The Bellini Card (42 page)

“Yes. Perhaps.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing Marta again.”

“She will be happy to see you back.”

Palewski bit his lip. “The Bellini was only an idea, Yashim. We’ll have another.”

“The Bellini …”

“You’re not listening, Yashim.”

Yashim nodded. “Yes,” he said.

F
OR
several days Yashim kept to his cabin, but on the morning of the fourth day, as they began to thread a course between the islands of the Aegean, Palewski found him on deck.

He looked pale.

Palewski sat down beside his old friend.

“Two more days, and we’ll be home.” He paused. “Come on, Yashim. It was only a painting.”

“It’s not the painting,” Yashim said.

“What, then? You rescued Maria. Saved the contessa. Young Nikola would have died without you. And your disguise—it was terrific.” He peered at his friend and sighed. “But I don’t know why they didn’t just send you, Yashim.”

Yashim was about to reply when his eye was caught by a movement on the water. “Look!” he said, pointing. “Porpoises.”

There were three of them, scudding through the bright water, turning their bodies in the sunlight.

“They’re watching us,” Palewski exclaimed in delight.

Yashim smiled. “Strange, isn’t it? These interlocking lines. Our own lives. It’s in the diagram, I suppose.
Com’era, dov’era
. Nothing, in the end, moves out of the square.”

“The diagram? You’re speaking in riddles, Yashim.”

“The Sand-Reckoner’s diagram. Everyone’s face is turned inward, you see, but they adopt a different background as they move. It’s like a shadow sliding across a building.
Com’era, dov’era
describes a sort of ideal moment before the dance begins. Before things change.”

“When someone—or something—shifts its position, it changes, too? Is that what you mean?”

“Nothing is still. Nothing remains the same—except the pattern that lies underneath.”

“Hier ist die Rose, hier tanze!”
Palewski murmured. He crinkled his nose. “Hegel.”

Yashim went on: “Everyone belongs in the diagram. Maria, Ruggerio, Barbieri, Carla, and you. Even me.” Yashim laid his thumb and forefinger on the rail. “Take Maria. She’s linked to Ruggerio—it’s Ruggerio who puts her in your bed. That provides you with an alibi when Barbieri turns up dead. I don’t know how close you were to getting arrested then.”

He put another finger down. “Alfredo, now. Taking Maria was his big mistake, but he had to find out who you were.” Another finger. “Alfredo becomes Eletro, as it were. Eletro, dead. But Eletro is linked to the boy, Nikola. That’s five intersections. Now it goes back to Maria. She takes Nikola to church, where he recognizes the priest.”

He put his other thumb down on the rail. “Which is not the end of the story: you connect Nikola to the contessa.”

“And she’s linked to Ruggerio and Eletro by the game of cards in the Fondaco dei Turchi.”

“Yes. Everyone’s placed. Except the Austrian.”

“Finkel?”

“He’s the one who has no obvious connection.”

He stared out over the rail. They were among the Cyclades, a group of Orthodox islands that had fallen to Venice after the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Three hundred years later, with some relief, the islands’ Greek inhabitants had welcomed the Ottomans. Here and there, on the horizon, the islands’ outlines shimmered in the sunlight.

Something gathered at the back of Yashim’s mind.

Venice and the Ottomans: two empires locked together in trade and war, moving to a pattern reproduced all across the Mediterranean. Venetians taking possession of Byzantine strongholds. The Ottomans snapping at their heels. In the tiny Cyclades, as in mighty Cyprus.

“Patterns aren’t measurements,” Yashim said finally. “I’ve seen the
Sand-Reckoner’s diagram on a sheet of paper and on the floor of the wrestling school, in Istanbul. It’ll work on any scale.”

“Of course.”

Yashim closed his eyes. “And a pattern repeats, too.” He thought of the Iznik tiles he had saved from the fountain. Minute versions of a larger pattern. “The same shapes reoccur throughout. A square, for instance, is the center of a bigger square.”

“Yes,” Palewski agreed.

“Perhaps the diagram we’ve followed fits into a larger version of the same diagram? Making room for Finkel after all. Extend the connections that link everyone in Venice, and you could have a version of the diagram that includes Resid, and the sultan, too. It’s like this. The Tatar should have killed Carla that night. Next morning Finkel turns up at the Ca’ d’Aspi. He has been sitting on the order to remove the painting and the note.”

“So why does he choose that morning to make a move?”

“Exactly. Either he thought that Carla was dead or he knew already that the Tatar had failed. Either way, there must be a link between them.”

Palewski slapped a hand to the rail. “The Tatar was working for the Austrians!”

“Not quite. He was sent by Resid. But he was steered by Ruggerio, who was killed when the job was done.”

“Ruggerio could have told Finkel.”

Yashim nodded. “Easily. It’s a diagram of possibilities, but it doesn’t touch on motive, Palewski.”

“Resid’s motive is fairly obvious, isn’t it? He sent the Tatar to destroy the evidence that the Duke of Naxos was in fact Sultan Abdülmecid. To save the sultan’s honor.”

“With Austrian help?”

Palewski threw up his hands. “I don’t get it, Yashim. Why would the Austrians help Resid?”

Yashim bit his lip.

“There’s more to it than the sultan’s honor. Resid was chasing down evidence that the sultan had misbehaved in Venice. Evidence that could safeguard his own position, too.”

“Blackmail? That’s more like it,” Palewski agreed. “But it still doesn’t give the Austrians a motive.”

Yashim smiled grimly. “On the contrary, it gives them every motive. What do the Austrians want from the Ottoman Empire?”

