The Winter Thief

98

Vahid walked through the gardens of Yildiz Palace, unseeing, trying to understand what Huseyin Pasha had meant by “Rhea’s fiancé.” How could she have become engaged without his knowledge, and to whom? Turning down the drive leading to Akrep headquarters, he quickly halted. Dozens of gendarmes surrounded the building. Vahid ducked behind a shrub. Through the window he was outraged to see men moving about his office. He was certain they were there to arrest him. But on what charge? They had no evidence that he killed Sosi or anyone else. He would brazen it out, he decided, and almost moved from his hiding place. But what if the vizier had concocted evidence against him? He clutched his bandaged hand. Kamil Pasha had seen him with the girl in Karakaya. That must be it.

Seized by an unreasoning terror, no longer able to see where the threads connected, Vahid stumbled through the wooded palace grounds. If news of his arrest hadn’t reached the guards at the back gate, he might still escape. He had never told anyone where he lived, so he calculated that he had time before anyone noticed he was not at the palace and managed to track him down in the backstreet warren of Fatih.

Less than an hour later, Vahid sat at the table in his room at home and, fumbling slightly with his left hand, opened the velvet-covered box. He could hear his mother snoring down the hall. He lifted out the swatches of hair and the torn drawing of his father’s Greek mistress and his half brother, Iskender. Beneath it, in the folds of satin lining, his fingers found a pin with a narrow piece of satin attached. He pulled it out, licked his thumb, and rubbed at where it had begun to rust, although that just made it flake more. It was his award for graduating first in his high school class. He remembered that his father had received the news silently, nodding once, and gone back to reading his paper.

Later his father had gone to the coffeehouse, returning home long after he and his mother were in bed. Vahid, though, had been awake and saw his father pull the award from his shirt pocket and place it on the table. Vahid had felt a piercing joy at knowing that his father had shown the pin to the men at the coffeehouse.

“Baba,” Vahid whispered, gently replacing the award in the box. He added Rhea’s hairpin and the other objects and closed the lid. Then he went into the kitchen and shoved the box into the stove, waiting until the flames had bitten securely and were devouring it. He went back to his room, pulled a suitcase from the top of the wardrobe, and hastily packed.