim. The governor. Poor old man. He died, I’m told, still trying to find out who brought such dishonor on his family.”

  A stubborn look came into Yashim’s eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, well. His wife—the lovely Greek girl? Manhandled, shall we say, before they slit her throat? At least she got to see who gelded her only son, before she died. I’m told she was allowed to watch.”

  Yashim’s lip peeled back.

  “The governor’s son,” Fevzi Ahmet went on, in the same musing tone. “Not quite a son, anymore. Very sad, for everyone. And embarrassing for the old man, wasn’t it? With all his power, not knowing who. Not knowing why. His wife dishonored and dead, and his son castrated. Who did it? He never found out. Too much grief. Some people said it pushed him into an early grave.”

  Yashim closed his eyes. “I don’t care, anymore.”

  “If I thought about the wife I never had, the children … I think I would still dream about that cave. My mother’s screams.”

  “My mother’s screams?” It took Yashim a violent effort to control his voice. She hadn’t screamed, the woman with the laughing eyes. But he had been forced to watch her die.

  “I find things out, Yashim. I knew years ago.” He stepped closer: just not quite close enough—he had measured the distance carefully. “So if you can rescue my daughter—and help me get away—I’ll tell you.”

  He opened the door. “I hope you can find your own way out, Yashim. I’d give you a candle, but in the circumstances it would be foolish, don’t you think?”

  “What do you mean?” Yashim had hardly spoken when the stench rolling up the stairs answered his question.

  Paraffin oil.

  On the landing he could hear one of Fevzi Pasha’s men, sloshing fuel across the floorboards below.

  “Just in case you thought of mounting a daring rescue,” Fevzi Ahmet said. “A fire is very effective, and leaves nothing behind—as I well know. It took the yali ten minutes to burn to the ground. The bodies went up in smoke. My wife’s coffin, as it happens, contained a quantity of ash and a piece of bone. Her silver bangles had fused to it. That’s how I knew.”

  120

  KADRI had just time to backup the stairs when Yashim and the stranger came out onto the landing.

  He heard them talk, and then they went downstairs.

  For some reason he could not understand, Palewski and Marta were imprisoned in the cellar; only Yashim had been allowed to go.

  He heard the front door close, and a breeze laden with paraffin wafted up the stairs.

  It would take only a spark, and the whole place would go up in flames—just as the stranger had said.

  Kadri knew he did not dare go down. If he met the man with the spark …

  He thought of trying the empty drawing room, but the windows would be closed, and he would make too much noise opening them.

  Very quietly he went back to his room and eased the window open.

  It was a long way down to the yard.

  121

  “MARTA?”

  “I am here, kyrie.” Her voice came out of the darkness behind him.

  “Can you move?”

  “Not very well, kyrie. I can move a little—but it is cold.”

  “Yes.” Palewski tried to remember how Marta had been dressed, but after a while he gave up. All he could remember was the trusting look she had fixed on him earlier, in the drawing room.

  He shifted slightly on his knees, to ease the discomfort; his kneecaps crackled against the damp stone. Already his knees hurt; in an hour, they would be worse. He imagined the cold, and the cramps shooting up his thighs.

  “Marta, have they made you kneel on the floor?”

  “To kneel, kyrie? I am sitting down, but I cannot move my arms. They have tied my arms behind my back.”

  “You can move your legs?”

  He heard the sound of her skirts rustling against the stone floor. “Yes, kyrie.”

  “Could you—stand up?”

  “I—I think so.” He heard her move again. “I can push myself up against the pillar.”

  “Reach out with your foot, Marta. As far as you can, but gently. Perhaps you can reach the wine racks, with your foot?”

  “Just, kyrie. I think I brushed it with my shoe.”

  “That’s good. That’s very good.”

  “Kyrie?”

  The sweat beaded on his forehead. “I’m thinking, Marta, that we need a knife.”

  In the next ten minutes, too, he thought: I don’t think I can stand this, on my knees, much longer.

  122

  KADRI landed safely on the cobbles, and at once drew back into the shadow of the wall.

  He needed to find Yashim. If Yashim had gone home …

  He bit his lip. Yashim lived far away, in Balat, across the Golden Horn.

  He crept to the front of the residency and looked around. He could not quite
see the front door. If someone was watching …

  He doubled back, and left the compound through the courtyard at the back, making no noise.

