The Winter Thief

14

When the messenger came again to say that the pasha was with his family and wouldn’t be long, Gabriel could no longer contain his anguish. He stormed past the servant into the hall leading toward Simon’s office, beyond which he believed lay the pasha’s private quarters. Guards with drawn swords rapidly converged on him, and, too exhausted to fight, he slumped against the wall. The guards accompanied him back to his room.

He took another draught of laudanum to ease the pain in his hands and lay on the bed. He was awakened by a peremptory knock on the door and the sound of the key turning. Simon walked in and announced that the pasha would see him. Gabriel glanced at the window. Judging by the light, he guessed it was nearing noon.

When Gabriel entered Yorg Pasha’s receiving room, he was momentarily disconcerted by the painted creatures and forest scenes on the silk-paneled walls. In the flickering light of the fireplace, the animals seemed to roam through the foliage. Gabriel turned his attention to Yorg Pasha, seated in a velvet armchair. Although the man’s face sagged and the backs of his hands were knotted with veins, Gabriel had the impression of immense strength. It was the first time they had met. Until now all of Gabriel’s dealings had been with Simon, who stood at the pasha’s shoulder.

Yorg Pasha motioned for Gabriel to sit by the fire. “You appear to be in difficulty,” he said conversationally, brushing his fingertips along the armrest.

Gabriel nodded, not sure whether Yorg Pasha was referring to the state of his frostbitten hands or the confiscation of the shipload of weapons. The pasha couldn’t know about Gabriel’s involvement in the bank robbery.

Yorg Pasha had a reputation abroad as a reliable arms dealer with good connections in the government and police. Thinking he needed a powerful local protector in this unfamiliar territory, Gabriel had made a deal with him, or rather with his secretary, Simon, to bribe the necessary officials to make sure the ship passed customs. In return, Simon had demanded the steep price of three hundred rifles and a hundred pistols, more than a third of the shipment. Gabriel had told him that the guns were destined to arm the villagers directly on the Ottoman-Russian border, which cut through the mountains just east of Trabzon, against a possible Russian incursion. It was a ludicrous story on the face of it, given that Gabriel was himself Russian, but Simon had seemed to accept it. Gabriel assumed that the pasha and his secretary didn’t care what the cover story was, as long as they were paid.

But Yorg Pasha and Simon had failed. Almost as soon as the ship had docked, the guns were confiscated by the police. Someone must have tipped them off. Gabriel leaned in toward the heat of the fire, hiding his furious face, wondering whether the pasha or his secretary had betrayed him, and why. A servant handed around porcelain cups of Turkish coffee set in wrought silver sleeves, then withdrew. Gabriel fumbled the cup with his nerveless fingers. Annoyed, he put it down on a side table, where it tipped over and leaked a brown ooze onto the inlay.

“I’m concerned about your health,” Yorg Pasha said. “No one will benefit if you freeze to death.”

“You needn’t worry,” Gabriel retorted, knowing as he spoke that it was a mistake, that he should be conciliatory if he wanted the pasha’s help, but unable to rein himself in. “I imagine you’ll find a way to be paid, even though you didn’t hold up your end of the bargain.”

Simon moved fractionally, but at a slight lift of Yorg Pasha’s eyebrows, he became still again.

“Debts are always paid, one way or another,” Yorg Pasha said mildly, ignoring the insultingly direct mention of money.

“Isn’t there anything you can do about the shipment? That was your part of the bargain, to make sure it passed customs.” Damn the guns, Gabriel thought. It was the ship he needed now, so he could take the gold to New Concord. With the gold he could buy new guns. And he needed to find Vera.

“Do you know who informed the police about the shipment?” Yorg Pasha asked.

“The only person who knew about it was your secretary.” Gabriel shot a glance at Simon, who opened his mouth as if to speak, then shut it again.

Yorg Pasha regarded Gabriel with a direct gaze that made him uncomfortable. No one spoke.

“I’m not saying you did it,” Gabriel backtracked. “Why would you? You drove a hard bargain. But I don’t see another explanation, do you?” He took up a fire iron and began to stab aimlessly among the coals.

“Surely more people knew about the ship than just the three of us in this room,” Yorg Pasha suggested reasonably. “Who was going to help you off-load it? How were you going to get the cargo to the east?” Gabriel noted with contempt that the pasha delicately avoided using the word “guns.” But he was struck by the truth of what the old man had said.

