Empire of Lies

by Raymond Khoury

  The director was unable to focus on what the man was saying. Every neuron inside him was focused on the blade. He tried to formulate some kind of plea, to prod his mouth to eke out something that might change his captor’s mind, but his senses were too jumbled to react. All he could manage was a meek, mumbled “please,” but even as he said it, he knew it wouldn’t change anything.

  “It’s actually a shame you won’t be around to see it,” the man said as he set the knife down on the floor beside him and pulled a handgun out from his belt, “because I really do believe it’s going to be glorious.”

  And with that, he raised the gun to the director’s head and pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  So many possibilities, Ayman Rasheed thought, as he sat in the trashed office of the director of antiquities.

  So many possibilities and such a huge decision to make … but also so much to look forward to if he got it right.

  As he stared out the window at the destruction and chaos outside the gates of the museum, Rasheed contemplated how much his world had changed. How outside factors, ones way beyond his control, had ended up with him here, in Palmyra, surrounded by strangers, fighting an enemy with many faces in a land that was not his own.

  A week had passed since the fateful moment when he saw the hesitation and fear in the museum director’s eyes, and he could think of nothing else. He could barely sleep. Ever since he’d done it, ever since he’d tried it out for himself, his mind was drunk with excitement. The director’s secret had opened up a whole universe of possibilities, quite literally. Which meant Rasheed had to think hard and choose from his staggering array of options very, very carefully. The future of hundreds of millions of people—billions, even—rested on his shoulders.

  Their future … or their past?

  He was still having a hard time getting his head around it.

  An incredible choice to have to make for any man, to be sure. A monstrous responsibility, and a gift that could, in the wrong hands, be easily squandered.

  Rasheed wasn’t about to let that happen.

  This prodigious gift, after all, hadn’t fallen into the hands of some illiterate, impulsive fool. It had found its way to him: an erudite, thoughtful man. A man whose career was built on intellect as well as instinct, a calculating strategist who appreciated the long view and never rushed into things, unlike so many of his peers.

  And, most crucially, in the light of what he’d stumbled upon, an inquisitive man who also had a long-standing passion for a subject that would now serve him well: history.

  Allah worked in mysterious ways, indeed.

  11

  PARIS

  Present Day

  “When are we going to the beach, “anneh?”

  Tarek, Noor, and Nisreen were in the kitchen having breakfast. The sun poking through the slats was still low. Even this early, it was hinting at the blaze that was coming.

  Nisreen hadn’t gone back to bed after her troubling discovery on the computer. She’d barely managed a couple hours’ snooze on the sofa before Noor had padded in and tugged her arm to wake her before giving up and snuggling up next to her.

  “In two weeks’ time,” Nisreen replied with a smile.

  Tarek beamed and held up Firas, his stuffed dinosaur. “Two weeks. You hear that?” He turned back to his mom. “I promised to build him a castle. A huuuge one,” he added excitedly, with arms stretched wide open and an even wider grin.

  Nisreen chuckled. She and Ramazan had planned to take the kids to the south coast for the annual week of celebrations that marked the accession of the sultan to the throne. They tried to get away at least three times a year, either to the mountains or to the sea. Nisreen couldn’t wait, and its prospect managed to push some light into a small corner of her heart.

  “Baba promised he would teach me how to swim,” Noor said in between focused bites of her cheese borek.

  “You’re too young to swim,” Tarek countered.

  “Tarek,” Nisreen said with a raised finger—then her phone rang.

  “I only learned last year. She’s still five,” he protested. “Besides”—he grinned at his sister—“she looks so cute in her little pink armbands.”

  Noor stuck her tongue out at him as Nisreen glanced at her phone and took the call.

  Her face darkened almost immediately.

  A few words were all it took to snuff out the light that Tarek’s question had sparked.

  * * *

  The Hafiye was a half hour’s brisk walk from Kamal’s home.

