Sleight of Hand - By Phillip Margolin Page 0,7
small antipasto and spaghetti aglio e olio. The antipasto had just arrived when Victor opened the door to admit a woman who looked as exotic as her accent. She was carrying an attaché case and wore a trench coat. Dark glasses obscured her eyes, raven-black hair fell to her shoulders, she wore no rings on her fingers, and her lips were ruby red. Dana thought she’d fit in perfectly as the femme fatale in a 1940s film based on a Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett novel.
“Miss Cutler?” the woman asked.
Dana stood and offered her hand. The woman’s fingers barely touched Dana’s before she pulled her hand away.
“I am Margo Laurent.”
“Have a seat, Ms. Laurent,” Dana said as she motioned toward a chair on the other side of the table. Then she pointed her fork at her antipasto. “Sure you don’t want something to eat? The food here is great.”
“Thank you, but I am not hungry.”
“Suit yourself. I hope you don’t mind if I eat while we talk. I was up all night on a case and I’m starving.”
“Please.”
Dana waited for the woman to take off her coat. When she didn’t, Dana said, “So, Ms. Laurent, why do you want to hire me?”
“How much do you know about the Ottoman Empire?”
Dana had speared a piece of mortadella and a slice of provolone, but she paused with her fork halfway to her mouth.
“Turks, right?”
Laurent nodded.
Dana smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid that’s the extent of my knowledge. I was never much of a history buff.”
“The Ottoman Empire lasted from 1299 to 1923,” Laurent said. “In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at the height of its power, it controlled territory in southeastern Europe, southwestern Asia, and North Africa. Constantinople was its capital city and the empire was at the center of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. At times, the empire’s tentacles reached into Persia, Egypt, Baghdad, Hungary, Transylvania, Moldavia, and the outskirts of Vienna. By the end of the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1566 the empire’s population totaled fifteen million people.”
“Impressive,” Dana said before taking another forkful of Italian delicacies. She had no interest in Laurent’s history lesson, but three thousand bucks was three thousand bucks, so she pretended to find it fascinating.
“If you do not know about the Ottoman Empire, can I assume you’ve never heard of Gennadius or Mark of Ephesus?”
“You got me,” Dana said before eating a slice of prosciutto.
“In 1444, the court of Byzantium was desperate for Western assistance against the Turks and it agreed to a union with Rome, yielding on almost all of the important theological issues that divided the East and the West. For example, the unionists agreed to accept the concept of purgatory, which they had previously rejected.”
“Where is this going, Ms. Laurent?” asked Dana, whose patience was starting to fade.
“Bear with me. You need to understand the backstory before you can understand why I need your help.”
Dana shrugged. “It’s your dime.”
“Mark of Ephesus was concerned about the preservation of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He was the only bishop who refused to sign the union, and he spoke for the average Orthodox churchgoers who gathered around him. George Scholarius was a judge who made several speeches in favor of the union. When he returned to Byzantium, he saw how the lesser clergy and the common people opposed what they saw as the betrayal of their beliefs. He changed his mind and became a strong opponent of the union. When Mark died, on June 23, 1444, George became the leader of the anti-union camp. This brought him into disfavor with the court and he retired to a monastery and took the name Gennadius.
“In 1453, at the age of twenty-one, Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople and cemented the status of the empire as the preeminent power in southeastern Europe. Mehmet wanted to assure the loyalty of the Greek population so they would not appeal to the West for liberation, which could have set off a new round of Crusades. He needed to find the cleric with the most hostility toward the West to help him cement the loyalty of the Greek populace. Gennadius was the natural choice.
“After Mehmet took Constantinople, Gennadius was captured by the Turks and sold as a slave. Mehmet’s men found Gennadius in Adrianople and brought him to the sultan on a beautiful horse from the imperial stable adorned with a silver saddle. The sultan received him in his suite while standing. The sultan rarely stood when receiving visitors,