An Evil Eye (5 page)

13

B
ROTHER Palamedes put his fingers across his face.

“Someone came to us, a week ago, maybe longer. Asking about a friend who had gone missing. I thought—perhaps …”

He trailed off.

Yashim said: “Someone?
Ortodox
?” He meant someone of the Orthodox faith, the usual description for a Greek: the empire recognized people by their confession, not their race.

The hesitation was momentary. “A type of
Ortodox
, yes.”

Yashim widened his eyes. “A type of Orthodox,” he echoed. It could mean Armenian, or Serbian. A glance at the monk’s face told him it was none of those. “Russian,” he said.

Brother Palamedes clasped his hands together. “Please, Yashim efendi. At Hristos we are men of the church. We do not seek the friendship of the Russians. Believe me. We welcome the friendship of all men but—we must be careful.”

Yashim glanced at the pale slip of skin lying on the table, and shuddered. For years, Russia had been stirring up the Greeks, encouraging them to rebellion, disturbing their age-old compact with the Ottoman state.

“Who did you intend to tell?”

The monk twisted his fingers in his lap. “No one. That is—we want no trouble, Yashim efendi. These days anything may be taken amiss. You understand.”

Yashim grunted. He picked up the monk’s pen and pushed the skin flat against the tabletop.

“It’s not a tattoo.”

“No, efendi. I do not know what it is. But a mark, of some kind.”

14

Y
ASHIM found Palewski fast asleep, with
Pan Tadeusz
across his face.

“I can’t believe it, Yash,” Palewski said at last. “You seem to have prevented a sectarian riot, identified a corpse, and thrown suspicion on the Russians, all while I was drinking my pear syrup. Incredible.”

Yashim unwrapped his handkerchief. “Do you know what this is?”

Palewski raised his eyes to Yashim’s. “No. But after all that, you’re going to tell me that it is a piece of human skin.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Oh, Christ,” Palewski said. He sagged back against the cushion. “I’m sorry, Yashim. That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”

“It was taken from the man’s underarm. It shows something, I’m not sure what. A scar, maybe.”

Palewski was silent for a while. “Or a brand.”

“A brand?”

“A jail brand. Either that, or Russian army—which comes to much the same thing. Regimental badge, so to speak. Germans go for facial scars. Your Janissaries—they carried tattoos, didn’t they? The Russians can be pretty crude, as I think I’ve mentioned.”

“Under the arm?”

“Why not? The right people will always know where to look.”

“The monk cut it out, Palewski. Either because he wanted the body to remain unidentified, or—”

“Or the opposite. I don’t suppose he put it in his water jug to improve the taste.”

“He meant to preserve it.” Yashim frowned. “I should go back to Istanbul. Perhaps I can identify the mark.”

They sauntered down the avenue of limes and arrived at the quayside just in time to see the Istanbul ferry pull out.

Yashim kicked the ground.

“A couple of hours won’t make any difference,” Palewski said equably. “Let’s take a stroll and look for something to eat.”

They wandered off along the track that lined the shore, overhung with Judas trees. Small fishing boats with painted eyes were drawn up on the beach, watching them as they passed. On the rocks, fishermen sat mending their nets or cleaning the day’s catch.

Yashim sniffed the air.

“That smells good, my friends!”

A group of fishermen were sitting around a fire and dipping bread into a cauldron. “You are very welcome, kyrie. Join us. Take some bread, and have a little wine.”

An older man, with a fine crop of white curls, grinned and winked at Palewski. “For the Frankish kyrie, the wine is good.”

Yashim squatted gravely by the fire. Palewski settled like a cormorant on a rock. A boy was sent to the sea with a couple of tin plates. He presented them, clean and fresh, to the newcomers. The old fisherman ladled out some stew, and someone passed them a loaf of round bread, from which they broke pieces.

Palewski held his thimble of yellow wine to the light. “To your hospitality.” He drank; the men murmured their approval; his glass appeared refreshed.

