The Winter Thief (6 page)

“Yes, Chief.” He handed Omar a piece of paper. “I found out about the keys too. The central cashier has the key to the main vault and the barred gates. The assistant director and the comptroller each have one key to the double locks on the strong room doors. You need all three keys at the same time to get into the strong rooms.”

“Fine,” Omar grumped. “but have you got anything useful?”

“There’s only one set of keys,” Rejep added triumphantly.

“Well, fuck a donkey,” Omar exclaimed. “Can you imagine? One of the managers wanders out the door with his key and falls into the Bosphorus and suddenly the entire gold reserves of the empire and half a dozen countries are unavailable.” His voice was thick with incredulity. “If that’s not crazy, then call me a donkey’s whore.”

They contemplated the locked strong room. “What do you think?” Kamil asked the gendarme captain.

“It would take a long time to break through that door by force,” the captain concluded. “It would practically take a military operation. It would be better to get a locksmith, although I don’t know anyone with experience in opening doors like this.”

“Or a safecracker,” Omar said, smiling broadly. “I know just the man.” He sent Rejep to fetch him.

Within half an hour, Rejep returned, leading a man who reached only up to Kamil’s chest. Despite his short legs and odd gait, he moved swiftly. A large growth on his back bent his head at an angle, but his face was handsome and confident. He wore a padded jacket and a leather satchel hung from his belt.

“Hagop, my good friend”—Omar beamed—“we need your peerless skills.”

“Well, Chief, we meet again. What do you have this time?”

“We’d like you to crack this strong room.” Omar pointed at the locked door.

Hagop coughed. “You want me to rob the Ottoman Bank?”

Omar looked offended. “Of course not. We’re all representatives of the law here.”

Hagop glanced at the policemen and gendarmes standing around the room. “Whatever you say, Chief.” He opened his satchel and spread out a variety of mysterious tools. He inserted a thin piece of metal into the lock of the barred gate, and within moments a latch clicked and the gate swung open. Hagop then turned his attention to the strong room door. He ran his fingers over every crease and rivet, then spent some time examining the lock. He finally turned to Omar. “This won’t be easy, but I can do it. The same deal?”

“Same deal.”

Kamil wondered what kind of regular deal a police chief would have with a safecracker, but he had learned that some things about Omar he was better off not knowing.

Hagop asked for more lights. “Bring me some water, then get out,” he commanded. “I’ll tell you if I need anything else.”

O
MAR AND
Kamil went outside to reclaim their horses. The morning sun had burned through the mist and the destruction was more evident. Crowds of curious onlookers milled about the street. A few men were picking through the charred remains of the taverna.

Omar called over one of the gendarmes. “Get those men out of there before they break their legs.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Omar said, placing a restraining hand on the neck of Kamil’s horse. “If you need three keys to get in, where did Swyndon get the other two?”

“That’s what I’m hoping he’ll tell us.”

V
AHID SANK INTO THE
leather chair in his new office. Akrep occupied a large stone villa near the outer perimeter of Yildiz Palace, not far from the forest. He treasured the thick walls, the solitude, the secluded corners of his new realm. Mounted on the wall behind him was a matching backdrop to the chair, the framed leather padded and tufted into large diamonds like a quilt. He understood the need for certain trappings to induce respect and obedience. He had had most of the other furniture removed so that the high-ceilinged room seemed even more imposing. Two straight-backed chairs were placed before his desk for visitors.

In a locked room in the basement he kept a bloody sword. Vizier Köraslan’s only son had stabbed his best friend with it in an act of rage over a woman. Vahid had spirited the friend’s body away, and it was later discovered in the Belgrade Forest, where presumably the young man had been robbed and set upon by bandits. Vahid had arranged for some bandits to be killed by the police, just to put the minds of the city’s inhabitants at rest, as the forest was a favorite spot for outings. Vahid had also let the grateful vizier know that the bloody murder weapon with his son’s insignia was in a safe place and that he had paid a witness to the murder to be quiet. That the witness didn’t exist was immaterial. It was the perfect solution. Vizier Köraslan could continue to lie to himself about the nature of his vicious son, and Vahid had been promoted and given this building to run Akrep.

Vahid instructed his assistant not to disturb him. He brought out Rhea’s hairpin and placed it on his desk. The tines were silver, shaped to conform to the head. It was crowned with a spray of rubies, each framed in gold and attached by a tiny chain to the crest. He held it up against the light so that the rubies spilled from the comb like a sparkling waterfall. An expensive pin. How had Rhea acquired it? Her father owned vineyards on the Aegean coast and sold his wine by the barrel. He knew Rhea was—had been—her father’s favorite, but he was unlikely to give the youngest of his six children a valuable ruby ornament. It was the sort of thing you gave a wife. He thought about his own father, who had never given his mother a kind word, much less a gift.

Vahid ran his fingers over the tines. He should have been the one to give Rhea this gift. Instead, just like his father, he had demanded everything but given her nothing. She would have married him if he had given her jewels like this. Women always responded when you gave them what they wanted. But he had never been able to understand what it was that Rhea wanted.

