Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

‘Your purpose,’ the old man said. ‘Now that things are … as they are … What can you want with me?’

Moriarty smiled. ‘Ah, so you do know the truth, sire,’ he said. ‘I wondered whether your fears, and there are so many of those, would let that in.’

‘There have always been people who have sought my death. You, Moriarty, will know that better than most.’

Professor James Moriarty said nothing. The sultan lit a cigarette.

‘I know the precise date and time you first came to me,’ the sultan said. ‘It was the twenty-third of May 1878. Three days after my people attempted to take my throne and give it to my insane brother. At five p.m., exactly, my doctor ushered you into my presence and said, “Here, Your Majesty, is a man who can cure all your nightmares.”’

‘Ah, dear Dr Mavroyeni.’ Moriarty smiled. ‘What a good man he was.’

The sultan’s eyes expressed pain. ‘Yes.’

‘I met him in Paris in 1876,’ Moriarty said. ‘Place called Montmartre. Holidaying, it turned out, amongst the bohemian artists’ colony that continues to thrive there. His French was so good, I thought he was a native.’

‘And you befriended him.’

‘I rather liked him. A fellow man of science. But when I found out he was personal physician to Your Imperial Majesty he became, I must confess, irresistible to me.’

‘You saw a business opportunity.’

‘I identified a method whereby I might serve your empire, sire.’

Abdulhamid rose with difficulty and walked over to his desk. He picked up a leather-bound notebook and turned to the first page. He read. ‘“City of Kayseri. There is a carpet seller in the bazaar, a man with an Armenian mother and a father who is lame. He organises secretive meetings late at night at the back of his shop. Other men of poor appearance attend. What is discussed can only, sadly, be treasonous. I beg the pardon and the pity of Your Majesty for bringing this to your attention. Your humble slave”, etc.’

‘Plots are like fungus, sire, they thrive in the dark.’

‘Moriarty, your organisation has been bringing me information about my enemies for over thirty years,’ the sultan said. ‘You have served me well.’

‘A network of agents was needed that far exceeded even my calculations,’ Moriarty said. ‘It is the same, I fear, sire, in all the great empires of Europe. The French opened the door to revolution and …’

‘And we all speak the language of revolution now, don’t we?’

‘Many people speak French …’

‘Including you and I and those who like to see themselves as the elite. It enables them to understand these Gallic ideas that resulted in an emperor losing his head.’

‘Sire, it is a long way from reading a book to …’

‘Is it?’ The sultan put the notebook down. ‘You know, Moriarty, these journals from your agents across my empire have consumed my waking hours. Descriptions of illiterate Druze tribesmen in Palestine, hungry for my death, sellers of yogurt passing messages to Armenian agents in the streets of my capital city. Poor people.’

‘In some cases, yes, sire.’

‘In all.’

The sultan sat behind his desk. ‘I ask again, Moriarty, what do you want here? I know you cannot have gained entry to my palace without the collusion of my “loyal troops” from Macedonia. The ones who can speak and read French and on whom your agents have always been silent. Fortunately for me, other contacts I have cultivated over the years have not been so reticent in that regard.’

‘My agents have only ever reported what they have heard, sire.’

‘And I have paid you, and them, well for it.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Indeed. And yet …’ A small, manicured fist came down quickly and suddenly on the top of the desk. ‘Here we are, Moriarty, in the eye of a revolution against my rule. And you didn’t see it coming. Or did you? I have done everything for my people! I have given them the Constitution they apparently craved, I have made a powerful ally of the German emperor, built a railway to the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. I even allowed my poor mad brother to live out his insane life at my expense in spite of the fact that these Macedonian revolutionaries wanted to replace me with that drooling fool. My people are children. I am their loving father. It is not a carpet seller from Kayseri that will come to hang me tomorrow and end the House of Osman forever, but an educated, French-speaking army officer. You, Moriarty, I would venture, have deceived me. The game is not “afoot” as your nemesis Sherlock Holmes once said, but it is up.’

Moriarty sat. His pale face didn’t move. Then he smiled. ‘You have me there, sire.’

‘You find it amusing that you have failed me? That your so-called “professionalism” should be called to account? Do you not even have the urge to defend yourself?’

‘Against what?’

The old man looked down at his desk, at the bell that should call his chief eunuch to his side. Could Moriarty be right that he had fled? There was only one way to find out, which he resisted.

‘I am still absolute monarch of my empire.’

‘A Colonel Rustem Bey opened the gates for me,’ Moriarty said. ‘Blond, French-speaking, charming man. He’d ridden all the way from Macedonia to be here. Tomorrow he’ll probably stand beside that lovely lake you had dug out in your park and wonder what a man who claims to be the Shadow of God on Earth was doing hiding himself away in a fantasy world. When did you last leave this palace, Abdulhamid? I don’t just mean to attend the mosque at the bottom of the hill, I mean leave the complex completely?’

Had Moriarty’s use of his name passed the sultan by?

Thin, arthritic fingers steepled underneath his chin. ‘So now we come to be candid with one another, do we, James?’

‘It’s why I’m here.’

‘To tell me that you have tricked me?’ He shook his head.

‘Maybe you did. Maybe you have come to gloat over my inevitable demise. I know it’s almost here. But it, and you, are no surprise. Do you honestly think I never knew that the baker from Diyabakir, the imam from Adana and all the other little people you brought to my attention were innocent? Of course they were. Or rather what they said was said in ignorance and without malice. But power, Moriarty, as you know, has to be demonstrated. Often. It has never given me pleasure to sign an order to put a man to death, but I know that in order to remain in control and do what is best for one’s people, it is essential. My empire responds to the sword. These young officers with all their dreams about equality and democracy will learn. They call themselves the Young Turks.’ He laughed. ‘What does that even mean? This empire is named after my family. We are Ottomans. They will learn. When they have hung me from their gallows and my people have risen up against them and they have killed them in their thousands, they will learn.’

‘Maybe.’ Moriarty smiled. ‘But at the moment they have history on their side. In fact that’s been the case for some time.’

The sultan put one cigarette out and then lit another.

Moriarty took his own cigarettes out of his pocket and held his case up for the old man to see. ‘May I?’

‘Of course.’

‘Thank you.’ Moriarty lit a black Sobranie. ‘In all my journeys around your empire, sire, I have learned many things. I have learned that the Armenians want their own country, that the Jews desire only to be left alone and that there are more diverse and bizarre sects and societies in eastern Anatolia than there are jewels in the Austro-Hungarian emperor’s crown. But what these groups all have in common, and I include Turkic Muslims too, is their desire for a life that does not begin in filth and hunger and ends the same way. Your people, Abdulhamid, want exactly what the poor all over Europe want. They want education, money, electricity …’