Bang!
‘Çekil yolumdan!’
The alleyway was crowded and another passer-by in a hurry had cannoned into him, a big man in a bright blue turban, a flowing white tunic and loose pyjama-y trousers. A man with two pistols and a knife stuck in his belt. Stanton mumbled an apology and moved on.
One corner, then another. A darkened passage then a burst of light and a tinkling fountain in a walled square. Horse dung on his nostrils then delicate perfume. Tobacco, hashish, oranges, fried meat, rose water and dog piss. There were so many dogs.
He heard shouts and clattering and the squeal of metal on stone.
Just in time Stanton jumped to avoid a sweating carthorse as it skidded down the street in front of him. Stamboul was a city on a hill and the gradients of some of the alleyways were almost precipices. The foam-mouthed beast was struggling to restrain the heavily laden cart which theoretically it was pulling but in practice now threatened to push it down the steep hill. The drover cursed Stanton and pulled on the horse’s reins. The man knew a feringi when he saw one, an obvious foreigner in his Norfolk jacket and moleskin britches. A man out of place and out of time.
Stanton felt exposed. Eyes peered out at him from deep within dark and barred recesses. Others flicked a glance through niqabs. A young soldier strode past, chest out, eyes front, but he too stole a glance at the foreign stranger. It felt to Stanton as if those eyes could see through him and knew his secret.
He needed to pull himself together. He’d already been nearly killed twice that morning, first by a car and just then by a horse. He might even have been killed by the man with the pistols in his belt. Life was clearly cheap in the old city and offence, once taken, was mortal.
He had to concentrate. Whatever his personal sorrows might be, he had a mission to accomplish and one he truly believed in. Cassie and the children were gone, evaporated like the morning mist on the Bosphorus, along with the century in which they’d lived. He couldn’t save them but it was in his power to save millions of others. Young men who would very shortly be choking on mustard gas, hanging limp on barbed wire and vaporized by shells. Unless he changed their fate.
But to do that he needed to keep his head.
He decided he would drink some strong Turkish coffee, and found a cafe on a tiny square in the shadow of a mosque. Everything in Stamboul was in the shadow of a mosque. Or else jammed up against some decayed and rotting palace which in its days of glory had housed a prince or potentate with his eunuchs and his harem. Nowhere else on earth, Stanton thought, could current decay have lived so entirely within the shell of past glory.
It reminded him of London in 2024.
The little cafe had just two small tables and a counter but it was scrupulously clean and well ordered. There was a splendid hookah pipe on display in the window and neat little rows of pink and green sweetmeats lined up in a glass cabinet on the counter. Each table had a well-brushed, tasselled velvet cloth on it, a clean ashtray and a small bowl of salted almonds. Such calm and order amid the seemingly random chaos outside allowed Stanton his first moment of reflection since the Crossley 20/25 had thundered on to the Galata Bridge.
He was shown to a seat and brought coffee and bottled water. Whatever suspicion of feringi he had felt out in the street was not evident in the cafe. Business was always business, whatever age or town you were in.
Speaking in Turkish, the cafe owner pointed at the cakes and pastries. Stanton made an expansive gesture as if to say that he was happy to be served as the proprietor wished.
He was brought some marzipan and a kind of semolina doughnut in a sticky syrup, the first food he had eaten since dinner the evening before, a hundred and eleven years ago. It was a strange sort of breakfast but he was grateful for it. He laid a ten-lira note on the table and indicated that he didn’t need change. The man smiled and returned to his coffee, newspaper and cigarette.
Prayers were being called in the mosque outside. Stanton could see the devout beginning to assemble in the little square outside the window, beyond the hookah pipe. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out his wallet. Slimmer now than he was used to, no plethora of plastic cards, no photo ID. Just some post-Edwardian Turkish currency.
And two printouts.
Letters which better than anything else could remind him of his duty and focus his resolve.
Cassie’s last two emails.
The one asking for a divorce.
And then the final one. The one that had offered a glimmer of hope. The one she had written in reply to his pleas and his promises. The one he’d been rushing home to answer face to face.
If you can just change a little.
No, not even change. Just be yourself again. The man I married.
The father of our kids.
That man was every bit as passionate as you are. But not as angry.
Every bit as tough. But not as hard.
Every bit as cool. But not as cold.
Stanton swallowed his coffee and held out his cup for a refill.
He’d wanted so much to prove to her that he could be that man again. But four drugged-up hooligans had denied him the chance. Cassie had died thinking him unredeemed. Tess and Bill had died thinking that Mummy was leaving Daddy.
Because Daddy was a stupid selfish bastard who didn’t deserve their love.
I never minded being married to a soldier. Because I knew you believed in what you were risking your life for. What you were taking lives for.
I never minded being married to an idiot whose idea of inspiring kids was to see how close he could get to death without actually dying.
Even when we had kids of our own and you still kept on doing what you did. Even though you weren’t just risking leaving me without a husband but our children without a father, I still didn’t mind.
Because that was the man I signed up for.
Just like you knew you married a girl who’d rather lie in bed and watch daytime TV than go hiking up a mountain in a storm.
A girl who didn’t want to get her scuba ticket. Or go paragliding (or watch you doing it either).
We both knew who we were getting and we were fine with it.
But who’s this new guy, Hugh?
I don’t know him? Do you?
Really, Hugh? Seriously?
A security guard? A hired gun? A glorified minder?
You leave me and Tess and Bill at home to go off and be some billionaire’s bitch? Would you really take a bullet for those people, Hugh?
Is that how little we mean to you?
She was right. It was crazy. Why had he done it?
Bitterness? Boredom? Pride?
All three. But pride was the big one of course. Stupid male pride. After they kicked him out of the army and the webcast thing went sour, he just hadn’t known what to do with himself. Hanging around the house, fighting with Cassie, shouting at the kids. He’d felt … unmanned.
And there was the money. He’d never cared about it before and nor had Cassie. They’d always had enough, always got by. But then Guts Versus Guts made them briefly wealthy, or so it had seemed. Wealthy enough to make the down payment on a proper family house in a really nice area. There was a second baby on the way, they’d needed more room and he’d just done it. Without even telling her. She was angry at first, of course, but he knew she’d love it. That house had been the first real home they’d ever had. Before that it had been just short rentals and army housing.
He couldn’t just let it go.
He couldn’t tell Cassie and the kids that they had to pack their bags because he could no longer meet the payments on the mortgage. He was too … proud.