George Mills (63 page)

“How do they know?” Mills asked.

“How do we get hashish? How do we get
halvah?
Where do the fashions come from the fellows like to wear at parties? How do we get the forbidden boozes? Where do the rifles come from?”

“We don’t have rifles.”

“We don’t, no. The officers do. To use against us if we make trouble.” And when George looked at him in disbelief, Bufesqueu went on. “Kiddo, kiddo, it’s a Byzantine world. There’s plots and intrigues under every fez. There’s bucks to be made and merchants to make them. You want to know the real reason our outfit still exists?”

“We’re the greatest fighting force in the world.”

“The
real
reason.”

“That
is
the real reason. Man for man and hand to hand no one can touch us.”

“Listen to this bird,” Bufesqueu said. “He’s marching off to a town where the first guy to spot him will already be thinking not how to kill him but how best to dispose of his body after he’s dead, and his heart’s in his head and his head’s up his ass. What, you’re a snowman? You got coals for eyes? Open them up, you’re melting.
Kickbacks!
”

“Kickbacks?”

“Sure kickbacks, of course kickbacks! Kickback kickbucks! The fix is in. The fix has always been in. The two-hundred-year-old fix. The peddlers vigorish the Busboy, the Busboy kicks back to the Steam Table Man, the Steam Table gives to the Meat Cut, the Meat Cut slices off a piece for the Soup Man, the Soup Man ladles it out to the Grand Vizier, the Grand Vizier sees to the Sultan and the Sultan gave at the office. And that’s why we continue to exist! You know what’s the best business there is?”

“I don’t know anything,” George Mills said.

“The best business there is is a deprived, captive population. A prison’s a good business. A garrison like ours is. Mom and Pop stores on desert islands.”

“If you’re so smart why ain’t you rich?”

“I am rich. They say they let you keep Khoraghisinian’s bribegold.”

“They say I captured it in a fair fight,” Mills said gloomily.

“More snowmen.”

“But me? How would they know about me?”

“In town you mean? The good people who want to kill you, who want to hide your face?”

“Yes.”

“George, George, those walls only
look
impenetrable.”

“Money talks.”

“Talks? It sings soprano. But it didn’t need any money to make you famous. Penny dreadfuls tell your story. There’s broadsides and chapbooks and solos for cello. The ruthless, Christian Janissary from Blighty Limey Land. The folks hate you, Mills!”

“I’m done for.”

“Nah, I have a plan.”

They were caparisoned, their formal uniforms more like frock than battle dress. In their flaring knee-length skirts and high bodices they seemed rather like warriors on vases, urns. Percale as sheet or pillowslip, even their fabrics felt sumptuary, voluptuous. Though he had the reputation, Mills did not feel vicious. And if he’d had no knowledge of what Bufesqueu had described as the Janissary’s Byzantine arrangements—indeed, he’d only first heard of them moments before—he felt, in his Attic, high-stepper uniform, more raiment than clothing, more gown than garment, oddly venal, sharp and shady. (Already memorizing it, figuring ways it could be rendered.) But then, recalling his jeopardy—Bufesqueu he figured was there for the ride, along as a witness, no more (suspicion reinforcing his new Tammany heart)—chiefly he felt foolish, vulnerable as a traffic cop. “Oh yes?” Mills said. “A plan?”

They were on the open plain that ringed their fort—men watched from the ramparts and parapets—land that had once been valuable and held some of the city’s most venerable buildings. As recently as Mills’s induction the year before, a sort of grandstand and playing field had stood there, but over the years, as the original defilement became a parade ground, the parade ground an entrenchment, the entrenchment a breastworks, the breastworks a camp, the camp a fortification and the fortification the fortress that the Janissaries now permanently occupied, there had been a sort of piecemeal retreat, gradual as balding, of the old residences and public buildings. Now, however, they left the open area and entered the city proper, slicing into it through a failing neighborhood. Here, Mills guessed, the vendors and profiteers lived whom Bufesqueu said supplied his colleagues with their black market contraband. (I didn’t know, he thought. Sitting aloof and ignorant on my double bribegold. Starving for
halvah
and they didn’t even tell me, wouldn’t, not even Bufesqueu. Sent to
halvah
Coventry.)

