Реймонд Хаури - Empire of Lies

“Come on,” Taymoor hissed, “ du shesh ”—two sixes. Holding the small ivory dice with three fingers, he kissed them, then flicked them onto the elaborately carved game board.

The dice tumbled, spun, and finally settled. Sure enough, two sixes showed up.

“Allez,” Taymoor rasped as he pumped the air with his fist.

Oddly, people across the empire still called out the dice rolls using Persian numbers, a tradition that was as old as the game itself. Taymoor’s last outburst was another linguistic anomaly, this one a leftover from the eyalet ’s French history.

Taymoor didn’t have to move any of his checkers. His victory was now numerically unavoidable. He took a celebratory pull from his mouthpiece, causing the water pipe to gurgle so loudly it seemed to be heckling his opponent, then sat back with a big, smug grin on his face. “Had enough? Or are you feeling particularly masochistic tonight?”

Kamal frowned at him—then he flicked both sides of the board upward, slamming it shut like a vertical clamshell. “Hasiktir,” he cursed. “Your dice are impossible today.”

The outburst startled everyone around them. Bad sportsmanship at backgammon was a major faux pas in Ottoman circles, but no one was going to scowl at them tonight.

“Go easy on him, Taymoor Agha,” a man sitting at the next table laughed. “Today, you are both champions.” He raised his glass to him. A wave of others joined in his toast.

Taymoor raised his own glass, smiled, and bowed his head in thanks.

“For our heroes,” the jovial coffee shop’s owner bellowed as he wobbled over with a tray of fresh drinks. “You’ve never tasted anything like it, trust me,” he said as he laid down the two tall glasses of pomegranate and plum khoshâb . “I’ve made it for you with a touch of amber, musk, and my secret ingredient.” He paused, then leaned in with a wink and whispered, “Wisteria.”

Taymoor nodded his thanks as the man retreated from the table. Then he turned to his partner. “Would you stop already?”

“What?”

“Look at you. All glum on one of the biggest days in our—hell, in anyone’s—life. Come on, brother. Live it up.” He leaned in and gave Kamal a big slap on the shoulder.

Kamal raised his glass half-heartedly. “You’re right.” He took a sip.

Taymoor frowned. “Your sister-in-law chose to be friends with an enemy of the state, all right? That’s her problem, not yours. She’s an adult. There’s only so much you can do.”

Kamal nodded. “I know, I know.”

“You need to talk to Ramazan,” Taymoor told him. “He needs to set her straight before she gets caught up in a bad situation.”

Kamal scoffed. “Set her straight? Are you kidding me? No one sets Nisreen straight. No one ever has. Except her father.”

“So talk to her father.”

“It’s a bit complicated, given that he passed away two years ago.”

Taymoor took another long pull. “Well, someone’s got to talk to her.” He edged in, lowering his voice. “I don’t want to see you get into trouble because of her.”

“Me, or us?”

Taymoor looked at him askance. “That’s not fair, brother.”

Kamal’s face scrunched with remorse. “I’m sorry. It’s just… the way things are going, it feels like we’re all going to get sucked into some kind of trouble, doesn’t it?”

Which threw Taymoor. “What are you talking about?”

“The psychos hoping to get their seventy-two virgins by blowing themselves to smithereens? I’m all in. Find them, take them out, every last one of them—absolutely. That’s what I signed up for. White Rose subversives and anarchists like Azmi plotting to topple the Divan? They need to be stopped, no question. But the rest of it? They’ve got a radio DJ in the dock for insulting the beylerbey’s son by questioning his real estate dealings. A university professor was fired for giving a seminar about the merits of solar power. They even locked up two puppeteers for ‘incitement to anarchy’”—using air quotes around the words—“just because their puppet show linked the sultan’s ripping up of environmental controls and the grand vizier’s factories to poisoning a town.”

“It’s not conclusive. The Environment Department’s still looking into that.”

“It’s a puppet show, brother.”

Taymoor shrugged. “That’s not us. That’s Z Directorate. It’s their business.”

“We’re on the same team.”

“Our job is to get the killers. That’s what we do. It’s not complicated.”

“Yeah, but… you don’t think this is going overboard? Everyone seems to be guilty of something these days. It’s getting so that people are scared to think.”

“Maybe they should be.” He edged closer. “Some thoughts can be more dangerous than explosive vests. We’re at war, brother. It might not be a war in the old sense of the word, but it’s a war. We’re under attack from all sides, and we’re vulnerable. And if we let some cracks set in, then everything could fall apart.”

Just then, Taymoor’s phone beeped with an incoming text. He picked it up with a grin. “Saved by the bell. That’s way too heavy a conversation for today, brother.” He glanced at the screen, and then his grin widened.

“Hot date?” Kamal asked.

“Care to rephrase that without limiting yourself to the singular?”

Kamal played the game, kept up the pretense, and rolled his eyes as Taymoor got up.

“I’m out of here,” Taymoor said. “Take a breath and kick back a little, brother. Or I just might have to find myself a new partner.” He gave him a playful, pointed look.

Kamal gave him a nod. “New me. Tomorrow. Promise.”

“Good. See you at the castle, bright and early.” Taymoor wagged a finger as he stepped away through a wave of congratulatory pats. “No rest for the vigilant: remember, bad guys are waiting.”

By sunset, once the maghrib prayers were done, enough time had passed since the mystery patient had walked into the hospital for him to be operated on safely.

There were still a lot of unknowns, especially for Ramazan, who would be administering the anesthetic. The man’s medical history was an empty file. This was far from ideal, dangerous even, but he had no choice. The surgery—open heart, not exactly a minor procedure—was unavoidable. He would just have to be overly cautious and monitor his vitals like a hawk during the operation, which would last several hours.

But that was easier said than done, given the questions swirling through Ramazan’s mind concerning the man’s bizarre tattoos. He’d never seen anything like them, and the few words he’d managed to read had awakened an unusually clingy curiosity inside him.

They were in the pre-op chamber, preparing the man for surgery. A nurse was standing by the bed jotting down the readings from the monitors onto a chart while Ramazan prepared the drugs that he would feed into the man’s IV drip.

As he worked, Ramazan couldn’t help but glance at him, and each time he did, the man was staring back at him with that same inscrutable, hard look. Which was unusual—and disturbing. Normally, while waiting to go under the knife, patients were nervous. They were about to put their lives in someone else’s hands and cede control over their bodies and minds to a total stranger. Worse, the anesthetist could be the last person they ever spoke to. This usually made them overly talkative, and they mostly discussed their fears: what if they don’t ever wake up? Or, worse, what if they wake during surgery? They were usually desperate for reassurance, of which Ramazan would offer plenty. Then he’d distract them with small talk.