Mills stared at him. Moses Magaziner returned his gaze. “Oh no,” Mills said, “no no. This isn’t the way a world works. No no. You can’t get me with that stuff. What, there’s magic in the moonlight? No no. Look,” Mills said earnestly, almost severely, “sometimes things happen and you’d have to give long odds. Sure, and throw in a point spread just to get someone into position where he can’t afford not to take your bet. Freaky things. Not just coincidence but coincidence called. In expectation! Jolts and starts and thunderclaps, percentage and probability not just caught unaware or caught napping but caught napping unaware with its pants down. I mean out-of-the-blue-you-could-have-knocked-me-down-with-a-feather stuff, things so improbable as to be imponderable. Junk, you know? A fire at the ball game or an earthquake in the park. So farfetched and implausible it would be like spitting in God’s eye. One chance in a million would be a dead cert, foolproof, sure thing, safe bet, lead pipe cinch next to what I’m talking about. Or not talking about. Because what I am talking about you can’t talk about. Because if you could,” and he was weeping now, “because if you could, you could talk about everything, think about anything. Lovely things would happen, spectacular things. Friends like women who love you. Like lawyers who can save you or doctors that can heal. Everything would work out. The world would come true. I don’t mean God or saying your prayers. I don’t even mean hope. Hell, you could make a wish over a lousy birthday candle and it wouldn’t even have to be your birthday and the candle wouldn’t even have to be stuck in a cake. Shit, it wouldn’t even have to be lit!”
“All right,” Moses Magaziner said, “you wanted to see me, see me.”
“All right? Yes? All right? Didn’t you hear anything I said?”
“All right,” Magaziner said.
“Why?” he asked. “Why you?”
“You’re the believer,” the Jewish British ambassador dressed like a street Arab said. “You’re the hopeful one. What do you believe? What do you hope?”
“That you’re a spy, that you work for our king. I don’t know, that your eye is on the sparrow.”
“All right,” he said, “I’m a spy, I work for my king. Sure, sometime. Sometime my eye is on the sparrow.”
“I get it,” Mills said. “Good will. Word of mouth. The harem’s best-kept secrets traded for candy.”
“Schmuck,” Magaziner said, “have you never measured any despair but your own? Why not candy?”
“Why not? Because they don’t have secrets.”
“They sleep with the Sultan. What’s the matter with you? You never heard of pillow talk? Look, I’m busy. I’m a man of affairs. It’s already midafternoon. I’ve got a courier waiting and I still haven’t looked at the diplomatic pouch. Tonight Yetta Zemlick and I are entertaining the Spanish embassy, and if I don’t get back soon to approve the arrangements Gelfer Moonshine is going to have conniptions. So don’t hock me about likelihoods and probabilities. What do you want?”
“What do you think I want, Moses?” Mills cried. “I want to get out of here! I want you to part those eunuchs like the Red Sea!”
“Nah,” he said, “too risky. I’m a foreign national. We ain’t allowed to interfere in the domestic affairs of other empires. Here, have some halvah. No, go ahead, there’s plenty more where that came from.”
Mills stared after him as the old man walked off. At the door to the laundry Magaziner turned. “Listen,” he said, “it’s a long shot, longer than you think, not the sure thing, shoe in, when-you-wish-upon-a-star crap you were talking about. His Majesty don’t want you. He wouldn’t authorize air from petty cash to get you back. He still thinks you’re some Pretender or other. Maybe he’s right. He don’t need subjects like you. So it’s a long shot. So long it ain’t even mathematics. But if you ever do manage to escape, drop by the embassy, why don’t you? Maybe I can get you on a ship.”
“I figured it out,” he told Bufesqueu an hour later. “We can make our break. Be ready after dinner.”
“What, tonight? I was going to see Yoyu tonight. Everybody’s going to be there. They say even the Valide Sultan may put in an appearance. They’re expecting me. Why don’t you come too, George? The women are going to play cards. The girl with the lowest score has to take her veil off for ten minutes.”
“I think we can make it. Watch me. Do what I do.”
“Gee, George, it sounds like a nifty plan. It really does. I wish you’d spoken up sooner. The eunuchs have been telling me about this game. It’s supposed to be really something to see.”
“We can get out of here,” Mills said. “The odds are a little tight, but I think we can make it. We just have to be careful not to panic.”
“Hey,” Bufesqueu said, “you didn’t say anything about odds.”
“Forget the odds, Tedor. What were the odds when you took Constantinople? Why do I say Constantinople? You took the whole entire Ottoman Empire that day. What were the odds against that?”
“You know that novice, Debba Bayuda? You know — the tall one. The one they say is this far away from becoming a favorite lady. Well the morning line on old Debba is that she’s almost as gorgeous as she is rotten at cards.”
“How long do you think they’ll leave us alone? Sooner or later they’ve got to castrate us.”
“Yeah,” Bufesqueu said. “In a way you can’t blame them.”
“Are you coming with me?”
“Hey,” Bufesqueu said, “I really wish I could.”
Mills looked at his friend. “If I make it,” he said, “they’ll cut your balls off.”
Bufesqueu, embarrassed, looked down at his shoes. “Yeah, well,” he said shyly, “it’s like part of their dress code.”
Inside the Valide Sultan’s residence Mills squared his shoulders and knocked on the big door in the rear hallway. Beyond it was the short passageway that led to Yildiz Palace. He knocked on it five times rapidly, paused for as long as it took to recite the invocation to Allah that began the evening prayers, then rapped again, slowly, eight more times. Straining, he was just able to make out voices, then, moments later, footsteps. He adjusted his regimentals, the full-dress Janissary uniform laundered now and clean as it had been on the day it was issued.
A large man dressed in a fantastical costume was standing on the other side of the big oak door. The Palace Invigilator. Two armed guards stood behind him, their rifles pointed at George’s chest.
Mills held up his empty hands and turned in a slow circle.
“You’re a Janissary,” the Invigilator said.
“These are my campaigns,” Mills said. “Khash, Bejestan, Krym and Inebolu. Victories at Khash and Krym, wounded in Bejestan, taken prisoner at Inebolu.”
“Where are your ribbons?” the Invigilator demanded.
He looked at the citations stitched on the guards’ uniforms, the medals and chains of entitlement that hung from the Invigilator’s neck.
“Burned ’em,” Mills said. “Burned the ribbons and buried the medals when I disgraced myself at Inebolu by being captured instead of outright killed.”
“Escaped or ransomed?” the Invigilator said.
“Exchanged,” Mills said, “for thirty-seven lads from the enemy side.”
The guards murmured to each other. The Invigilator hushed them and turned back to face Mills. “You came through the doorway of our Sultan’s mother,” he said harshly.
“ ‘As did my father, so does his son,’ ” Mills said, quoting the proverb.