Edward Whittemore - Jerusalem Poker

From Constantinople she was floating with conviction down the coast of the Eastern Mediterranean.

The flying carpet paused. Sophia again dipped her finger in the milky white porcelain cup. The spellbound delegates leaned forward on their pillows, holding their breath, as Sophia arrived at the Red Sea and banked to the left, speeding east around the tip of the Arabian peninsula, heading now across the water toward the Persian Gulf, the line of crude advancing with her.

Their eyes narrowed. The flying carpet drifted over Abadan and floated inexorably north in the direction of the Black Sea, the space enclosed by Sophia's black line gradually taking on the shape of an ellipse, an enormous area that would contain all the future oil-producing lands of the Middle East except for Persia.

A final dip in the cup of crude and the ellipse was closed. The line had returned to Constantinople, the former capital of the Ottoman Empire.

Sophia triumphantly raised her veil, the only time the men in the room would ever see her face. She was smiling happily and puffing her cheroot, but perhaps what they would all recall later was the dreamy quality of her eyes. It was true she looked no more than half her age, if that, which was astonishing in itself. But it was the softness of her eyes that held them, not at all what they would have expected at a time like this.

It was almost as if she had created the drama of this momentous occasion with the guileless simplicity of a child.

Yes, they were sure of it. Innocence. That's what they saw.

Sophia smiled shyly, then all at once her face was serious. Another command in Tosk or Gheg and the flying carpet floated to the middle of the circle above the map. She put her tiny right fist in the fragile porcelain cup of crude, wiggled it around and brought it out dripping. With a gesture of authority she flattened her hand in the very center of the map.

An unmistakable black handprint on the heart of the Middle East. Sophia blew a smoke ring. The men on the pillows gasped.

Now the flying carpet gently rose in the air, withdrawing to a position of height just outside the circle.

After fixing each man in the room with her eyes, Sophia lowered her veil. She waved her cheroot commandingly and spoke in a quiet voice.

Yes, gentlemen, there you see it This is the former Ottoman Empire for our purposes, and this is the area covered by our charter. We have the agreement of your governments and I now solemnly declare the syndicate in operation. You will return to your countries and issue the necessary orders. We begin digging, pumping and distributing at once.

Thus the most brilliant moment of her career. Speeding on an exquisite flying carpet, tiny Sophia the Unspoken had silently circled the entire Middle East in minutes and transformed herself into Sophia the Black Hand.

From an opulent Oriental chamber on a lemon-scented barge, a vast international cartel had been launched. And the tiny Armenian woman in black would thereafter be known, among the very few men in the shadowy upper reaches of power who were aware of her true role in the world, as the phenomenal Madame Seven Per Cent of the earth's richest oil fields.

Oil and immense wealth.

Yet within the tiny old woman there still lived a haunting innocence, as witnessed by others on the lemon-scented barge where she had once floated on a flying carpet, the innocent simplicity of an eight-year-old peasant girl who had found a broken man lying at the gate of a ruined castle, the last of the Skanderbeg Wallensteins home from his unparalleled ordeal in the Holy Land, and with the perfect faith of her years fallen in love with him forever.

Indeed, there were still mornings when Sophia rose long before dawn with a strange distant smile on her face, silently to descend the stairways of the castle to a small unused room in its foundations, a servants'

kitchen where she had been born and lived in poverty with her mother during her first years, the room where the two of them had tenderly nursed the last of the Skanderbegs back to life on their bed of straw, while they slept on the stone floor.

Sophia had kept the room exactly as it had been then, with its bare walls and its little hearth, the one or two pots and the bed of straw, the broom by the door.

On those mornings she took the broom and proudly swept the floor of the little kitchen. Went down on her knees in her plain black dress and her flat black hat and her black gloves to scrub and scrub the worn stones. Chopped a few imaginary vegetables and kindled a meager imaginary fire, setting the pot to cook the morning meal for the lord of her ruined castle.

Later she drifted up to the courtyard to gather imaginary firewood and tend the imaginary garden where imaginary vegetables grew, down on her knees once more washing out imaginary rags and hanging them up to dry, humming Armenian nursery rhymes as she did the chores of her childhood.

It's on her, whispered the servants in awe, peeking out the windows.

Sophia had broken her hip and the bones had mended poorly, causing her to totter when she walked, bent forward from the waist with her hands groping in the air for balance. And on those special days the bent old woman wandering in the courtyard, so tiny and frail, seemed at any moment about to grasp some passing breeze that would lift her above the walls and the lemon groves on the soft sunlight of her memories.

It's on her, whispered the servants in awe, peeking out the windows to see whether their tiny mistress was still with them. Or whether she had already taken flight, and the strange distant smile of a child's dreams had finally found its way to heaven.

In the dining room Bach's Mass in B Minor progressed from a chanted solo to a choral response. Sophia accepted two lamb chops, waiting until the empty place at the far end of the table had been served before she picked up her fork. Nubar was already chewing a slice of brown bread and cutting up boiled vegetables.

I wish you'd have just one of these chops, she said gently, but Nubar ignored the comment.

Vegetarianism was one of the important resolutions he had made on his twenty-first birthday.

I've come across a fascinating historical study, he said to change the subject.

Sophia sighed.

What is it this time?

It was written by a Scotsman. It's called, Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Freemasons, llluminati, & Reading Societies.

Sophia shook her head.

Really, Nubar, spare me. What is that supposed to mean?

Just what it says. It turns out, you see, that the Knights Templars weren't really exterminated in 1364 as everyone has always thought. They survived as a secret society dedicated to abolishing all monarchies and overthrowing the papacy in order to found a world republic under their control. From the beginning they were poisoning kings, slowly, so the kings would appear to be insane, as so many have. Then in the eighteenth century they captured control of the Freemasons. In 1763 they created a secret literary society ostensibly led by Voltaire and Condorcet and Diderot. But it wasn't really the Templars who were doing all this. They were behind it.

Plots? asked Sophia. Still more plots? Who were they?

The Jews of course.

Oh Nubar, spare me. Not that kind of nonsense.

But it's not nonsense, Bubba, it's fact. And it goes back much further than the Templars. I can prove it to you.

Now Sophia tried to change the subject.

What was in those crates the workmen were carrying up to your tower this morning?

Cinnabar, Bubba.

Cinnabar? More cinnabar? I thought there was a shipment just last week.

There was, but my experiments use up a great deal of mercury.