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distances and velocities to accommodate him. All across the Bosphorus Bridge, through every arterial of vast Istanbul, every second the ceaseless pump of traffic shifts and adjusts, a flock of vehicles.

    Drive-time radio news at the top of the hour. The tram bomb is already downgraded. No one dead besides the suicide bomber. A woman. Unusual. No promise of Paradise’s rewards for her; just eternity married to the same old twat. Something in the family. It always is. Men die for abstractions, women for their families. No, the big story is the weather. Hot hot hot again. High of thirty-eight and humidity eighty per cent and no end in sight. Adnan nods in satisfaction as the Far-East gas spot-price ticker crawls across the bottom of the windshield. His forty-eight hour delivery options on Caspian Gas will hit their strike this morning. Nice little earner. He’ll need the premiums for a few small necessary purchases on Turquoise. Cash is always king. Adnan slips the nozzle of the inhaler up his nostril. The rush of inhaled nano breaks across his forebrain and the numbers become sharp, the focus clear. He hovers high above the golden fabric of deals and derivatives, spots and strikes. Only the concentration-enhancing nano makes it possible for Adnan to pick a pattern from the weave of transactions. The old traders use more and more to keep pace with the young Turks. He’s seen the shake in their hands and the blur in their eyes as he rides down the express elevator with them to the underground car park after the back office has settled out. Nano, Caspian gas, CO 2 and traders: all the many ways of carbon.

    Music: the special calltone of his Paşa, his white knight. Adnan clicks him up on the windshield.

    ‘Adnan Bey.’

    ‘Ferid Bey.’

    He is a fat-faced man with skin smooth from the barber’s razor, almost doll-like in its sheer buffed finish. Adnan recalls from his research that Ferid is very vain, very groomed.

    ‘I’m interested in this. Of course I’ll need much more detail but I think we can do business. I’ll be at the Hacı Kadın baths from seven thirty.’ He laughs hugely though there is no comedy in his words.

    ‘I’ll see you there.’

    The call ends. The Audi stitches itself in and out of the traffic and Adnan Sarioğlu beats his hands on the dashboard and whoops with delight. A new call chimes in; a poppier tune, the theme from an animated TV series that Adnan and his three fellow Ultralords of the Universe grew up with.

    ‘Hail Draksor.’

    ‘Hail Terrak.’

    Adnan and Oğuz graduated from the MBA and entered Özer together. Adnan floated into lofty hydrocarbons and the realm of abstract money, Oğuz was pumped into Distribution, the all-too-solid domain of pipelines and compression stations, tanker terminals and holding centres. It’s lowly, unglamorous; very far from lunch at Olcay and champagne at Su come bonus time. Too easily overlooked. That was why, when the idea of Turquoise struck in its full, lightning intensity as he rode the elevator up the glass face of the Özer tower, Oğuz was the first call of his old college friends.

    ‘Volkan’s got a fitness test at twelve.’

    ‘He’ll never make it,’ Adnan says. ‘Fat bastard’s so out of condition he can’t even touch his toes.’

    Oğuz’s face grins in the smartglass of the windscreen. The four Ultralords of the Universe are also ultra-Galatasaray fans. On their bonuses they could easily afford a corporate box at Aslantepe but they like to be in the stands, with the fans, with their kebabs and their small flasks of sipping rakı. Cimbom Cimbom Cimbom! Fighting stuff that rakı. The Ultralords understand going to games. It is not about sport. There is no such thing as sport. It is about seeing the other team lose. One million goals would not be enough to crush the opposition. When he is up there with the rest of the boys, Adnan wants to see the opposition all die on stakes. The Romans had it right. It’s fighting