Finally he saw a road sign labelled with a large ‘H’ and the word ‘Hastane’, which he guessed was Turkish for hospital. Myles followed the arrows and soon saw a well-lit building. He moved down through the gears as he approached the accident and emergency section, where he live-parked.
Myles froze still for a moment, trying to force himself to move. His body resisted. He wanted to stay with her. But he knew he had no choice.
‘Helen, I’m going to have to leave you here,’ he whispered, hating himself for it.
Gently, he moved round to help her out of her seat. Then he wiped dirt from her forehead, and kissed it.
Lifting her up, he hugged her close, then carried her towards the reception desk. Seeing that the woman was obviously very sick, two medical professionals in uniforms moved over to take her.
‘Thank you, Myles.’
Myles just caught her words as he left the building.
Days IX–X
Forty-Seven
Safiq knew the supertanker was approaching land. Italy, someone had said. Safiq’s chance to settle in civilisation was approaching…
One of Juma’s crew came down into the oil storage area, where the smell of faeces had displaced the whiff of gasoline. The pirate explained what was going to happen.
Two groups, he had commanded: young men with weapons to lead, and everybody else to follow.
Safiq was one of the first young men to be offered a gun — an AK-47. He remembered his father had once been given a Kalashnikov too, and had cherished the Russian-made weapon, even though he never had any bullets for it. Safiq accepted both, half nervous, half excited by what was to come.
As he followed the others onto the deck of the tanker, he saw how police boats were trying to block the port entrance. Loud speakers were blaring across the water in a language Safiq didn’t recognise. Port workers were running away. The tanker was approaching them fast.
Too fast?
Then Safiq realised — it was meant to go fast. The supertanker would ram into the dockside so that none of the Italian police could stop it.
The pirates were pushing the young men with guns to the front. But Safiq reckoned anyone near the bow would be hurt when the ship crashed into the port. He moved through the crowd to avoid an argument with the pirate crew, who were becoming angry. As the dockside of Europe came closer and closer, he barely had a chance to look forward. He was still trying to get to the middle of the ship.
Safiq tumbled over when the tanker hit, his ears deafened by the crunch of metal against concrete. He heard the people around him roar — first in fear and confusion, then in celebration. They had landed in Europe — now they would reach America.
The crowds streamed off, jumping down from the buckled deck onto the harbourside below. They cheered as they ran. The men with guns fired into the air. The families followed, carrying whatever they could and taking much longer to climb down from the ship than the young men at the front.
Safiq realised the great mass of people was moving forward. They knew where they were going. Safiq followed.
Jostled by the crowd, Safiq’s AK-47 was knocked and the magazine fell to the ground. He picked it up but it was dented. Still running, Safiq tried to clip it back into place again but it wouldn’t stay. He tried holding it there, until he decided he didn’t really need it — the gun already had a bullet in the chamber, and that was enough. He allowed the magazine to drop again, and left it this time.
He saw some of the men with weapons taking aim. A rocket was fired at a tower — but missed. A burst of gunfire hit the outside of a house. They were scaring the local people away so they could reach their destination. Threatening civilisation so they could join it.
Safiq pointed his AK-47 at an empty car, holding it from the hip, and pulled the trigger. The single bullet pumped out. Metalwork near the wheel hub buckled. But the gun was much louder than Safiq had expected and the recoil frightened him. He didn’t want the weapon. He let it fall on the roadside and ran along with the others.
He could see people watching the crowd from windows. They were afraid — good. But not that good — Safiq wanted to be like them. To enjoy a home like theirs, food like theirs, a life like theirs…
He kept running with the crowd, all of them desperately hoping they could reach the centre of the city before they were blocked or captured… Then Safiq truly understood: he and the African migrants around him weren’t running for their lives. They were running for a good life.
And they knew where they were running: to America.
Via the American Embassy in Rome.
Forty-Eight
Myles slumped. Deep tiredness infected his muscles. His whole body was exhausted. Three days ago he had sprinted for more than a mile to escape the gunman in London. He couldn’t do that now.
Once he had driven clear of the hospital, Myles parked up and tried to think through his next steps. He knew he had some nasty choices to make.
Should he stay near Istanbul? That way he could check on Helen — perhaps visit her in hospital in a day or two, when no one was expecting it. Desperately, he hoped she was OK. Septicaemia, he tried to convince himself, was quite common. The medics would diagnose it quickly. She’d get the right treatment, whether Myles visited her or not. There was probably nothing more he could do to make her safe.
Should he hand himself in? After all, he’d stopped an attempted poisoning in Germany and now a plot to spread the plague — even though the bungling grave robbers had only dug up smallpox. Police would have seen his work in both places and known that Myles had foiled two terrorist plots within a week. They might even let him stay with Helen.
But it wasn’t enough. Myles was convinced that Placidia was planning more. The Roman Empire had been weakened by lead poisoning and the plague, but it had not been destroyed by them. It was barbarians running through the streets of the capital — desperate and hungry, but also jealous and resentful, which had defined the ancient civilisation’s final days. The barbarians had ransacked a culture they envied but couldn’t understand.
How could Placidia make that happen to modern-day America?
There was more going on here. Far more.
He felt sure that if he gave himself up to the authorities they’d quarantine him, or find some other excuse to keep him away from what was happening. Myles would have to keep running. And the best thing he could do for Helen would be follow the lead she’d given him — to Iraq.
He lay back on the car seat. As the back of his scalp hit the headrest he recognised just how tired he was. He was hungry and thirsty, too. His whole body was a wreck. He needed downtime, and he needed to spend it away from danger.
He also realised that he needed to change his car. The Ford had been seen by the policemen near the pharmacy break-in, and also at the hospital. Turkish police were probably looking through CCTV footage to find him while he rested.
Summoning his energy, as if a long-planned lie-in had been cut short, Myles climbed out of his vehicle and walked along the street until he found another row of cars. As before, he checked the doors of several of them until he came to one which was open — a white Fiat. He climbed in, tore open the cardboard hiding the electronics, and again hotwired the ignition. He was able to do it more quickly this time, now he understood how the circuitry in modern cars was arranged. But he still found it exhausting.