Instantly porters appeared from the doorway of the hotel. Stanton flashed more currency and waved them away from McCluskey, pointing at his bags. He then supported her through the doors while a porter followed with the luggage.
Inside the building the reception desk was in a different place to where it had been when he had checked in that morning but he could see that the Orient Bar was still tucked into the corner of the great atrium, the same place it had been when he had his drink with McCluskey before what she called her ‘last supper’.
Last supper? Yeah, right. The outrageous old cheat.
He approached the reception desk with McCluskey stumbling along beside him; it being so late the foyer was almost empty, which was fortunate. Only the porter following behind with the bags and the staff at the desk were present to witness the arrival of this strange check-in party.
‘My mother has had a fall,’ Stanton said loudly and authoritatively in English. ‘I need adjoining rooms. Do you offer private bathrooms?’
‘In our suites, sir,’ the receptionist replied, also in English.
‘Then I need a two-bedroom suite. The best you have. Also ice, I presume you still have some in your cellars? Have two buckets sent up at once.’
At first the receptionist seemed pretty dubious about the new arrivals. McCluskey with her blanket for a skirt looked far from being a society lady and Stanton was not dressed in anything remotely resembling evening wear. But they were carrying letters from the British Foreign Office requesting and requiring they be afforded due assistance, and when Stanton insisted that the manager be called while casually playing with a gold sovereign in the palm of his hand, a suite of rooms was secured. The British were, after all, internationally recognized as being pretty eccentric and impervious to the opinions of foreigners. Mad old English ladies supported by sons dressed for what looked like hillwalking were probably not such an uncommon sight in the best hotels in Europe at the time.
A porter accompanied them in the splendid lift to the seventh floor and carried their bags into the suite.
A fumbled tip, a mumbled thank-you and Stanton was alone in a gilt and crimson-velvet sitting room dripping with luxurious Edwardian excess.
Again, Stanton decided to focus on the moment. McCluskey was running a fever now and muttering incoherently. He got her into the bathroom and bathed the wound on her head. It was a pretty deep cut and being on the scalp had bled profusely. The back of her cardigan was soaked in matted blood.
He sat her on the toilet and checked her pupils and her respiratory passages.
‘What’s your name?’ he said.
‘Professor Sally McCluskey,’ came the reply. It was slurred but clear enough.
‘Where do you work?’
‘Cambridge. I’m the Master of Trinity.’
He thought about asking her what year it was but decided to leave that; the answer could provoke a brainstorm even in someone who wasn’t concussed. McCluskey was functioning mentally, and as long as the brain didn’t swell inside the skull she’d probably get away with a nasty headache. Nothing he could do about that till the ice arrived.
Of course, he needed to get her into bed, which wasn’t going to be an easy task. She was conscious but not physically able and she was pretty fat and old. He struggled with her clothes, wrestling with the tightly knotted brogues and thick woollen tights, terrified of toppling her off the toilet. Eventually he got her down to her vast bra and industrial-looking pants and decided to stop there.
It occurred to him to look further into her bag and he found himself whistling at the brazen deceit of the woman. She’d come fully prepared. There were three sets of underwear, a plain black ankle-length dress of late Edwardian design and a brushed cotton nightie, all tightly rolled and packed Girl Guide-style. There was also British and German paper money, plus what looked like treasury bonds. There were various pills and medicines and, to Stanton’s surprise, a small handgun, a Ruger LCP Six Shot in pink polymer. He wouldn’t have imagined she’d tote such a girly piece but, pink or not, he knew the make and it was lethal at close range. He cracked it open and emptied the chamber, pocketing the bullets. His old professor had done a pretty bad thing barging into his mission and she was also severely concussed. For the time being at least he decided he’d prefer to have such an unpredictable associate unarmed. There was much else besides in the bag, which seemed to be bigger on the inside as ladies’ bags often were, but Stanton had no time to explore the limits of his old professor’s audacious duplicity.
He wrestled her into her nightdress and with some effort carried her to bed in one of the rooms that adjoined the sitting room, just as the ice arrived. Using a towel and a pillowcase to make a pack, he laid her head against it and took further stock. As long as the ice contained the swelling, he reckoned she’d be all right. A blow like that against a person in their early seventies was a serious thing, but for all her unhealthy lifestyle McCluskey was a tough old war horse. With luck she’d pull through. Not that he ought to care, of course. She was a lying, cheating traitor who had deliberately put the entire mission in jeopardy for her own personal gratification. But he did care. He liked her and always had. Now that she had made the leap with him and they were together on the strangest adventure in all of human history, he hoped she’d get to see whatever stupid ballet it was she’d set her heart on.
Her breathing was easier now. He felt that she was more asleep than unconscious. Apart from anything else they had both been up now since 4 a.m. the previous morning. He glanced at the beautiful carriage clock that stood on the mantel above the fireplace: 2.15 a.m. Allowing for a two-hour time gain for Central Europe, that was more than twenty hours.
And a hundred and eleven years.
No wonder McCluskey needed some sleep.
When she woke she was going to be in for a shock. A shock that he knew he himself must now begin to assimilate. It was time to accept it. Newton had been right. It was the early hours of the morning on the first of June 1914.
Not one shred of his life existed any more.
Apart from McCluskey, which was little comfort.
He took out his smart phone, looking for a signal despite knowing full well there could be none. But who knew? Those techy guys in LA were so clever that perhaps they’d downloaded him an app that could facilitate calls across separate dimensions in space and time. But of course they hadn’t, and there was an empty pie shape where that morning four black bars had been.
He pressed music and scrolled through his library. Perhaps he would listen to some tunes. He didn’t. It was just too strange.
He went out on to the balcony and stood against the railing. The Pera district was on a hill and Stanton could see the whole of Istanbul and the waters of the Golden Horn stretched out below. Lights twinkled then dimmed as slowly the last remnants of the city he must now call Constantinople went to sleep.
If history were to run its course, within three months the city would be at war. Europe would have embarked on the bloodiest and most terrible conflict the world had ever known. Only he and McCluskey knew that and only he could do anything about it.
He felt very small.
He didn’t feel like sleeping so he sat on the balcony looking at the city for most of the night, going back inside only to check on McCluskey and change the ice until it had all melted. At about five in the morning dawn began to glimmer on the distant horizon.
The dawn of his first day.
He decided to go for a walk. McCluskey seemed OK. The signs of fever that she had exhibited earlier had disappeared. She was sleeping easily and soundly as her body readjusted to the shock. He dressed her wound, put water and a bowl of fruit on her bedside table and wrote her a note, which he left on her pillow.