The Winter Thief (18 page)

V
ERA TOLD THE
A
GOPIANS
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 difficulty, 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.

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

“No, Commander.” The Akrep agent shifted his stance uncomfortably before Vahid’s desk. There was a bandage beneath his right eye. “The hanoum was traveling with four men, a Jew, a Frank, and two servants. We followed them to the Valide hospital in Üsküdar. An orderly told us she had identified one of the patients as her husband, so we dealt with him.”

“Excellent,” Vahid said, a surge of pleasure rising in his chest at having bested both his rivals, Huseyin and Kamil, and avenged Rhea. He repressed a smile.

“Unfortunately it wasn’t the pasha, sir,” the agent admitted in a subdued voice. “The doorkeeper was killed too; that was an accident. When they discovered the bodies, the director called the authorities and we went in disguised as policemen, but the hanoum and her group had left before we got there. It took us a while to locate them. They spent part of the night in a peasant’s hut. We found them just before dawn.”

“And then you tracked them through the woods. What is this? A fairy tale?” Vahid’s disappointment was doubly bitter at having imagined Huseyin dead.

“It was me and four agents, Hilmi,…” He began to name them, but Vahid cut him off.

“Just tell me what happened.”

The agent crossed his arms, then dropped his hands to his side. Vahid could smell his anxiety. “I thought we could bring the pasha’s wife in to be questioned about where her husband was. It wasn’t working to follow her around. We weren’t finding out anything, and we were making people suspicious.”

Vahid’s voice rose with exasperation. “You wanted to bring the wife of a pasha in for interrogation.” He slammed the palm of his hand on the desk. “Are you insane?”

“She’s just a woman. And the pasha would be dead anyway, as soon as we found him.”

“Did it occur to you that she doesn’t know where her husband is?”

The agent’s shoulders were hunched, and he looked down at his hands, clasped before him.

“Go on,” Vahid commanded.

The agent fastened his eyes on the wall behind Vahid. “I took the hanoum, but she stuck a knife in my face and ran off.” His hand reached up involuntarily to touch the bandage on his cheek. “Then we heard a sound, I tell you honestly, it made my hair stand on end. It was surely a djinn.”

Vahid leaned forward and stared at the agent. “What do you mean?” This account was getting worse and worse. A mistaken murder, the involvement of the local police, an attack on Huseyin Pasha’s wife, and now his agents believed they had been attacked by djinns. A feeling like ants crawling invaded his extremities. He clenched and unclenched his fingers. He could feel his heart beat against his collar. “Go on.”

The agent’s eyes widened. “One minute our men were fighting, the next they were lying there in pieces like dog meat. Hilmi and I backed up a bit to…to reconsider our strategy.”

If he wanted to build Akrep into an organization to be feared, Vahid thought, he’d have to weed out superstitious cowards like this.

“How many agents dead?”

“Three,” the man admitted softly.

Vahid’s finger tapped on the desk, a steady drone like water dripping. “And Huseyin Pasha’s wife?” Kamil Pasha’s sister, he added to himself with the satisfaction of knowing that destroying Huseyin would also wound Kamil. The symmetry of it gave it the stamp of fate.

“She was gone. The next thing we knew, they were all back at the hospital, except for one of their party, who was dead.”

Vahid rose to his feet. His chest was so tight that he could barely breathe. “This whole operation was a disaster,” he pointed out in a deceptively gentle tone. Vahid was considering what might happen if Vizier Köraslan or Sultan Abdulhamid discovered that he had been using Akrep resources in a personal vendetta against one of the empire’s most highly placed and respected citizens. Vahid was aware that to the old elite families, he was little more than a roach underfoot, one they tolerated because he was useful but wouldn’t hesitate to crush should that become necessary.

There were limits even to his hold over the vizier. An attack by a lowly bureaucrat on a member of the royal circle would not be tolerated. Now both Huseyin Pasha and his wife would have to die to make sure the attack could never be linked to Vahid. This was all a consequence of the colossal incompetence of his agents, he thought, turning his glare on the man standing before him.

The agent had gone pale. He bowed his head, hands pressed to his sides. “I have no excuse, sir.”

Vahid let the silence stretch out until, finally, he said, “Are you satisfied with your work here?”

The agent looked surprised. “Yes, Commander.”

“But you could always use more income, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, Commander.” The man’s eyes sought the window, as if he wished to escape.

“You have two daughters, don’t you?” His finger tapped once.

The agent stiffened. “Yes, Commander.” His voice had fallen to an uneasy whisper.

