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money.
    Go broke.

PART TWO
    Do you know, brother, that you are a prince?
A son of Adam?
    Jalal al-din Rumi (1207–1273)

12
    It’s late June 1914.
    The summer is a warm one, golden even. The international scene is peaceful. The tensions that have bubbled away in Europe for the last dozen or more years are certainly no worse than they have been and quite probably a good deal better.
    Seven British warships have joined the German Imperial High Seas fleet for the Elbe Regatta: a week of racing, dancing, music and fireworks. When finally the British fleet steams away, the British admiral signals to his hosts: ‘Friends in the past and friends for ever.’
    In Serbia, an archduke has been killed by an anarchist, but who cares? Serbia is Serbia, and in that part of the world, archdukes are two a penny.

    Alan and Tom are grown men now, twenty-one years of age. Their future lies ahead of them, a sparkling ocean on which anything could happen.
    Alan has grown into a tall man, pale blond hair, eyes of pale blue, eyebrows so fair you can hardly see them. He has his father’s lean hawkishness, though softened by hints of his mother: her smile, her appearance of mild worry.
    Alan is at Oxford, finishing his final examinations. The exams have been gruelling and exhausting, but they’ll soon be over. His degree will be in Natural Science, a subject he has little time for, except that it allows him to specialise in his chosen field of geology.
    Because D’Arcy’s adventures in oil hadn’t ended. He’d found his investors, he’d continued to drill. And in 1907, six years from first beginning, he struck oil.
    Oil on a huge scale. No trickle this time, but a gush so vast that one of the world’s great companies was in the process of being built upon it. The company, now named Anglo-Persian, has a use for resourceful young geologists, and, as soon as September comes around, Alan will start work on the Persian-Mesopotamian border, scouting for oil. But that’s September. In between now and then, he has two clear months for riding, shooting and fishing in the country, and for balls and parties in London.

    Tom, too, is doing well.
    He’s shorter than Alan, but stronger, broad in the shoulder, glossy dark hair with a hint of curl. His face is almost picture-book handsome: wide, strong and with a dazzling smile that comes quickly and fades slowly. Unlike Alan, Tom is already highly experienced with the girls. It seems he’s never without them. Alan laughs about it, but also finds it embarrassing. Where Tom is a veteran, Alan is wholly inexperienced.
    And there’s another way in which Tom is running ahead of Alan: in business.
    Once his schooling was over, Tom rejected a possible scholarship to Oxford and instead won a position with the American giant, Standard Oil, in their London office. He’s doing well. Talented and energetic, he’s already building a name for himself as one of the most able young men in the company. Though Tom works hard, he joins up with Alan every weekend and they spend their time together either dancing and socialising in London, or riding and shooting in the country.

    And Guy?
    These days, Guy seems altogether less significant. The enmities of childhood appear to have faded. If the old hatreds haven’t exactly disappeared, they don’t make a lot of difference now. Tom is in London. Guy seems to be anywhere but. Guy is a soldier, a major, with a particular aptitude for staff work. Tom and Guy don’t see much of each other, aren’t likely to see each other much in the future. When their paths do cross, they are coldly polite.
    But, meantime, summer 1914 is a golden one.
    It’s one to be enjoyed, a time when the best thing in the world to be is a young Englishman with the future a sparkling ocean at his feet. Tom and Alan hardly feel the need to signal anything to each other, but if they did, they’d send the same signal as the British admiral in Kiel. ‘Friends in the past and friends for