The ferry lurched as it approached the dock at Kanlıca, the engines thudding into reverse. She reached a platinum hand for the rail to steady herself. Rustem simply shifted his weight. He felt, for a moment, an advantage. He continued: “It must have been terrible. There were those who tried to help them—throwing food to them from boats. But eventually all the dogs died.”

In the bright sun off the water the abglanz swarmed, green and iridescent as bottle flies around a corpse. Agitation? Or was he imagining things?

“It can’t have been that important an event, or I would have heard of it before.”

“They say that for years afterward—even long after the bodies should have rotted away—people in the city could smell their corpses.”

“This sounds like a myth. And I fail to see what it has to do with any of what we are talking about.”

“No, you’re right. It was just a random thought. And that island is in the Sea of Marmara. I doubt you could see it from here.”

“We need you to focus, Rustem. Not drift around the city thinking of dogs abandoned on islands. We hired you to get a job done.”

“Yes. But I can only focus for so long at a time. And the rest of the time, the mind has to find something to think about.”

“Well”—she was heading down to the lower deck now, as the ferry rocked into port and thumped against the old tires of long-dead gasoline cars and the gangway engine whined to life—“I suggest you find something more positive to think of than islands full of trapped and dying dogs, or other stories to frighten children. We need you focused.”

“You haven’t told me what code I’ll be shaping to the vulnerability. Eventually I’ll need to know.”

“Eventually,” she said. “But not at this moment. First, map the way in.”

The crowd at the terminal gate was mostly of people come from shopping, with bags at their feet and the blank, exhausted faces of consumers returning from their search for that thing they lacked. Faces probably not much changed from the days when they would have done their shopping at open stalls in the market squares or the covered bazaars. Few of them even noticed the swirling abglanz as the woman walked off the gangway. But one boy, holding his father’s hand, did see her. With terror in his eyes, he ducked behind his father’s legs.

Rustem looked out over the rail at Karaköy, mobbed by seagulls slashing down at a pile of abandoned bread.

That boy is right to be afraid. And I should remember to be afraid. Because there is no way she, or whoever she is working for, will let me survive this.