They were treated to another of Kaspar’s frowns. “You know I dislike being called ‘dude,’ Barry.” Seeing the near-homicidal expression on Love’s face, he continued hastily, “But the answer to the first part of that question is ‘almost certainly,’ and the answer to the second is ‘that remains speculation.’”
“Why ‘almost certainly’?” Morris asked him. “Either you know for sure, or you don’t.”
“As you may have noticed,” Kaspar said, “I strive to express myself precisely. Since I have never – to my knowledge – personally met a member of the Knights Templar, I cannot attest to their existence with absolute certainty.”
“Then how can –” Barry Love began.
Kaspar stopped him with an upraised palm. “Several individuals whom I trust have attested to the very contemporary existence of the gentlemen you mention. Therefore, I am reasonably certain that the Knights Templar represent a very real presence in the world.”
“So, these fellas are still around, and they just might have gotten their hands on a piece of Solomon’s Seal,” Morris said. “That right?”
“Succinctly, albeit inelegantly put, Mister... Quincey.” Kaspar favored Morris with a ponderous nod. “That is exactly the meaning I have been attempting to convey.”
“Where can we find them?” Love asked him.
“Alas, that is information that I do not possess.”
Barry Love gave Kaspar a very direct look. “You wouldn’t be holding out on me, would you, old buddy?”
“I assure you, the thought would never occur to me.”
“That’s good,” Barry Love said, “because if I thought you were... Hey, did I tell you that I ran into Van Herder last week?”
Kaspar’s face had gone completely still. “No,” he said in a flat voice. Morris would have bet that the little man was incapable of a monosyllabic response to anything.
“Yeah, he’s still got that bar over in Jersey, as a front for his... other operations,” Love went on. “We had a couple of drinks, shot the shit for a while, just like old times. He asked me if I’d seen you lately. Said there’s something he wants to discuss with you, pretty badly.”
Kaspar’s eyes did not leave Barry Love’s face. In the same emotionless tone he asked “And?”
“I told him that I thought you’d moved out west – you know, for your health. I said the last I heard, you’d set up shop in Denver, or maybe it was Santa Fe.”
Kaspar produced another slow nod. “Thank you.”
Love waved one hand dismissively. “No problem. I’m always willing to tell a few white lies – for my friends. We’re still friends, aren’t we, Kaspar?”
“Of course we are, Barry,” replied the little man, and Morris thought he detected a thin sheen of sweat on the oversize face. “Why ever would you think otherwise?”
“Well, sometimes I wonder –”
“I assure you, I spoke the truth when I said that have no idea how to get in touch with the Knights Templar – but I can refer you to a man who very probably does know.”
“Who’s that?”
“His name is David Kabov,” Kaspar said. “At least, that is the name he goes by these days. He is retired now, but I know for a fact that he did business with the Templars in years past. More than once.”
“David Kabov.” Barry Love said the name as if he were tasting it. “Where can we find him?”
“As I said, he is retired,” Kaspar said. He pulled a cocktail napkin toward him. “Do you have a pen?”
“I do,” Morris said, glad to be contributing to the conversation once again. He took a silver pen from his pocket and put it in front of the little man. He had once put out the eye of a vampire with that pen, but figured that information was more than Kaspar would wish to have, especially in his current agitated state.
Kaspar printed slowly on the napkin for a minute or so, pushed it across the table to Love, and handed back Morris’s pen, all without speaking.
Love picked up the napkin and squinted at it. “David Kabov,” he read aloud. “Sweetwater Village, #114, 3945 West Oakland Park, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 33311.”
He looked up. “An old folk’s home?”
Kaspar gave him half a smile. “I believe the preferred term is ‘retirement community.’”
“Yeah, sure. How old is this guy Kabov, anyway?”
“He would be in his mid-seventies now, I believe.”
Morris put his pen away and asked, “What exactly did he retire from?”
