Sam raised his hand, “Mea culpa.”
“You wrote it?” Hibbert leaned back in his seat, shocked.
Kassidi could barely contain her excitement, “Oh my gosh. How did you slip this one past everyone?”
“Well, to start with, I wrote the book twenty years ago.”
Gill snorted, “You can’t have been more than ten years old then?”
“Unless…” Sam waived a finger in the air.
Kassidi quickly shuffled all of the pieces in her brain, mentally scribbled out the obvious answer, then blurted out, “You’re one of them!”
Sam fired rock-star fingers at his new best friend.
Stanwick had the phone in her hand, finger poised over the redial. Calling in to the station was proving to be ridiculously frustrating.
“You’ve got to admit, it was a stroke of genius.” She pointed at the screen, “Asshole has certainly played Tiernan at his own game.”
Charlene was almost afraid to ask, “It is Beach isn’t it?”
West nodded, “Pretty sure.”
“Should we not get David down here?”
West’s eyes lowered, “Stan, can you record the last fifteen minutes? Charlene’s right; David and Stephanie deserve to see this.”
Stanwick barked a command at the TV, then stabbed at her phone’s screen again, “Why the hell is it so hard to get through?”
“Are you kidding?” West asked, “You saw how she nerded out over him. I would imagine half of the women in America are trying to get through to the station right now.” He thought about the many films he’d watched with Cushing in starring roles, “Possibly even more men.”
Stanwick looked up from the phone, her face contorted in confusion, “Really?”
West threw up his hands defensively, “I’m a fan, what can I say?”
“You watch that shit?” She hit redial again.
“You don’t?”
“How do you find the time?”
“We literally have all the time in the world. Until this week, I’ve made a habit of watching at least two movies per day,” Stanwick held up a finger, eyes wide with anticipation. She waved her hand in the air, giddily.
“FVTRX, this is Paul, you’re wanting to talk to Sam Cushing?”
Stanwick was dubious about Paul’s abilities to take a message, and even more doubtful that she’d be put through while Sam Cushing was still on air. Now that David had joined them, she walked away from the others so they could turn the volume back up on the TV. She could still hear him, answering a lot of fluff questions from fans, and occasional convoluted and confused queries from conspiracy theorists. Once she was put into the hold queue, she realized she could hear the audio from the broadcast over the phone, and because the TV broadcast appeared to be on a ten second delay, this quickly became confusing, so she left the huge entrance area altogether and walked into a private study.
She sat down into a recliner and pushed her back into it so that the mechanism triggered. She eyed the bookcase which ran the length of the room, and noticed a shelf which held thirty copies of Dr. Beach’s book. She pulled her legs back in and grabbed a copy off the shelf, then launched herself back into the comfort of the recliner, thumbing through the pages.
There was a click on the phone line, “Miss Thrass, you’re the next caller.”
David stood a couple of feet from the huge TV screen, rocking back and forth on the spot. The man on the screen certainly wasn’t the father he remembered. More worryingly, he had watched Sam Cushing’s films. All of them. Several of them with overly gratuitous sex scenes. It was all too much for him to contemplate.
“I’ve got to call Hannah.”
Cobb swallowed hard, trying to quickly force down a fistful of jerky, “You can’t. Her phone’s bugged.” He swallowed again, “Your sister’s a real classy lady by the way.”
David grunted, “I don’t see what difference it’s going to make calling her.”
He spun around excited, pointing back at the screen. West nodded, gently mocking David’s childlike enthusiasm, pointing at the screen, smiling open mouthed.
“Hello caller.”
“Hi Kassidi, long time viewer, first time caller.”
“Stanwick, am I saying that right?”
Stanwick chuckled politely, “No ma’am, silent W”
“I’m so sorry. Hi Stanwick. You’re on the air, and you’ve got a question for Sam?”
“Hi Sam.” Stanwick sparkled, “Such a fan of your work.”
Sam smiled at the camera, “That’s so kind.”
“So I’ve got a copy of your book here, and in chapter fourteen, A Family to Fear, you talk about Allan Tiernan, Lucas Miller and Petra Miller. Specifically, you make a lot of very compelling connections between those three and a large number of families going back over six hundred years.”
Sam Cushing leaned forward, smiling straight into the camera, the fingers of his hands meshing together gleefully,
“You talk about the lengths that you went to to follow paper trails, from banking records to forged birth certificates and university credentials, and I have to say, your research is flawless.”
On screen, Kassidi Stein clapped her hands together, “This is amazing stuff caller. I’m going to have to rush you to your question.”
Cushing waved his hand, “No no Kass, please. It’s really so rare that I get to talk to anyone who is a fan of my written work.” His smile thinned by degrees and he leaned his elbows onto his knees, “I wonder if the caller minds if I ask her a question?”
“Of course not Sam.” Stanwick’s voice bubbled with enthusiasm.
“So you were on the campaign trail with Tiernan right?”
“Um, yes I was.”
Confused, Kassidi reached across the desk, “You know the caller?”
