Shadow Maker (10 page)

T
he Grand Bazaar was a sprawling labyrinth of roofed-in streets, all hopelessly narrow, all packed with rugs and hookahs and knickknacks, and all echoing with the shouts of merchants and the buzz of more than three hundred thousand daily visitors. It was a claustrophobic man's nightmare and a covert operative's dream.

Drake sniffed the air and grinned. “I love this place. Why have you never brought me here before?”

“I've never had a reason, dear.”

Nick had not been to the Grand Bazaar in years, but he found his way through the maze with little trouble, mostly by following his nose. Hadad liked to meet at a favorite tea shop, and all of the tea, coffee, and spice shops in the bazaar were concentrated into one long row—the same row that had housed them for more than half a millennium.

In this section of the bazaar,
shop
was a loose term.
Bay
would be better. The cafés amounted to little more than shallow caves lining the covered street. The kitchens took up most of the space, while the patron seating—painted iron chairs and little round tables—spilled out into the narrow street. Nick and Drake each ordered a mint tea from Hadad's chosen shop and took a seat at the edge of the bay.

“He should be here,” said Drake, checking his watch.

Nick raised a tiny glass to his lips. “This is Turkey,” he said before taking a sip. “Any appointment time comes with an implied ‘ish' at the end. Besides, he's already here. He has protection posted.” With a subtle movement of his elbow, Nick indicated a waiter that haunted the opposite corner of the bay. His grim expression contrasted sharply with his bright red jacket and fez.

Drake brushed a hand through the hair on the back of his head, a pretext to get a look at the sentry. “That guy could play for the Patriots,” he said when he turned back.

“He's scoping us out. Hadad will show up in his own time.” Nick took another sip of tea and then drew the shooter's knife from the pocket of his coat. He held it with both hands, running his thumb across the gold calligraphy.
“Ana al-muftaah,”
he read out loud.

“Say again.”

“It's Arabic. It means, ‘I am the key.'”

He handed the knife to Drake, who held one end up to his eye, trying to look down inside. “How do you open it?”

“I don't know, but I assume each blade comes out like a spring stiletto, so I wouldn't do that if I were you.”

“That's good advice.” Thin and cracked with age, the voice came from close by Nick's left shoulder. He had not heard the old man's approach, despite the fact that he walked with a cane. Nick smiled, but he did not turn. “It has been too long, my friend. God's peace be upon you.”

“And upon you, Nicholas, though it never seems to stick.” Hadad placed a withered hand on Nick's shoulder and lowered himself into the chair between the two operatives. He was small, shrunken by his many years, which Nick figured to be at least ninety. He rested a cane with a gilded head between his knees and then, without asking, he reached out and took the knife from Drake. “What an exquisite piece,” he said, wrapping his gnarled fingers around the hilt. The two blades shot out from the sides with a metallic
ring
. “And it is functional. Remarkable. I presume you are looking for a trade? I've been working on a new shoulder-launched missile that you might like.”

“Easy, Hadad. We just need information. We need to know where the knife came from.”

The blades retracted as quickly as they had shot out. “I see.” Hadad gently laid the knife on the table and smacked his lips, pushing a tobacco-stained tongue off the roof of his mouth. “I am thirsty, Nicholas. And too much talk dries out an old throat. Perhaps some tea might strengthen my voice.” He raised a hand, and the grim waiter in the red jacket and fez came over with a glass of tea and plate of sweet halva wafers on a tray.

Nick knew the drill. He slipped the waiter a small stack of bills, much more than tea and wafers were worth. The waiter left the refreshments and returned to his post.

Hadad sipped his tea in silence for a while, watching the tourists passing by. Finally, he set down his glass and picked up the knife again. He pressed his thumb against the back of his cane and the tip of the gold head swung open, revealing a set of bifocals. These he put on before examining the hilt, slowly rotating it with his fingers.

“How did you get it to open?” asked Drake, losing patience with the old man's silence.

Hadad grinned at the big operative, exposing an uneven row of yellowed teeth. “It is an ancient design using cogs and springs. You could call it clockwork. The switch is hidden. Look here.” He flipped the hilt to the side with the silver circle and crescent moons and pressed the symbol inward with his thumb. The blades shot out. As soon as he released it, they retracted again.

“That explains why they retracted when the shooter dropped it,” said Nick, but Hadad did not seem to hear him. The old man had fixated on the symbol. He adjusted his bifocals and brought the weapon to within an inch of his nose. “Did you say that you fought a man who wielded this knife?”

Nick nodded. “He had the same symbol tattooed on the palm of his hand, the circle with the crescent moons.”

