Phantom (30 page)

Erik's apartment was located among some of the finest at court, and I could see that he was mollified by the opulence that met his eye.

He examined the white marble bathroom with satisfaction and returned to arrange himself with languid grace across the Turkish divan. Painfully thin and angular though he was, he seemed incapable of any hurried or inelegant movement, and sometimes it was virtually impossible to chart his soundless progress around a room. Like a cat he could be there one moment and gone the next, without exciting attention. I found it a disturbing quality.

"These apartments arc normally reserved for an officer of state," I warned him. "You must expect to make enemies."

"I never expect to make anything else," he said.

"What did you discuss with the shah?" I demanded curiously.

"Among other things the appalling architectural poverty of this city."

My mouth dropped open. "He wasn't angry?"

"No, he was rather interested. He has asked me to design and build a new palace outside Ashraf. If the result pleases him I shall be permitted to rebuild Tehran."

"Allah!" I breathed softly. "Can you do that?"

"There is nothing I cannot do, if I choose."

"But, Erik, you can't conjure up an entire palace. That requires professional training—experience of building."

"I have had all the experience I require," he said shortly.

"Are you sure?"

He leapt off the couch, in the grip of some fierce and ugly emotion that I found impossible to comprehend.

"I learned my skills from a very great master mason!" he spat unexpectedly. "Do you dare to doubt that?"

"No." I backed away from him hastily, aware of cold sweat suddenly trickling down my temples. "I don't doubt that you can do anything you say."

Still he advanced upon me and I continued to retreat. I had never known such primitive, gut-sliding fear, and my terror was touched with bewildered panic, for I could not think why my words should have made him so uncontrollably angry.

"Erik"—I gasped—"for pity's sake, I believe you… I believe you… Can't you hear me?"

He stopped abruptly; the hands that had been reaching out for my throat fell limply at his sides and he looked at them with dull bewilderment. I suddenly had the oddest feeling that he was very close to tears.

"I'm sorry," he said wearily, turning away from me. "My temper is truly inexcusable at times… I look for insults even when none are meant. It gets harder and harder to be rational, to pretend that I don't hear what they say… That ignorant fool in the garden!… It's him I want to kill, not you—not you. You have shown me nothing but civility…"

He made a gesture of frustration toward the mask and subsided into brooding silence. After a while he drifted to the window and looked out with an absence that made me wonder if he realized I was still there. In his hand he was suddenly holding what looked to me to be a silver compass, turning it around and around with restless fingers.

"He taught me everything," I heard him murmur distantly, "everything! I can't go on wasting all that he gave me. I want to build something
beautiful
—something he would have been proud of. There has to be a purpose in being in this world. There has to be some purpose in living…"

I waited patiently, expecting to hear more, but he did not speak again. His hand was empty now, the compass gone as suddenly and mysteriously as it had appeared. He seemed sunk in a very deep reverie as he stared down into the Gulistan below, and at last, believing it would be both insensitive and discourteous to linger, I slipped quietly from the room and left him alone.

I had hoped that the safe completion of my mission would leave me free to return to Mazanderan to resume my regular and less onerous duties; but later that day I was summoned to the shah's presence and required to stay at court.

"I have a little further task for you, Daroga," said my young master, and my heart sank, for I had a sudden unpleasant premonition of what this task was going to entail.

"I am honored by the opportunity to be of further service, Imperial Majesty," I parroted dutifully; but inside my head a little voice had begun to scream:
Damn, damn
, damn!

"I intend to make you entirely responsible for the safekeeping of my masked friend," continued the shah, twisting his thin wisps of moustache to exaggerate their curl. "You will answer for any harm that befalls him during such time as he continues to please me. It is not, you understand, a task that I can entrust to a simple bodyguard. The commission he is to undertake in Mazanderan is a state secret. I require a man of proven skills and loyalty to keep him under surveillance."

