Empire of Lies

by Raymond Khoury

Kamal looked away and acknowledged her words with some thoughtful nods as the impossible started to, if not sink in, then at least slip under the surface. “And you’re saying Rasheed—whoever he was—he gave you the incantation?”

  “Yes. Well, sort of. Half of it. He told us how to travel back into the past, but we didn’t get the way he came here. To the future.”

  “So you know it?”

  “Not by heart. I mean, I should. I read and reread it and listened to it so many times while trying to translate it … But it’s in Palmyrene. It’s not related to any language we use.”

  “Why were you trying to translate it?”

  “I wanted to see if there was any part of it that was specific to going back in time, to the past. I thought that maybe substituting that part with a word that relates to the future or to going forward might be how one travels that way. Like he did. I had it all written down in my notebook along with what I’d managed to translate so far.”

  “Which you gave to Celaleddin?”

  “Yes. I didn’t have a choice. Which is why they don’t need us anymore.” A haunted, questioning look imbued her face. “Why did they react so violently? Why the need to…” Her breath caught as she stumbled over the words. Then, looking away, she added, in a low voice, “They’re monsters. Just … monsters.”

  Kamal averted his gaze from her as well and stared down at his feet. Once again, even though he’d just lost his own brother, even though she had to know how much he loved them all, he couldn’t help but feel included in her contempt, but he chose to let it die out rather than give it any oxygen. It helped that he was still trying to understand what had happened.

  “This man. The one you’re saying was Ayman Rasheed,” he said. “If everything he said is true … he changed history. He went back, and he changed everything. And if he could do that, someone else could do it, too. That kind of knowledge, that kind of power … I can’t think of a more dangerous weapon. And they knew you and Ramazan had it.”

  “But they had no reason to think we would be a threat to the empire. Not in that sense. This is our world. Our whole existence.” She paused, then added, “Or at least, it was.”

  “Even so. For them, the risk is too great. You could go back and change things without meaning to. You could tell someone, and they might decide to use it to destroy all this.” He spread his arms wide. “Besides, even without acting on it, the knowledge of it alone is dangerous.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The empire. The caliphate. We’ve always believed it to be the will of God. The empire’s success, the defeat of the Christians, the fall of Rome before the sword of the sultan. It’s all part of a divine plan, right? That’s what we hear in the sermons, that’s what history tells us. Now imagine if this came out.”

  “That it wasn’t God’s will at all. That it was just the will of one man.”

  “Exactly.”

  She thought about it for a second, then said, “Unless you consider him a tool of God, doing His bidding to fix the world. Maybe this is how it was all supposed to be. Maybe Rasheed brought it back to how it was supposed to be. I mean, how do we know someone else hadn’t gone back long before Rasheed did and changed things, perverted history, and turned the world into the one Rasheed knew?”

  He was surprised by her clearheaded response and wanted to keep it going. Any distraction he could get her engaged in, no matter how brief, was surely helpful—for them both. “We don’t. But if you’re going to open that door, the possibilities become infinite. And it all leads to the same problem: why would God allow so much meddling with His divine plan? Why isn’t He in control? That kind of questioning is just as problematic and dangerous.”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anyway. We are where we are.” Her expression retreated into a distant, even more drawn look. “Nothing’s going to change that.”

  Kamal said nothing at first. Then he found himself unable to stop pondering something that sounded so incredible he couldn’t believe he was about to say it out loud.

  “If you had the incantation, if you knew for sure that you had the right wording—and assuming it works—couldn’t we use it to go back and fix things? Like go back, I don’t know, a week? Before any of this happened?”

  “No. He said you can’t go back to any time within your lifetime. Which makes sense, I suppose. There’d be two of you around, right? Besides, like I said, I’m not sure I remember the exact wording. They have my notebook, and I lost my phone.”

  “Your phone? What’s that got to do with it?

  “I recorded it. Rasheed, what he told us—I have it on video. All of it. But I lost it when they grabbed us.”

  “It’s on your phone? Everything Rasheed said?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have your phone. I found it in your car.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s here, in the car.” All kinds of possibilities were now flaring up inside his brain. “Having the incantation … it gives us leverage. We can threaten them. Say we’ll go public with it.”

  “How? They control everything. And even if they didn’t, no one would believe it.”

  “They’re desperate to keep it under wraps. That’s leverage.”

  “They’ll never let it get that far.” She was shaking her head ruefully. “They’re not going to stop until we’re dead.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  She shook her head, dejected. “You won’t stand a chance. We both know how effective they are at dealing with anyone they consider a threat.”

  He tried not to read anything accusatory in her words. “Let me worry about that. But I have to get you to safety first.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  He reached out to grab her by the shoulders, but stopped himself. “You can’t say that.”

  Her eyes took on a faraway, chilling tightness. “If I want to be safe, it’s only so I can get back at them. So I can make them pay. Starting with Celaleddin.”

  “Let’s start by making sure you’re safe.”

  She turned her gaze on him. “Where? Wherever I go, nowhere is safe.”

  “Wherever we go,” Kamal corrected her. “We’re in this together now.”