“Despite your abject failure, you’ll find that I’m a fair man. Bring the youngest in next week, and we’ll find some work for her here.”

The agent took an involuntary step backward. “But…I can’t. She’s been very sheltered.”

Vahid gazed at him with interest, wondering at the predictability of human interaction. “Of course you can. She’ll be very happy here, I assure you, and her salary will be half of yours.” He smiled, exposing his perfect white teeth above his pointed beard. “I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

A
NUN CARRYING SLOPS
in the early morning had found the body by the courtyard wall of Saint Peter’s Church. The girl’s body was draped across the rosebushes, her marigold robe pinned by thorns as if she were a rare specimen of butterfly. Her face was creased as if in pain, a discolored, swollen tongue protruding from her mouth. There were bruises on her neck.

When Sister Balbina touched her, an object fell from the dead girl’s hand. The nun screamed and ran to wake the others.

C
HIEF
O
MAR
gave Rejep instructions, then faced the nuns. “Did any of you move anything?”

Sister Balbina stepped forward and handed him a silver pocket watch. “This was in her hand.”

Omar glanced briefly at the elegant timepiece, trying to keep his face expressionless, then slipped it into his pocket. He had seen the magistrate pull this watch countless times from his vest to check the hour. Someone wanted to set Kamil up as a murderer. He thought he knew who that might be.

“Anything else?” he asked brusquely.

“Take a look at her arms,” Sister Balbina insisted. The girl’s sleeve was pushed up around her elbow. The flesh inside her forearm was ravaged with punctures, burn marks, and cuts, some healed, others fresh. “We should take her down.” She headed for the rosebushes. “She’s been through enough.”

“Hold on,” Omar bellowed. The girl had been strangled. What else she had endured would have to await the arrival of Sister Hildegard, the nun from the Austrian infirmary, whom he had sent Rejep to fetch. It would take hours to track down the police surgeon in Fatih, across the Golden Horn. He had muscled his way in on another police chief’s turf, and he would have to improvise. The Austrian nun had seemed efficient and cold-blooded enough to deal with a girl’s corpse, unlike this flock of Italian nuns who fluttered about in morbid excitement.

He told one of his men to string a rope across the end of the garden and keep an eye on the nuns so they didn’t enter. He didn’t trust them. When nuns were convinced that something was right, not even Allah could stop them.

A few minutes later, Sister Hildegard hurried through the gate, accompanied by Rejep, who carried a bulky leather case. She made her way directly to the girl caught on the bush. “Get her down,” she ordered Rejep, who looked helplessly at Chief Omar.

Omar nodded. He had looked the body over carefully and noted where and how it had fallen. She hadn’t simply been tipped over the top of the wall. If that had been the case, the weight of the body would have crushed the bushes and it would have come to rest on the ground. No, someone had carried the girl into the garden and arrayed her neatly across the top of the rosebushes, spreading her robe around her. The girl was small, so she rested easily on her bier of thorns.

Sister Balbina ducked under the rope and joined Sister Hildegard and the policemen. In a babble of languages, they took the girl down and laid her gently on a cloth-covered table under a tree. It had lost its leaves, but wizened yellow apples decorated it like a tree of wishes. The other nuns had retreated into the church, and the murmur of their prayers leavened the air.

“We’ll need to know…” Omar began.

Sister Hildegard raised her hand. “I know, Chief Omar. I regret to say that I’ve done this sort of examination before. Much too often.”

Omar wondered at this. He had thought nuns to be aloof from the sort of sordid crimes he had to deal with. Sister Hildegard was clearly a nun who got her hands dirty.

The women rolled up their sleeves and bound them at the elbow, and Sister Hildegard opened her leather case.

Omar left them to the examination of the body and, together with Rejep, went over the crime scene again to see if he had missed anything. He had already examined the soil for footsteps, but the pack of nuns had trampled most of it. In other places, the ground had been swept. He could make out the telltale parallel grooves of a broom.

He walked over to the gate, his head bent to the ground. There it was: the imprint of a boot. A new boot, with a clear circumference instead of the amorphous shape of the well-worn shoes most people wore. A sharply outlined heel. He could even see the faint impression of a line of stitches along the front and, more important, a small nick where the leather had been cut by a sharp stone. Hand-sewn soles were expensive, but as prey to the city’s razor-sharp rubble as the meanest slipper. Judging from the size, he estimated that the man would be about two heads taller than himself. Omar told Rejep to place a stool above the footprint, so no one would blunder over it. He wanted to show it to Kamil, who, he now remembered, had mentioned that Vahid was tall.