I repressed a shiver. I wanted to say I would have considerably more success following a moonbeam than trying to keep track of Erik's dubious activities; but the shah's steely glance told me exactly what my fate would be if I dared to demur.

"You are the obvious choice for this assignment, Daroga. Already you know him better than anyone else. It would suit my purposes if you persuaded him to trust you. Befriend him… win his confidence… and keep me informed of any interesting developments. The man intrigues and fascinates me, but I am well aware that he will bear very careful watching."

I bowed my head wretchedly.

"It will be as you command, O Shadow of God," I murmured.

"I have no need of a bodyguard!" said Erik ominously. "I am perfectly able to take care of myself… And as for you, your presence is far more urgently required elsewhere. No one in common charity could possibly expect you to remain here indefinitely. I shall speak to the shah and have you removed from this farcical position at once!"

I begged him urgently to do no such thing.

"You have no understanding yet of how easy it is to fall from favor in this country, Erik. If you refuse to accept my services it will be seen as a failure on my part and I shall be punished accordingly, perhaps by many months in prison."

"Why do you tolerate such gross injustices?" he demanded quietly. "Why do you not simply ride back to your son and tell the shah to hang himself?"

"All that I possess depends upon the shah's continued favor. My pension and my estate could be stripped from me tomorrow; my son thrown out to die in poverty upon the streets. I beg you to reconsider your request and permit me to serve you in this capacity."

"Have you been commissioned to spy on me?" He sighed.

I made a reluctant gesture of assent and let my eyes drop to the floor.

"Well, that's honest, at least," he acknowledged philosophically. "I shall have to make sure your reports are suitably interesting, shan't I? I don't want the shah getting bored and replacing you with someone more
efficient
."

I glanced up at him and once again, in spite of myself, I began to laugh.

He was a murderer, a thief, and an unbeliever; but against my better judgment I was beginning to find him curiously likable…

Next day I accompanied him to the boundary which separated the harem from the rest of the palace.

"This is as far as I am permitted to go," I said.

I indicated the two eunuchs who waited to conduct him to the inner sanctum of the khanum and reminded him that their Turkish yataghans would be trained upon him for the duration of his presence in the shadowed world. I did not think it necessary to say more. His entry to this exclusive domain was in the nature of a special dispensation, such as might occasionally be granted to a doctor; it was a privilege he would abuse on pain of the most terrible death.

No one with any pretensions to success at court can afford to overlook the significance of harem intrigue, and I had long ago taken the precaution of opening a private channel of communication within these hallowed walls. It was easy enough to do. Eunuchs are notoriously fond of money and the things it can buy. The physical effects of castration require them to abstain from alcohol, but they love opium, good perfumes, and rich confectionery, and for the right price they are willing to talk to anyone who will pay for their information.

The seraglio was the khanum's domain, an exclusive, evocative world whose insidious influence spread out through the court like a sweet cloud of poisonous perfume. By tradition it was a place of bitter rivalries, cunning conspiracies, and sudden, violent death. To be the mother of the reigning shah was to reach the very pinnacle of power, and the present khanum was a force to be reckoned with, a handsome, vigorous, clever woman who knew how to manipulate her son to the utmost advantage. She ran the harem with a ruthless efficiency, reducing the shah's three principal wives to timid subservience and ruling the concubines with a rod of iron. She spent her days eating sugarplums and occasionally smoking a pipe, and out of her frustrated boredom there had hatched some formidable tragedies. I do not think there was a man at court who did not fear her more than he feared the shah himself. I was willing to pay handsomely for news of Erik's reception in this veiled world of labyrinthine corridors, marbled baths, and hushed whispers. The world of Kismet, where he had yet to find his appointed fate…

He was taken to a small courtyard, and there, surrounded by half a dozen eunuchs, he waited for the khanum to appear on the balcony above with her ladies.

I was told that she kept him waiting there for over an hour and that the eunuchs were growing deeply uneasy as he began to pace up and down like a caged tiger, displaying the angry impatience that was already so familiar to me. They were obliged at last to draw their yataghans upon him, to confine him to the appointed area; but as they closed in upon him, they were suddenly driven back by a shower of multicolored sparks which issued from his fingertips and ignited a perfect circle of flames around him.

