The Snake Stone: A Novel

all that much: he stood a far better chance of getting out alone. But he didn’t say a word to anyone—least of all his wife.”

“I see. He abandoned her?”

“He abandoned all of us. You might say, monsieur, that he jeopardized the whole plan. If the Egyptians had caught him—well, you can imagine. I suppose he did what he felt he had to do to save his own neck. We had an uncomfortable day of it, once we’d found him gone. We couldn’t be sure the Egyptians didn’t know we were coming.” He straightened up and took a breath.

“But Meyer wasn’t caught by the Egyptians.”

“No,” Millingen said slowly. “He wasn’t caught.”

Yashim stood very still. His eyes traveled slowly over the figure of the man in a frock coat leaning against the fireplace, over the two chairs, then over the ornate rug on the wooden floor.

“And Chronica Hellenica? Do you still subscribe?”

“Chronica—?” Dr. Millingen frowned. “No one subscribes to the Chronica these days. It folded years ago.”

Yashim tilted his head back. “I’ve been wondering if he taught you that trick with the coin? Was that how Dr. Meyer whiled away his time? Or was he too busy with the Hetira? Was that formed at Missilonghi, too?”

The question hung in the air.

“I thought—at first—that the Hetira was like a secret army,” Yashim continued when Millingen did not reply. “Taking control of the Greeks in the city—raising money from them, terrorizing them, punishing them for stepping out of line. Preparing, perhaps, for an uprising. These are delicate times. I thought that the Hetira were killers.”

Millingen sighed. “I told you once what the Hetira was. A boys’ club. A learned society. Chronica Hellenica—edited by Meyer—was our society journal. Our aim has always been to preserve Greek culture. We raise money for the maintenance of churches, here and throughout the Ottoman Empire. We sponsor schools. It’s nothing so very sinister.”

“Then why the secrecy?”

“Partly for amusement. Partly because, when we founded the society, we thought of ourselves as rebels. And partly for the sake of prudence. You might call it a matter of tact. Not everyone in the Ottoman Empire takes kindly to the idea of Greek cultural unity. But perhaps we have pushed the secrecy too far.”

Yashim looked doubtful. “But Dr. Stephanitzes’s book is inflammatory, isn’t it?”

“Dr. Stephanitzes has a mystical turn of mind, Yashim efendi. And he is something of a scholar. You might take that book as a statement of intent, I don’t know. For Stephanitzes, it is simply an exercise in tracing the development of the restoration legend over the centuries. He’s a Greek, of course: he wants to show that the Greeks are different. It really matters to him that the Greeks developed a cultural resistance to Ottoman rule— otherwise, they would simply be Ottomans in Greek costume. And then what do you have left? Only politics. And politics, as I have no doubt said before, is the Greeks’ national vice.”

Millingen paused to relight his pipe. “That,” he said, puffing, “is what Missilonghi taught us. And it’s why we established the Hetira. Secret, cultural—and essentially unpolitical.”

“If that’s true,” Yashim said dejectedly, “you have wasted a great deal of my time.”

A skein of blue smoke edged upward from Millingen’s pipe.

“When you saw Lefevre,” Yashim said slowly, “did he mention the possibility of other buyers?”

Millingen shrugged. “A man like Lefevre,” he began. “If you were trying to sell something, wouldn’t you try to create an auction?”

“But no one could trust him.”

“No. But don’t forget, I was instructed to buy on sight. We wanted Lefevre to find his—” He paused, looking for the right words. “His Byzantine relics. But other people might have wanted them—not to be found. It’s only an idea.”

Yashim was silent for a moment.

“Do you think the Mavrogordatos had him killed?” he asked at length.

“Why—what makes you say that?”

“You know the answer to that, doctor. Madame Mavrogordato.”

“What rubbish,” Millingen retorted, rising to his feet.

“Lefevre was married to Madame Mavrogordato. At Missilonghi—until he ran away.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Millingen said furiously. “Petros!” He got up quickly and bellowed at the door. “Petros!”

There was a sound of rushing feet outside. To Yashim, it sounded as if someone were going up the stairs—and again, that curious swishing noise he’d heard before. But then Petros appeared, looking alarmed.

“This gentleman is leaving,” Millingen said crisply. “Show him the door, Petros.”

106

THE Suleymaniye Mosque stands on the third hill of Istanbul, overlooking the Golden Horn. Built by Sinan, the master architect, for his patron, Suleyman the Magnificent, in 1557, it reflects all the piety and grandeur of its age.