Yashim was curious to taste the
fishermen’s stew
. He took several mouthfuls: it was strong, flavored with the wild thyme that grew farther up the shore, beyond the track.

“Tomato!” he exclaimed.

One of the younger men nodded. “I’ve seen them growing it, kyrie. It grows like a weed, when you know how, and it tastes good. Even raw.”

The old fisherman put up a stubby finger. “Raw, it’s no good.” He passed his hand across his belly. “It lies here, very cold. And gives my wife headache.”

“She always has headache.”

“Not like this.”

“What do you think, kyrie?”

“I think tomato is good to eat.” Yashim picked out a little mass of bones with his fingers, and cast them toward the sea. “But like an eggplant, it is dangerous raw.”

The old man nodded. Palewski said, in his workmanlike Greek, “I have read that it is safe to eat it raw, but you should not eat the … the little seeds.”

“The pips, that’s right. That’s where the trouble lies.”

The younger man shrugged amiably. “I eat it, pips and all.” He touched the knuckle of his thumb to his belly. “I feel good.”

“Why not? You’re young.”

Yashim smiled and buried his head in his plate. Greeks always had some opinion, and they adored novelty. Their conversation never flagged.

“You grow the tomatoes yourself?”

The young man laughed. “It is better to have friends, kyrie. My cousin works in the pasha’s
konak
, his mansion on the island. As a gardener.”

The old man frowned. “Enough. You talk too much.”

“The pasha?”

The young man scratched his chest. “He’s gone away,” he said vaguely. “It’s not a crime, when he’s away.”

“Eh, time to mend.” The old man slapped his thighs. “Then a rest.”

“You’ll go out again later?” Palewski was curious.

“Best time for us, early evening. It’s the light,” the young man said.

“I don’t know about that,” another man countered. “My old man always swore by the tide.”

Later, as they walked back along the track to the quayside, Palewski gestured to the fishing boats.

“The Greeks were painting eyes on their ships in Homer’s time,” he said. “I’ve read somewhere that the practice is universal. Even in China. I wonder what we should make of that?”

Yashim did not reply.

“Splendid fellows, those sailors,” Palewski remarked. “The wine wasn’t bad at all. Ship a barrel to the residency, maybe.” He yawned. “Good stew. I think we have time to take coffee, and then home.”

But he was wrong: a ferry had already docked. They took seats along the port side, for the view returning to Istanbul. A sail went up and filled in the wind; the rope was cast off. Palewski went to find some coffee.

Yashim was watching idly for dolphins.

“May I?”

Yashim glanced around to see a tiny man in foreign dress bending toward Palewski’s seat. He wore a wide-brimmed flat black hat and carried a cane.

“I’m afraid it’s taken,” Yashim said.

“Everybody wants to drink coffee at the same time,” the little man remarked, hopping onto the seat. “I will sit just for a moment, until your friend comes back.”

He spoke with an accent Yashim could not quite place.

“You may think of me, Yashim efendi, as a ferry,” the stranger continued, swinging his short legs and staring imperturbably out to sea. “Like this one, I go back and forth, picking up and setting down. One friendly shore to the next, you see.” The little man held up his cane and rested his chin on it, like a child peering over a railing. “Today it will be picking up. I am sure of it. I take something quite useless from where it is, and drop it off where it can do some good.”

“And where would that be?”

The man’s expression changed. “Just like the ferry, everyone must buy a ticket. Then there are no questions asked.” He made a movement, quite slight: “Just give me what doesn’t belong to you.”

There was a gun in his right hand, intricate and tiny, like its owner. Its muzzle pointed at Yashim’s stomach.

Yashim threw out his left hand. When the gun wavered he scooped up the little man’s hand with his right, and held it pointing out to sea.

He felt the man’s fingers relax. Yashim slid the gun from his hand. It was not cocked. He wondered if it was even loaded.

“Will you give me the little bit of skin?”

