The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim)

by Jason Goodwin

  “Once there was a girl,” he began. “She lived…”

  “Stop.”

  Yashim looked down. She blinked.

  There was a bang, and a sudden wind, and something fell from above in a flurry of old straw and crashed onto the floor. Natasha’s fingers brushed Yashim’s lips. Her eyes never left his face.

  “A beautiful girl,” Yashim whispered. “Who did terrible things for love.”

  “Father. You.” Her head swayed. “Did you—?”

  “Did I—?”

  Her eyelids fluttered, and her chest convulsed.

  “Before—and after, Natasha. I loved you.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “I love you.”

  She closed her eyes. Yashim cradled her in his arms, holding her wounded face against his breast, staring at those dark brows, the tender bows of her eyelashes, the narrow bridge of her nose and the nostrils. She was alive, so alive against his leg and beneath his arms that he could imagine she was only sliding gently into sleep.

  Once he thought crazily that her eyes were opening again. But it was only the light of the flames that licked across the broken roof.

  He felt her shiver, for a moment, in his arms, and he rolled her head onto his chest and looked up at the lamp that was still glowing on the window ledge. A clump of burning sticks fell to the ground. Still Yashim did not move.

  “The gunners have found their mark,” he said aloud. “I don’t know why.”

  And for some reason he thought of the old kadi, with his scrap of yellow paper.

  “Of course,” he murmured. He bent and kissed her brow. The clerk, with sixty-six pieces of silver! He’d sold the secret of Czartoryski’s visit—and Midhat found out. The Italians didn’t kill Abdullah Ozgem. Natasha didn’t kill him. He was dead as soon as Midhat Pasha guessed.

  Midhat, always so anxious not to be overheard, discovered there had been a leak right there, in the ministry—just as Yashim had warned him.

  Midhat’s reaction would be to stop the leak—and erase the evidence that it had ever occurred. He knew Yashim might uncover the trail. So he had Ozgem killed.

  A plausible attitude to take, if the reputation of your ministry needed to be protected. Close down the whole operation. Czartoryski, the Italians—once they were gone, there was nothing, actually, to show that anything had happened. Czartoryski might never have arrived. Ozgem dead, a detail. The rest was anecdote.

  There would have been a nest of foreign vipers in a farmhouse, plotting; but now wiped out. They’d murdered a girl. And Czartoryski nowhere to be found.

  And outside, from among the trees, Midhat Pasha was finishing the job.

  Yashim stroked Natasha’s hair, and marveled at the chiseled beauty of her face as another rocket raced into the air.

  She had tried to bring him home. Oh, she was a murderess, and a highly accomplished liar, and it probably didn’t mean a thing but there, just for a moment, Yashim had glimpsed the longed-for place, and felt on his face the winds of home.

  80

  PALEWSKI, breathing heavily, staggered through the trees.

  The gunners hardly saw him coming through the smoke.

  “What the hell’s going on? My friend’s down there!”

  Midhat turned his sad eyes on him. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it, Your Excellency. Yashim, I believe, is still at Eyüp. This is an operation to clear out a nest of vipers and revolutionaries.”

  Palewski goggled at him. “You—imbecile! You’ve got Yashim, Czartoryski, and the Russian girl down there. Stop this bombardment at once! Send in your men.”

  “I do not believe in exposing men to unnecessary risk,” the pasha replied. “My own son died at Shumla Pass because commanders took unnecessary risks.”

  “Your son? I don’t believe this.” Palewski simply stared. Midhat looked away.

  “Stop the guns this minute, or you will have a Polish ambassador to account for, Midhat Pasha.”

  Palewski stepped away and began to walk, very slowly, downhill through the moonlight.

  He could see the farmhouse at the bottom of the valley. Half its roof was gone, and from the other end bright orange flames were licking from beneath the tiles.

  Palewski’s attention was focused on a lamp that glowed in the window of the ruined farmhouse like a beacon, improbably small and hopelessly faint. It reminded him of the fire on his hearth, and Yashim dropping into his favorite armchair.

  Palewski’s chest hurt, but he didn’t care. The grass under his feet was wet with dew: it made a swishing noise as he walked.