  She gave him a curious, uncomfortable look; then her face softened fractionally.

  He was grateful for it. Under the circumstances, he was glad she’d even managed that.

  “It would have to be far,” he said. “Beyond the border. Out of their reach. England, maybe. That’s the nearest option. I’ll find a way to get you across the channel.”

  “The sultan has agents there, doesn’t he?”

  Kamal frowned. England wasn’t part of the empire, never had been. But the English and the Ottomans had a long history of cooperation, one that went all the way back to 1570, when the pope excommunicated their Protestant queen, Elizabeth I. The rest of Catholic Europe shunned her, too, leading her to forge an alliance with the Ottomans against their mutual enemies. Despite the fact that this alliance was rooted in cold political and economic reasons, Elizabeth eventually came to believe that Protestantism had more in common with Islam than with Catholicism.

  “The English would hand me over to them,” Nisreen added, “assuming they don’t find out what’s really going on and want me for themselves.”

  “Then maybe we use it as a stepping stone to moving on.”

  “To where?”

  “America?”

  Nisreen scoffed. “Oh, they’d welcome us with open arms, wouldn’t they?”

  The Christian Republic guarded its religious exclusivity fiercely. There were no mosques, no synagogues, no temples there. Visitors who were already Christian and could prove it under rigorous vetting, converted on arrival and agreed to be held in “Saviour Camps” for months until they were deemed to be fully reborn, or not allowed in. It was that simple.

  “Well … I could be useful to them.” As he said it, Kamal couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth—the mou
th of a fêted Hafiye hero, casually discussing betraying his people. But he was more than ready to do that. Right now, he was ready to do whatever it took to bring the whole empire crashing down on its murderous, lying self.

  “I’d be the useful one if they ever found out what happened. If anyone would want to change history, it’s them.” She mopped her face with her hands and let out a long, weary breath. “And maybe they should. Maybe they need to know about this. Maybe they should send someone back to change it to how it was supposed to be.”

  “And none of us would be here, right?”

  She shrugged and looked at him squarely. “Would it matter?”

  Kamal said nothing. The only person out there that still mattered to him was his father, who was farming his chickens quietly in the Périgord and was likely oblivious to any of this. Perhaps it was better that way, Kamal thought, although he knew he’d need to tell him the truth about how his son died, and soon.

  After a quiet spell, she said, “I pushed him.”

  “What?”

  “Ramazan. I should have told him to stop. I should have made him stop asking questions.” Her voice cracked, and she teared up again. “Instead, I pushed him to talk to him again, to get the incantation. I insisted on going in with him. Maybe if I hadn’t, maybe if I’d—”

  “No,” Kamal interjected. “You can’t blame yourself. His curiosity triggered it, and they came after him. They caused this. This is on them, not on him, not on you. They’re responsible. And I’m going to make sure they pay for it.”

  She calmed her sobs and nodded passively, an internal debate going on.

  “I don’t want to run,” she finally said.

  “I don’t think there’s much of a—”

  “I don’t want to run,” she insisted. “I don’t want to live in hiding. I’ve seen it. I’ve been around people who’ve had to do it. It’s not a life. It’s not for me. Not matter what.”

  He let it sink in. “What then?”

  “I don’t know.” She fell silent; then her face hardened again. “I want them dead. I want them all dead. I want them to suffer for what they did.”

  He looked at her. She was shivering.

  “That makes two of us. But that’s my job from here on.”

  “No. I want to be part of it. I want to do everything I can to make it happen.”

  Her shivering gave her words a steely tinge. She meant every syllable.

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” he told her. “We’ll make them pay.”

  She nodded and looked away.

  He sat there for a moment, then got up. “We’d better get moving.”

  “And go where?”

  “We don’t have money. And we need new papers. IDs to allow us to move around a bit more freely. The only place I know where to get both is in Paris.”

  “You want to go back to the city?”

  “Yes. It’s dangerous, but we might stand a better chance of getting lost in the crowds than out here. We’ll need to ditch the car and find another way there. But not yet. We’ll wait until it’s dark. I think I know a way into the city they won’t expect.”

  Nisreen didn’t comment, but she was visibly uncomfortable with his thinking.

  “I want to see that recording,” he added, and got up. “I’ll go get it.”

  She pushed herself to her feet. “I’ll come with you.”

  They walked through the woods, back to the SUV. She looked like she was about to say something, held back, then said, “This is so … insane.”

  “What?”

  “Everything. All of it. And now listening to you. Doing the same things that those you normally hunt would do.”

  “I don’t hunt people, Nisreen.”

  She gave him a skeptical shrug.

  “Yes, of course, I’ve hunted people,” he told her. “But they were terrorists. Nutjobs who were out to kill innocent people.”

  “And lawyers and professors who were saying things you didn’t like.”

  He nodded ruefully. “I wasn’t part of—well, I hope I wasn’t. The truth is, I’m not so sure anymore.” Anger and regret were dueling inside him. “Kuzey and his people … they were murderers. The White Rose … it was all a lie.”