“The next time you try to fire this gun,” Yashim said gently, peering into the chamber, “it will explode in your hand. The action is rusty and the bullet has rusted into the breach. But I suppose you do not mean to fire it.”

“Will you give me the little bit of skin?”

Yashim snapped the gun into place and handed it back. “No, I’m sorry. You see, I, too, have a destination for it in mind.” He glanced up. “Who are you working for?”

Palewski was advancing uncertainly along the deck, bearing two small coffee cups and swaying against the motion of the boat.

The little man caught his glance. He hopped off the seat and tipped his hat. “Goodbye. I wish you a pleasant crossing.”

He walked away with pedantic dignity, tapping his cane along the deck.

“Who,” Palewski said, “was that?”

“Exactly what I mean to find out,” Yashim replied, getting up. “Come along.”

The little man had crossed to the opposite rail, where he stood looking out over the sea. Yashim saw him raise an arm, as if he was loosening his sleeve.

Palewski leaned past Yashim and placed the cups on the bench. When he straightened up, Yashim could see the man moving briskly down the companionway toward the stern of the ferry.

“Go ’round the other way,” he said to Palewski. “Or we’ll be running in circles.”

“Pincer movement? Jolly good.”

Yashim crossed the deck.

The little man vaulted with surprising agility over the stern rail, and the last thing Yashim saw was his head and hat disappearing over the side.

Palewski had seen him, too. They both began to run.

But before Yashim reached the rail, a slender black caïque shot away from the boat’s side and slipped into its wake. The gap between them was widening by the second.

In the caïque, with his back to the ferry, the little man raised a hand in a farewell salute.

“Good lord!” Palewski panted, as he joined Yashim. “The little rascal got away!”

Yashim slapped his hand on the rail. “I thought he’d jumped. I should have guessed he had an escape.”

“What did he want?”

Yashim let out an exasperated sigh. “Do you still have your watercolor paints at the residency? He wanted that little piece of skin.”

15

“
I
’LL clear a space,” Palewski said.

They were in his drawing room on the first floor of the residency. The windows were open, but no breeze stirred the wisteria outside. The grate had been swept clean and piled with logs, ready for the distant season when fogs and snows would return to Istanbul, but the rest of the room was in its usual state of comfortable disorder. Books lay on the armchairs, on the floor, and piled up on the sideboard. The escritoire was covered in papers. It looked as if a regiment of scholars had been surprised only moments before and forced to flee.

“The translation,” Palewski said, sweeping the sheets up and dropping them in an irregular pile on the seat of his armchair. “The watercolors must be somewhere …”

He found them in a shiny black tin box that had got lost under a large volume of maps.

“I’d rather you didn’t use the sable brushes,” he explained, handing Yashim a number 2 hog bristle.

“What’s this made of?”

“Don’t ask,” Palewski said. He handed Yashim a small plate.

Yashim selected a tube of cadmium red, squeezed a pea-sized bulb of paint onto the plate, and mixed it with the brush.

He let the handkerchief drop onto Palewski’s desk, and teased it open. The skin had dried slightly, and was curling and shrinking at the corners.

He took the skin between his thumb and forefinger and laid it on the desk, pressing it smooth. He dipped the brush in pigment, shook it, and began to stipple the ridged surface of the skin.

Palewski laid a sheet of paper on the blotter. Yashim picked up the skin and flipped it over onto the paper, taking care not to let it slip around. He took a second sheet of paper and laid it on top, then took a pile of books off the armchair and laid them on the paper.

He pressed down.

He and Palewski exchanged glances.

Yashim lifted the pile of books. Palewski lifted the paper.

And Marta came soundlessly into the room, bearing a tray.

Palewski looked up with a start.

“Ah, tea!” he enthused, letting the paper float back down. “Tea!”

Marta dimpled. “You need it when you’ve been to sea,” she said, and approached the desk.

Yashim sprang forward and seized the tray.

“Just what I hoped for, Marta. I was afraid the ambassador might offer me something stronger.”

