THE BYZANTIUM STONE

David Chacko

Published by Foremost Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 David Chacko

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PART ONE:

PROVENANCE

CONSTANT

Palamedes saw the tall Englishman come down the passage from the Grande Rue de Pera toward the entrance of the bar. Hair and skin of the same color—the palest sand—he seemed to enjoy being out among the darker tribes. He was dressed in a blue jacket and yellow ascot that must be his idea of how not to advertise himself on the prowl. A colonel in his real life, he passed in and out of the Hagopian Han with some regularity, like all the spies, and perhaps he thought the world did not recognize that salient fact. Perhaps he did not care. If Palamedes had learned one thing about the British, it was that they did not care for anything but how not to care.