The Winter Thief: A Kamil Pasha Novel (Kamil Pasha Novels)

by Jenny White

  “Where are they now?” Kamil broke in impatiently.

  “They spent the night here, and the next morning we found the doorkeeper and the man with eczema dead. The police were summoned, of course. They suspected the visitors of having something to do with the murders. I told them it was absurd to think that a distinguished hanoum or the doctor could have had anything to do with it. The foreign man, I can’t say. There was something odd about him.” He stood and took up a watering can.” On the other hand,” he continued, eyeing the soil in each pot before adding a calibrated stream of water, “the patient who was killed was the man the hanoum had mistaken for her husband. Surely there’s something important in that.” He turned toward Kamil, the half-empty can dangling from his hand. “It’s as if they meant to kill Huseyin Pasha.” He put down the can and sat again, waiting silently while an orderly placed a cup of coffee before each man.

  Kamil’s nerves were so taut that the click of cup on saucer sounded as loud as an explosion.

  “The police wanted to detain them,” the director went on, “but they left, which I thought was wise at the time. But this morning the hanoum returned. She and her associates said they had been attacked on the road. The doctor and one of their servants are quite badly wounded.”

  Kamil rose, knocking against the table and spilling the coffee. “And the women?”

  Looking confused, the director unfolded his lanky body from the chair. “There was only one woman, Huseyin Pasha’s wife. She and the foreign man accompanied the wounded here.”

  “Where are they?” Kamil grasped the back of his chair, his knuckles white.

  “The police have them locked up,” the director explained in an anxious voice, making propitiatory motions toward Kamil with his hands. “I told them they couldn’t treat exalted personages like that, but it was like talking to stone. I did what I could to make them comfortable. I put the hanoum in the guest room. The Frank was covered in blood and by rights should be in the infirmary, but the police took him away.” The director righted Kamil’s cup. “Would you like to see them?”

  Kamil stood by the door, barely able to control his impatience as the director opened it and preceded him out into the hospital courtyard.

  “I can’t tell you what a relief it is that you’re here, Magistrate,” the director babbled as he led Kamil through the arcade and across the path to the padlocked door Kamil had noticed when he arrived. A policeman in a gray wool uniform and peaked helmet, armed with a rifle and sidearm, slouched against the wall beside the door. When he saw Kamil and the director, he jumped to attention.

  “Kamil Pasha would like to speak with Huseyin Pasha’s wife,” the director told him.

  The policeman threw back his shoulders and proclaimed loudly, “Impossible without permission from my commander.”

  “Where is your commander?” the director asked.

  Before the man could answer, Kamil stepped close to his face and snapped, “Open it. I am a special prosecutor for the sultan.”

  The policeman fell back, “Of course, Your Eminence.” He bowed, clutching his fist to his heart. “I didn’t know. I wasn’t told.”

  “Kamil!” he heard Feride cry out through the window.

  The guard pulled the key from his pocket. Kamil grabbed it from him, unlocked the door, and flung it open. Feride ran into his arms.

  “My sister,” he barked at the director and the astonished policeman.

  Kamil was appalled at Feride’s appearance. Her charshaf was ripped and spattered with mud and what looked like blood. Her face was bruised and strands of hair escaped from beneath her veil. She hadn’t bothered to cover her face, and he could see that her lip was swollen.

  “Allah protect us,” he called out. “What’s happened to you?”

  Instead of answering, she pulled her veil across her face and pleaded, “Where’s Elif? You must find her.” Her voice had an edge of hysteria.

  Admonishing the director to take care of Feride, Kamil grabbed the policeman by the back of his uniform. “Where’s the foreign man?” He felt deep in his bones that she was in great danger. She was so frail in body and lately in spirit that it would take little to snuff out the flame.

  The policeman led Kamil along an unlit hallway and unlocked a door.

  Kamil stepped inside, but at first saw nothing in the darkness. His eyes adjusted quickly, and he saw Elif slumped against the wall, covered in blood. He enveloped her in his arms and carried her out.