  The light of the lamp was fading. The flames had taken hold of the roof, and their orange light lurched sickeningly at the window, now advancing, now backing into darkness. The lamp still burned, but against the leaping sheets of flame it dwindled.

  He was halfway there. A rocket sizzled up, over his head. It blazed with a bright white flame, banishing the shadows around the farm. Palewski dropped his stick and began to run.

  The blood from his wounds seeped through his shirt, but it was warm, and his feet flew over the grass, over the molehills and the tussocks, toward the lamp that burned and flickered in the window.

  “Yashim! Yashim!”

  The rocket dropped from the sky like a ballerina making a descent en pointe.

  Palewski raised his hand to shield his eyes from the glare as it sank toward the farm. He seemed to be really flying now, as he had flown when his heavy brigade rode against the Russians at Borodino, the way his feet had flown as he rushed across the parquet to where Irina was waiting for him, long ago, and longer still, further back, down the long, great winding stairs at home, to his father standing in the hall …

  He remembered those moments, and for Palewski they fused into a single, tiny flickering goal in the darkness beyond, a single moment that was, and would always be, the one small point at which a human heart can aim.

  And the flash of the rocket lit up the smile on his face.

  Epilogue

  STEAM rose from the bath, in front of a crackling log fire. The shutters were drawn—with some difficulty, for they were old and slightly warped by sun and rain—and fresh candles twinkled in the pier glass.

  Beside the bath, on a low inlay table, stood a tumbler of brandy and a book, taken at random from the shelves.

  Prince Adam Czartoryski lay back in the bath and reflected that never, in these last twenty years, had he felt so well.

  Respite from a diet of creamy sauces, salty stocks, and twelve elegant courses every night had done wonders for his digestion. He had lost some weight and livened up his musculature, taking cold dips in the pool. Apart from a mild anxiety that he might at any moment be called to his death, he had enjoyed a carefree week. For the first time in twenty years, he whistled in his bath.

  The boy had it coming, anyway. When Czartoryski had stumbled on the old well, covered with a few rotten planks, the whole scheme had dropped into his mind complete and in an instant.

  “I wonder,” he had said, “since we have no food, if we shouldn’t try drinking water from the well.”

  They’d gone to look. Czartoryski had peered over the edge and muttered that it looked dry. Fabrizio had peered, too, and Czartoryski pushed him in.

  Tomorrow promised to be an interesting day—lunch with the sultan, and a discussion of his favorite schemes: a new European order, and a settlement for exiled Poles on the shores of the Bosphorus. A safe haven. It might be called something like Adampol, after him.

  He took a sip of Palewski’s brandy and picked up the book.

  And as he peered a little closely at the letters—for his sight was not quite what it had been—he heard the front door bang, and light footsteps on the stairs, and a woman calling out in fear, or triumph. It was hard to tell.

  “Kyrie! Yashim efendi! You—you are home!”

  And he heard the murmur of men’s voices, and the sound of their footsteps as they crossed the hall below.

  GLOSSARY

  Alhamdulillah—thank God
>
  baglama—a Turkish stringed instrument

  chaush—a page, errand boy

  cicerone—a guide (Italian)

  Circassian—i.e., from the Caucasus, the homeland of many harem women

  corek—a pastry

  Decembrists—Russian mutineers of December 1825

  divan—an Ottoman daybed

  efendi—sir, gentleman

  firman—an imperial order

  Frank—a Christian from western Europe

  gelato—ice cream in Italian

  giaour—disparaging term for unbeliever, a Christian

  gözde—a concubine, sleeping with the sultan

  hamal—street porter

  hammam—Turkish bath

  hanum efendi—madam

  imam—a Muslim teacher, attached to a mosque

  inshallah—God willing

  jezail—long-barreled musket

  kadi—an Ottoman magistrate

  kismet—fate

  köçek—a transvestite male dancer

  kuruş—Ottoman coin

  lokum—Turkish delight, a sweet confectionary

  medrese—a Muslim school that is often part of a mosque

  milord—literally “my lord,” a wealthy English traveler

  mullah—a Muslim leader

  Nasreddin—a foolish mullah, dispenser of folk wisdom

  Nazarene—i.e., from Nazareth, a Christian

  Nasdrovie—Russian toast

  oka—a Turkish weight of about one pound

  pasha—a title, minister of state

  Patriarch—head of the Orthodox church

  raki—aniseed-flavored alcohol

  salaam alaikum—God be with you

  saturno—a priest’s hat

  sipahi—Ottoman cavalryman

  stambouline—Ottoman frock coat

  Stambouliots—inhabitants of Istanbul, also Istanbullu

  Sublime Porte—literally, High Gate, the name given to Ottoman government; shortened to the Porte