“Peace and quiet, I suppose.”

“Exactly. The Austrians are overstretched. In Italy, in Poland, in Galicia. They are keeping a lid on things, but only just. Even Carla wanted the money for the cause of Venetian independence. The Austrians would like nothing better than a compliant sultan. Finkel’s instructions were to get the note, but he didn’t do anything until the last minute. And then, thanks to us, it was too late.”

“You mean Finkel knew about the Tatar? He sat back and waited for the Tatar to do his job for him?”

“By eliminating the witnesses, one by one. Who’d ever imagine a Tatar assassin would be stalking the streets of Venice? You didn’t believe it yourself, even when Nikola put him in his painting. And that gave the Austrians their alibi.”

“If the Tatar got the incriminating note, Resid would have the Austrians to thank,” Palewski said slowly. “If he failed, the Austrians would take it themselves. Either way, they stood to gain by cooperating with Resid.” He gave a low whistle. “No wonder Resid didn’t want you hunting the Bellini in Venice. He was handing control of Ottoman foreign policy to Austria.”

They exchanged glances.

“This is going to be awfully hard to prove, Yashim.”

“Yes.”

“And it isn’t over while Carla—the contessa—is still alive.”

“No.”

“And if Resid finds out where we’ve been …”

“Yes.”

Palewski looked out to sea and sighed. “Do you know, I am missing Venice much more than I’d expected.”

T
HE
Bosphorus quivered in the summer heat. On the Pera shore of the Golden Horn, where once the plane had extended its grateful shade, sunlight sprang from the rubble of the broken pavement. Across the Horn the courtyards of the mosques were full; people squatted against the walls and moved lazily to and fro between the arcades and the fountains.

Outside the Topkapi Palace, Yashim stopped by a fountain whose scrolled and overhanging eaves created a welcome strip of shade. He set a book and a small parcel down on the stone bench and washed his hands and face beneath the spigot. Then he went through the main gate of the Topkapi Palace into the First Court.

There were more people here than was usual, now that the Ottoman court had moved to a new, European-style palace on the Bosphorus. They came for the dappled shade of the trees beneath which they sat cross-legged: elderly men in fezzes and pantaloons, drawing on long pipes; younger men with swathed wives, watching their children scamper through the dust.

Yashim crossed the court and reached the High Gate, where he knocked.

A sleepy halberdier opened a wicket.

“Yashim
lala
, to see the valide sultan.”

Inside, the gatehouse was cool and dark. Yashim sank gratefully down onto a stone bench.

A few minutes later, another halberdier saluted him, and they went out into the glare of the Second Court. Instead of crossing to the far
corner and the entrance of the harem, the halberdier took him to the central gate and then right, toward the Treasury.

He found the valide in the Baghdad Kiosk, lounging on a divan set up beneath the arches.

She smiled and raised a hand when she saw him, her bracelets tinkling like water.

“Don’t look so shocked, Yashim,” she said as he approached. “There are limits to our endurance.”

Yashim smiled and bowed. The valide’s apartments were like ovens in the heat.

“It’s not the heat, Yashim. I was born to it, after all. It’s the stillness. I thank the sultan, Yashim. He suggested I come here.” She patted the divan. “I have no idea how he intends to rule and frankly I am too old to care. But I approve of his consideration.”

The Baghdad Kiosk was one of the oldest parts of the palace, a medieval cavern open to the breeze with a view running straight up the Bosphorus.

“I’m not shocked, valide. I’m only pleased that the sultan—”

“Remembers me?” She arched an eyebrow, while Yashim shook his head. “I even sleep here sometimes,” she said. “I also like the view. It makes me feel like a sultan myself.”

A girl came in carrying a tray of cooling sherbet.

“Tell me about Venice,” the valide said.

Yashim almost dropped his glass.

“Venice, valide?”

“Do the women still sit in their
altana
on the roofs, making their hair go yellow?”

Yashim lowered his eyes, nonplussed. The valide’s vision of Venice was so different from the one he’d seen.

“I brought you something,” he remembered.

She undid the parcel. Inside, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, was a pair of candlesticks. They were made of a twist of pink Murano glass, and each had a tassel of colored pendants dangling from the rim.

The valide examined them carefully. “Very pretty, Yashim.”

Yashim felt satisfied; the valide was never lavish with her praise.

“I should have liked to have seen Venice,” she continued. “But perhaps it is very ugly now?”

“It is beautiful, valide. But it is poor.”

The valide lifted a bangled arm to the balustrade and turned her head. Her profile was still extraordinarily clear.

“Istanbul could become poor one day. Who knows?”

“I felt the same, valide,” Yashim admitted. “Istanbul and Venice always ate from the one dish.”

“I suppose you are right. Istanbul the master, Venice the servant—and when the master has dined, the servant clears his plate.” She looked at Yashim. “Perhaps that’s why the sultan came here last week. To talk about Venice.”

Yashim felt himself blush. “The sultan spoke of Venice?”

The valide raised her chin. “In the olden days, Yashim, the sultans left their dominions only in time of war—to conquer. But that age is past. Abdülmecid is young, Yashim, and he has not lived in the world. He knows it. I think he regrets it, too.”

But he has lived in the world more than the valide might suppose, Yashim reflected.

“He comes to me because he thinks I know Europe. I don’t discourage him.”

“You—have traveled, valide?”

“You
might
call it traveling, Yashim. Certainly I met some quite interesting men.” A smile hovered on her lips. “I threatened the Dey of Algiers with the vengeance of the French navy. Later, I pulled his beard. I, too, was very young.”