The Abyssinian Proof (37 page)

“You can let Amida go. He’s of no use to you. I’m the only one who knows where it is.”

“He’ll be fine here. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

Kamil looked offended. “You know better than that.”

“Yes, I believe I do,” Owen said thoughtfully, regarding Kamil with a sad smile. “I believe I do.” He turned back to the piano and played a few bars of what Kamil thought might be Mozart.

Kamil calculated the distance between himself and his gun on the table beside the piano. Owen could easily reach it from where he sat.

Owen turned around and gave a mock bow. “What can I do to convince you, Kamil?”

“You can let Amida go and answer some questions about those chests full of antiquities and jewelry.”

“I thought that had to be you. No one else could have worked it out. Congratulations. And what about that flaxen-haired damsel, Miss Elif? Amida said you went out on a limb to rescue her.” Owen chuckled. “My dear fellow, is that the mark of a casual acquaintance? But you can’t be beside her every moment, old chap. I’d be honored to ensure that no harm comes to her.”

He began to recite, “‘And thou art dead, as young and fair / As aught of mortal birth; / And form so soft, and charms so rare, / Too soon return’d to Earth!’”

“‘Look around and choose thy ground, and take thy rest,’” Kamil responded in a hard voice, furious at Owen’s implied threat.

Owen looked enormously pleased. “My dear friend. You know Byron too! How wonderful! That’s from ‘My Thirty-Sixth Year,’ isn’t it? What a delightful change from the rather uninspired company I’m forced to keep these days.” He gave Ben a toothy smile. “Sorry, old man, but you’re not exactly a poet, though you have many endearing qualities. Kamil, you know we’d be smashing good friends if you gave me half a chance. Tell me where the Proof of God is and let’s split the proceeds. Right down the middle. No one will know.”

Kamil looked down at Amida.

“Oh, he won’t say a word. I can guarantee you that,” Owen assured him.

The confidence of his prediction sent a chill through Kamil.

Suddenly a shot rang out. At Kamil’s feet, Amida’s body writhed, then lay still. The carpet pattern began to blur. Kamil turned to see his gun in Owen’s hand.

“Not to worry. Nothing serious, although the next one will be. I’m in a bit of a rush. I’ll trade you Amida’s life, and Elif’s, for the Proof of God. Now that’s surely a bargain you can’t refuse? It’s a pile of paper, for heaven’s sake. Surely it’s not worth two lives.” Owen smiled. “You see, Kamil, I do know you. I know your type.”

There was no more time to stall, Kamil decided. Omar or no Omar, he had to act now. He picked up one of the Venetian lamps and hurled it onto the sofa so that its delicate glass belly shattered and oil spilled over the cotton cover, already soaked with whisky. The second lamp followed. Kamil grabbed the ormolu device and ducked behind the sofa just as Owen released another shot. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Ben heading toward him. Kamil pressed the lever and a flame shot out. He held it to the oil-soaked handkerchief draped over the back of the sofa, and when the cloth caught fire, he flung it onto the seat.

Ben was almost on top of him. Kamil scuttled around the other side of the sofa just as a bullet screamed by his head. He lit another part of the sofa with the flame from the device, praying that, in spite of everything he believed, this time there was a God, and he was looking his way.

Crimson and yellow flames shot up as the lamp oil caught fire and spread to the straw stuffing. Black smoke began to fill the room.

Owen slammed the piano lid down. “You can’t win this,” he shouted and ran toward the corridor, Ben behind him. They stopped briefly to confer with Remzi, then they were gone.

Kamil threw himself across the floor and tore open the front door.

Yakup burst into the room, gun drawn. The draft caused the fire to bloom.

Outside the cottage, excited voices shouted, “Fire! Call the fire brigade!”

Kamil instructed Yakup to bring Amida outside, then turned to pursue Owen and his men.

In the corridor, he paused and listened. He heard a noise coming from the bedroom and peered around the door. Ben was trying to squeeze his girth into the opening in the wall that led to the tunnel.

Just then, smoke boiled into the room and the rafters cracked.

Ben disappeared, but the smoke had become so thick Kamil couldn’t follow. Coughing, he turned and ran out of the house, his jacket singed, ashes glowing in his hair.

