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Synopsis

Embark on a thrilling alternate historical mystery with Sir Seaton Begg and Doctor Sinclair as they chase the enigmatic Red King assassin through the streets of Istanbul...

Sent undercover by Britain's famed yet clandestine Temporal Agency to Istanbul, Detective Sir Seaton Begg and Doctor Sinclair are on the hunt for the Red King, the leader of a secretive group of assassins who are plotting to change the shape of the world. At the same time, the nascent Nazi forces are also in Istanbul, for their own reasons. Begg and Philips are thrust into a city that is in transition from the ancient to the modern, reflecting the state of the world in the early 1930s, and they are hard pressed on all sides by assassins and betrayals. Yet, one ally has emerged, an enemy from the past, the dreaded albino Monsieur Zenith, Begg's nemesis.

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1 A Strangling Interrupted

The purpling sky of Istanbul made her crowded minarets and towers glow like enormous jewels. As the raw red orb of the sun spread its dwindling rays, the muezzins chanted the evening summons to prayer. Their musical clamour resonated across timeworn rooftops. Muslims streamed to their mosques, while Orthodox Christians departed their churches.

The last admonishing notes of the ?alat al-magrib echoed into the distance, leaving behind a moment of seeming silence.

Several curious people noted a figure passing through the narrow lanes and shadowed alleyways. Tall and slim, the individual wore a smart black suit with a fedora angled low over the face.

They strode quickly and purposefully, with eyes fixed unswervingly ahead, for one could not afford to cast a sidelong glance when stalking the hulking yet slippery brute known as Suleyman the Strangler!

Tenaciously the follower stuck close to the killer, through the old neighbourhood, with its crooked and decrepit tenements leaning against each other as if exhausted by age. Were one to collapse, the others would fall like dominoes.

Stars salted the sky, but between the precarious dwellings the gloom only deepened. Candlelight and oil lamps provided illumination here and there, slanting from gaps in drawn blinds and closed shutters, briefly flickering as the hunted and the hunter went by.

Candlelight! This part of the city had been without a gas supply for nine days. Now the electricity had failed. Again, as so frequently happened, the infrastructure had faltered under the strain of hauling an ancient metropolis into the twentieth century.

Only the Strangler and his pursuer welcomed the darkness.

Intent, they pushed on through the Old Quarter. The follower, in thin rubber-soled shoes, found it hard going over the worn cobblestones but never fell behind, never lost sight of the lumbering creature as he skirted a manufacturing district where dyers and tanners proliferated, the air saturated with their rancid stench. Mint sellers offered sprigs to alleviate it. Suleyman and his shadow paid them no heed.

Nor did they notice, as they entered that busier zone of shops and residences, the half-veiled temptresses enticing them from murky doorways, the beggars wheedling for baksheesh, or the inebriated men shouting invitations to drink. They did not hear the distorted, cheap French jazz record jangling from an upper window, or the throbbing tom-toms that accompanied a zither in some hidden square nearby.

An old man kicked a whimpering dog and laughed. A woman sobbed hysterically. Something heavy dropped with a splintering crash. In the distance a cursing lad tried to start a stubborn motorcycle.

All this was ignored.

The pair progressed northward, stepping suddenly from foul air into pungent and delicious fragrances, as if a tangible border existed between the atmosphere of the tanneries and that of the spice market ahead.

The murmured prayers of those devout Muslims who remained in their mosques were barely detectible beneath the sounds of the yelling merchants and their customers.

Suleyman shoved through them all, like a silverback gorilla casually crashing through thick jungle. He came to the famous Galata Bridge. On the other side, the docks, offices, banks, agencies, embassies, and other buildings of mercantile Galata boasted power with their twinkling lights. Electricity there.

Also wicked, premeditated murder!

Passions and tempers ran high on this sultry and breathless April night. Arguing Turks and Armenians thronged the bridge; Greeks and Jews, Western Europeans and Arabs, exiles from a once-imperial Russia, even Chinese, all getting in each other's way, all unrestrained in their opinions of one another.

No one, however, dared to object as Suleyman elbowed them aside, especially when the power supply abruptly snapped back on in the Old Quarter, the lights lining the bridge blazing into incandescent life, revealing him in all his awful immensity.

Suleyman the Strangler was a solid mass of meat and bone, small-headed and slope-browed, with bristling black hair, beady eyes, and an apishly wide mouth. His legs were short, his shoulders vast, his arms thick, and the hands knotted, sinewy and lethal. He had once been a pehlivan--an oil wrestler--notorious for killing two opponents and breaking the bones of many others. Since then, less sporting forms of violence had added to his infamy.

