“Yes, Chief.” He handed Omar a piece of paper. “I found out about the keys too. The central cashier has the key to the main vault and the barred gates. The assistant director and the comptroller each have one key to the double locks on the strong room doors. You need all three keys at the same time to get into the strong rooms.”
“Fine,” Omar grumped. “but have you got anything useful?”
“There’s only one set of keys,” Rejep added triumphantly.
“Well, fuck a donkey,” Omar exclaimed. “Can you imagine? One of the managers wanders out the door with his key and falls into the Bosphorus and suddenly the entire gold reserves of the empire and half a dozen countries are unavailable.” His voice was thick with incredulity. “If that’s not crazy, then call me a donkey’s whore.”
They contemplated the locked strong room. “What do you think?” Kamil asked the gendarme captain.
“It would take a long time to break through that door by force,” the captain concluded. “It would practically take a military operation. It would be better to get a locksmith, although I don’t know anyone with experience in opening doors like this.”
“Or a safecracker,” Omar said, smiling broadly. “I know just the man.” He sent Rejep to fetch him.
Within half an hour, Rejep returned, leading a man who reached only up to Kamil’s chest. Despite his short legs and odd gait, he moved swiftly. A large growth on his back bent his head at an angle, but his face was handsome and confident. He wore a padded jacket and a leather satchel hung from his belt.
“Hagop, my good friend”-Omar beamed-“we need your peerless skills.”
“Well, Chief, we meet again. What do you have this time?”
“We’d like you to crack this strong room.” Omar pointed at the locked door.
Hagop coughed. “You want me to rob the Ottoman Bank?”
Omar looked offended. “Of course not. We’re all representatives of the law here.”
Hagop glanced at the policemen and gendarmes standing around the room. “Whatever you say, Chief.” He opened his satchel and spread out a variety of mysterious tools. He inserted a thin piece of metal into the lock of the barred gate, and within moments a latch clicked and the gate swung open. Hagop then turned his attention to the strong room door. He ran his fingers over every crease and rivet, then spent some time examining the lock. He finally turned to Omar. “This won’t be easy, but I can do it. The same deal?”
“Same deal.”
Kamil wondered what kind of regular deal a police chief would have with a safecracker, but he had learned that some things about Omar he was better off not knowing.
Hagop asked for more lights. “Bring me some water, then get out,” he commanded. “I’ll tell you if I need anything else.”
Omar and Kamil went outside to reclaim their horses. The morning sun had burned through the mist and the destruction was more evident. Crowds of curious onlookers milled about the street. A few men were picking through the charred remains of the taverna.
Omar called over one of the gendarmes. “Get those men out of there before they break their legs.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Omar said, placing a restraining hand on the neck of Kamil’s horse. “If you need three keys to get in, where did Swyndon get the other two?”
“That’s what I’m hoping he’ll tell us.”
11
Vahid sank into the leather chair in his new office. Akrep occupied a large stone villa near the outer perimeter of Yildiz Palace, not far from the forest. He treasured the thick walls, the solitude, the secluded corners of his new realm. Mounted on the wall behind him was a matching backdrop to the chair, the framed leather padded and tufted into large diamonds like a quilt. He understood the need for certain trappings to induce respect and obedience. He had had most of the other furniture removed so that the high-ceilinged room seemed even more imposing. Two straight-backed chairs were placed before his desk for visitors.
In a locked room in the basement he kept a bloody sword. Vizier Köraslan’s only son had stabbed his best friend with it in an act of rage over a woman. Vahid had spirited the friend’s body away, and it was later discovered in the Belgrade Forest, where presumably the young man had been robbed and set upon by bandits. Vahid had arranged for some bandits to be killed by the police, just to put the minds of the city’s inhabitants at rest, as the forest was a favorite spot for outings. Vahid had also let the grateful vizier know that the bloody murder weapon with his son’s insignia was in a safe place and that he had paid a witness to the murder to be quiet. That the witness didn’t exist was immaterial. It was the perfect solution. Vizier Köraslan could continue to lie to himself about the nature of his vicious son, and Vahid had been promoted and given this building to run Akrep.
Vahid instructed his assistant not to disturb him. He brought out Rhea’s hairpin and placed it on his desk. The tines were silver, shaped to conform to the head. It was crowned with a spray of rubies, each framed in gold and attached by a tiny chain to the crest. He held it up against the light so that the rubies spilled from the comb like a sparkling waterfall. An expensive pin. How had Rhea acquired it? Her father owned vineyards on the Aegean coast and sold his wine by the barrel. He knew Rhea was-had been-her father’s favorite, but he was unlikely to give the youngest of his six children a valuable ruby ornament. It was the sort of thing you gave a wife. He thought about his own father, who had never given his mother a kind word, much less a gift.
Vahid ran his fingers over the tines. He should have been the one to give Rhea this gift. Instead, just like his father, he had demanded everything but given her nothing. She would have married him if he had given her jewels like this. Women always responded when you gave them what they wanted. But he had never been able to understand what it was that Rhea wanted.
“I respect you, sir,” she had said in a voice so warm that he was convinced she liked him. They met every Saturday afternoon in the private room of a café overlooking the Golden Horn. There she let him touch her golden hair, the shafts of it flexible between his fingers. He held her dimpled hand with its translucent pink nails. Once she let him guide her trembling head onto his shoulder. Her hair smelled of lemons.
But she refused his offer of marriage, saying her father wouldn’t allow it. He then talked to her father, a man who could have used a powerful son-in-law. Her father put him off, once saying she was too young, another time that he did not yet have the money for a dowry. Vahid understood that Rhea’s father was afraid to refuse him, and he took comfort in that small hope. Lately he had put pressure on her father to hasten his decision. One of the father’s warehouses had burned, ruining a season’s production. Vahid wondered if Rhea had guessed the origin of the fire. Could that have been the reason she had refused to see him the past two weeks? He pressed his thumb against the tine of the hairpin with such force that it buckled. He could master men, he thought, but whenever he reached for love, it was wrested from his grasp.
He opened a drawer and took out a small, sharp, and pointed knife, a bottle, and a latched box. He rolled up his sleeve, revealing a swarthy arm seeded with scars like grains of rice. He pressed the tip of the knife to the skin just below the crook of his elbow and for a few moments let the sting penetrate like a balm. His heart beat faster. Lowering the blade, he increased the pressure ever so gently, until he broke into a sweat, his eyesight blurred, and a cascade of pleasurable feeling washed over him. He removed the knife. He was breathing rapidly and his heart pounded. Carefully averting his eyes from the line of blood, he took a piece of cotton from the box, poured on alcohol solution, and tied it to his arm with a cotton strip. He rolled up his sleeve, flexing his arm to feel the sting. He put on his jacket, slipped Rhea’s hairpin in his pocket, and left without a word to his assistant.