The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim)

by Jason Goodwin

  “Well, La Bouboulina was no friend of the Porte, hanum.”

  It was an understatement. La Bouboulina was a wealthy Greek widow who had fitted out—and almost single-handedly managed—a Greek fighting fleet in the war of Greek independence, twenty years before. The Ottomans called her La Capitanessa, the lady captain: and feared her.

  “Pouf! That was politics, Yashim. La Bouboulina was a woman of my own sort. She was a friend.”

  “A friend? I had no idea.”

  “No, because I never told you. You know she was born here, in Istanbul? In prison, as it happens. Her family were great revolutionaries, Yashim, seamen. They were always fighting. The father had colluded with the Russians so we put him in prison, where he died. A ridiculous waste.

  “She was raised on Spetses, in the Aegean, and before she was twenty-five she had been widowed twice. Her second husband also fought us when the Russians came, and he was killed fighting Algerian pirates. If more men had shown his courage, I might not be here,” she added, thinking of her own capture by pirates many years before. “La Bouboulina showed courage equal to if not greater than his. She took over the business, and had new ships built—including a warship. Imagine!

  “To punish her dead husband, the Porte decided to confiscate all La Bouboulina’s property. Some type of Midhat Pasha of the day, no doubt, intended to seize her ships, her goods, her house—everything. So there she was, a widow with many children, facing ruin. But La Bouboulina did not give up—you know what she did?

  “She came to see me. She sailed one of her ships to Istanbul, and came to visit me, to beg me to help her. Oh, she was charmante—and funny! She had so many children, and so many ships, and she told me it was only the children who gave her any trouble. She could have been a queen—we understood each other very well. As valide, I told her not to be naughty anymore, but as a woman I understood her. And I told my son, the sultan, that he should not let one piece of her property be taken from her. And it was not.”

  Yashim smiled. “I can believe that.”

  “Later she was naughty. Of course. She did what she liked, and she became a great rebel. She raised a navy with her own money, and sailed about in her warship, and made a lot of trouble for the Ottomans. But she did not forget what I had done for her. When her fleet took Tripoli, and the Greeks wanted to take revenge on the garrison, there were some women of our household there, and she stepped in to rescue them. She looked after them with proper decorum and sent them back here, to Istanbul, safely.

  “She spent her entire fortune fighting for independence. It ruined her—and do you know? The Greeks put her in prison. They killed her daughter’s husband. She had a son, George, who was very good-looking—I’m sure they all were, as she was—and he eloped with a beautiful girl from another big family on Spetses.” The valide frowned, and waggled her fingers. “La famille Koutsis, c’est ça. When the girl’s family came to complain, La Bouboulina faced them from the balcony of her house—and some coward shot her, out of the dark. Seventeen years ago. I still think about her. Elle était très méchante—naughty, very—but she had a big heart.”

  Yashim nodded. The valide looked at him and smiled.

  “Voilà. That wretched pasha pricked my vanity, Yashim, and I needed something to restore it. I did La Bouboulina a kindness, and her children will pray for me. Not the kings.”

  There was a scratch at the door. Yashim opened it, and found one of the girls standing with the tray.

  He took it to the valide, and set it on a low ivory inlaid table.

  “I don’t want it anymore,” the valide said. “It was when I was feeling angry. But there it is.” She shrugged. “I cannot write.”

  “For Natasha’s father?”

  “Since you tell me nothing, Yashim, I have to find out in other ways what is going on. Your friend, Palewski—he was shot? And someone taken away? Midhat tells me—qu’est-ce qu’il a dit?—that this has changed the atmosphere. It is no longer appropriate for us to ask for favors from the tsar.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not, why not?” The valide placed her fingertips to her temples and closed her eyes. “Because it would suggest that we do not take seriously the outrage committed on our streets. It may be supposed that the affair has Russia’s hand behind it. If I write to the tsar, it might be construed as a form of exoneration. C’est tout.”

  “I see his point,” Yashim admitted.

  “I see his point, and I blame you, Yashim. Had you kept me informed of events, it might have prevented an unpleasant scene. Coffee.”

