The Winter Thief

95

The Minister of Justice, Nizam Pasha, fitted the torn scrap of paper against a page in Vera Arti’s passport. It was written in Cyrillic, with stamps and signatures, and at the bottom a translation in French. They were in his private chambers, sitting in armchairs before the minister’s desk.

Kamil handed the minister another document. “This is Vera Arti’s deposition, her account of being forcibly abducted by Vahid and kept in Akrep’s basement, along with the murdered woman, Sosi. The passport fragment we found confirms she was there,” Kamil continued. “And it gives credence to her claim that she saw Sosi also being held there and that the girl probably died there.”

“There’s no proof of where and by whom Sosi was killed,” Nizam Pasha corrected Kamil, “but this evidence is very indicative.”

“The girl feared for her life. Vera reported seeing wounds on Sosi’s hands of the kind documented by the autopsy, the same kind of wounds that I saw had been inflicted on Bridget, the British governess. They clearly were made by Vahid,” Kamil insisted. “These are the actions of a man with no respect for human life.”

“You think it was Vahid. But there’s no proof that he killed Sosi or anyone else. It could have been one of his men.”

It took all of Kamil’s willpower not to rise from his chair and smash something. It was as if all the violence of the past months had crept into him and now threatened to uncoil. But respect and protocol required him to remain seated in the presence of the minister and to hide his uneasiness. He needed Nizam Pasha’s help to hold Vahid to account for his cruelty. If not Vahid, then who was responsible for all the deaths in the Choruh Valley? He felt a deep personal grudge as well. Kamil hadn’t forgotten his four nights in Bekiraga Prison or Sakat Ali’s attempt on his life. If Omar hadn’t been awake to stop the Akrep agent, Kamil would be dead.

“This should be enough to exonerate you.” Nizam Pasha waved the documents in the air. “The Order of Honor alone will make this charge go away. The sultan isn’t in the habit of rewarding his subjects with the empire’s highest honor one day and throwing them in jail the next. You should take care, though. Vizier Köraslan has taken a special interest in you, first jailing you in that outrageous manner and then pushing for a trial. Aside from the fact that it’s an affront to our class, I don’t approve of officials from the palace messing about in the business of the courts. The vizier should stick to matters of state.” He pointed his pipestem at Kamil. “You’ve made a powerful enemy there, Kamil, but you seem to have a talent for that.”

“What about Vahid?” Kamil asked, trying to mask the desperation in his voice. “I want him punished.”

“There’s no evidence to link him to any of the crimes. I’ll bring Madame Arti’s testimony to the attention of the vizier, but my guess is that he’ll succeed in explaining it away. After all, she’s a foreigner of the worst kind, a Russian.”

“Vahid and the vizier are covering for each other.”

“Of course. That’s life, Magistrate.”

Kamil felt a helpless rage twist inside him. This, he noted almost dispassionately, was how men are pushed beyond their natural boundaries to take violent measures. This is how a man feels when he kills the man who has dishonored him. He must find a way to hold Vahid accountable for what he had done.

“That solves the robbery as well, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, the bank robber, Gabriel Arti, was killed in the fighting. The guns from the confiscated shipment probably will never be retrieved.”

“And the stolen gold and jewels?”

“They disappeared in all the madness.”

The minister shook his head. “It’s a big loss. Eighty thousand British pounds. Perhaps Arti sent it abroad. I suppose we’ll never know. Allah be praised that the bank was insured. The managers didn’t even lose their posts. In fact, Mr. Swyndon has been promoted.”

Kamil couldn’t mention that he had found only half that amount in Trabzon. He had no idea what had happened to the rest of the money. In the larger measure of things, it didn’t seem to matter anymore. He had come face-to-face with an evil greater than lying, stealing, betrayal, or even, he thought wonderingly, murder. Three months ago, he would have argued on principle that one life was worth the same as many. Every unnecessary death, every killing was equally reprehensible. But that was before New Concord, before so many innocents had been trodden underfoot. Hundreds of people killed, and for what? As fodder for men’s ambitions. Whether that man was Vahid or Gabriel was immaterial. Or Kamil himself. Now he was being honored for all of it, he thought with despair-for his treason, theft, deception, subverting the army, and killing the sultan’s men, and for the loss of hundreds of lives that he had set out with hubris and naïveté to save, but had failed to do so. He had compromised everything he believed in and failed. An image flashed through his mind of Siranoush Ana’s daughter carrying her mother’s body on her back through the mountains, loyal beyond reason.

Kamil left the ministry of justice and turned down a narrow lane. He had no idea where it might lead, but he felt as though he couldn’t breathe. He walked faster until he finally broke into a desperate run, fleeing blindly through the winding lanes.

Omar found him hours later, sitting on the rocks beneath the spire of the Ahirkapi lighthouse. It was dark, and the Sea of Marmara spread out before Kamil like a black bowl. Every six seconds, a light slashed the darkness as a screen pulled by a weight rounded the crystal that cradled and refracted the lighthouse’s kerosene heart.