  46

  VERA WOKE IN A ROOM with an icon of the Blessed Virgin on the wall before the bed and lace curtains at the sunny window. It took her several moments before she understood where she was.

  The Agopian girl was sitting beside the bed, embroidering. She ran from the room, calling, “Mama, Papa, she’s awake.”

  Madame Agopian bustled in carrying a dress and an armful of other garments. “Lena, welcome back to us. I’m sure a sleep did you good. When you’re ready, we can serve a late lunch.” She piled the clothing at the end of the bed. “I’ve had a few things altered to fit you. My seamstress can come and make any last-minute adjustments.” She looked down at the pile, frowning. “I didn’t want to wake you, you see, so I chose some things I thought would be practical. I hope you like them, but if not, please tell me and we’ll find something else. You will do that for me?”

  Her face was so creased with worry that Vera almost laughed. She was certain she would never again worry about the cut of her clothing. “Thank you, madame. I’m sure it’s lovely. You’ve been so generous and kind.” She sat up and flinched. Her whole body ached. Her feet were blistered and scraped and throbbed beneath the bandages. She fingered the brushlike swatch where Vahid had cut off her hair.

  When she had dressed, she joined the family in the dining room. Ravenous, she devoured the lamb and vegetable stew set before her and drank several glasses of water.

  “Eat more, child,” Madame Agopian urged Vera, telling the maid to refill her plate. Her daughter watched their guest from beneath lowered lids.

  Monsieur Agopian sent his plate away untouched. “Are you planning to return to Geneva?” he asked Vera. “I can arrange a berth for you on the next ship. I’ll cover the cost, so you needn’t worry. You must be anxious to get home.” At Madame Agopian’s startled glance, he added, “There’s no rush, none at all, but if I can be of help…”

  It seemed to Vera that he was in a hurry for her to leave. Perhaps she should take him up on his offer. She could be in Geneva within the week. But she couldn’t leave without learning what had befallen Gabriel, and she wondered what to do about Sosi. If Sosi had been recaptured and Vera remained silent, the girl would be lost. Should she try to find her family? Gabriel had mentioned that his cell was based in Kurtulush, but she had no idea where that was. She wondered what Gabriel would do and found that she couldn’t imagine.

  They moved to the sitting room. Sleep had cleared her mind, and she began to think about her predicament and what to do. Vahid knew her by the name Lena Balian. She realized that the only person who knew her by that name, and who could have told Vahid, was the grandfatherly gentleman sitting here before her, smoking his pipe. Yet without the Agopians’ help, she didn’t know what to do about Gabriel and Sosi. She was saddened by the thought that she couldn’t trust any of them. Still, if Vahid learned she was here, not only she but the Agopian family would be in danger.

  When Madame Agopian and her daughter left the room, Vera asked, “Do you find it easy to be a publisher here in Istanbul, monsieur? I had the impression from our first conversation that you were under some pressure by the state.”

  “Do you know the fable of the fig tree?” Monsieur Agopian asked her.

  Vera shook her head no.

  “One day the gardener asked the fig tree, ‘Why do you spread your branches so low to the ground?’ The fig tree replied, ‘I have many enemies. I bend low so that they won’t break my branches, and I serve them sweetness so that they forget evil.’”

  Vera
thought about this for a few moments, then asked, “Doesn’t that mean you condone evil?’”

  “Not at all, my dear girl. It means that the weak must try to sweeten the bitterness of the strong by being humble and by serving them. We don’t really have another alternative.”

  “You could grow the fruit higher and starve them.”

  He chuckled at her naïveté. “They’d just pull the branches down or come with an ax. What have we gained by that? No, we must think of survival. There are good times and bad. We make our peace with the bad and save our strength to take advantage of the good.”

  “But people aren’t trees,” Vera protested. “People can do things differently. They could themselves take up the ax.”

