Assassins - Ian Watson & Andy West (6 page)

She squeezed his arm. “Thanks. I always seem
to be in your debt.”

She knew there’d be no more talk of Ismailis
or poetry. Walid liked to process things in background mode. He’d
come up with something, hopefully sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile there was plenty to catch up on. Eagle’s nest, eagle
teacher…

Cairo, the
Fatimid Caliphate: May, 1155

In a courtyard drenched with the scent of orange
blossom, a cool glass of sherbet by his side to refresh his spirit,
Hakim reread pages from a Greek manuscript, the History of the
Wars, which he’d paid an Alexandrian living in Cairo to translate
scrupulously into Arabic. Doctoring for rich Cairo clients since he
graduated had provided Hakim with a healthy income, most of which
he saved to finance his visions. In a year all would be ready for
him to depart in company with Sadiq, whereupon he must to swap such
luxuries as sherbet for hardship, perhaps forever.

The almost forgotten conflicts which the
History
recorded had been fought six centuries earlier in
Persia, Africa and Italy, during the reigns of the Christian
emperors of Byzantium, Justinus and Justinian. Its author was a
Palestinian Greek named Procopius.

The old wars in themselves were of no
interest to Hakim. All that mattered were the dozen or so sheets he
held in his hands, along with the distilled
idea
of war
itself.

The pages described a terrible plague that
had almost annihilated the whole human race. Procopius claimed that
this plague started among Egyptians living in Pelusium at the
easternmost mouth of the Nile delta, and then spread westward
throughout Egypt and also north-easterly through Palestine. The
affliction had travelled remorselessly onward like a voracious
fire, burning a vast forest of a myriad people in many lands and
reducing those to a barren landscape of fallen corpses. Plague
always began at the coast, wrote Procopius, and moved inland.

Surely this flesh-eating sickness couldn’t
appear from out of thin air or, as many writers believed,
spontaneously due to foul air. Nor could the fire of plague hide
unnoticed for decades in such a populated city as Pelusium.
Pestilence must arrive like an unwanted traveller from elsewhere
more remote and isolated, yet with which nevertheless there was
some trade – somewhere where its fire could smoulder unseen, until
it put forth a malignant tongue.

Hakim had consulted many sources and wracked
his brains. To one Arabic author, the fact that the river Nile
reached the Middle Sea at Pelusium was a clue. Surely the plague
had arrived from higher up the Nile, which brought goods to Egypt
from as far away as the dripping jungles in the heart of Africa.
Paradoxically, this fatal fire must have come to Pelusium by way of
fire’s contrary, water. In other words, the tongue of plague must
have hidden itself in a boat.

Although enormous loads could be carried by
the great river, travel was still sedate, taking many weeks from
the higher reaches. And never forget about the foaming cataracts of
the upper Nile, which must be circumvented by the tedious process
of unloading and reloading boats! So if the forked tongue that
licked lethally at Pelusium had indeed come by way of the Nile,
then plague must
already
have been raging in Upper Egypt,
which wasn’t the case.

Yet the remoter wilds of Africa might hide
this terror, and the boat theory explained so much.

Perhaps plague came by the swifter route of
the Red Sea to the narrow gulf between Egypt and the Sinai, so
finally overland by caravan to Pelusium. At the time of the Plague
of Justinian, it was the empire of Axum that controlled the trade
routes of the Red Sea. Axum was now a forgotten power, but had once
ranked along with Persia, Rome, and China as one of the four great
kingdoms of the world, exporting gold and grain, rhino horns,
monkeys and animal skins, ivory and frankincense. Only the rise of
Islam and the subsequent whirlwind of Arab victories had wrested
control of those trade routes which started from…

Ethiopia!

Recessed rills of water cooled the courtyard,
bubbling from white marble sources that reminded Hakim momentarily
of breasts, liquid overflowing forever from the nipples. He thrust
that random thought brusquely aside, purged by the fire of his
duty, to God.

His great task drew him irresistibly, yet
laid a great burden of responsibility and even fear upon him too.
Deeply he inhaled the scent of orange blossom, to fix it indelibly
in his memory. What strange jungly smells might assault his
nostrils before too long, what strange sights assail his eyes?

