The Janissary Tree (21 page)

But
Yashim had stopped listening. "An edict?"

The
seraskier lowered his voice. "You may as well know. Changes will be made in
many areas. Equality of the people under a single law. Administration.
Ministers instead of pashas, that sort of thing. It will follow the way the
army has been reformed on Western lines, and it will not be enough. Naturally."

Yashim
felt flattened. What did he really know about anything? In six days, an
imperial edict. An order for change. With an effort he pushed aside the
thoughts that crowded in.

"Why
the Russians? Why not send our boys to have tea with the English? Or drink wine
with the French ambassador?"

The
seraskier rubbed a hand across the back of his enormous neck. "The
Russians--were more interested."

"And
that didn't strike you as being suspicious?"

"I'm
not naive. I took a risk. The boys from the Guard were--what shall I
say?--sheltered. I thought it safer for them to make some mistakes now, in
Istanbul, than to be ignorant later, on the battlefield."

Yet
they might have survived a battle, Yashim thought.

In
Istanbul they didn't have a chance.

51

****************

THE
man who kills in the dark is not afraid of darkness.

He
waits for it. It is reliable, it always comes.

Darkness
is his friend.

His
feet were bare, to make no sound. He knew he would make no sound.

Years
ago, he was one of the Quiet Men. One of the elite. Now he watched the daylight
ebb from the grating that lay overhead. In four hours' time he would lift the
grating as easily and silently as a feather, and begin his work. But now he
would wait.

He
remembered the day of selection. The colonel sat with a rose on his lap and a
blindfold over his eyes at the center of the barracks hall and dared the men to
approach him, one by one. To lift the rose--and return to their place. The
reward: a commission in the sappers.

The
stone floor of the hall was strewn with dried chickpeas.

Nobody
had the dexterity and the patience that he had. His self-control. One or two
others reached the rose: but their eagerness betrayed them.

They
taught him how to move in the dark, making no sound. It was easy.

They
taught him how to live underground. They buried him alive, breathing through a
cane.

They
explained to him how shadows worked, what the eye could see, the difference
between movement and movement.

They
ordered him to be a shadow. Live like a rat. Work like a miner. Kill like a
snake.

Patience.
Obedience. Time, they said, is an illusion: the hours pass like seconds,
seconds can seem like lifetimes.

Inch
forward under the enemy's lines. Burrow into his defenses. Listen for the enemy
sappers, the countermines, the creaking of the props. Absorb the dark like a
second skin. Kill in silence.

And
if he was captured--it happened, that far forward of the lines--say nothing. Give
nothing.

They
didn't talk much, anyway. That suited him, too, he'd never been a talker. The
sappers were the Quiet Men.

He
hadn't needed friends when he had the corps. He belonged. He shared faith. And
the faith carried him through. Through the cramped tunnel. Beyond the cramped
muscle. Over fear and panic into the timeless and immobile center of all things.

Then
came the betrayal. The shelling of the barracks. Dust, falling masonry,
splinters of stone. A wall that hung in the air before it fell. He remembered
that moment: an entire wall, thirty feet high, blown from its foundations and
sailing, hanging in the air.

He
remembered how it flexed and buckled like the flanks of a galloping horse. As
if the air itself was thick as water. It was a moment that seemed like an
eternity.

It
gave him ample time, then, to seek the hollow and roll up into it.

Like
a man entombed. But not dead. Breathing through an aperture in the rubble. Working
the rubble gradually from head to toe like a worm coming up for the dew.

The
grating overhead was now invisible. The sapper could see it, though, by moving
his head just a fraction of an inch. By using the light that no one else could
see.

He
raised his chin. This was the time.

Patience
was all that mattered.

Obedience
was all that mattered.

People
would die. People had to die.

Only
death could sanctify the empire's rebirth.

Only
sacrifice could cleanse and protect the holy shrines.

The
four pillars of the Karagozi.

The
assassin felt in his pouch. He touched the ground with the palm of his hand.

And
then, like a cat, he began to move.

52

****************

YASHIM
leaned forward and fixed his eyes on page 34 of
Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
But it was no use. The book had been open on the same page for half an hour.

Whose
law would it be? Would it be like the Frankish laws, which allowed the Greeks
to have a country but denied the same convenience to the Poles? And would it
work as well in the highlands of Bulgaria as in the deserts of Tripolitana?

The
necessary leap? Perhaps. A single law for everybody, regardless of their faith,
their speech, their parentage. Why not? He doubted that such a thing was
sacrilegious, but then... plenty of others would think it was.

As
he revolved these questions in his mind, Yashim wondered who else, precisely,
knew about the edict. The sultan and his viziers, of course. High-ranking
dignitaries like the seraskier himself, no doubt. The religious leaders--the
mufti, the rabbi, the patriarch? Probably. But the rank and file--priests and
imams, say? No. And not the common people of the city. For them it was to be a
surprise. As it had been for him.

He
snapped the book shut and closed his eyes, leaning back on the divan.

In
the past few hours he had thought this through a dozen times. There was going
to be trouble, he could be sure of that.

But
there was something else.

Something
he knew was there, like a face in the crowd. Something he'd missed.

53

****************

The
man sat suddenly upright.

The
assassin thought: he smells me. It made things more interesting. He'd been
trained to infiltrate like an odor, not as a man. Now the odor clung to him.