  He passed her the tiny fragile cup.

  “And Natasha? What will you tell her?”

  “I will tell her the truth, Yashim.” She rang a bell, and asked that Natasha be sent in. “She’s an intelligent girl and she doesn’t deserve to be kept in the dark.”

  It was the first time Yashim had seen Natasha since they made love. She stood for a moment on the threshold, hand on the door frame, the light gilding her hair.

  “Valide?” She curtsied. “Yashim.”

  Was there something in the way she looked at him—the slow smile, a tiny widening of her eyes? Something the valide would not miss.

  “Valide hanum,” he said. “You’ve mentioned the need to be informed. It might be as well to tell you—both of you—what has happened in the past few hours.”

  He told them about the discovery of the clerk’s body at the cemetery. “As a man unknown, there was nothing to link him to the other events, including the abduction and the attempted assassination of Palewski, that have, as you say, Valide hanum, so changed the atmosphere.”

  He was making it easier for Natasha to understand, when the time came, why the most important thing for her was no longer possible: why the valide was going to dash her hopes.

  “Things have changed,” he went on. He explained how the murder of the clerk might be linked to the Italians—who themselves had disappeared.

  “But—” Natasha began.

  “The worst,” he said, “is to come. Last night, Birgit was murdered.”

  The valide’s face went taut. Natasha put a hand to her mouth. “No!”

  “Doherty, the priest, found her this morning. Things are still not clear in my mind, and I have only really begun to pull the pieces together. It does seem, at the moment, that there’s some sort of plot to destroy a certain type here, in Istanbul. Liberal, revolutionary, call it what you will. Istanbul is an open city—and the Ottomans are generous. Even you, Natasha, are here because of that. Maybe some people in Europe resent it.”

  “It seems to me quite clear,” the valide declared. “We are dealing with a religious maniac, with political views. And one who holds very distorted views on women, too,” she added, vehemently. “Quelle tristesse. Quelle horreur.”

  There were questions he needed to ask Natasha, and he supposed it was better to ask now. Later, when the valide had said her piece, Natasha would be upset.

  “About last night. After the baths. You returned to the house?”

  “We found a—a chaush? Is that what he’s called? He escorted us. We went upstairs and then, like I told you, I came down to find you.”

  “And you left her with Giancarlo?”

  She twisted her fingers. “I didn’t actually see him, Yashim. I’ve just been thinking—I felt I’d seen him, but it’s not true. We went inside, Birgit and me. She said something like ‘Giancarlo’s back.’ The bedroom door must have been slightly open. We’d talked a lot about these things, at the baths,” she added, with a glance at the valide. “So I came downstairs and found you.”

  “It might not have been Giancarlo, then?”

  Natasha looked anxious. “Oh God, Yashim. You know how sensual she was. She stretched like a cat, and I felt out of place. I knew what she was thinking—all fresh and warm from the baths, like that.” She hesitated, blushing.

  The valide’s eyebrows rose a fraction, but she said nothing.

  “It’s not your fault, Natasha,”
Yashim said, gently. “How could you have known—if Birgit didn’t?”

  “It makes me feel so—ashamed.”

  Yashim nodded. They both knew what she meant: not just her assumption that Giancarlo and Birgit were about to fall into bed together, but them, too. She and Yashim had wandered the moonlit streets and made love while Birgit—suffered.

  The valide’s eyes moved from Natasha to Yashim and back.

  “Go, Yashim.” She waved a bangled arm. “There has been quite enough blood and mayhem for one day, and I trust you to prevent any more. Natasha and I have a great deal to talk about.”

  61

  ABDULLAH Ozgem, the clerk, lived not far from his work at the Sublime Porte.

  It was a street of timber houses, narrowly packed together, whose jutting upper stories almost touched and kept the street below in perpetual shade. The broken ground was damp and muddy in parts, and Yashim had to pick his way carefully.

  He knocked, but there was no reply. The ground-floor windows were high and barred, but they were not shuttered and one was open, releasing a scent of onions frying. Yashim knocked again, harder, and eventually an old woman put her head out the window and looked down at him through the iron bars.

