These thoughts occurred to Stanton all at once and only in the most fleeting and compressed form for his whole being was already in motion, his body accelerating away from the railing against which he had been leaning with all the energy of a man who by both instinct and training kept himself in a state of permanent physical readiness.
The young mother turned, her coal-black almond eyes staring out from the letterbox window of her face covering, wide with terror as Stanton, having covered most of the distance between them, launched himself into a long dive with arms spread wide. He hit them perhaps a half second before the car would have done, he and the little family passing in front of the oncoming machine with so little time to spare that the fender knocked Stanton’s foot as it swept by. He felt himself turning in mid-air, the family still gathered in his arms, causing the whole group to spin almost full circle as they crashed down on to the stones together.
The monster bumped and skidded on its way, horn still tooting and its braying occupants shouting more merrily than ever, pleased if anything with the terror they had caused. It was time sleepy old ‘Istanbul’, as the locals still insisted on calling it, recognized that the pace of life in Turkey was changing. If they wanted to be a Western nation they’d better learn to act like one, and they could start by getting out of the way of traffic.
Stanton was lying on top of the woman. Her veil had been dislodged and his cheek lay against hers. He felt her hot breath gusting past his ear and her breast heaving against his body. The little boy was half caught between them and the girl stretched out alongside.
He got quickly to his feet. This was Ottoman Turkey after all and the woman was clearly highly orthodox. While he couldn’t imagine even the most conservative of mullahs taking exception to the physical contact he had been forced to make, it was still an uncomfortable and threatening intimacy. He didn’t want an irate husband getting the wrong end of the stick and reaching for the long curved knife so many of the locals wore openly on their belts.
He had a job to do, and currently his first duty was to leave no trace.
He helped the young mother to her feet as she stuttered her thanks. Or at least he presumed they were thanks. She was speaking Turkish, which he recognized but did not understand. However, the gratitude in her eyes as she readjusted her veil would have been clear in any language.
People were gathering round, babbling in a variety of languages. Besides Turkish, Stanton recognized Greek, French and Arabic, and there were certainly others. The Galata Bridge must have been the most cosmopolitan thoroughfare on earth. Babel itself could scarcely have been any more polyglot.
‘I’m very sorry, uhm, madam,’ Stanton began in English, not quite sure how to address the woman, ‘but I don’t speak—’
‘She’s saying thanks, although I’m sure you guessed that,’ a voice said at his shoulder. Stanton turned to face a middle-aged man in the ubiquitous linen suit and straw boater of the European nabob. ‘She says you saved her children’s lives, and hers, which of course you did. Neat bit of work, I must say. You shot across the bridge like you had the bailiffs after you.’
A man in a uniform pushed his way through the crowd. Stanton thought he was probably a policeman but he may have been some sort of militia or even a postman. Turkish officials loved an extravagant uniform.
He felt someone take his hand and shake it.
Someone else slapped his back.
An old French gentleman seemed to be offering to stand him a drink, although by the look of the man’s red and bulbous nose this was more by way of grabbing the excuse to have an early one himself.
This was all wrong. His duty was to pass through the city like a shadow and suddenly he was the epicentre of a crowd. He needed to get away.
But the young mother kept thanking him; holding up her crying children, her big dark eyes shining with gratitude, thanking him over and over again.
‘You – my – babies,’ she said in slow, faltering English.
Her meaning was clear. He had saved her babies, nothing in the world could be more important.
But he hadn’t saved his own.
How could he have done? His family had never even been born.
2
IN CAMBRIDGESHIRE, IN the early morning of Christmas Eve 2024, Hugh Stanton, retired British army captain and professional adventurer, was riding his motorbike through the frozen dawn.
There was thick mist on the ungravelled, icy road and the markings had long since faded from the potholed tarmac. If Stanton had deliberately sought out the most treacherous and deadly conditions in which to ride a powerful motorcycle at high speeds he would have struggled to find better.
Which suited him very well.
Death was the only prospect in life to which he was looking forward with any degree of enthusiasm.
It would be such a simple kill too. The road was empty, no other headlight beam illuminated the freezing darkness. There’d be no risk, no collateral damage. A clean hit. Not like on those awful desert operations he’d sweated through back in his army days, when there always seemed to be dead women and babies caught up in the tangled wreckage of exploded Toyotas.
This target was isolated and prone. Stanton had only to action the strike. One tiny turn in the direction of a tree. A little twist on the throttle for good measure, and oblivion.
Except …
What if there really was a hell?
Stanton was as close to being an atheist as prudence allowed but Cassie had been a Catholic. He therefore had to allow for the faint possibility that hell existed and, if it did, then self-murder would surely condemn him to it. Not that the idea of fire and brimstone bothered him much. An eternity of satanic torture might actually serve as a distraction from his own company, which he was beginning to find almost unbearable. The fear Hades held for Stanton was simply that if there was such a place then it was a certainty that Cassie and the children wouldn’t be there.
Angels didn’t go to hell.
The possibility of him spending eternity in a different place to his lost family was simply too terrible a thought for him to take a risk on, no matter how remote. Therefore, despite his longing for release, he kept his grip steady on the handlebar and his concentration firmly on the road as tree after tree shone briefly grey-bright through the misty dark, branches spread wide and welcoming. Like a lover’s arms, promising peace.
Stanton flicked on his indicator. The Cambridge turn-off was approaching. He knew the road. He’d ridden it many times as a student, hurtling back from London in the small hours, a takeaway meal clamped between his thighs, feeding himself through the open visor of his helmet.
Now he was returning, on his way to have breakfast with an old tutor, Professor Sally McCluskey, an eminent military historian who had been his favourite teacher as an undergraduate. More than just a favourite, in fact, McCluskey was one of the few people in Stanton’s life whom he’d ever felt close to. A large, jolly woman with bloodshot cheeks and a poorly bleached moustache who liked nothing better than to hog the fire with a drink in her hand and revel in the glorious and bloody past. To McCluskey history was alive and vibrant, a thrilling cavalcade of heroes and villains, deathly plots and brave dreams. She had held weekly debates for her students in her cosy drawing room in Great Court, which she called her ‘What ifs?’ Long lazy afternoons during which she’d serve beer and crisps and challenge terrified but delighted undergraduates to imagine and justify alternative historical scenarios. Scenarios which, but for chance and luck, might easily have made up the content of her lectures.