Sam threw his head back, running his fingers through his designer buzz-cut. He turned to look at his host, contemplating how best to answer, “No I don’t know her personally Kass, but I’ve been aware of her for some time. Like I say, not many people got a chance to read my book.” He looked back at the Camera, “Caller, as a fan, perhaps you’d be able to shed some light on why the book reached such a small audience?”
“Well Sam, it kind of read like a death wish. It was like you were deliberately calling out every one of the most dangerous people in the world, and revealing all of their dirty little secrets. At that particular point in time, concerned parties took it as their duty to protect you from yourself.”
Kassidi Stein looked crestfallen, “Hang on, I’m so confused. You’re saying this is true? I mean this is all a publicity stunt for your film right?”
Sam mused, “It would be a pretty good stunt right?” looking back into the camera, he pitched continued, “So Stanwick, that was then … Where do you stand now? I mean, what do you think about President Tiernan’s reappearance on the political scene? It’s been a crazy forty eight hours right?”
“Listen Sam, you’re a dangerous man, but you should know that if you want to go toe to toe with Tiernan, there’s a lot of people have your back. Next time you’re in West Virginia, you should stop by the Stupins Institute. Maybe my brother can come along for the party.”
When Stanwick walked back into the living room, all eyes were on her.
Bemused, West came to meet her, “Ballsy move. There’s six of us, including one child and three completely unseasoned fighters, and you just called out Tiernan. What’s the Stupins Institute?”
“Business address.” She threw her arms open wide, “Welcome to the Stupins Institute, registered 1905.”
The troops were prepared for anything, but they had been led to expect moderate civilian resistance. Singer had spoken to President Stathopolous who made it abundantly clear that any attempts at approaching Bulgaria by way of the Aegean would be looked upon as an open declaration of war against Greece. Skirting North of Istanbul, moving the majority of the troops across Cubuklu Bay via the Mehmet Bridge would still take them through heavil
y populated areas of course, but it struck Julius as being preferable to crossing the Bosphorus bridge and riding defiantly through the heart of the city with a convoy of fifteen thousand.
How many armies had been gored on Istanbul’s Golden Horns he wondered. If they could avoid engaging any civilians on the Antolian side of the city, Julius was certain things would be easy going from there on in.
It was after six in the morning as the convoy broke off on the Northbound stretch of the E80. The sun had already cast out a luxurious blanket from the East and would be behind them as the road curved back towards the city. Red sky in the morning, thought Julius; not an abundance of shepherds in the Maslak district … plenty of skyscrapers.
He was certain that even without the protection afforded by his dark companions, he would have taken the lead vehicle; he had fought in twelve major conflicts, had led the assault in nine of these and had survived unscathed. It had been several centuries since he had born a wound deep enough to force him to look upon the delvers of Allim, though they were rarely far from the front of his mind. He couldn’t begin to fathom how many men he had seen pulled back from the brink by the leeches, each of them victims of their own stupidity, and each seemingly addicted to the sight of their tiny saviors. He understood that addiction too well. He had witnessed men fall slowly into madness, waiting for the next advance, hunkered down, entrenched, bored to the point of delirium, hacking away at their own flesh just for the feel of the miracle, a glimpse of the darkness.
Traffic on the bridge was slowing as the lead pair of vehicles made their approach. By the time the front twenty had reached the bridge’s center, traffic had halted completely,the arcs of the thick steel suspension cables reaching their lowest point about 20 meters in front of Julius’s humvee. Julius turned his body, resting his arm against the seat back so he could address the four passengers, “We need recon. All of you, out. Remember, we’re already conspicuous enough, we don’t need to alarm anyone.” He turned to the driver, “Corporal Cartwright, call in sit rep, then keep comms open. If traffic starts to move again, move on our position.”
They kept to the side of the road where possible, but Julius quickly noted that cars were actually pulling out of the line of traffic, the drivers going so far as to push their vehicles up against the barrier which ran along the side of the road in an effort to halt their progress. Julius hopped the barrier guessing that taking to the narrow pedestrian path would make things easier, but the sound of several car doors slamming alerted him to the fact that drivers and passengers alike were exiting their cars and forming an impromptu blockade ahead of them.
“The fuck are they doing?” Sergeant Bickersley’s voice grated on Julius. He stopped and rested a hand on the railing.
“Sergeant, you are a killing machine. This situation does not get ugly unless you make it ugly. If these people lay hands on you, you turn the other cheek. If one of these people raises arms against you, you turn the other cheek. If you take a bullet to the cheek, what do you do Bickersley?”
Bickersley’s dark skin hid the flush of color well, but his eyes were downcast with embarrassment. He knew the answer that Singer was expecting, but he couldn’t fathom his reasoning.
Julius narrowed his eyes reproachfully, his nostrils flaring, “We were expected. Don’t know how, don’t much care. They’re clearly expecting Tiernan’s attack dogs. We will act with absolute decorum and humility. Do I make myself clear?”
Bickersley pulled his weapon close to his chest and raised his chin proudly, “Affirmative sir.”
