Jenny White - The Sultan's seal

“Yes, you know that,” Kamil snaps. He stands and moves toward Bernie. “Either you tell me who he is or I’ll shake it out of you.”

“Hey, hey, my friend. No need for violence. It’s too late now, anyway, for poor Hamza.”

“You knew him too?”

“Yes. Look, can I trust you not to pass this on to your superiors?”

“No.” Kamil is still standing, one hand flipping his chain of beads back and forth in a steady rhythm. He is breathing heavily.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. What on earth has happened to get you all in a lather like this?” He holds out a cigarette.

Kamil shakes his head impatiently.

Bernie sighs. “You’ll need more than a cigarette to digest this news. Why don’t you take a swig of your scotch?”

“Just talk.”

“All right, then. But in the name of friendship-we are still friends, right? — I beg you to keep this just between us.”

“I’d like to hear it first.” He doesn’t deny, nor does he acknowledge, the friendship. At this moment, it is irrelevant.

Bernie crosses his legs, then uncrosses them and leans forward, the scotch glass forgotten in his hand.

“All right. I do hope you have enough sense, after hearing this, to keep it to yourself. Eight years ago, Hamza was part of a group trying to engineer a coup against the sultan with British help. The sultan had just disbanded the parliament, so there were a lot of angry reformists, even in his own nest. Prince Ziya was one of them. He put the Brits in touch with someone in the palace. Hannah was the go-between, with Hamza receiving the information outside the palace and passing it on.”

“How do you know all this?”

Bernie does not answer right away. He gets up and paces the room as if looking for a way out, drawing deeply on his cigarette. His other hand still holds the glass of scotch. Finally, he stops before Kamil and gives him a long look.

“You’re my friend, Kamil. I don’t want you any deeper in this shit. You’re already up to your shirt collar in it.”

“Are you involved in this?” Kamil asks sadly.

“Well, not precisely.”

Bernie and Kamil stand tensely facing one another. Kamil’s beads flip back and forth in a staccato.

“I need your assurance that this stays between us.”

Kamil meets his eye. “I cannot give you such assurance.”

Bernie sits suddenly on the chair. “Oh, what the hell,” he mutters angrily. “I’m sick and tired of this skulking around. For what? So more people can get killed? I was shanghaied into this and I’m damned ready to get out.”

“Into what?”

Bernie squints up at Kamil and says, “British Foreign Service.”

“What? You? You’re American.”

“Good disguise, eh? Well, yes, I am American, but one of my relatives in England is in the Foreign Ministry-Sybil’s brother-in-law, actually. They thought I would be less obvious. Who’d suspect an American of anything more than rudeness and bad taste?”

Kamil doesn’t smile, but pulls over a chair and sits. “Go on.” The puzzle of the case is calming him, as if each piece he puts together redeems a piece of his shattered life.

“Hamza was having an affair with Hannah. Our correspondent in the palace had the pendant made and Hamza gave it to Hannah as a gift. If someone inside wanted to communicate with him, they’d wait until she took it off, put a note in it, and she’d carry it out when she met Hamza. It was cleverly designed. You needed a key, but the lock was invisible unless you knew it was there. She probably didn’t even know it could be opened. We used it to schedule our operation.”

“And the Chinese-that was your contribution?”

“No. Our contact inside the palace came up with it. He has some kind of interest in China and copied out the characters, although not perfectly. It’s why they called me in on this. I can read the characters. I puzzled over why that particular poem, but I can’t figure it out, other than the possible connection to the revolutionary, Kung. It probably has a personal meaning to whoever sent it from the palace.”

“Who is it?”

“We never found out. Even Hamza didn’t know. The messages went in through the harem, but we don’t know who sent them out. We’ve always assumed it was Ali Arslan Pasha, the current grand vizier. The top women in that part of the harem where Hannah worked were related to him.

“So you used Hannah.”

“Yes, although we never thought any harm would come to her.”

“What Hamza did was harmful.”

“You mean, sleep with her or whatever they did in that pavilion? That was his business. Anyway, he was a free man. We had no say about what he did or didn’t do.”

“Did he kill her?”

“I don’t see it,” Bernie says thoughtfully. “There was no reason to. He seemed like a pretty good guy. I think he genuinely cared for Hannah. I’m not sure what motivated him, whether it was patriotism or something else. He did seem to honestly believe in modernizing the empire, but there was a real bitterness about it, like there was something personal in it for him, so I just don’t know.” Bernie throws up his hands. “Anyway, around that time everything went to the dogs.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone was on to us and spilled the beans. The secret police moved in. They got Prince Ziya. Killed him in Paris. I guess to warn off anyone else thinking of bucking the sultan. Then Hannah turned up dead. We never figured out how they found out about Hannah-who ratted. Anyway, I got out fast, so did Hamza. He had a driver, that Shimshek Devora, who must have known about all this too, but someone finally found him and shut him up for good. We always assumed the secret police were responsible for Hannah’s death. I guess probably Mary’s too-then framed Hamza for it. That would be typical. Two birds with one stone. Hamza comes back from exile years later and-boom-they use Mary to bait their trap. The secret police have long memories. They keep files on everything. Your government must have warehouses full of secret reports. Maybe that’s why they have to keep building new palaces. They get pushed out by all that accumulated paper.”

“What does any of this have to do with Michel?”

“Remember that night we went out on the town and that dog almost had me for dinner? That animal belonged to your associate Michel Sevy.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw him duck down an alley after I shot the dog. I recognized him. I have to admit, I was pretty surprised when you told me the name of your associate. I paid his office a little visit and, sure enough, it was the same guy on our tail eight years ago. Michel Sevy. The Chameleon, we called him. He didn’t even bother to change his name.

He doesn’t work for you or for the police. He’s one of the sultan’s own. I reckon he didn’t like me snooping around.”

“That’s outlandish. Michel in the secret police?”

“Why not? Did you have anything to lead you to Hamza until Michel laid it all in your lap?”

“No. Most of the clues led in other directions.”

“I remember you had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right. Ask him yourself how he knew about Hamza.”

“I did. He said he was having Hamza watched. He withheld evidence from me. But he didn’t explain why.”

“So now you know. Whether or not Hamza killed those women, he was going to hang for it because it let the secret police nail him as a traitor. I don’t know why they didn’t just shoot him on a dark night and get it over with the minute he stepped back in the country. Although that would have killed any chance they had of finding out who his contact in the palace was.”

Kamil jumps up from his chair, fists clenched, knocking his glass to the floor. “We’re a civilized country, Bernie,” he shouts. “We have a judicial system. We don’t just gun down people in the street like in America.”