talk.
“It’s past his bedtime.” Dmitri took Yashim’s arm. “We’d best be off. He doesn’t like the dark.”
The gatekeeper scratched his head, disappointed. They heard him scrape the bolts behind them.
“You were good,” Yashim said. “For a moment I thought-”
Dmitri hissed angrily: “You never said you’d go inside.”
They walked on in silence until they reached the track.
“I’m going this way.” Dmitri held out a handful of tomatoes. “If you like…?”
Yashim shook his head. He watched Dmitri walk away, until he was lost in the dusk that gathered beneath the trees. Then he turned and walked in the direction of the quay.
He didn’t hear the sound of running feet until it was too late. A man, running barefoot toward him. The man was a shadow between the trees, and the last light had begun to fade.
Yashim stopped where he was: the man approaching flung back his head to look behind. Yashim heard his panting breath, and at the last moment he swiveled to one side.
He might have got clear had he jumped from one rut in the track to the other. Instead, the runner crashed blindly into Yashim, whose legs gave way: the runner pitched forward over him, hands outstretched, and the two of them rolled on the ground.
Yashim was winded. He threw up a hand to grab the man’s wrist but his fingers closed instead on something round and hard. The runner was already somersaulting over him, and he broke free with a tug that seemed to drag Yashim’s fingers out of their sockets. Before Yashim could stagger to his feet the man was up and off, pelting down the track.
“Hey! Hey!”
Someone else was lumbering heavily up the track. Yashim held his side: the collision had bruised him, and he needed to suck the air into his lungs. His hand hurt.
“You there! Hey! Stop, thief!”
Yashim shook his head and straightened up.
“Not your thief,” he gasped. And then it struck him: the word was kleftis. The man lumbering up the track had shouted “ klepta,” which was Greek, but ancient Greek.
“What the devil-?”
The last remark was made, not in ancient Greek, but in a language Yashim, who had every language he was likely to meet on the islands, and four more, knew most imperfectly. The tone, and the voice, seemed unmistakable.
“Compston!”
The dark bulk of George Compston, second secretary at the British embassy to the Sublime Porte, coalesced at Yashim’s elbow.
“The deuce! Jer voo connais, monsieur. Ce klepta — I mean, ce voleur, monsieur — ” He panted, and wiped his brow: “My God! Yashim efendi! I mean to say!”
“Mais oui-c’est moi,” Yashim replied, half smiling in the dark. He took the Englishman’s arm and felt for his hand. “Your watch, I think.”
He pressed the watch into Compston’s hand. The young man gurgled with surprise.
“B-by all that’s holy, Yashim efendi! Pater’s Hunter! Well, well… The blighter had it off me by the quayside, when I was taking a walk with a girl… snatched it out of my weskit. I’ve been running ever since. And a pretty girl, too.”
He held the watch up to his ear. “Still ticks! We can iron out the creases, Yashim efendi. Good work! Chain’s gone, though.” He paused. “You didn’t happen to get the chain?”
“I’m afraid the chain broke off,” Yashim replied drily.
“Too bad. Little cutpurse, good day’s haul. But not the Hunter, eh?”
“It was only chance-”
“Bloody miracle. Pater’s Hunter,” Compston murmured. “Can’t thank you enough, Yashim efendi. Pretty much the old man’s parting shot. Go forth, young man, and all that. Solid gold. Not that it’s what matters. I mean to say.”
“It was nothing.”
“Look, if you’re heading for the city I could send you on.” He linked his arm in Yashim’s, and they strolled down the track together. “I brought the embassy yawl.”
They reached the quayside a few minutes later, Compston still extolling the virtues of his father’s watch, eager to examine it under the light.
“No, not a scratch I can see. Tick-tock, good as new. Pity about the chain, but it’s the watch that matters. Hi! Caiquejee!”
He gestured cheerfully to the boatman. “New passenger! Alexander the Great. Hop in, Yashim efendi. Stavros gets you back to Istanbul in under an hour, or I’m a Dutchman.”
“You aren’t coming?”
“Back to strolling, efendi.” Compston raised a hand. “Take the yawl. Least I can do for you.” He glanced about the quay. “Now, where’s that dashed girl?”
46
One by one, along the edge of the Golden Horn, the fishing boats drawn up on the strand lit their lamps as dusk descended over the Bosphorus. Dark figures crouched beneath their prows, tending the braziers where they cooked their fish: mackerel, mostly, headed, gutted, and then split apart to sizzle for a few minutes over the glowing charcoal. The warm air reeked of fish oil dripping into the fires.
A Nubian sailor slapped his hams and squatted down by one of the braziers. The fisherman took his coin, and tipped a hot mackerel fillet into a flat roll.
Overhead, in the branches of a plane tree, Kadri licked his lips, and waited.
47
The embassy caique swept over a glassy sea. Yashim lay back, reveling in the wind, pondering his discovery.
At length he saw the dim outline of the Topkapi Palace, lights in the tower of the Third Court, and the curve of the dome of Ayasofya. As the ferry wheeled into the Golden Horn, the great mosques of Bayezid and Suleyman seemed like curious configurations of the hilltops; beneath them, all along the Stamboul shore, a parade of tiny lights winked in the gathering darkness where the fishermen had set up their braziers. The quayside was empty. The fishermen had already gone, leaving their nets. The men who hung around the quays had retreated-some to the Greek bars that thronged the lower streets around the port, others to their wives and children.
A whiff of grilled fish wafted across the water.
The fishing boats drawn up on the strand were all alike, all selling mackerel fresh from the sea, and Yashim found it hard to choose one over another. He saw a sailor sitting on his hams and munching a sandwich with evident enjoyment: the firelight flickered on his black skin, and his teeth were very white in the darkness.
Yashim approached the boat and pointed to the flaming grill. “I’d like one nicely done,” he said.
The fisherman nodded, dropped a split mackerel into a round of bread, and held it up. And at that moment something odd happened.
The sandwich disappeared.
Yashim’s hand met the empty hand of the fisherman, and they both startled.
Overhead a branch creaked in the darkness.
