Shadow Maker (22 page)

N
ick!”

Katy called to him.

Her voice was muddled, distant. He saw her atop a shining limestone wall, spotted with tufts of green rock plant and studded with tiny prayer scrolls.

Jerusalem.

Katy was in Jerusalem. That was right, wasn't it? Nick had sent her there with his father. To keep her safe.

Suddenly Masih Kattan appeared next to her, holding Luke in his arms and smiling triumphantly. Katy's face twisted with fear as a wall of flame rose up before them. Nick's face burned from the heat. She screamed his name from beyond the fire.

“Nick!”

Nick awoke, staring at streams of water pouring in through cracks in the MG's windshield. His chest ached, a consequence of having it slammed into the seat belt when they hit the water. Gravity pulled him forward. The MG was vertical, heading for the bottom of the river. To his right, Rami was struggling with his seat belt.

Strong hands shook Nick by the shoulders. “Nick! Wake up!”

“I'm awake. Help Rami,” he said to Drake, his voice weak at first, but gaining strength.

While Nick fought with his own seat belt, he felt the jarring impact of the MG hitting the bottom of the Thames—twenty, maybe twenty-five feet down. The winter current carried the tail of the car sideways and it hung at a steep angle, dragging its crushed nose slowly through the silt.

Thanks to gravity, the murky brown water filled the front of the car first. It had already reached Nick's chest. “Rami, I need your revolver,” said Nick.

“No, you don't,” countered Drake. He held up the bobby's baton. “Whenever you're ready, boss.”

Nick's seat belt finally came free. “Go,” he ordered. “I've got the professor.”

Drake smashed the butt of the baton into the window and the river took care of the rest, caving the whole thing into the backseat and gushing into the car. As the water passed his neck, Nick fished out the Hashashin knife. He pushed Rami's hands away from the belt and cut him free. “Come on!”

“One moment!” countered the Egyptian, his face up against the roof. To Nick's astonishment, the professor ducked down beneath the seat, hunting for something on the floorboards. He came up hugging a thick text, blinking in the murky water. The car was completely full.

Drake was already gone, and Nick pushed Rami out next. The professor's tenured academic midsection barely fit through, but he made it. Once outside the car, Nick could see blue and yellow police lights flashing above, their colors muted by the green-brown water. He held on to Rami's jacket from below, keeping the professor from surfacing, letting the current carry them away from the police. When the professor batted desperately at his hand, indicating that he couldn't hold his breath any longer, Nick counted another ten seconds and then let him go.

They surfaced near a small dock on the southeast side of the river, a good bit south of the flashing lights on the opposite shore. Nick tried to grab Rami under the arms and pull him toward the dock, but the Egyptian pushed him away. “I am not an invalid, Nicholas,” he sputtered. “I can manage.”

They found Drake lying on the dock in a prone position, his arms over the side ready to catch them. He pulled the professor up onto the composite planks first and then helped Nick. All the while, Rami held on to his prize. Dripping, he lay on his back, hugging the book to his chest.

“Must be a really good story,” said Drake.

“You will be glad I brought it. For now though, we need shelter and warmth. And I know just the place.” The Egyptian struggled to his feet and ran to the end of the dock, crouching like a professional operator.

Nick and Drake exchanged a look. Nick shrugged. “I guess we follow him.”

Rami led them several blocks away from the river until they came to a nondescript glass-and-aluminum door in a row of joined office buildings—distinguished from the other doors in the row only by the small bronze plaque beside it. One-inch block lettering read
COPTIC CHURCH OF SOUTH LONDON.

Rami reached out with a shivering hand and pressed a white button below the plaque. “Our resident priest Youssef is a heavy sleeper. I hope he hears the bell.”

—

A half hour later, Nick peeled back a yellowed shower curtain in the church bathroom and found a stack of clothes on the counter next to his towel—worn khaki slacks, a blue button-down shirt, boxers and socks, even a pair of Adidas. When he finished dressing, he stepped out into a narrow hallway lit with the warm wash of yellow incandescent fixtures. Drake was seated on a folding chair outside the door, wearing a blue and white Hawaiian shirt and tweed slacks.

“The church has a clothing-and-food mission for the poor,” he said. “Rami and Youssef raided the shelves to find clothes for us.” He kicked his feet out from under the chair, displaying a pair of shiny, patent leather shoes.

“Those are nice,” said Nick.

“They had a little trouble finding something in my size.”

“We can't stay here. We have to get home. If CJ is taking over this chase, she's going to need our help behind the scenes.”

