The Abyssinian Proof (17 page)

Kamil was skeptical, but seeing Malik’s earnest face, he felt guilty at having doubted his friend’s sincerity. Clearly people believed deeply in the power of this object, enough to sustain a four-hundred-year-old sect. The doubts of one magistrate did nothing to tip the scale.

I’ll inquire about the reliquary,” he assured Malik. “And you make sure that document stays safe. I won’t tell anyone about our conversation tonight. Where’s the document now?”

“Hidden where no one will find it without my guidance. By now, whoever took the reliquary will have discovered it’s empty and they’ll be back. They’ll want the Proof of God from me, but they won’t get it.”

Was Malik saying he thought his life was in danger? Kamil wondered whether he should tell Malik that it was his nephew who had stolen the reliquary. He didn’t think Malik had much to fear from Amida. The young man must have learned of the Proof of God from Saba or perhaps overheard them talking about it and seen an opportunity. A man who sells his patrimony. What else was he capable of? Perhaps he had underestimated Amida. But if he told Malik about Amida’s involvement, he might decide to confront his nephew on his own and Kamil wanted to avoid that. Amida’s possible involvement in the murders and with Kubalou made the situation too sensitive.

Kamil decided that since the Proof of God was safe for now, the best thing to do would be to find out what Amida had done with the reliquary. He wouldn’t be surprised if he had sold it in the bazaar.

“I promise to look into it.”

“Thank you. You’re a good and kind man.” Malik placed his arm around Kamil’s shoulder. “If you come for breakfast tomorrow, I can show you the document. I’ll ask Saba to join us. I’ve wanted you to meet her for some time, but Amida’s arrival and translating the Proof has kept me busy for the past few months.” He looked at Kamil thoughtfully. “Things will become clearer to you then.”

Kamil was puzzled. What answers could Saba give that Malik could not? “I look forward to it.”

Malik got up from the chair. He reached into his sash and pulled out a sealed letter, which he handed to Kamil. Kamil saw it was addressed to Saba.

“I’m imposing further on our friendship, Kamil, but I need this additional favor from you. If anything should happen to me, would you please give this letter to my niece?”

“Are you ill?” Kamil asked with alarm.

“Age diminishes me year by year, but, thanks be to Allah, I am well enough.” He gripped Kamil’s forearm. “Will you do this?”

Touched, Kamil said simply, “I’d be honored. By the will of Allah, may this letter never need to be delivered.”

“Inshallah,” Malik repeated, releasing Kamil’s arm.

At the door, Malik paused and said, “Watch over her. She’ll need your help.” Malik left, his bearing lighter than when he had come.

Kamil watched him through the window and puzzled over his request. He was pleased at the prospect of seeing Saba again, but disturbed that he was somehow expected to take responsibility for her. He heard the gate close, and eventually the creak of a carriage from the lane above.

Kamil didn’t believe the reliquary had any miraculous properties. Reason was more likely to be duped by faith than by logic. The world was peopled with believers whose faith caused them to act against all reason, to steal, to wage war, to kill and maim their neighbors. If they believed the reliquary or its contents was sacred, then they could cause great harm. The icon stolen from the Patriarchate had already demonstrated that.

Kamil found the file and reread the description of the box. He had wondered why there was no drawing of it. Malik must have thought making a likeness was too risky. A niello engraving showing a turbaned man, an angel, and the figure of Jesus. A partial inscription that fit what Malik had told him. The surface pitted with age. Malik was right. Why would anyone think this was an antiquity worth stealing unless they knew what it was? And who would buy it from Amida unless they too knew of its importance? A bazaari might buy it as scrap. But it would be a big coup for a dealer who realized its value. He wondered if, after all, Malik’s reliquary would lead him to the mysterious dealer and the connection to Rettingate and Sons in London. No ordinary dealer would be able to handle the missing icon or the Proof of God.

T
HE IMAM PUT
down his lamp in the entryway, out of the rain, hefted the enormous key into the lock, and used both hands to turn it. Several times he had sent a petition to the Ministry of Pious Foundations requesting a modern door with a more manageable key, but he had never received a response. He supposed the ministry had more important things to worry about than the pockets of an elderly imam being ripped by the weight of a Byzantine key.

