“You’re usually more thorough than this, Magistrate. Your evidence is as insubstantial as moonbeams. None of it implicates Vahid directly or gets you off the hook.”
Justice, Kamil realized with a sense of despair, depended not on big philosophical questions but on trivial details. He remembered Omar’s failed attempt to preserve a footprint in the church garden. “That’s all I have, Your Excellency,” he answered, barely hiding his exasperation. “However, the evidence against me is just as slim. A watch, but no motive or evidence that I ever set eyes on the girl. So let there be a trial,” he added defiantly.
The uneasy silence in the room stretched on. Kamil, seething, kept his eyes lowered. A servant brought a piece of live charcoal in a pair of tongs and placed it in the bowl of the minister’s chibouk. After a few exploratory puffs, Nizam Pasha said, “If there is a trial, it won’t be for a few months yet.”
Kamil looked surprised.
“Sultan Abdulhamid is sending you on an assignment to the east. In addition to investigating this socialist settlement, he wants you to find out what happened to the weapons from the confiscated shipment.”
Kamil was taken aback. “I thought the shipment was being kept under guard.”
“The British wanted their ship back, so the weapons were moved to a warehouse, coincidentally owned by your friend Yorg Pasha, and then they disappeared.”
At first, Kamil feared that Yorg Pasha had spirited them away himself, but as he heard the story of the men disguised as Ottoman soldiers who had brazenly stolen the guns, he chided himself for thinking badly of the man who was organizing his defense.
“I think it can be assumed,” Nizam Pasha concluded, “that the guns are headed east toward this settlement that you and Yorg Pasha seem to believe is so innocuous. If they fall into the hands of the Armenians in that province, Allah only knows what will happen. Sultan Abdulhamid believes they would turn the guns against us and join the Russians.” The minister laid down his pipe and walked over to one of the bookshelves. He drew his hand across the leather-bound spines, then turned back to Kamil. “Whatever the case, the wishes of our padishah, the Shadow of God on Earth, always take precedence. He is sending you east, and you can stand trial when you return. By that time, perhaps you’ll have some evidence, instead of conjectures. And, let us hope, the missing guns and gold.”
70
Vera stumbled on deck when Apollo told her they were approaching Trabzon. Her legs were weak from inactivity, but she felt elated. She had spent much of the four-day voyage in her cabin, out of the rain and wind, reading books in French, which Apollo had miraculously procured for her. He and the other men slept in hammocks in a common room. These comrades, Armenians from all walks of life in Istanbul, now crowded the deck. The ship had been “borrowed” by its captain and crew and would return to Istanbul immediately. That would leave only ten men and Vera. They would have to rely on local sympathizers to move the guns.
The men claimed to be socialists, but Vera by now understood that they did not understand socialism as she did, as a universal ideal of justice. This, she had come to realize, was an Armenian movement, and it was her Armenian heritage, not her ideas, that caused them to accept her. The men had obsessively planned the trek into the mountains, going over every possible scenario and danger. They had quarreled over each kurush of expenditure, since their means were limited by the money Father Zadian had collected.
“There’s Trabzon,” Yedo announced, pointing toward a cluster of red-roofed houses at the base of a steeply ascending forested slope patched with snow. Yedo, who had played the role of Apollo’s lieutenant, was from Trabzon, and his face seemed chiseled in replica of some ancient Roman hero.
Vera gazed over the approaching rooftops at the ever-expanding cliffs and thought about Gabriel alone in this wilderness. She wondered how he was doing, a kindly concern, without the commotion she had expected in her heart now that she was so close. Apollo planned to send a messenger to tell Gabriel that they were coming. She felt a shiver of apprehension. How would Gabriel receive her?
A crowd of curious townspeople waited onshore, watching the small steamboat dock. Apollo had taken down the Ottoman navy flag, and their fake uniforms were hidden inside one of the barrels. Yedo peered into the distance, looking for his cousins, who had been sent a telegram asking them to meet the ship. It was a busy port, so before long the attraction of a new, unidentified ship wore off, and the crowd dispersed.
Vera watched from deck as Yedo approached a group of youths squatting against a warehouse wall. They jumped up and surrounded him, gesturing eagerly. As Yedo spoke, the men cast occasional sharp glances at the ship. Several of them left and returned with mule-drawn carts. Finally, the hold was opened and the barrels rolled down the gangplank and loaded onto the carts. “Cod,” she read in English on the side of one barrel. The lids, she noticed, had been daubed with a crude symbol that might be a Henchak ax. That should be painted over, she thought, but probably no one here in the eastern mountains knew what it signified.
71
The weeks between Kamil’s release from prison and his upcoming voyage to the east passed over him like the eye of a storm. It was early February, and the snow in Istanbul had begun to melt, coursing down the hillsides in brooks and waterfalls, overwhelming drains, and flooding low-lying basements. The crimson smears of geraniums in window pots burned through the morning mist.
Elif had set up her easel in Kamil’s winter garden amid his orchids and was painting a fragrant, early-flowering Pleione praecox. The frilly pink-skirted flowers, she told Kamil, reminded her of ballet dancers. Since Huseyin’s return, Elif came nearly every morning to Kamil’s villa. Over breakfast, she shared news of Huseyin’s improvement, then took out her box of watercolors as Kamil left for the courthouse in Beyoglu.
To his surprise, Kamil found that he didn’t mind the loss of privacy in his winter garden, which he had thought of as his refuge. He had also overcome his anxiety that his orchids might be damaged. Elif always remembered to shut the door so that the temperature and humidity stayed constant. She drifted through his life light as a feather, and he found himself disappointed and out of sorts on the mornings when she did not appear.
He and Omar planned to embark on February 18, arriving in Trabzon just as the snow began to clear, but before the mountain roads were mired in mud caused by meltwater. Yakup was preparing their clothing and supplies, and Omar was seeing to the Ottoman navy steamer and the military guard the sultan had sent along with them. The police chief had insisted on accompanying them. He seemed convinced that Vahid’s plotting extended to the east and that he might discover something there to undermine the Akrep commander. Kamil tried not to think about the murder trial he would face upon his return.
It was a Friday morning, a day of rest when the devout went to worship. Kamil stayed home to catch up on his work, read, and tend his orchids.
Elif lounged on the sofa in the sitting room, chatting idly about the week’s events. She wore a cerise brocade vest over a white linen shirt and trousers. She had discarded her shoes at the door and, as usual, refused slippers, her toes burrowing into the thick pile of a tribal carpet. Kamil flung the French doors open to the garden, where as yet nothing grew, but the evergreen vines climbing the wall and the sparkling light of the strait beyond flooded the room with promise of spring. He came to sit beside her. Yakup had left a tray of coffee and savories on the table.
“Feride has changed,” Elif was saying. “She even stood up to Huseyin’s sisters the other day. When Feride told them that he was still missing, they descended on her like demons, demanding to know what was being done and blaming her for driving him away.” Elif grimaced. “One of them told me, ‘Your clothing is an abomination.’” Elif mimicked the woman’s high-pitched voice.