“I am quite certain he would prefer to answer that question personally,” Kaspar said. “Assuming, of course, that he will speak with you at all.”
“How about a phone number?” Love said. “Or maybe an email address.”
Kaspar shook his head like a banker turning down a mortgage application. “This man does not talk on the telephone – ever. And if he even has an email address, he guards it quite closely.”
“What is this fella,” Morris said, “paranoid?”
The half-smile reappeared on Kaspar’s face. “You may call it that, if you wish. Although I believe someone once observed, ‘It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.’”
“Somebody’s out to get this Kabov?” Love asked. “Who?”
“I believe that question is also one best answered by the man himself, assuming –”
“Yeah, yeah,” Love said. “So, what’re we supposed to do, fly all the way down to Lauderdale and just knock on his door?”
“No,” Kaspar said. “I think that could be unwise, and quite possibly dangerous.”
Morris looked at him. “Dangerous?”
“Indeed, yes. This was once a very dangerous man – professionally dangerous, one might say. It would, I think, be a mistake to assume that age has transformed the Lion of Judah into a pussycat.”
“Lion?” Morris clamped a hand onto Kaspar’s forearm. “What do you know about lions?”
Kaspar stared at him. “Unhand me, sir!”
Once Morris had let go, Kaspar pulled the arm in close to his body and said, “I do not know what prompted such extreme rudeness on your part, but I assure you, I know nothing more about lions than anyone else who owns a television. The term ‘Lion of Judah’ is a very old one, and uniquely applicable to David Kabov, as you may learn, should you ever meet him.”
“Let’s get back to that,” Love said. “How do we meet this guy, if we can’t call, email, or visit him?”
“What you do is write him a letter,” Kaspar said. “To that address. Use my name, if you wish. Indeed, you probably should.”
“And this letter should say what, exactly?” Love asked him.
“Write that you wish to call on him, at a specified date and time. You should allow at least three days’ lead time from when you post the letter, the mail being what it is these days.”
“Should we say what we want to talk to him about?” Morris asked.
Kaspar gave him a sideways look, but addressed the answer to Barry Love. “That will not be necessary, but you should indicate in your letter how many of you there will be – I strongly advise no more than two – and a brief description of each person. And if you do visit him, be punctual.”
“So what if we do all this,” Love said, “and show up at his door – punctually, I mean – and the guy isn’t even home? That’d be a pretty good example of what they call a fool’s errand, wouldn’t it? And I don’t know about Quincey here, but I hate feeling foolish.”
“You need have no concern on that score,” Kaspar told him. “I understand that he rarely goes out. The only questions are whether he will admit you – and what kind of reception you will receive.” He tossed off the last of his absinthe and stood up abruptly. “I wish you good fortune – whatever your ultimate object may be. Now if you” – he gave Morris another sideways look – “gentlemen will excuse me, I have business elsewhere that has already been delayed long enough.”
As he watched Kaspar head toward the door, Morris said, “You
know, I don’t think he likes me.”
“If you wanted to be buddies, then you shouldn’t have grabbed him,” Love said. “He’s weird about stuff like that.”
“I just thought it was a pretty odd coincidence that he’s sitting here and talking about the Lion of Judah, when fifteen minutes earlier you were telling me that afreets like to snack on lion hearts.”
“Maybe, but stuff like that does happen – otherwise, coincidence wouldn’t be a word.” Love leaned forward a little. “I kept saying we in front of Kaspar, so as not to confuse the issue,” he said. “But you know I’m not going to Florida with you, right? I can’t leave the city right now, Quincey – there’s too much weird shit going on.”
“Anything I can help with, before I leave town?”
“Probably not. You ever hear of a guy called Pinhead?”
Morris shook his head. “Sounds like some old Dick Tracy villain.”
“This guy’s a villain, all right, but the kind that would give Dick Tracy screaming nightmares.” Love signaled their waitress. “You want a refill?”
“No, I better get going. But thanks for all your help, amigo. At least I’ve got a lead now.” Morris slid out of the booth and stood up.
