Empire of Lies

9

One by one, Ramazan enlarged the pictures for a closer look.

Written that way, back to front, the words tattooed on his patient were hard to read. He wondered about that. The obvious answer was that they’d been done that way so the stranger could read them while looking at himself in a mirror. Ramazan thought of a further reason: it made them harder for a casual observer to read. Which was useful if one had something to hide.

He stepped out to the foyer and held the phone so it faced the mirror above the side table. He studied the photograph. The words were easily readable now. There were several names and dates—“Dorde Petrovic, Visevac, 16/11/1762”; “Alexander Ypsilantis, Istanbul, 12/12/1792,” and others—but he didn’t recognize any of them. He pulled up another photograph. More names, plenty of them—“François-Marie Arouet / Voltaire,” “Rousseau,” “Napoleon,” and others—alongside places and numbers that looked like more dates from some distant, centuries-far future, all of which meant nothing to him either. He flicked to the next shot. More unintelligible gibberish with lines like “3NG / 1diatomite / min sod carb.”

He went through a few more photographs that showed the tattooed drawings. They also seemed random. One was a diagram showing the inner workings of some kind of box that had a long handle coming out of it and coiled cylinders inside it. Another was a diagram of a mechanical contraption that had a crank handle, what looked like a rotating barrel made up of several cylinders, and various springs and pins linking them. A few others showed schematics that involved vats, cylinders, tubes and valves linking them, and fire—and these registered with him. Sizzling with curiosity now, he kept going until, a couple of images later, he came across something else that triggered a burst of recognition.

At first, it looked like just another list of names and places. “Thomas Savery / Salisbury Court / London,” “Denis Papin / Paris 75 / London 87 / Marburg,” and a few others. In his haste, he was about to flick to the next photo when he made the association and realized what he was looking at. He swiped back to the drawing of the vats and the tubes.

Savery, Papin, and some of the other listed names, like Huygens and Newcomen, were centuries-old inventors who had pioneered the steam engine.

The tattooed schematics depicted early versions of it.

The inventors—English, French, Dutch—had all moved to Vienna not long after its fall to the empire in 1094.[3] Like many scientists, they had been attracted by the sultan’s offers of unlimited funding and resources. They were all part of the Ottoman industrial revolution, a golden era for the empire that had begun during its victorious sweep across Europe in the late seventeenth century and had changed the world.

The inventors in question had collaborated on creating the first steam-powered trains, which had a dramatic effect on shortening travel times between Istanbul and the far reaches of the empire, allowing the efficient shuttling of troops and military supplies. This had played a huge role in the conquest of Europe after the fall of Vienna.

Why did the stranger have those names and schematics tattooed across his torso?

Ramazan mulled it over in the darkness, deciding he needed to investigate further. On tired feet, he padded to the family living room, where he sat at the low desk and switched on the computer. He scrolled through the pictures he’d taken of the tattoos again, still wondering about them. He was having second thoughts about running queries through the government-controlled Hafiza Internet search engine, which was the only one available in the empire. Abdülhamid’s tight controls meant that only government-approved websites and content was authorized to be online. Anything else was blocked. Even so, Ramazan knew that he still needed to be careful about what he typed into the search box. Everything accessed online would go through the authorities’ filters. Websites, email—every keystroke would be suspect and analyzed by algorithms, and there was no way to evade them. The Internet was heavily censored and monitored—goals easily achieved, since the state was also the only internet provider across the empire and everything passed through its servers. A small group of rebellious coders had tried to spread a VPN by putting it on discs distributed on the sly, but that soon ended after the authorities caught them and had them publicly flogged and locked up. The VPN discs that were still in circulation were highly prized until the government’s coders figured out a way to flag anyone using them. Arrests followed. No one was using the discs anymore.