  Nisreen looked at him in wide-eyed shock as he filled her in on what the Z Directorate hitman had told him earlier that evening.

  “I’m so sorry, Nisreen. I know you can never forgive me for even being—”

  “Please.” She raised her hand and cut him off. “Not now. It’s all too much to bear already. Please.”

  He said nothing more as all the long weeks and months of distance, anguish, and pain came rushing back to the surface, propelled by a far greater pain. One that, he knew, would never let them go.

  Then, slowly, they plodded on through the maze of oaks, heading for the car.

  They were almost at the clearing when Kamal saw something up ahead through the trunks and foliage, a flash of movement that caught his eye.

  Men, moving around the SUV.

  They’d found them.

  43

  Kamal grabbed Nisreen and, with one hand pressed tight against her mouth, whisked her off the path and ducked behind a thick tree trunk.

  “Keep quiet,” he whispered, pointing ahead.

  She didn’t move as he peered out.

  He could see a man—then another—by the SUV. One had his back turned to them and was speaking on his phone. The other, to the left of the SUV, was looking away, scanning the forest, waiting. Farther back, in the shadows, he spotted another agency Kartal. It had the same predatory matte-black livery as the one they had driven there.

  Hafiye agents. But how—

  Then he saw him. The man on the phone, turning so his face was visible.

  Taymoor.

  Kamal stifled a curse. He’d brought him here once, months ago. He’d invited him to accompany him on one of his walks. Allowed him into his sanctuary. A charitable act—a stupid act, he now felt—when his partner had been going through a rough patch of his own.

  Had his partner given him up? Or did he just miss something? A surveillance camera, a drone, a tracker. He wasn’t sure. Either way, that was quick. Celaleddin was clearly pulling out all the stops to make sure they were found.

  Kamal thought fast. The sensible choice was to retreat and slip back into the forest. He knew the woods well, knew the various paths that cut through them, where they led. Knew how to find the river, where they might be able to hop onto a passing barge. Knew where the nearby roads were. Taymoor was probably setting up a cordon around the forest on the assumption that they were still there, but it was huge, and there was too much of a perimeter to cover. But retreating meant abandoning the phone and losing the only piece of leverage they had.

  They needed that phone.

  There were only two men facing them, for now. Taymoor plus one, whom Kamal now recognized as Kenan Hamza, an agent in their section—a friend, in another life. And Kamal had the element of surprise.

  “Don’t move,” he mouthed to Nisreen.

  Her expression went wide with protest, but he pressed his hand against her mouth and held a finger in front of his own.

  “Stay here and keep still,” he whispered. Then he pulled out his gun, bent into a crouch, and headed out.

  Waiting until he could see that they weren’t looking his way, he crept closer to the clearing, moving from tree to tree, scanning the ground to make sure he didn’t step on anything that might rustle or snap and give his presence away, taking his time, his gun drawn and ready. He was halfway to the edge of the clearing when Taymoor and Kenan, their weapons drawn, started moving down the path, the one he and Nisreen had been on, each of them taking up one side of it, keeping as much distance as possible between them.

  They were coming after him and Nisreen.

  Which actually made things easier.

  He stayed behind the tree, listening intently, and waited until they passed his position and had their backs turned to him. T
hen he emerged, slowly, quietly.

  Taymoor must have heard him. His pace slowed and his face swiveled to one side, his attention pricked.

  “Don’t move,” Kamal called out to them, leveling his gun at their backs. “Arms up high, where I can see them. Fingers off the triggers.”

  Hesitation, for a second.

  “Do it, brothers. You know the drill.”

  They both raised their arms, slowly, and turned to face him.

  “What are you doing?” Taymoor asked. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Put your guns down on the ground, one at a time. Kenan, you first. And slowly, please. Very, very slowly.”

  Kenan started to bend down.

  Taymoor said, “Kamal, come on, this is—”

  And just then, just as Kamal’s eyes flicked over to Taymoor, Kenan whipped his arm out so his gun was leveled on Kamal and took his shot—only Kamal saw it and reacted just as the agent squeezed the trigger. He dropped to a sideways squat and flicked his gun around—it had less of an arc to cover than Kenan’s—and pumped a bullet out a split second before he felt the air to the left of his ear whistle and saw the red mist sprout out of the agent’s right thigh.

  Kenan’s gun flew out of his hand as his leg gave way and he dropped to the ground, lopsided, like a felled tree. Kamal ignored him and pinned his attention back on Taymoor, who had also brought his arms down and was now holding his gun aimed dead straight at his partner.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Taymoor roared, darting a quick glance sideways to check on the fallen man. “He’s one of us.”

  “So were the two bastards who came to my house to kill me last night,” Kamal shot back. “And so were the sons of dogs who killed my brother and his children.”

  His words struck Taymoor hard, his expression changing to one of stunned confusion. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Taymoor was still in shock. “Ramazan…? And the kids?”

  “Yes,” Kamal hissed.

  Kenan was writhing on the ground, his hands gripping his thigh as he groaned with pain. Blood was pooling onto the soil under him, but from the amount coming out, Kamal didn’t think his shot had severed the femoral artery.