Empire of Lies

END NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to time travel in books, movies, and TV. It wasn’t long before it was joined by my love of alternate reality stories. So you can imagine my delight when the idea for a book that combined both ambushed me late one summer night. Researching and writing it was going to be a lot of fun; that much was obvious from the start. But what made it irresistible to me was that it would be—it had to be—an unusual mirror to the times we live in—unsettling, troubled times. Because these last few years, no matter where I look, it feels like we’re spiraling down an ever-darkening episode of Black Mirror.

A lot of the disturbing stuff that’s happening in Kamal’s world is happening in our world. Truth and freedom of speech are under threat across the globe. The Social Credit System is a reality in China. Article 275 of the criminal code, which deals with treason, is a reality in Russia, as was the Z Directorate, now part of the post-KGB SVR. The Comprehensive National—not Imperial—Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center is a huge NSA data storage facility located in Utah. The Insider Threat Program, which deals with whistleblowers, is up and running in the US. Other winks at our world and at our history are peppered throughout the book, in names of characters, places, and organizations, and in events—but I’ll leave it to you to have fun digging them up if you’re so inclined.

Most of the history you’ll read here is true. The horrendous siege of Vienna, and all the names and events associated with it (apart from my time travelers’ interference), is faithfully depicted. The statue of Kolschitzky, commemorating the debatable story of his bringing coffee to Vienna, hangs there above the street that bears his name. ISIS was indeed born in the prison camps of Iraq, after the 2003 invasion. Its raiders did capture Palmyra and execute the director of the ancient city’s museum. Kara Mustafa was executed under the sultan’s orders on Christmas Day, 1683.

And if researching this book was truly a blast, the most challenging part, however, was trying to picture what the Ottoman Empire might look like in the twenty-first century. It was challenging because I couldn’t simply extrapolate forward from its last days, when it collapsed at the end of World War I. I had to start much further back—in 1683—and project forward from there. This was simply because the failure in Vienna was the beginning of the Ottoman empire’s decline, and although it did last another two and a half centuries before it finally died out, its evolution over those centuries was very much informed by the Ottomans’ efforts to catch up with a Europe that was charging ahead with the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, not to mention the effects of more than one major revolution. In Kamal’s world, none of these took place, which meant I needed to imagine how three hundred years of history might have evolved in a vacuum with none of those seismic events to shape it. I hope you find it to be a credible take on how that might have unfolded.

The other challenge in the research was figuring out how Ayman Rasheed could plausibly lead the Ottomans to not just conquer the rest of Europe, but hold it—and hang on to it for more than two centuries. Again, I hope I managed to do a convincing job. I would have loved to include all the fruit of my research on all those fronts, but that might have undermined the page-turning experience I was aiming for.

A lot of people helped me along this journey—friends, experts, and colleagues who helped me through brainstorming or sharing their knowledge of all things Ottoman with me. I’m grateful to them all, but specifically, I’d like to single out my agents, Mitch Hoffman and Eugenie Furniss, the high priest and priestess of perseverance; my editors and friends at Michael Joseph in London: Rowland White, Ariel Pakier, and Sarah Kennedy; and their equally stellar counterparts at Tor/Forge in NYC: Bess Cozby, Devi Pillai, Linda Quinton, and Lucille Rettino.

Last, but far from least, I’d like to thank everyone who worked on this book in sales, marketing, and publicity at Michael Joseph and at Tor/Forge for all their hard work in getting this book on the shelves and on your attention radar. I’d also like to thank all the booksellers who welcomed it into their stores and championed it with their customers. In our Facebook/Instagram/Netflix/Fortnite-consumed times, neither one sounds like an easy task. My thanks to you all again.