The Bellini Card (43 page)

Yashim smiled. The dey had sent his captive on, to Istanbul, as a gift to the sultan. Perhaps he didn’t like having his beard pulled.

“But Abdülmecid is less experienced,” the valide continued. “I have encouraged him to read more French, I hope.”

Yashim remembered the Dumas.

“I have brought this back, valide. Dumas’s
Ali Pasha.”

She took it with a small smile.

“I don’t think it’s quite right for the padishah,” she said.

“No,” Yashim agreed.

B
EFORE
he left the palace, Yashim crossed the Third Court and entered the imperial archives, where the vast records of the bureaucracy that had governed millions of lives for centuries were all held.

He spent an hour going through an elaborate index, waving away all offers of help until he found the volume he wanted.

A librarian disappeared into the huge stacks, crammed with volumes of correspondence and reports, ancient scrolls, imperial firmans.

“The records you’re asking for are not yet bound.” The librarian fluttered his hands apologetically. “They have only just been delivered.”

“I’d like to see them anyway.”

The librarian frowned. “It’s against regulations to let out unbound records.”

Yashim waited.

“You can’t remove them, efendi.”

“I’ll examine them in front of you, if you like.”

The librarian sniffed. “That won’t be necessary,” he said crisply.

A few moments later, Yashim was leafing through a pile of diplomatic records.

It took him twenty minutes to find what he wanted.

“W
HERE
yous been, efendi? You have a
yali
now, I thinks, like some big pasha, hey?”

Yashim smiled and shook his head. “I’ve been away, George.”

George scratched his chest. “Is too hot here, Yashim efendi.”

George grabbed a bucket and roved from piles of spinach to pyramids of tiny cucumbers, sprinkling them with cold water. When he was finished he rubbed his wet hands across his face.

“Today, you is not busy, efendi.”

He caught a dozen or so tiny artichokes, one by one, and placed them on his scales. They were no bigger than his thumb.

“Some tomatoes. Some garlic. Aubergine—here.” He took four long green aubergines and weighed them, too. He carefully placed everything in the basket with his huge hands and crammed a fistful of herbs—parsley, dill, rosemary—on top.

He puffed up, waved his arms, and subsided with a gesture of calm. “You cooks in the heat and eats in the cool,” he bellowed, miming to suit. “Dolma. A raki. No meat.”

Yashim paused on the way home to buy bread, yogurt, and olives. When he got back, the little apartment was like an oven. He threw back the windows and left the door slightly ajar to encourage a breeze.

It was only when he picked up the basket again that he noticed a small parcel by the door.

He undid the string.

Inside was his knife.

With it came a letter.

He put the letter aside and examined the knife. The binding on the grip had come loose, but the steel itself was bright and sharp. He weighed it in his hand.

“You have traveled a long way,” he said aloud, “since Ammar made you.”

He wiped the blade with a cloth, glad that the knife was clean.

“Ammar made you to chop vegetables,” he said.

He took a board and set to work. With the knife he prepared the tiny artichokes, trimming their leaves. He chopped the tomatoes, slit the aubergines, crushed and salted the garlic cloves. The room filled with the scent of herbs.

The Tatar had been dispatched to expunge every trace of the sultan’s dishonor. To kill, leaving no witnesses.

Palewski had said something on the ship, before the porpoises broke the cover of the sea, something he had put from his mind.

Resid had sent a killer and not him.

I could have done it, Yashim thought, without killing anyone. I might have retrieved the letters—and the painting, too. That is my job.

He stuffed the aubergines with tomatoes, onion, a little parsley and garlic, carefully gathering the last fragments from the board.

If the Austrians already knew about the sultan’s visit, killing the witnesses was a waste. A waste of life, above all, but also a risk.

With sticky fingers he set the aubergines into a dish.

He filled an earthenware with the artichokes, drizzled them with oil, a splash of water, and a sprinkling of lemon juice.

When it was done he stuck his head out of the window and shouted, “Elvan! Elvan! Come!”

A boy levered himself out of a patch of shade and stood up, stretching.

“I am here, Yashim efendi,” he called.

Upstairs, he took the dishes from Yashim and carried them down the street to the baker’s shop, where the baker put them in his oven.

Yashim went to the hammam.

An attendant took his clothes and led him through to the steam room, where he spread out a towel for him on the hot slab.

Yashim lay down. The heat seeped through his limbs. His muscles relaxed.

Only his mind remained tense.

He stared upward, at the light shining through the domed ceiling, and remembered the Tatar at the top of the stairs, framed in the dawn breaking through the Byzantine windows.

Resid’s assassin.

