Behemoth

“She is proving to be a most interesting woman.”

Alek stared at the man, a slight shudder passing through him.

“Don’t worry, Alek, I haven’t told her all my secrets. How is your friend Dylan, by the way?”

“Dylan? He’s … quite astounding, at times.” Alek sighed. “In a way it’s because of him that I let myself be captured again.”

Volger’s coffee cup froze halfway to his lips. “What do you mean by that?”

“Dylan convinced me it was safer to give myself up than to escape. There were a dozen Ottoman walkers headed toward us, I suppose. But it was more than that. He seems to think that I belong on this ship.” Alek sighed. “Not that it matters. Once we’re back in Britain, they’ll put me in a cage.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that just yet.” The wildcount glanced at the windows. “Haven’t you noticed?”

Alek looked out the window. Last night when he’d grown too tired to stay awake, the airship had been headed back down the strait, guiding the behemoth back toward the Mediterranean Sea. But now there were mountains passing by, tipped with orange from the rising sun. Their long shadows stretched through the mist, trailing toward his left.

“Are we headed east?”

Volger clucked his tongue. “That took you some time. I’m sure your friend Dylan would have noticed right away.”

“No doubt. But why are we headed for Asia? The war’s back in Europe.”

“When this war began, the German navy had ships in every ocean. The Goeben and the Breslau aren’t the only ones that the British have been searching for.”

“Do you know where in Asia we’re going?”

“Alas, Dr. Barlow hasn’t been forthcoming on the matter. But I suspect we will be in Tokyo sooner or later. Japan declared war against Germany four weeks ago.”

“Of course.” Alek stared out at the mountains passing by. The Japanese had been Darwinists since signing a cooperation pact with the British in 1902. But it was astounding to think that the war ignited by his parents’ death had already outgrown Europe, and now encompassed the entire globe.

“This detour is inconvenient, but it keeps you out of that cage a little longer,” Volger said. “Austria-Hungary is not faring well against the great fighting bears of Russia. The time for you to reveal yourself may be sooner than I thought.” He prodded the newspaper as if it were a dead fish. “That is, to reveal what little you haven’t already.”

Alek pulled the scroll case from his pocket. “You mean this?”

“I was afraid to ask if you still had it.”

“As if I would have lost it!” Alek said angrily, then realized that he had, in fact, lost it once already. But since the taxi incident, he’d kept the letter with him at all times.

The night before, the airman who’d searched him in the cargo bay had found the scroll case and opened it. But the letter’s ornate Latin script had meant nothing to him, and he had politely returned it.

“I’m not a complete fool, Volger. In fact, this letter is why I ignored your advice and stayed in Istanbul.”

“What do you mean, Your Highness?”

“A pointless feud among my family started this war, so it’s up to me to stop it.” He held up the case. “This is the will of heaven, which tells me what I’m meant to do. Not skulk in hiding but take my rightful place and put an end to this war!”

Volger stared at him for a long moment, then steepled his fingers.

“That letter is no guarantee that you’ll take the throne.”

“I know all that. But the pope’s word must count for something.”

“Ah, I had forgotten.” The wildcount turned away. “You’ve been in a land of heathens and heretics. You haven’t heard the news from the Vatican.”

“News?”

“The Holy Father is dead.”

Alek stared at the man.

“They say the war was hard on him,” Volger continued. “He wanted peace too much. Of course, what he wanted doesn’t matter now.”

“But … this letter represents the will of heaven. The Vatican will still confirm that it’s real, won’t they?”

“One would think so. Of course, someone there told the Germans about your father’s visit.” The man spread his hands. “We must hope that this someone doesn’t have the new pope’s ear.”

Alek turned to stare out the window, trying to make sense of Volger’s news.

After his parents’ death, the whole world had gone mad, as if his family tragedy had broken history itself. But in Istanbul, somehow, things had started to fall back into place. The Committee’s revolution, Dylan arriving with the behemoth in his wake, all of it revealed that it was up to Alek to stop the war, to put matters right. For the first time in his life, he had felt a certainty in all his actions, as if providence were guiding him.

But now the world was turning upside down again. Fate was taking him not back toward the center of the war but away from his homeland and his people, away from everything he had been born to do. And the letter in his hand, the only thing his father had left him that Alek hadn’t thrown away, might now be worthless.

What mad providence was this?

AFTERWORD

Behemoth is a novel of alternate history, so most of its characters, creatures, and machines are my own inventions. But the historical locations and events are modeled closely on the realities of World War I. Here’s a quick review of what’s true and what’s fictional.

The Sultan Osman I was a real warship, purchased by the Ottoman Empire and awaiting completion at a British shipyard in late 1914. As the war began, however, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill decided to seize the ship, worried that the Ottomans might join the Germans and use the warship against Britain. The Ottomans did ultimately enter the war, but partly because Churchill had stolen their ship. It is still debated whether they would have become involved without this provocation.

As in Behemoth, the Ottoman Empire was unstable in 1914. In the real world, in fact, the sultan and his grand vizier were no longer in charge. They had been overthrown during the revolution of 1908, and the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) was already in power.

In the world of Behemoth, however, the 1908 revolution was unsuccessful, leaving the sultan in power and the CUP split into many factions. I created a second rebellion in 1914 because I wanted my characters to be involved in a successful revolution, one that would perhaps nudge history toward a more positive outcome.

The German influence in Istanbul was very real; they owned a popular newspaper, while the British embassy had no one on its staff who could read Turkish. (Hard to believe, but true.)

Just as in this book, the German ironclads Breslau and Goeben found themselves trapped in the Mediterranean at the beginning of the war. They escaped to Istanbul and became part of the Ottoman navy, crews and all. In return for the two ships, the Ottomans put Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, commander of the Goeben, in charge of their entire fleet. On October 29, 1914, Admiral Souchon attacked the Russian navy without official permission, dragging the Ottomans into the war.

In the real world, the war resulted in the end of the Ottoman Empire, which was partitioned into a number of countries, including Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. I wanted to create a history in which the empire remained intact and Istanbul retained its cosmopolitan nature as a model for the rest of the world.

And yes, you really should call it Istanbul, not Constantinople. Although the Ottoman aristocracy used the name Kostantiniyye for many centuries, and many westerners cling to the name in story