“Say hi to Libby for me,” Love said. “Is she gonna be heading down to Florida with you?”
“I hope so,” Morris said. “I really do.”
Sixteen
THE DETROIT ZOO is not actually in Detroit. It occupies a hundred and twenty-five acres of ground in Royal Oak, two miles north of the Motor City. It is a well-designed modern facility, and a great deal of money has gone into building and displaying the animal collection over the years. The Detroit Zoo has it all (almost), from aardvarks to zebras. They’ve got bears (black, grizzly, polar, and panda), giraffes (reticulated), and pythons (also reticulated), as well as rhinos, kangaroos, gorillas, and penguins.
And lions. Six of them.
The newly redesigned Lion Habitat was only a few years old. It consisted of seven and a half thousand square feet of faux-savanna surrounded by a seventeen-foot wall full of glass panels, for easy viewing from outside. An interior wall further divided the enclosure into two sections, each occupied by its own three-member “pride” of lions. Keeping the two groups separate was essential; during mating season male lions have been known to try getting frisky with the females of another pride. In the lion world, this is a good way to get a set of three-inch claws raked across your importunate leonine face.
Of course, the division also made things a bit easier for anyone contemplating breaking into the enclosure to kill one of the lions.
Three men who had that precise goal in mind were now sitting in a stolen Ford Econoline van. The vehicle was parked about a hundred and fifty feet from the zoo’s exterior fence, in sight of one of the secondary gates used for deliveries. Abdul Nasiri was far too valuable to risk apprehension (according to Nasiri, anyway), so the raid had been entrusted to Jawad Tamwar, Mujab Rahim, and Sharaf Uthman.
The zoo had closed to visitors at 5:00 p.m. It was now 10:22. Nasiri had obtained a very detailed map of the zoo, and by now the three men had it virtually memorized. Once Uthman used an unlocking spell to get the delivery gate open, they knew exactly how close they could take the car to the lion enclosure – about eight hundred feet from the exterior wall. The rear of the van contained two lightweight aluminum ladders that would extend to a length of twenty feet. One of these would get Uthman to top of the lion enclosure, where he would cast a spell that would send the three lions inside into a sleep so profound that it would verge on coma. Then Tamwar would join Uthman atop the wall, and Rahim would pass up the second ladder, which they would wrestle over the wall, setting one end firmly onto the ground of the lion enclosure. The two ladders would then be leaning against the wall from each side, their top rungs only a few feet from one another. Rahim would then climb the ladder himself, bringing with him a small plastic cooler half full of dry ice.
The three of them would climb down into the enclosure and get their bloody work done. Afterward, they would reverse the process to get back out – only this time the cooler would be heavier – by about two pounds.
In theory, Uthman could have used magic to levitate all three of them over the wall, both coming and going. But levitation magic is very stressful, and Uthman was no longer a young man. It simply would not do for the levitation spell to fail them when it was time to leave – especially since the surviving two lions would eventually awaken. Hence the ladders.
A disagreement had arisen over which of them would remain outside the enclosure to deal with any prowling security guards; Nasiri’s research had revealed that the zoo had four such men working the night shift. Rahim had volunteered (nay, almost insisted) to be the outside man, but his probable method of dealing with an errant guard was precisely what Nasiri wished to avoid.
“The crusader police will devote far more time and resources to investigating the death of a guard than they will of an animal.” Nasiri had pointed to an image on his computer monitor. “Even one so majestic as this.” Nasiri had looked at each of them at this point, but had stared at Rahim a bit longer than the other two. “You will kill someone only if the alternative is being identified or captured. Our brother Sharaf assures us” – and here Uthman had come in for his own long, intense look – “that his magic is sufficient to disable anyone who might discover you, so let it be done that way. Keep your righteous thirst for the crusaders’ blood in check a bit longer, my brothers. It shall be slaked, more than slaked, very soon now.”
