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

‘You expect me to believe that? Why not?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Moriarty said. ‘Considering you suspended your empire’s constitution for over three decades, killed thousands of your own people and tried to use religion to further your own ends, I can’t rightly work it out. You’d get no mercy from me.’

‘I’ve had no mercy from you.’

‘But these Macedonian boys are quite civilised. They won’t stay like that of course. Power will corrupt them,’ Moriarty said. ‘I’ve high hopes for them. But they won’t kill you. They just can’t bring themselves to do it – yet. They may live to regret that. But it’s their choice. Unless, of course, you kill me now. Then they won’t have a choice. You know it’s eerily silent down with those fresh-faced, earnest democrats outside this palace. They can hear a twig snap. They do hear them when your tiger goes in search of a monkey to eat.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Am I?’ Moriarty shrugged. ‘Pull the trigger and see what happens. I won’t stop you.’

‘Are you armed?’

‘Looking for a gunfight, sire? Of course I’m armed. I would have to be insane to walk through your park with your zoo on the move without a gun. But, if I shot you, I’d just make you stronger. I’d undermine the Macedonians and harm my own business. I’m counting on your own good sense to preserve my life. Because I know that at the end of everything all you care about is yourself. Religion? Your throne? Even your children don’t matter, do they? Only you matter and that’s why you won’t kill me.’

‘My life will be nothing without my throne.’

‘Then shoot me and let them hang you. You know there is a doctor in Vienna called Freud who has this idea that all of our obsessions, our character traits and our foibles are developed in childhood. How one turns out will depend upon what one experiences as a child. Makes me wonder what happened to you, Abdulhamid? What kind of childhood does a royal Ottoman prince have?’

‘That is not your concern, or this man Freud’s.’

‘I bet your father favoured your brother, Murad,’ Moriarty said. ‘His firstborn son. Gregarious, open and jolly as a young man as I recall. The constitutionalists had high hopes for him.’

‘He was a madman.’

‘He was an alcoholic, which was unfortunate. But if you’d stopped his endless supply of champagne and brandy he would have got better. Ah, your gentle father, Sultan Abdulmecid, must have loved such a boy …’

‘Shut up.’ It was said coldly. It was a tone Moriarty knew of old could only be interpreted as the sultan at his most dangerous. He looked at the floor.

Through a small gap at the bottom of the heavy brocade curtains at the sultan’s window, he saw that the sky outside was beginning to lighten. Soon the Macedonians would come. Armed with a fatwa signed by the highest religious authority in the empire, the Sheikh ul Islam, four Ottoman gentlemen, none of them Muslims, would depose this sultan and send him into exile. He would be replaced by his brother, Reshad, who was a pleasant, weak man in Moriarty’s experience. Perfect for a monarch required to be little more than a puppet. The Young Turks were already beginning to think like autocrats in some respects, which was excellent. Autocrats always paid more for information. They were always more worried than most.

Moriarty stood. ‘Well, much as I’d like to stay, I really do have to go,’ he said. ‘I know there’s thousands, probably millions of Ottoman lire in this palace and you do owe me money. But what’s the point, eh?’

‘I owe you nothing, Moriarty.’

‘I’d beg to differ, sire,’ he said. ‘Had you read between the lines of the reports my agents sent you right at the start, it would have been apparent what was happening in your empire. And, in the end, you did see the truth. I mean why would a very religious imam from Adana want you dead? And yet you executed him and thousands like him so that you could rule by fear. You put these Young Turks where they are today and, if I’m right and Germany goes to war with Russia, they will fight alongside the kaiser and I will make a lot of money out of that.’

The sultan aimed. ‘You are the devil, Moriarty!’

Moriarty smiled and then turned his back on God’s Shadow on Earth and began to walk towards the door.

‘I think you’ll find I’m a devil, Abdulhamid,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of us about these days.’

He put his hand on the doorknob and turned it. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the sultan’s pistol was still aimed at his head.

He said, ‘You know, I will be sorry to see you go, Your Majesty. Your brother Reshad is weak and, although you won’t be the last of your line, you are the last of your kind. For the moment, your empire doesn’t need a divinely appointed autocrat. You time is done.’

He opened the door.

‘You imply a time may come when the Ottomans need an autocrat again?’

‘Maybe.’ Moriarty shrugged. ‘One must never say never about anything, sire. And while there are men like me about, men like you may be supplied to regimes who need, shall we say, a firm hand. It’s all about betting, you see. On the right horse, at the right time. Quite a science that.’

He walked through the door and pulled it shut behind him.

With a turn of speed he could not normally achieve, the sultan sprang from his chair and ran after him. But, when he opened the door on to the corridor outside, Moriarty had already gone. As had any sign of his chief eunuch. There weren’t even any guards.

Abdulhamid II, Sultan of Sultans and Caliph of the Ottoman Empire, Shadow of God on Earth, last of his kind, was entirely alone for the first time in his life. He put his pistol down on top of all those works of fiction sent from Moriarty’s agents across his vast empire and he waited, alone, for the dawn.

Abdulhamid II was the last autocratic sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Paranoid and fearful, he operated the largest network of spies in history. He was indeed deposed on 27 April 1909 and was sent into exile. The tale about the harem girl and Abdulhamid’s son is a commonly heard story. This story is simply a take on this monarch’s last night as Sultan of Sultans.

The world was full of victims.

The old man who had just left the bank was a prime example. He had neither the physical strength to put up a fight nor the speed to make an escape. He was easy prey. The high street always had a police presence, but this fool was heading off into the alleyways, far from their protective influence. If he had just withdrawn any money then, after a handful of punches and kicks, those paper notes would shortly become the property of Irving Beck.

Following the old man, Irving kept his cap pulled low and stayed in the shadows, so that any onlookers would not recognise him. He kept his distance for a few minutes, studying his target, waiting until they were far enough from the high street that he could strike.

The man had a large, distinctive high-domed forehead, a receding hairline and sharp, angular features. Irving had seen him before, coming and going from the university. It was James Moriarty, a professor of mathematics, who was frequently spoken of in high regard in almost all circles of society; even those at the very bottom of the social strata to which Irving had always belonged. Regardless of the professor’s reputation as a man of intellect, Moriarty carried himself with an undeniable air of confidence and intelligence, which rather begged the question: why was he doing something so thoroughly foolish?