  It was based in the old Grand Châtelet on the right bank of the Seine, across the river from the Île de la Cité. He often walked to work, opting for the lazy comfort of a taxi or the tram only on the harshest, darkest mornings of winter. Today, however, he’d ridden his motorbike in after waking up heavy-headed and running late. Cutting through the snarls of traffic made the heat and humidity a bit more bearable.

  No one would be rebuking him for any tardiness today. Not after the ceremony the day before, which he was gleefully reminded of by almost every person he encountered while making his way through the labyrinthine compound to reach his desk. No, today Kamal could glide by on the kudos of his colleagues, from the security guards in the entrance lobby who almost apologized for having to scan his ID to the senior officers who gave him acknowledging nods as he walked past their glass-fronted offices. It should have felt great, but somehow it didn’t. He decided the best thing he could do was bury himself in his work and hope that he could soon ferret out another real enemy of the state, someone with lethal intent whose comeuppance could help shore up Kamal’s faith in what he was doing.

  Even with the modern additions, the ancien régime stronghold was a grim place. It had been entirely rebuilt by Louis XIV in AD 1684, a decade before the Ottomans had swept into Paris and beheaded him. They were greatly aided by the fact that fourteen years earlier, in an act of unfortunate recklessness, Louis had declared Paris safe from foreign attack and ordered its ring of defensive walls to be torn down in order to expand the spread of the city, replacing them with grand boulevards. During his reign, the Grand Châtelet was a sprawling fortress with forbidding walls and a clutch of squat, turreted towers that housed the police headquarters, courts, and several prisons. Its dank subterranean dungeons had enjoyed a fearsome notoriety, far worse than that of the Bastille, which was a mile to the east. The Ottomans saw no reason to undermine that reputation. Under their rule, its prisons were just as full, its reputation just as sinister. It had grown over the centuries, with newer buildings seamlessly blended into the ancient fortress and its stone towers. The Ottomans preferred to keep historically significant structures, only altering them so that they became unquestionably Ottoman and Islamic in appearance, totemic reminders of the conquered past.

  The Hafiye initially shared the compound, nicknamed the Citadel, with the Zaptiye, the police force that handled basic tasks like traffic violations, domestic altercations, alcohol and drug use, robbery, and the occasional homicide. Given that penalties under shari’a law were harsh and could easily lead to the loss of a limb or worse, crime rates were low. But with the ever-present dual threats of terrorism and civil unrest, the Hafiye had expanded and taken over the entire compound. Kamal and his brethren now ruled the streets, and the Zaptiye had to relocate to a building nearby, close to the old Hôtel de Ville.

  Kamal’s and Taymoor’s workstations faced each other on the fourth floor of one of the new additions, in a low-ceilinged open-plan space that they shared with a dozen of their colleagues. There were several other areas of similar size, one per section, all of them buzzing with agents who were busy sifting through surveillance logs, recordings and transcripts, and informants’ reports. Runners hurried along the hallways, ferrying coffee and paperwork. There were no women around. The small department of female agents, which handled cases involving women, was housed in a small, separate building that had its own entrance. Male and female agents were only allowed to work tog
ether when it was deemed crucial to a case. Under Abdülhamid’s conservative agenda, fraternizing between the two was not only discouraged. It was banned.

  Taymoor’s desk was a mess, of course—it always was—and he still hadn’t come in. Clearly, Kamal’s partner was milking the previous day’s limelight for all its worth. Which suited Kamal fine. He wasn’t sure he could handle Taymoor’s gung-ho fervor just yet.

  He spent half an hour trawling through the overnight surveillance reports but didn’t find anything noteworthy. Once he was done, he picked up his phone and rang the analyst he’d tasked with going over the CCTV footage from the riverbank.

  “Chaouch komiser,” the man replied, “I was about to call you.”

  “Tell me,” Kamal said.

  “There’s something you should see. It might not be anything, but—”

  “I’ll come down,” Kamal told him.