It had therefore seemed logical that Uthman, the wizard, should remain outside the lion enclosure while the others went in to do the bloody work of the evening – but the other two had raised firm, if respectful, objections.
“I do not doubt our brother’s power to work miracles,” Tamwar had said. “Have I not seen him do so more than once already? But if perchance one of these lions should prove less... susceptible to his power than even our wise brother might expect, it would be essential to our mission for him to be on hand to deal with the creature at once, lest disaster befall us all.”
The thug Rahim had typically been more blunt. A product of the Cairo slums, he had never seen a zoo before – had not even been aware that they can be found in the Middle East. But Rahim knew enough to realize that even his skill with a knife would be no match for an awake, angry lion. He was also motivated by his own crude notion of fairness. “Our brother assures us that his magic will render the great beasts harmless,” Rahim had said. “He should be therefore be with us to suffer the consequences, just in case he should be proved wrong.”
It had finally decided that Uthman would cast an aversion spell on the ladder, as well as on the parked van. A variation on what infidel magicians called the Tarnhelm Effect, the spell would not render either the ladder or van invisible, but rather would cause the eye of anyone passing to unconsciously avoid looking at them. Unless a strolling guard should actually walk into the side of the van, for instance, he would pass by without even registering its presence. That arrangement would have to do.
Thus it was that the three fighters for jihad had found themselves on the hard-packed earth inside the Detroit Zoo’s lion enclosure. Each carried a backpack containing essential materials. Uthman’s, of course, contained magical implements and materials he might need. Rahim bore the small plastic cooler and dry ice. And Tamwar carried a pack containing several medical instruments, including several veterinary scalpels and a device that is known among surgeons as a rib-spreader.
The moonlight, combined with the park’s ambient lighting, provided enough illumination for the men to see where they were walking, and to observe the three still forms that lay a few hundred feet away. They had discussed the operation a hundred times in planning, so there was no wasted conversation now. The three men set off stolidly on their mission. They had a djinn to feed.
Seventeen
FROM THE DETROIT Free Press:
LION MUTILATIO
N PUZZLES,
ANGERS OFFICIALS
By Frances Dooley, Free Press Staff Writer
(Royal Oak, March 19) Officials and employees of the Detroit Zoo are outraged over a daring break-in last night that has left one of the facility’s prize lions dead and mutilated.
The invasion, which occurred sometime between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., involved one or more persons, who entered the lion enclosure and killed Samuel, one of only two male lions in the zoo’s collection.
A zoo employee, speaking anonymously, said that Samuel’s corpse was mutilated, apparently resulting in the removal of the animal’s heart.
Louise and Mimi, the two female lions also living in that section of the enclosure, were not harmed, according to zoo officials. How the intruders were able to kill the male lion without harming, or being attacked by, the two females, is one of many questions facing zoo officials and Royal Oak police.
Roger Wigton, the zoo’s Director of Animal Health and Safety, said blood samples would be taken from the two female lions, as well as the corpse of Samuel, to determine if the animals had been drugged.
Police said that the intruders apparently entered the zoo grounds through a service gate, although the gate has an alarm that was neither set off, nor apparently disabled.
The zoo has a system of security cameras that cover the entire park, both outdoors and indoors. However, the system apparently went down last night, since nothing was recorded after approximately 10:00 p.m., zoo officials say.
Police theorize that the zoo’s central computer was somehow hacked, disabling both the video system and the alarms, thus allowing the intruders to enter, do their bloody work, and leave undetected.
Authorities are not ruling out the possibility that some kind of occult ritual may be at the root of the crime. “I’ve seen reports over the years of animals being used by these devil-worshippers as sacrifices,” said Royal Oak Police Chief Frasier Boone, “but that’s always involved small animals, like dogs, cats or chickens. If some of those sickos are in our community, we will identify and prosecute them, to the fullest extent of the law. This kind of cruelty will not be tolerated.”
Midnight At The Oasis Page 8