He was a brute who plainly struggled to form a coherent thought, but whose loyalty to his owner--of a certainty, he was more an owned beast than a free man--was absolute.

Who could command blind devotion from such a subhuman monster?

Some in Istanbul could answer the question in two words, whispered but never spoken, and only ever uttered where they could not possibly be overheard.

Suleyman's master was

The Red King!

For three years, from the very day Constantinople was reborn as Istanbul, the Red King, the mysterious master assassin, had terrorised the city. He and his gang were ruthless. His victims were many, his methods terrible and cruel, his motives a mystery. He confined himself to no single nationality, race, or religion. Most of his victims were men, but he had killed women, too, and even, once, a child.

Turks said he was a Latvian Jew. Others claimed him to be an Arabian sheikh and leader of a bandit tribe. In a British Secret Service file he was identified as a half Greek, half Kurd who had served with the Okhrana, the Guard Department--the Russian secret police--before the Petrograd uprising of 1917. Beneath this latter assertion, the word "Unconfirmed" was stamped, and under that, someone had scrawled, Red King--red herring.

In truth, the assassin was a mystery that, due to the unique nature of "the City of the World's Desire," spanned two continents.

But--

"If I have anything to do with it," the one who followed Suleyman vowed, "the Red King's henchman will commit no murder tonight!"

The silent pursuit continued.

At the end of the bridge, Suleyman swung left and ploughed through a group of dockhands, upsetting their backgammon boards. With cigarettes between their calloused fingers and acrid smoke billowing from their mouths, they gesticulated furiously and cursed him for his bad manners... but only after he was well beyond them. They had quickly taken his dimensions into account.

He made his way toward Kasimpasa, one of the oldest residential districts, a sprawl of cheap, single-storey dwellings mostly occupied by sailors and harbour workers.

The crowds were soon left behind, and now that there were fewer people and more streetlamps, it might be noticed that Suleyman the Strangler, in addition to being hunted, was hunting.

His follower knew that some distance ahead, strode a Frenchman named Apollinaire de Villiers. He was a married gentleman of fifty-five who had allowed himself to be seduced by a woman two decades his junior. She called herself Mademoiselle Béatrice Lefevre. It was an alias, but had de Villiers known, he would not have cared. She was extraordinarily lovely, very charming, and so obviously wealthy that he had no qualms concerning her motives. She desired him, not his money.

Like Suleyman, Béatrice Lefevre was a member of the Red King gang.

Three, not two, then, were making their way to an assignment with death. The adulterer, the monster, and the slender figure in black.

They bypassed the commercial centre and ventured into the suburbs crammed onto Galata's slopes.

Suddenly, again, the power cut out, as if Suleyman's unholy presence somehow eclipsed all light.

From a house on the other side of the road, male voices raised an ironic cheer.

Someone yelled, "Yasasin Kemal ve beceriksiz hükümeti!"

Long live Kemal and his incompetent government!

The Strangler did not pause. He lurched past a café, lit by a single candle, and filled with bearded men in greasy trilbies, peaked caps, and turbans. They were smoking flavoured tobacco from hookahs, and drinking minted teas and sugar-laden, sludge-bottomed coffee. And, in jabbering clamour, they enthusiastically heaped insults upon the president's decade-old republic, with its tidal wave of reforms and modernisations, and its absolute inability to keep the gas or electricity flowing. Yesterday, they had praised him. Now, they cursed him. Tomorrow, they would erect statues to celebrate him.

The streets grew narrower, quieter, darker still.

The black-suited pursuer saw, for the first time, de Villiers, far ahead, passing through the glow of an abandoned food vendor's brazier, its owner doubtless in a nearby bar. The Frenchman strode on with confidence. He obviously knew the area and did not fear for his safety, sure that he could talk, or, if necessary, bribe his way out of any potential difficulty.

More cautious now, Suleyman, some fifty yards behind, crossed the road and slipped from doorway to doorway, gradually closing the distance.

To the rear, and doing the same, came the follower.

One after the other, they reached a wide alley sloping up in long, shallow, cobbled steps. A brief spring shower earlier in the day had left the ground puddled with fresh rainwater. The acrid odour of vinegar from a hundred-year-old pickling shop cut the muggy air. Scavenger dogs yipped around piled garbage, slinking away as the three approached. From the Golden Horn came the mournful bawl of a departing ship.

De Villiers disappeared.

The last of the trio drew a snub-nosed S&W .38 police special.

The Frenchman had turned into a narrow passage, expecting to find a door at the end of it; the entrance to an apartment, in which he imagined Béatrice Lefevre waited in an enticing state of déshabillé. She would claim, no doubt, that it was to accommodate the night's warmth.