  Out on the street he ran, weaving from doorway to doorway, keeping to the darkest shadows.

  He did not want to run into the stranger he had heard on the stairs.

  123

  “YASHIM!” Preen put a hand to her mouth. “You look terrible, darling—what happened?”

  Yashim shook his head.

  “Fevzi Pasha came back,” Yashim said heavily.

  “Tell me,” Preen said. “Sit, and explain. I don’t understand—Fevzi Pasha? How can that be?”

  “I barely understand it myself,” Yashim admitted. He told her what had happened, and how Palewski and Marta were being held as hostages against the recovery of the girl.

  “Kadri?”

  “I don’t know. I think he was asleep, upstairs.”

  “If he wakes up—if he comes downstairs—”

  “Yes, what can I do? Fevzi Ahmet doesn’t like surprises. He’d kill him.”

  “What about—the others?”

  “I’d trust him to do what he says—or worse. He’d kill them both without blinking.” His shoulders sagged. “Perhaps he already has.”

  The door opened and both of them started.

  “Kadri!”

  Kadri stepped in and closed the door. “I heard you on the stairs, Yashim efendi. I came to find you.”

  “How did you—” Yashim began.

  Kadri explained how he had climbed down, trying to quell the note of pride in his voice.

  “Marta and Palewski efendi—they’re in the cellar.”

  “And Fevzi Ahmet has left a man to watch.” Yashim did not repeat what he had said to Preen. “If we make a move—”

  He left the idea hanging in the air.

  Kadri leaned forward. “I went down there for Palewski efendi’s wine. That was last summer, when the weather was so hot. He said it would give me an education.”

  Yashim frowned, and glanced at Preen. The young thought only of themselves—and this was hardly the moment to discuss Kadri’s education.

  “When I was living in the mountains there were caves where you could go to get out of the sun. Some of them were very deep, and they were always cool. The best one always had a wind blowing. Like the cellar. I found a funnel in the rocks which took me down to a ledge on the side of the hill. There was a small pool there, and I think the air somehow got sucked up. I don’t know why.”

  Reluctantly Yashim gave Kadri his attention. “Why was it like the cellar?”

  “There was a hole in the cellar floor, right at the back. I thought it must be a well, but it wasn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because when I looked in I got hit by a wind. A really cold breeze. Just like that cave—only it was very dark. I meant to go back and have a better look, but I never got the chance.”

  “Did Palewski know? Did you tell him?”

  “He said we’d have a go at exploring it one day. He said—” Kadri screwed up his face. “He said there must be lots of tunnels under Galata Hill, from the old days. He wouldn’t have been surprised if we found an old road going down to the waterside, that had got built over and forgotten about.”

  Preen gave Yashim a warning look. “Even if there was a tunnel, and you could find the opening, you’d have to get into the Tophane arsenal to find it.”

  “The arsenal is built on reclaimed ground, Preen,” Yashim said thoughtfully. “If Kadri’s tunnel exists it would have come out at the old waterline. At the bottom of the hill, where the city walls used to be.”

  “Long gone, Yashim.”

  Yashim shook his head. “That’s what everyone thinks. The towers have gone, and the walls along the Golden Horn aren’t there anymore—” He paused. “I’ll think of a way of getting Fevzi Pasha’s little girl, but first I have to get Marta and Palewski out. Kadri’s given me an idea.”

  Kadri jumped to his feet. “Yes, Yashim efendi. Yes. Are you going to explore?”

  “No—we are. We may find a use for your special talent, after all. Preen—if the theater could spare some rope?”

  124

  PALEWSKI, too, was thinking about rope.

  He had done his best to tense his wrists, but the men only cinched the ropes tighter. At the foot of the cellar steps they had bound his ankles, too.

  They had run the rope through the loop of his arms, drawn it tight, and fastened him to a square pillar, leaving him on his knees with his feet drawn up painfully behind him.

  He thought about rope as he knelt on the gritty flags.

  “A knife, kyrie? But I do not—ah! I understand.”

  “Some people, Marta, think that I drink too much wine. I’d very much like to tell them that wine has saved my life.”

  He heard the rasp of a bottle against the wood.

  “I—just—can’t …”

  “Take off your shoe, maybe. Try with your toes.”

  “Oh, kyrie!” A thud as she dropped a slipper to the floor. “That’s better—but I can’t reach so far!”

