Jason Goodwin: An Evil eye

Yashim backed away from the desk and slumped into an armchair.

“A secret service?”

“A military secret service, yes. Not the same as the tsar’s spies, quite-the ones I have to deal with,” he added, a little grimly. “My position may offend the tsar-but it’s a tactical detail. It doesn’t affect Russian strategy.”

Yashim blinked. The sun still shone, but the shadows had lengthened on the floor.

He glanced at the desk. The skin was curling up: as he watched, it gave a tiny start and rolled back and forth.

Yashim shuddered. “I think I need to take some advice.”

Palewski nodded. “Don’t forget to take the skin. I don’t think Marta would like it at all.”

In the far-off mountains, a shepherd prepared himself for death. He had lived many summers, but now he felt no warmth from the sun and he knew his time had come.

The shepherd explained everything to his son about the sheep, and the new lambs, and the standing corn.

He said nothing, however, about the feud. Of the dishonor that could only be cleansed with blood.

He blessed the boy, and turned his face to the wall.

“ It seems we have two options.” The grand vizier raised his heavy lids. “Instinctively I would prefer to do nothing.”

Yashim coughed politely. “The Russians almost certainly know what happened.”

The vizier blew through his nostrils. “Your little friend on the boat.”

“If he was working for them-”

The vizier waved a hand. “Yes, yes. You know the situation with Russia is delicate. We have certain treaties, certain… obligations.”

Yashim knew how heavily the Russians pressed upon the empire. For decades they had advanced steadily south, dislodging the Ottomans from the northern coast of the Black Sea. Tartary was theirs, and the Crimea, too. Their navy now cruised in what had been an Ottoman lake, the Black Sea. That was humiliation enough; but then the Egyptians had attacked.

In 1836 Mehmet Ali Pasha’s well-trained Egyptian army swept up the Mediterranean coast. Sidon, Acre, Beirut, had all fallen to the overmighty vassal of the sultan, who had appealed in desperation to the only power capable of protecting Istanbul.

The tsar and his generals had been only too happy to assist. The Russians had moved closer to Istanbul-and politely withdrew when the danger was past.

“Meanwhile,” the vizier added, “we have lost one sultan, and gained another.”

He stared at Yashim as he might stare at a spot on the wall, thinking.

The silence extended. One minute. Two minutes.

“You will inform the Russians,” the vizier said finally. His eyes regained their focus and he gave Yashim a rare, and rueful, smile. “Perhaps that will be the last decision I make.”

“I hope not, my pasha,” Yashim replied.

The day promised to be hot.

At the cafe Yashim folded his legs and sat on the divan, facing the street. The cafe owner nodded and slapped a brass jug on the coals.

Yashim watched the street slide by.

A few minutes later, the cafe boy brought Yashim his coffee, and a note. He drank the coffee.

The note was in French. A cab is waiting at the end of the street. Take it.

Yashim glanced up. His eyes met the eyes of the Sufi across the way. Close by, a man was sweeping the road with a long besom broom. A stout woman went past in the opposite direction, holding a huge turnip like a lantern in her outstretched arm. The houses opposite were shuttered, but one was merely latticed on the upper floor. An Armenian peddler with a mule sauntered down the street and stopped at the cafe as if uncertain whether to ply his trade here or move on. His glance fell on Yashim and rested there a moment.

Take it. No threat, no promise. No explanation, either.

Yashim gestured to the boy. “Who brought the note?”

“It was a ferenghi, efendi. We did not know him.”

“A tiny man?”

The boy looked surprised. “Bigger than me, efendi. Not small.”

Yashim got to his feet. Whoever had sent the note would have had time to set up. It lay to him to restore the balance and surprise them.

There would be a man on the street, maybe two. One to watch, one to follow. Keeping an eye on him-and on each other, too.

Yashim glanced left before turning right down the street. He picked out the stop man immediately: he was outside the Libyan bakery ten yards down the lane, eating a pastry-and eating it very slowly, Yashim imagined.

In Pera you could stand on the street for hours, window-shopping, watching the crowds, and no one would give you a second glance-but Kara Davut was a traditional mahalle. On Kara Davut, people tended to know one another by sight; strangers were uncommon. Strangers with nothing to do but watch the road were so rare as to be objects of curiosity.

The stop man had found something to do. Now he would be finishing his corek and tailing Yashim. He would be ten, maybe fifteen yards behind. Unworried as yet, because Yashim had responded to the note according to plan, and was moving in the right direction.

It was three hundred yards to the end of the road, where the cab was waiting. Like most streets in the district, Kara Davut was neither straight nor level: it rose toward the middle, then dropped steeply in a series of shallow steps that slanted around the hill. The steps were an impediment to wheeled traffic, but a boon to the porters, who plied their trade all over Istanbul.

There were bound to be two men to ensure that Yashim was in view at all times.

Yashim resisted the urge to glance around.

The second man did not, really, have to masquerade. Provided he stayed reasonably close to the cross street, on the steps, he would simply seem to be waiting for someone to come down. He need not try to be part of the mahalle at all, in which case he would not see Yashim until he was perhaps halfway down the stairs. Thirty yards.

Yashim glanced ahead: light traffic, no crowd.

He leaned into the rise in the street. Several people passed him in the opposite direction, tradesmen and apprentices on errands, two veiled women with sloshing pails of water from the pump, three schoolboys heading for the medrese, casting about for any diversion. Ahead, a simit seller with his tray balanced on his turban came over the rise.

Yashim let the man come close, then flinched.

“I don’t owe you a penny!” he exclaimed, flinging up his arm. “You’ve got the wrong man!”

With his left hand he snatched out and grabbed the bewildered simit peddler’s shirt.

The man put up his hands, instinctively.

Behind Yashim, the people strolling had stopped and turned. Not quite a crowd, but more than enough to make it hard for the stop man to see exactly what was going on.

Yashim grabbed the peddler’s hand and dragged himself back. The peddler spun, off balance. The tray tilted.

Two dogs, apparently asleep in a doorway, rose with surprising agility and dashed forward.

The buns spun from the tray.

“My simit!” the peddler cried. A dog caught a simit in midair, while the schoolboys darted at the ground.

An old man stepped out of his shop and made to catch the tray.

Twelve yards back down the street, the stop man flung his corek to the ground with an exclamation of surprise, and broke into a run.

It was no time for caution.

His quarry had disappeared.

At the back of the shop was a curtain, and behind the curtain a flight of wooden steps.

At the top Yashim flipped the catch on the back window, pushed the casement, and vaulted out.

It wasn’t much of a drop, because the house was built into the slope. Dodging the laundry lines, he raced along the alley. It ended in a wall. There was a water butt against the wall, and Yashim was soon over the top.