  sufi—holy man

  Sultan Abdülhamid—the valide’s husband

  Sultan Mahmut II—her son

  Sultan Abdülmecid—her grandson and reigning sultan

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WHEN I let slip my initial anxiety that Yashim might not survive this novel, some of his admirers took to my website at www.jasongoodwin.info to protest: their humanitarian instincts, along with wise editorial advice from Julian Loose in London and Sarah Crichton in New York, turned the scales in Yashim’s favor.

  Kate, my wife, used her forensic erudition and a red pencil to heal narrative and psychological flaws in the story. Richard Goodwin encouraged our hero to reveal aspects of his physiology that had not been previously exposed. Sarah Chalfant and Charles Buchan at the Wylie Agency have been exemplary Yashimites, while my Estonian editor, Krista Kaer, arranged the world premiere of The Baklava Club in its Estonian translation; my thanks also to Juhan Habicht, my translator, and to Ott Sandrak and the Tallinn Headread festival.

  Istanbul’s role as a safe haven for European exiles and malcontents first struck me when I was researching Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, but with The Baklava Club already written, Professor Norman Stone reminded me of the many years Garibaldi himself spent in Constantinople. Thanks to him, and to Ömer Koç for friendship and hospitality. I am grateful to Edward Impey and Mark Murray-Flutter of the Royal Armouries for telling me about old guns, and to Enrico Basaglia for checking my blunders in matters Italian; while Emin Saatçi and John Scott—the editor of the world’s finest magazine, Cornucopia—led me imaginatively through a duck shoot on the Çekmece lakes, formerly a wild region of marsh and water crossed by Sinan’s beautiful bridge. Any subsequent errors are mine.

  The female characters in this book seem to be mad, bad, or dangerous to know. My daughter, Anna, to whom this novel is dedicated, is quite unlike them. Except in her beauty. And her energy of spirit. This book is for her.

  DORSET, 2014

  ALSO BY JASON GOODWIN

  Fiction

  The Janissary Tree

  The Snake Stone

  The Bellini Card

  An Evil Eye

  Nonfiction

  A Time for Tea: Travels Through China and India in Search of Tea

  On Foot to the Golden Horn: A Walk to Istanbul

  Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire

  Greenback: The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jason Goodwin is the Edgar® Award–winning author of the Investigator Yashim series. The first four books—The Janissary Tree, The Snake Stone, The Bellini Card, and An Evil Eye—have been published to international acclaim. Goodwin studied Byzantine history at Cambridge and is the author of Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, among other award-winning nonfiction. He lives with his wife and children in England.

  Sarah Crichton Books

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Copyright © 2014 by Jason Goodwin

  All rights reserved

  First edition, 2014

  eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Goodwin, Jason, 1964–

  The Baklava Club / Jason Goodwin. — First edition.

  pages cm. — (Investigator Yashim; 5)

  ISBN 978-0-374-29437-3 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-4299-4955-2 (ebook)

  1. Yashim (Fictitious character: Goodwin)—Fiction. 2. Princes—Fiction. 3. Eunuchs—Fiction. 4. Istanbul (Turkey)—History—19th century—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6107.O663B35 2014

  823’ .92—dc23

  2013048038

  www.fsgbooks.com

  www.twitter.com/fsgbooks • www.facebook.com/fsgbooks

  * See An Evil Eye.

  * See The Snake Stone.

  * See The Snake Stone.

  * “So far into that ancient wood had my steps,

  Though slow, transported me,

  That I could no longer tell the place

  Where I had enter’d; when, behold! my path

  Was bounded by a rill, which, to the left,

  With little rippling waters bent the grass

  That issued from its brink.”

  * See The Janissary Tree.