by Alex Archer
Chapter 28
Fes el Bali
Kingdom of Morocco
The SUV caravan had to slow as it approached the old city sandwiched in the new. When Fes had been built at the turn of the eighth century, it had been constructed for carts to travel the narrow, twisting streets along the banks of the Fes River.
Annja glanced over her shoulder at the two SUVs that trailed the one she was riding in. She felt certain she could have gotten away. She’d gotten quite inventive since coming into possession of the sword. Leaving Smythe wasn’t an option, though.
When she turned back to face forward, she found Hamez scowling at her.
“Do not even think about it.”
Annja blinked, wide-eyed innocence. “Think about what?”
Hamez cursed. “You are useful only as long as you are controllable, Creed. Remember that.”
“What does your employer want?” With Karam’s writing, she had no clue. “It would help if I knew what I was looking for.”
Hamez shot her an appraising glance. “What is it you normally look for?”
The question caught Annja by surprise. “Everything. I look for everything.”
“Then look for that.” Hamez turned back around to face front.
Annja reached into her backpack and took out her journal. Diligently, she went back over her notes. It didn’t take her long to realize, again, that she simply didn’t have enough information to form a hypothesis.
* * *
PARKING HADN’T BEEN a consideration when the University of Al-Karaouine had been built in 859. Judging from Hamez’s scowl when they had to leave the SUVs in private parking, he hadn’t known about that. He assigned two men to Annja, and two also to Smythe, and made sure they were kept separate. Other guards trailed along on the opposite side of the narrow street, in front and behind. Their coats disguised machine pistols.
Annja approached the university with mixed feelings. Smythe had promised to spend a day with her here.
Muslim and Jewish scholars had flocked to the university when it had opened, followed later by Christian sages, to learn from the documents of students who had gone before them. The university was still considered, by some, to be the oldest continually operating academic school in the world.
The architecture was ancient, all keyhole doorways, towers and peaked roofs. It had begun as a mosque, funded by the daughter of a wealthy merchant. The early days had fostered classes on religious instruction and political discussion, which had been tightly intertwined.
And still were.
As they approached, Hamez spoke rapidly on a sat phone. Nearer the university, he changed directions and headed right, toward one of the buildings away from the main entrance.
Annja regretted that. She’d hoped to see the central hub of the monastery. She was also pretty sure Hamez wouldn’t be able to get her in to see the documents she’d told him she would need to continue her research. She was weighing her chances of calling out for help to the young men who were obviously security guards standing at the door when Hamez and the entourage were waved inside.
Glancing back at Smythe, Annja saw the professor was surprised as she was. She followed Hamez through the beautifully tiled corridor. Few students were up this early in the day. College students were the same around the world.
Their footsteps echoed through the long corridors. Display cases lined the hallway with books, scrolls and other artifacts.
After traveling through a maze of corridors, they arrived at a small library.
“Wait here.” Hamez waved his men into place. “And watch her.”
Annja stared out over the stacks of books that filled the center of the low-ceilinged room. There were desks with computers on them at the front and back of the room, and a small office equipped with photocopy equipment.
An elderly librarian returned with Hamez. He was thin and elegant, with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, sad eyes and an easy smile. “Good morning. I am Professor Mahfoud Daoudi and I will be assisting you. I am told that you wish to see the journals left by Professor Ulker Bozdag.”
Hamez looked at Annja.
“Yes.” She stepped forward and extended her hand. “I’m Annja Creed.”
The professor smiled. “My wife loves your show. She said if she had known history could be so interesting, she would have paid attention to me a long time ago.”
In spite of the guards around her, Annja laughed. “I’m flattered.”
Daoudi waved that away. “Now, if you’ll accompany me, I’ll take you to the Bozdag holdings.” Daoudi took off at a spry pace and Annja instinctively fell into step with him.
Hamez caught her by the elbow and held her for just a moment, letting her know that she was at the end of a very short tether. She took a couple quick strides to match Daoudi’s pace again.
“Ulker Bozdag isn’t a well-known writer.” Daoudi counted the aisles as they passed. “Would you mind telling me about your interest in the man?”
“I’m not so much interested in Bozdag as I am his research on Abdelilah Karam. Have you heard of him?”
Daoudi shook his head. “Sadly, I am not a student of Bozdag. I don’t know of anyone here who is. Until the call I got last night, I was not really aware that we had anything by him in the collections. As you might imagine, we have numerous holdings.”
“I’m sorry about that call last night.”
Daoudi shrugged. “A little bit of excitement in an otherwise boring day.”
Annja tried to remember the last boring day she’d had but could only remember the last day she hadn’t been shot at.
“I was given to understand that this was a favor for one of our benefactors.”
Annja would have killed to know which benefactor had called in the favor, but she didn’t want to involve the professor in whatever trouble might come from Hamez. The professor stopped and walked down an aisle. Gently, he took books from the shelf and passed them to Annja. She wiped off the dust and looked at the unappetizing covers. Time had yellowed the pages and the books felt fragile.
