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

by Jenny White

  Kamil watched the smoke curl from the pasha’s mouth toward the ornate ceiling. He would have liked a cigarette himself, but it would be rude to light up before an elder. His father had never seen Kamil smoke. Society’s rules were there to create order and civility out of the rabble of our emotions, he reflected. You may hate your father, but by not smoking in front of him, you show your respect. He hadn’t hated his father, but he hadn’t known him either, and this seemed to him as great a tragedy, the inadmissibility of love.

  “I don’t understand the motivation of the local Armenians, though. All they’ve accomplished with their explosion is to endanger their own people. What’s the point of their playing along with the socialists only to undermine them? If they object to the socialists setting up a commune in an Armenian valley, the local residents can just drive them out. You said they were barely surviving anyway.”

  “This is a radical group within the Armenian community. They wouldn’t be the first to orchestrate an attack on their own people in order to get attention for their cause. It’s brutal, but it works. They grafted their own interests onto Gabriel’s socialist experiment. They set him up. Now it will all look like his doing. And if there’s a massacre of socialists and Armenians, the blame will fall on the socialists and their commune for inciting it. The British press, no friends of ours, would pick up the news of a massacre and push for their government to get involved. The Armenians would expect the British to help them carve out a homeland where they’d be safe. That’s what they’re hoping anyway. A remarkable plan.”

  “Let me understand this. A group of Armenians in Istanbul are hoping that blowing up the bank will prod the sultan into cracking down on the Armenians in Choruh?” Kamil shook his head in disbelief. He leaned back and let his eyes play over the colorful plumage of the birds pictured on the ceiling. He smacked his hand hard on the divan. “I bet it was the local Armenians who reported the weapons shipment to the police. And told them about the commune. How else would the secret police know about the settlement in the Choruh Valley? Someone inside Gabriel Arti’s circle must have told them.” He emptied his glass, feeling energized as ideas clicked into place.

  Yorg Pasha exhaled a plume of sweet-scented smoke. “The male of a certain species of spider allows himself to be devoured by the female after they’ve mated,” he said. “It’s his final, magisterial investment in the success of his offspring.”

  Kamil grimaced. “That’s grotesque.”

  “It’s heroic. The Cause is always greater than individual lives.”

  “The second guest you mentioned,” Kamil asked, “was he tall, with a pointed beard?”

  “Ah, well done. Always a step ahead. His name is Vahid, commander of Akrep, the sultan’s very own poisonous creature.” The pasha set down his pipe and reached for the glass of boza. Simon stepped up from the lower room, picked it up, and handed it to him. “Unlike our selfless spider, the scorpion paralyzes its prey with venom.” He drank some of the boza and wiped his mouth on an embroidered cloth. “Perhaps it toys with its prey for a time before eating it,” he speculated. “The prey is only immobilized after all.” His eyes sought Kamil’s. “Imagine the terror of seeing those small claws attached to the scorpion’s jaw come closer, take small, delicate bites. Watching yourself being slowly dismembered.”

  Kamil listened carefully. He had a feeling that the pasha, who never wasted words, was telling him something important.

  “Yet surprisingly,” Yorg Pasha went on, “for such cruel beings, scorpions are actually quite timid. They’ll run from danger or they remain very still. It’s when they’re still that you must be particularly careful. And you must never, never,” he repeated, “allow a scorpion to mistake you for prey.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He wants people to be in his power. His is the voice whispering in the sultan’s ear.”

  “Where’s this Gabriel Arti now? And the gold?”

  “On their way to Trabzon.”

  Was it a slip of the pasha’s tongue, or had he meant to reveal to Kamil that he knew where the gold was? The realization disturbed Kamil, but he found he wasn’t surprised. He tried to remember that he needed to be wary of the pasha. “How?” he asked.

  “Steamer. You won’t catch up with him now.” Yorg Pasha waved his hand dismissively. “Forget these socialists. They aren’t a problem, except to themselves. Vahid is where you should focus your attention.”

  “I can’t leave the city right now anyway.” Kamil told him about the fire and Huseyin’s disappearance. “Feride and Doctor Moreno are looking for him in the hospitals.”

