THE seraskier tapped his foot on the sloping roof.
“Do you know what this is? Do you see where we are?”
Yashim gazed at him.
“Of course you do. The roof of the Great Mosque. You see the dome, above your head? The Greeks called it Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom. One hundred and eighty-two feet high. Enclosed volume, nine million cubic feet. Do you know how old it is?”
“It was built before the days of the Prophet,” Yashim said cautiously.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” The seraskier chuckled. He seemed to be in the best of spirits. “And it took just five years to build. Can you imagine what an effort that must have required? Or what we could do with such energy today, applied to something actually worthwhile?”
He laughed again and stamped his foot.
“How does something so old get to last so long? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because no one, not even the Conqueror Mehmet himself, had the wit or courage to knock it down. Do I surprise you?”
Yashim frowned. “Not entirely,” he replied quietly.
The seraskier looked up.
“Thousands of sheets of beaten lead,” he said. “Acres of it. And the pillars. And the dome. Just imagine, Yashim! It’s been weighing on us all for fourteen hundred years. We can’t even see beyond it, or around it. We can’t imagine a world without it. Can we? Do you know, it’s like a stench, nobody notices it after a while. Not even when it’s poisoning them.” He leaned forward. The gun, Yashim noticed, was still steady in his hand. “And it’s poisoning us. All this.” He waved a hand. “Year after year, habit piled on prejudice, ignorance on greed. Come on, Yashim, you know it as well as I do. We’re smothered by it. Tradition! It’s just grime that accumulates. Why, it even took your balls!”
Yashim could no longer see the seraskier’s face against the light of the fires at his back, but he heard him snicker at his own thrust.
“I’ve just come from the palace,” Yashim said. “The sultan is safe. There was a coup of sorts—”
“A coup?” The seraskier ran his tongue across his lips.
“Yes. The palace eunuchs, led by the kislar agha. They were set to turn back the clock. Reinstate the Janissaries. It was all in that Karagozi verse—remember?”
The seraskier blew out his cheeks. “Come, Yashim. This isn’t important. You know that, don’t you? Eunuchs. Sultans. The sultan’s finished. The edict? Did you really think the edict was going to make a difference? You saw him today, didn’t you, the old boozer? What makes you think any of them can do a thing? They are half the problem. The edict is just another worthless piece of paper. Equality, blah blah. There’s only one equality under these skies, and that’s when you’re in the line, shoulder to shoulder with the men beside you, taking orders. We could have figured that out years ago, but we grew crooked.”
The seraskier gave an amused grunt.
“The Janissaries—and their Russian friends. Some of them, I gather, were living in Russian territory. And the rebels wanted Russian help.”
“Who warned you?” Yashim asked. “Not Derentsov?”
The seraskier chuckled. “Derentsov doesn’t need money. It was your friend in the cab. The scarface.”
Yashim frowned. “Potemkin—kept you informed?”
“Potemkin informed me, initially. But he was too expensive. And too dangerous.”
Yashim regarded the seraskier in silence. “So you found someone else to keep you up to date with the Janissary plot. Somebody safe, who wouldn’t be much noticed.”
“That’s right. Somebody cheap and inconsequential.” The seraskier grinned, and his eyes widened with delight. “I found you.”
“I gave you the timing of the rebellion.”
“Oh, more, much more. You kept the plot alive. You helped to create the atmosphere I needed. Down there, a city in panic. They’re defeated already. The Janissaries. The people. And now the palace, too.”
He ran his hand around his chest: a gesture of relish.
“For you, I’m afraid, I have a choice prepared between life and death. Or should I say, between devotion to the state and—what, a romantic attachment to an outdated set of traditions.” He paused. “For the empire? Well, the choice is made. Or will have been made in”—he drew a glinting orb from his pocket—“approximately eighteen minutes. The choice between all this, this weight and history and tradition, this great weight squatting over us all like the dome of Justinian’s cathedral—and starting fresh.”
“But the people—” Yashim began to interrupt.
“Oh, the people.” The seraskier half turned his head, as if he wanted to spit. “The world is full of people.
“We’re well-placed, up here, aren’t we?” the seraskier went on. “To watch the palace burn. And with the dawn, a new era. Efficient. Clean. The House of Osman served us well in its time, yes. Reform? An edict? Written in water. The system is too crazy and tottering to reform itself. We need to start fresh. Sweep away all this junk, these pantaloons, sultans, eunuchs, whispers in the dark. We have suffered under an autocracy that doesn’t even have the power to do what it wants. This empire needs firm government. It needs to be run by people who know how to command. Think of Russia.”
“Russia?”
“Russia is unassailable. Without the czar it could beat the world. Without all its princes and aristocrats and courts. Imagine: run by experts, engineers, soldiers. It’s about to happen—but not in Russia. Here. We need the Russian system—the control of labor, the control of information. That’s an area for you, if you like. I’ve said you’re good. The modern state needs ears and eyes. We’ll need them tomorrow, when the first day dawns on the Ottoman republic.”
Yashim stared. He had a sudden vision of the seraskier the first time they’d met, reclining so awkwardly on his divan in trousers and a jacket, reluctant to sit at the table with his back to the room. A fine Western gentleman he made. Was that what all this was about?
“Republic?” He echoed the seraskier’s unfamiliar word. He thought of the sultan and the valide, and all those women in the court: and he remembered the glittering fanatical light in the eyes of the leading eunuchs, and the unexpected death of the chief.
The seraskier had known that they would gather together. And he, Yashim himself, had persuaded the sultan to let the artillery into the city.
“That’s right,” said the seraskier curtly. “We’ve seen those weak old fools for the last time. Blathering about tradition! Padding around in their own nest, like silly chickens. Defying history.”
He drew himself up.
“Think of it as—surgery. It hurts, of course. The surgeon’s knife is ruthless, but it cuts out the disease.”
Yashim felt his heart grow still. With it, his mind cleared.
The seraskier was still talking. “For the patient, the agony brings relief,” he was saying. “We can be modern, Yashim: we must be modern. But do you really think modernity is something you can buy? Modernity isn’t a commodity. It’s a condition of the mind.”
Something stirred in Yashim’s memory. He clutched at it, an elusive shape, a form of words he’d heard before. The man was still talking; he felt the memory slipping away.
“It’s an arrangement of power. The old one is over. We have to think about the new.”
“We?”
“The governing classes. The educated people. People like you and me.”
No one, Yashim thought, is like me.
“People need to be directed. That hasn’t changed. What changes is the way they are to be led.”
None of us are alike. I am like no one.
I will stay free.