Radcliffe Institute
for Advanced Studies, Cambridge, Massachusetts: April

Back at her desk after visiting Walid, Abigail was
keen to get started. But Terry’s photograph stared hard at her,
inducing serious guilt. She hadn’t spoken to him in four days,
despite his messages, and couldn’t really put it off again. With a
resigned sigh, she reached for the phone.

Just as her fingers touched, it rang.

Damn! She muttered. If that’s him, I’ll have
to be even more apologetic.

“Hello Abigail. It’s Jack, Jack Turner.”

Caught by surprise, Abigail struggled to
switch her psychological context from Terry to the ICEman
snooper.

“Dr. Leclaire,” she managed, acidly.

“Yeah. Okay. I followed your tip, about an
Imam.”

Why did she have to talk to this man? Why was
the government suspicious of anything and everything Islamic? Why
couldn’t she just live her life without burden or interference?

Anger erupted from Abigail. “Did you have me
followed?” she yelled.

“What? What are you talking about?” He
sounded shocked, even worried.

Abigail’s anger collapsed as quickly as it
had flared up. She felt cold, and at a loss.

“Oh, I thought…”

“Why would I do that? Maybe someone at the
office got over-zealous. It’s unlikely, but I’ll check.”

“What tip did you say?”

“About the
teacher of many lessons
being an Imam maybe. Not much luck with anyone modern so far, but
it’s easy enough to find a historic connection. Have you heard of
the
Assassins of Alamut
?”

Damn! He was right on her tail.
How
could she explain that she was only just aware of a link herself?
Would he believe her?

“Dr. Leclaire? Have you heard of them?”

“Yes… yes I have. But…”

He talked over her. “Did you know that their
fortress at Alamut, the base of an Imam, was known as
the
eagle’s nest
?”

Even though she should focus on getting
control of this call, her brain raced. The link between Alamut and
Safiyya couldn’t be a direct one. The fortress was in ruins when
Safiyya was writing, not to mention Safiyya was more than two
thousand miles away in anti-Ismaili Granada. But where had the
Ismaili Imamate passed to? And where had Sinan al-Din come from?
Safiyya’s Ismaili lover and a man of rank; what knowledge for
initiates might he have shared with his poetisa, which maybe she
used to build the poem,
knowledge that could be retrievable
?
Puzzles abounded and maybe Sinan al-Din was a key, yet this was
purely a
medieval
matter, not a modern one. It should not
interest ICE! No doubt the word
assassin
had over-excited
them.

“Are you there, Dr. Leclaire?”

She was flustered. Her throat was dry.

Why did Jack Turner make her feel guilty? Why
did Terry make her feel guilty?

“No, I mean yes.”

“Yes you’re there? Or yes to the eagle’s
nest? Why do I get the feeling that you’re hiding something?”

“Look, this is absurd. Alamut was twelfth and
thirteenth century for God’s sake. It’s all just medieval
history!”

“Then I need a history lesson. We should
meet.”

“Why should we?”

“Do you intend to obstruct my
investigation?”

“No… No of course not.”

“Well then, this evening.”

Panic ran unchecked through Abigail’s
veins.

“No… No, I’m busy. Make it next week,
Monday.”

“Okay Dr. Leclaire, I’ll be there Monday
morning.”

“No, not here,” she practically squealed. She
didn’t want him in her office, in her space. “We could have lunch,”
she suggested, with as much warmth as she could muster. “At
Elephant Walk.”

“Where?”

“Massachusetts and Walden, one P.M.”

“It’s a date,” answered Jack smoothly. He
rang off.

“Shit!” She banged her fist on the desk.
“
Shit!
”

It was a couple of minutes before her mind
stopped reeling. When it did, she turned Terry’s photo over so that
he wouldn’t watch her. She simply
couldn’t
wait for more
from Walid. It was
paramount
to stay ahead of Jack, so she
needed a short-cut, preferably at least a couple of hard facts. A
blunt attack was called for, to uncover anything that might help,
however unlikely that seemed and however long it took!