He took up his lamp and stepped across the stone threshold into the corridor that ran along the front of the Kariye Mosque. Directly before him was the archway leading to the prayer room. Starlight sifted through its windows, illuminating faint trails of dust in the air. He turned to the right and walked down the corridor toward the stairway that led up into the minaret, from which he would call the faithful to their first morning prayer. Mosaics gleamed in the arches above him, reflecting the lamplight.

He looked up and came face to face with an enormous mosaic of Jesus, whose eyes seemed to follow him as he walked. When the mosaics were revealed, the sultan’s heathen architects had been so enthralled, they had insisted on restoring them, over his objections and entirely heedless of the Muslim prohibition against the representation of the human form. The corridor, they claimed, was so dark that the restored images would disturb no one if they kept their eyes piously to the ground.

The imam was relieved that the reconstruction was limited to the public areas and not the smaller room that he used to entertain his friends in private, and where he kept the chalices, plates, reliquaries, and other objects he had found over the years secreted in the former church or its grounds. At the back of the mosque, behind the caretaker’s house, amid the ruins of a large building, the ground yielded interesting objects every spring, pushed upward by the frozen earth from where Byzantine hands had buried them on the night of the Conquest.

The caretaker should have swept the hall the night before, the imam noted, but the tile floor still looked dirty. There was also a stench in the air, perhaps a dead pigeon that had not been cleared away. Carelessness, thought the imam. When a man inherited his right to a job, why should he care to do it well? All in all, though, he had few complaints about Malik, except for a disquieting feeling that his caretaker was more learned than he. Still, the imam could recite all of the Quran in Arabic. Since this was the language Allah spoke through an angel to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, it was much more important than any other languages the old caretaker might have acquired. The imam sometimes wondered where Malik could have gained so much learning since he came to the mosque as a young man to replace his father. It was true that Malik had always been curious. Right after his arrival, while exploring the Byzantine ruins behind the mosque, he had fallen into an abandoned cistern and broken his leg. His friend Omar had pulled him out, but the leg had healed badly.

A large bundle blocked the entrance to the minaret stairway. The imam, fearing he was late for his ezan, pushed at it with his foot. When it didn’t budge, he leaned over and pulled at the black cloth. He fell backward, landing hard on the floor, the cloth still in his hand. The stench was overpowering.

The lamplight fell on Malik’s ghastly, bloodied face. His robe had been slashed open and his body sown with innumerable cuts.

The imam felt his heart pause with fear. He took a breath, then tried to calm himself by whispering a prayer, but his eyes roved the dark corners of the mosque and his ears strained to hear whether or not the person who did this was still there. He tried to shake Malik’s cloak from his hand, but the cloth was swollen with blood and stuck to the imam’s arm, as if some vital essence of the caretaker was holding fast to him in a final desperate plea. With a shout of alarm, the imam struggled to his feet and ran outside into the driving rain. From the minaret of a neighboring mosque, the call “Allahu akbar, Allah is great” drifted over the imam as he woke the neighborhood with his cries.

S
QUALLS OF RAIN
flung themselves against Kamil’s bedroom window as if someone were throwing handfuls of pebbles. He massaged his forehead against the pain that had settled inside his skull. Ever since his father’s death, he had been plagued by headaches. Sleep was impossible, so he rose and slipped on his dressing gown. The predawn call to prayer was muted by the weather, but the plaintive cry worked its way into the house and followed Kamil down the stairs. He could hear the chink of glasses and china in the dining room.

Yakup appeared with a glass of tea on a tray.

“Just tea. I’m having breakfast with a friend this morning,” Kamil told him. Not under the plane tree, he thought, peering out of the window at the rain. He looked forward to seeing Malik and to continuing their conversation, but he’d wait for dawn before setting off.