He wiped the sweat from his eyes with two hands. He went over his conversation with the valide in his mind.

He did not protest when the hammam attendant slopped over in his pattens to lead him from the slab.

He let himself be seated by the spigot of hot water and began to mechanically sluice himself from head to foot.

Seeing nothing. Hearing no one.

Until a bare foot prodded him in the ribs.

He glanced around then, surprised, through a film of steam.

For a moment he didn’t recognize the young man with slicked-down hair who sat beside him on the marble floor.

“You have disobeyed me, Yashim. I find that—interesting. And unfortunate. We were getting along so well.”

Yashim recognized the voice. It was Resid Pasha.

“D
ISOBEYED
you?”

“I told you I would summon you when the time was right. But yesterday you visited the Old Palace. Topkapi. You spoke with the valide.”

Yashim put his scoop under the flow of water and let it fill.

“We discussed a book, Resid.”

“You are supposed to be in Venice, remember? The sultan ordered you to go.”

“You asked me to stay, my pasha.”

Resid’s eyes were like gimlets. “Don’t try me, Yashim. I am the slave of the padishah. His lightest wish is my command.”

“There must be some mistake. Maybe I misunderstood.”

“Impossible. The sultan’s order was very clear. You were to go to Venice. But you are here.”

“Yes, my pasha. I am here.” He poured the water over his head. He rubbed a hand through his hair. “The ship docked yesterday.”

“What ship?”

“The packet from Trieste.”

Resid said nothing, but the scoop he was lifting stopped in midair.

“We are all slaves of the padishah, Resid.”

Resid let the water trickle onto the floor. “Really, Yashim, this is so interesting.” There was something gravelly in his voice, and Yashim wondered if it might be fear. “Did you—succeed?”

“I believe so, in a way.”

“In what way, Yashim?” The young vizier turned his scoop gently between his fingers. “You found the painting, perhaps?”

“Yes, Resid Pasha. I did.” Yashim put his scoop under the spigot and watched it fill again. “The portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror,” he said, raising his voice slightly above the bubbling water. “Among other things.”

“Other things?”

“Letters.”

“Letters. A pity that you decided to go to Venice, after all. I warned you it was a dangerous city.”

Yashim stared at Resid.

“It’s not a worry, Resid Pasha. I’m safe home now, in Istanbul.”

Resid filled his cupped hands with water and splashed it over his face. “I wish I could share your confidence, Yashim. One hears so often these days of accidents, if not banditry. Perhaps we should try to install more lighting, as I hear they have in Venice? Security in the city, however, is not my concern—I deal with foreign affairs.”

“Curiously enough, it is those very foreign affairs of yours that give me confidence,” Yashim said with a gentle smile. “One particular affair, at least.”

Resid’s own smile was bland and fixed. “And what—affair—might that be, Yashim
lala?”

“One that a certain Duke of Naxos had with the Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria. As an affair, I gather, it was one-sided, and largely epistolary. Though of course I may be wrong.”

Very slowly, Resid picked up the scoop. He held it in his hand, empty.

“I’m sorry to hear you say that, Yashim. At home, or abroad, my loyalty is to the sultan and to his good name.”

“Even a sultan may be judged by the company he keeps, Resid.”

A masseur arrived and knelt at Yashim’s feet. Yashim waved him away.

“You drag the sultan into this?” Resid hissed. “I expected better of you, Yashim.”

“The sultan? No. Abdülmecid wasn’t a part of this.” Yashim let the water patter into his open palm. “You should have let me go, Resid. Your Tatar wasn’t good enough.”

“My Tatar?”

“He’s dead, Resid. Who was he, anyway? A relative of yours perhaps?”

“You question me?”

Yashim sighed. “Not really, no. After all, you couldn’t have sent me, Resid Pasha.”

“You? What could you have done?”

“A service to the sultan. That’s what I do, Resid. My training. My talent. But in this case, my services were not required.”

Resid said nothing.

“Last year,” Yashim went on, “the sultan sent an envoy to Vienna. In Trieste he develops a slight malady, which keeps him there a few days. I’ve checked, Resid. The dates of his mission to Vienna are on the record.”

He poured the water over his head.

“In Venice, it’s Carnevale. Parties, drinking, gambling. Everyone is in disguise. The Duke of Naxos arrives. The name is cleverly chosen. It sounds faintly familiar to the Venetians—remember? But it means so little, except to the man himself. Perhaps he’s thinking of Joseph Nasi, the last man to genuinely hold the title. An influential adviser to Süleyman, in his old age, and then to Selim, his son. No friend to Venice, either.”