“A patient with burn wounds transferred from Eyüp Hospital yesterday or today?” The man rubbed his beard. “I don’t recall anyone like that. In fact, as far as I know we have no burn patients here. I’ll have to wake the director.”
He led them through a door at the opposite end of the vestibule, then across a colonnaded courtyard, where he knocked tentatively, then more loudly at a door. A tall, lanky man in a hastily donned robe emerged, settling a fez on his balding head. “What is it?” he asked.
Doctor Moreno stated his case again.
“Come, let’s look through the wards,” the director said, glancing curiously at the doctor’s associates, “but I can assure you that we have no burn patients. Are you sure he was sent here?”
Feride took a lamp and stepped into the first ward. It was cleaner than the Eyüp hospital and had fewer patients. She walked among the patients, then halted beside a man whose head was wrapped in bandages. She knew without a doubt it was Huseyin. This was the husband who had always supported her, even when her father committed suicide and, blaming herself, she lapsed into melancholia for months. This was the husband who adored his twin girls. The thought of them growing up without their father made her begin to weep.
The director rushed over. “Now, now, this is just a bad rash,” he explained gently. “Nothing life-threatening. A local man. Not your husband. Certainly not.”
Elif drew her arm through Feride’s and they continued to the next ward. After they had looked through all the rooms, she asked the director, “Where else could he have been brought in Üsküdar?”
“Patients with wounds that severe generally would be brought here. But there are several smaller infirmaries attached to the mosques.” In her exhaustion, Feride had let her veil fall open, and he politely avoided looking at her face.
“If such a patient appears, would you immediately send word?”
The director bowed. “Of course, hanoum.” He turned to Doctor Moreno. “I can make chambers available for you and your guests if you’d like to spend the night. It’s a dangerous crossing.”
“That it is,” muttered Nissim.
A cock crowed nearby and Feride opened her eyes, then sat up, startled by the unfamiliar room. A stone cupola arched above her, and a narrow window gave out onto a courtyard. It wasn’t the cock’s crow, she realized, that had awakened her. It was still night. Light flared across the window as men with lamps ran past through the courtyard. Feride put on her charshaf and stepped outside. The director was buttoning his jacket. He had forgotten his fez and his head looked pale and vulnerable. He saw her and said in a breathless half shout, “Please, hanoum, go back into your room and lock the door.”
As soon as he was out of sight, a figure detached itself from the shadows and pulled Feride aside.
“Elif!” Feride exclaimed, relieved. “What’s happening?”
Elif looked as though she hadn’t slept at all. “The doorman was murdered. They think we had something to do with it.”
“Why would they think that?”
“Because one of the patients also died.” She grasped Feride’s hand. “The man with the bandaged head.”
32
That morning, Kamil woke before dawn and rode directly to Omar’s house in Fatih. Omar’s wife, Mimoza, was already stoking the fire in the potbellied stove. She bade him sit, and returned after a moment with a glass of tea. At the door, her adopted son, Avi, slipped off his shoes and handed Mimoza two loaves of bread, still warm from the community oven.
“I saw you, but I couldn’t catch up with you.” He beamed at Kamil, then followed Mimoza to the kitchen.
A few moments later, Omar appeared, tucking in his shirt.
“Welcome, pasha, to our humble home.” He settled heavily beside Kamil on a cushion. Avi came in with the teapot. Omar waited until the boy had gone before he told Kamil in a low voice, “We found Abel. They had buried him already, but we dug him up.”
They sipped their tea in silence while Mimoza brought in a pan of poached eggs and spinach, settled it in the middle of the tray, and tilted a big spoon against it. She gave them a curious glance and disappeared again.
“Two fingers cut off,” Omar whispered, one eye on the corridor. “Burn marks on his yarak. Who would do something like that?”
“Akrep commander Vahid, no doubt,” Kamil responded, remembering Yorg Pasha’s warning. “He found Sosi through the nanny Bridget, and Sosi led him to her brother, Abel. Any sign of the girl?”
“The priest said she was abducted. On her engagement day, no less. She’ll be conspicuously dressed, which might make her easier to find. We talked to her fiancé, but he doesn’t know anything. He was under the impression that she lived a sheltered life at home. Their father was in the house when it happened, by the way. He’s blind, and now they say he has brain fever. We couldn’t get a coherent sentence out of him.”
“Yorg Pasha knows the man, Gabriel Arti, who carried out the robbery.” Kamil told him Arti’s suspicions about his driver, Abel, and about Vera Arti’s arrest.
“Yorg Pasha runs in dangerous circles,” Omar commented, “but that doesn’t surprise me. Now Abel setting off the explosion to draw attention to the Armenian cause, that surprises me. That’s like blowing off your behind to loosen up your bowels.” Omar let out a deep breath. “Well, they certainly got the palace’s attention.”
Mimoza coughed before she entered with the rest of their breakfast. They ate to Avi’s chatter and good-natured sparring between Omar and his wife. Kamil felt unaccountably lonely and wondered for the hundredth time where Feride and Elif were. No message had arrived.
When the dishes were cleared and the tray removed, Omar asked, “Do you think Gabriel took revenge on Abel for messing up his nice, neat robbery?”
Kamil remembered Yorg Pasha’s description of Gabriel. “I don’t think so. He has bigger problems. But I have a favor to ask of you.”
33
The normally placid Doctor Moreno was flushed with anger. “Of course, we’re leaving. You can’t possibly think we had anything to do with these murders.”
“As a man of science,” the director said, “you must admit it’s unlikely to be a coincidence that right after you arrive, the man who let you in and the man you mistook for Huseyin Pasha are both dead. We wait for the police.”
“Has it occurred to you, Director, that we might also be targets?” Feride pointed out. “Keeping us here puts us in danger as well. Whoever did this apparently wanted to kill”-her voice broke-“a man he believed, or thought I believed, was my husband.”
“I’m sorry, hanoum,” the director said in a conciliatory voice. “Of course, I understand that.” He peered at her. “Do you know why someone would want to kill your husband, especially as he is already incapacitated?”
Feride heard the slight pause before the word and knew the director thought that Huseyin was either dead or as good as dead.
“Ask the orderly who was on duty in the room,” Elif suggested in a boyish voice.
It was the first time she had spoken to the director, and he looked at her curiously. “Excellent idea, monsieur,” he told Elif, then called his assistant and told him to find the orderly.
“He’s the only one who could have seen me at the man’s bed,” Feride added, suddenly afraid.
After a few moments, word came that the orderly was missing.
Feride went to warn Vali and Nissim, who were keeping watch across the courtyard.
“Someone followed us here? Through that fog?” Nissim was incredulous.
“They could have gotten the location the same way we did,” Vali noted, “from the orderly at Eyüp hospital. He’d sell his mother for a kurush.”
“Who are these people?” Feride asked, near tears. “What should we do?”
“Not wait for the police.” Nissim turned to Vali. “Is there a carriage?”
Vali disappeared for a few moments, then returned and shook his head no. “We’ll have to walk.”