He took the previous day’s newspaper, which he hadn’t had a chance to read, and carried his tea into the winter garden. Yakup lit the lamps. Kamil relaxed into a chair and looked up at the wet, black panes. The newspaper dropped from his hand.

“Bey, bey.”

Kamil awoke with a start, wincing with pain as he moved his head. Yakup stood above him, his face imperturbable, as always.

“What is it?”

“The police chief of Fatih, Omar Loutfi, is here.”

“What time is it?” Kamil squinted. He could just make out the shapes of the rosebushes in the garden.

“Five thirty,” Yakup replied.

Kamil pushed through the door into the house.

Omar was streaming water onto the carpet of the receiving room. “Malik is dead, Allah protect us. He’s been murdered. The imam found him in the mosque when he went to call the first ezan.”

“What?” Kamil was stunned, remembering Malik’s furtive visit the previous night. He pressed his palms against his forehead. Malik had as much as told him he was afraid for his life, and what had Kamil done? Nothing. He had sent him off to his death with a handshake.

Kamil pulled on the raincape Yakup held out to him and headed for the front door.

Omar grabbed his arm and said, “There’s one more thing. Remzi has escaped.”

Kamil halted and turned on Omar. “How could that happen?”

“Someone must have bribed the guards. Believe me,” he added grimly, “when I find out which one, I’ll rip out his liver.”

T
HE ASHEN-FACED
imam held Kamil’s bridle as he and Omar dismounted. The rain had turned into a light mist that crept along the ground and clung to hollows. Residents peered out of their windows at the commotion and a crowd of men had begun to gather in the square. The imam began a steady stream of low-pitched commentary as they made their way to the mosque.

Kamil squeezed the string of amber beads in his pocket, aligning himself with the fingertips of his father and grandfather, who had ticked off each bead with a prayer, one of the ninety-nine names of God, or, like him, with a string of thoughts. This morning, he gripped the beads in his fist. He should have pressed Malik about who he thought might come after him. Men who would use the Proof of God to incite hatred among religions, Malik had said. That didn’t sound like Amida.

A policeman stood guard by the door and saluted when he saw Omar. Following the imam’s lamp, they stepped across the threshold of the mosque. There was a fetid smell, not of decay but of excrement. He took a linen handkerchief out of his pocket and held it across his nose. The imam extended a silver rosewater sprinkler, but Kamil waved it off.

“The windows don’t open, you see,” the imam explained. “I would have moved the body outside, but I didn’t want the neighbors to see it.”

“It’s better this way,” Kamil assured him. “I can learn more if the body isn’t touched. Nothing should be moved.”

“No, Magistrate bey. Nothing’s been touched.” He grimaced.

Omar had gone ahead. Kamil could see him standing like a statue in a pool of lamplight at the far end of the corridor.

“Wait here,” Kamil told the imam, and joined Omar by the ruined body of their friend.

Although he was wet through and the thick walls trapped the cold, Kamil’s face was covered in a sheen of sweat. He knew his distress was not just a result of his headache.

Omar’s face was grim. He glanced at Kamil, then looked again more closely. “Are you well?”

“I’m fine,” Kamil answered through gritted teeth. He closed his eyes for a moment, then took a deep breath and forced himself to look at the scene slowly and methodically.

Malik’s turban had fallen to the side and his wispy hair was matted with blood. His mouth was a rictus of pain. His robe was splayed open and revealed his chest, raw with cuts that were already thick with flies. Judging by his frame, Kamil thought he must once have been a large man, but age had withered him. His feet were bound together with rope.

They each grasped the body and turned it. Malik’s hands were bound behind his back.

“Do you have a surgeon assigned to the Fatih police?”

“That’s Fehmi. I’ll send one of my men to get him.” He thought for a moment. “Fehmi might be gone. In that case, they’ll bring in Courtidis. Damn.” He was unshaven and his face sagged with sorrow and fatigue.

“What’s the problem with Courtidis?”

“Let’s go outside.” They stepped into the square and Kamil waited while Omar instructed one of his men.