  “Yes?”

  Yashim took a step back. “Good afternoon, hanum. Is this Abdullah Ozgem’s address?”

  She munched her lips and inspected him. “That’s right,” she said at last. “Are you from the mosque?”

  “No, not exactly. May I come in?”

  She continued to move her lips, considering. “You look like a gentleman from the mosque.”

  “I’m with the kadi, if you like.”

  “There you are,” she said triumphantly. “Ozgem?”

  “That’s right. I’m sorry, hanum. It’s hard to talk out here in the street.”

  “Push the door, then. It’s not locked.”

  Yashim met the woman in the hallway. She wiped her hands on her apron. “He isn’t home. Abdullah. I see all my students home at night.”

  “Students?”

  She shrugged. “It’s what I call them, efendi. Most of my gentlemen are at the technical college. But Abdullah has a job, obviously. I suppose that’s why he got so rich,” she mused. “New clothes, new shoes, wants meat every night. Splash it about, he does. Not that anyone dislikes him for it. He works for it, see? Coming in at all hours. Not coming in at all.”

  “You haven’t seen him lately, then?”

  “Gone since the day before yesterday, and not a word.”

  “I’d like to see his room.”

  She cocked her head. “What? He’s not moving on, is he? I give him meat and I look after him like a mother. That’s what they need, isn’t it?”

  Yashim agreed that that was exactly what they needed.

  “It’s a lovely room, efendi. I’ll show you.”

  She led the way upstairs. The stairs were clean, the walls newly whitewashed. On the landing several doors led to what Yashim assumed were the tenants’ rooms.

  “This is the one, at the back,” she said, pushing the door. “Oh!”

  Yashim peered over her shoulder. It was a lovely room—wood-paneled, with a large window at the far end overlooking a yard, simply furnished with a divan, a table, and a glass lamp.

  The window was open, and the sudden breeze picked up a ball of fluff and sent it surfing across the boards. The old woman peered into the room with her mouth open.

  “I never!”

  Yashim stepped past her. The divan had been dragged sideways, and stuffing from its mattress was spread across the floor. The lid of Ozgem’s chest was raised and the mattress slashed, his clothes scattered across the floor along with feathers from the quilt and the pillows.

  “I never heard anything,” the old woman said, staring aghast at the damage. “He must have come in mad, or something.”

  Yashim leaned out the window. The yard was bounded by a low wall, giving onto an alley. Anyone could have come into the yard and climbed the back wall.

  “I don’t think he did this himself. It’s a burglary.”

  “Burglars!”

  Everything had been ransacked. Yashim picked up the lamp on the little table. It was a brass oil lamp, cheap but workmanlike; it was surprisingly heavy. He removed the mantle, laid it on the ruined mattress, and unscrewed the wick and the turning mechanism.

  He took the lamp to the window and tilted it away from him. The oil slid to one side.

  “Burglars,” Yashim agreed. “Who didn’t look in the right place.”

  The oil chamber of the lamp was full of silver coins.

  In the old lady’s kitchen Yashim accepted a glass of mint tea.

  “There’s never been anything like it in this house before,” she complained. “Mattress on the floor, all split—and the cushions. Looks like the Tartars had been through.”

  Yashim poured the oil into her lamp and took Ozgem’s lamp into the yard to shake out the money. The amount surprised him: more than sixty silver dollars, Maria Theresa thalers from the Viennese mint. He counted them. There were sixty-six in all.

  “Does he pay you with these?” he asked, accepting tea in the kitchen.

  “Them? I’ve never seen them before. Foreign, aren’t they?”

  “Maria Theresa thalers. One is worth about three hundred kuruş.” He watched the amazement spread over her face.

  “What shall we do? Put them back, efendi, before he finds out.”

  “He won’t, hanum.” Yashim bit his lip. “The fact is, Abdullah Ozgem’s dead.”

  The look of terror that succeeded the amazement on her face told Yashim he’d phrased it wrongly. No doubt she suspected that he, Yashim, had killed Ozgem and come for his money.

