Shadow Maker (15 page)

R
ami walked the perimeter of his office, bobbing up and down at random, pulling books from shelves above his head and lifting them from the stacks on the floor. None of them seemed to satisfy him, and he kept putting them back, rarely in the place where he had found them.

“Doc, we're in a bit of a hurry, here,” urged Drake.

“Shh.” Rami held out a quieting hand and continued scanning his shelves. “You cannot rush knowledge.”

Drake shook his head and left the professor to his searching, wandering impatiently around the small office. Amid the clutter and books, he saw the artifacts and memorabilia one would expect in the den of a professor of antiquities—fragments of pottery, blocks of hieroglyphics and cuneiform script. Then he came across an old Bible with dog-eared pages, lying open on a stand. He leaned closer to the Bible. It was open to the tenth chapter of Romans. Faded orange highlighting covered the thirteenth verse.
For whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

“Not all Middle Eastern people are Muslims, Mr. Merigold,” said Rami, suddenly standing right next to him. “That is especially true in Egypt.”

“You're a Copt. Nick didn't tell me.”

“As well he shouldn't. It is not for him to tell.” The professor held up a book bound in blue leather with both hands, one index finger holding a place in the text. “Come, I have found the information we need.”

Drake eyed the weighty volume. “Doc, I don't have time for a history lesson.”

“Trust me, you'll want to make time for this one.” As if to emphasize the point, the professor made Drake wait while he squeezed back behind his desk and cleared the space between them.

“These are the writings of Hulegu Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan,” he said finally. “Hulegu sacked the Hashahin stronghold of Alamut in Persia and spent many hours in their library. In this book, he recounts the story of a splinter group that left Alamut a century before he arrived in the region. Scholars have always dismissed it as pure fiction.”

“Why should they dismiss it?” asked Drake.

“Because there was no archaeological evidence to support it.” Rami's thin lips spread into a conspiratorial smile. “At least, not until you stepped into my office with those pictures.” He laid the book on the desk and opened it to the place he held with his finger. At the center of the page, beneath flowing silver script, was a hand-drawn illustration of the same five symbols that Nick had photographed in the tunnel.

The professor's eyes shone behind his square lenses. “What do you know about the Hashashin?”

“They were assassins,” said Drake. “Everyone knows that. But Nick said they were pragmatic killers, not apocalyptic zealots like the terrorists we're chasing.”

Rami gave a dubious nod. “Nicholas was half-right. The Hashashin leader, Hassan, used his assassins to consolidate power for his Ismaili cousins. He killed far more Muslims than Crusaders and was, indeed, a pragmatist. But”—the professor raised a finger—“his foot soldiers were the
quintessential
apocalyptic zealots.”

Rami swept backward through the text until he came to a tinted illustration of a lush garden, lit by a radiant sun. Four bearded men in long robes stood in a half circle, happily conversing.

“Where are the seventy virgins?” asked Drake.

“I am sure that many retired suicide bombers have asked the same question,” said Rami, sitting back in his chair. He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “The heavenly harem is a more recent invention. Hassan did not promise his followers postmortem sex. He promised them an earthly paradise instead.”

“An
earthly
paradise?” repeated Drake, furrowing his brow.

Rami nodded. “Hassan promised his soldiers an eternal age called the
Qiyamah
, a final peace brought on by the return of the twelfth imam, the Mahdi. He convinced them that he was the Qaim, the ambassador who could speak to the Mahdi across the veil between worlds, and that all these assassinations were preparing the Earth for the Mahdi's return.” The professor shrugged. “The great Hassan was nothing more than a charlatan, and every charlatan has his comeuppance. That is where Hulegu's splinter group comes in.”

He sat forward and flipped through the pages again, coming to rest on a picture of two cloaked men in peaked helmets. They carried curved scimitars and glared at each other with their pointed beards nearly touching. “Hulegu tells us that in the year 1120, Hassan reached the precarious pinnacle of his career. His society of assassins had hundreds of murders to its credit—”

“But still no Mahdi,” interrupted Drake.

Rami smiled. “High marks for you, Mr. Merigold.” He placed his elbows on the desk on either side of the text and steepled his fingers. “Hassan's only option was to fabricate a Mahdi. He paraded a child around his mountain stronghold as the incarnation of the twelfth imam and then hid him away and declared the Qiyamah had begun.” The Egyptian grinned like a car salesman and spread his arms wide. “Welcome to paradise! Now get back to work. Of course, Hassan remained the Qaim, the assassinations continued, and no one ever saw the child again.”