“And where will you go at one o'clock in the morning?” asked Rami, stepping out from a doorframe a short distance down the hall. “The police are at every corner, and they will be for the rest of the night.” He handed each of them a steaming bowl of soup. It looked like porridge, but it smelled divine.

“Eat. Sleep. Regroup. You have chased the Hashashin nonstop for three days, and they are always two steps ahead. Perhaps you need to slow down in order to get out in front.”

Nick was too exhausted to argue with his old professor. He could play along now and get moving again once he checked in with Romeo Seven.

The two operatives followed Rami to a room with several cots and sat down to eat their soup while the Egyptian disappeared to talk to Youssef. The soup tasted as good as it smelled—lentil bean with rosemary and thyme, and something sweet Nick could not identify.

While they ate, they let thoughts of Kattan and the bioweapon rest. They caught each other up on the events of the night, recalling the better parts of their fights and chases as if they were already faded memories.

By the time his bowl was empty, Nick no longer had the desire to race back out into the cold. He wanted sleep and nothing else. He laid out a pad on his cot, and the moment his head hit the vinyl cushion, the room faded into darkness.

W
hen Nick awoke, he found Rami and Drake in the room next door, poring over the professor's old book, still wet from its dunk in the river. He leaned against the doorframe and yawned. “How long have I been out?”

“Five hours,” said Drake, glancing at the screen of his smartphone. “It's seven
A.M.
”

Nick's eyes widened. He had intended to sleep for an hour, ninety minutes at the most.

Rami removed his spectacles and gave him a knowing smile. “How do you feel? Rested?”

“Woozy. What did you put in that soup besides beans?”

The professor waved his glasses in the air. “Oh, this and that. A few spices, some poppy-seed oil.”

“Poppy seed. You drugged us?”

“I helped you get the rest you needed. I gave you the same soup I eat to help with my insomnia. Poppy-seed oil is a common ingredient in Egyptian culinary arts.”

“Opium?” Drake looked from Nick to the professor and back again. He pointed at his teammate. “If Walker has us do a urine test in the next two weeks, remind me to borrow a bottle of Molly's.”

Nick closed his eyes and shook his head. “What are you two doing with that old book?”

The professor put his glasses back on and folded his hands together, tilting his knuckles toward his former student. “Don't take this the wrong way, Nicholas, but you have approached your entire mission the wrong way.”

“Oh, here we go,” said Nick, stepping deeper into the room. “Always grading my work. You and my father.”

Rami shrugged. “What good is a teacher who doesn't teach or a father who doesn't parent?” He opened his hands and smiled. “You are dealing with the Hashashin, not al-Qaeda. The two organizations have overlapping ideology, but they are separated by nearly a millennium.”

“So?”

“So you are an expert at combating
modern
terrorists. You depend on a decade of experience and success, but in reality you have never faced, much less defeated, a threat like the Hashashin.” Rami patted the soggy pages of the text in front of him. “I propose that you consult the one man who has.”

“Hulegu.”

“You remember!” The professor clapped his hands together. “That is why you were always my favorite.”

Nick shook his head. “Hulegu employed overwhelming force. He stormed the Hashashin stronghold at Alamut with a hundred thousand Mongol warriors.” He gestured at Drake with an open hand, tracking down from the worn Hawaiian shirt to the patent leather shoes. “All I have is him, and even if we could send in the Marines, we don't know where to send them.”

“Ah.” Rami raised a finger. “You are forgetting that Hulegu foiled multiple assassination attempts
before
he destroyed the Hashashin at Alamut. No one, not even the Sultan of Rum had stopped their assassinations before.”

The professor motioned Nick closer, his movements quick, energized by academic discovery. “Look here. It is difficult to find amid the rabid self-glorification, but I believe Hulegu gives us the true key to his success.” Rami placed a finger on the page and read in the voice of a pompous Mongol khan.

Having inherited the divine foresight of the eagles, I sent my informants into their houses of worship. For I had discerned by the wisdom granted to me by heaven that the Mohammedans do not separate their worship from their war. Rather they worship through war, by what they call jihad. Within the domed shrines frequented by the Ismailis, my informants discovered a network of Hashashin outposts with tunnels, secret rooms, and armories. There they learned of the plots against my brother the Great Khan Möngke and my adviser Kitbuka. Thus I laid in wait for my enemies and by my own hand met them with divine retribution for their sins.

“The mosques?” offered Drake.

“Yes. Yes!” said Rami, slapping him on the back. “Unlike the crusaders, Hulegu understood the value of infiltrating the mosques rather than burning them, at least in the early stages. And unlike today's intelligence agencies, he did not concern himself with the political consequences of having a spy discovered in a mosque.”

