An Evil eye yte-4

by Jason Goodwin

  Marta and Palewski froze as they listened to a heavy tread descending the cellar steps.

  Two thoughts ran through Palewski’s mind. The first, that one of the men had been sent to kill them. Or that the sound of the breaking bottle had brought him down to check.

  About the first possibility, he could do nothing-unless Marta could pass him the shard of broken glass.

  Palewski felt Marta’s hand close around his wrists, searching for the cord.

  The man stopped. Then they heard him tramp upstairs again, and the door closed.

  Palewski climbed slowly from the pillar, flexing his fingers.

  Marta laid a hand on his arm. “They are coming back.”

  He cocked his head, and heard the sound of someone scraping nearby. He tightened his fingers around the glass and put Marta behind him, covering her with an outstretched arm.

  In the dark they strained their ears.

  Palewski frowned, incredulous.

  One of his favorite pieces was Chopin’s tiny mazurka, the prelude in A major. He had practiced it all summer, with fairly good results.

  It didn’t sound too bad right now, whistled by Kadri between his teeth, from the far end of the cellar.

  130

  Yashim felt the savage yank on his foot. Rather than tumble to the ground, he used his outward-falling momentum to spin in the air. Akunin had stepped back, face raised. He received the full weight of Yashim’s knee on the bridge of his nose.

  The crack! of the cartilage breaking loose was lost in the sound of both men crashing to the ground.

  Wrestling training at the palace school had saved Yashim’s life before. Leaving Akunin on his back instinctively cradling his broken nose, Yashim rolled with the fall and came up about six feet short of the running man. Shishkin eased back, but not fast enough. His last faltering step halved the distance between the two men: Yashim closed the gap with his lowered head.

  As Shishkin doubled up, Yashim sidestepped and chopped his neck with the side of his hand. The Russian fell to his knees, coughing.

  Akunin had got to his feet, but he was in no mood for fighting-one hand was clamped to his face, the other flailing drunkenly in the air.

  Yashim placed a knee on Shishkin’s back and took hold of his chin in both hands.

  “Why were you following me?”

  Akunin began to back away.

  “Stop. Tell me, and you can take your friend.”

  Akunin hesitated. “The Fox,” he said thickly. “He thinks Fevzi Pasha is back-and he wants to talk to you.”

  “Fevzi Pasha back?”

  Akunin tilted his head. The blood was black under his hand. “I saw him, at the Polish residency.”

  Shishkin groaned. Yashim said: “Go on.”

  “He went in, about an hour before you came. Galytsin guessed you were meeting him there. He told us to pick you up.”

  Yashim released his hold on Shishkin, who sputtered and sank to his hands and knees. “Where’s Galytsin now?”

  “At the embassy, efendi.”

  “Tell him I’ll meet him there for breakfast.”

  131

  Ten minutes later, Yashim heard a low whistle from the yard. He put his face to the bars.

  “Yashim!”

  He recognized the voice, even in a whisper. He thrust a hand through the bars and gripped a well-known hand.

  “Incredible!” Palewski’s excited whisper cut through the night like steam escaping from an engine. “We’ll have to rethink the whole story!”

  “Yes. It’s not Talfa-”

  “Talfa?” Palewski dropped his hand. “I’m talking about the Genoese settlement, Yashim, prior to the Conquest. Those tunnels? Greater continuity than anyone realizes. Gibbon, von Hammer…” His whisper trailed off. After a moment he said: “If this gate is locked, how the devil do we get out?”

  It took almost half an hour with ropes, and muffled curses, to bring Palewski and Marta over the wall.

  She descended with solemn grace, holding her skirts tight.

  “It would be better for you not to go back to the residency just yet,” Yashim explained as they made their way up the open lanes toward Galata Hill.

  Twenty minutes later, when everyone had told their story, Preen looked at Yashim.

  “You’ve been very quiet, my dear.” She turned to the others. “Yashim is thinking up a plan to capture Fevzi Pasha,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Bring the bastard to justice.”

  Yashim shook his head. “I thought that. But no. My plan is-to send him to Egypt, with his daughter.”

