The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim) Read Free

“that I am a sort of nineteenth-century Varangian.”
    She laughed. “And who do you guard, Signor Yashim?”
    He would have said that his role was to protect the sultan’s household and his empire; but then a cork popped, and a boy was shouting across the room.
    “Birgit! Drink up and have another!” Giancarlo sprang from the armchair and took up the bottle.
    Rafael laid a hand on his arm. “She doesn’t need—”
    Giancarlo shook him off with an impatient shrug. “Birgit’s all right. These northerners can drink—eh, Palewski? Fabrizio’s the one we ought to watch.” He stood behind Fabrizio’s chair and circled his shiny curls with the bottle. “Sicilian blood.”
    Fabrizio glanced up, his exquisite little face a perfect mask. Giancarlo swung the bottle toward the window and advanced on Birgit.
    Yashim stood up, smiling. “Your friend was saying that you are in Istanbul to unite Italy? You’ll forgive me, we Ottomans are sometimes out of touch…”
    “Of course.” Giancarlo hesitated, then lowered the bottle. “Birgit—Signor Yashim—some champagne?”
    Birgit shook her lovely head, and laid a hand on her glass. “But I see you have opened the baklava, Giancarlo?”
    “Baklava? Of course. Forgive me.” He returned with the box. “I like the green ones best!”
    “They are pistachio, no?” Birgit’s hand hovered over the honeyed treats. “Will you explain, Signor Yashim?”
    He glanced into the box. “These are pistachio, and these are made with walnut. This one is made with the same thin dough, as fine as a rose petal, shredded first and then baked. They smell very good. Where did you get them?”
    “Not very far from here.” She gave some directions and Yashim nodded. “He’s very good.”
    “I love the way he picks them out, in sheets, with his knife. And this one,” she added, taking a bite, “is my favorite.”
    Giancarlo nodded. “Italy is divided, Signor Yashim. It’s time that Italy belonged to her people, the Italians. Not Austria. Not Piedmont or the two Sicilies. And first we have to deal with the Pope.”
    “The Pope?”
    “I am—or was—a Catholic, Signor Yashim. The Pope should be a man of God but not a despot. He cannot serve two masters.”
    “These boys, Yashim, think the Pope is in a fix,” Palewski said. “On one hand, he’s the vicar of Christ, the conscience of the church, our Holy Father—a sort of Catholic Grand Mufti, whose fatwas are called encyclicals. On the other hand—”
    “The other hand is dyed in the blood of the people!” Fabrizio burst out.
    “Well, certainly. On the other hand he is the temporal ruler of that swath of Italy known as the Papal States, consisting of Rome, naturally, and lands to the north of Rome, and Giancarlo’s beloved Tuscany, or parts of it. Whatever his virtues as a priest, Yashim, as a ruler he is a reactionary idiot.” Palewski drained his glass. “After the 1830 uprising, when the Poles fought against the Russian occupation, we looked to Gregory for support. A word would have carried weight. Yet Gregory was the first to condemn us. Our Holy Father took the side of the Orthodox oppressors against the Catholic Poles, and blamed the insurrectionists for ‘disturbing the peace.’”
    “Gregory is a tyrant!” Fabrizio said. “He is ruthless—but weak. And being weak, he relies on the Austrians to enforce his rule.”
    Rafael, the shy one, nodded. “We stand against arbitrary oppression and the corruption of power.”
    Yashim spread his hands: “Why Istanbul?”
    It was Giancarlo who answered. “Don’t you see? We’re free men here. Italy crawls with papal spies—it’s the same in France. Superstitious clerics, credulous informers. Russia? Habsburg territories? They scent revolution, and they all work together, signor. When a continent is poisoned by lies, truth must be an exile,” he added, waving his hand dramatically. “So we come east, for freedom. Where else could we go?”
    “You could have