“D
AMN
,” K
AMIL SAID,
resting on a large stone beneath the cistern wall. “Damn.” Spurred by the implied threat to Elif, he had sent Yakup to alert the guard at Huseyin’s house while he helped put out the fire, part of a human chain that passed buckets of water from the well. Exhausted, his head aching, Kamil surveyed the damage both to the cottage and to his case. He was also worried about Omar.

It was sheer luck that Balkis’s house and the other cottages hadn’t caught fire. There had been enough men around to put out the blaze quickly. During the day, most of them would have been at work, but in the middle of the night, all were at home. The fire brigade arrived—a team of muscular young men running in unison, carrying a water pump on their shoulders—but by that time, the fire had been tamed. The piano remained upright like a large smoldering creature rooting in the rubble. Amida was being looked after by Courtidis and Saba. He had been shot in the lower back. Courtidis was not sure whether he would recover. There was no sign of Owen or his men. Kamil boiled with frustration that he had let them slip away. He had expected them to run out the front door, where Yakup was waiting. He should have remembered that Remzi knew about the tunnels.

It was almost dawn. A pall of white smoke filled the cistern like a bowl, making it difficult to see. A tall, thick-necked man in a ripped shirt approached him. His face was scratched and dirty, as were all their faces. Kamil assumed it was a villager coming to thank him. If only they knew he was the one who had started the fire, Kamil thought glumly.

“Well, where the hell were you?” Omar asked him with mock anger.

“Where was I?” Kamil jumped up and cried out. “Where was I while you were getting your beauty sleep?” He took a closer look at Omar and noticed for the first time the cuts and bruises. His eye was beginning to swell. “What happened to you?”

“You don’t count punches in a fight.” Omar tried to smile, but ended in a grimace of pain. “What happened to you?” He leaned closer and examined Kamil’s blood-caked hair.

Kamil smiled bleakly. “We can compare war stories later.”

“Well, come along, then. I have a present for you.”

He led Kamil through the smoke to a tumbledown cottage at the edge of the compound.

“It’s used for storage,” Omar explained and flung open the door.

On the floor, bound like two neat packages, were Ben and Remzi, bloodied and black with soot. Ben’s face was swollen like a cantaloupe. Remzi lay quietly with his eyes closed, blood trickling from his ear.

Kamil pounded Omar on the back. “How did you do it?”

“There are those who can ride a horse, and there are those who can’t,” Omar replied, making no attempt at modesty. He pointed to the back of the cottage, where steps led down into blackness. He shrugged. “Two against one, in the dark? It was better than kissing a pretty woman.”

A
FTER MAKING SURE
their prisoners were under lock and key, Kamil and Omar sat at the back of the Fatih station, drinking tea. Dawn threw strange halfhearted shadows on the floor, as if the day were only practicing and still unwilling to commit its full strength.

“I can’t believe Owen escaped.” Kamil’s voice was hoarse from inhaling smoke. He worried about Elif and wondered if Owen would make good on his threat to harm her or whether he’d just try to leave the empire the fastest way possible. Kamil had ordered every customs station, port, and train station to be watched, and sent gendarmes to notify every stable in the city where Owen might rent or purchase a horse and carriage. Huseyin’s liveried guards were armed and on full alert.

“Why haven’t we been able to find out where the bastard lives?”

“None of his associates ever met him there. And he has money. That buys you anonymity.” Kamil stood. “I’ll go and get cleaned up and this afternoon we can hand Ben over to the embassy. Remzi is all yours until his trial.”

“This time he’ll squeal like a bitch. His Charshamba gang is out of business. When I round up the rest of them, believe me,” he added in a deadly voice, “they’ll be sorry they ever laid a hand on my men. At least I know Remzi will get what’s coming to him when he goes to trial. Open and shut case. My friend the warden at Sultanahmet Prison has reserved a nice dark cell for him in the basement where he can chat with the rats. But it really eats my liver about Owen. He’s the one responsible for the murders, but we don’t have a thing on him. I bet if we handed him over to the British, they’d fine him a thousand liras for smuggling, then cut the bastard loose.”

“At least we’ve severed his smuggling artery. The thefts should dry up now.”

“We’ll make it so hot at this end that the bazaaris will look like us if they so much as go near a stolen icon.” Omar pointed to Kamil’s singed hair.

Kamil laughed, but his eyes were cold.