  He was getting up to leave when he saw Taymoor making his way in. Their eyes met, and Taymoor’s expression tightened with a sudden tinge of seriousness.

  “Do I even dare ask why you’re late?” Kamal asked when he reached him.

  Taymoor brushed off his comment. “Forget that, brother. Did you know Nisreen is here?”

  “What? Where?”

  “Downstairs, at reception. She’s causing a scene. I think you’d better get down there.”

  Kamal was already moving.

  Two colleagues and a runner were waiting by the elevators. Kamal nodded to them curtly as he tapped the down button impatiently, glaring at the digital display that showed both elevators to be stuck on higher floors. He gave up and darted for the stairs, flying down three steps at a time, and burst onto the ground floor. He blew across the busy foyer, and, as he approached the duty officer’s station, he could see a small gaggle of men crowding it, with two lone women among them.

  One of them was Nisreen. He spotted her from across the huge hall.

  He wasn’t sure at first. Being married, she didn’t have to cover her face completely when she wasn’t home or with other women behind closed doors, and she generally left most of her face unveiled, like non-Muslim women, only bothering with a thin veil around her hair that got progressively lower with each passing year. Today, however, she was wrapped under a more opaque veil and was harder to recognize—another shift in the city’s social dynamic under the new regime. Her body, however, had to be covered up. That had never changed much, and that morning she was in a summer ferace, a loose coat that had room in its sleeves for her to conceal her hands.

  Her companion was even more shrouded than her, her face concealed behind a thicker gray muslin veil. Kamal couldn’t tell if he knew her.

  Police officers were watching from the sidelines, while at the core of the disturbance Nisreen was arguing forcefully with the official and two of his men.

  “What do you mean, you don’t have to explain anything?” Her furious voice echoed around the stone chamber as Kamal made his way through the small crowd to reach her. “The man is missing and all we want to know is whether or not you have him.”

  The duty officer was unmoved. “You know very well that there’s nothing to discuss in cases of state security. End of story.”

  “End of story? The man has a wife,” she insisted, pointing at her companion, a woman who, Kamal now saw, was in her midthirties and was standing beside Nisreen quietly, her head slumped. Then Nisreen spotted him. He felt her stab of recognition, a cold, hard glare that was loaded with hurt and sadness and rage and defiance—then she continued, as if he didn’t exist. “He’s got four children. Don’t they deserve to know something more than ‘end of story’? What kind of a barbarian have you turned into?” She turned to the others, incensed. “All of you? How can you do this?” Her eyes snared him again, their almond charm replaced by fierce anger.

  Kamal was about to intercede when the duty officer slapped his hand hard against the desk. “Nisreen hatun, I would respectfully suggest you leave here now while you still have that option.”

  “What are you going to do?” Nisreen shot back angrily. “Lock us up, too? Are you going to put all of Paris in your cages?”

  Kamal stepped in and waved a calming gesture at the duty officer. “Başçavuş—”

  The duty officer ignored him. “I don’t know about that, but I could certainly be happy to start with—”

  Kamal interrupted him, louder and more forcefully this time. “Başçavuş Ahmet Efendi, please. There’s no need to aggravate an already inflamed situation. I’m sure she doesn’t mean any disrespect—”

  “Oh, I mean it,” Nisreen interjected, her tone soaked with contempt. “I absolutely mean it, every damn—”

  Kamal raised an open palm to still her. “Nisreen, please. You need to calm down.” He glanced over at the duty officer, gave him an “I’ll handle this” look and gesture, and turned back to face Nisreen. “What’s this about?”

