Benedict Hall Read online

  The strange thing about that day in Jerusalem was that he hadn’t wanted to go into the Old City at all. The crowds made him uneasy, those throngs of dark-skinned people with their sly glances and jabbering languages no one could understand. It was Carter’s idea. He had only gone along with it to show he wasn’t afraid.

  The truth was that he was terrified. He was frightened of everything—the other officers, the horses, the bayonets, the guns, and the cannon with their great thumping blasts that shook the ground and knocked the gunners right off their feet. Preston felt as if things were exploding all around him, at meals, at teatime, even when he tried to sleep. He felt inadequate and inept, and he suspected the other officers of sniggering at him behind his back. More than once he woke up whimpering with fear, and Carter, who had been out in the East for months, would make some joke and bring him tea to calm his nerves.

  But, as it turned out, fate had him in its hand. His destiny had drawn him into the Old City and guided him to the sapphire. It hadn’t really been Carter at all.

  Benjamin Carter was a big, noisy Brit. He had the grossest tastes, in food and women and war, but not the slightest bit of embarrassment about them. And until that day in the Old City, though Preston was the officer and Carter his servant—his batman, as they said in Allenby’s army—Preston mostly did what Carter wanted.

  Their relationship looked like a friendship, but Preston didn’t trust it. He feared that Carter secretly despised him, that he, too, was laughing at him with his mates. Carter didn’t give away his true feelings, naturally, but that was part of the system. He was as obsequious as all the other batmen, but when they were on their own, he dropped the “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” altogether. Preston didn’t know if he was supposed to order him to speak properly or assume that all the batmen did the same. Half the time Carter seemed to be hiding a smile, as if Preston were a child to be humored. Preston hated that, but he had no idea how to go about replacing him, and he was afraid that, if he tried to get rid of him, Carter would tell everyone his Captain Benedict was a coward who woke sobbing in the night like a frightened baby.

  But all of that was before their day in the Old City.

  They left their billet in the late afternoon to ford the bustle of the Damascus Gate and take a stroll in the Muslim Quarter. In the squares, crowds of veiled women and turbaned men mixed with uniformed soldiers and bearded Jews. Carter loved a sort of kebab he could buy straight from smoking grills, handed over with dirty fingers by men who bowed and nodded, then sneered at the fat Brit behind his back. Preston wouldn’t touch the kebabs, but Carter was always hungry. Soldier-Servant rations were never enough for him. He ate the meat as he walked, dripping grease over his cuffs as he led the way through noisome alleys lined with tiny dark shops. Preston felt anxious, and nauseated by the smells of unwashed people and suspicious foreign foods, but he followed. He wasn’t sure he could find his way out of the quarter on his own.

  They came upon the antiquities dealer seemingly by accident. His windows were stacked with painted boxes, dusty amphorae, hookahs with long, twisting tubes, ropes of beads, flat cloth shoes with embroidered toes. Preston paused at the open doorway. It was dim in the shop, but it was quiet, and it smelled pleasantly of some sort of spice. Carter’s messy meal stank of rancid fat and made Preston’s nostrils twitch. He said, “Carter—I want to go in here.”

  Carter, chewing, waved his thick hand. Preston stepped in through the door, and his glance fell on a short curved sword in a brocade scabbard.

  The dealer, a small man with dark eyes gone rheumy with age, emerged from the back of his shop through a curtain of beaded fabric. He wore a fez, and he smiled at Preston with lips so dark they were nearly purple. “Many fine thing,” he said, bowing, clasping his hands before him. “Many fine thing, special for you. For your lady.”

  His accent was thick, but he spoke decent English for a Turk. Preston pointed to the sword, and the shopkeeper scurried to take it down from the wall display. He carried it to Preston, and presented it on both palms. Preston took it in his hands, and slid the blade slowly out of the scabbard.

  Just then Carter appeared at his shoulder. He gave a low whistle when he saw the sword. “Have a care, guv. That looks bloody sharp.”

  Preston ran a finger down the flat of the blade. The edge of it, with its cruel arch and pointed tip, had the shiny look of steel recently sharpened, though the flat was pitted and stained with age.

  The shopkeeper murmured, “Very nice. Very old, sir.”