Hadad removed his glasses and looked up, dropping the quaint, dotard expression he had maintained since he arrived. He was suddenly alert, and very grave. “The man with the tattoo. Did you kill him?”

“I threw him off a roof.”

“But did you
kill
him?”

Nick found the urgency in the old man's voice perplexing. “No. He disappeared.”

Hadad pushed the hilt into Nick's hand and leaned on his cane to stand. “I have told you all that I can. Thank you for the tea.”

Nick took hold of his arm to keep him at the table. “You saw something on that hilt. What was it?”

“It was nothing. Let me go.” Hadad pulled against Nick's grasp. The Turkish linebacker started toward them. Out of the corner of his eye, Nick saw Drake reaching for his Beretta. This meet was going sideways, fast, but he needed answers. “Please, Hadad. For an old friend.”

Hadad hesitated for a moment longer and then settled back down in his chair. He motioned for his protector to back off. Drake withdrew his hand from his jacket.

“Only for you, Nicholas,” said Hadad as he set his cane between his knees again. He lowered his voice so that Nick could barely hear him over the echo of the crowd. “At first, I thought you had brought me an artifact. The design is centuries old. So are the symbol and the motto on the hilt. They all belong to an ancient order.”

“Which ancient order?” asked Nick.

Hadad glanced up and down the street as if his answer might bring enemies flying from the shadows. “The Hashashin,” he whispered.

“The society of killers from the Middle Ages?” asked Drake, sitting back and folding his arms.

The old man winced and motioned for him to keep his voice down. “Not killers. Assassins.”

“The Hashashin died out eight hundred years ago,” said Nick. “What are you so afraid of?”

“This weapon is newly fashioned.”

“So? It's a fake, then.”

“You don't understand. This is not one of the trinkets we sell to the tourists. Its construction requires methods and materials forgotten to history.” Hadad handed Nick his bifocals. “I have only known one smith who still retains these skills. His family was rumored to have served the Hashashin as armorers.” He slowly tapped the hilt at the bottom of the silver circle. “That man's name was Ayan Ashaq.”

Nick held one lens of the bifocals like a magnifying glass over the spot that Hadad indicated. There he saw a blacksmith's touchmark etched into the hilt in Latin letters—the initials
AA
.

Hadad retrieved his bifocals and returned them to their place in the head of his cane. “Ayan's family once had a smithy in the Ankara Citadel. I trust you have the resources to find it, if it is still there, but I must caution you. The Hashashin are not as dead as the world believes. The man you fought today is proof of it. The wisest course is to leave them be.”

Drake snorted. “We can handle them.”

Hadad shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Perhaps.”

Nick stared down at the knife, the beautiful inlays, the strange, dark alloy behind them. “Hadad, if the Hashashin have been in hiding for eight hundred years, why would they surface now?”

“Only one reason.” The old man stood, sweeping a couple of halva wafers from the plate as he stepped around the table. “Armageddon is approaching.” Then he melted away into the passing crowd.

Cairo, Egypt

T
he Emissary smoothed out his white hooded robe and shifted his hands behind his back, clasping the lifeless prosthetic fingers as if they were real. In this pose he gazed across the Nile from the window of a forgotten watchtower, considering the thousand minarets of Cairo. He admired their workmanship. Each one was beautiful, unique. And like the mosques below them, each would soon become entirely meaningless.

The time of the true
Qiyamah
rapidly approached. The time long predicted by Ismaili scholars when mankind would join together in enlightenment, and these places of both worship and segregation would become merely architectural curiosities. But the advent of the Qiyamah required a purge. Looking out from the watchtower, the Emissary could see the path to Armageddon in a whirling, winding pattern of outcomes as complex as the motifs that adorned those many minarets. That was his gift—to see events unfold before their time, to shape them as he saw fit, to use them to draw an opponent to destruction.

Armageddon would bring both global peace and personal justice. The man who had stripped the Emissary of the one thing he cared for would now be stripped of everything he loved, piece by piece, outcome after outcome. The dominoes would fall one by one, bringing Nick Baron's world crashing down around him, until he was left in the same state he had left the Emissary—utterly alone.

Then the two of them would die together.

The Emissary withdrew from his vision and turned expectantly to face the open archway to the tower's spiral staircase. A half second later, a young Syrian appeared. Kateb, the assistant security clerk from the Latakia weapons storage facility, entered the room carrying a brown leather satchel.

“Ya Sheikh,”
said Kateb, offering a short bow. “I have brought the item you . . .” The clerk's voice faded. His eyes fixed on an old wooden desk in the corner of the room where a white-haired Pakistani busily soldered electronics together. A shiny metal box on the edge of the desk was marked with a yellow-and-black radiation-hazard label.

