Stanton stood up. It seemed the only way of getting a word in edgeways.
‘Now hang on!’ he said. ‘You can’t blame the Americans solely for the collapse of the environment.’
‘Not any more we can’t, but they started it. Who taught the peoples of the world to consume beyond their needs? Beyond even their desires? To consume simply for the sake of consuming. The world’s greatest democracy, that’s who! And look where that’s got us. I tell you, the Great War ruined everything. The lights went out and the brakes came off. Just try to imagine what the world would be like now if it had never happened – if the great nations of Europe had continued on their journey to peace, prosperity and enlightenment; if those millions of Europe’s best and finest young men, the most highly educated and civilized generation the world had ever known, had not died in the mud but had instead survived to shape the twentieth century.’
Stanton could see her point. All those names on the chapel wall just metres from where he sat and on every town memorial and village cross. What good might those young men have done had they lived? What evil might they have prevented? And in Germany? And Russia? Had their lost generations also survived, surely they would have stopped those morally bankrupt mediocrities who emerged from the rat holes and drove their nations towards absolute evil. Without the corrupting catalyst of industrial war, where might those countries have gone?
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Can’t fault your argument. 1914 was the year of true catastrophe. So you answered Newton’s question. You got to delve further into his papers. What did you find next?’
‘What we found next was a sequence of four numbers.’
‘Numbers?’
‘Yes, numbers that were the end result of a lengthy and complex equation. Newton had written them on a slip of paper and sealed them in another envelope three centuries ago. And the sequence of those numbers was One Nine One Four.’
‘1914?’
‘1914 indeed.’
‘Isaac Newton predicted the Great War?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! How could he have done that? He wasn’t a soothsayer! He was a mathematician, a man of science. He dealt in empirical evidence. He didn’t arrive at those numbers via some Nostradamus-style mystical mumbo-jumbo. He did the maths.’
‘I’m really not following, prof. Agreed, 1914 is a year of vast historical significance, but what’s that got to do with maths?’
‘All in good time, Hugh, all in good time,’ McCluskey said, draining her teacup and stretching broadly. ‘That’s enough for now. I need a nap. Can’t handle boozy brekkies like I used to.’
‘But wait a minute on, you can’t just—’
‘I’ve told you everything I am qualified to tell, Hugh. Bigger brains than mine must take over from here. Don’t worry, all will be explained after the service.’
She was already disappearing towards her bedroom.
‘Wait a minute,’ Stanton called after her. ‘What service?’
‘It’s Christmas Eve, Hugh. Carols at King’s, for God’s sake. Even a bloody atheist like you can’t miss that.’
6
‘BAYıM BAYıM, DURUN!’
Stanton heard a little girl’s voice behind him and turned to see that the Muslim child he’d saved from the speeding car was running after him. Struggling with something. His bag.
He’d forgotten his bag.
His bag!
How could he have been so stupid?
He’d left the majority of his money and equipment in his room at his hotel but he still had with him a handgun and a small computer, water purifiers, antibiotics and a state-of-the-art field surgical kit. Items which, if lost, would take at least a hundred years to replace. And he’d walked away without them.
Sure, he was disorientated but it was still an unforgivable lapse.
Allowing emotion to cloud his judgement and losing contact with essential equipment was about as ill-disciplined and unprofessional a mistake as a soldier on active service could make. In fact, he absolutely should never have intervened to save that family at all. Quite apart from the possible repercussions on history of saving a family who had been destined to die, he could quite easily have been killed himself by that careering car, thus ending his mission before it had even begun.
But when he turned round and looked into the big jet-black eyes of the little Turkish girl who was struggling up behind him with his bag, her broad smile framed between outsized loop earrings and cascades of coal-dark silken hair, Stanton was glad he’d let instinct be his guide. Somewhere in that big dusty city there was a father who would be spared the death in life that he himself was living.
The bag was quite heavy for a little girl to carry, although not as heavy as it looked, being made of Gore-tex disguised to appear like old leather and canvas. She held it up to him, grinning a big gap-toothed grin. He took it and turned away. He couldn’t speak to her or even look at her for long. For all that she was oliveskinned and dark-eyed and her hair was shiny black, she reminded him too much of Tessa.
He made his way off the bridge. Leaving the broad modern thoroughfare behind him, he plunged at once into the matted tangle of ancient streets and alleyways on the south side of the Golden Horn.
Despite the disorientation and confusion he was feeling, Stanton could not help but be intoxicated by the magic of his situation. He was in Old Stamboul, fabled city on a hill. Ancient soul of Turkey. The gateway to the Orient where East met West and for twenty-six centuries the heartbeat of history had been heard in every wild cry and whispered intrigue. Where enchanting music played all down the ages as swords clashed and cannons roared and poets told their tales of love and death. Armies had come and armies had gone. First Christian, then Muslim, then back, and back again, but Stamboul had remained. Church had given way to mosque and mosque had given way to church then back to mosque. And through it all, the people of Stamboul had gone about their business just as they were doing now. Unaware of the fact that there had now arrived among them the strangest traveller in all the city’s long history.
Stanton gave himself over to the romance of the moment. Kicking his way through the stinking piled-up rubbish. Tripping on erratic, uneven paving stones laid down when Suleiman the Magnificent was Sultan. Avoiding the mass of dogs that snarled and whimpered as they scavenged for food at the little bread and fruit stalls lining the tiny streets. He was lost almost at once within a labyrinthine warren of alleys and passages. Dark, shadowy flights of steps disappeared into tiny cracks between sagging buildings, up towards half-hidden doorways or down into stinking, dripping cellars. And sometimes, enchantingly, into fragrant sunken gardens. How Cassie would have loved to glimpse into those gardens.
Quite suddenly Stanton found that he couldn’t recall her face.
He stopped dead in his tracks and was roundly cursed for it by a fierce bearded man in a keffiyeh who was driving two skinny, bleating goats with a stick. Stanton stood stock still, ignoring the man and his animals as he struggled to bring to mind the most precious memory he possessed.
It was the panic. He knew that. The sudden fear that she was fading, like some figure in a photograph in a time-travel movie. He struggled with his confusion, desperate to bring her face to mind but just making matters worse, like trying to remember a familiar word but chasing it further away by trying to retrieve it. He forced his brain to place her in a familiar situation. There she was! He’d found her. Picnicking on Primrose Hill when the children were tiny. Smiling up at his camera phone.