  “You don’t know?” Delivered with as much sarcasm as scorn.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Nisreen studied him for a tight intake of breath, then said, “This woman is the wife of Ibrahim Sinasi. Her husband didn’t come home from work last night. A shopkeeper who knows him saw three men lead him into a black SUV and drive away. She’s worried sick. His children are worried sick. The man’s a playwright, for God’s sake.” She paused, then waved him off. “Why the hell am I bothering telling you this? You’re worse than they are.” She turned to her companion. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Nisreen, please, wait. I’m just—”

  She turned abruptly. “What? What are you going to say?” She jabbed an accusing finger at the duty officer. “We know you have him. We know he’s here.” The man remained stone-faced. She spun her gaze onto Kamal. “Are you going to get him to tell us what’s going on? Are you going to help me get to the bottom of this so I can get this woman’s husband back home where he belongs?”

  “It’s not that simple. You know that.”

  “It should be,” she spat out. “It used to be. Back when we were civilized. Back when you and the rest of these thugs had a conscience and a backbone.” She adjusted her veil as she turned to her companion. “Let’s go.”

  He reached out and took her by the arm to stop her. “Nisreen—”

  She swung around angrily and swatted his hand off. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare touch me.”

  Kamal froze.

  They stood there for a few frenzied heartbeats, facing off, her anger burning through his regret. “Where does this end, Kamal Agha?” she finally hissed. “What are you going to do, lock us all up? Or feed us all to your executioners?”

  His eyes dropped as he shook his head. He started to say, “That’s not fair,” but she was already storming out.

  He watched her disappear and felt his insides shred.

  12

  Over at the Hurrem Sultan Külliye, Ramazan was bringing his patient back to consciousness.

  Enough time had passed since the surgery, and all the signs were positive. The mystery man had a stable heartbeat. The oxygenation level in his blood was good. His renal function was normal. There was no bleeding in the drainage tubes coming out of the sides of his chest. The lung X-rays were fine. Of equal importance to Ramazan, however, was that the cardiothoracic nurses’ night shift would be ending soon, and he figured that a tired nurse would make it easier for him to get some time alone with his patient.

  He was pleased to find that Anbara wasn’t on duty. They hadn’t discussed the man’s surprising outburst just before the surgery, and Ramazan wasn’t keen to bring it up with her yet either. He needed to understand more about what was going on and thought that the more time that passed without discussing it with her, the more he could downplay it, if need be.

  With another nurse assisting him, Ramazan initiated the recovery process, gradually reducing the level of drugs passing through the IV line while monitoring the man’s reactions, only this time he was doing it slightly differently. His objective
wasn’t to bring the patient back to full consciousness as fast as possible.

  He had something else in mind.

  He watched as the man’s vitals ticked up, and then he saw the first stirrings of awakening. There was movement behind the tattooed man’s eyelids before they fluttered, barely at first, then more noticeably. Patients were groggy and disoriented when they awakened after surgery. For some, it didn’t take too long to become clearheaded, but for others it can take hours. That was what Ramazan was after: he intended to keep his patient in a bleary state as long as possible. A state where he would be unguarded about what he said.

  Making sure the nurse was focused elsewhere, Ramazan tweaked the setting on the tattooed man’s IV line so it would keep delivering a mild dose of sedative, along with some of the anesthetic. How much he’d need to achieve the state he was after, though, was a guess. He’d never attempted to prolong a patient’s delirium. It went against everything he stood for as a doctor and clearly violated the rules and practices of his profession. Despite the trepidation pulsating inside him, despite the crippling tightness spreading across his body, he kept going.

  He wasn’t sure why he was doing this, but he didn’t stop to think about it too much. He was doing it, regardless of the consequences, driven by a curiosity he couldn’t suppress, the excitement of it egging him on, feeding on itself. It wasn’t like him. In fact, he’d never done something like this before. It wasn’t his style. He could picture his brother Kamal doing it. Kamal was the one with an appetite for risk and a disdain for rules. Ramazan had always been the sensible one. The safe, reasonable, measured one. The boring, methodical anesthesiologist. And maybe that was why he was doing it. Maybe he needed to be more adventurous.

  Maybe that was what Nisreen also needed him to be.

  Less than a minute later, the tattooed man was slowly emerging from unconsciousness.