Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (47 page)

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 heavily 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, traveling 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.

“My friends,
Istanbul is too beautiful to bear witness to the coming conflict.
Previous wars, occupations and advancements have woven a this
magnificent tapestry of cultures that you enjoy, but make no
mistake; to be part of this war is to touch a burning taper to that
heritage. Your military has made a brazen statement against America
today, burning bridges that have been long in the making. Look
there,” he pointed towards the smoke clouds, “The residences of the
U.S. Consulate General burn at the hands of your leaders. This was
an act of defiance and solidarity with those countries opposed to
the E.U.C, maybe, but the administration of President Tiernan has
already declared this as an open act of war. In this, your country
has pitted you, innocent and peaceable citizens, against the might
of the U.S. military.”

He paced back
and forth, slowly making up ground between himself and the crowds,
“I lead an army that does not yet know its own strength and I will
not make a name for myself here. Do not allow this to be the
birthplace of the new war. Do not let my army cut their teeth
here.”

He watched
apprehensively, hoping for some sign that the crowds were weakening
in their resolve, but no such sign came. Two men broke from the
pack and moved towards an aging ford truck which had been abandoned
by its owner. Julius was disturbed by their smiles. He wondered if
he had missed something, some vital sign in the surroundings. As
the two men stepped to opposite ends of the truck, Julius stepped
back instinctively, the darkness consuming him, a hundred voices
calling to him, castigating him for his stupidity. Arrogance. He
understood it now that he was confronted with it. That was the
skulking creature lingering at the edges of his conscience. He had
allowed himself to imagine that the deck was stacked in his favor,
but now, too easily, too gracefully, the men bent with their knees
and lifted the truck as if it were a fiberglass set dressing. When
the truck landed, roof to roof atop the lead humvee, the bullhorn
dropped unceremoniously from Julius’s hands and he ran, head bowed
slightly, torso leaning forward, heart thumping with the rush of
chemicals released by the leeches.