  Preen stiffened. “You’d do that for him-after everything?”

  He caught her look: it chilled him.

  “You said-you promised me-you’d seen through him, Yashim. And now-you work for him, like that!” She snapped her fingers.

  “Do you remember, Preen, when I said there is always a gap, however tightly we try to fit the pieces together?”

  “For mercy,” Preen sneered. “For a man who would give none!”

  “It’s not for him. Not exactly.”

  “Who, then?” Palewski said.

  Marta smiled shyly. “He means his daughter, of course.”

  Yashim cast her a grateful look. “I can’t play God, Preen. If we don’t move now, I’m afraid the little girl will die.”

  Preen tossed her head. “She’s in the harem, you said. Safe-and secret. The safest place in Istanbul.”

  Yashim slowly shook his head. “It’s secret-but it isn’t safe. Not safe, at all.”

  “What do you propose, Yashim?” Palewski yawned. The night had been long.

  “I propose, my friend, that you get some sleep. As for you, Kadri, I want you to find a caiquejee called Spyro, and bring him here.”

  132

  Yashim found Galytsin at a table laden with patisseries.

  “Join me,” the prince suggested, pouring Yashim a cup of tea.

  Yashim sat down opposite him, and ripped a croissant between his fingers. He had been tired, but now he was only hungry. “You were closing in on Fevzi Ahmet Pasha, weren’t you? Threatening him?”

  “Is that what he told you?” Galytsin shrugged. “Threatening him with what?”

  A question for a question. Yashim took a side step: “Three years ago you burned his yali — as a warning.”

  “I have good reason to remember that.” Galytsin smiled, showing a row of perfect teeth. “Try the jam, Yashim efendi. But no, believe it or not, that was his concubine.”

  The tea burned Yashim’s tongue. Galytsin pushed the jam toward him. “It seems to me, Yashim efendi, that you know very little about the pasha.”

  Yashim tried the jam. Galytsin leaned back and stuck his foot up on the next chair.

  “Pervyal.” He twisted his hand in the air and a liveried footman stepped forward with a box. “Fevzi Ahmet bought a concubine on the Black Sea coast,” the prince remarked, selecting a cigar. “Smoke?”

  Yashim shook his head.

  “Pervyal,” Galytsin repeated, putting the cigar into his mouth. “She was beautiful, and clever, too, in the Circassian way.” The footman presented a match to the end of his cigar, but the prince ignored him. “More beautiful than his wife, naturally. In Istanbul, she would have fetched thousands-and the imperial harem would have taken her.”

  Yashim put a smear of jam onto his croissant. “So how did he buy her?”

  “A very good question, which Fevzi didn’t think to ask.”

  The footman struck another match, and this time Galytsin presented the tip of his cigar to the flame. He drew on it, turning it fussily this way and that, until the flame was almost touching the man’s fingers.

  “I imagine Fevzi Ahmet thought the dealer was doing him a favor. He brought her back, and installed her in his harem-he told her he would marry her when she produced a son. His wife had given birth to a daughter. Pervyal was very helpful. A very good second mother to the child.”

  “So-?”

  “Pervyal got pregna
nt. It was a boy. He was dead when she gave birth.”

  “And Fevzi Ahmet-”

  “Didn’t marry her, no. He wanted a live boy. But Fevzi Ahmet told her next time, it would be all right.” He blew a ring of smoke into the air. “She miscarried. She became-difficult. She spent a lot of time with the little girl, but the wife didn’t trust her.”

  “I can understand.”

  “Fevzi Ahmet became Kapudan pasha. Mahmut told him to build the bridge.” Galytsin dropped his hand toward his cup, and the footman reached forward with the teapot. “He was less often at home. Two women, a child, a eunuch attendant-you might say it was a combustible situation. And Pervyal had a flaw.”

  “A flaw?”

  Galytsin leaned forward with a look of amusement. “That’s what the dealer had recognized. I don’t know if you are a superstitious man, Yashim efendi, but some people would say Pervyal was a witch.”

  Yashim shook his head. “I don’t understand-you talk about this woman as if you knew her.”