Their socialist network here was thin and full of leaks, he thought. The eight men in the cell that the International had contacted to help him in Istanbul all were Armenian, rather than of mixed heritage like socialist cells in Europe. This herd mentality of like with like was infecting the movement in Europe too. Vera had joined a new socialist group in Geneva called Henchak, of which all the members were Armenian. Gabriel had wanted her to quit, but their friend Apollo had been a founding member, so out of misplaced loyalty she had refused. It was a contradiction, he had insisted, to claim allegiance to socialism while clinging to an outmoded and divisive identity. Gabriel was convinced that in their hearts the Armenians were nationalists who would rather have their own Armenian pashas, priests, and landlords than join with peasants and workers around the world against these oppressors.

He had discovered that rather than accept his lead in the project, the Istanbul cell obeyed a priest, Father Zadian, whose permission Gabriel was forced to obtain for his every move. Gabriel didn’t trust Zadian, just as he didn’t trust this pasha, a merchant without principles, who helped them only in order to turn a profit. But the pasha was right. Father Zadian had known about the shipment of guns.

Where the hell was Apollo? Apollo had failed to arrive at the train station in Geneva, and they had received no word from him since. The doleful Armenian Russian philosopher with the silver tongue would have known how to handle Yorg Pasha and Father Zadian and his unreliable cell of Armenians. And Apollo would have kept Vera company so that she wouldn’t have embarked on her ruinous campaign to get Karl Marx published in Armenian. Gabriel stabbed furiously at the coals, aware of the uncomfortable silence in the room.

The pasha waited, his hands resting calmly on the arms of the chair. Gabriel could see blue veins under the papery skin. Simon stood behind him, watching Gabriel closely.

“It’s possible,” Gabriel admitted. “It might have been one of the socialists here in Istanbul. Maybe one of them got drunk or told his mistress, who knows? But what are we going to do about it?” He tossed the iron onto the hearthstone. “Look, I need help.”

“I thought as much.” The pasha nodded, his eyes hooded.

“I need a ship. Small, fast.”

“You can arrange that with Simon,” Yorg Pasha sounded impatient. “Surely that isn’t what you wanted to drag me out of bed for.”

“My wife,” Gabriel surprised himself by saying. “She was followed and then taken from our room last night.”

“You brought your wife on this mad adventure?” Yorg Pasha seemed nonplussed. “Didn’t you have enough other things to worry about?”

“Yes, of course. But I still have to find her before…”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Can you find out if the secret police have her and help me get her out?”

“Do you think members of the secret police lie about like apples in the orchard? Do we know anyone in the secret police?” he asked Simon.

“No, pasha.”

“And we don’t want to know them. May I point out that in your present circumstances, the last people you want anything to do with are the secret police.”

“I was hoping you would make the inquiries for me, pasha.” Gabriel knew what he was asking. Yorg Pasha did not want to attract attention. He was an arms dealer, and not just through official channels. But Gabriel had no other options. None of the socialists he knew had sufficient connections to remedy all that had gone wrong, and he no longer knew whom among them he could trust.

“Explain to me why I should put myself in any further danger in order to help you?”

“For ten thousand gold liras.”

“Don’t mark me for a fool,” Yorg Pasha said in a low voice. “I expect those with whom I do business to be straight with me.” Anyone listening from outside the door would have been fooled by the friendly tone, but Gabriel froze.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “I told you I don’t know why the weapons were discovered, but there’s no way the police can link them to you, so you have nothing to worry about.”

“Don’t I? What about those two chests filled with gold in my stable? I believe they belong to the Imperial Ottoman Bank, which was recently robbed.”

Gabriel was flabbergasted. Were there no secrets in this country at all? “What makes you think I had anything to do with that?”

“The pasha knows everything that goes on in his house,” Simon answered. “I’ve examined the contents. You’ve done well. I’d estimate the value at about eighty thousand British pounds. Clever to take the jewels. They’re easier to carry.”

“So you see,” Yorg Pasha pointed out, “I was right. Debts are always paid.”

Gabriel panicked. “You can’t take the gold. It’s not mine.”

