for both East and West, for Christian and Muslim, is incalculable. It was the center of trade, and trade breeds wealth, wealth breeds warfare, just like religion. Here, still, in this slum, East and West mingle, trying to get the better of one another. Your father, I believe, saw the coming of the new religious war, the last Crusade, if you will, and he wanted very much to do everything in his power to stave it off.'
'So that was why he wanted to be Magister Regens.'
'Through the power of the Order, judicious use of its cache of secrets-oh, yes, I know of the cache's existence, though little, I'm afraid, of its contents. There is great power there, and influence, this much I do know. But it would take a special man, indeed, to take control of the Haute Cour, to be elected Magister Regens.'
'There was also the matter of the traitor hidden in the midst of the Haute Cour. I imagine he would have worked dutifully to frustrate my father's plans.'
'I would think he made circumstances more difficult for Dexter, yes.'
'I found him,' Bravo said. 'In Venice. Paolo Zorzi.'
'Zorzi! But this is incredible news.' Khalif shook his head sadly. 'I know Zorzi, and liked him, as did your father. I thought him intensely loyal.'
'Then he did his job well,' Bravo said.
'Did?'
'He's dead. Uncle Tony-Anthony Rule-shot him before he himself was killed by a second traitor, one of Zorzi's Guardians named Jenny Logan.'
'My God, the tragedy is doubled and redoubled.' Khalif rubbed his chin. 'Heartfelt condolences, my Bravo, what a terrible series of shocks you've had.' He lifted his glass. 'A drink to departed friends.'
They clinked glasses and drank deeply of the strong, harsh raki.
'And the inferno to our enemies, eh?' Khalif cried.
The glasses clinked again and this time they drained them dry.
The food came then, a veritable feast, seven plates or more, and they fell to consuming it. The steady rain had morphed into a fine drizzle that kept the concrete and roof tiles dark and gleaming. Lights had come on, steaming in the wetness. Illumination harsh as the local tobacco threw into prominence the bow-backed workers trudging across the bridges that spanned the ravines. The Natashas were long gone, presumably now hard at work seducing what tourists had wandered, half-stupefied, into their territory. An eerie hissing rose from the pavement, as if the drizzle were tiny pellets of ice. The low sky was the color of a deep and painful bruise.
Bravo was lost in thought. At length, he said, 'I never realized how difficult my father's life was. He was battling the Knights and members of his own Order.'
Adem Khalif nodded. 'Your father had vision, this is undeniable. In this he reminded me of Fra Leoni, the last Magister Regens of the Order, but he lacked a certain-how shall I put this-a certain ruthlessness. I don't mean to give offense, I loved Dexter as if he were my brother, but his expertise lay in other areas. His genius lay in planning for the future. He wasn't the warrior required of a Magister Regens. What was required was digging deep into the lower echelons of the Order, that's where his support would have come from.' Khalif's eyes twinkled. 'It's a lesson his successor should learn.'
Bravo put down his fork. 'You mean me.'
Khalif spread his hands. 'Who else? You are Dexter's son, he chose you from an early age to follow in his footsteps.'
'I've heard this before.'
'Of course by now you have, but have you ever asked yourself why he chose you? It wasn't because you were his son, that wasn't Dexter's way. The Order was too important to him, it was his life. He chose you, Bravo, because he knew. He saw your future, just as, I firmly believe, he saw his own death. It is the passing of things, from father to son, the building of a legacy, do you see? This I know.' He thumped his chest with his fist. 'I feel it here.'
'If my father had this so-called second sight, why didn't he know the identity of the traitor inside the Order?'
Khalif cocked his head to one side. 'I hear your skepticism, Bravo, and I grieve at your lack of faith. Do you think second sight is like a flashlight that can be turned on and off at will? This adolescent idea is from the comics. Your father wasn't a superhero. He was gifted with something unknown and unknowable, it cannot be questioned or parsed. The more you try to understand it, the more enigmatic-and improbable-it seems.' He shrugged. 'But I cannot tell you to have faith, you must find it on your own.'
There was silence between them for some time. Khalif went back to shoveling grilled octopus into his mouth. Bravo, his appetite vanished, turned away. Light thrown off by the buildings on either side lit the top of the ravines like a livid scar, but below was the utter darkness of the abyss, as if the ravines were bottomless, a crack clear down to the earth's core. On the bridges, the procession of people continued unabated. He observed a smattering of women now, young, pretty, perhaps more Natashas on a cigarette break. An old man walked beside a small boy, a large, square hand on the boy's narrow shoulder. The boy looked up, asked a question, which caused the old man's face to crease deeply in a smile that made him look twenty years younger.
'I need an answer,' Bravo said, turning back. 'Is there a building in Trabzon with a spiral staircase?'
Khalif, sucking at his teeth, thought for a moment. 'In fact, there is. At the Zigana Mosque. Why do you ask?'
Why? Because vice, the first of the words Dexter had written on the velvet scabbard lining, was derived from the French word vis, a vine. In medieval times, a vice was a spiral staircase, as in the twisting of a vine's woody tendrils.
'Come, come,' Khalif said, 'you've stopped eating. It's a sin with such fine food.'
The clear note of affection in his voice caused Bravo to turn back to him. 'On the matter of faith, ever since I started on this journey, my father has come to me in dreams and at… other times. At first, I thought little of it, putting the visions down to a symptom, an aftershock of his violent death, but now I don't know, I feel as if… as if in a way he's still with me.'
A huge grin spread across Adem Khalif's face. 'On the matter of faith, my Bravo, I believe you're on your way to finding yours.'
'Secrets,' Camille Muhlmann said. 'We all have secrets, God knows I have a fistful of them.'
She and Jenny rode in a jouncing taxi on their way into Trabzon from the airport, having caught the evening's last flight out from Venice, via Istanbul. High up, the sky was still indigo, but below the dark undercurrent of the night held sway, pierced here and there by lights, glimmering sickly yellow, as if irradiated.
'I had a lover who treated me badly-very badly.' Camille shook her head with a grim and rueful smile. 'What woman hasn't? One-at least one. But what I can't make out is why-why do we choose these men who will abuse us physically, mentally, emotionally? Is it because we feel we deserve to be punished, Jenny, or is it cultural, passed down from oppressed female to oppressed female? Is it true we can't help but feel the same way our mothers and grandmothers did?'
Jenny shook her head. 'I don't think it matters. What's important is that we can change, that we make different decisions, braver decisions.'
Camille raised her eyebrows. 'Really? How do you propose we do that when men stand in our way no matter which way we turn?'
'It might be that we walk away from them, from everything they've built, everything they stand for.' Jenny stared out the window for a moment, watching the fast accretion of concrete spreading over the green countryside like a pernicious skin disease. 'I used to think that, anyway.' Yes, she had, in the aftermath of her disastrous breakup with Ronnie Kavanaugh. In fact, she'd been sure of it. Then she had met Dexter Shaw, and everything in her life had changed. Or had it? Wasn't Dexter another of her male crutches? Arcangela would no doubt pity any woman with such a psychological need.
'But now, obviously you don't.' Camille held up a pack of cigarettes, and Jenny nodded.
As Camille lit up, she said, 'I would very much like to know what happened. Will you tell me?'
Jenny took the cigarette from between Camille's lips, took a long drag, let the smoke out slowly, then handed the cigarette back. 'I discovered that the way to change things is to do all the things men do, only better.'
'Beat them at their own game.'
'In a way,' Jenny said, 'but only in a way. Their game is the only game, that's the hard thing to get set in