“Great story,” said Drake, growing impatient again, “but what does that have to do with our Hashashin terrorists?”

Rami brought his hands together with a startling clap. “I'm so glad you asked!” He laid a finger on one of the bearded men in the illustration. “This is General Insar, a foot soldier who survived too many suicide missions. He didn't buy Hassan's lies and started squawking about it among the faithful. When Hassan tried to arrange his death, Insar challenged him and killed him and then fled with his followers to another mountain fortress.”

“The Ankara Citadel,” said Drake.

Rami abruptly looked up from the book. “High marks again, Mr. Merigold! You're much smarter than Nicholas gives you credit for.”

Drake opened his mouth to respond, but the professor kept going before any words came to him.

“Insar formed an unsteady alliance with one of the late Hassan's rivals, the Sultan of Rum—sort of an enemy-of-my-enemy arrangement. His splinter group of Hashashin, the Insari, lived and thrived at Ankara for a hundred years, making their living openly as assassins and blacksmiths and waiting for the return of the real Mahdi.”

“Who, once again, never came.”

The professor raised a pair of bushy eyebrows. “They never got the chance to find out. The whole group was wiped out in 1242. The new sultan saw them as a threat and sent a huge army to Ankara in a preemptive strike.” He closed the book and sat back again, removing his glasses. “According to Hulegu, the sultan's army finished off the Insari Hashashin, but at great cost. Five thousand men marched on Ankara. Only two hundred returned.”

Drake narrowed his eyes. “If the sultan wiped out the Hashashin in the thirteenth century,” he asked, “then who did we fight in those catacombs last night?”

Rami shrugged. “Why should we trust the word of the sultan's men? Perhaps a remnant of the Hashashin survived at Ankara, living in secret all this time as assassins for hire. There are rumors of it all throughout history. Can every one of them be false?”

“That would mean the Insari Hashashin are remarkably adept at keeping to the shadows, even in the modern world. They've purposefully stepped out into the light. Why now, after eight centuries? What changed?”

The professor pressed one stem of his glasses to his chin, his face clouded in thought. After several seconds, his eyes focused again, and he shook the glasses at Drake. “They must have found another Qaim, another Hassan more convincing than the original.”

The word
Qaim
stuck in Drake's brain. “You mentioned Hassan pretending to be the Qaim before. What did you say it meant?”

“Al-Qaim,” said the professor, slipping his glasses back on. “In English, ‘the ambassador.'” He seated his frames and looked across the desk at Drake. “Or perhaps more accurately, ‘the emissary.'”

B
ritish food had always mystified Nick. How could the nation credited with the invention of the sandwich be utterly incapable of producing a basic ham and cheese? He dumped the caramelized onions off a dubious adaptation of a chicken club and then considered dipping the sandwich in his Americano. That might at least soften the hard roll, which promised to go down like broken glass.

Across the table, Chaya drummed the Formica with manicured nails and stared out the café window at the Strand. “You said the IBE security video was a major breakthrough.”

“It was.”

“Then what are you doing?”

Nick slowly chewed a bite of sandwich, grinding the stiff crust between his teeth until it was safe to swallow. “I'm eating.”

Chaya muttered something in Hindi and pounded the table with her fist, sending a spatter of Nick's coffee onto the sleeve of his overcoat. He leisurely dabbed it away with a napkin.

Behind the stolid expression, Nick was just as impatient as she was. The security video from IBE showed Kattan's face from multiple angles, their biggest lead yet. Now they had a complete digital profile along with fixed points in time and space to feed into London's public-camera system, the largest Big Brother network in the world. Finding Kattan was only a matter of time, but Nick couldn't go back to the hotel to prepare to go after him—not yet, not with the lawyer in tow.

As he struggled to masticate his third bite of sandwich, Nick's comm unit finally crackled to life. “Are you there, One?”

Nick raised the phone to his ear to conceal that he was talking through the earpiece. “I'm here,” he said to Scott. “Did you get it?”

“I hope you know how many international laws I had to break.”

“Which makes this no different than any other day. Where to?”

“Take the Piccadilly Line from Holborn. Head for Piccadilly Circus.”

“On my way.”

Nick slapped a lid on his coffee and started for the door, leaving the sandwich languishing in its wrapping. Chaya scrambled out from behind the table to follow. “Your friend has something?”