As he pushed forward, Julius wondered how much easier this would be if the soldiers were fully aware of what they had become. He strode towards a man who stood at the front of the crowd that had gathered before them. The man was tall, muscular, a thick dark mustache accentuating the sombre curve of his mouth as he sneered at Julius. Julius addressed the man in perfect Turkish dialect, “Friend, we have a common enemy and my troops seek passage, not hostility.”
The man struggled to talk over the babble of the crowd. After a couple of abortive attempts at yelling his response, he leaned in close to Julius, shouting more or less directly into his ear, “We’re a peace loving people. We stand behind our President. Our President has spoken out against the Economic Unification Council. We stand here in defense of those countries who would oppose America and its role in the E.U.C.”
Julius closed his eyes in thought, frustrated by the man’s rational response. He turned his body and gestured towards the long line of military vehicles, “I have a convoy of fifteen thousand troops. Turning these vehicles around on this bridge is not an option.”
The man stepped back a pace and spread his arms, “You will find it much easier than moving forwards.”
Julius saw no point in arguing. The man was of course right. Leading the others back to the convoy, he pulled his satellite phone out of his breast pocket and thumbed through the contact list, searching for the listing for the American Embassy in Ankara. He selected the personal number for the U.S. Consulate General who was based out of Istanbul. He stepped away from the humvee as the other men climbed into their seats. The phone rang several times before the call was answered.
“General Singer? To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Julius dispensed with formalities, “Paul, I’ve got rather a large ask, but you can consider your debt answered in full if you can pull it off.”
“Nothing I could do will erase my debt to you.”
Julius laughed, “We’ll see.” He paused, wrestling with his conscience. If there was another way of resolving things, he couldn’t see it.
“Paul, I need you to stage a joint attack on the embassy in Ankara and on your own residence. It needs to look like the attack was carried out by the Turkish Military and I need it to look good … clean if possible, dirty if necessary.”
He listened to the Consulate General breathing steadily on the other end of the line and he was quietly pleased that the request had not yet been met with derisory laughter. Paul was a good man who had accepted a dark secret in a time of dire need, and Julius knew that this was a filthy way of calling in that debt.
“How soon?”
“This morning. Now if possible.”
Silence.
“Paul, I …”
The Consulate General spoke over him, “Julius, old friend, I will need a few hours, but it will be done.”
Julius glanced at the group of pedestrians who had gathered outside their vehicles and he tried to imagine this ending peacefully.
“Give Mary-Elizabeth my love.”
“Julius, her every breath is your love.”
Stephanie had never dreamed before that night, or at least that’s how she would come to remember it. It had taken her a while to drift off, and when she finally did, she found herself still surrounded by the insane visual cacophony that she’d experienced throughout that day. She dreamed that she had woken up the next day, dismayed and exhausted by her own decisions and their ramifications, each thought branching off and dancing into the unknown, another life lived. If she looked hard enough, she could see into one of those lives, their joys and sorrows, and always through everything, their wonder and elation at their chance for life.
In those first moments of dreaming, it became a guiding philosophy for her, that the more options she could think of, the greater the possibility that somewhere out there she was getting it right.
She dreamed of herself flourishing in this new world of possibility, the world positively teaming with an ever growing populace of decisions, made and unmade. She learned that without acting on merely on impulse, she could watch.
With that early epiphany, the pace of the dream changed. Recalling the words that West had spoken to her father, she dreamed of the war that her grandfather had started. She had little knowledge of war, but her imagination was bursting with what war could be. More than that, she knew that they could help. The delvers. The tongues of Antrusca. And to her bidding, the delvers bent, tra
veling through her cerebral veins, feeding her need.
She watched the days unfold and the thousand ways that everything that she loved could be lost; the decisions of her newfound companions weaving through one another; a hell on earth riddled with the pathways trodden by the unsung heroes of battles lost. A new day dawned though, and again the world was replete with their victorious siblings and offspring, and there was no other possibility. When she looked back through the channels and streams, she could see so clearly that there was no future without her in it.
Still further, she saw a world beyond the coming war, where their gift broke free of the shadows, and the choice would be forever each person’s birthright, Tiernan’s greatest legacy, the gift he guarded so jealously.
So the night raged on, a thousand minds, dreaming a seemingly infinite cosmos of dreams.
The humvee was thick with heat, such that every breath had become a labour. The crowds had barely stirred with the noise of the distant explosion, but the plume of black smoke rising in North West was Julius Singer’s cue. Grabbing the bullhorn from the floor of the cabin behind his seat, he opened the passenger door and stepped out. He was careful to aim his rifle over the water, firing a short spray of bullets between the bridge’s steel struts. Bringing the bullhorn to his lips, he strode towards the crowd which had quickly become panicked and skittish.
Although he had struggled to adapt to the shifting Turkish language after the 1930s, he had spent enough time in the country to become fluid again, to the extent that he now struggled to recall some of the Arabic phrases to which he had become so accustomed and which had been supplanted by newly created terms or replaced with re-introduced Ottoman Turkish words. His love for the country and for the people had spanned centuries. This wasn’t a fight he wanted to be a part of, but these people had put themselves between him and the necessary fight. He watched the dark cloud rising from what must now be the ruin of the consulate buildings and he swallowed back his emotion.
Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams Page 35