“I respect you, sir,” she had said in a voice so warm that he was convinced she liked him. They met every Saturday afternoon in the private room of a café overlooking the Golden Horn. There she let him touch her golden hair, the shafts of it flexible between his fingers. He held her dimpled hand with its translucent pink nails. Once she let him guide her trembling head onto his shoulder. Her hair smelled of lemons.

But she refused his offer of marriage, saying her father wouldn’t allow it. He then talked to her father, a man who could have used a powerful son-in-law. Her father put him off, once saying she was too young, another time that he did not yet have the money for a dowry. Vahid understood that Rhea’s father was afraid to refuse him, and he took comfort in that small hope. Lately he had put pressure on her father to hasten his decision. One of the father’s warehouses had burned, ruining a season’s production. Vahid wondered if Rhea had guessed the origin of the fire. Could that have been the reason she had refused to see him the past two weeks? He pressed his thumb against the tine of the hairpin with such force that it buckled. He could master men, he thought, but whenever he reached for love, it was wrested from his grasp.

He opened a drawer and took out a small, sharp, and pointed knife, a bottle, and a latched box. He rolled up his sleeve, revealing a swarthy arm seeded with scars like grains of rice. He pressed the tip of the knife to the skin just below the crook of his elbow and for a few moments let the sting penetrate like a balm. His heart beat faster. Lowering the blade, he increased the pressure ever so gently, until he broke into a sweat, his eyesight blurred, and a cascade of pleasurable feeling washed over him. He removed the knife. He was breathing rapidly and his heart pounded. Carefully averting his eyes from the line of blood, he took a piece of cotton from the box, poured on alcohol solution, and tied it to his arm with a cotton strip. He rolled up his sleeve, flexing his arm to feel the sting. He put on his jacket, slipped Rhea’s hairpin in his pocket, and left without a word to his assistant.

D
ESPITE THE EARLY HOUR
, Kamil rode first to Feride’s house. He had to know whether Huseyin had come home. Deep shadows beneath Feride’s eyes revealed that she hadn’t slept. She was dressed in the same gown she had worn at dinner the night before. Elif sat beside her on the sofa and held her hand. Kamil thought Elif must have stayed the night. He imagined the steep streets of Galata, where she lived, had been made impassable by the storm.

Two anxious servant girls waited just inside the door. Glasses of tea and a plate of breakfast chörek rested untouched on the table beside the sofa. A fire roared in the grate.

“Kamil!” Feride jumped to her feet. “What are you doing here so early?” She turned to one of the servants. “Tea, and bring some breakfast.”

“I can’t stay long, Ferosh.” Kamil could see the tension around her eyes. The furrow that had appeared between her eyebrows after their father’s death had deepened. “Is Huseyin here?”

“Has something happened?” Her voice was steady, but he could hear her anguish moving like water beneath a thin sheet of ice.

He wasn’t sure what to tell her. In truth he knew nothing. “Do you know where he went last night?”

Elif stood also, her slight figure in a crumpled shirt and trousers. Her feet were bare. She looked at him questioningly, not wishing to upset Feride further by asking outright.

Kamil indicated with a shake of his head that he didn’t know, but there was a moment of understanding between them. She took a deep breath and put her arm around Feride.

“I think he has a mistress,” Feride said, her tone brutally frank, as she pushed Elif’s arm away.

“Nonsense, Ferosh,” Elif countered. “You’re jumping to conclusions.”

Feride looked unconvinced, the pain evident on her face, but she grasped Elif’s outstretched hand.

With a look, Kamil tried to communicate to Elif his gratitude that she was there to support his sister.

“Does he often stay out late, Ferosh?” Kamil asked. “Has he stayed away all night before?”

“He’s rarely away in the evenings without telling me where he’s going. A few times, especially in the last month, but he’s never stayed away all night without letting me know.”

“What’s different about the past month? Did something happen? Have you had unusual visitors?” Or a fight? Kamil wondered silently.

Feride thought, then shook her head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Huseyin’s friends come and go, but I know most of them.”

The servants appeared and set down two trays of hot tea, freshly baked bread and pastries, cheese, olives, and honey.

“Business people? Tradesmen? Servants?” Kamil didn’t know what he was searching for. An alternative to death, he supposed, as an explanation for Huseyin’s absence. A business deal, a mistress.

“I wouldn’t know. My housekeeper handles all of that.”

They stared abstractedly at the food, but no one made a move to take anything.

Elif spoke up. “The vintner came a few weeks ago.”

“He comes once a month to take Huseyin’s wine order,” Feride said dismissively.

Elif looked as if she might say something more but closed her mouth.

“Tell me more, Elif,” Kamil coaxed.

“They were in Huseyin’s study and…”

“Really?” Feride exclaimed. “But he always sees tradesmen in the receiving room at the side of the house. What were they doing in his study?”

