Vizier Köraslan sat down in a satin-upholstered armchair and looked him over slowly. “They have proof that this girl was murdered in your headquarters. What do you plan to do about it?”
Vahid grasped on to this appeal to his competence. “One of my men has been charged with the girl’s murder.”
“You realize that everyone will know it was you who killed her.”
Vahid looked up. “Do you know that, Your Excellency?”
Taken aback, the vizier said, “Well, not directly, but from the evidence, it can be assumed.”
“You don’t know it,” Vahid told him, “and neither does anyone else. They can think whatever they like, but they don’t know.”
“It will damage you politically, nonetheless. Who would follow someone who makes an innocent man take the punishment for his own crimes”-Vizier Köraslan held up his hands-“whether he actually committed them or not?”
Vahid took a step closer to the vizier. “And what of your son, Your Excellency?”
The vizier’s face flushed red. He rose to his feet. “You backstreet scum, you son of a whore. You dare threaten me?”
Iskender is the whore’s son, Vahid wanted to cry out. I am the good son. He stood unmoving, glaring at the vizier.
Perhaps having noticed something unpleasant in Vahid’s eyes, the vizier stopped shouting and was regarding the Akrep commander with disgust. “I should never have gone along with your stupid scheme. You told me the troops would wipe out a small group of socialists that no one cared about. Instead they ran loose and massacred entire villages that had nothing to do with the Henchak revolt you sold me. Now I know why you disappeared. You went to lead them yourself, and undoubtedly to engage in more of your unpleasant digressions.” Vizier Köraslan’s mouth screwed up in distaste. “The Franks are looking for any excuse to invade. By allowing such madness, you gave them the pretext to come in and help the embattled Armenians. If Kamil Pasha hadn’t stepped in to save the refugees and if I hadn’t sent reporters and photographers east to make sure the world knew about it, it could have been a disaster. I was a fool to trust you.”
“You’ve never trusted me, Your Excellency,” Vahid pointed out reasonably. “We had an arrangement that until now has suited us both.”
“You said you’d increase my influence with the sultan, and instead now he suspects me. You were going to sideline Kamil Pasha, and now he’s a hero. Why? Because you enjoy giving pain and you don’t know when enough is enough.”
Vahid smelled the old man’s must emanating from the vizier’s mouth. It reeked of death. He, on the other hand, was young, vital, untouchable. When Vizier Köraslan was deposed, he, Vahid, would be promoted to be the head of the Teshkilati Mahsusa. He would build a secret service for the sultan that would deprive all his enemies of air. He would be the guardian of the empire. Not the sultan, not this vizier, not his father’s favored son.
“You go too far,” the vizier said, visibly unsettled by the smile on Vahid’s face and no doubt remembering that Vahid held evidence linking his son to murder. “You are mad.”
“No, Your Excellency. I am not.”
Vizier Köraslan stared at him a moment and seemed to come to a decision. “Get out,” he said.
Surprised, Vahid hesitated, then turned and left the room.
AFTER VAHID had gone, the vizier called in his secretary and asked him to summon Nizam Pasha and Kamil Pasha. “Tell them to bring the file on the Armenian girl’s case.”
The two men were surprised to be summoned. Vizier Köraslan listened to the pasha’s evidence that placed Sosi in Akrep’s basement. He further surprised them, saying, “I have absolutely no doubt that Vahid committed this murder and probably others. He is an unscrupulous character who has been clever enough to pin the blame for his misdeeds on others. Why, he’s even tried to blackmail me with trumped-up evidence against my son. We cannot have a scoundrel of this magnitude commanding a force like Akrep. That institution will be shut down and replaced by a more efficient secret service, and I want Vahid arrested and charged with murder and treason.”
“Treason, Your Excellency?” Nizam Pasha inquired.
“Kamil Pasha, did you not witness Vahid leading a group of bandits in the massacre of innocent civilians in the east and attacking your imperial troops that were protecting the population?” Without waiting for Kamil, who seemed at a loss for words, the vizier answered his own question. “That, gentlemen, is treason.”
97
Vahid tenderly straightened the tine of Rhea’s hairpin, then put it in his pocket. It took only a short time to walk from Akrep headquarters across the grounds of Yildiz Palace to Huseyin Pasha’s office in the Great Mabeyn.
The secretary announced him and then asked him to wait until Huseyin Pasha had finished his meeting. Vashid paced impatiently. After half an hour, several well-dressed men emerged, followed by their secretaries and a scribe. Finally Vahid was shown into an office more luxurious than his own. He strode in, his eyes seeking the man he had sworn to kill, the one who had stolen Rhea from him and caused her death.
The sight of Huseyin’s scarred face brought back memories of Rhea’s charred body on the sidewalk. He started when he saw Kamil standing by the open French doors. Vahid smelled the cloying scent of lilacs enter with the breeze. An invisible bee buzzed insistently as the two men glared at each other.
“Selam aleykum, Vahid.” The note of satisfaction in Kamil’s voice caused Vahid more concern than the hostility. His wound began to throb.
“Aleykum selam,” he answered cautiously. He hadn’t expected to ask about Rhea in front of Kamil and wondered if he should return another time.
“If you have something to say,” Huseyin snapped, “let’s hear it, or don’t waste my time.”
Kamil shut the door and came to stand beside his brother-in-law.
“These have been trying times.” Vahid began in a neutral tone, wishing Kamil would leave.
“The times have certainly been treacherous for Armenians,” Kamil agreed in a hard tone, “and for socialists. In fact, for a lot of ordinary, innocent people. Their graves line the road from the Choruh Valley to Trabzon. But you know that, don’t you? You put them there.”
Kamil’s tone was sarcastic, but Vahid was satisfied to hear the anguish beneath the magistrate’s words. Undermining Kamil emotionally and morally was almost better than killing him outright. The cruelest death was the slow rot of self-doubt.
“I’m amazed to hear you criticize His Highness’s decision to send troops to put down an armed rebellion,” Vahid responded, “but what else can one expect from a traitor?”
Kamil stepped toward him, but Huseyin pulled him back. “There’s no point,” he told Kamil.
A man who can be baited, Vahid thought, smiling inwardly. Passion made men weak.
“Do you deny that you ordered Ottoman soldiers to fire on the sultan’s troops?” Vahid asked. “And this charade about using your own fortune to help the refugees,” he scoffed. “No funds have been withdrawn from your bank. Nothing was sold to account for the sudden, mysterious appearance of forty thousand British pounds in gold and several large emeralds in your hands in Trabzon. Did you steal them? Perhaps from the Ottoman Imperial Bank?”
“You are a mass murderer,” Kamil responded in a cold voice. “Worse than that, you are a man who kills for a calculated reason, as if he were slaughtering pullets to sell at market. Did you get what you wanted? Were the deaths sufficient to get you promoted?”
“I don’t answer to you,” Vahid said offhandedly, and turned to Huseyin. “I want to know something.”
“What?”
Vahid wondered if the men were armed. He presumed Kamil was. He reached into his pocket and saw Kamil’s hand slip inside his jacket. Vahid slowly withdrew Rhea’s hairpin. The magistrate’s hand emerged empty.
Vahid placed the pin on a small table by Huseyin, then watched jealously as he picked it up. The sight of the precious artifact in Rhea’s lover’s hand was unbearable. He felt a desperate need to pierce his own skin until all the poison had run out.