“I have to get to Piccadilly Circus.”

As soon as Nick hit the sidewalk, he extended his stride, forcing the short lawyer into a stilted jog. The Strand and Kingsway were crowded with lunchtime foot traffic, and he weaved his way through the oncoming droves, picking the path of most resistance. He could hear the uneven click of Chaya's power heels behind him, her panting apologies as she bumped into the people he sidestepped. Nick found it difficult not to smile.

When they came within sight of Holborn station, he felt the lawyer's fingers graze his back, grasping for him. “You're taking the Tube?” she asked, out of breath. “It will be packed at this hour. We should walk it.”

“No time. The Tube is still faster. Besides”—he stepped onto the steep escalator descending into the station—“I'm a government employee, remember? I have to support the public-transit system.”

Chaya clutched the arm rail on the step above him, gasping for breath. “You're not an employee of
our
government.”

A cloud of static grew on Nick's comm link as the escalator took them deeper underground. “I'm going to piggyback on the Tube's cell-phone repeaters to keep the link open,” said Scott through the interference. “Once you're on the train, give me an execute signal. After that you'll have only a ninety-second window, encompassing both stages. Will that be enough?”

“Should be.”

Chaya looked up from straightening her rumpled coat. “What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

Chaya's concerns about the noontime traffic proved to be well-founded. The platform was packed. Nick jostled his way to the map on the back wall. “Which train?”

“All of them, you stupid Yank,” said Chaya, scrunching her nose. “All the trains that pass this platform go to Piccadilly Circus.”

“The next one,” answered Scott through the earpiece. “It arrives in forty-seven seconds. Get on it, even if you have to crowd out other passengers. The rush at the up-channel station is beginning to slow. The following train will have too much open space.”

Exactly forty-seven seconds later, the next train pulled into the station. The doors opened and a bright feminine voice warned, “Mind the gap.” No one did. The masses crammed themselves into the already loaded cars. Nick herded Chaya ahead of him, shouldering a lanky teenager with green hair and studs in his eyebrows out of the way. As the cheerful voice advised them to mind the doors, he took a sip of his coffee and winked at the angry teen still standing on the platform. The kid slapped the door.

A moment later, the train lurched into motion and the crowd swayed as one body. Chaya gripped a vertical bar with white knuckles. The passengers around her engulfed her tiny form. She leaned a shoulder into Nick to gain a little space from a gristly, hairy individual. The man seemed all too content to have his oversized gut pressed against a pretty girl. As the train reached full speed, Nick took a final sip of coffee. It was much too sweet for his taste, and it had grown tepid. Perfect. He held the cup low and removed the lid. “Go,” he said through his teeth.

“Executing,” said Scott. “Three, two, one . . .”

The brakes locked, sending a terrific squeal ripping through the train. The passengers fell into one another. The lights flickered. With a little extra guidance, Nick's coffee flew from his open cup. A flying wall of brown liquid hit Chaya in the back of the head.

Her hands flew up in shock and surprise. “Ugh!”

“I am so sorry. What a klutz.” Nick wiped her back with the sleeve of his coat, and her heavyset admirer joined in from the other side, a model of English chivalry. She batted them both away.

Scott's voice sounded in Nick's ear again. “Stage two in three, two, one . . .”

Every light in the car brightened and then popped. Sparks showered down. The passengers screamed.

—

Moments later, Chaya was still trying to get the coffee out of her hair, her fingers dripping. The dark and the screaming passengers did not concern her nearly as much as the horrible, sticky liquid.

The train operator made a desperate announcement over the PA system. “Remain calm, everyone. Please remain calm. We've only had a little power surge. Do not attempt to open the doors. The train will begin moving again shortly.”

He was right. The train jerked into motion again, but the lights never came back, blown out by the surge. The big man next to Chaya patted her sleeve, leaving his hand there a little too long. “Don't worry none, darlin'. You're safe with me.”

Right.

Chaya felt behind her back for Nick, but her hand went straight to the door. He was gone.

—

Nick emerged from a utility stairwell into daylight on Russell Square. He felt a pang of guilt at leaving Chaya alone in the dark with her chivalrous friend, but only a small pang.

After all, she was blackmailing him—
was
being the operative word. He glanced down at the paper in his hand to make certain he had lifted the right one from her peacoat. Then he crumpled it up and tossed it into a recycle bin. So much for the fake warrant and Chaya's adoring magistrates.