  “Ah, vay, ah, the poor man. And my dear girl, Feride, what a tragedy. I hope it will not come to that and you will find him well. Perhaps a different accident has befallen him, a broken leg in the snow?”

  “We would have heard. Huseyin isn’t the quiet type.”

  Yorg Pasha chuckled, breaking the tension that had been growing between the two men. “Yes, that’s so.”

  Kamil passed his hand across his face. “Sometimes I feel the task is beyond me.”

  Yorg Pasha came to sit beside Kamil and laid his hand on his shoulder. They sat in silence for some moments before Yorg Pasha said softly, “Your father loved you as he loved life itself. I know this.”

  Kamil nodded his head in acknowledgment. He smiled to cover his confusion and, after a few moments, got to his feet, swaying with tiredness.

  “Stay here tonight,” Yorg Pasha suggested. “It’s a cold night.” He stood up with difficulty. Kamil offered his hand, but Yorg Pasha waved him away, muttering, “Even in winter, the lion can roar.”

  “Thank you. That’s most generous, but I have work to do tonight.” He stepped down from the divan platform into the marbled hall. “You mentioned a woman,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

  Yorg Pasha shook his head in bewilderment. “The fool Gabriel brought his wife along. I’ve looked into this Gabriel Arti. He has a reputation as an experienced activist, but he was groveling on his knees because he’s allowed his woman to fall into the grasp of Akrep.” The pasha leaned on Simon’s arm to step down from the platform. The secretary then retreated, following the pasha like a shadow.

  Yorg Pasha and Kamil walked side by side through the glittering lamplit rooms. Beyond the window sashes, the black mass of the strait heaved in the night.

  “There was something about a sister,” Yorg Pasha continued. “She lived with Gabriel in Sevastopol. One night while he was out, she was murdered, and I gather that he went on a rampage. Some men were killed, but it was never established that it was Gabriel who killed them, or that these were truly the men who had murdered his sister. But none of those distinctions mattered to the Russian police, who needed to arrest someone for the crime. Gabriel fled to Geneva to avoid arrest and joined the socialists.”

  “A man with nothing left to lose is dangerous.”

  “And a man with a wife is vulnerable.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Vera Arti, but Vahid thinks the name of the woman he holds is Lena Balian. I hope I convinced him that Lena Balian is the wrong person and useless to him as a lure for Gabriel. But I dread to think of what she’s already endured. If there’s any way to bring her out…”

  Kamil felt tired and overwhelmed. He wanted to focus on finding Huseyin. Now Feride and Elif were missing, and here was another person lost, pieces of a puzzle that seemed to shift in three dimensions. But he could say he had found the bank robber and the gold, he thought with a glint of hangman’s humor. He could put a pin on the map and say they were on a ship between Istanbul and Trabzon. And Vera Arti was probably being held in the Akrep headquarters. That would be easy enough to locate. Another pin. Yet the entire roster of lost persons was insignificant compared to the match he now saw being held up to a corner of the map, the conflagration that would devour an innocent population.

  “I’ll do my best, amja.”

  “Yes,” the pasha said with a worried look
. “You always have.” He gripped Kamil’s arm with surprising strength.

  31

  THE FOG WAS NOT AS thick in Üsküdar. An icy rain seemed to have swept the air clean as the little group made its way across the square opposite the boat landing and into the alleys leading uphill to the Valide Mosque hospital, the largest in the district. The cold had frozen the mud into troughs, so they walked slowly, Nissim in front and Vali bringing up the rear, each carrying a lamp. A strange calm possessed Feride as she followed Elif and Doctor Moreno. She stumbled once and caught at Elif’s coat. After that, Elif came to walk beside her whenever the lane was wide enough. No one spoke.

  Before long, the way opened up into a lane that passed between orchards and vineyards. A pack of bony dogs followed them, remaining just outside the light. Whenever one of them approached, Vali hurled a rock at it. The rain had stopped. There was an odor of pine and soil, and the stars had reappeared. In the dimness, Feride made out the dome and two minarets of a mosque flanked on either side by buildings, which must be the complex of monasteries, schools, soup kitchens, hospitals, baths, and shops that accompanied all great mosques.