W
HILE
O
MAR RETURNED
to Sunken Village to check on Amida, Kamil rode through Fatih, across the New Bridge, and up the hill through Galata. The Grande Rue de Pera was still relatively deserted. Doorkeepers returning from the bakery carried loaves of fresh bread in string bags or tucked in paper under their arms. A few women, probably servants, hurried past, heads down.

Kamil turned into Agha-Hamam Street and dismounted before a wooden door.

“Your arrival pleases me,” the hamambashou Niko boomed, quickly hiding his surprise at Kamil’s appearance.

A red-checked peshtemal towel hung around Niko’s neck, doing little to hide his barrel chest. Another covered him from waist to knees. Kamil came here every week to bathe and to suffer brilliantly under the blows of Niko’s muscled arms. This week, he was early.

Niko led Kamil into the cooling-off room and indicated a cubicle, a simple wood-paneled room with no ceiling that contained a comfortable padded bench, a wardrobe, towels, high wooden clogs, and a hamam bowl of tinned copper, indented in the center to fit the bather’s middle finger when he poured water from the basin onto his head and shoulders.

Kamil stripped. In the enclosed space, the stench of charred wool was foul. He piled his clothes in a corner and wound a towel around his waist. Then he lay on his back on the bench and looked up gratefully at the calm, blue-tiled dome above him. His head throbbed, but distantly, like a storm at sea. The voices of other men echoed about him, distorted by the marble and tile walls.

Restless, he got up and called Niko. He pointed to the pile of clothes and told him to dispose of them and to send someone to his office for new ones.

The air became increasingly dense as Kamil moved from the cooler rooms to the hot domed hall, where Niko waited with a silk-weave washcloth and a bar of olive-oil soap.

A
N HOUR LATER,
Kamil arrived at his office freshly scrubbed and dressed.

A soft knock on the door announced Avi. “This is from Mimoza Teyze.” He held out a packet redolent with the scent of freshly baked börek.

“Thank you.” Kamil unwrapped the börek and offered a piece to Avi. “How do you like living at Chief Omar’s house?”

“Mimoza Teyze lets me help,” Avi responded. “I get to bring the water from the fountain. That’s my job,” he added proudly, taking a bite. “And the garden. I’m helping Omar Amja build winter beds. He showed me how to do it. See?” He held out his hand. The blisters had healed, but Kamil saw a new bruise. “I’m not so good with the hammer yet,” Avi said, chagrined. “But I will be.”

Kamil clapped the boy on the shoulder. “Well, you’ve done a wonderful job for us. Who knows, you might end up a police chief instead of a magistrate.” He pushed the börek in Avi’s direction. “Now eat up. The padishah expects his officials to have meat on their bones.”

After Avi left, Abdullah handed Kamil a letter. It was from Nizam Pasha, reminding him that his seven days were up and ordering him to appear at the Ministry of Justice that afternoon.

Where could Owen live, Kamil wondered, without the local muhtar, who registered everyone in the district, or the police being aware of him? The only answer was in a district of villas, konaks, and mansions like Huseyin’s. The rich kept to themselves. But they had servants, and servants gossiped. There must be a way to find out.

Abdullah announced a visitor. Tailor Pepo’s apprentice came through the door, hands clasped before him, head bowed.

“Pasha, Tailor Pepo sends his greetings. He asked me to tell you that Monsieur Owen has ordered two new shirts. He paid extra to have them made up right away.” He held out a piece of paper. “Here’s the address we delivered them to.”

Perhaps he should believe in miracles after all, Kamil thought.

T
HERE WERE NO
servants and the house appeared deserted. It was a small villa in Nishantashou, not far from Huseyin’s mansion and an easy ride to the apartment in Tarla Bashou and to the British Embassy. Surrounded by a great iron fence and set within an overgrown garden, the villa was barely visible from the street. Kamil asked a passerby if he knew who lived there, and was told that the place was empty, except for a caretaker. But no one had seen him for several months.

The gendarmes took up positions around the house. Kamil instructed Captain Arif to make sure nothing, not even a hare, got through. “We believe there’s only one man in there, an Englishman. Chief Omar and I will go in first.” He took out his revolver. “I hope he’ll come quietly. But if you hear shots, you know what to do.”

“Yes, pasha.”

Kamil and Omar circled around the back, where a carriage waited in the dusty lane.

“You can get in and out back here without anyone seeing you,” Omar remarked. “But not anymore.” He grinned. Owen wouldn’t escape again.