Jenny White - The Winter Thief

“Treason, Your Excellency?” Nizam Pasha inquired.

“Kamil Pasha, did you not witness Vahid leading a group of bandits in the massacre of innocent civilians in the east and attacking your imperial troops that were protecting the population?” Without waiting for Kamil, who seemed at a loss for words, the vizier answered his own question. “That, gentlemen, is treason.”

Vahid tenderly straightened the tine of Rhea’s hairpin, then put it in his pocket. It took only a short time to walk from Akrep headquarters across the grounds of Yildiz Palace to Huseyin Pasha’s office in the Great Mabeyn.

The secretary announced him and then asked him to wait until Huseyin Pasha had finished his meeting. Vashid paced impatiently. After half an hour, several well-dressed men emerged, followed by their secretaries and a scribe. Finally Vahid was shown into an office more luxurious than his own. He strode in, his eyes seeking the man he had sworn to kill, the one who had stolen Rhea from him and caused her death.

The sight of Huseyin’s scarred face brought back memories of Rhea’s charred body on the sidewalk. He started when he saw Kamil standing by the open French doors. Vahid smelled the cloying scent of lilacs enter with the breeze. An invisible bee buzzed insistently as the two men glared at each other.

“Selam aleykum, Vahid.” The note of satisfaction in Kamil’s voice caused Vahid more concern than the hostility. His wound began to throb.

“Aleykum selam,” he answered cautiously. He hadn’t expected to ask about Rhea in front of Kamil and wondered if he should return another time.

“If you have something to say,” Huseyin snapped, “let’s hear it, or don’t waste my time.”

Kamil shut the door and came to stand beside his brother-in-law.

“These have been trying times.” Vahid began in a neutral tone, wishing Kamil would leave.

“The times have certainly been treacherous for Armenians,” Kamil agreed in a hard tone, “and for socialists. In fact, for a lot of ordinary, innocent people. Their graves line the road from the Choruh Valley to Trabzon. But you know that, don’t you? You put them there.”

Kamil’s tone was sarcastic, but Vahid was satisfied to hear the anguish beneath the magistrate’s words. Undermining Kamil emotionally and morally was almost better than killing him outright. The cruelest death was the slow rot of self-doubt.

“I’m amazed to hear you criticize His Highness’s decision to send troops to put down an armed rebellion,” Vahid responded, “but what else can one expect from a traitor?”

Kamil stepped toward him, but Huseyin pulled him back. “There’s no point,” he told Kamil.

A man who can be baited, Vahid thought, smiling inwardly. Passion made men weak.

“Do you deny that you ordered Ottoman soldiers to fire on the sultan’s troops?” Vahid asked. “And this charade about using your own fortune to help the refugees,” he scoffed. “No funds have been withdrawn from your bank. Nothing was sold to account for the sudden, mysterious appearance of forty thousand British pounds in gold and several large emeralds in your hands in Trabzon. Did you steal them? Perhaps from the Ottoman Imperial Bank?”

“You are a mass murderer,” Kamil responded in a cold voice. “Worse than that, you are a man who kills for a calculated reason, as if he were slaughtering pullets to sell at market. Did you get what you wanted? Were the deaths sufficient to get you promoted?”

“I don’t answer to you,” Vahid said offhandedly, and turned to Huseyin. “I want to know something.”

“What?”

Vahid wondered if the men were armed. He presumed Kamil was. He reached into his pocket and saw Kamil’s hand slip inside his jacket. Vahid slowly withdrew Rhea’s hairpin. The magistrate’s hand emerged empty.

Vahid placed the pin on a small table by Huseyin, then watched jealously as he picked it up. The sight of the precious artifact in Rhea’s lover’s hand was unbearable. He felt a desperate need to pierce his own skin until all the poison had run out.

“My wife’s hairpin!” Huseyin exclaimed. “Where did you get this?”

No wonder Rhea wouldn’t marry him, Vahid thought. She had already married this bastard. “Rhea was your wife?”

“Of course not,” Huseyin exclaimed. “Rhea was a young girl I was trying to help.” He dropped the pin on the table. “You harassed the poor girl. If it weren’t for you, she’d still be alive.”

“That’s a lie,” Vahid snarled. “She died because of you. You brought her to that taverna.”

“How dare you insinuate anything. Rhea was like my daughter.”

Vahid snatched up the pin and held it in Huseyin’s face. “Is this what a father gives his daughter?”

“Her fiancé asked me to buy something special for her. What business is it of yours?”

“What fiancé?”

“I ask you again, what business is it of yours? You did your best to destroy her life. I won’t let you destroy her reputation after her death.” Huseyin hobbled to the door and held it open. “You’ve caused enough tragedy for us all. Leave now.”

Overcome by confusion and an inchoate rage, Vahid slammed the door shut behind him.

Turning to Kamil, Huseyin explained, “Rhea’s father asked me to get rid of Vahid’s unwanted attentions. They were making it difficult for the girl to get married. Vahid threatened her father.”

“He misunderstood your relationship, but that explains why he was trying to kill you and why his men attacked Feride.” Kamil frowned and pressed his fist against his mouth. The thought of Vahid harming Feride made him want to finish the job he had left undone. He would have gone after him if he hadn’t already laid a satisfyingly malicious snare for the Akrep commander.

“What a viper,” Huseyin exclaimed. “We have to do something about him. Imagine the damage he could do if he were promoted to head up the new secret service?”

“It’s been taken care of,” Kamil answered, his jaw tight. He had come to Huseyin directly from Vizier Köraslan’s office, but Vahid had arrived before he could tell Huseyin about the meeting. Better even than shooting off Vahid’s other hand was the thought of the man shivering in the special cell Omar had reserved for him at Bekiraga Prison, where Vahid would wait, perhaps for a long time, for his trial.

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.