  Monsieur Agopian stared at her for a moment, then said gently, “Young people always believe that survival is their God-given right, if they even think about it at all. But as we get older, we realize how weak and vulnerable we are—and the people we love.” He glanced at the door through which his wife and daughter had disappeared.

  Vera nodded, her suspicion of the publisher suddenly softened by understanding. He had so much more to lose than she did. But she couldn’t ask him to help her find Gabriel and Sosi, and she knew that she had to leave. She wished she could report Sosi’s imprisonment to someone in authority she could trust. There seemed no one left in the world who matched that description.

  47

  KAMIL, ACCOMPANIED BY Feride, carried Elif’s limp body into the infirmary and laid her on a bed. Her hair, face, and hands were crusted with dried blood and her clothes stiff with it. There were no other patients in the room, and Kamil told the hospital director to lock the door. Feride held Elif’s hand.

  “Elif is a woman,” Kamil explained to the director. “I want no one but you to see to her.”

  The director didn’t seem surprised. “I thought he seemed rather odd, not a boy, not a man. I wondered for a moment if he had been castrated. No matter. Let’s tend to her.”

  He called for hot water, bandages, salve, and a tisane to be made from some herbs from his garden. While Kamil waited by the door for the supplies, the director pulled over a mangal to heat the area by the bed. When the hot water arrived, Feride washed Elif’s face and hands, which were covered with cuts. The deep ones began to bleed again. The director smoothed on a salve, then wrapped Elif’s hands in bandages. He examined her face, but when the blood and filth had been washed off, it appeared as pale and unmarred and distant as the moon.

  Gently, Feride peeled off Elif’s shirt and trousers, exposing her fragile, birdlike chest, her small, pointed breasts, and hips slender as a boy’s. On the inside of her thighs, Feride saw two ragged scars in the shape of carnations, as if the skin had been scraped or burned away and had regrown pale and puckered. She wondered what could have caused them. There were no recent wounds that she could see, so she tucked a quilt around her.

  Kamil sat beside Elif’s unmoving body and found that his mind had gone entirely blank. He had been too busy with work to protect the two people he loved most in the world. Now that it was too late, he understood that none of his work counted for even a kurush against their lives.

  “Why isn’t she awake?” Feride asked the director.

  “I don’t know,” the surgeon admitted. “Did she fall or bump her head?”

  “She walked here with me, but she hasn’t spoken in some time—since we were in the vineyards. It’s as if her body was there but she wasn’t in it.”

  “What happened in the vineyards?” Kamil asked. “Why was she so covered in blood?”

  Feride told them of the attack and what she thought she had seen in the vineyard.

  “She couldn’t have killed three men by herself,” Kamil said, his speech slow and thick.

  “Maybe I just saw her standing over the bodies,” Feride admitted. “I’m not sure now. It was dark and I was frightened.”

  “I’ve seen the bodies,” the director said. “The police brought them here. A woman of her size would have been no match for them. Likely they were killed by your men and Elif Hanoum witnessed it.”

  “Nissim was the Camondo family’s boatman. Someone should let them know,” Feride suggested, her voice flat.

  “I’ll take care of that, chère hanoum.” The director gently raised one of Elif’s eyelids to examine her pupil. He slapped her lightly on the cheek, but there was no response. “It’s shock. I’ve seen it happen to men after battle.”

  “How long does it last?”

  “Sometimes they wake up and it’s over. Sometimes it’s a lifetime.”

  Kamil bowed his head until it rested on the quilt beside Elif’s matted hair.

  48

  VERA TOLD THE AGOPIANS that she wanted to visit a friend in Kurtulush, and they allowed her the use of their coach. By finding Sosi’s family, she hoped to find Sosi, her only link to Gabriel. She had no idea how big the district was, but she had a plan.

  She asked the coach to stop outside a house that she had picked at random. Late-afternoon shadows pooled in the cobbled lanes that wound up the hill from the small square. The house was quiet, its lace curtains shutting out the street, a cat snoozing on the windowsill. A young girl peered out and, seeing the strange coach, turned back inside. The door opened, and a man emerged and called out to the coachman.