“Are these first editions?” Annja looked at the sketched image of an androgynous angel with a flourish of peacock feathers spreading as wings. The title was The Order of the Peacock Angel: A Summary of Apocalyptic Warnings That Have Been Ignored. Thankfully, the book was in English.
“Yes, they are.” Daoudi cocked his head ruefully. He held three more books in addition to the two Annja had. “I have a small room you can use.”
“That would be great.” Curiosity overwhelmed Annja’s survival instinct for the moment.
“Please follow me.” Daoudi led the way and Annja followed him as she leafed through the table of contents of one of the books.
* * *
“HOW MUCH LONGER will this take?”
Hamez sat in a straight-backed chair near the door of the small office space Daoudi had guided them to. She and Smythe each sat at one of the two tables and divided the books between them. After his captivity among the Bedouin, Smythe looked like the victim of a car wreck.
Two large picture windows overlooked the main library area. Maps of Fes and Morocco lined the walls under glass covers. The maps were decades old and depicted the various stages of the country’s formation and documented the events that had shaped the colorful history.
Annja locked eyes with Hamez. “You’re welcome to start reading with us. This is a lot of material to cover, and we don’t know what we’re looking for.”
Hamez didn’t say anything.
“If you want to do something productive, you might send out for lunch.” Annja returned to the book. “We’re going to be here for a while.”
Hamez’s chair creaked as he got up and walked out. The three guards he’d assigned to watch Annja and Smythe remained in place.
<
br /> Dawnchaser
Mediterranean Sea
“ANNJA TELLS ME SHE does not know how long this will take.”
Habib ibn Thabit stood on the flying deck of his yacht as she sailed through the gray-green waters of the Mediterranean Sea. “What she is looking for has been hidden for a very long time, my friend.” The cool breeze washed over him and wrapped him in its salty scent. He had grown up on dry desert, but he had learned to love the sea.
At the other end of the sat phone connection, Hamez hesitated. “She says it would help if she knew what she was looking for.”
For a moment, Thabit was tempted to reveal what he knew about his ancestors. The secret had been protected for generations. “Just have her keep searching.”
“Every minute we spend here increases our risk of discovery. The people that sent the mercenary—MacKenzie—will still be searching for us. And if they find us, they will find you.”
“Would you give me up so easily?”
“No. Of course not.”
“It gladdens my heart to hear that.” In truth, though, Thabit knew Hamez couldn’t give him up. The man didn’t know where he was, and Thabit wasn’t about to tell him.
Thabit watched an albatross wing by overhead. The ungainly creatures trailed the yacht, hoping for food, because the winds were favorable. Once they shifted, the albatrosses would go.
Hamez was silent, and Thabit knew the man was frustrated because he didn’t know the significance of the mission he’d been assigned.
“Have patience with her. Give her more time.”
“It has been hours.”
“That only means she is hours closer to finding that which we seek.” If it is to be found. Thabit prayed that it was not. It would be far simpler and more rewarding to discover that Annja Creed couldn’t find any trace of Karam’s histories. Then Thabit could have Hamez put a bullet through her head and be done with her. “I will reward you handsomely for your efforts when this is done.”
“I don’t do this for the reward. I do this to strike back at our enemies.”
“Then know that this is part of that effort.” Thabit broke the connection. He stared out at the sea with his hands behind his back. Someone called his name and he turned to find Rachid standing there with a troubled expression.
“There is an unpleasant development in Fes.”
Thabit ignored the foreboding he felt. “What?”
“A covert team is en route to the city. I only just learned of this.”
“The Americans?”
Rachid shook his head. “The British. They have an MI-6 strike team within three hours of the city.”
“How did they find us?”
“I believe someone within the CIA alerted them. I have only been able to get a little information about the operation. It appears the attack on the Bedouin attracted more attention than we had believed.”
Thabit considered the situation. The British wanted him as badly as the Americans, but not so badly as the Israelis. They would continue their search, as well.
“Should we tell Hamez?” Rachid asked delicately.
After a moment longer, Thabit said, “No. The work he is doing there with the American archaeologist is important. If they are not finished in three hours’ time, the British close in on them and Hamez will put a bullet through Annja Creed’s head.”
Chapter 29
University of Al-Karaouine
Fes el Bali
Kingdom of Morocco
“I think I’ve found something.”
Head aching from lack of sleep and sustained intense reading, and maybe from the dust, as well, Annja pushed up from her seat and joined David Smythe at his table.
Some of Smythe’s fatigue disappeared with the excitement of discovery.
Hamez hurried over, too. He had sat quietly for the past two hours, but Annja had sensed his growing tension. He kept his hand on the gun at his hip under the jacket.
Smythe trailed a finger over a page. “Bozdag evidently tracked down another book that had entries regarding Abdelilah Karam.”
“Why, if there was so much interest in this guy, have we never heard of him?”
