“That’s an interesting rug,” Kamil noted.
Amida looked momentarily disconcerted. “That rug? It’s been in my family for generations.” He pointed to an armchair. “Please sit.”
A dark-skinned boy of about fifteen hurried into the room. He stopped short when he saw Kamil, and the smile slipped from his face, but not before Kamil had witnessed his unguarded adoration when he looked at Amida.
“Bilal, go fetch us some whisky,” Amida told him.
The boy cast a curious glance at Kamil, then disappeared down a corridor.
The room was furnished in European style, with a sofa and armchairs crammed into the small space. Several Venetian lamps stood on occasional tables, their delicate glass bellies filled with oil. The sofa rustled when Kamil sat. Cheap local manufacture, he thought, stuffed with straw and covered in cotton, its wooden arms gilded. Amida had expensive tastes, but not enough money to complete the picture of fine living. The furniture in Balkis’s house, by contrast, was finely made. She clearly kept her son on a short financial leash.
“Do you play?” Kamil asked, indicating the Steinway piano in the corner. It must have cost a fortune.
“Amateur,” Amida said enthusiastically. He went over and slid his hand along the sleek black lid. “Isn’t it magnificent?”
Amida reminded Kamil of a puppy, one moment earnest, the next playful as he trotted up with a favorite scrap of bone. Not gang material, Kamil thought, and wondered whether the young man was in over his head.
The boy brought a tray with a decanter and two glasses. He poured each man a drink, then squatted against the far wall. Amida offered Kamil a cigarette, then took a small ormolu box from the table, clicked it open, and pushed a lever. A flame shot up. When they had lit their cigarettes, he tilted the box toward Kamil so he could see the elaborate mechanism inside.
“Clever, isn’t it? Every day there are new inventions. To be really modern, you can never rest. Railways, for example, are changing everything. Soon we’ll be able to get on in Istanbul and step off in Paris. Have you heard about something called centrifugal force?” He seemed to have forgotten all about the reason for Kamil’s visit.
“The tendency of rotating bodies to fly outward,” Kamil answered. “I’ve read about it.”
“In America, they have a train based on centrifugal force, a gravity switchback train. It was built on an island called Coney. They call it the Gravity Pleasure Ride.”
Amida seemed starved for conversation. “You know,” he continued, “I spent nine years away, in Abyssinia mostly, but on the way back I spent a year in Cairo. I met the most fascinating people there. Have you heard of Shepheard’s Hotel? It really gave me an appreciation for the modern life. I met an American there, Charles Freer, one of the new men of industry. He runs factories and collects art and antiquities. The two marks of the modern man, he told me, are money and taste. Have you been abroad?”
“I was in England for a year,” Kamil said.
“London, Paris, New York. I’d love to see those places.”
“Are you planning to travel?”
Amida’s mood changed. “I have responsibilities here. I’m going to modernize the family business. Once that’s done and it can stand on its own, I plan to travel.”
“What’s your family’s business?”
“Export,” Amida answered blandly.
“I see, and what do you export?” Kamil could see the jeweler’s wheels spinning inside Amida’s head.
“Carpets,” he said finally.
No carpet dealer would put the prayer rug of Ahmet I on his floor and walk on it with dirty boots, Kamil thought. Did Amida’s “family business” send Remzi to bribe Kamil? Whoever was behind the Tobacco Works kidnapping was well organized, and, unlike the old smuggling families, brutally careless of life and unafraid of the police. Omar thought they were a new and dangerous group. But they had sent Remzi, a common local thug, so perhaps it was only the leadership that was new.
Was that leader Amida? Kamil regarded the young man and thought it unlikely. He didn’t appear to possess the steely bloody-mindedness that made a leader. No one would follow him. Perhaps it was someone else in the village, someone not so obvious. Balkis, perhaps. But she hadn’t recognized Remzi’s name.
“When there are so many interesting new things, it seems a shame to be wasting our time on old pieces, like the reliquary your uncle Malik reported stolen from the Kariye Mosque,” Kamil ventured.
Amida hesitated for a moment, as if scenting a trap. “I agree, modern is best.”
“Did you ever see the reliquary?”
“It’s just an old box.”
“So who do you think would take it?”
Amida shrugged. “Some people like that old stuff.” He refilled his glass, knocking the decanter against the rim.
“Do you know people who buy antiquities?”
“Me? No.” He stood. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
“Let me try this again,” Kamil said calmly. “I’d like you to take me to the tunnel that leads to the Tobacco Works.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The Tobacco Works is over by the Golden Horn.”
Kamil waited.
“Look, I heard about the policemen killed over there last night. Word gets around. But I have nothing to do with that,” Amida insisted. “And I don’t know what tunnel you’re talking about.”
Kamil wondered whether that could be true. Amida looked nervous, but it might simply be because he thought Kamil was trying to link him to the murders. He considered again the possibility that Remzi was lying, saying the tunnel connected to Sunken Village in order to cast suspicion on Amida and away from someone else. He decided to apply more pressure and put his face close to Amida’s.
“There’s a policeman missing. If you help us find him, we’ll overlook your role in all this. But if we find out that you knew about it and didn’t help us, then you’ll be spending the rest of your life in a dungeon. He was taken into that tunnel and I’m going to find him. I know the tunnel ends in this village and I’ll find out where. I might begin by tearing your house apart, starting with your piano.”
Amida’s expression swung between confusion, outrage, and fear. “Go ahead and look,” he said. “You won’t find a tunnel in the piano or anywhere else.”
It was clear to Kamil that Amida wouldn’t tell him where the tunnel was, even if he knew. What was he afraid of?
“You’ve been warned,” he told Amida ominously. “If you change your mind, you can find me at the Beyoglu Court. Believe me, you’ll wish you had talked to me sooner.”
He walked out.
He could arrest Amida for stealing the carpet and the reliquary later. Right now, Amida was more useful to him as a potential link to the dealer, especially since his other link, Remzi, was in jail.
Kamil stood at the base of the cistern wall, a massive expanse of rough, broken stone, wondering where to start looking. He walked the perimeter of the cistern, working his way systematically into breaks and around fallen sections. Some homes, like Amida’s, were built right against the wall with bricks taken from the cistern itself, as if they were parasites. He soon generated a trail of curious onlookers, mainly children. He passed out some small copper coins, and the children led him to a rotted wooden door. He pried it open and squeezed into the corridor behind, but it soon ended in a pile of rubble.
The entrance had to be inside one of the houses, Kamil concluded, when he returned, dusty and sweaty, to the village square. He studied the cottages and the enveloping cistern for a few moments, noting the mounds of debris that had collected against the walls. If you multiplied that debris over several hundred years, he realized, the ground was probably five meters higher now than when the cistern was built. He had been looking in the wrong place. Any tunnel built back then wouldn’t be at this level, especially if it had been used for water. It would be far below ground.
He looked around, envisioning a trapdoor in every cottage that led to a rabbit warren of steps and paths running underground in every direction. Omar was right. This was truly a smuggler’s paradise. He wondered if Balkis or Malik knew or would tell him anything. He doubted it. There was a secret to this place, strange undercurrents that disoriented him. He wanted to go back and smash a chair into Amida’s piano until he told him where the tunnel was. What kept him back was the faint possibility that Amida was telling the truth and Remzi was lying.