  “Oh, yes.” He examined his cigar. “I am-or rather, I was-her employer. Her dealer, I should say. It was me who sold her, Yashim efendi.”

  Yashim reached for his cup and drained it. “You sold her to Fevzi Ahmet?”

  Galytsin chuckled. “I was rather better than that. I sold her to the sultan.”

  Yashim stared.

  “It’s good to see your face, Yashim efendi! I knew nothing about Pervyal myself, until she set fire to the yali. We had warships in the Bosphorus then, and she came to us. A very good-looking young woman, with subtle accomplishments. Not a virgin-but there are, apparently, ways of remedying that. We used them.” He waved a hand. “We restored her purity, and arranged her sale-at a distance, of course. Quite a coup, wouldn’t you think? But we overlooked one thing.”

  “What?”

  “The sultan’s harem is an enclosed world. Pervyal was supposed to report to us-we had arranged a drop-off at the bazaar. When she sent for anything, she was to give the eunuch who shopped for her a purse and he would leave it at the shop. The eunuch and the shopkeeper supposed she was sending money to her family. It was a perfect system, except that she never made a report.”

  Yashim sat back, considering. “Once she was in the harem, she broke the connection?”

  “Completely. She was an intelligent woman, and she’d got where she wanted. She used us, of course. We don’t even know her harem name.”

  Yashim could not resist a smile at the irony of it. “But why are you telling me this?”

  Galytsin drew on his cigar and then, with a curiously vulgar expression, sent a smoke ring wobbling across the table.

  “I don’t like being used, Yashim efendi. But I am generous to my friends. I want you to consider it. Fevzi’s concubine tricked me, and you might say she is tricking you. Your people. You could take it as a tip.”

  Yashim stood up. “Thank you for the breakfast. If I may ask-when you say ‘subtle accomplishments’?”

  Galytsin spread his hands. “Well-trained. Elegant manners.”

  Yashim smiled. “They all have elegant manners, your highness.”

  133

  Tulin stepped to the window and looked out over the gray leaded roofs and curving domes of Topkapi, here and there touched by pockets of melting snow.

  Her face was grave; she had not slept well, visited by dreams in which the valide was dead, or trapped in a room engulfed in flames. She had woken from one such dream beating her hands on the quilt, surprised to find herself in a cold room, the morning already advanced.

  Quickly she broke the ice on the washbasin, and splashed her face. With a grimace she let her shift slip to the floor, then stepped forward and cupped the water in her hands and dashed it over her neck and breasts.

  She dried herself carefully with a towel and picked up the shift, which she folded and laid on the bed.

  She rummaged in the bags hanging against the walls, finding a pretty patterned jacket she didn’t recognize. She held it up. When she tried it on, it fitted well; she smoothed her hands down the sides and wished she had a mirror.

  After a while she grew bored of staring out over the Topkapi rooftops. It was only in one corner, beyond a dome, that she could discern the outline of the land beyond: the Galata Tower and the trees of Taksim, where they kept the water.

  134

  The wind had dropped. On the Bosphorus, the water ran black and smooth; the waters of the Golden Horn were oiled like old steel. Sultan’s weather, they called it, for the official opening ceremony of the bridge.

  It had snowed before dawn, and by midmorning, when the sun came out, most of the alleys and thoroughfares of the city were a laced tangle of mud and standing ice; the air was clear, and the skyline of the seven hills was picked out sharply against a cold blue sky.

  The bridge cast a crisp black shadow on the water. Its planks were swept, and glistened darkly in the frosty air; its parapets were entwined with glossy leaves, with here and there a spray of yellow flowers.

  Crowds thronged the shoreline on the Pera side, and spilled through the gates that opened in Istanbul’s Byzantine walls, their appetite whetted by the scent of roasted chestnuts and corncobs grilling on little fires. A man with long mustaches raked stuffed mussels over a brazier. The simit seller wandered through the crowd, with his distinctive bread rings on a tray on his head. The sherbet seller followed him, clinking two glasses between finger and thumb, and the water man, with his tank on his back. Boys darted through the crowd with roasted chickpeas in paper bags, and the sahlep men pushed their trolleys along the waterfront, offering their concoction of sweet orchid root sprinkled with ginger and cinnamon.

