paper and on the floor of the wrestling school, in Istanbul. It’ll work on any scale.”
“Of course.”
Yashim closed his eyes. “And a pattern repeats, too.” He thought of the Iznik tiles he had saved from the fountain. Minute versions of a larger pattern. “The same shapes reoccur throughout. A square, for instance, is the center of a bigger square.”
“Yes,” Palewski agreed.
“Perhaps the diagram we’ve followed fits into a larger version of the same diagram? Making room for Finkel after all. Extend the connections that link everyone in Venice, and you could have a version of the diagram that includes Resid, and the sultan, too. It’s like this. The Tatar should have killed Carla that night. Next morning Finkel turns up at the Ca’ d’Aspi. He has been sitting on the order to remove the painting and the note.”
“So why does he choose that morning to make a move?”
“Exactly. Either he thought that Carla was dead or he knew already that the Tatar had failed. Either way, there must be a link between them.”
Palewski slapped a hand to the rail. “The Tatar was working for the Austrians!”
“Not quite. He was sent by Resid. But he was steered by Ruggerio, who was killed when the job was done.”
“Ruggerio could have told Finkel.”
Yashim nodded. “Easily. It’s a diagram of possibilities, but it doesn’t touch on motive, Palewski.”
“Resid’s motive is fairly obvious, isn’t it? He sent the Tatar to destroy the evidence that the Duke of Naxos was in fact Sultan Abdulmecid. To save the sultan’s honor.”
“With Austrian help?”
Palewski threw up his hands. “I don’t get it, Yashim. Why would the Austrians help Resid?”
Yashim bit his lip.
“There’s more to it than the sultan’s honor. Resid was chasing down evidence that the sultan had misbehaved in Venice. Evidence that could safeguard his own position, too.”
“Blackmail? That’s more like it,” Palewski agreed. “But it still doesn’t give the Austrians a motive.”
Yashim smiled grimly. “On the contrary, it gives them every motive. What do the Austrians want from the Ottoman Empire?”
“Peace and quiet, I suppose.”
“Exactly. The Austrians are overstretched. In Italy, in Poland, in Galicia. They are keeping a lid on things, but only just. Even Carla wanted the money for the cause of Venetian independence. The Austrians would like nothing better than a compliant sultan. Finkel’s instructions were to get the note, but he didn’t do anything until the last minute. And then, thanks to us, it was too late.”
“You mean Finkel knew about the Tatar? He sat back and waited for the Tatar to do his job for him?”
“By eliminating the witnesses, one by one. Who’d ever imagine a Tatar assassin would be stalking the streets of Venice? You didn’t believe it yourself, even when Nikola put him in his painting. And that gave the Austrians their alibi.”
“If the Tatar got the incriminating note, Resid would have the Austrians to thank,” Palewski said slowly. “If he failed, the Austrians would take it themselves. Either way, they stood to gain by cooperating with Resid.” He gave a low whistle. “No wonder Resid didn’t want you hunting the Bellini in Venice. He was handing control of Ottoman foreign policy to Austria.”
They exchanged glances.
“This is going to be awfully hard to prove, Yashim.”
“Yes.”
“And it isn’t over while Carla-the contessa-is still alive.”
“No.”
“And if Resid finds out where we’ve been…”
“Yes.”
Palewski looked out to sea and sighed. “Do you know, I am missing Venice much more than I’d expected.”
114
The Bosphorus quivered in the summer heat. On the Pera shore of the Golden Horn, where once the plane had extended its grateful shade, sunlight sprang from the rubble of the broken pavement. Across the Horn the courtyards of the mosques were full; people squatted against the walls and moved lazily to and fro between the arcades and the fountains.
Outside the Topkapi Palace, Yashim stopped by a fountain whose scrolled and overhanging eaves created a welcome strip of shade. He set a book and a small parcel down on the stone bench and washed his hands and face beneath the spigot. Then he went through the main gate of the Topkapi Palace into the First Court.
There were more people here than was usual, now that the Ottoman court had moved to a new, European- style palace on the Bosphorus. They came for the dappled shade of the trees beneath which they sat cross-legged: elderly men in fezzes and pantaloons, drawing on long pipes; younger men with swathed wives, watching their children scamper through the dust.
Yashim crossed the court and reached the High Gate, where he knocked.
A sleepy halberdier opened a wicket.
“Yashim lala, to see the valide sultan.”
Inside, the gatehouse was cool and dark. Yashim sank gratefully down onto a stone bench.
A few minutes later, another halberdier saluted him, and they went out into the glare of the Second Court. Instead of crossing to the far corner and the entrance of the harem, the halberdier took him to the central gate and then right, toward the Treasury.
He found the valide in the Baghdad Kiosk, lounging on a divan set up beneath the arches.
She smiled and raised a hand when she saw him, her bracelets tinkling like water.
“Don’t look so shocked, Yashim,” she said as he approached. “There are limits to our endurance.”
Yashim smiled and bowed. The valide’s apartments were like ovens in the heat.
“It’s not the heat, Yashim. I was born to it, after all. It’s the stillness. I thank the sultan, Yashim. He suggested I come here.” She patted the divan. “I have no idea how he intends to rule and frankly I am too old to care. But I approve of his consideration.”
The Baghdad Kiosk was one of the oldest parts of the palace, a medieval cavern open to the breeze with a view running straight up the Bosphorus.
“I’m not shocked, valide. I’m only pleased that the sultan-”
“Remembers me?” She arched an eyebrow, while Yashim shook his head. “I even sleep here sometimes,” she said. “I also like the view. It makes me feel like a sultan myself.”
A girl came in carrying a tray of cooling sherbet.
“Tell me about Venice,” the valide said.
Yashim almost dropped his glass.
“Venice, valide?”
“Do the women still sit in their altana on the roofs, making their hair go yellow?”
Yashim lowered his eyes, nonplussed. The valide’s vision of Venice was so different from the one he’d seen.
“I brought you something,” he remembered.
She undid the parcel. Inside, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, was a pair of candlesticks. They were made of a twist of pink Murano glass, and each had a tassel of colored pendants dangling from the rim.
The valide examined them carefully. “Very pretty, Yashim.”
Yashim felt satisfied; the valide was never lavish with her praise.
“I should have liked to have seen Venice,” she continued. “But perhaps it is very ugly now?”
“It is beautiful, valide. But it is poor.”