She put her phone on hold, then tapped
furiously at her keyboard, connecting to the private Harvard
libraries and CMES archives, plus the public web too. She kicked
off half a dozen searches centred on Sinan al-Din ibn Nasir, using
all acceptable variants and including various tags to filter the
inevitable high hit-rates. It was a pretty common name structure.
Then she leapt up and got the coffee machine going, fuel for a long
session. She opened the large boxes of books at the back of her
office, which she’d never got around to unpacking, and scooped out
volumes until they littered the floor, searching for
half-remembered works that contained references to the Ismailis and
Alamut.

Much of the time she cursed herself under her
breath, ignoring her old tutor’s advice. If she’d researched this
poem and its sources properly in the first place, she could have
trotted out innocent medieval reality to Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, then no doubt never seen them again. She brought up an
image of the original fragment on her second screen, to remind
herself of the target.

The best image was in infra-red, though
they’d tried UV and powerful back-lighting too. The linen-paper was
in a pretty bad state, especially near the ragged edges at the top.
The dim marks of six more words slid partly into the tear,
tantalising yet not discernable, although the fourth might be the
single letter ‘e’, signifying ‘and’.

Hours passed. High on caffeine, she growled
at cleaners and colleagues alike who dared to put their head around
the door. Later still, she lost all track of time. She felt low
now, and chill too in the empty building. The screen was starting
to swim before her eyes.

Then something curious made her alert. It was
in Provençal; she’d only absorbed names and the general gist. Now
she reread again, much more carefully, scribbling down a
translation as she scanned the lines.

…and so Sinaldin and Guy de Dieulefit
journeyed long together from Jerusalem, renewing it is said the
friendship of their grandfathers. Yet Sinaldin was sorely wounded
in a quarrel with a Saljuq, enemies of his kind in Syria and
Persia. Wherewith Guy gave succour, and raised Sinaldin slowly back
to life. The two parted in Maselha (i.e. modern Marseilles, she
glossed), though the Arab begged Guy to journey onward, being
strangely afraid that the eastern plague would descend upon such a
busy area of trade and shipping. In this his fear was soon proved
true, yet Guy was called back to our Order here and knew fullwell
his duty. Whereupon Sinaldin, bound for the diminished realm of
Granada, bade him farewell and gave to him a great gift. Yet this
gift was not of land or gold or other such substance of wealth of
this earth, but of most precious Holy Water, which had the most
miraculous power. So came Guy de Dieulefit back home, bringing news
of the Holy Land and many messages of import from our brethren on
the isle of Rhodes.

She knew of Dieulefit, a town in Provence.
What bell did it ring? And what
was
this document?

She flicked to the top and discovered that
she was looking at the administrative records for a village called
Montlume, digitised only months ago. The item was dated 1350 AD,
but seemed to be confirming details of land transfers actually made
two and three years before. Montlume was quite close to Dieulefit,
so Guy was indeed coming home. It was very fortunate for historians
and researchers that scribes often got bored, adding gossip on the
side. How had her frantic efforts managed to pull up this
particular text?

She backed up a page, and realised that her
last search of the
Medieval French Land Records (Provence,
Orange and Burgundy)
, a long shot indeed, was mistyped. Her
tired fingers had skipped two characters; she’d entered ‘Sina
l-din’. The search engine had no doubt tried with and without the
dash and the space characters, so
Sinaldin
was valid.

And why not
? Given that the great
philosopher Abu Nasr Muhammad al Farabi was known in the medieval
West as Alfarabius, then surely Sinan al-Din ibn Nasir could be
Sinaldin
. And the dates
were
contemporary with
Safiyya, albeit at the later part of her life.

Then it hit her, with a shock so sudden that
she physically jumped. She gasped out loud, still barely able to
comprehend what her instinct had divined.
Our Order
. She
remembered clearly now: Dieulefit was unusual in being ruled
jointly for centuries, half of the administration being provided by
the Knights Hospitallers!

Guy de Dieulefit was a Hospitaller, and he’d
come home to his Order in Provence. Sinan al-Din had travelled with
him to modern Marseilles before going on to Granada where his lover
waited, the poetisa Safiyya bint Yusuf al-Ballisiyya. There was a
bond between the Ismaili and the Christian knight.
And so the
two sheets of paper she’d found in the chapbook must be
linked!