A few women and old men returning from market spotted them and were already whispering among themselves, gesturing and, so far at least, only vaguely pointing in their direction. Boys saw them, watched silently, their faces expressionless. Dogs barked. “It better be good,” Mills said into his hand as if he were coughing.

“Trust me,” Bufesqueu said.

“Sure,” Mills said, out of sight now of the Janissaries on the battlements but still closely scrutinized by Bufesqueu.

“When I give the word,” Bufesqueu said.

“Sure,” Mills said, “the word.” (And thought: The word will be Mills. Hey, everybody, here’s George Mills that you heard so much about. Come and get it!)

“Just watch me,” Bufesqueu said. “When I give the signal.”

“When you drop the handkerchief?” Mills said.

Bufesqueu glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “Just watch me,” he said.

They might have been strolling in the park, Bufesqueu slowing his pace and Mills slackening his own in order not to get out in front of him, when Bufesqueu suddenly began to run full out, shouting as he came. “
Blitzpounce!
” he shouted. “
Thrustrush! Raid-grapple!
” They were Janissary commands for attack and Bufesqueu was yelling them at the top of his lungs. “
Flakshoot!
” he screamed. “
Swipeslam! Flailshove! Harrywaste!
”

The people divided before them and Mills fell in beside his friend, matching him stride for stride. Bufesqueu continued to shout. “
Sallystorm! Knockstrike!
” he shouted.

“
Chargepelt!
” Mills joined in. “
Lungehavoc! Siegescorch!
”

Now the crowd was taking actual flight, disappearing into passageways, alleyways, niches, hiding in the bays and cubbyholes of architecture like matadors behind the barriers in bullrings.

Leaving Bufesqueu the final word. “
Charge, men!
” he roared so passionately even Mills looked around to see if they were not the vanguard of a full-fledged invasion.

The trouble was it was a city, that as they cleared one street their sheer noise attracted new groups in the next. The good part was the new groups saw the old ones disperse, and, when the pair was close enough for their war cries to be distinguished, they’d already gotten the message and begun to scatter. There wasn’t a soul in the streets who hadn’t himself either been beaten by a Janissary or known or heard about someone who had. Beaten or killed, beaten and killed. So what worked in their favor was history, time’s and memory’s bad press.

And they looked as they advanced like engines of destruction, like some great avenging avalanche of trouble and death, some spilled Vesuvius of molten bad news and worse intentions. Guzo Sanbanna himself was a witness that day and later admitted that it seemed to him that nothing, no one, could have stopped them. “I ran myself,” Guzo would say, “with one thought for my life and another for my profits!”

The trouble was they were only human first and Janissaries second. That the spirit was willing but the flesh was an old story. That charges like theirs, even with the adrenalin flowing like a chemical bonanza, could not be maintained. Already Mills was winded, already Bufesqueu was. The good part was traffic was already beginning to back up, that, seeing the townspeople scatter, lunging recklessly in front of the rearing nags, drivers and passengers alike called from their carriages to the fleeing crowds. Mills could hear them. And the isolated replies of brave men: “An attack,” they called back over their shoulders as they fled. “Janissaries,” they shouted, “the entire force.” “Janissaries, including that legion recalled from Africa.” “
Janissaries!
” they cried. “
Janissaries on a rampage! They’ve overturned their soup kettles in the square!” “I heard someone say that Mills himself is leading the charge!
”

So what they had going for them was rumor, rumor and panic and the prepped fear which greased them, which perspired imaginations all round—so alarmed were the Constantinopolans that out of some inspired sense of emergency the news was passed instantly from neighbor to neighbor, leaping neighborhoods, entire arrondissements and administrative quadrants of the city, flashed across the Bosporus from Europe to Asia so that they already knew at Yildiz Palace—and caused what had only been a traffic jam to become a sort of evacuation.

The trouble was they were exhausted. For two blocks now they had ceased their war cries altogether and for once they had seemed, had anyone troubled to look, more the pursued than the pursuers. For half a block—Mills had pulled up first—they had stopped running entirely. Winded, they leaned up against a shop window and vomited. The clerks and people who’d run inside to escape might have captured and killed them easily but their sudden appearance on the other side of the glass had only served to startle and frighten them further. Perhaps they thought that the vomit and spew which issued so violently from their stomachs and throats was only a sort of Janissary way of spitting. At any rate, no one thought to investigate when Mills and Bufesqueu pulled away from the window and staggered on a few steps. “What——what,” Mills panted through the foul bile that burned his throat, “do we——do we do now?” And Bufesqueu, who did not have the strength to reply, pointed vaguely toward the road.