When Omar returned, he led Kamil into the small mosque garden. They stood in a dry area protected by the wall, smoking. “Courtidis is another one of those people who have sudden, unexplained wealth.” Omar narrowed his eyes. “I hate people like that. It makes me want to know everything about them down to the direction they piss in.” He threw his cigarette to the ground. “He’s a Greek, lives near the Crooked Gate. I get tired of hearing what a great guy he is, how he treats the poor, even if they can’t pay.”

“That sounds admirable.”

“Why would anyone do that? And if he’s giving it away for free, where’s he getting his money from?”

“You know and you’re about to tell me.”

“He’s a small-time drug dealer, that’s where. Makes the stuff at home and sells it all over Fatih. Dishes it out like halvah. Not enough to bother about, but I like to keep people like him on a long rope, so I can reel him in if I need to.” He made a sweeping motion, ending with his fist before Kamil’s nose.

“That’s an unusual combination,” Kamil laughed weakly, “a philanthropic, drug-dealing surgeon.”

“Let’s not take the charity thing too far. He gets something out of it. Think of all the grateful mothers with nubile daughters.”

“Not everyone thinks like you,” Kamil teased, glad that Omar seemed to have regained some of his equanimity.

“The world would be better off if they did.”

“I take it that none of those mothers has managed to marry off a daughter to him yet.”

“He’s besotted by Saba. You can understand why. But he doesn’t have a chance. She’s much too proud to take up with a bastard like him. I mean that in the best sense of the word. He doesn’t know who his father is. When he was five, his mother tried to walk out on his stepfather and he bludgeoned her to death. The stepfather married again and the new wife decided she didn’t want someone else’s spawn, so they shipped him off to the monastery out on Heybeli. And suddenly he reappears as a surgeon. How is that possible, I ask you? Something stinks. I don’t think he really is a surgeon,” Omar grumbled. “And besides, an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“People take charge of their own fates. For all we know, the darkness this man saw as a child might have spurred him to climb towards the light. I’m sure the monks on Heybeli helped him.”

“You mean they enlightened him?” Omar joked.

“I mean they educated him.”

“As I said before, Kamil, you’re a saint.”

“Well, whether he’s a real surgeon or not, we have to take what we can get. Where can we bring Malik?” Kamil couldn’t get himself to say the word body.

“There’s a hamam just down the street.”

“Have your men take the body there. We’ll need some hot water.”

“Already arranged,” Omar said in a rough voice and turned away. “Ready?”

Kamil nodded and followed Omar back inside. His head still ached, but the cigarette had helped.

Two policemen lifted the body onto a stretcher. They covered it with a sheet, then carried it outside. One of the men was retching, a dry, barking sound.

Kamil looked around. The stench emanated from a sticky puddle where Malik’s body had lain.

The imam bustled in breathlessly, then retreated to stand by the open door. “I did another inventory of the mosque’s valuables,” he reported. “A silver candleholder is missing. That’s all.”

Kamil scanned the corridor, then pointed to a candleholder glinting in a dark corner. “There.”

Omar picked it up. It’s blunt end was slick with blood. “Looks like they used it to bludgeon him.”

“It might have been just one man,” Kamil countered. “Maybe the same man the baker’s apprentice saw during the first robbery. He didn’t find what he was looking for the last time and came back.”

“True, but if it was one man, he’d have to be young and strong. Malik, may Allah accept him into paradise, was old, but he had steel in his arms.”

They went outside and followed the policemen carrying Malik’s body.

“I suppose that lily-ass Amida will become caretaker now. That’s the way it is with that family. Malik’s father was caretaker before him. My own father knew him. They probably sat together in the coffeehouse just like me and Malik. It must have been almost time for old Malik to retire,” he shook his head in disbelief, “but I wish he had left that way and not this.”

He leaned closer to Kamil. “All last week Malik looked worn out, like he wasn’t sleeping.” He thumped his chest. “Something was wrong. I felt it here.”

“He might have been worried about the stolen reliquary,” Kamil ventured.

Omar thought for a moment. “He claimed it wasn’t valuable, but there must have been something important. Otherwise he wouldn’t have badgered me to write you. And why you?”