Assassin's Creed: Underworld (10 page)

Ethan never told The Ghost anything of his home
life. The Ghost knew names of course – Cecily, Jacob, Evie – but nothing distinct,
apart from the fact that the twins were close to him in age. ‘One day I hope to introduce
you,’ Ethan had said, with a strange, unreadable expression. ‘But that won’t
be until I’m certain they’re ready to join the fight.’

That was as much as The Ghost knew. On the other
hand, he didn’t pry, and besides he hadn’t told Ethan anything of his own life away
from the excavation. Ethan knew nothing of Maggie or the denizens of the tunnel, and The Ghost
hadn’t told his handler that he often lay awake shivering with the cold, his eyes damp
with memories of Mother and Father and jasmine-scented Amritsar. Or that the dying face of Dani
continued to haunt his nightmares. Lips drawn back. Bloodied teeth. A mouth full of steel and
crimson.

He just continued to exist, working shifts at the
dig, burying his spade in its special hiding place before going home to the tunnel and looking
after the people there.

And then, four nights ago – four nights
before the body had been discovered at the dig, this was – The Ghost had been making his
way home, when as usual he’d glanced into the churchyard – but this time saw the
gravestone leaning to the left.

Instead of going back to the
tunnel he turned and went in the opposite direction, heading for Paddington. It would be a long
walk but he was used to it. It was all part of the daily penance he paid for his …

Cowardice
, he sometimes thought, in
those moments of great darkness before the dawn freezing in the tunnel.

But he hadn’t been a coward the night he
had saved Maggie, had he? He had fought for what was right.

So maybe not cowardice. At least not that.
Failure to act instead. Hesitancy or unwillingness – whatever it was that had stayed his
hand the night of his blooding, and heaped such great shame on himself and his family name.

By rights he should have paid with his life, and
would have done – were it not for the intervention of Ethan Frye. Sometimes The Ghost
wondered if his ultimate act of cowardice was in accepting the older Assassin’s offer.

The sounds of the street – a cacophony of
hooves, traders and a busker’s sawing fiddle – all fell away as he walked, lost in
thought, his mind going back to The Darkness. When the door had opened that morning it was to
admit his executioner. Or so he had thought. Instead, Ethan Frye had reappeared, grinning
broadly from ear to ear.

Ethan had checked himself at the sight of
Jayadeep, whose expectation of death was written all over his face, and he took a seat on the
straw, just as he had the previous day. Here, Ethan had explained to Jayadeep that he was
required in London for an important mission; that Arbaaz had given his blessing for it.

It would involve him going undercover.
‘Deep cover’ was how Ethan had put it. And before Jayadeep went
thinking this was some kind of pity mission, that Ethan was doing anything he could just to
save the youngster from the Assassin’s blade, he could think again. Ethan wanted Jayadeep
because Jayadeep had been his star pupil.

‘You’ll remember I advised against
sending you on Assassin assignment?’ Ethan had said, and Jayadeep had nodded his head
sadly. ‘Well, that’s because I saw in you a humanity that I think can be helpful to
the Brotherhood. The job I have in mind is by no means pleasant. You will become a different
person, Jayadeep, all vestiges of your former self buried within the folds of a new disguise.
You will no longer be Jayadeep Mir, do you understand?’

Jayadeep had nodded, and then Ethan had left.
Only this time the door remained open.

It took Jayadeep some moment of contemplation
before he too rose to his feet and left – stepping out of The Darkness at last.

‘The mission begins now,’ Ethan Frye
told him the next day at dusk. The warmth Jayadeep was used to seeing in his tutor’s eyes
was absent. Ethan’s relief at having freed Jayadeep was short-lived. Now was time to
attend to the next order of business, the next phase of the operation.

They stood alone on a harbour wall. The hulls of
boats clunked together in the gentle swell, while gulls swooped and called and preened.
‘I’m about to leave you,’ said Ethan, looking the boy up and down, noting the
pauper’s clothes he wore, just as directed. ‘You need to make your own way to
London. Find somewhere to live, somewhere befitting a man of very limited means indeed. Here
…’
He handed Jayadeep a small pouch of coins. ‘This is
for your subsistence. It won’t go very far so spend it wisely. And remember that from this
moment forth you are no longer Jayadeep Mir, son of Arbaaz and Pyara Kaur of Amritsar,
accustomed to comfort and wealth and the attendant respect of others. When you arrive in London
you arrive as the scum of the earth, a brown-skinned outsider without a penny to your name,
which, incidentally, will be Bharat Singh. However, your code name – the name that I will
know you by – is The Ghost.’

