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kissed his cheek softly. He caught her scent of hyacinths and thought he should stop and embrace her. He had believed his sister was dead, but he was mistaken. The realization filled him with happiness. He resisted the desire to sit down and let the snow cover him. He had to stay alive to get Vera back.

6
     
    T HE WINDOWS of Kamil’s villa glowed invitingly as he rode up the drive, wrapped against the icy wind in a heavy wool coat and a kalpak of Persian lamb. His cook and housekeeper, Karanfil, made it a point to place lamps near the windows when he was out, a habit she had developed when he was a child and sentimentally kept up now that he was a grown man. He could see the elegant silhouettes of his orchids on the sills, the long sprays of flowers preening in the limelight. He would have to remind Karanfil again not to put the lamps so close to the delicate blooms. He looked forward to one of her meals and to an hour in his winter garden before returning to the problem of finding the guns.
    The firearms meant that something unusual was brewing, something that could tear at the belly of the empire, already made vulnerable through massive debt to European banks and loss of territory in decades of wars and revolts. The Ottoman state had created a stable system, fairer than most, that allowed every subject to participate, regardless of faith. Ottoman laws respected people’s differences and accommodated them. None of those who broke away and founded their own nations could say the same, Kamil thought. These new states on the empire’s receding fringes were cradles of blood in which nothing grew but hatred. The streets of Istanbul were crowded with refugees from massacres committed by people newly freed from the Ottoman system of law, acting with impunity or, worse, with a nod from their national leaders. Kamil was determined to keep the center strong, serving the empire like his father and grandfather, who had both been governors.
    Karanfil’s son, Yakup, who acted as Kamil’s manservant, ran from the house and took hold of the bridle before Kamil could dismount. Yakup’s ascetic, high-boned face was grim.
    “I was just about to fetch you, pasha. Chief Omar sent for you. Someone blew up the Ottoman Imperial Bank. A taverna next door burned down. There are many dead.”
    Kamil turned his horse and galloped back through the gate. He was surprised to receive the summons from Omar. The bank was located in the Karaköy district. Omar was the police chief of Fatih, on the other side of the Golden Horn.
    Half an hour later, he slowed to maneuver through the traffic that thronged the steep, winding streets even at this late hour. Below him, he could see a black funnel of smoke twisting upward and expanding into a ghostly white cloud lit from below. He descended to Karaköy Square, where horse-drawn carts, porters, pedestrians, handcarts, and peddlers jostled one another, churning the snow into a brown paste. He spurred his horse through the crowd of onlookers until he heard Chief Omar’s familiar, booming voice, then dismounted, giving his horse to one of the constables.
    Black smoke boiled into the night. There was a cacophony of screaming, shouting, and the crack of smoldering wood. The confusion was fitfully illuminated by men running back and forth with torches. A crowd of onlookers was gathered at the end of the street, barely held back by a handful of policemen. Others were at work carrying people from the wreckage. Italian nuns, their lips moving in prayer, watched from the rectory windows of Saint Peter’s Church, directly behind the bank.
    Two fire brigades pumped water from their portable tanks onto the taverna. One group of firemen had relayed a long hose into the Golden Horn and was pumping water from the harbor. Despite the cold, the firemen were shirtless and their bodies gleamed with sweat in the torchlight. Kamil wet his handkerchief and held it over his mouth and nose.
    He identified himself to one of the