Ramazan hesitated, pondering his next move. It was very late, he’d had a long day, and he was exhausted and weary. But there was a stubborn curiosity flickering deep inside him that he couldn’t extinguish. He shrugged and decided that his queries shouldn’t raise any red flags, then started typing the words into Hafiza methodically and cautiously. Most of what he inputted yielded nothing. Many of the names gave no result; it was as if those people had never existed. A few, like Baruch Spinoza, were obscure writers and political thinkers whose work had been officially discredited centuries ago. But then the result from one of the queries he entered shot a spike of dread through him: “3NG / 1diatomite / min sod carb” turned out to be an abbreviated formula for manufacturing dynamite. Which triggered a sudden, unexpected association in Ramazan’s mind regarding one of the schematic diagram tattoos he hadn’t recognized before that moment: he was now sure that it depicted an ancient, plunger-type blasting detonator.

In a panic, he killed the browser window and jabbed the computer’s power button. He watched the screen die out, then shut his eyes, furious at himself. Researching dynamite couldn’t be good. Not good at all. He might have some explaining to do. Which was not something anyone looked forward to. His heart was now kickboxing its way out of his chest, his mind ruing his overzealous curiosity—and yet he still couldn’t ignore the question gnawing at him: What did this all mean?

Ramazan couldn’t make sense of what he had uncovered—he wasn’t even sure he wanted to anymore—but it only added to the portentous feeling he had about the man. The tattoos could point to a dangerous psychotic, someone who should be reported to the authorities. An enemy of the state. If they asked, he could always excuse it that way. He was being a patriot. Then again, the tattoos could be dismissed as no more than the eccentric markings of an original or deranged mind, his odd outburst further proof of his imbalance. That was what a rational, calm mind would have concluded, and Ramazan was a rational, calm man. Too rational and too calm, perhaps. But he was also an intelligent man and an instinctive one, and, faced with what he had seen, he was finding it hard to dismiss them. Something didn’t feel right. And in some strange, unfamiliar way, it didn’t just scare him.

It excited him.

Sayyid Ramazan Hekim didn’t get excited too often.

There was a hidden story locked away inside that man. Ramazan thought about the dynamite again and wondered if the man wasn’t a threat to the people, to the city, to the empire. He had to find out more. He needed to investigate. And if the man did turn out to be an enemy of the state, one intent on causing death to the innocent, and if Ramazan were to be the one to flush him out and get him locked away before he could strike, it would be a massive coup. It would be life-changing, especially when it came to his marriage. He’d reap the praise and the high esteem that his brother Kamal had been basking in since the arrests. Even more important, he might even get to savor the kind of admiration Nisreen once held for his brother. He’d be the hero, without any of his brother’s taint.

The prospect was electrifying.

He checked his watch. It was almost five. Dawn wasn’t far off.

“What are you doing up this late? It’s the middle of the night.”

Her voice snapped him out of his reverie, and he looked up.

Nisreen was there, leaning against the doorjamb, looking half asleep with her tousled hair and eyelids that were struggling to stay open.

“I—I couldn’t sleep. The surgery was—it took forever,” he said, trying to smother any hint of deceit from his voice.

“Oh. Is your patient all right?”

“Yes. Well—yes, I think so. He is.”

She seemed momentarily confused. Then her features relaxed somewhat. “Good.” She studied him, then asked, “Are you going to stay up?”

“No. I mean—I don’t know. It’s…” He made a show of checking his watch again. “Actually, I should head back soon. He’ll be coming out of sleep, and I really ought to be there when he does.”

There was a lag in Nisreen’s reaction. He wondered if he should stay, be with her on this troubled night, comfort her. But he didn’t want to talk about Azmi’s death, which the conversation would inevitably drift to. And he needed to find out more about his mysterious patient. If there was something sinister to uncover, something that might turn him into a hero, his window of opportunity wasn’t unlimited.

Nisreen nodded slowly and asked, “You want me to make you a cup of coffee?”