  “No, no. I didn’t kill him—I’m with the kadi, as I said. I suggest you take care of the coins until we know who it all belongs to. He must have had family?”

  It seemed that Ozgem’s way of life had changed quite recently.

  “At first I had him down as a student, efendi, whatever he said. Never much money—he’d give me five kuruş a week, for his board, same as the others. I don’t know when he started wanting meat. Two months ago, maybe? He told me he’d got a better job, and they were paying him more. So I bought him meat. He bought new trousers, new everything, from that Castelar efendi, the Jew along the road here.” She peered at the heap of coins. “And each one is three hundred kuruş?”

  “He could have bought your whole house.”

  “I’m not selling,” she said, surprised. Then her voice sank. “Poor Ozgem. He must have done something wrong to get so much money, mustn’t he?”

  62

  “I’LL buy food.”

  Giancarlo nodded. “We may not need it,” he said.

  “Why not? You mean—Fabrizio?”

  “He has his knife. Nobody watching. You heard him, Rafael. He knows he got us into this mess.”

  “What—what will you say to Birgit?”

  “She doesn’t have to know.”

  Rafael bit his lip. “I’ll get some food. I’ll give you an hour.”

  Giancarlo gave him a faint smile. “An hour’s good. Thanks, Rafael.”

  He watched Rafael go down the road. A good boy, loyal and quiet. A real revolutionary. A Jew, as well. The Jews had nothing to lose by fighting the Pope.

  The operation was, of course, a disaster. He had given it much thought since they arrived at the farm. Fabrizio was an amateur, a play actor, like so many of his southern compatriots. Rafael was too kind, too unimaginative. It was, Giancarlo had realized, the wrong team. Napoleon himself could have done nothing with them.

  The wrong team—and perhaps the wrong time, too. The Pope could not last forever, but in the meantime he could make life very difficult. For Giancarlo’s family, for instance. He needed to think about them, too—and the estate, and the men and women who lived on it; simple folk, who depended on the Tazzia family. They had responsibilities. Not standing—status didn’t matter to Giancarlo, although h
is was a prominent family, it was true. And that would help, of course. People would speak for him.

  His father was not well, as he’d last heard. Fabrizio and Rafael would not really understand, but in the end one could not shirk one’s responsibilities, as a son, as a Tazzia.

  He walked quickly down the street. It was the best way, he reflected. He should not have become involved at this time, and with this team. It was hardly fair to Birgit, either. No. He’d been a bit of a fool. At least he had been kind to Doherty, which could mean another friend in Rome, perhaps. Only a priest, but Giancarlo knew how the system worked. Patronage and favors, clients and protégés. Doherty could be a friend.

  Lucky that Rafael was so trusting. Fabrizio already knew it was goodbye. Probably planned the same thing himself. Giancarlo grinned. Well, he wouldn’t hold it against him. Just trust to luck they wouldn’t be traveling to Italy in the same boat, God forbid.

  There would be a boat, sometime in the next few days. In the meantime, he and Birgit could find another room, somewhere to lay up until the boat sailed. It wasn’t like Rome here, you didn’t need to show papers. He and Birgit could keep to their room until the ship was ready, and presto! A lot of time with Birgit, between the sheets.

  He glanced up eagerly at the house. To Birgit then, and quickly. Rafael had given them an hour.

  He pushed the door and stepped swiftly into the hall, which is where his nightmare began with a sudden, smashing blow to his face.

  63

  RAFAEL hurried through the market, stopping here and there to buy bread, cheese, and vegetables. Every now and then he glanced nervously over his shoulder.

  A few days before, while everyone was getting ready for the assassination that never was, he had sensed that someone was following them. Admittedly he had seen no one, or at least no one he could point to; the others had scoffed at his fears.

  “People watch us,” Giancarlo had said. “We stick out, here. But as for being followed—that’s in your head, Rafael. A persecution mania.” And he had exchanged an amused glance with Fabrizio, meaning—what? That it was like a Jew, probably. Like a Jew to feel always hunted, everywhere.