De Villiers had considered it an unlikely district in which to arrange an illicit assignation, but she had quickly persuaded him of the advantages. This would be the last place her husband suspected, should he wonder where she was. Moreover, property here was cheap. She was able to rent the little "bolt-hole" without Monsieur Lefevre noticing the expense.

That, at least, is what she had told her lover.

However, as he now discovered, his petite Béatrice was not in the apartment. There was no apartment. The passage was a cul-de-sac.

"Mon Dieu! Ai-je fait une erreur? N'est-ce pas la bonne adresse?" he muttered.

He turned.

Thick fingers clamped around his neck.

Suddenly, he could not breathe. A mountainous form loomed over him. He pulled desperately at meaty wrists. They were as immovable as rock. He was lifted off his feet, the strain on his neck agonising. His ears rang. His last breath squeaked with dissonant terror.

A husky command rang out. "Put him down, Suleyman, or I'll shoot you through the head!"

The giant wheeled, swinging de Villiers. The Frenchman's vertebrae crunched, almost breaking.

The Strangler snarled like a dog. "Huh?"

"Don't pretend to be dumber than you are. I know you understand English. Drop him and put up your hands. I shall count to three; then I'll shoot."

Through blurring eyes, de Villiers saw a tall, slim figure outlined in the mouth of the passageway.

"One!"

The Red King's man grunted and barked, "Suleyman!"

"I know who you are, stupid! Two!"

"I kill."

"Trust me," said the other, "I'll kill you first. Three!" A moment of stillness and silence, then, "I warned you!"

Crack!

A shot echoed down the passage.

De Villiers, abruptly released, crumpled to his knees. He sucked air desperately through his bruised windpipe.

"Put 'em up, Suleyman! Now!"

The Frenchman scrambled frantically across the ground toward his saviour.

"Get out of here," the shooter snapped at him. "Run! And don't see the Lefevre woman again. This was her doing, you dupe!"

De Villiers pushed himself up, slipped past his rescuer, and took to his heels. He left the passage, raced across the cobbled street, plunged into another black opening on the opposite side, and became nothing more than fading footsteps.

"Your attention, Suleyman! I just took off your right ear. That's how good a shot I am. You're now going to tell me the name of your master, and if you refuse, I'm going to put bullets through your hands, so you can never use them again. Understood? So, tell me: Who is the Red King?"

The beast took one shuffling pace forward, keeping his hands raised.

"Red King," he rumbled, "is Red King."

"Enough of that! Stay still!"

Suleyman growled deep in his throat. He advanced another half step and said, "Mr. Milk."

"I won't tell you again! Stay still. One more move and you'll lose fingers."

The brute grinned, his slablike teeth white in the darkness.

He took another step.

A flash, a report, and he howled as his left middle finger disappeared. He clutched at the wounded hand.

"Raise them!" the shooter commanded, voice pitched higher. "If you hold them like that, my next shot will go right through them and into your heart. Levez les mains, vite!"

With gore flowing and spattering onto the ground, Suleyman complied.

"Mr. Milk?" demanded the figure in black. "You say the Red King's name is Mr. Milk?"

"No," the killer rasped, "you work for Mr. Milk."

"I do not. I have never heard of him."

"Then--who sent you?"

"It is me interrogating you, my friend, not the other way around. I want everything you know about the Red King. And while you're at it, you can tell me about your Milk man, too."

"Huh!" Suleyman swayed and moaned in pain.

Gesturing with the pistol, the other said, "You had better start--"

The ex-wrestler pounced.

For such a big man, he was shockingly light on his feet. That great bulk moved as rapidly as a cobra. One second, he was standing unsteadily, the next, he had flung himself forward and barrelled into his opponent like an avalanche.

They careened out into the cobbled street. The gun went clattering away. Powerful fingers reached for a slender throat, but the blood made them slippery and the intended victim twisted, ducked, and jumped clear, losing the fedora in doing so.

Dark, bobbed hair flopped free of confinement.

"What?" Suleyman exclaimed. "A woman?"

It was no ordinary woman.

She slammed her fist into the side of his jaw. It hit with a resounding clack! His head snapped to one side, spittle spraying from his mouth.

Striking Suleyman, however, was akin to striking granite, particularly when his head was the target.

By the time she had regained her balance, his hands were again around her neck.

Now she was helpless.

Her fists thudded over and over into his ribs, her boots smashed against his shins, her knee went into his groin, but he was inexorable, and in a matter of moments, the strength drained out of her.

And he squeezed... and squeezed...

Copyright © 2025 by Michael Moorcock

Copyright © 2025 by Mark Hodder

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