The
man sniffed.

Click.

Very
slowly the man got to his feet. A knife in his hand.

Now
where had that come from?

The
assassin smiled. He felt for his pouch. His fingers closed on something hard.

The
man with the knife stood crouching, craning his neck.

"Who's
that? What do you want?"

The
assassin didn't move.

A
breeze caught the tattered curtain at the window and it flapped. The man with
the knife wheeled around, then back again. He peered into the dark.

He
craned his neck. Very slowly he turned his head.

He
was trying to hear.

The
assassin waited. Watching.

The
man's head moved through the midway point of its turn.

The
assassin flicked his wrist and the cord snaked out. He plucked it back with a
fierce grunt and the man with the knife was jerked off balance, scrabbling with
both hands at his neck.

The
assassin gave the cord another savage tug.

The
man started sawing at the air, searching to cut the cord. The assassin stepped
out of the shadows and pushed him down. He caught the knife wrist and wedged
his thumb between the tendons: the knife clattered to the floor as the hand
spasmed open.

The
assassin was astride him now. He put a hand to his belt and slid out a wooden
spoon.

The
man on the floor was choking.

The
assassin slackened the cord for an instant. His victim gave a shuddering gasp,
but it was a false respite. The assassin slipped the wooden spoon beneath the
cord and began to twist it.

54

****************

A
fat man, eager for sleep, felt himself rolled off the bed and hit the ground. He
opened his eyes and saw a pair of women's feet.

"All
right, petal? Here's your kit. Shove it on, love, I'm done. Go on."

The
fat man scrambled blearily into his robes. Get out, he thought. Five on the
table, he'd be gone before she knew.

The
woman watched him scurry through the door.

She
was done for the night. Done with outside business, anyhow. No one would come
now.

Upstairs
would know the final customer had left. She was left with one more trick to
turn, the worst.

Carrying
her lamp, she climbed the stairs. At the top she paused, hearing nothing.

Very
slowly she pushed the door ajar. The room smelled terrible.

Silently
she put in her head. She stretched out her hand, carrying the little lamp, and
the shadows started to flicker around the room.

Months
ago, the woman had lost her faith in God. She had begged, she had prayed, she
had pleaded with Him night after night, and every dawn had brought the same
answer. So she cursed Him. Nothing changed. In the end, she had forgotten Him.

But
what she saw now was like a revelation.

"Thank
God," she said.

55

****************

YASHIM
went down to the water stairs at first light, still clutching the note that the
kadi had written shortly after the morning prayer. By the time he was settled
in the bottom of the boat, the note was limp with the exhalations of Istanbul's
morning damp, between fog and drizzle, but he didn't need to read it again.

While
the rower dragged busily at his heavy sculls and sent the caique skimming
toward Seraglio Point, Yashim drew up his knees on the horsehair cushion and
automatically let his weight settle on his left arm, to trim the fragile boat. A
wooden spoon, the kadi had written: having seen the bag of bones and wooden
spoons tipped out over his floor only yesterday, the coincidence had inspired
him to inform Yashim.

Twenty
minutes later, the rower turned the caique and backed it neatly against the
Yedikule stairs in a flurry of backstrokes and shouts.

As
soon as Yashim saw the little man sprawled facedown in the mud with a wooden
spoon bound tightly to the back of his neck, he knew that this was not the
fourth cadet. The corpse's hands were by his ears, his knees slightly bent, and
there was a curve in his back that made him look, Yashim thought, as if he were
simply peering down into a hole in the mud.

Yashim
rolled the corpse over and looked at its face.

The
staring eyeballs. The protruding tongue.

He
shook his head. The night watchman, who had been squatting close to the body
for several hours, spat on the ground.

"Do
you know him?"

The
night watchman shrugged. "Fings "appen, innit?" He glanced over at the corpse
and brightened. "Yer, good lad an' all. Did some blokes a favor. Women, y'know,
and all that."

He
scratched his head.

"Mind
you, fackin" tough." His simple mind slipped into the reverse key. "Bit too
'eavy, if you ask me. They didn't like "im, not the women."

Yashim
sighed. "These women. Are you saying he ran a brothel?"

"Yeah.
Funny-lookin" geezer, too."

Yashim
walked away, squelching in mud up to his ankles. Up on the quay he saw the
entrance to a courtyard and picked his way across a scattering of rubbish to a
pump. He cranked the handle. A thin trickle of brown water dribbled from the
spout.

People
were stirring in the apartments around the courtyard. A shutter banged and a
woman leaned out of an upstairs window.

"Hey,
what you doin"?"

"I'm
washing my feet," Yashim muttered.

"I'm
chuckin" this bucket, so watch out."

Yashim
beat a hasty retreat, the mud still clinging to his feet. What a foul district
this was!

He
walked around the corner, hoping to find a cab or a sedan chair. Every doorway
seemed to have its ragged beggar or snoring drunk: some of them stared blearily
at Yashim as he walked past. The bars were supposed to close at midnight, but
Yashim knew that they tended to stay open for as long as anyone had money to
spend, finally pushing the last patrons into the street when their purses were
empty and their guts were full. He couldn't understand the attraction. Preen
had once argued with him, saying that she enjoyed the bars, their mixture of
happy and sad.