Jayadeep had thought then that he hated the name
Bharat Singh. The Ghost suited him better.

‘When you have lodgings I need you to find
work,’ continued Ethan, ‘but at a very specific place, the significance of which
will become clear in some months’ time. I need you to find work at the Metropolitan
railway dig in the north-west of the city.’

Jayadeep had shaken his head in confusion.
Already there was so much to take in. A new life? A new job? All of it in a strange foreign
land, without the benefit of his family name, without his father’s tutelage and
Ethan’s guidance. It seemed impossible what was being asked of him. And now this. A
railway?

‘Don’t worry about that just at the
moment,’ said Ethan, reading his thoughts. ‘All will become clear when you’re
in London.’ He ticked things off his fingers. ‘First find lodgings of some kind.
Lodgings suited to a man on the very lowest rung of the social ladder; then become acquainted
with your surroundings, then secure employment at the Metropolitan railway dig. Is that
clear?’

The young man could only nod
his head and hope these mysteries would somehow solve themselves in due course.

‘Good. You have three months from today to
do it. In the meantime I need you to study this …’

A folder, leather-bound and tied with a thong,
was duly produced from within the older Assassin’s robes.

Jayadeep took it, turning it over, wondering what
lay within.

‘I suggest you read the papers during your
passage and then toss the lot in the ocean. Just make sure you have committed its contents to
memory. We shall meet on this day three months’ hence, in the gardens of the Foundling
Hospital off Gray’s Inn Road at midnight. Now, and this is the most important aspect of
what I’m telling you, under no circumstances are you to demonstrate that you have any
abilities beyond those expected of a dirt-poor seventeen-year-old Indian boy. Walk small, not
tall. You’re not an Assassin and you are not to behave like one. If you find yourself
under threat, then be cowed. If you appear to be a more competent and able worker than your
fellow men, then try less hard. The important thing for you now is to blend in in every single
way. You understand?’

The Ghost nodded, and water lapped at the harbour
wall as the sun poked its way into a new day.

Lost in the memory of his final morning in India,
The Ghost had almost walked past the house that acted as his meeting place with his handler.

Number 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens, Paddington,
looked just like any other house on the street, but what only a handful of people knew –
the neighbours, the builders, and, more pertinently, The Ghost and Ethan Frye – was that
the two houses were, in fact, false fronts built to hide a hole in the ground.

It had been Charles Pearson’s idea.
Constructing his railway he had come across an immediate problem, which was finding an engine
suitable for use underground. An ordinary steam engine with its usual emission would have
suffocated passengers and crew straightaway. Since it is unacceptable for railway operators to
kill their passengers, Pearson cast about for a solution. First he had the idea of dragging
carriages through the tunnels using cables, and then, when that proved impractical, came up with
a plan to use atmospheric pressure. That proved impractical too – though it was of course
great fodder for the city’s many satirists.

It was John Fowler who came to Pearson’s
rescue, in this as in so many aspects of the line. He had overseen the construction of an engine
where smoke and steam would be diverted into a tank behind the engine. The only trouble
was that the smoke and steam would need to be released at some point, and
that was why number 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens,
W
2, were set aside, so that the
engines from below could, quite literally, ‘let off steam’.

The opening of the Metropolitan line was still
over a year away, and it was here that The Ghost and Ethan Frye would meet.

‘How are you?’ said Ethan that night.
He had been sitting on the edge of the void, staring down to where timbers criss-crossed just
below his dangling boots.

The Ghost nodded but said nothing, a closed book.
He took a seat next to Ethan. His bare feet dangling next to the boots of his mentor, a great
darkness below them.

‘You will be pleased to know we are moving
to the next phase of the operation,’ said Ethan. ‘Matters are going to come to a
head. You will find yourself under scrutiny. I have no doubt whatsoever that you will be
followed and your credentials checked by our Templar friends. Are you confident your cover
remains absolutely secure?’

The Ghost pondered whether this was the time to
tell Ethan about Maggie and his unofficial guardian role at the tunnel. It was a conversation
he’d carried out in his head many times, imaginary explanations where he’d tell
Ethan that one thing had led to another and that he hadn’t intended to set himself apart,
just that he had been unable to stand by and allow injustice to prevail. And surely Ethan would
… Well, even if he didn’t approve, then he would certainly understand,
wouldn’t he? And after all, it wasn’t as though The Ghost were a recognizable public
hero, front-page news in the
Illustrated London News
.