Nick nodded, staring down at the page. “Eight centuries ago Hulegu discovered the heart of Islamic insurgency. ‘The Mohammedans do not separate their worship from their war,'” he read. “‘Rather, they worship through war.' Nothing has changed. Today's generals are just too politically correct to say it.” He tapped the illustration of the mosque. “This should have been my starting point. Instead, I let Kattan lead me around by the nose.”

Youssef entered from the hallway, interrupting their conversation. “It is time,” he said solemnly.

The academic smile on Rami's lips faded. “You must excuse me for a while,” he said, standing up and patting Nick on the shoulder. Then he and Youssef silently walked out of the room.

Nick's phone chimed. He checked the screen. A black box with ivory text told him
TheEmissary has taken your rook. Your move.

He frowned at the screen. The game was supposed to be over. CJ had captured the phone that sent Kattan's moves. Was one of her techs playing with the program? Before Nick could fully process the ramifications, the box disappeared, replaced by an incoming call—one of the secure hard lines at Romeo Seven. He checked his watch: two
A.M.
, DC time. Not a good sign. He pressed the green square and put the phone to his ear. “I swear I didn't shoot the wing off that angel.”

“Nick?” The voice was Doc Heldner's. “We've been trying to reach you on SATCOM.”

“We had to shut down the earpieces and let them dry. Long story, but—”

“Nick, Romeo Seven has been penetrated,” interrupted Heldner. “We're in lockdown.”

N
ick turned on the phone's speaker and set it down on the damp pages of Hulegu's text. “Clarify.”

Dr. Heldner's explanation was urgent, hurried. “Scott is back, but he's hurt. We don't know how, but someone or something got to him while he was at his workstation. When he arrived, I came in to give him the standard postmission workup. He was healthy, but he was agitated. He wanted to get to work on an assignment you gave him.”

Nick nodded at the phone. “Cracking the Second Sign Virus.”

“That's it. I told him to go home and rest, but he blew me off and went straight to a workstation in the command center. I went up to the Ivory Tower to talk to Dick. A few minutes later, Scott cried out as if something hit him. We looked down in time to see him crash to the floor. Dick hit the panic button and put the bunker in lockdown.”

“Intruders?” asked Nick.

“None. None that security could find, anyway. By the time I got to Scott, he was unresponsive. His eyes are open, staring. His symptoms present like a neurotoxin.”

Drake shook his head. “No way. There's no way the Hashashin got past base security and got into Romeo Seven. Maybe they hit him with a dart or something before he got to the airport.”

“A delayed response?” asked Heldner. “Not by seven hours. That's not how neurotoxins work. There has to be another solution. Scott is fading fast. He may already be losing brain function. Without knowing the specific poison, I can't administer an antidote. Nick, I'm going to lose him.”

Nick squeezed his eyes shut. The game was on again, and Kattan had taken another piece—Scott. But how? None of them ever gave away the location of the apartment, not even to Chaya. The Hashashin had no way to poison Scott before or after he escaped London.

Unless one of Nick's own team had done it for them.

Unless he had done it himself.

“The thumb drive,” he exclaimed through his teeth. “I gave him a thumb drive that Scotland Yard found at the site of the second terrorist attack.”

On the speaker, they could hear the sound of Heldner rushing through Romeo Seven on her way from the clinic to the command center.

Nick bent closer to the phone, placing his hands on either side of the book. “Look for a partially burned thumb drive at Scott's workstation, but be careful.”

When she reached the workstation, Heldner found the thumb drive already plugged in to one of Scott's computers. She described micro-needles protruding from the top and bottom. “It's not a drive at all. It's a CO
₂
injector. The electricity from the USB receptacle must have activated the charge. It hit him as soon as he plugged it in.”

“Can you save him?” asked Drake.

“Maybe. If there's enough residual toxin for me to make a positive ID, I might find a suitable antidote.” She paused and then added, “But at this point, I don't know if there's much of him left to save.”

After the doctor hung up, Nick and Drake stared at the blank phone for several moments. Then Nick opened up the message from his chess application and showed it to Drake.

The big operative gave him a wary look. “May I assume we're not going home as ordered?”

“Can't,” said Nick, pocketing the phone. “The game isn't over yet.”

“But the thumb drive was supposed to be our next break. It's a bust. How do we chase him now?”

“We don't chase him. We head him off.” Nick smoothed out the wet pages of Rami's book, tracing his fingers over the illustration of the ancient mosque. “We go to the one place we know Kattan will appear.”