The Snake Stone

30

The French ambassador glanced up from his desk. “I understand you knew this Lefevre.”

“Only slightly, Your Excellency. Monsieur Palewski brought him to dinner one evening at my home.”

“It’s not much of an acquaintance,” the ambassador agreed.

Yashim hesitated. “Some days later, though, he reappeared at my door. He was frightened and confused, but he asked me to find a ship for Europe, as soon as possible. The next day, when I had done so, his spirits seemed to have improved.”

The ambassador raised a finger. “Ask Boyer to come in,” he said. “You were not friends?”

“No. I merely tried to help him,” Yashim explained. “He seemed anxious. Almost a little crazy. The ship was to have sailed yesterday morning. The Ca d’Oro, of Palermo. How he came to be here, in Pera, I have no idea.”

“And you saw him to the ship?”

“I saw him off on a caique from Fener the night before last. I assumed he had left Istanbul.”

Boyer came in with a secretary. The secretary laid a paper on the desk, and the ambassador framed the paper with his fingers and squared it up with the edge of the desk.

“ Enfin. As the chief representative of the kingdom of France, it is my duty to see that justice is accorded to French citizens who fall under my jurisdiction in this empire. A man is found where he is not supposed to be, slaughtered in a bizarre and barbaric way. We must make an account of his movements, of course. Dr. Millingen has made a preliminary inspection. He says Lefevre must have been killed the night before last. En effet, the night you saw him to the caique.”

“Can he be sure?” Yashim asked.

“Frankly, I do not know. The doctor has his methods, I imagine. Taking the doctor’s opinion in the matter, and from what you say, Monsieur Yashim, it could appear that the unfortunate archaeologist spent the last twenty-four hours of his life in your apartment.”

Yashim opened his mouth to speak, but the ambassador pressed on.

“To conclude, monsieur, only three people might have known where Monsieur Lefevre was likely to be that night. Including, of course, Lefevre himself,” he added with an ironic drawl. “And a ship’s captain-selected almost at random from the port-who is unlikely to have known Lefevre.”

The ambassador half turned in his chair to exchange a glance with Boyer, who coughed slightly. The ambassador flicked the corner of the sheet of paper up and down with his thumb on his desk, not looking up.

“As you say, the Ca d’Oro sailed yesterday. This is confirmed. In a month or two, if he returns, we may learn something from its captain.

“In the meantime, Monsieur Yashim, you say you did not know the archaeologist well. You say, euh, he was afraid. But he trusted you, evidently. Why?” The ambassador looked up slowly from his desk. Yashim had a feeling that he was only an observer, as if he were watching this interview from somewhere else. He heard himself say:

“I don’t know.”

The ambassador clicked his tongue. “I find the situation curious. A report will have to be prepared, naturally. Under the circumstances, however, I do not think that your attendance in this matter will be required. I would prefer to pursue it with the authorities by-other channels.”

Yashim could not remember the last time he had blushed. He stood up and bowed with what dignity he could muster, but once out the courtyard he reeled aside and put a hand to the wall.

So much had been going through his mind that he had simply forgotten the principal rule of his profession, if it was a profession: to try to think like the other man. The ambassador’s insinuation was not, he recognized, so very absurd. A curious situation, indeed: in similar circumstances, he would perhaps have made the same inference. Yashim, liaison to the French ambassador! Well, he could forget that possibility now. He hunched his shoulders and stepped out into the street. A few yards farther on, he came across a patch of sand strewn across the cobbles. Yashim stood silently, looking all around, half hoping to see something that the watchmen had overlooked in the dark.

A report will have to be prepared.

The ambassador’s report changed everything for him. His duty to the shade of the dead man had been a private matter-but it was taking on a more terrible, public urgency. He knew what the report would contain: details of a bizarre act of savagery committed on a French national in the streets of Pera; reference to the mystery of Lefevre’s final days, and to a ship that had already sailed. And at the heart of the whole mystery, of course, something not quite right about Yashim himself. Something uncertain about the role he had played: Yashim and the ship; Yashim and his curious acquaintance with the dead man; Yashim, the last man to see Lefevre alive. What lay between him and the dead man would become the source of whispers, rumors, innuendo.

The sultan’s vast household was riven with cliques and cabals; at the palace your choice of friends decided who your enemies would be, too. Yashim had been the confidential eunuch. The sultan’s own discreet problem solver. But the sultan was dying; and not everyone in the palace had reason to appreciate Yashim’s efforts.

They wouldn’t need to say that he had killed Lefevre. All that mattered was the cloud of uncertainty-the dust raised by the French ambassador’s report. The shake of a head, a fluttering of hands, a frown: those would be enough to damn him.

Powerful friends would drop him in a blink. Not a matter of choice, but of survival. People who had depended on him-just the way Lefevre had done-would need a new protector.

At the back of Yashim’s mind lay the thought that Palewski had run him into a trap. He did not encourage the thought; but he allowed it to relieve him a little of the wretchedness he felt.

Yashim put his hand to his head. He’d been too slow: too slow to save a life, too slow to rescue his own reputation; now Palewski’s blundering had cost him his room for maneuver.

How long would the ambassador need to make his report? A few days, at most. A few days, then, was all he had. To find the killers, and to save himself.