But no. He kept his mouth
shut. He said nothing and walked willingly into the next phase of the plan.

‘Which is what?’ he asked.

Mischief lit his master’s eyes. It was a
look that The Ghost had come to love when he was a child in the security of Amritsar. Now,
staring down into the void with only uncertainty ahead of him, he wasn’t so sure.

‘You will need to write a letter to our
friend Mr Cavanagh. You can use your knowledge of Cavanagh to establish your credentials.
I’ll leave the details up to you. The important thing is that you tell Mr Cavanagh that he
has a traitor in his ranks and that you hope to curry favour with him by unveiling this
traitor.’

The Ghost nodded, his gaze fixed on the darkness
below. ‘I see,’ he said when Ethan had finished. ‘And what then?’

‘Wait for a body to be discovered at the
dig.’

‘When?’

‘Difficult to say. In the next few days,
I’d imagine, depending on the rainfall.’

‘I see. And am I allowed to know whose body
will be discovered?’

‘You remember our Templar friend, Mr Robert
Waugh?’

The Ghost did indeed remember him. ‘The
pornographer?’

‘The very same. Only Mr Waugh hasn’t
been altogether straight with his associates. He’s been using his erotic prints to make a
little extra money, a sideline I uncovered last night.’

‘When you killed him?’

‘Oh no, I didn’t kill him.’
Ethan slapped The Ghost heartily on the shoulder. ‘You did.’

As he returned from his meeting with Ethan, The
Ghost reflected on the first time he became aware of the man he now saw every day at the dig.
The man known primarily as Cavanagh. It was on the passage from Amritsar to England, when he had
done as he was told and opened the folder given to him by Ethan on the harbour wall.

Inside was an introductory note from Ethan
explaining that the contents were dispatches copied and decoded from a Templar haul. The papers
had been replaced; as far as the Assassins knew the Templars had no idea they were in possession
of the information.

The dispatches had been compiled from first-hand
accounts assembled by Templar documentarians, and they began innocuously enough with a factual
account of the English retreat from Kabul in 1842.

The Ghost knew all about the march from Kabul of
course. Everybody did. It was one of the most disastrous events of English military history, and
the turning point of the godforsaken war in Afghanistan. Sixteen thousand soldiers, families and
camp followers had embarked on a ninety-mile retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad in January 1842.
Only a handful made it.

Not only did they have food for just five days,
but their leader, Major-General William Elphinstone – otherwise
known
as Elphy Bey – had a head as soft as his body was frail. Not only was he idiotic but he
was gullible, and he believed every lie that the Afghan leader, Akbar Khan, told him.

And Akbar Khan told Elphey Bey a lot of lies. In
return for the British army handing over the majority of their muskets, Khan guaranteed safe
passage, as well as offering an escort through the passes. He also gave assurances that the sick
and wounded left in Kabul would be unharmed.

It took Khan roughly an hour to go back on his
word. The march had only just left the cantonment when his men moved in to loot, burn tents and
put the wounded to the sword. Meanwhile, the rearguard was attacked. Porters, camp followers and
Indian soldiers were butchered, and with little or no resistance from the column the Afghans
began mounting increasingly brazen sorties, swiftly devastating the baggage train. Barely out of
Kabul and the march left behind a trail of trunks and corpses.

Very few tents were taken on the march, and they
were for women, children and officers. That night most lay down to sleep in the snow and by next
morning the ground was littered with the corpses of those who had frozen to death in the night.
Frostbitten and starving, the march pressed on, hoping to beat the worst of the weather and
withstand the constant Afghan attack.

For reasons known only to himself, Elphy Bey
ordered a rest at just two o’clock in the afternoon, when what he should have done was
heed the advice of his officers and press on through the dangerous Khord-Kabul Pass.
Perhaps the old boy had simply lost his mind completely, for his decision
meant handing the pass to the Afghans whose snipers took up position on the ledges, while their
cavalry readied themselves for more sport.

Sure enough, shots began to ring out as the
column entered the pass the following morning, and the march stopped as negotiations were
carried out. Akbar Khan agreed to let the column through in exchange for hostages, but his
deceit knew no bounds, for after the hostages were handed over the firing began again, while
mounted tribesmen rode into the column, scattering followers, hacking down civilians and
soldiers and even carrying off children.

Three thousand lost their lives in the pass and
all supplies were lost. That night the remnants of the march camped with just four small tents
and no fuel or food. Hundreds died of exposure.

The killing continued over the next few days. To
escape the massacre some killed themselves while others deserted, though they were not allowed
to escape by the Afghans, who only spared those they might ransom later – the officers,
wives and children. Soldiers, servants and followers were butchered.