Marta kept her grip on the tray. “When the kyrie has to work, Yashim efendi …”

She took Palewski’s bookwork very seriously. Marta was always gravely courteous to Yashim, but he sensed that she sometimes considered him a distraction.

He relinquished the tray obediently, and she set it down on the desk as Palewski whisked the papers away.

“I’ll pour,” Palewski said.

Marta’s lively black eyes darted from him to Yashim, and back. “As you wish,” she said lightly. She turned and left the room, her skirts whispering against the rug.

“So,” Palewski said.

Yashim carefully lifted the skin off the paper and they both craned over it.

“It’s a face?”

Palewski straightened up. “Not a face,” he murmured. “Rather the opposite, a
Totenkopf
. A death’s-head.”

Yashim looked baffled.

“It’s a skull, branded on the man’s arm.”

“But what—what could that possibly mean?”

Palewski placed his forefingers to his lips and frowned. “The reality of death, Yashim. Worms, bones, the grinning skull. Death conquers all, in effect.” The Islamic world had none of the imagery of faith or death that Catholics took for granted. No Madonnas, no cross. No
danse macabre
. “Here, I suspect, it’s a regimental brand.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “The soldier adopts the symbol because it represents what he wields. He deals in death, with all that implies. Also to demonstrate that he knows the worst that can happen to him. You conquer—and you heap up those skulls, the skulls of your enemies, as a warning and a recognition.”

“Like Tamerlane,” Yashim said.

“Tamerlane was a puritan. He stood against luxury and citified ease. To him, and to others like him, we are simply bones robed in flesh. In death, the reality is revealed. The soul, on the other hand, has nothing to do with all that. The skull reveals itself for what it is—an earthly prison. In Europe, the image became associated with the reformed church. Lutherans and Calvinists. Protestants in general. Most especially, among the Germans.”

Yashim took a deep breath. “The Germans. He was a German?”

Palewski shook his head. “Yes and no. I think we’re looking at a Russian brand. A Russian regimental badge.”

Yashim looked puzzled.

“Medieval Germans,” Palewski began. “
Drang nach Osten
—the eastward push. Teutonic knights settling the pagan lands of the Baltic, pushing into East Prussia, Estonia and Latvia, up the coast. Later on, the Russians moved in, and the Baltic Germans had no choice but to accept the tsar as their overlord. They gave up their independence for jobs in the Russian army. The Baltic Germans take to the military life.”

Yashim nodded. “Like the Albanians, in our armies.”

“Very like. In Russia, the foot soldiers are Russians, pig-thick and loyal. The generals are Russians, too—loyal, but not necessarily so thick. But the officer corps is stuffed with
vons
—minor Baltic German aristocracy.”

“I see. And the Baltic Germans—how loyal are they?”

“Good question, Yashim. Obviously not considered quite as loyal as the generals—nor quite as dumb as the foot soldiers.”

“And the death’s-head? This brand?”

“Belongs, as far as I know, to a regiment that doesn’t officially exist.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Palewski shrugged. “It isn’t listed in the army book. You hear rumors. Stories about men with that insignia snatching a Tatar warlord, for instance. A platoon spotted in Afghanistan, to discomfit the British in India. It may be that the men who carry the death’s-head badge belong to other regiments but take orders through another channel, which remains secret. That’s what I think.”

Yashim backed away from the desk and slumped into an armchair.

“A secret service?”

“A military secret service, yes. Not the same as the tsar’s spies, quite—the ones I have to deal with,” he added, a little grimly. “My position may offend the tsar—but it’s a tactical detail. It doesn’t affect Russian strategy.”

Yashim blinked. The sun still shone, but the shadows had lengthened on the floor.

He glanced at the desk. The skin was curling up: as he watched, it gave a tiny start and rolled back and forth.

Yashim shuddered. “I think I need to take some advice.”

Palewski nodded. “Don’t forget to take the skin. I don’t think Marta would like it at all.”