  Preston glanced up. “How old?”

  The dealer shrugged, and spread his hands. “Who knows? Very nice.”

  Preston slid the blade back into the scabbard and laid it on the counter. Carter said, “Gonna buy it, guv? Snappy souvenir of our glorious victory.” He drew out the word glorious, laughing, then fell to scrubbing at the spots on his sleeve with the heel of his hand.

  “I don’t know,” Preston said. He tapped the scabbard with his fingers. “How much?”

  The little man’s eyes brightened. “For you, very nice, very nice. Five pounds.”

  Preston turned to Carter. “Five pounds is about twenty dollars, right?”

  Carter nodded, and laughed. “Way too much, old son,” he said gleefully. “Make him come down.”

  Preston, heartened by Carter’s approval, turned back to the dealer. “I’ll give you ten shillings.”

  The shopkeeper pressed his right hand to his heart. “Sir, you pain me.”

  Carter chortled, and Preston said, “His English is improving, don’t you think?”

  The man dropped his hand to sweep it over the scabbard, brushing the raised stitching, the old stained velvet. “You see, very old.” His dark lips pursed. “Four pounds.”

  Carter was fingering a scarf draped over an enameled mirror, but he left it, and came back to the counter. The dealer leaned closer to Preston, making him want to step back. “Very rare, sir,” the man said. “Very old.”

  Preston said, “One pound, then. I don’t even know if it’s genuine.”

  “Likely not,” Carter said. The dealer threw him a glance full of venom.

  Preston pushed the scabbard away from him, across the counter. “Last time. One.”

  The shopkeeper’s look of pain was genuine this time. He opened his hands and held them up. “Sorry, sir. Not possible. Three pounds, possible. One, not possible.”

  “No good, old son,” Carter said cheerfully. “Too much.”

  Preston thought he might have paid it, if Carter hadn’t been so sure. He gave the sword a final glance, rapped once on the counter with his knuckles, and turned away. Carter grinned, and the two of them started out of the cramped shop. The door was too narrow for them to pass through together, and for once, Carter stepped back to let Preston go ahead.

  As he stepped into the shaft of hot sunlight falling through the open doorway, Preston looked up, distracted by a gleam of something blue. He stopped, and Carter’s heavy stomach bumped his elbow.

  It shone beyond a barrier of smoky glass, its suspending chain draped over a tiny, discolored mirror. It was as long as the first knuckle of Preston’s thumb, and nearly as wide. The facets were irregular, and poorly cut, but the color—violet with tinges of purple—was vivid, alive with light. It seemed to flicker, as if a blue flame burned in its depths. Preston’s fingers curled, yearning to touch it, to feel its weight in his palm, to have it.

  Carter shifted behind him, eager to be on his way again, but Preston saw nothing but the sapphire tempting him, calling to him from its crowded cabinet.

  “What’s this?” he barked over his shoulder, pointing at it.

  The shopkeeper, sensing a sale after all, hurried from behind his counter, a ring of brass keys jangling in his hand. He brushed past Carter with a murmured apology, and stood at Preston’s shoulder to see what had caught his eye. His indrawn breath was one of pure regret. “Oh, no, sir,” he said. He stepped back, making no move to unlock the cabinet. “Oh, no, so sorry. Is
not possible.”

  “What d’you mean, not possible?” Carter thundered. His voice, in the cramped space, made Preston wince. “What’s it doing there if it’s not for sale?”

  The shopkeeper said, “So sorry. So sorry.” He turned away in a swirl of his cotton robe, and retreated to his counter.

  Preston could not take his eyes from the sapphire. “What is it?”

  Carter said, “Just some old necklace, Preston.”

  The dealer spoke in the firmest voice he had used thus far. “No. Is from Khourrem Sultan, sir. Very old. Very valuable.”

  “Name a price,” Preston said softly. Suddenly, strangely, nothing in the world mattered but the possession of that jewel, that dully gleaming sapphire. Carter made some movement, but Preston held up his hand, forestalling him. The jewel glittered at him from its tarnished silver chain, its crude facets reflected in the ancient mirror, and he knew he couldn’t leave the shop without it.