By the fifth day the column numbered just three
thousand – five hundred of them soldiers. Elphy Bey gave himself up, later to die in
captivity, while the wives and families surrendered also. Still the march struggled on, numbers
dwindling, and was attacked at the Jugdulluk Crest, suffering appalling casualties. Running
battles took place overnight, in feet of snow, until the survivors got to
Gandamak, by which time they numbered fewer than four hundred.

They took up position on a hill, but found
themselves surrounded by Afghans, who commanded them to surrender. ‘Not bloody
likely!’ scoffed a sergeant, and his retort would become something of an English national
catchphrase. He was as good as his word, though, so the Afghan snipers went to work before a
final attack.

Jugdulluk Crest was no battle; it was a massacre.
Six officers escaped, five of whom were cut down on the road to Jalalabad. Just one, William
Brydon, made it. Part of his skull had been sheared off by an Afghan sword stroke but he’d
survived the blow thanks to a copy of
Blackwood’s Magazine
stuffed into his hat.
‘Never knew this old bit of Lolland drivel could come in so handy,’ he’d
apparently remarked.

Of the sixteen thousand who had set off from
Kabul six days previously, he was the only one to reach his destination.

Except … not quite. The story of good old
William Brydon making it alone to Jalalabad was a good one – so good that it loomed large
in the public consciousness for some time. Sadly, however, it was not quite the truth, because
there were other survivors. Just that the methods and means of their survival were not quite so
noble as the stoicism of Dr William Brydon. A man will do anything to survive, to live to see
another sunrise, feel the lips of his wife and children, laugh along with a drink in his hand.
So, yes, there were others who lived through that disastrous march, but their exploits were not
to be applauded,
celebrated, sung about nor later immortalized by artists.
They were not even ‘exploits’ at all, in the sense that the word suggests adventure
and derring-do. They were acts of survival, pure and simple. Dirty and mean and ruthless and
executed at a dreadful cost to others.

And so it was that on the march there was a
certain commander who went by the name of Colonel Walter Lavelle. This man belonged to the Order
of the Knights Templar. He was not an especially high-ranking Templar, not a person of interest
to the Assassin Brotherhood, but known to them nevertheless.

Shortly before the march was due to leave Kabul,
a corporal by the name of Cavanagh inveigled himself with Walter Lavelle.

‘I wonder if I could have a word,
sir,’ said this Cavanagh on the morning of the march.

Seeing a certain seriousness and, if he was
honest with himself, a little danger in this man’s eyes, Lavelle had nodded, despite the
fact that the man was a mere corporal, and the two soldiers moved to the shelter of a cypress
tree, away from where servants and followers were loading carts, and horses struggled beneath
the weight of panniers and saddlebags. Indeed, the courtyard was a hive of industry. Above the
sound of men cursing and struggling and orders being issued and women wringing their hands and
crying, came the constant exhortations of Lady Florentia Sale, the wife of Major General Robert
Henry Sale, a woman in whose honour the word ‘redoubtable’ might well have been
minted. Lady Sale
left nobody in doubt that she considered this march a
mere afternoon excursion, a matter of little import for the might of the English army and that
to think otherwise was treacherously un-English. ‘Oh do cease your bawling, Emily, and
make yourself useful,’ she would exhort. ‘You there, have a care. That is my very
best Madeira wine. And you, watch that china or my Jalalabad soirées will be somewhat
lacking in finesse. I’m planning my first one two days hence. What a hoot it will be to
meet the good ladies of Jalalabad.’

Away by the cypress tree, Corporal Cavanagh
turned to Lavelle and in a dead-eyed way said, ‘She’s a fool.’

They were well out of earshot but even so the
colonel spluttered indignantly, as colonels were in the habit of doing. ‘Have you gone
mad, sah? Have you taken leave of every single one of all your senses at bloody once? Do you
know who you’re talking to, man? Do you know who you’re talking
about
? That
is –’

‘I know full well who I’m talking to
and who I’m talking about, sir,’ replied Cavanagh evenly (by gad the man was a cool
fish and no mistake), ‘and it’s precisely because I know who I’m talking to
that I feel I can talk openly. Forgive me if I misjudged the situation and I shall retire to
continue preparing the men of my section.’

He made as though to walk away, but Lavelle
stopped him, curious to hear what was on the impertinent corporal’s mind.
‘I’ll hear you out, man. Just mind your tongue is all.’