“Huseyin was trying to convince him of something, but I didn’t hear what. I thought the man said the name Rhea. You were out, Feride, and I had come back for some painting supplies I left behind. I noticed the vintner’s carriage when I left, so I assumed it was him.” She shrugged. “But maybe it was someone else.”

“Rhea.” Feride rose and walked to the window. She held aside the drapes and stared out into the gray shimmer of the day. “Rhea,” she repeated. “I’ll get hold of the vintner and find out what this is all about. They’re all the same, those Greeks,” she said, her voice breaking. “The women have no shame.”

“You’re upset,” Elif responded, taking her arm. “I may have been mistaken. They might have been talking about a new type of grape.”

Feride went to the desk in the corner of the room and picked up a piece of paper. “I sent a messenger to Doctor Moreno’s house. You remember him, don’t you, Kamil? He was a friend of Baba’s. They used to play chess together. He’s a surgeon at Yildiz Palace now. I thought he could find out whether Huseyin had been held up at the palace.” She handed Kamil a note. “Here’s his response. I know it doesn’t look good for me to be chasing my husband across the city, but I have to know.” She closed her eyes and shook with the effort of keeping her emotions under control, then opened them again. “Doctor Moreno is discreet.”

Kamil remembered Doctor Moreno, a tall Jewish surgeon with graying locks that hung like women’s curls down either side of his face. He had long, graceful fingers that picked up a chess piece with as much delicacy as a scalpel. Moreno’s note said that he hadn’t seen Huseyin for several days and knew nothing about a business meeting the night before. He placed himself at Feride’s service and said he would make some inquiries and come by in the morning, but that she shouldn’t worry.

Kamil wondered at the cavalier way men treated one another’s disappearances. It was as if every man was assumed to have a secret life and was expected to disappear into it from time to time without having to account for his absence. He hoped Feride was right. The tragedy of Huseyin’s keeping a mistress was nothing compared with his own worry.

“Where does Huseyin go during the day?” Elif asked.

“I don’t know. I suppose he must have an office at the palace. Do you know, Kamil?” Feride turned to him, a puzzled frown on her face. “I never realized until today how little I know about what Huseyin does when he isn’t at home.”

Kamil wasn’t surprised. Muslim men of Huseyin’s class never sullied their hands directly with commerce but guided the acquisition of wealth and power by Christian and Jewish merchants from the lofty heights of a bureaucratic admiral’s bridge. They did business with the help of many informal agreements rarely recorded or shared with their fellows, and certainly not with their wives. “He has an office in the Great Mabeyn,” he said. “That’s the building at the palace where the sultan meets with his staff and visitors.” Kamil had seen Huseyin’s enormous office and staff, appreciably larger than his own, but had little idea what exactly his brother-in-law did there. Perhaps the gold medal had belonged to another loyal subject of the sultan’s, Kamil thought, and it was premature to tell Feride about the fire. His momentary relief left him ill at ease. He knew he didn’t believe it.

Kamil took a sip of tea and encouraged Feride and Elif to eat something and then sleep until Doctor Moreno arrived. They both looked haggard. He saw in Elif’s face the shadows that had been there when she had first appeared on Huseyin’s doorstep after her harrowing escape from Macedonia.

Neither woman had any appetite, and Kamil left them sitting on the sofa, waiting. What he wanted to do was ride directly to Eyüp and check the hospital for Huseyin. Composing himself with difficulty, he spurred his horse toward the bank official Swyndon’s house instead.

A
FTER
K
AMIL
had left, Feride excused herself and went to her dressing room. There she opened an almost invisible door, painted white to match the wall. It led to a small, oddly shaped room that appeared to have been added by the architect of the mansion without a thought to function. Feride closed the door behind her. This was her space, where she could take off the social mask she was required to wear. The servants entered only to clean and keep the mangal coals alive so the room was always warm. Its single window looked out onto the top of a chestnut tree. She settled into a high-backed armchair. A footstool and a small table were the only furniture in the room. She watched the pink-breasted doves huddle on the ledge by the warmth of the slightly open window.

She thought about the early days of her marriage. She had seen Huseyin twice at formal meetings set up by their families after he had made his intentions known. She had agreed, even though she had two other suitors. What was it about Huseyin that had attracted her? He had rudely looked directly into her eyes and then smiled. What had he seen there? She was shy, and people had mistaken that for submissiveness, an attractive quality in a bride. Only Huseyin had seen what she needed, when she herself hadn’t known. She blushed when she remembered their first weeks after the wedding, the mad dashes about the rooms. He had laughed and licked her up and down like a cat, and finally she had turned on him and bitten him with her small teeth. They had laughed until tears came. After that Feride had ceased to be quite so afraid, as long as Huseyin was beside her.

She tried to imagine her husband licking another woman’s skin, but the image remained indistinct, a flickering shadow that presaged a darkness she knew she couldn’t bear. Worse was the thought that he would leave her, push her aside for a second wife. Or that he would die. For a brief moment, she considered that it would be better for him to die than to reject her, but at that the darkness descended. There was a frantic burst of flapping at the window as the doves fled, leaving behind a soiled windowsill.