  The kebab houses and the cafes were busy, and the frosty air was full of music, too, played by bands, by gypsies, by wandering musicians with bagpipes and flutes, stringed ouds and mandolins. A team of Africans who had arrived in the autumn were knocking out unfamiliar and catchy rhythms on their drums; gypsy girls were tinkling their tambourines; grave Sufis chanted the ninety-nine names of God, for charity.

  In spite of the cold, Yashim could see that it was a larger crowd than had turned out for the accession of Abdulmecid only a few months before. That had been a more private affair, conducted swiftly upon the old sultan’s death in the presence of the Ottoman family, the sultan’s pashas and his slaves. The ceremonial opening of the bridge marked the sultan’s gift to the people of Istanbul, and it was generally understood that Abdulmecid would bring his ladies.

  Cannon fire announced the departure of the sultan’s suite from Besiktas. Everyone turned expectantly to the water and watched the mouth of the Golden Horn; people leaned from balconies in Pera and crowded the crumbling walls of Istanbul.

  The corps diplomatique, including the ambassadors of Russia, France, Britain, Austria, and the United States, was assembled in an edgy silence on the Pera side of the bridge. The Polish ambassador was there, too, looking tired but talking amiably to the Sardinian consul; his presence was noticed by certain members of the crowd. Only the junior members of the ambassadorial suites chatted and laughed among themselves.

  “Admit it, Compston,” Count Esterhazy was saying as he waved a smoldering cigar. “The Ottomans have done it. They have built their bridge after all, and you fellows have lost the wager!”

  George Compston adopted a mulish expression. “The bet says the sultan has to get across the bridge. Isn’t that right, Fizerly?”

  “I grant you they built it,” Fizerly added. “But will it stand? That’s the question, Esterhazy.”

  Esterhazy’s pale face betrayed the hint of a smile. “I think you will pay the forfeit, gentlemen. Look!”

  A vermilion eight-oared caique appeared, flying brave pennants, carrying important dignitaries of the empire: the grand vizier, Husrev Pasha; the mufti of Istanbul; the military chiefs of Rumelia and Anatolia.

  Behind it came the imperial caique itself, with young Abdulmecid and two veiled women; it was rowed by twelve men, who barked like dogs in the
traditional manner, so that the sultan’s conversation would go unheard.

  As the cavalcade approached along the Bosphorus, ships anchored in the roadstead dipped their colors. Six caiques, vermilion and eight-oared, bore the ladies, who turned their veiled heads regally this way and that, to appreciate the lively scene. Among them could be seen some of the harem children: little boys in silk jackets, little girls in furs.

  The sultan’s caique passed momentarily from sight, then swept out of the shadows below the bridge and into the basin of the Golden Horn. The crowd began to chant its approval: “Hu! Hu!”

  The third, then fourth caique slipped beneath the bridge. As its prow passed under the parapet, two garlanded caiques that had been milling in the lower basin shot forward and fell into flanking positions, one on each side of the caique as it went under the bridge.

  Eight seconds later, straddling a crossbeam of the bridge’s superstructure, Erkan, the Strongest Man in the World, took hold of Kadri’s ankles and lowered the boy toward the water.

  The ladies in the caique gasped as the swinging figure of a boy jostled against them. Then he was gone.

  The caique shot out into the Golden Horn. The ladies looked about them, uncertain what had happened in the fifteen seconds it took them to go underneath the bridge. The rowers blinked-and kept on rowing, for there was nobody aboard to change their orders.

  Invisible from the shore, Kadri, Erkan, and the little girl they had just snatched from the harem caique scuttled along the gantry below the planked surface of the bridge and made their way to the far side. The girl was lowered into a waiting caique. Low and black, it had not been spotted moored up against the pontoon.

  Spyro the caiquejee twitched a blanket over Kadri and the little girl and applied himself to his oars. They came out from beneath the bridge, heading to the open water, as the last imperial caique emerged on the other side.

  Erkan scrambled through the final span of the bridge and stepped onto land, where he was soon lost in the crowd.