The Winter Thief (34 page)

Some of the money from Gabriel’s chest was used to hire ships to take people to Istanbul or other Black Sea ports where they had relatives who might take them in. Some families had decided to return to their villages under Levon’s protection. A photographer disembarked from one of the ships and, carting his box and tripod through the town, took pictures of the remaining refugees.

Kamil began to think of leaving. He trusted the governor and the sizable Armenian community in Trabzon to continue the relief effort as long as the money held out, as it would for some time yet. Kamil reminded himself that he faced a murder charge. The thought was so ludicrous that he laughed out loud.

V
ERA CRADLED
the Henchak pin in her hand. She had found it wrapped in a piece of flannel in Gabriel’s chest, along with her passport, and, pressed between two pieces of cardboard, a dried daisy she had given him before their marriage as a memento of a lovely day they had spent picnicking in the Alps. He had brought this simple, fragile flower all the way from Geneva to Istanbul and from there to Trabzon. She had been married only a single night, and all the rest had been misunderstanding and needless pain. Why had she immediately assumed that her husband would abandon her?

He was like the Straw Thief, she thought, a hero who loved her and his people and took great risks to help them. He had embarked on a long road across the globe and had produced something new and wonderful for them but had made mistakes along the way. One by one, his successes had slipped through his fingers, numbed by this savage winter. She pressed the flannel parcel to her chest and gave way to her grief, whether for herself or for Gabriel, she didn’t know.

“C
OME WITH
us, Vera.” Alicia pleaded, her eyes dull with the pain of losing Victor. Her freckles looked almost black in her pale face, and her hair blazed in the sunshine. She and Apollo and some other comrades were boarding a ship to Batumi the following morning, then traveling overland to Tiflis.

“This is just a harbinger of things to come,” Apollo told Vera. “They’ll go after the Armenians whenever the wind blows the wrong way. The villagers don’t have any coordinated defense, just bands of young men with outdated rifles. They would barely have been armed if Gabriel hadn’t brought in weapons.”

Vera didn’t point out that it was Apollo who had brought the weapons to the east.

“We have to organize.” Apollo took her hand. “Come and help us do that, Vreni. It’ll be in Gabriel’s name. He would have wanted us to do this.”

Vera thought about the women and children huddled in hastily assembled wooden shelters at the edge of town, coughing in the smoke from their braziers. Would forming an armed revolutionary group help them? Or could justice be had without violence? Gabriel had always wanted peace, yet his actions had led to the deaths of so many people.

“I need to think on it,” she told Apollo, her hand lingering in his. “Kamil Pasha has asked me to return to Istanbul to testify in a court case. I should do that first. Send me a message when you’re settled and tell me where you are.”

Kamil Pasha had told Vera about Sosi’s murder and the attempt to blame it on him. She had failed Sosi once, and she promised herself that she wouldn’t fail the courageous girl again. The idea of bringing Vahid to justice for what he had done to them was immensely satisfying.

Apollo drew Vera to him and kissed her on the lips. “Promise me you’ll come, Vreni.”

Vera nodded, mute with joy, now and forever adulterated with regret.

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
, Kamil stood on the pier and watched a group of refugees and the surviving members of Gabriel’s commune board their ship. Omar had learned that they planned to organize an armed resistance against the Ottomans, coordinating and arming all the small village-based groups like Levon’s. As an Ottoman official, Kamil knew he had a duty to stop them. As a representative of justice, he had no idea what the right thing to do was.

He was spending the empire’s wealth—the proceeds of a robbery that he had been charged with solving—on saving these Armenian refugees, who in the future might well turn on the empire. He had helped them while they used illegally obtained weapons to defend themselves against the sultan’s irregular troops. Worse yet, he had subverted his soldiers to fire on their own. The sultan could exile him or even have him shot for any of these offenses. Yet he felt he had done the right thing. Did moral decisions have to be worked out along the way, or could one rely on a set of moral principles that applied under every circumstance? He found himself thinking that what was right today might not be right tomorrow depending on the circumstances. He wondered uneasily where such a relativist attitude might lead him.

Kamil raised his hand in farewell, then turned and walked away through the morning mist. “A magistrate without principles,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head. “What’s left?” he asked, louder. His voice echoed between the houses in the early-morning stillness.

E
LIF HAD
returned and was waiting for him in the dining room, where Yakup had laid out breakfast. The sight of her slight form and keen eyes was as heartbreakingly lovely as the flower-strewn meadow outside his window.

Elif stirred her tea. Kamil sat down and for a moment was captivated by the delicate clink of her spoon against the glass. “So fragile,” he said, half to himself.

“What is?” she asked, handing him the glass of hot tea.