  “No,” the shopkeeper answered. There was both regret and pride in his voice. “Is not for sale, sir.” He nodded toward another cabinet, where lesser pieces jumbled together in piles of dull stones and broken chains. He gestured to it with both of his slender, nervous hands. “Please,” he said. “Many others. Please.”

  Preston forced himself to look away from the sapphire. His chest tightened with the old, familiar pressure as he fixed his gaze on the dark shopkeeper. “Tell me why the necklace is not for sale.”

  The man folded his hands in front of him. “Is not mine.”

  Preston stared at him, assessing the probability that the man was lying to him, deliberately standing between him and this thing of beauty. “Whose, then?”

  “Khourrem Sultan,” the man said again. “Is very bad, sir.”

  “What d’you mean?” Carter began, but Preston silenced him with a flick of his fingers. He crossed the creaking wooden floor, and laid his hands on the counter to gaze across it into the shopkeeper’s face. The sword in its scabbard still lay between them.

  Preston pointed back at the cabinet. “For that, you can have your five pounds.”

  At that moment the dark little man, dealer in antiquities, made a fatal error. His last mistake. He laughed.

  The sword made a slight snicking sound as Preston pulled it free of its scabbard. It made a louder sound, like that of a boot sucking free of a mud puddle, when it slashed the shopkeeper’s folded arms. It sounded like the crack of a whip against stirrup leather when Preston struck through the man’s throat, nearly severing his head from his neck.

  The shopkeeper’s body crashed backward through the beaded curtain. Instantly a scream began, the long, winding shriek of a woman. The ululation set Preston’s bones to tingling.

  Behind him, Carter swore. Preston snapped, “Break the glass, man, and be quick!”

  In moments, the cabinet lay in shards, and the sapphire—the jewel of Khourrem Sultan, whoever that was—lay deep in Preston’s pocket.

  There was blood on his uniform, but that was hardly unusual. He threw the sword to the floor, and left it there. He and Carter melted into the crowds in the street just as a knot of men dashed toward the shop in answer to the panicked wails. Preston’s heart thudded with pleasure, as much for the thrill of exacting justice as for the delight of the sapphire’s weight in his pocket.

  And that was before he knew the nature of his prize.

  One of the British officers, a lieutenant called Mather, had been raised in Africa and could read Arabic. It was from him that Preston learned the story of the sapphire. The theft of the jewel was apparently much bigger news than the death of a minor dealer of antiquities. There had been many deaths in the war, but, according to the account in el-Carmel, there was only one jewel of Khourrem Sultan, a woman of the sixteenth century popularly known as Roxelana.

  The great mystery, according to el-Carmel, was how the sapphire came to be in an obscure shop inside the Damascus Gate. Mather read the account, translating as he went, sometimes struggling for the English word, sometimes puzzling over an Arabic construction.

  “Roxelana, born Aleksandra Lisowska in about 1510, was captured by Turkish slavers from her Ukrainian village and sold in Constantinople to the harem of the Turkish sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent. One of three hundred young women belonging to Suleiman, she distinguished herself through wit and personality, becoming known as Khourrem, the—let’s see, the Laughing One, I think.

  “Legend says that Roxelana possessed a single jewel, a gift from the young sultan. She called it her only estate, all a poor harem girl was allowed. It never left—” Mather stumbled, searching for a word. “Her person, I suppose. Or her body, I’m not sure.

  “Her rivals claimed the jewel, a large blue sapphire, had—” Another hesitation. “Powers of magic—” Mather shook his head. “That’s not quite right, I’m afraid. The word means evil power, but I don’t know how to translate it.”

  Mather took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “There’s more, but it’s hard to read. She built things, apparently, and sponsored some charities, things an Ottoman woman hadn’t done before.”

  He laid the paper aside. The others in the unit relaxed in camp chairs and sipped their tea. The sapphire nestled deep in Preston’s vest pocket, cool and heavy and sweet.

  “So how did the jewel get to Jerusalem?” Carter asked. Preston threw him a warning glance, and his face paled quite satisfactorily. Everything between them had been different since that day in the antiquities shop.

  Preston said, “How can they be sure the one that was stolen was hers?”