Where doors hung ajar on abandoned carriages and the driverless horses that pulled them backed and filled or turned halfway round in the street to stare into the faces of other horses, milling about, or frozen in maneuvers—they seemed more burdened now that their drivers and passengers had quit them, hobbled by their loose reins like so many leathery trip wires and the dead weight of their vehicles—which gave them the actual appearance of loiterers.

Mills understood at once. Thinking: Here’s something I can do. Here’s something I can do if I can still do it. “All right,” he told Bufesqueu, indicating the Overland, “go on, get in.”

But Bufesqueu pulled the shades and slammed the carriage doors shut and climbed up to sit beside Mills on the driver’s bench.

“Great,” George said. “
Two
Janissaries. Now we make twice as big a target.”

“Someone who knows the city has to tell you where to go. I pulled the shades.”

“Fine,” George Mills said. “Now the sun won’t fade the upholstery.”

“I pulled the shades,” he repeated. “They’ll think we’re carrying God knows who. The Soup Man himself probably. Turn left,” Bufesqueu said. “Make a right at that mosque.”

No one stopped them. No one interfered. Everyone had heard of the invasion and thought that the two Janissaries topside the Overland with its tightly drawn shades drove God knew who, the Soup Man himself probably.

Bufesqueu directed Mills past the logjam of vehicles and into the broader avenues. He told him which turn-off to take in traffic circles, guided him into narrow lanes that widened into grand boulevards. Mills was actually beginning to enjoy the ride when Bufesqueu instructed him to pull up before a thick wrought-iron gate surrounded on all sides by a high stone wall. “All right,” he said. “You can stop now. We’re there.”

Mills did not yet know that it was the harem of Yildiz Palace.

Guards were there to challenge them. They stared at the Janissaries’ uniforms.

“You girls want something?” one said, leveling his rifle at them.

“Hey you,” Bufesqueu said, “watch your language. All
we
ever did was swear off. We never took no low shave like the rest of you capons.” Mills poked Bufesqueu with his elbow.

“I’ll measure my dick against both you young ladies. I’ll put one of my balls on the ball scale and bet you double or nil it’s heavier than all four of yours put together.”

“Big deal,” Bufesqueu said, “you got fat balls.” The second guard laughed and Bufesqueu put a finger to his lip to silence him and jumped down from the driver’s bench. “
Sir!
” Bufesqueu snapped suddenly. “Yes,
sir!
”

Mills supposed his friend would be shot before his feet touched the ground, but all that happened was that the Balkanese ran about to the blind side of the carriage, opened the door and stuck his head in. Mills grinned sheepishly at the two guards but both stared quizzically at the drawn black shade on their side of the locked Overland. They appeared to be straining to overhear. Mills strained too and was just able to make out brisk guttural murmurs, and then, seconds later, Bufesqueu’s crisp, military “
Sir!
Yes,
sir!
” and the door slam smartly.

When Bufesqueu reappeared the two guards had already lowered their rifles. The Balkanese climbed back beside Mills and turned to the first guard, the man who had challenged them. Bufesqueu glared at him. “Himself wants to know what’s causing the delay. Unlock the gate,” he said.

“Where’s your authorization?”

“Why don’t you stick your face in that carriage and find out yourself where’s my authorization? Then, if we can anybody find the stub of a prick or two whole entire balls between us, we can have that little weigh-in you were so anxious about. Open the gate!”

The first guard glanced anxiously at the carriage’s drawn shade and turned to the second guard. “Go on,” he said. “Better unlock it.”

Mills shook his head when they were safely inside the extensive grounds. “That was a close one. How’d you have the nerve to talk to those fellows like that?”

“Not close.”

“No? Even the horses were getting nervous.”

“Service rivalry,” Bufesqueu said. “Not close.”

“Oh,” Mills said.

“Look, Snowman,” Bufesqueu said sharply, “how long am I going to have to carry you? We’ve been in this chickenshit outfit practically the same time but I’ve got all the answers and you’ve got all the questions. It’s simple. Soldiers and sailors are
supposed
to hate each other. Every branch of the services is supposed to hold the other branches in contempt. It’s sanctioned. It’s how the mother fuckers induce pride.”