The best-brewed tea is the color of rabbit’s blood in the glass, Kamil remembered his mother saying. Not knowing what to answer, he drew Elif close, then closed his eyes and sipped the scalding liquid.

V
ERA SAW
Chief Omar on the docks that morning, supervising the loading. Now clean-shaven except for his extravagant mustache, he leaned on his staff and bellowed orders. The local doctor had cleaned his wound and rebandaged it. It seemed to be healing, but the police chief had been warned to watch for infection. Vera was amazed that after all their travails, the eight remaining soldiers from the pasha’s force of thirty were still willing to march in formation as if they made up a company. In two hours they all would embark on new lives, but, she was sure, not lives any of them would have recognized two months earlier.

S
ULTAN
A
BDULHAMID RECEIVED
Kamil in his private quarters. Kamil could hardly believe three months had passed. Everything looked the same: the furnishings of the receiving hall, the sultan’s formal gold-braided suit, the tip of his sword embedded in the pile of the carpet. Enormous gilt-edged mirrors at the sides of the room reflected each other, as if opening a tunnel into the void. Dozens of officials and servants stood in formation along the walls, with Vizier Köraslan by the sultan’s shoulder. Only this time the French doors to the garden stood open, admitting a soft breeze. Birds rioted in the hydrangeas.

Kamil bowed before the sultan, then stepped back, keeping his eyes lowered.

The vizier walked over and closed the French doors. Kamil’s ears rang in the sudden silence.

“I’m glad to see you returned safely, Kamil Pasha.” Kamil thought he heard a trace of genuine concern in the sultan’s voice. “If you would be so kind, sit and tell me your account of events in the east.” The sultan indicated a brocaded chair.

As Kamil sat down, he felt the full weight of the exhaustion that had dogged him since his return. He straightened and took a breath. “From my inquiries, I estimate three to four hundred dead, most killed by the Kurdish irregulars, but many refugees died on the road of hunger, cold, and disease.” He couldn’t think what else there was to say.

The sultan waited for Kamil to continue. When he remained silent, Sultan Abdulhamid asked, “And what of the revolt? That was your purpose, was it not, to investigate the revolt?”

Kamil looked up into the black eyes of the sultan. He could read nothing in them, neither concern nor interest. “There was no revolt, Your Highness.”

“We have reports that there were hundreds of weapons in the villages as well as in the monastery where your supposed socialists set up their commune. I suppose those weapons all grew in the meadows like spring flowers.”

“The guns were taken from the arms shipment the police intercepted in Istanbul in January.”

“I thought the police had confiscated those,” the sultan exclaimed, turning to Vizier Köraslan for explanation.

“The cargo was moved to Yorg Pasha’s warehouse,” the vizier admitted. “The British company wanted its ship back, and we thought that was the best place to store the guns. As far as I know, they’re still there.”

“You didn’t know they had been stolen?”

The vizier flushed.

“What of your Akrep sources?” the sultan asked impatiently. “Surely they knew. This was under their jurisdiction.”

Vahid had let the vizier down, Kamil thought with satisfaction. The Akrep commander had been away in the east. Did Vizier Köraslan know that?

“Perhaps Yorg Pasha didn’t report them stolen. I’ll find out, Your Highness.”

“Do.” Sultan Abdulhamid turned back to Kamil. “Hundreds of weapons in the hands of Armenians in the east, right on the border with Russia, and yet you claim there was no revolt.”

“The weapons were distributed only after word spread of an impending attack on the villages.”

“How do you know that?” the vizier snapped.

“The news of the attack was in a telegram waiting for me in Trabzon. I have it here.” He handed the vizier the telegram. “By the time I arrived, the entire region had learned of its contents.”

“The villagers, led by these Armenian socialists, attacked our troops.” The vizier’s face was flushed with outrage.

How do you explain a massacre, Kamil wondered, except in parables? “Your ten-year-old son is feeding the cow,” he began, “and a soldier kills him with an ax to the back of his head. You go to protest, and you too are brought down. All the men of the village and older boys are herded together in the square and killed. Not shot, but axed, to save ammunition. Then the soldiers break down the doors shielding the women and girls. Their fate is worse.”

“What in Allah’s name are you talking about?” Vizier Köraslan shouted. “How dare you profane the padishah’s presence with such nightmarish lies?”

“If you could get hold of a gun, what would you do?” Kamil continued calmly.

“That is not the behavior of an Ottoman soldier,” Sultan Abdulhamid said, his voice tight. “Are you insulting our army?”

“No, Your Glorious Majesty. The Ottoman army is a professional force. The soldiers you sent with me were obedient, dutiful, and fought bravely.”