  Vera placed a neatly folded note addressed to Monsieur Agopian on the seat, then slipped out of the carriage on the side away from the house and disappeared into the lane. After walking for some time up and down the slopes of Kurtulush, she spied the belltower of an Armenian church.

  Out of breath and sweating in her borrowed coat, she knocked on the door of the adjoining residence. It was opened by a man wearing a priestly robe. A curtain of gray hair and a long beard framed his face. Below his alert eyes were pouches of fatigue. Vera introduced herself in Armenian and told him she was looking for the family of a woman named Sosi.

  The priest’s eyes shifted behind her as if to make sure that no one had overheard, and then he pulled her inside. In the dim light of the parlor, he bade her sit on the sofa, while he stood by the door. “I am Father Zadian. Why are you looking for Sosi?”

  Vera considered what she could tell him. “We employed her at one time and owe her back wages.”

  “I see.” Vera could tell from the tone of his voice that he was suspicious. “May I ask what service Sosi performed for you?” he asked. “And what is your name?”

  Vera hesitated but decided to trust the priest. “My name,” she said finally, “is Vera Arti.”

  “Are you related to Gabriel Arti?” The priest sat down in a chair opposite her.

  “He’s my husband,” she said, her voice betraying her excitement. Someone else who knew Gabriel. “Do you know where he is? I’m looking for him.”

  “He’s in the east.”

  Vera was stunned. She had thought he was in hiding or perhaps under arrest. It had never occurred to her that he would simply continue his project, leaving her behind in the hands of the secret police. He would have had to make a choice, a difficult choice, of that she had no doubt, but in the end he had chosen the movement. As she absorbed this news, she monitored her heart but found only a cramped emptiness where there had been joy.

  “Where in the east?”

  “The New Concord commune.” The priest seemed surprised. “You didn’t know?”

  “I was…” She forced herself to go on. “I was being held by the secret police, and I just escaped.” As she uttered it, she realized it seemed a fantastic claim.

  The priest drew in his breath and muttered a quick prayer. She saw him glance at her expensive coat.

  “I went to the only person I knew in the city.” She told him about the kindness of the Agopians.

  “Do they know you came here?” the priest asked.

  “No.” She thought of the note she had left in the carriage for Monsieur Agopian in which she had thanked him for his help and explained that, not wishing to put his family in any diffi
culty, she had decided to leave Istanbul. She hadn’t said where she was going. He might worry about her, but he would be relieved.

  “I don’t want to speak against them,” Father Zadian said. “They’re good people, and God knows we all have to make our peace with the powers above us, but, well, it would be best if you didn’t let them know too much.”

  “I understand. They don’t know my true identity.” It reinforced what she already suspected. She remembered Monsieur Agopian’s fable of the accommodating fig tree.

  “Father,” she said urgently, “I need to find Sosi’s family.” She told him about their escape. “I think they caught her. She needs help.” Her mind shied away from how they might punish the girl for attempting to escape.

  The priest’s face was grim. “This is monstrous. Let me think about what can be done.” He regarded Vera huddled in her coat on the sofa. “Can you give us a detailed description of the building? I know some people who can try to free her.”

  “Who?” she asked, thinking of the socialist cell Sosi belonged to.

  “You needn’t concern yourself. The less you know, the better.”

  She saw the pity in his eyes, not knowing whether it was for her or Sosi, and recoiled.

  A housekeeper appeared at the door and brought a tray of tea and choereg, still fragrant from the oven. At the sight of the glossy braided rolls sprinkled with sesame seeds that her family’s cook in Moscow baked every Sunday, Vera put her face in her hands and wept.

  49

  “HUSEYIN PASHA IS Kamil Pasha’s brother-in-law,” Vahid mused. “I love the efficiency of it. Did Feride Hanoum lead you to her husband?”