When the flames died away, there was slow, mocking applause from the balcony above, and Erik was left staring up at the veiled and majestic woman who had appeared in the gallery.

"I trust," said the khanum softly, "that you have not come all the way from Russia simply to show me fireworks."

"By no means, madame," Erik replied smoothly. "That indeed was a mere trifle, designed to amuse tiresome children."

He indicated the eunuchs with a contemptuous gesture and the khanum laughed outright.

"If that is a mere trifle, then 1 am eager to see your true skills. And also to see you, my friend. The mask is likewise a device to frighten infants. Remove it!"

He stood very still, his hands clenched by his side, every muscle in his body tensed.

"Madame, I crave your indulgence in this… I would rather not."

"Indeed!" The khanum glanced briefly behind her to silence her whispering women with a single venomous look. "Then perhaps I should remind you that only ladies hide their faces in this country. Remove the mask, or the
children
will be instructed to perform that service for you—and also to take the precaution of removing your head with it!"

Still he made no move to obey her, and the khanum stirred restlessly, made uneasy by such unprecedented defiance.

"If you have no great attachment to your head," she continued slowly, "perhaps you would prefer to share the fate of a Chinese eunuch and carry your genitalia around with you in a small jar of brine."

He made a graceful shrug of mocking indifference.

"Are you so sure a
small
jar would contain me, madame?"

The khanum laughed delightedly.

"I am sure of nothing where you are concerned, my friend, but I warn you now, in deadly earnest, that this is the last time I shall choose to overlook your disobedience on the matter. Take off the mask!"

When the mask landed abruptly at her feet, panic broke out behind her as the younger women hid their faces in their veils and collided in their terrified urge to distance themselves from the dreadful sight that had been revealed.

"Be silent!" snapped the khanum viciously. "The next woman who screams will be beaten to death for her stupidity, I swear it! Now leave me—go, all of you!"

She clapped her hands imperiously and the women dispersed in a flurry of voluminous pearl-trimmed trousers and thin crepe chemisettes, their many bracelets and necklaces clacking wildly together in their hasty departure.

The khanum placed her elegant hennaed hands on the white latticed stonework of the balustrade and smiled down at Erik with immense satisfaction. She drew a huge diamond ring from her finger and when she tossed it to him, he caught it deftly, almost without appearing to move.

"If your imagination matches your face," she said quietly, "it will make you the most powerful man in Persia."

As he placed the diamond upon his little finger, the eunuchs say that he seemed to smile for a moment.

"Is that a prophecy, or a promise?" he inquired.

Again the khanum laughed.

"That, my friend," she said silkily, "is entirely for you to decide."

It did not take him long to reach that decision. By the time the court left to winter in Mazanderan, he was being called upon to give his opinion at council meetings and remaining present during the grand vazir's private audiences with the shah.

It was impossible to determine the shah's true motives, but he seemed to take a certain delight in baiting his brother-in-law in this fashion.

"Erik has certain interesting proposals to make concern-ing the Dar al Funun, my brother," he said one day, leaning back on his divan to observe the effect of his words. "I think you should take the trouble to consult him."

The grand vazir stiffened angrily.

"With the greatest respect, Imperial Majesty, I should prefer to rely upon the opinions of qualified men of science in all matters that appertain to the college. I must, with deepest humility, suggest that this is not an appropriate field for the talents of a court magician."

"If I say he is to be consulted," said the shah with deceptive mildness, "then you will consult him. I can assure you that you will find few qualified men of science who can even begin to rival his knowledge—in any field."

The slave who was serving sherbet was forced to withdraw at that point and was therefore unable to give me the grand vazir's reply; but he told me that he saw Mirza Taqui Khan cast a look of pure venom in Erik's direction before the great double doors closed the scene from his view.