But Cavanagh did nothing of the sort. He planned
to speak his mind and speak it he did. ‘Do you know how far it
is to
Jalalabad? It’s ninety miles. We have an army of fourteen thousand, but hardly a quarter
of them are soldiers, the rest of them a great rabble: porters, servants, women and children.
Hardly a fighter among them. Do you know what the conditions are like, sir? We’ll be
marching through a foot of snow on the worst ground on earth and the temperature freezing. And
what of Akbar Khan? He’s been in the hills, going from this chief to that, gathering
support for further hostilities. Khan will not stand by his word. As soon as we step outside
those gates he will begin taking us apart. Lady Sale thinks she’ll be having her first
Jalalabad soirée in two days’ time. I say we’ll be lucky to make that march in
two weeks. We don’t have arms, ammunition, nor enough food or supplies. The march is
doomed, sir, and we are doomed with it unless we join forces to take action.’

He went on to tell Lavelle that he had a
reasonable command of Pushtu, and suggested that he took a position as Lavelle’s batman.
But Lavelle hadn’t finished spluttering, and he did a bit of blustering as well, and when
that was over he dismissed Cavanagh with a flea in his ear, telling him not to be so impertinent
and to keep his treacherous thoughts of desertion to himself.

‘You must have hoped to curry favour with
me, y’wretched lickspittle!’ he roared, ‘For whatever reason I cannot imagine,
but I’m telling you I remain General Elphinstone’s faithful servant to the very
last.’

By the first night of the march it was clear that
Akbar Khan had indeed gone back on his word and that Elphy Bey was a fool. And as the column
rang to the screams of
wounded men and the Afghan sorties continued, and
poor unfortunates froze where they lay, a terrified and craven Lavelle crept into
Cavanagh’s tent to ask if the corporal would agree to be his batman.

‘Me, a mere wretched lickspittle?’
said Cavanagh, his face betraying nothing of the dark satisfaction he felt at the look of panic
on the colonel’s face. He demurred and refused, acting offended, until he elicited an
apology from the quaking colonel.

The next morning, as British Lancers rode against
the Afghans in a futile attempt to deter further attacks, Cavanagh, Lavelle and a faithful
sepoy, whose name is not recorded, left the company for good.

Their path through the hills and passes was
treacherous. They didn’t dare get too near the column for fear of being seen by either the
British soldiers or their Afghan attackers, but neither did they want to stray too far from
established routes. The Afghan countryside was well known for being among the most hostile on
the face of the known world, never more so than in the unforgiving frost of January, and
what’s more the men feared falling into the hands of far-flung tribes.

They had feed for their mounts, but as they made
their way through the cliffs and peaks of the pass it became clear that they had seriously
miscalculated when it came to food for themselves. So when, in the late afternoon of the third
day, the chill breeze brought to them the smell of cooking meat, their stomachs were as alert as
their senses.

Sure enough they soon came upon five Afghan
hillmen
on the track. They were tending to a fire in a clearing, over which
they were roasting a goat, with sheer rock on one side of them and a vertiginous drop on the
other.

The three deserters took cover immediately. Like
all English soldiers they maintained a healthy respect for the fighters of Afghanistan –
theirs was a warrior nation: the men were skilled and fearsome, and the women notorious for
their ghastly methods of execution, with flaying and ‘the death by a thousand cuts’
among the least sadistic.

So the trio stayed hidden behind a large boulder:
the sepoy, implacable, a picture of steely resolve, despite knowing how the Afghans treated
their Sikh prisoners; Lavelle wordlessly ceding authority to Cavanagh, who thanked God the
tribesmen had not thought to post a lookout and, in a series of quick glances, took stock of the
situation.

Well, there was no making a detour round the
position, that was for sure. In order to continue along the path, Cavanagh, Lavelle and the
sepoy would have to engage them in combat – either that or return to the column and
explain their absence and most likely be shot for desertion.

Combat it was then.

There were five of them, wearing skullcaps or
turbans and long coats. Tethered nearby were horses loaded with supplies, including the carcass
of a second goat. The Afghan rifles, called jezzails, were arranged in a tepee shape not far
from the campfire.

Cavanagh knew the jezzail well. Home-made
weapons, their long barrels gave them a considerable range
advantage over
the British Brown Bess musket used by Elphinstone’s men. These Afghan warriors would use
their jezzails to great effect against the column, with expert snipers firing a deadly barrage
of bullets, nails and even pebbles down upon the beleaguered retreat some eight hundred feet
below. They were intricately decorated, as was the Afghan custom; one of them was even adorned
with human teeth.