  Mather tapped the paper. “The dealer was a Turk. The report says he acquired it himself during repairs to her mausoleum.”

  “Acquired,” Preston said smoothly. “He stole it. And now someone stole it from him.”

  “The paper says he was a respected dealer.”

  “Don’t mean he ain’t a thief,” Carter said.

  Preston cleared his throat, and tapped the fingers of his right hand on the arm of his camp chair. Carter subsided, and brought the teapot to refill Preston’s cup. Preston said, “Tell me, Mather. How did you come to grow up in Africa?” He sipped his tea, and listened politely as Mather related his childhood as the son of a British Army officer.

  In the days following, Carter argued that Preston should sell the jewel. “Then we can split the money.” His eyes fixed on Preston’s vest, where the sapphire was hidden.

  “Split it?” Preston drawled. “Why should we split it? You didn’t do anything.”

  Carter frowned, searching for an argument. “Smashed the glass,” he said after a moment.

  “I did all the dirty work,” Preston said. “The hard work.”

  Carter was polishing Preston’s riding boots. He spat on the toe of one, and rubbed it fiercely with a blackened cloth. “It was dirty, all right,” he said to the boot. “But I didn’t tell.”

  Preston, leaning indolently against a cupboard, laughed. “No, Carter, you didn’t tell. That’s worth something, and I’ll see you’re compensated.” Carter looked up, a hopeful gleam in his small eyes. “I won’t sell it, though,” Preston finished. “It goes home to America with me.”

  Carter grinned. “I’d love to come to America, guv. Just say the word.”

  “We’ll see.” Preston caressed his vest pocket to feel the shape and solidity of Roxelana’s jewel. The image of her was taking shape in his mind, Roxelana the laughing one, the daring one. The slave girl who owned nothing but her courage and a powerful sapphire. Her slanting dark eyes seemed to shine over the centuries, to cast their seductive glance onto him. Thinking of her made his loins stir.

  He dropped his hand, and nodded to his batman. “We’ll see. And that’s Captain Benedict, Carter. See you remember.”

  The look in Carter’s small eyes was one of surprise and discomfort. It gratified Preston to see it, and he touched the jewel once again through the fabric of his vest.

  Frank went to call on William Boeing in his office in the Hoge
Building, on Second. The Hoge was modern, eighteen stories, with an exterior of terra-cotta and tan brick and elaborate cartouches. Boeing’s office was full of heavy furniture, which would have made it look old-fashioned were it not for the pictures on the walls. These were photographs and illustrations of sea sleds, of flying boats, of soaring triplanes, every one of them manufactured by the Boeing Airplane Company. The receptionist who welcomed Frank was a trim young woman in a gleaming white shirtwaist and navy-blue ankle-length skirt. She led him into the inner office, held the door for him with a professional smile, then disappeared.

  Frank took a seat across from a tall, well-built man in early middle age. Boeing wore owlish spectacles and a pencil mustache. He had thinning brown hair, which he brushed back with his hand every few minutes. His gaze, through the round glasses, was intense, nearly unblinking.

  Boeing shook his hand, eyed Frank’s empty sleeve, and said merely, “Rotten luck, Major.”

  “Yes, sir.” Frank took off his hat and shrugged out of his greatcoat. He could see his resume laid open on the broad mahogany desk, his slender portfolio of vellum drawings beside it.

  Boeing tapped the resume with a finger. “I was in the navy, myself.”

  “Yes, sir. Navy Reserve, I believe.”

  “That’s right. You wouldn’t mind working for a navy man?”

  Frank hesitated, then allowed himself a contained smile. “I’m sure you would have joined the army if you could, sir.”

  This won a laugh from Bill Boeing, and he leaned back in his chair, still smiling. “The Boeing Airplane Company means to prove that commercial aviation is the future, Major.”

  “Seaplanes?”

  Boeing nodded. “Seaplanes, yes. But more than that. We’ve been hit hard by war-surplus biplanes, but we can’t let that stop us. I intend to build better airplanes that can carry more weight and travel farther—in other words, commercial air travel.” He reached for a model that rested on the corner of his desk, and set it down in front of Frank. “This is going to change the way people think of flying.”