He hadn’t been able to get hold of Kamil. The messenger sent to his house had returned saying the pasha had gone to Üsküdar. What on earth was Kamil doing in Üsküdar? No matter. He would deal with this himself. Certain that this neighborhood would have a shop making friezes for the many high-ceilinged apartments, he told Rejep to find a plasterer.

When Rejep had gone, Omar leaned against the wall, watching the nuns hover over the girl’s body. The stone was warm against his back, having absorbed and saved up the faint winter sun all afternoon. He fell into a kind of trance. The garden was so tranquil, the light leaning in sideways and backlighting the leaves so that they seemed to glow from within. He was content, he realized, with a wife who put up with him and maybe even loved him, or at least had the compassion to let him believe so, and since last year the boy Avi, a street boy they had adopted and whom he loved as much as any of the sons he might have had but never could. Contentment was nerve-wracking, he decided. It made you always afraid of a fall from grace. What would it do to his famous willingness to take risks, to walk toward a blade or rifle barrel point-blank, as he had done many times as a soldier, intent upon breaking the enemy and uncaring whether he himself lived or died? Surprisingly, that kind of bloody-mindedness worked miracles. More than one enemy soldier had turned and run. He couldn’t now remember which wars, but he thought of all of them with fondness and regret, not for his dead companions, some of whom he still mourned, but for the old Omar, who he feared was now truly dead.

He was startled by Sister Hildegard’s voice close by his elbow. “You look tired, Chief Omar. Let’s go sit on that bench.” She was wiping her hands on a towel as she walked.

The girl was gone from the table.

“They’re washing the body. Do you know who she is? She must have family.”

“She might be a missing Armenian girl from Kurtulush called Sosi. That looked like it might be an engagement dress.” And what does Sosi have to do with Kamil? he wondered, sliding his thumb over the domed surface of Kamil’s watch in his pocket.

Sister Hildegard closed her eyes for a moment. “She was engaged? How terribly sad,” she said. “The poor girl was strangled, but first she was raped and tortured. She also has what appear to be dog bites on her arms and legs.” She glanced sideways at Omar to see how he was taking this narrative of harm.

“Go on,” Omar said gruffly. “I’ve seen worse in the war.” He took out his cigarette holder, hesitated, then offered the nun a cigarette. He thought she looked at it longingly, but she shook her head no. Omar returned the case to his pocket without taking one himself.

“Cuts, cigarette burns, bruises on her arms and chest,” she continued. “Who would do something like that to a young girl?” After a few moments she added, “I too have seen war close up. Visiting such brutality on children is beyond evil.”

Omar wanted to ask Sister Hildegard which war, but a certain delicacy held him back. He remembered hearing about an Englishwoman, Florence Nightingale, who had cared for wounded British soldiers thirty years earlier at the Selimiye barracks in Üsküdar across the Bosphorus. This nun didn’t seem old enough to have worked with Nightingale. He had a sudden image of Sister Hildegard aiming a rifle that didn’t seem at all incongruous. What did he know about women?

“We can still be shocked,” Sister Hildegard went on. “That’s the only good thing.” She squinted at the apple tree, as if to find an answer there. “It means we’re still human.”

Omar nodded. Another saint, he thought, not unkindly. As for him, the horror of war had settled well into his bones. Having seen and withstood the worst gave him a kind of immunity, but he paid his tithe in bitterness. Everywhere around him he saw the potential for neighbor to brutalize neighbor, even after forty years of sharing tea and grazing sheep in the same pasture. No one was exempted, including himself. He knew what he was capable of. Except for the few saints like this nun that walked among them. If he allowed himself to be shocked by the girl’s brutalization, Omar thought, he wouldn’t be able to summon the rage he would need to find and castrate her murderer.

Just then Rejep returned with a man in a white-stained smock, followed by an apprentice struggling to carry a heavy bucket. Omar gave instructions, then watched while the plasterer carefully poured the pasty mix into the footprint.

“How long will it take?” Omar asked him.

“You can pull it out with these.” The man pointed to two loops of string half buried in the plaster mass. “Best if it sets for a day.” He thrust his beaked nose in the air. “Good thing it’s not snowing.”

“How about two hours?”

The plasterer shrugged. “Five, maybe. Not less.” He nodded to the apprentice, who picked up the empty pail.

When they were gone, Omar put the stool back over the footprint and told Rejep to make sure no one disturbed it for five hours. Kamil wasn’t the only one who could be clever, he thought with satisfaction, putting the question of humanity out of his mind.