‘Bet that cost a pretty penny,’ McCluskey observed excitedly. ‘Now we know what the sly old bugger was doing at the Royal Mint all those years.’
‘Yes, well, be that as it may,’ Sengupta said firmly, clearly irritated at McCluskey’s constant interruptions. ‘The great man’s hope was that the cellar would still be locked in 2025, thus enabling a traveller from that time to enter the sentry box unimpeded. It was a long shot given the turbulence of history but in fact he nearly made it. It was only in the chaos that followed the Great War that Newton’s hospital finally was closed. Thus in 1914 the cellar was still locked under the terms of Newton’s endowment.’
‘But the cellar’s still there!’ McCluskey cried out.
‘Yes, yes, Professor McCluskey.’ Sengupta positively snarled. ‘I was coming to that. The palace above it fell into disrepair and has been redeveloped many times but the foundations remain—’
‘And we’ve bought it!’ McCluskey shouted, now jumping up and joining Sengupta on the stage. ‘It belongs to us. It will be waiting for us on the thirty-first of May next year. Waiting for you, Hugh. Waiting for Captain “Guts” Stanton.’ She pointed her stubby, nicotine-stained finger towards him. With all the talk of 1914 Stanton found himself thinking of the famous Lord Kitchener recruiting poster. Perhaps McCluskey was thinking of the same thing.
‘Your country needs you, Hugh. The world needs you!’
8
‘COME ON, CHOP chop. Christ, what a country! I said coffee and cognac. And breakfast. Got any eggs? Fresh, mind.’
He’d heard that voice before.
His head had been bowed, his eye focused on Cassie’s emails. Now, quietly, he folded them away in his wallet and put it back in his pocket. Then, as much by instinct as intention, his right hand slid down beyond his pocket and dropped down into the bag at his feet, fingers closing round the handle of his little polymer machine pistol.
Although God knows he couldn’t use it.
Discharging a weapon like that with its awesome and currently unimagined capabilities could scarcely fail to raise the interest of every intelligence agency in the city. And as any student of military history knew, there were more spies than dogs in pre-Great War Constantinople.
‘I said coffee! And a drink! Dammit, what’s the bloody Turkish for booze?’
It was a curious voice, very clipped with short vowels, but the tone took Stanton back to Sandhurst. To officer training and all those private-school boys with their effortless sense of entitlement.
‘Lazy kaffir’s probably on some carpet praying,’ the voice went on. ‘They never stop praying, do they? If they spent less time praying and more time doing, then the country wouldn’t be such a bloody basket case, would it?’
But it wasn’t just the tone he recognized. He’d heard this specific voice before.
How could that possibly be?
He gripped the weapon tighter.
And then he remembered. His fingers relaxed around his gun.
How stupid. How very stupid. Of course he’d heard the voice before. Not in another century but scarcely an hour ago.
It was the idiot from the Galata Bridge, the driver of the Crossley 20/25.
He turned and glanced. It was them all right, the men in the car. All five of them. Early twenties. Boaters, blazers, flannel bags. Swagger sticks and old school ties. Smart enough but with bloodshot eyes and sweaty, pasty faces. Still half drunk. Hooligans. Wealthy ones but hooligans nonetheless. You got them in any age, any class. Swap the boaters for hoodies and they could have come from the twenty-first century.
Quite suddenly Stanton felt a terrible anger rising within him.
These could have been the four bastards who wiped out his family. They very nearly had wiped out a family.
‘I said coffee and cognac!’ the young man repeated loudly and unpleasantly as he and his companions slumped themselves noisily around one of the little tables, scraping back their chairs, lounging about and generally making it clear that they owned the place.
One of the others spoke up from behind a street map.
‘I’m sure it’s around here somewhere,’ he said. ‘Hey, you!’ the man barked at the cafe owner, who having disappeared into his kitchen was now emerging with a tray of cups and a coffee pot. ‘House of Mahmut – where is it? Girls? Dancing? House of Sluts? Where – Mahmut – House?’
The owner merely shrugged and shook his head.
‘Bloody idiot’s got no idea what we’re talking about,’ the first man said, ‘and he’s forgotten the brandy. Oi, you. I said coffee and cognac.’
The owner shook his head and turned away, which infuriated the Englishman, who banged the table in protest.
‘Don’t you bloody turn your back on me, you bloody dago! I said, where’s the bloody brandy?’
Stanton rose to his feet and picked up his bag. He knew he had to leave because he really wanted to confront these men and that would be a very stupid thing to do. His first and only duty was to pass the time until his business in Sarajevo as quietly and with as little impact as possible. His whole mission depended on the key events he was tasked with influencing remaining unchanged from when they had first occurred in time. Confronting gangs of semi-drunk posh boys in Old Stamboul was unlikely to affect the diary plans of the Austrian royal house, but it might.
The movement brought him to the attention of the five men.
‘You, sir,’ the man who’d been at the wheel of the car and who was the most vocal of the group said, ‘you don’t look Turkish. English? Français? Deutsch? We want some brandy. Do you speak dago?’
He should have just said no and walked out.
‘You’re in Stamboul,’ Stanton said quietly, ‘so have a bit of respect. This is a Muslim establishment. Obviously they won’t have brandy. It’s morning, so go back to Pera and sleep it off. But don’t try to drive or I’ll take your keys.’
For a moment the five young men stared in astonishment.
The leader collected himself first. ‘And you would be …?’
Stanton still could have turned around and left but he didn’t.
‘I’m a British army officer and I’m telling you that you’ll get no cognac here because alcohol is proscribed under Islam, as even imbeciles like you must know. So why don’t you just clear out and go home – but I warn you, don’t try to drive.’
Five jaws dropped open in front of him.
This was stupid and Stanton knew it. These men hadn’t killed Cassie and he was crazy drawing attention to himself.
‘I know who he is,’ another member of the party shouted. ‘He was on the bridge this morning. He’s the chap who nearly made us crash.’
‘So he is! Wish I’d damn well hit him now.’
‘I’m the chap,’ Stanton replied firmly, ‘who saved you from being under arrest for the manslaughter of a mother and her young children.’
Now finally he did try to leave, taking a step towards the door as if he’d said his piece. But he was already in too deep. The five young men were having none of it.
‘The wogs can’t arrest Englishmen,’ the leader said. ‘Or weren’t you aware of that?’
‘Funny sort of army officer,’ another remarked. ‘What’s your regiment?’
Stanton bit his lip. He knew from the research he’d done in Cambridge that Turkey had traded sovereignty for foreign investment. No British officer was going to rot in a gaol for knocking over a few locals and this comfortable arrangement would have been second nature to the British in the city.
‘Who are you, damn you?’ the leader of the group demanded. ‘I haven’t seen you before.’
‘I don’t think he’s army at all. I’ve never seen him. Anybody seen him?’
Stanton was feeling stupid. Why had he said he was a soldier? The foreign groups clustered around the embassies and hotels of the Pera district must inevitably be small and insular; the five men facing him would expect to know all their comrades in the city.