The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim) Read Online Free PDF Page B

water, on which the faintest glow was just visible. It wobbled as the two men climbed aboard. A third man Palewski had not seen pushed off: a small hunched figure in the bow, stealthily laying a paddle over the side.
    Palewski sat behind his companion as the boat glided silently out over the water. A mist lay over the surface, scarcely a foot high, and Palewski had the odd impression that he was gliding through time as well as space, into some region of the mind where all the lakes and creeks he had ever shot—the ice-bound chasms of the Lithuanian forests, the great soft-edged lakes of Podolia, the marsh flats of the Baltic coast—glinted mysteriously in the early dawn.
    Above them loomed the dark span of the bridge, across which Ottoman armies had marched each year into Europe, a thick black line against the bluer darkness of the western sky.
    “And so, Ambassador?” The voice in his ear was very low.
    Palewski shifted his length, and eased his gun out of its wrapper. “He’s coming, Midhat Pasha efendi,” he murmured, scarcely moving his lips. “I have had word that he has already left Paris.”
    “Marseille?”
    “Brindisi.”
    A ripple trickled along the hull, so close to Palewski’s ear that he almost shivered. In spite of his clothing he felt the cold; he squeezed his fingers.
    “Everyone will know.”
    “He’s taken every precaution. In Marseille he would be watched, but in Brindisi? Even their resources are limited.”
    The pasha grunted. The punt nudged against the reeds, and the boatman rested his paddle on his knees. In the stillness, Palewski heard the familiar whir of wings overhead: two mallards, he thought. There was a splash as they settled on the lake.
    “His coming here is still a risk.” Midhat Pasha was looking along his gun. “I have heard of the committee they still maintain, the 1814 Committee. Like it or not, they have kept the peace—among themselves.”
    “ Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant ,” Palewski murmured. “They make a desert and they call it peace. Tacitus.”
    “Hmm?”
    “The Committee’s job is to protect its members,” Palewski whispered. The sky had lightened almost imperceptibly. “It has done you no good. Since 1814 you have lost Serbia and Greece, and nobody lifted a finger. Then Algeria, and Egypt, of course. Your empire is fraying at the edges, pasha.”
    “We make reforms, to treat Christians the same as Muslims. They will bind us together, inshallah.”
    The pasha had moved and the punt rocked slightly.
    “Not unless it’s accompanied by a more active foreign policy. You can’t just sit and wait.”
    Three black spots appeared against the dark sky: they curved around the edge of the lake and then began to descend. Palewski’s gun cracked, and a bird spun down into the water.
    “Good shot!” Midhat whispered. “Go, Aslan.”
    The dog was already in the water, making a V on the surface with its nose. It took the duck gently between its jaws.
    A drake. Midhat took the feathered corpse and laid it in the bottom of the punt. Palewski reloaded.
    “It’s a mistake to leave the balance of power in Europe in the hands of others, my pasha.”
    “The Committee again?”
    “The Committee. But also the English and the French. When the Powers talk, the Ottomans must be there to talk, too. Conferences and congresses are all the rage—but you do need something to say.”
    “I hope our visitor will give us some ideas,” the pasha said dubiously.
    “He will,” Palewski replied, ruffling the feathers of the dead bird. It was, he had to admit, a good clean shot. “Certainly he will.”

 
    9
    Y ASHIM went up slowly to his apartment. It was a top-floor flat in a tenement in Balat, reached through a doorway that had sunk lower and lower below the street as the centuries slipped by: Palewski had conjectured that the ground floor, at least, was a relic of Byzantine times—stone-built, with a vaulted hall, and the faint impress of a decorative frieze