Touchstone (Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  “Oh, that much is obvious,” said Maeve. “Let’s call it what it is Doctor, war.”

  “They call it that.” LeGrand came back at her quickly. “I believe the word is Jihad.”

  “Nonsense,” said Maeve, folding her arms abruptly—a very bad sign as far as Nordhausen was concerned. The conversation was becoming more and more heated, and he was considering what he might say to cool tempers down.

  Maeve started in again: “It’s true that the Islamic world is far behind the West in terms of social equity and justice. But it is equally true that Western powers have never really had any noble interest in dealing with that. They’re motivated by political and economic reasons—like this expedition by Napoleon. He wanted to campaign through the Middle East to isolate Britain from her colony in India.”

  “And he disarmed the peasant rabble,” LeGrand cut in. “He broke the back of the Mamluk hegemony, established new political systems, built hospitals to curb disease—“

  “Carried in the plague,” Maeve raised her chin, unwilling to allow her host to serve these facts unchallenged. “He massacred hundreds of prisoners in Palestine, put down the Cairo insurrection with ritual beheadings, then tried to cart off virtually anything he could find of interest. Thankfully, he loses. The British win and so they decide set up shop in Egypt until well into the twentieth century. Got to keep a close eye on Suez, you see.”

  “Well,” said LeGrand, a bit disconcerted. “It’s been my experience that the British usually leave things better off than they find them.”

  “Chin, chin old boy,” Maeve winked at him, unyielding. “Yes, when the natives get restless there was always the Martini & Henry rifle and a bayonet to set things right. England created the situation that led to unrest and division in the Middle East for decades. The Sykes-Picot agreement just drew arbitrary lines in the sand here after the First World War, irrespective of cultural and ethnic differences. It created pacific little countries like Iraq, a gross conglomerate of Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish and Turkomen tribes, and all the misery that has resulted. Then, seeing the mess they’d made, Britain calmly withdrew ‘East of Suez’ and left it all to their new friend to sort out—the good old U.S.A. Now, don’t get me started on how that turned out.”

  “Oh, I know exactly how it turns out, madam. You forget, it’s all history to me.”

  “Spare me the details,” said Maeve, realizing she could not fight in that corner. “I can see where it’s heading quite well, thank you.”

  “Come, come,” said LeGrand, trying to diffuse the situation. “If I didn’t know better I would have to ask myself who’s side you are on here.”

  Maeve fixed him with a riveting stare, but LeGrand met her gaze with heavy lids, a look of suspicion settling into his fleshy features.

  “Well, Doctor,” she said with an air of finality. “You didn’t invite us to tea to quibble over politics. Suppose you tell us what your real mission is here, and why you were warned to be on the lookout for two Americans on the road west of the city? Be quick about it, sir. The morning is wearing thin.”

  17

  Le Grand seemed taken aback by Maeve’s remark. The fire in her eyes seemed to surprise him, and he took a guarded posture, eying Nordhausen as though to see where he came down in the argument that had been unfolding. “Madame,” he said at last, “you make it sound as though there is some nefarious plot in the works.”

  “You said it yourself, Doctor,” Maeve went on. “You received a message telling you to be on the lookout for two Americans on the road. You were kind enough to return my purse, but you, and your people, have had a good long look at my notes in the bargain, and this Order you speak of certainly knew what we were about here.”

  “That you were about here,” LeGrand corrected. “Yes, we knew that much. The Touchstone database also indicated that there was a variation concerning the Rosetta stone as well. To put it bluntly, it was lost, as far as history was concerned. It’s significance as a key to the hieroglyphics was completely undone. We assumed you were interested, even as we were, but we did not know why.”

  The ire in Maeve’s eye had not diminished. “Really? Even with a century or more to think it over? Don’t be coy, Doctor. From your perspective in the future this Order of the Temporal Knights knows very well what we are about—and why. If you will not at least grant me the courtesy of honesty, then I’m afraid I will have to insist that we leave here at once. We’ll find our way to the discovery site on our own.”

  “Now, Maeve…” Robert touched her shoulder.

  “Be quiet, Robert.” The tone of her voice made it quite plain that she was in no mood for compromise.

  LeGrand squinted and pursed his lips, deciding. “Very well,” he said. “I forget who I’m dealing with: Maeve Lindford, head of Outcomes & Consequences, and the bane of research for…” he caught himself briefly, “an eternity,” he concluded.

  “And what outcome will we have here, Doctor?” Maeve waited, chin up, eyes unyielding.

  “Yes,” LeGrand said slowly. “We knew you were coming. We’ve had time enough to determine that much. The clues in that purse you dropped made the research easy. And I must warn you, Madam—warn you both.” He looked at Nordhausen as well. “They know you are here as well—the other side. You know who they are. Your friend, Mr. Dorland, made their acquaintance in Castle Massiaf. What a stroke of luck that was—a perfect example of his Pushpoint theory. Oh, Research predicted that you would try and retrieve your Ammonite fossil, Professor. Still, that little affair in Wadi Rumm was quite interesting. It’s amazing that you stumbled on the well like that.”

  “You mean to say you knew about the well all along?”

  “Quite the opposite,” said LeGrand. “We knew nothing at all. They set the Oklo reaction up with great secrecy, and used it sparingly so as not to reveal its location to our sensors. You see, Time war is a rather delicate business. You don’t fight any battles. There are no sweeping maneuvers and heavy blows against the enemy. It’s all subtlety, subterfuge, misdirection. It’s the little things that count, after all, the Pushpoints. So you can imagine our concern when we got a variation alert just as you were trying to slip out of Jordan for your surreptitious rendezvous with the Arabesque.”