Smythe shook his head. “You know as well as I do that we don’t know everything. In some ways, history is like space. We really know very little about it except what’s around us. The farther you go—back, in the case of history—the less we know. This is only thirteen hundred years, as opposed to figuring out what happened eleven thousand years ago when Atlantis was reputedly still above the Atlantic.”
“If it was the Atlantic.”
“Exactly, though I am of the opinion that in our present location, we aren’t that far from—”
“Silence! You chatter like children.” Hamez glared at them. He pointed at the book. “What have you found?”
Smythe looked at Annja and she nodded. “As I was saying, Bozdag was evidently basing some of his research on work another historian had done. This other historian—” he bent closely to the page “—Miskawayh, was writing a history of Adi ibn Musafir al-Umaw.” He glanced up. “Do you know who that was?”
“Twelfth-century sheikh of Kurdistan. A descendant of Marwan ibn al-Hakim, the fourth Umayyad caliph. Reappointed as caliph by Muawiya I after Ali removed him.”
“Exactly. And you recognize the significance of Muawiya, right?” Smythe was riding the excitement high. Before Annja could answer, he explained. “Muawiya’s rule was the first caliphate after Muhammad died. That succession split the Islamic people.”
“Muawiya was a usurper, a traitor to the beliefs of our people.” Hamez surprised Annja with his vitriolic intensity. “Muawiya seized leadership, but did not have God’s ear. Only the true family of Muhammad has that.” He stared at the book. “This person you are reading about is a false prophet. What you read there is doubtless lies.”
“Lies or not,” she said, “do you want us to continue?”
Hamez pursed his lips. “Continue. But you are wading in sacrilege.”
“According to this,” Smythe said, “al-Umaw was supposed to have a book written by Abdelilah Karam concerning some of the events after Uthman’s murder.”
“It was not murder.” Hamez kept his voice tightly controlled. “His death came as a result of true believers trying to bring our people back to God.”
Annja faced Hamez. “Maybe it would be better if we did this on our own.”
Hamez stood his ground.
Annja reached for her tablet PC, disconnecting it from the wall outlet where she was charging it, and started saving images of the sections concerning Karam.
“Where does the Telek Maus fit into this?” She captured another image.
Smythe turned the page and revealed the black-and-white illustration of an androgynous angel with spreading peacock wings. “Because Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir founded the Telek Maus and was believed to be an incarnation of the peacock angel.”
The ink drawing looked a little faded. She leaned down and examined the drawing, finally placing her finger on a line of script. “This looks like an artist’s signature.”
Smythe picked up the magnifying glass he’d borrowed from Daoudi. “If it is, I can’t read it. It’s Arabic.” He glanced up at Hamez. “Maybe you can.”
Carefully, as though this was a trick, Hamez leaned down to read. “Ata ibn Wassaf.”
Smythe studied the illustration. “I’ve never heard of him, but he seems to have collaborated with Bozdag on this book as well as the other one I’ve been through.”
Curious, Annja returned to the three books on her table. “Wassaf illustrated one of these books, which is about Karam and the spread of Islam into Morocco.” She looked at Hamez. “We need to speak with Daoudi.”
* * *
“AS IT TURNS OUT, Ata ibn
Wassaf was a popular illustrator for Moroccan books.” Daoudi led the way through the stacks. “He worked on a number of projects involving religious studies.”
Annja trailed at the scholar’s heels. She already had an armload of books.
“According to our files, Wassaf died nine years ago.”
“Where?”
“Here in Fes. He only left the country a few times. He studied art at Oxford.”
“Do you know when he was there?”
“In the 1960s.” When Bozdag was studying at the university. With both of the men being young, from Islamic countries, Annja easily saw how they could have come together.
But what had bound them so tightly?
* * *
SEVENTEEN BOOKS LITTERED the two tables in the small office. Annja and Smythe had divvied them up. Wassaf’s skill was amazing. He’d illustrated histories, children’s stories and maps.
She was going through a child’s book about the white horse, al-Buraq. It contained several plates of the prophet and the winged animal. In compliance with Muslim belief, Wassaf had left depictions of Muhammad faceless. In Persian art, the horse was nearly always given a human head and features.
The dedication in the children’s book caught Annja’s eye. It was written in Arabic as well as English.
To my father, Wassaf ibn Fadlan, who first showed me his angel and taught me to draw.
* * *
“WASSAF’S FATHER WAS AN illustrator, too?” Annja had returned to Daoudi’s desk with Hamez, her entourage.
Daoudi read something off his computer. “Yes. We have some of his books, as well.”
“May we see them?”
“Of course.”
After writing the reference number down, Daoudi quickly found the books illustrated by Wassaf ibn Fadlan.
Consumed by curiosity, Annja sat on the floor and leafed through the books as quickly as she could. Wassaf ibn Fadlan hadn’t been as popular as his son. There were only three books in the university collection, but one of them was about the peacock angel. The illustration of the figure was much like the one Ata ibn Wassaf had drawn in Bozdag’s book, but there were differences.