“A war of shadows,” he murmured as fire danced like devils in his eyes. “Yes. But your knights, skilled killers that they are, are too clumsy for the kind of killing you propose. This war would require stealth. Spies, who could steal into the strongholds of an enemy and kill them in their beds. That would strike fear into the hearts of the faithless and that would drive them back to God.”
Sir Guy nodded. “Ibrahim said that he could make a deal with the fida’i, those Sufi killers who cause so much trouble for the Templars. The cult of assassins run by Hassan ibn Sabbah. Ibn Sabbah is a great friend of Ibrahim’s. Would that we had their like in Europe. We will have to invent what we need. We will have to find a way to train candidates to become a new breed of warrior. Not knights but assassins like Ibn Sabbah’s fida’i. ”
Nicodemus suddenly straightened and walked a few steps away. He stood staring into the shadows a long time and his body was so rigid with tension that Sir Guy dared not interrupt.
Finally, Nicodemus turned, but his face was in shadow.
“Do not be afraid, my son,” murmured the priest. “God Himself speaks through me and He has whispered a word to me. The answer to what we need to wage our shadow war.”
As Nicodemus stepped forward into the firelight Sir Guy gasped and took an involuntary step backward, for once again a strange and inexplicable change had come over the priest. His brown eyes swirled with colors-leprous yellows and greens, mushroom white, and the mottled brown of toad skin. Sir Guy touched the heavy silver cross that hung around his neck.
“What word?” asked Sir Guy with a dry throat.
The priest smiled, revealing crooked yellow teeth.
“Upierczi,” he whispered.
Part Three
The Blood of Angels
Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the life…
— Deuteronomy 12:23
Chapter Fifty-Seven
CIA Safe House #11
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 12:53 p.m.
I sagged against the door frame.
“Ah… Christ…”
The Mouradipours had been stripped naked and tied to wooden chairs. On a nearby table were pliers, a hammer, matches, wire cutters, and other tools. Everything in the room was covered with blood and wrongness. They were both dead. I didn’t need to search for pulses to figure that out. It would be nice to believe that they had died quickly and with some shred of dignity left, but that would be an absurd self-delusion. The team downstairs had torn information from them and then continued on to tear away their humanity. And the bastards had used burning matches to sear crosses over their hearts.
The Mouradipours were Muslim, so if it hadn’t been for the stakes and garlic and all that vampire hunter bullshit I would have figured this for some kind of anti-Islamic statement.
And why kill the Mouradipours and then try to take me captive? Or, was capturing me a prelude to a trip up here to this makeshift torture chamber?
Probably.
Even so, why set up this hit at all? Just to get the flash drive? Or to keep its information out of someone else’s hands? Hours had passed, surely they had to know that I would have passed along that information by now. What was the point of targeting me now?
And how many teams was I facing here?
The Red Knights were one faction, and they were top of the line. I would like to think that I would have won the fight in the hotel without Violin’s help, but I’m not sure I can say that with conviction. I can say without fear of contradiction that I have never faced anyone as fierce or capable as that knight.
On the other hand, the fearless vampire hunters-though clearly organized and violent-were Triple-A ball compared to the knight’s major league status. Sure, the team downstairs was brutal, but they were absurdly clumsy. I’m pretty good in a fight, but I was unarmed when I stepped into the house, and I won this one too easily. They were not exactly amateurs, but they sure as hell weren’t very high up on the professional food chain. If they hunted the Red Knights I wonder what the win-loss ratio was. If this was Vegas I’d bet the farm on the knights for a shutout.
Now, my friend the rat-bastard Rasouli was a third team.
Violin and whoever she worked for were a fourth.
Could I make an argument for any of them being the same team? Hard to say, because I had no idea who was lying to me and who was telling me the truth.