  “Very well, take a rest.” He frowned in the dark. “How high did you raise your foot?”

  Marta considered. “I think, up to my waist. A little lower.”

  “Good.” Palewski bit his lip. Marta had touched the top of a bottle with her slipper, just. He imagined that she could describe an arc with her foot, and that arc might just make contact with a bottle in the rack. Like a circle inside a square: one small point of contact.

  “Use your toes. Whatever you do, don’t push the bottle. Maybe next time, if you can, just twist a little to one side. It may help you stretch a little farther.”

  Marta responded with a deep intake of breath.

  “I’ve been a complete fool,” he muttered, as he listened to Marta kicking her skirts aside. She was reducing the weight on her leg, and he heard her groan as she twisted to one side, dragging on her wrists.

  “Aaaah!”

  The bottle dragged slowly up the rack, clamped between Marta’s toes.

  At the last minute she jerked her foot and the bottle flipped out. Palewski heard her cry and the sound of the glass splintering on the stone floor.

  He took a deep breath. He sniffed, momentarily distracted: Petrus, damn it, and almost certainly the ’04. But it was the glass that interested him; the broken glass, and Marta.

  “Marta, when we’re out of this—?”

  There was total silence in the cellar.

  “Kyrie?” Her voice sounded cold.

  Palewski swallowed. He’d been about to say something else, but he was warned now. “When we’re out—you won’t forget?”

  125

  “IT might be here,” Yashim murmured, running his hand across the beaten iron surface of the gate. “The question is how to get in.”

  Kadri stepped back into the roughly cobbled street and glanced up. A thin crescent moon hung in the black sky, and by its feeble light he assessed the wall.

  “Let me take the rope, Yashim efendi.”

  Kadri slipped off his shoes and slung the rope across his shoulders. He approached the base of the wall and raised his hands, feeling for a hold.

  Kadri climbed swiftly, barely pausing to establish his grip on the stones: he swarmed up the wall as though it were covered in net. He had learned in boyhood that falling took time, and effort, so he moved fast instead, fingers and toes loosely flexed. Yashim saw him pause when he reached the projecting tiles, then whip out and over the eaves like a snake.

  A moment later, Kadri was peering down into the inner court, formed in the ditch that separated the double walls of Genoese Pera. The walls themselves were velvety with soot from the forges, and by the time Kadri had descended, more cautiously, he was black from head to toe.

  He went to the gate and called to Yashim through the latch.

  “I’m in.”

  A street dog rose from the shadows and gave two hollow barks, before settl
ing down.

  Yashim passed a candle through the little opening. “The watch is coming. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  He melted into the darkness of a side alley, waiting for the familiar tap-tap of the watchman’s staff on the cobbles. When it did not come, he waited another few minutes before he went back to the gate. There he smelled charcoal, and the faintly acidic odor of cut metal. A nearby dog whimpered and whinnied in its sleep. Yashim listened for sounds in the courtyard and heard nothing. He moved from one foot to the other, feeling the cold, so that when Kadri spoke close to his ear he jumped.

  “Three tunnels,” Kadri whispered urgently. “One’s small, more like a pipe. It goes in about twenty yards and then bends up sharply.”

  “Maybe drainage,” Yashim suggested. “What about the other two?”

  “The first one could just be some sort of cellar—it hardly slopes at all, and the air is musty. But it’ll take time to explore them both.”

  “There isn’t much time,” Yashim pointed out. “The second tunnel?”

  “Lower than the other one. It doesn’t seem to go upward but it smells fresher inside.”

  “I’m sure that’s the one,” Yashim urged, with a confidence he didn’t really feel. Istanbul was a honeycomb of tunnels, cisterns, and holes in the ground; blanked-off cellars, disused waterways, the foundation arches of Roman buildings. Where they ran, or how they were linked, nobody knew. They composed a dark mirror image of the city above, an impress of the centuries that had passed since Constantine first planted his standard on the banks of the Bosphorus and named the city for himself.

  A sound at his back made Yashim turn his head. Kadri melted from the gate, noiselessly; but still Yashim stood, ears cocked, listening.

  A dog detached itself from the base of the wall and crept a few yards along the street toward Yashim, where it sat and scratched its fleas. It stuck its muzzle on its paws, and went back to sleep.

  Dogs did not willingly shift about at night, Yashim thought.