“No, thank you. I’ll get one at the hospital.” He smiled, then regretted it instantly. She knew him too well not to notice that it was forced.

She nodded again. “I’ll see you later then.” She was about to turn, then said, “You should probably get out of those clothes. Why don’t you have a shower? It’ll wake you up.”

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

She gave him a sheepish look. “I already am.”

“Okay.”

He followed her to the bedroom. She got back into bed while he headed to the bathroom and washed. By the time he came out to get dressed, she was asleep again.

He said his fajr prayers, though they didn’t provide him with any of the clarity he was hoping for or give him any respite from the apprehension he felt about what he was doing. Then he slipped out of the apartment and headed back to the hospital.

He wanted to be there when the mystery man regained consciousness.

Nisreen heard the front door click shut and sat up.

She’d woken up when Ramazan came home, but she’d stayed in bed and acted asleep when she felt him approach the bedroom. She didn’t like doing that, and it wasn’t something she did on a regular basis. But she’d had a tough day and neither wanted to discuss it with her husband, risking one of their tense debates, nor felt like engaging in small talk about anything else.

It had surprised her that he hadn’t come to bed, which was his normal routine, especially that late, which was also unusual. Instead, she heard him walk off to the front of the apartment; heard the soft clink of ice cubes against glass, once and then again; felt the minutes turn into hours—and still he wasn’t back—all of which was highly unusual. And when she finally decided to get out of bed and investigate, just as she was about to reach the doorway to the family room, she heard his sharp intake of breath, his hissed, muttered curse, and the violent stab of his finger on the computer’s keyboard.

She’d stopped in her tracks, wondering whether to intrude on whatever was going on. Then she thought that he might have already heard her approach and maybe that was why he’d rushed to shut down the computer. When she did make an appearance, it was clear that he was being evasive. Being so principled and honest also made him a very bad liar, especially to someone who knew him as well as she did.

Lies were not part of their life together. She didn’t think so—at least, nothing more than the trivial white lies that were often necessary among all couples. But she was absolutely certain that Ramazan was hiding something, and this was beyond unusual. It was unheard of in their relationship. Her husband had always been unimpeachably scrupulous—a good man, even boringly so, she now thought, a feeling she wasn’t proud of, although that didn’t make it untrue.

She was still hurting from Azmi’s death, and wasn’t sure she was thinking clearly. But she couldn’t get back to sleep, not after what had just happened. The idea of Ramazan hiding something from her was so puzzling that she couldn’t stop herself from getting out of bed, making her way to the family room, and turning on the computer.

And pulling up its web search history.

She should have known better, but her tired mind got the best of her, because her husband’s web searches, which took her by complete surprise, weren’t just destined to feed her curiosity.

They also landed four fersahs away, the equivalent of around fourteen miles, to the east of their apartment, at a highly guarded compound no civilian had ever been allowed to enter.

The vast complex covered over ten dunams and comprised power stations with chiller plants and cooling towers to keep them running and a central windowless structure that housed endless banks of computers capable of storing and processing the communications taking place within the empire’s borders: Internet searches, emails, landline and mobile phone calls and texts, as well as all kinds of personal data—purchases, coffeehouse bills, parking receipts, travel itineraries, and other kinds of digital “pocket litter.”

For the favored few who knew about it, the compound was called the Comprehensive Imperial Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center, and the exabytes of data on its servers were destined for two programs. The first was the Social Credit System, which rated all citizens and was accessible to the state’s officials and bureaucrats, allowing them to know at a glance who was late in paying bills, who had plagiarized schoolwork, who had health issues, or who had made inappropriate comments online. A parallel set of data was destined for the Insider Threat Program, which was run by the Hafiye and was far more sinister. Running afoul of that program inevitably led to far more serious consequences than being refused an insurance policy or turned down for a job.

The programs sucked in data in ways that were known, assumed, rumored—and unsuspected. More often than not, they were effective in catching their subjects unawares.

As they already had that night.