  Nissim led them to an adjacent building. They entered a grand vestibule that led to a caravanserai where travelers spent the night. Several men sat by a fireplace, and Nissim asked them the way to the hospital.

  Their stares caused Feride to look at her companions with new eyes—a blond foreigner, an old Hasidic man with sidelocks, a veiled woman, and two burly workingmen, assembled here at a suspicious hour.

  Nissim led them around the back of the building. He pounded on a locked door until it was opened by a bearded man in a turban.

  “What do you want, you ruffian? This is a hospital and you’re frightening the patients.”

  Doctor Moreno stepped forward and introduced himself as a physician at Yildiz Palace. The man’s expression changed immediately, and he stepped aside and welcomed them in.

  Doctor Moreno explained whom they were looking for.

  “A patient with burn wounds transferred from Eyüp Hospital yesterday or today?” The man rubbed his beard. “I don’t recall anyone like that. In fact, as far as I know we have no burn patients here. I’ll have to wake the director.”

  He led them through a door at the opposite end of the vestibule, then across a colonnaded courtyard, where he knocked tentatively, then more loudly at a door. A tall, lanky man in a hastily donned robe emerged, settling a fez on his balding head. “What is it?” he asked.

  Doctor Moreno stated his case again.

  “Come, let’s look through the wards,” the director said, glancing curiously at the doctor’s associates, “but I can assure you that we have no burn patients. Are you sure he was sent here?”

  Feride took a lamp and stepped into the first ward. It was cleaner than the Eyüp hospital and had fewer patients. She walked among the patients, then halted beside a man whose head was wrapped in bandages. She knew without a doubt it was Huseyin. This was the husband who had always supported her, even when her father committed suicide and, blaming herself, she lapsed into melancholia for months. This was the husband who adored his twin girls. The thought of them growing up without their father made her begin to weep.

  The director rushed over. “Now, now, this is just a bad rash,” he explained gently. “Nothing life-threatening. A local man. Not your husband. Certainly not.”

  Elif drew her arm through Feride’s and they continued to the next ward. After they had looked through all the rooms, she asked the director, “Where else could he have been brought in Üsküdar?”

  “Patients with wounds that severe generally would be brought here. But there are several smaller infirmaries attached to the mosques.” In her exhaustion, Feride had let her veil fall open, and he politely avoided looking at her face.

  “If such a patient appears, would you immediately send word?”

  The director bowed. “Of course, hanoum.” He turned to Doctor Moreno. “I can make chambers available for you and your guests if you’d like to spend the night. It’s a dangerous crossing.”

  “That it is,” muttered Nissim.

  A COCK CROWED nearby and Feride opened her eyes, then sat up, startled by the unfamiliar room. A stone cupola arched above her, and a narrow window gave out onto a courtyard. It wasn’t the cock’s crow, she realized, that had awakened her. It was still night. Light flared across the window as men with lamps ran past through the courtyard. Feride put on her charshaf and stepped outside. The director was buttoning his jacket. He had forgotten his fez and his head looked pale and vulnerable. He saw her and said in a breathless half shout, “Please, hanoum, go back into your room and lock the door.”

  As soon as he was out of sight, a figure detached itself from the shadows and pulled Feride aside.

  “Elif!” Feride exclaimed, relieved. “What’s happening?”

  Elif looked as though she hadn’t slept at all. “The doorman was murdered. They think we had something to do with it.”

  “Why would they think that?”

  “Because one of the patients also died.” She grasped Feride’s hand. “The man with the bandaged head.”

  32

  THAT MORNING, Kamil woke before dawn and rode directly to Omar’s house in Fatih. Omar’s wife, Mimoza, was already stoking the fire in the potbellied stove. She bade him sit, and returned after a moment with a glass of tea. At the door, her adopted son, Avi, slipped off his shoes and handed Mimoza two loaves of bread, still warm from the community oven.

