The Winter Thief by Jenny White

undermined his ability to prosecute them, as if he couldn’t decide whether he wished Kamil to succeed or fail and so routinely prepared the way for both.
    “Can you imagine if they had gotten hold of the guns too?” Omar whistled. “It must be something big they’ve got planned.”
    “With this gold, they can buy ten shiploads of guns.”

9
     
    I T WAS NEAR DAWN when Gabriel approached Bebek, a village north of the city on the Bosphorus shore. It had stopped snowing, and everything was muted by mist, the quiet punctuated by the raucous laughter of gulls. The muezzin called the faithful to prayer from a nearby minaret. A faint pink wash outlined the Asian hills on the far side of the strait, a band of tarnished silver against the black landscape. Gabriel came to a high wall and lifted a thick fall of ilex with numb hands, unmindful of the avalanche of snow this released onto his head and shoulders. He forced the gate and slipped into the barren garden of Yorg Pasha’s mansion.
    The guards were suspicious, but at Gabriel’s insistence they fetched Simon, the pasha’s secretary, who Gabriel had previously noted seemed never to sleep. Simon arrived in minutes, fully dressed in a crisp stambouline frock coat and tie. If he was surprised to see Gabriel, he gave no sign.
    Gabriel told him he had to see Yorg Pasha.
    “It’s six in the morning, Gabriel. The pasha isn’t available. Perhaps I can help you.”
    Gabriel considered making his request to Simon, but the matter was too important. “I need to speak with the pasha directly.” He didn’t trust either of them, but he had no one else to turn to.
    “That’s not possible. If this is in regard to business, I’m the one to speak to. The pasha doesn’t get involved in that sort of thing.”
    “It’s a personal matter,” Gabriel blurted out, unsure what other argument he could make to convince Simon.
    Simon looked at him oddly, perhaps with a glint of amusement. “You’ll have to tell me more if I’m to convince the pasha.”
    “Look, if this weren’t urgent, I wouldn’t have walked here in the middle of the night. All I want is ten minutes of his time. Please just tell him that.”
    Simon looked Gabriel over, considering. “Very well, I’ll tell him, but I promise nothing.” He pointed to Gabriel’s hands. “It looks like you have frostbite. I’ll send someone to look after that.”
    A servant arrived and brought Gabriel to a small marble bath, where he was instructed to place his hands into a basin of warm water. Gabriel’s entire body ached, but when he removed his hands from the water, the pain shocked him. Two of the fingers on his right hand had turned purple. The man returned with a lamp and looked over Gabriel’s hands. He pointed to the cuts on the fingers, which Gabriel had gotten from the brambles on his slide down the wooded hill, and explained in French, the shared language of foreigners in Istanbul, that if the cuts didn’t heal, he might lose those fingers.
    Brought to a room, Gabriel sat waiting, staring at his bandaged hands. The servant had given him laudanum to quell the pain, but the memory of it remained with him like the border of a large continent he was always just about to cross.
    He no longer trusted himself to know what to do. The room looked out over the Bosphorus, and as he stood there, the color of the sky gathered and thickened between the hills directly across the strait into a deep apricot stain so intense it seemed alive. A cat scrabbled to get in, but Gabriel was mesmerized by the glowing disk, still partially obscured by trees, that was rising from the Asian hills, increasing in brilliance until he was forced to look away.
    He pulled the curtains shut and went to lie on the bed. He tried to sleep but could not keep his eyes closed against the vertigo of visiting scenarios of his young wife in the hands of the secret police. He ceased to hear the scratching of the cat.
    Finally, a messenger came to tell Gabriel