“Who were they fighting?” Vizier Köraslan asked triumphantly, so that Kamil knew Vahid was back in Istanbul and had told him.

Kamil lowered his eyes and answered in a soft voice, “The wolves of the steppes devour the lambs and blame the shepherd.” He felt very weary and incapable of explaining.

“Stop talking in riddles,” the vizier snapped. “You suborned the sultan’s household troops to fight against the empire.”

Kamil raised his eyes and looked Vizier Köraslan full in the face. He saw fear behind his arrogance. “The Akrep commander led the offensive against the population, so you can place blame either way.”

Kamil saw the sultan glance sharply at Vizier Köraslan, and the vizier grow thoughtful. Vahid was rapidly becoming a liability, Kamil reflected with a trace of smugness.

“Kamil Pasha”—the sultan leaned forward, and Kamil heard a thin vein of compassion in his voice—“I understand you have been through a difficult time. I have also heard that you used a great part of your own fortune to save the lives of the refugees that descended upon Trabzon. Let us leave aside the question of who shot at whom and deal with the matter immediately at hand. I commend you for your humanity and your generosity. You are a true Ottoman.

“Once the engagement was over, the women and children deserved bread and a roof over their heads. If you hadn’t stepped in, the loss of life would have been tremendous. The empire has already come under attack by foreign journalists for supposedly attacking defenseless villagers. Whether or not they were defenseless is a question it seems we must disagree on. But if many more had died on the outskirts of Trabzon, the consequences for the empire would undoubtedly have been severe. Britain or Russia might have felt called upon to intervene. As it is, the newspapers took note of your admirable efforts and the world has already forgotten the Choruh Valley. You are quite an international hero, you know.”

Kamil looked confused. He had disembarked only a few hours earlier and had come straight to the palace. He saw the sultan motion to the vizier, and after a few moments, the man returned with a stack of foreign newspapers.

Although the vizier’s every outward motion was unfailingly polite, as he bent to hand Kamil the papers he caught his eye, and Kamil felt a wave of hatred and fear communicated in that look. Kamil wondered what could make a formidable man like the vizier so afraid. He recalled the rumors that the vizier’s son had murdered his friend. If Vahid had engineered a cover-up, he would be in a position to threaten the vizier’s family and reputation, and that was a threat that could bring low the most powerful man.

Kamil flipped through the stack of newspapers in his lap. The front page of the
The Times
of London showed a grainy photo of makeshift shelters in Trabzon. The headline announced:
PASHA PAYS FOR ARMENIAN RELIEF.
The
New York Tribune
read:
OTTOMAN LORD RESCUES ARMENIANS
. A rather inaccurate drawing of him with an oversized nose and bristling mustache showed him protectively holding his fez, in which a miniature huddle of threadbare women and children were sheltering. There was more of the same, in every language.

Kamil was stunned. “This is wrong.”

The sultan smiled at him. “Enjoy your fame, Kamil Pasha. To thank you for your service to the empire, I am bestowing on you the High Order of Honor and a yali mansion in Sariyer. May you be happy there.”

Vizier Köraslan held out a velvet-covered box, its lid open. Sultan Abdulhamid asked Kamil to approach. The sultan stood, took the High Order of Honor from its case, and lifted the sash over Kamil’s bowed head. It was an eight-pointed gold star with a central medallion bearing the seal of Sultan Abdulhamid II. It was surrounded by four green enamel banners on which Kamil read the words “patriotism, energy, bravery, fidelity.”

“I congratulate you and thank you for your service to the empire.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Kamil stuttered, overwhelmed and greatly disturbed. He bowed his head.

The sultan sat back down. “Oh, and did you discover the missing gold from the bank?”

“No, Your Highness. I’ve failed in that. The perpetrator is dead, so we may never know what happened to it.” Kamil noted dispassionately that he felt only a slight twinge of guilt at lying to the sultan. What else could he have said? The truth, that he had spent half of that stolen gold saving the lives of hundreds of people, presented a moral conundrum that he felt unable to solve. He had chosen life over honesty, one kind of justice over another, but he knew not everyone would agree that he had chosen well. He was certain that the vizier wouldn’t agree, but he wondered what the sultan would think.

“I see.” The sultan tapped his fingers on the chair arm and regarded Kamil thoughtfully but said nothing more. He lifted his index finger, and the vizier stepped forward to signal an end to the audience.

As Kamil backed out of the room, his mind was on something Vera had told him. “Karl Marx,” she had said, “believes that money is like a living being that divides and multiplies, so that those who have it gain ever more, while sucking the life from those who have none and never will.” At the time he had thought it an exaggeration.