The Emissary smiled reassuringly. “Do not worry, young man. The material is quite safe in its present form.” He gestured toward the man at the desk. “Dr. Wahish has assured me so.”

Before Kateb could respond, another man entered the room, this one carrying a green canvas backpack. He stepped around the security clerk and silently approached the Emissary. The newcomer wore the practical attire of a desert traveler—a brown vest and a tan shirt over loose-fitting olive pants, a black and tan
shemagh
scarf around his neck. There was a curved knife in a simple leather sheath tucked into the sash around his middle. When the Emissary nodded, he set the backpack down and withdrew a metal box marked
LITHIUM-6
.

“Excellent, Amran.” The Emissary took the box and motioned his lieutenant aside. “Dr. Wahish?”

Without a word, the Pakistani doctor rose from the desk and unfurled a six-foot roll of plastic sheeting onto the floor. He set the box of lithium-6 on the sheet and opened it. Inside, there were a number of soft silver chunks of metal, suspended in mineral oil. The doctor used a pair of tongs to transfer two small chunks into a metal cylinder the size of a 35-millimeter-film canister, spilling only a few drops of oil on the plastic. Then he closed both containers. He put the box on his desk, a good distance from the box with the radiation-hazard label, and then handed the small cylinder to the Emissary and returned to his work.

Kateb watched all of this with mild interest, patiently waiting his turn. When all was complete, the Emissary signaled for him to come forward. He approached, unconcerned that he was now standing on the plastic sheet.
“Ya Sheikh,”
said the clerk, bowing as if starting a rehearsed scene over again, “I have brought the item you requested.”

When the Emissary said nothing, Kateb hesitated, unsure of himself, and then handed over the satchel.

The Emissary opened the flap and checked the thermos-sized cylinder inside. Satisfied, he slipped his small canister of lithium-6 into the bag with it and lifted the strap over his head, letting it settle at his side. He smiled at Kateb and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

In the awkward silence, Kateb shifted his weight from one heel to the other. “Ya Sheikh, about my payment.” The clerk did not see Kattan's lieutenant slip around behind him, or hear him draw the knife from its sheath.

Romeo Seven, Joint Base Andrews

South of Washington, DC

D
r. Patricia Heldner sat at her computer, reading data bursts from the airborne team watching over Quinn during his transport back to the states. She started typing a response to one of them when she heard a gentle rap on her office doorframe.

“Yes, Dick?” she said, still typing. She did not have to look up. She recognized the knock. It was the knock of a man who entered every office in this bunker with a loud, boorish comment or the pound of his fist against the frame—every office but hers. Pat and Walker knew each other too well for him to wear that facade around her. Now in her late forties, Heldner had played doctor and team mom for Dick's operations long before the Triple Seven came into being. She knew all his secrets, and he knew hers—like the fact that not all of her shoulder-length red hair was still naturally that color.

“How's our boy, Pat?” asked Walker, coming around her desk so that he could see her monitors.

Heldner pressed enter to send her message and then sat up in her rolling chair, straightening her white lab coat. “We're still touch and go. Quinn is on the C-17, headed for Landstuhl, and unless the flight surgeon does something stupid, he's going to live. Whether or not he'll ever see field ops again remains to be seen. He won't be shooting so much as a cap gun for months, I can tell you that.” She glowered up at Walker. “When Nick checks in, I want to talk to him.”

“You want to yell at him. There's a difference.”

“He's the team lead. It's his job to protect them.”

“And he does, as best he can. You know that. You've seen how far he'll go to protect his own.”

“From the dangers that
he
puts in their path. Just like you, I suppose.” The doctor wasn't really looking for a fight, but she wasn't averse to one either, not while one of her boys lay bloodied and unconscious on a gurney, thirty thousand feet over the Balkans. “Don't think that I don't see the pride in your eyes every time Nick takes his team into the field. You think he's a younger version of you.” She narrowed her eyes. “You're being unkind.”

“To Baron or to myself?”

“Let me talk to him, Dick,” Heldner pushed. “I need him to tell me what Quinn had for breakfast before he was shot.”

Walker smiled. “No, you don't.” He started for the door. “I don't need you giving Baron a guilt trip right now. I need his mind free so he can figure out our latest puzzle.”

“What's that?”

“Baron got a lead on a weaponsmith named Ayan Ashaq who may have worked with the shooter.”

“So?”

“So the intel that Molly dug up on this character doesn't make any sense.”