The knight clearly wanted the flash drive and had no love for Rasouli. That seemed obvious. Violin was willing to work with Rasouli to set up the meet this morning, but she said that she considered him to be a spitty place on the sidewalk. She knew about the knights. The knight knew about Arklight, and so did Violin, and she tried to scare the bejesus out of me by saying that my even knowing that name could be fatal. She also warned me away from the knights. The bastards downstairs knew about the knights but so far they hadn’t mentioned anything about Rasouli, the flash drive, Arklight, the Book of Shadows, the Saladin Codex, or the nukes.
And on top of all that, were any of these teams the ones who planted the nukes?
If the nukes were even real.
My head was starting to spin. What would help me fill in the blanks?
I thought about Krystos and the Romanian guy. I looked at the dead bodies and the tools that had been used on them and some very ugly thoughts began forming in my head. The Civilized Man in my head cried out in protest. We didn’t do that kind of thing. The Warrior was grinning and sharpening his knife. He was all for it. I looked to the Cop for the voice of reason, but he kept looking out of my eyes at the innocent couple who had been torn apart.
There was a clean sheet on the bed, and I pulled it off and covered the murdered couple. I don’t know why: it wouldn’t matter to them; it wouldn’t make any of it better. I tried to tell myself that it was out of courtesy and respect, or a token act to afford them some measure of dignity even after this kind of death.
That sounded nice, but it was bullshit.
I couldn’t bear to look at them. If I turned away I knew I’d still see them that way in my mind. If I covered them, then that would be my last memory of them. Or so I hoped. Any lingering regrets I might have had for shooting Inigo drained away and left no trace.
I turned away and searched the upstairs for weapons and found nothing that provided any answers. So I stole one of Mr. Mouradipour’s clean shirts from a hall closet. In the bathroom I washed the blood off my face and throat, ran fingers through my hair, and took a moment to look at the blue eyes in the mirror. They were filled with doubts and questions.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked the man in the mirror. He had no answers at all, so I went back downstairs.
I found Ghost standing in the living room staring at Krystos, who stared back as if mesmerized. I clicked my tongue and Ghost looked at me with a strange expression in his brown eyes. He was not trembling as much as before, and there was more wolf than shepherd in the look he gave me. Maybe it was the smell of fresh blood or the sight of wounded prey. Or maybe the stress had pushed him into a different head space.
“Ghost,” I said, and for a moment he did nothing except stare.
I took a step toward him. It’s a pack leader move, challenging and demanding. He would either back down or go for me.
“Down!” I ordered.
And, with only the slightest hesitation, he lay down. He didn’t roll. I wasn’t asking that of him. But he obeyed my order.
I squatted between Ghost and Krystos. I don’t know if the Greek had participated in the horrors upstairs, or if he even knew about it, but he was part of this team. Apparently the leader of the team, and that put the whole thing on him as far as I was concerned. He could read those thoughts from my expression. He read other things too.
He began to cry.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
CIA Safe House #11
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 12:59 p.m.
I stared at Krystos for a long time without sp
eaking. Twenty, thirty seconds. It always feels longer when you’re holding the low cards. He may have been a tough guy when he had a gun and a crew, but when it came to toughing it out with me, he was holding four low cards and a joker.
Silence and patience were my cards while I waited for him to break.
“P-please…” he said in a hoarse whisper. “For the love of God.”
“Is that what you are, Krystos? A man of God? A true believer?”
“Yes.”
“Your friends, too?”
He glanced around at the dead. “Yes.”
“What’s that mean exactly, being a ‘man of God.’ To you, I mean.”
The word was a tough one for him but he came up with him. “Ordained.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re a minister?”
He shook his head. “Priest.”
“Bullshit. What about going to hell for torture and murder?”
Krystos raised his bound wrists and nodded toward his left arm. “Sleeve,” he said.
I pushed his sleeve up and there was tattoo of a cross with Latin words written in an arch above and below it. Above was
AD EXTIRPANDA
Below the cross
EXURGE D ET JUDICA CAUSAM TUAM
“What’s that?”
“Permission,” he said.
