Jason Goodwin - An Evil eye

“Three tunnels,” Kadri whispered urgently. “One’s small, more like a pipe. It goes in about twenty yards and then bends up sharply.”

“Maybe drainage,” Yashim suggested. “What about the other two?”

“The first one could just be some sort of cellar-it hardly slopes at all, and the air is musty. But it’ll take time to explore them both.”

“There isn’t much time,” Yashim pointed out. “The second tunnel?”

“Lower than the other one. It doesn’t seem to go upward but it smells fresher inside.”

“I’m sure that’s the one,” Yashim urged, with a confidence he didn’t really feel. Istanbul was a honeycomb of tunnels, cisterns, and holes in the ground; blanked-off cellars, disused waterways, the foundation arches of Roman buildings. Where they ran, or how they were linked, nobody knew. They composed a dark mirror image of the city above, an impress of the centuries that had passed since Constantine first planted his standard on the banks of the Bosphorus and named the city for himself.

A sound at his back made Yashim turn his head. Kadri melted from the gate, noiselessly; but still Yashim stood, ears cocked, listening.

A dog detached itself from the base of the wall and crept a few yards along the street toward Yashim, where it sat and scratched its fleas. It stuck its muzzle on its paws, and went back to sleep.

Dogs did not willingly shift about at night, Yashim thought.

Marta said: “How shall we use the broken glass?”

“I was rather counting on you to come up with an idea.”

He heard her sigh. “I have,” she said.

She carefully drew the shard of glass toward her, with her toes.

She tucked her foot beneath her. Her fingers were cold; her feet were cold; she did not feel the glass in her fingers until the blood ran.

Palewski heard her give a gasp.

“Are you all right?”

“I have a knife, kyrie.” He heard the triumph in her voice, and said nothing.

At the same moment he heard the sound of the cellar door swinging open.

Kadri had gone about thirty paces into the tunnel before the ground dropped away.

The breeze was faint, but it flowed steadily up the tunnel at his back. Carefully shielding the candle, he moved to the side of the tunnel and held the flickering flame out of the wind. He was standing halfway up a vaulted chamber thickly festooned with cobwebs that hung from the ceiling in hanks, spinning in the breeze. He shuddered, and peered down.

He wriggled forward on his belly.

A shape broke from the shadows down the street. It was not the shape of a dog, but of a man.

Yashim edged to the side of the gate and put up his hand to feel the stones. His fingers found a crevice and his arm tightened.

Had the moon been any brighter, Yashim might have recognized the bow-legged walk of Akunin; had he stopped to watch, he would have seen Shishkin step out from a doorway farther up the street, blocking his escape.

But Yashim did not stop to watch. With a sudden grunt he dragged himself up on his fingertips and scrabbled for a foothold on the wall.

Everything Kadri had told him about climbing vanished from his mind as he dug his toe into a crack and reached up.

The man on the street started to run.

Like Kadri, Yashim moved quickly, barely pausing to check his holds, using vertical fissures as well as horizontal, flinging hand over hand and using his feet to flail upward against the rough surface of the wall.

Akunin reached the base of the wall and lunged: Yashim felt fingers close around his ankle. He was gripping the stones above with one hand, the other searching wildly for a hold as he tried to break the pressure rapidly increasing on his ankle. But he could feel his fingers slipping from the stone and with it his balance beginning to move, driving his body away from the wall.

His free hand found a crevice between the stones and clutched at it: but it was almost too late.

Akunin held tight and dropped his weight behind his arm.

Marta and Palewski froze as they listened to a heavy tread descending the cellar steps.

Two thoughts ran through Palewski’s mind. The first, that one of the men had been sent to kill them. Or that the sound of the breaking bottle had brought him down to check.

About the first possibility, he could do nothing-unless Marta could pass him the shard of broken glass.

Palewski felt Marta’s hand close around his wrists, searching for the cord.

The man stopped. Then they heard him tramp upstairs again, and the door closed.

Palewski climbed slowly from the pillar, flexing his fingers.

Marta laid a hand on his arm. “They are coming back.”

He cocked his head, and heard the sound of someone scraping nearby. He tightened his fingers around the glass and put Marta behind him, covering her with an outstretched arm.

In the dark they strained their ears.

Palewski frowned, incredulous.

One of his favorite pieces was Chopin’s tiny mazurka, the prelude in A major. He had practiced it all summer, with fairly good results.

It didn’t sound too bad right now, whistled by Kadri between his teeth, from the far end of the cellar.

Yashim felt the savage yank on his foot. Rather than tumble to the ground, he used his outward-falling momentum to spin in the air. Akunin had stepped back, face raised. He received the full weight of Yashim’s knee on the bridge of his nose.

The crack! of the cartilage breaking loose was lost in the sound of both men crashing to the ground.

Wrestling training at the palace school had saved Yashim’s life before. Leaving Akunin on his back instinctively cradling his broken nose, Yashim rolled with the fall and came up about six feet short of the running man. Shishkin eased back, but not fast enough. His last faltering step halved the distance between the two men: Yashim closed the gap with his lowered head.

As Shishkin doubled up, Yashim sidestepped and chopped his neck with the side of his hand. The Russian fell to his knees, coughing.

Akunin had got to his feet, but he was in no mood for fighting-one hand was clamped to his face, the other flailing drunkenly in the air.

Yashim placed a knee on Shishkin’s back and took hold of his chin in both hands.

“Why were you following me?”

Akunin began to back away.

“Stop. Tell me, and you can take your friend.”

Akunin hesitated. “The Fox,” he said thickly. “He thinks Fevzi Pasha is back-and he wants to talk to you.”

“Fevzi Pasha back?”

Akunin tilted his head. The blood was black under his hand. “I saw him, at the Polish residency.”

Shishkin groaned. Yashim said: “Go on.”

“He went in, about an hour before you came. Galytsin guessed you were meeting him there. He told us to pick you up.”

Yashim released his hold on Shishkin, who sputtered and sank to his hands and knees. “Where’s Galytsin now?”

“At the embassy, efendi.”

“Tell him I’ll meet him there for breakfast.”

Ten minutes later, Yashim heard a low whistle from the yard. He put his face to the bars.

“Yashim!”

He recognized the voice, even in a whisper. He thrust a hand through the bars and gripped a well-known hand.

“Incredible!” Palewski’s excited whisper cut through the night like steam escaping from an engine. “We’ll have to rethink the whole story!”

“Yes. It’s not Talfa-”

“Talfa?” Palewski dropped his hand. “I’m talking about the Genoese settlement, Yashim, prior to the Conquest. Those tunnels? Greater continuity than anyone realizes. Gibbon, von Hammer…” His whisper trailed off. After a moment he said: “If this gate is locked, how the devil do we get out?”