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

‘They only have need of God!’

‘I’m not talking about what they need, but what they want,’ Moriarty said. ‘Oh, they will fight for you and your religion but what sort of chance do you think they will have against foreigners with flying machines? I take it, sire, you know that man can now fly?’

‘I do. But he should not. It is against God.’

‘And if your empire goes to war with a country like France, which has flying machines, it will have to train men to go against God if it is to stand any chance of winning. Your time is over, sire, it has been for a very long time.’

‘During which you have made a lot of money out of me.’

‘Because, if you recall, sire, you begged me to help you rid your empire of dissent,’ Moriarty said. ‘You didn’t want another incident involving your imprisoned brother. And with my help you didn’t get one. When did Murad die?’

‘Five years ago.’

Moriarty leaned forward in his chair and whispered, ‘I’d be prepared to bet you know the day, the hour …’

The sultan didn’t reply. His older brother, Murad V, had been a thorn in his side all his life. Older and some felt more rightfully due the title of sultan, Murad had been declared insane within weeks of ascending to the throne. Abdulhamid had been put in his place. But, deranged as Murad was, the sultan had never stopped thinking about him and neither had many of his people. Now all that remained were his younger brothers. Also old men, they had lived their entire lives in states of terror. Of him.

‘I knew all along that to kill dissent entirely is impossible,’ Moriarty said.

‘I beg to differ.’

‘Which was why my organisation was such an easy sell to you,’ Moriarty said. ‘You wanted the impossible. And I gave you that illusion for thirty years. But, as I’m sure you must have realised, my very presence here now tells you that I was always looking for the tide to turn. Anachronisms have no future.’

‘So now you work for these “Young Turks”?’

‘No and yes. I have helped them in the past. I plan to again.’

‘You have betrayed me.’

Moriarty put his cigarette out. He shook his head. ‘Your Majesty is one of the most intelligent men I have ever met,’ he said. ‘But, sire, your fears for your own life have always held you back. When I met you, you shook. Do you remember? Mavroyeni had to hold your hand. Then, in the years that followed, I watched every charlatan – astrologer, dervish – whatever they chose to call themselves, exploit those fears and manipulate you to their own advantage. I knew you couldn’t last. I am amazed you are still here now.’

‘You underestimate my family’s influence over the religious life of the empire.’

‘No, I don’t think so. I know your Muslim subjects will still fight for Islam. But will they still fight for you? You underestimate what they know, Abdulhamid. Talk to any man in the Grand Bazaar about you and he will tell you lurid tales of cafés built on the side of your lake where you try to convince yourself you are not the only customer, of gardeners shot by you because you mistook them for assassins. And most scandalously and stomachchurningly of all, of the little girl you had tied in a sack and thrown into the Bosphorus. Wasn’t that barbarous custom something your ancestors did away with? I thought so.’

The already grey face of the sultan became white.

‘And that too was when I knew for certain that I had to find another horse to back,’ Moriarty said.

‘That child betrayed me,’ the sultan said, ‘with my own son!’

‘Prince Selim, your eldest. Where is he now?’

The sultan lit a new cigarette from the dying ash of his last one. ‘Away.’

‘Since 1898. Mmm. Some backwater of the empire. That must be hard. You know it was in 1898 that I really began to notice these young officers from your Macedonian province. The boys from Salonika. Speaking French, using the word “democracy” … Trouble was they didn’t hate you. They saw you as a poor, isolated creature, desperately reaching out to your people but surrounded by those who sought to undermine you, and them. And that was partly true. But I also knew another you. The one that would sacrifice anything and anyone for his own miserable life.’

The sultan’s face flushed. ‘You are a traitor, Moriarty. What more is there to say? Get to your point.’

‘My point? My point is, sire, I knew that those nice young officers would defeat you one day. I could also see a lot of business opportunities in a relationship with them for myself.’ He smiled. ‘I saw the future. I just had to help it along. And so I paid your Kizlar Agasi, your chief eunuch, a lot of money.’

‘To do what?’

‘To tell you about how that lovely little blonde girl your sister had given you for your birthday was having sex with Prince Selim.’

The sultan turned away. ‘You’re lying. My Kizlar Agasi would never betray me.’

‘Well why don’t you ring your little bell and summon him so that he can answer you?’ Moriarty said.

The sultan looked at the bell; a present from his one-time friend, the Emperor of Germany, it was cast in gold. He remembered the day it had been given to him. He had almost felt as if he had a real companion. But the kaiser had better things to do than visit an old man in a hillside fortress these days. He, it was said, was preparing for war. Abdulhamid locked eyes with Moriarty and rang the bell. The professor sat back in his chair and knitted his fingers underneath his chin. Like the sultan himself, he could have, when he wanted it, infinite patience.

Fifteen minutes of silence, save the ticking of a grandfather clock, passed.

The sultan was the first to blink.

‘So shall we say that your Kizlar Agasi is not and was never to be trusted?’ Moriarty said.

The sultan didn’t reply.

‘Well, I will, he was and is not,’ Moriarty continued. ‘I knew this, I exploited this and found that, given the right incentive, he was a very willing confederate. I came here tonight, sire, to tell you that Prince Selim’s protests of innocence were entirely truthful. He did not sleep with that girl, nor was she pregnant with his child when your not so loyal chief eunuch put her in a sack and threw her into the Bosphorus. She’d only slept with you.’

The sultan did not move. He didn’t appear to breathe.

‘She was pregnant …’

‘I’m not a fool! You don’t have to spell it out!’

‘But what a story, eh?’ Moriarty said. ‘Doing the rounds of every bazaar from here to Jerusalem. Didn’t have to be true. But it was and so it travelled much more quickly and easily than it would have done if I’d just made it up. What do you think all these Cleaners of the Imperial Nargile Pipes and Court Dwarves actually do? You smoke cigarettes and you don’t find dwarves amusing. They’re bored, they gossip.’

While he’d been talking, Moriarty hadn’t noticed the sultan take that pistol out of his pocket again.

Then he did.

‘Ah …’

‘You killed my child,’ the sultan said.

‘In utero.’ Moriarty nodded.

‘I have no doubt that your Colonel Rustem Bey is within earshot,’ the sultan said. ‘But why should I care? They will kill me tomorrow. You have finally miscalculated, Moriarty.’

‘You think so?’

It wasn’t easy to look down the barrel of a gun held by a man who had never been known to miss. But it was hardly the first time Moriarty had faced his own death.

He took one deep breath and said, ‘Actually no, sire.’

‘No?’

‘No, Colonel Rustem Bey is with his men outside the palace. They won’t enter Yildiz in the hours of darkness. Would you? With all the strange sounds and peculiar movements around the park of your starving animals? No, they will come in the morning. But they won’t kill you.’