When I did not respond, he said something that I pretty much never expected to hear anywhere outside of a Dan Brown novel or an old episode of Monty Python.
“The Holy Inquisition.”
Interlude Six
Fortress of Alamut
Alborz Mountains, Northern Iran.
June 1192 C.E.
Hassan ibn Sabbah sat on a couch that was draped in rich fabrics. Pillows littered the stairs of the dais on which the couch sat. Two warriors stood at the foot of the dais, naked swords laid across their naked arms, their faces as hard and unmoving as stone. The scent of hashish wafted through the chamber and out onto the breeze where it was whipped away high above the mountains.
A carpet lolled out like a great tongue, rippling down the stairs and stretching across the long reception chamber. Sewn into the fabric with delicate skill were fantastical battles. Eagles attacked dragons and tore them to pieces; desert djinn ripped the hearts from crusaders. It had been a gift from Ibn Sabbah’s much missed old friend, the mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam. How Ibn Sabbah wished that his friend had lived to see this day. To see what Ibn Sabbah had accomplished.
He accepted a cup of juice from a servant who then bowed himself away from the dais, and as he sipped Ibn Sabbah studied the fifty men who stood in silent rows on either side of the runner carpet.
His fida’i.
His assassins.
His sacred killers. Guardians of the secret shared with him by his cousin, Ibrahim al-Asiri. Guardians, too, of the faith. Men who would be used to spill the blood of the infidel in the cleverest plan Sabbah had ever heard. Preserving the word of God through the spilling of blood.
A door at the far end of the chamber opened and Ibn Sabbah’s chief advisor entered, followed by six bare-chested guards. Between each guard staggered a man in shackles. The prisoners were freshly washed and wore simple but clean clothes. Ibn Sabbah did not allow prisoners to be mistreated, and he absolutely forbade any unwashed person to enter this room or draw near to that precious carpet. The rows of assassins watched dispassionately as the prisoners were brought to the cleared space to the right of the dais and well away from the carpet. Ibn Sabbah nodded to his advisor who produced a key and unlocked the shackles.
Ibn Sabbah studied the three men. Two of them stared at the floor, terrified, confused, and lost. The third stared up at Ibn Sabbah with the defiance sometimes seen in the eyes of a man who is doomed but who wants to spit in death’s eye. A brave man, which was doubly impressive because this man had seen other prisoners taken from the cells, day after day, and probably heard their screams. This man knew that none of those prisoners ever returned to the dungeons. This one has heart, Ibn Sabbah mused.
The advisor nodded to the guards who trotted over and laid their swords at the feet of the prisoners.
“Pick them up,” ordered Ibn Sabbah.
Only the brave man raised his eyes to Ibn Sabbah. The man was a Sunni with a full beard and gray eyes. “Why? So you can snigger as fifty men cut us to pieces? I spit on such cowardice.”
He made as if to do so, but Ibn Sabbah’s voice stopped him.
“You have a chance to live,” he said. “Do not squander it on an insult that you cannot take back.”
Ibn Sabbah snapped his fingers and a single fida’i assassin stepped out of the line and padded silently to stand facing the prisoners. He carried no sword and had only a small curved dagger in his sash. The brave prisoner stood with lips pursed, but he did not spit. He eyed the assassin and then looked again at Ibn Sabbah.
“This is not a trick,” said Ibn Sabbah. “I make you an offer. Take up those swords and face my man. If you kill or incapacitate him, then you may go free. I will give you each a camel and a pouch of gold coins. Before Allah I swear that I tell the truth.”
The three Sunni prisoners shifted uneasily. The brave one continued to glare at Ibn Sabbah, though now there was doubt in his eyes.
“And if we fail to kill him?”
“Then he will assuredly kill you.”
The brave Sunni nodded. “Which one of us fights him first?”
Ibn Sabbah smiled. “All three of you will fight him. Three men, three swords against my man and his knife. Surely even men such as you-thieves and pirates of the desert-could not call those unfair odds.”