At that Yorg Pasha laughed, a startling, deep well of sound. “Well, that’s true enough.”

Gabriel faced the fire, then turned back to Yorg Pasha. He had thought things couldn’t get any worse, yet in the space of an hour they truly had. He had no idea what to do now. His confusion must have been apparent because Yorg Pasha said in a conciliatory tone, “Gabriel, the chests are guarded, so don’t think you can spirit them away from under my nose. But I’m a fair man. Tell me what you planned to do with the gold and then I’ll consider our options.”

With the feeling that by doing so he was condemning all his comrades in Karakaya to death, Gabriel told Yorg Pasha about the commune. He tried to convince the pasha of the beauty and justice of their cause, of the fragile hopes of their community at New Concord, hoping to appeal to the pasha’s sense of honor so that he would release the gold and not be tempted to turn them in.

When he had finished, the pasha sighed deeply and said, “Very noble, although I feel obliged to tell you, also incredibly naïve. The news that foreigners are gathering in the Choruh Valley on the Russian border,” he emphasized, “has already reached the ears of Sultan Abdulhamid, and he’s about to order troops into the area. By spring your friends most likely will have no use for weapons or gold or anything else. They’ll all be dead.”

Gabriel turned white.

Yorg Pasha considered him for a moment, pity showing on his face. “There’s more. You need to hear this so that you have a complete picture. Your friends won’t be the only people to suffer. If the sultan sends in troops, they’ll likely be Kurdish irregulars. Judging by their previous interventions, I expect they’ll lay waste to the entire region. And do you know why Sultan Abdulhamid would send his least discriminating and most feared troops on this particular mission?”

Gabriel’s mind whirled with images of the sun-laced villages and orchards of the Choruh River valley put to the torch, its inhabitants arrested or killed. “Why?” he rasped, knowing what the answer would be. It was his fault.

“Because a shipload of illegal weapons was found in the Istanbul harbor and the next day the Ottoman Bank was robbed and blown up. Your incompetence has convinced the sultan that there’s a major revolt afoot.”

Gabriel’s head jerked up. “But I didn’t-”

Yorg Pasha cut him off, his voice rising. “And, dare I mention it, you have dragged me into the center of this enormously dangerous plot by using my house and my name to carry it out.” At this, the pasha’s anger broke through, and he slapped his hand against the arm of his chair. He stood and added, “And you come here asking me to help you find your wife.” He nodded once at Simon and headed for the door.

Gabriel jumped to his feet. “I didn’t blow up the bank,” he called after the retreating pasha, desperate to save at least a shred of his honor.

Yorg Pasha turned around. “What do you mean?”

“I only took the gold. I heard an explosion, but I was already on the road. I had no idea it was the bank.”

“How do you explain that?”

“I have no explanation,” he stuttered.

Then suddenly Gabriel remembered. His driver, Abel, and his odd unconcern about the explosion. Abel had been sitting atop the carriage and would have seen it. He must have known it was the bank. Abel would have had time to set an explosive charge while Gabriel was inside gathering the gold and jewels. Was it Abel who had told the police about the weapons shipment? To what end? Why undercut their mission?

Gabriel sank back into his chair. Somehow he was certain that Father Zadian was behind this. He buried his head in his hands, unaware that he had been spinning these thoughts silently.

Yorg Pasha stood quietly for a moment, then walked over and let his hand rest on Gabriel’s shoulder. “You remind me of a friend’s son. Like you, he’s always chasing shadows. But I’m glad to say he’s a lot more competent.” He sat down in his armchair.

“Now, tell me who did blow up the bank.”

Later, after Gabriel had returned to his room, Yorg Pasha thought about what the hotheaded young man had told him about the commune, an experiment the pasha suspected would be short-lived. He couldn’t help being unpleasantly reminded of his own twisted path through Ottoman society, a world that he had always believed was ready to crush his every initiative in the vise of tradition. He had had innovative ideas and had hoped he could leave a progressive mark on his world, but now the remnants of his idealism wouldn’t fill a thimble. There was no escaping a system that even controlled the roads leading away from it. He had listened to Gabriel’s ideas and, whatever he thought of the man-and he thought him a fool-the idea of the commune inspired him. He was too old to join such an endeavor now, but he thought there should still be a place in the empire for dreaming.