  “I saw you, but I couldn’t catch up with you.” He beamed at Kamil, then followed Mimoza to the kitchen.

  A few moments later, Omar appeared, tucking in his shirt.

  “Welcome, pasha, to our humble home.” He settled heavily beside Kamil on a cushion. Avi came in with the teapot. Omar waited until the boy had gone before he told Kamil in a low voice, “We found Abel. They had buried him already, but we dug him up.”

  They sipped their tea in silence while Mimoza brought in a pan of poached eggs and spinach, settled it in the middle of the tray, and tilted a big spoon against it. She gave them a curious glance and disappeared again.

  “Two fingers cut off,” Omar whispered, one eye on the corridor. “Burn marks on his yarak. Who would do something like that?”

  “Akrep commander Vahid, no doubt,” Kamil responded, remembering Yorg Pasha’s warning. “He found Sosi through the nanny Bridget, and Sosi led him to her brother, Abel. Any sign of the girl?”

  “The priest said she was abducted. On her engagement day, no less. She’ll be conspicuously dressed, which might make her easier to find. We talked to her fiancé, but he doesn’t know anything. He was under the impression that she lived a sheltered life at home. Their father was in the house when it happened, by the way. He’s blind, and now they say he has brain fever. We couldn’t get a coherent sentence out of him.”

  “Yorg Pasha knows the man, Gabriel Arti, who carried out the robbery.” Kamil told him Arti’s suspicions about his driver, Abel, and about Vera Arti’s arrest.

  “Yorg Pasha runs in dangerous circles,” Omar commented, “but that doesn’t surprise me. Now Abel setting off the explosion to draw attention to the Armenian cause, that surprises me. That’s like blowing off your behind to loosen up your bowels.” Omar let out a deep breath. “Well, they certainly got the palace’s attention.”

  Mimoza coughed before she entered with the rest of their breakfast. They ate to Avi’s chatter and good-natured sparring between Omar and his wife. Kamil felt unaccountably lonely and wondered for the hundredth time where Feride and Elif were. No message had arrived.

  When the dishes were cleared and the tray removed, Omar asked, “Do you think Gabriel took revenge on Abel for messing up his nice, neat robbery?”

  Kamil remembered Yorg Pasha’s description of Gabriel. “I don’t think so. He has bigger problems. But I have a favor to ask of you.”

  33

  THE NORMALLY PLACID Doctor Moreno was flushed with an
ger. “Of course, we’re leaving. You can’t possibly think we had anything to do with these murders.”

  “As a man of science,” the director said, “you must admit it’s unlikely to be a coincidence that right after you arrive, the man who let you in and the man you mistook for Huseyin Pasha are both dead. We wait for the police.”

  “Has it occurred to you, Director, that we might also be targets?” Feride pointed out. “Keeping us here puts us in danger as well. Whoever did this apparently wanted to kill”—her voice broke—“a man he believed, or thought I believed, was my husband.”

  “I’m sorry, hanoum,” the director said in a conciliatory voice. “Of course, I understand that.” He peered at her. “Do you know why someone would want to kill your husband, especially as he is already incapacitated?”

  Feride heard the slight pause before the word and knew the director thought that Huseyin was either dead or as good as dead.

  “Ask the orderly who was on duty in the room,” Elif suggested in a boyish voice.

  It was the first time she had spoken to the director, and he looked at her curiously. “Excellent idea, monsieur,” he told Elif, then called his assistant and told him to find the orderly.

  “He’s the only one who could have seen me at the man’s bed,” Feride added, suddenly afraid.

  After a few moments, word came that the orderly was missing.

  Feride went to warn Vali and Nissim, who were keeping watch across the courtyard.

  “Someone followed us here? Through that fog?” Nissim was incredulous.

  “They could have gotten the location the same way we did,” Vali noted, “from the orderly at Eyüp hospital. He’d sell his mother for a kurush.”

  “Who are these people?” Feride asked, near tears. “What should we do?”

  “Not wait for the police.” Nissim turned to Vali. “Is there a carriage?”

  Vali disappeared for a few moments, then returned and shook his head no. “We’ll have to walk.”