“Your word before Allah?” demanded the brave Sunni.
“May His wrath wither the flesh on my bones and make dust of my household.”
The brave man grinned and fast as lightning he hooked his toe under the blade of the nearest sword and kicked it into the air, caught it like a magician, whirled and charged at the fida’i. The other men, even cowed as they were, bent and snatched up the weapons and joined in, knowing that God had granted them mercy when they believed their lives were over. The three of them charged toward the assassin, closing the few yards in a heartbeat, swords glittering as they struck.
And then the fida’i moved.
His body seemed to vanish like smoke as he dodged in and to one side with incredible speed. The dagger vanished from his sash as he ducked under the sword of the left-handed prisoner, a fat man with bullish shoulders. The assassin danced past him and turned. As he did blood erupted from the fat man’s throat. Like a handful of rubies tossed into the wind, the drops of blood flew into the air and then spattered against the face and chest of the second prisoner, a tall man with the heavy forearms of a miller. The assassin pivoted and dropped low as the second man hacked at him with the sword.
“No!” cried the brave man, but it was too late. The miller was committed to the swing, and the assassin darted in and up; his blade opened a vertical line from crotch to breastbone. He stepped aside as the miller’s entrails erupted from the wound and flopped wetly onto the floor. The miller gagged out a shocked denial as he sagged to his knees and toppled forward.
And now it was the fida’i and the last Sunni.
The Sunni was not a rash man. He had just witnessed two men fall in two seconds, men he had seen kill in desert raids. The sword in his hand felt heavy but its solidity was reassuring. And yet…
The fida’i did not rush him, but instead began circling, stalking with catlike silence. The Sunni suddenly lunged, cutting upward at an angle that almost always caught an opponent off guard. It was nearly impossible to evade the cut at that distance, and the Sunni was not slow. But the assassin fell backward onto the floor, and as the blade passed, he arched his body and flipped to his feet again like an acrobat. When the Sunni checked his swing and cut backward to take the man across the thighs, the assassin leapt into the air, spry as a monkey, and the blade missed his bare feet by an inch.
The assassin landed
on the balls of his feet, balanced and ready. The Sunni pivoted and cut again and again and again, alternating long and short slashes; stabbing and chopping. He stamped forward and darted left and right, whipping the sword at the assassin at angles impossible to evade. But the blade never once touched him.
“Stand still you devil!” cried the Sunni as his frustration disintegrated into doubt. With each passing second he began to fear that he was indeed fighting a demon, some desert ghost who could not be harmed by human weapons.
Then behind him, the Sunni heard Ibn Sabbah speak.
“Stop toying with him.”
For a fractured moment the Sunni thought that Ibn Sabbah had directed the comment at him; but then he saw the body language of the fida’i change. It was a subtle thing, a shift from acrobatic evasion to the attack posture of a hawk. With another blur of movement the assassin darted in under the Sunni’s next swing, slipping past the blade with a hair’s breadth to spare.
The Sunni felt the world freeze into a pinpoint of ice. He tried to speak, to ask what had happened, but his jaw would not move. There was a strange pressure under his chin, in his throat, and his brain felt wrong in ways the man could no longer identify. He heard a distant metallic sound and as an afterthought realized that he was no longer holding the sword. He saw the fida’i step back away from him, his hands equally empty. The Sunni reached up to touch his own throat and found the hard, cold edge of a blade there. That made no sense. How could a blade be in such an absurd place?
The room tilted as his knees gave way, and then the Sunni was falling, falling into the void with his jaws pinned shut so that he could not even speak the name of God.
The fida’i stood over him, his naked chest barely heaving to betray the effort he had just spent in the killing of these three men. On the floor, the Sunni lay with the hilt of the dagger pressed up against his soft pallet and the very tip of the blade standing an inch above the top of the man’s skull. The assassin glanced up at Ibn Sabbah, who nodded; then the assassin knelt and pulled his knife blade free.
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