  “You knew about that?” Nordhausen seemed a bit flustered. “But I took the greatest care to conceal my plans. Why, not even Paul knew what I was up to until I had him in the helo over Wadi Rumm! How did you learn about the ship?”

  “That’s irrelevant,” LeGrand waved him off. “The point is, we were caught off guard by a hidden Pushpoint at the edge of that well. When Mr. Dorland stumbled in the dark, and took his fall, it set off quite a stir back in operations. We had a mission into the very same milieu where he manifested—a rather delicate mission—and he upset the proverbial apple cart with his arrival at Castle Massiaf.”

  Maeve smiled. “Let me guess,” she said with a slight edge of sarcasm. “The Horns of Hattin…”

  LeGrand gave her a penetrating look. “Indeed, Madam. Do you think we would allow something like that to stand if we could prevent it? The entire Christian army was slaughtered. A hundred Templars were lined up and beheaded, one by one, with that Moslem flair for the dramatic.”

  “The hostage executions were all over the Internet during the second war in Iraq,” said Maeve.

  “Then you can understand our motives easily enough. The battle of Hattin set back Christian plans in the Middle East for generations. It undid ninety years of painful consolidation in the kingdom of Outrémere, and caused a great deal of misery and suffering for decades thereafter.”

  “Yes,” said Maeve. “The third Crusade was the answer, but Richard The Lion Heart failed to deliver Jerusalem and met an unseemly end in a German prison. The Fourth Crusade gets diverted to Constantinople by greedy Venetian Merchants. Lots of pain and suffering there, I suppose.”

  “We had our reasons,” said LeGrand, then caught himself, realizing that he had said a bit too much. “But in the matte
r of Mr. Dorland’s visit to Massiaf, we could not quite figure out if you were running a deliberate mission or if it was mere happenstance.”

  “Yes,” said Maeve, “there are always reasons…” she let the phrase dangle, looking LeGrand square in the eye. “Tell me, Doctor. Were you trying to kill Reginald?”

  LeGrand jumped at the accusation, then narrowed his gaze, somewhat determined. “That would be quite unseemly,” he said. “Did we want him dead? Certainly. Did we think we could be so bold as to…assassinate him? Absolutely not. There are rules in the game, my dear. Violations are severe. Reginald was a Prime, as you well know. Without his headstrong influence, poor Guy never takes the crown from Baldwin’s daughter. Without his lust for vengeance and his greed, Saladin is never provoked to muster the Moslem armies. Without his brazen insults and bullying ways, the Christian army never sorties out to confront Saladin at Hattin, and things turn out… quite differently.”

  “I can imagine,” said Maeve. “So what were you up to, Doctor? And how did we upset your little scheme?”

  “We let it be someone else’s little scheme,” said LeGrand. “We were trying to arrange it so they killed Reginald. After all—the word assassin dates from that very milieu. There were experts in the mountains of Syria who could do the job well enough. All we had to do was make certain Reginald gave them sufficient reason. Our adversaries were not sleeping, however. They must have been on to us—or so we thought. It took us some time before we realized they were running couriers into Massiaf to their agent in place at that location.”

  “Sinan,” said Maeve, matter of factly.”

  “Quite so,” said LeGrand. “You really are very good, Madame. Reading about you is one thing, but seeing you work this out with that steely resolve of yours is quite another. Touché!”

  “Spare me the flattery,” Maeve put in.

  Nordhausen was following along as best he could, but he had a puzzled expression on his face. “See here,” he began: “Then this Sinan, the one the Crusaders feared as the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’, was indeed an agent from the future?”

  “Of course,” said LeGrand. “He was a perfect little Osama Bin Ladin for that milieu. He found a disaffected cult—just another of the many branches on the tree of Islam, and he managed to nurture and prune it until he had his crop of Assassins. They became a perfect instrument for the radicals for the next 200 years—until we put the Mongols on to them. In the meantime, Sinan poses quite a challenge for us.”

  “But I don’t understand,” said Nordhausen. “If he was as skilled an adversary as you indicate, then why would he allow himself to be duped into taking the life of a Prime Mover?”

  “Every barrel of fruit has a few bad apples,” said LeGrand. “Men are petty, they have pride, desire, odd motives that can be played upon by one who knows the span of their entire life. Sinan was not our target. We knew there were others in the Ismaili cult who could not abide a man like Reginald. We tried to get rid of Reginald ourselves, but to no avail. We urged him to conduct his little known raid by sea along the coast of Arabia, hoping to leave him hopelessly stranded there, but then, by some miracle, he escaped. We made sure he was restored to Castle Kerak on the southern border near the great Islamic trade route into Egypt, and then we whispered of the Sultan’s caravans, fat with gold, and spice and silk.”

  “And it almost worked,” said Maeve.

  “Almost.” LeGrand looked at her suspiciously. “Mr. Dorland’s fall into the Well of Souls undid our plan at the last moment. The man we were hoping to influence within the Ismaili cult failed to act. We aren’t exactly sure what Mr. Dorland did, or how he did it, but the assassination plot against Reginald was foiled. In fact, he managed to get the Assassins in Massiaf at each other’s throats! Quite effective for an agent saboteur! Well, we should have expected nothing less. After all, we relied on you people for the Palma reversal, so it should be no surprise to us that you find ways of… accomplishing things with great success. After all,” he smiled wanly, “you are the Founders.”

  “Yes,” said Maeve quietly. “And if I read you, Doctor, and I read very well, I would say you are not at all happy with our accomplishments.”

  LeGrand sighed heavily. “Well, there it is,” he said. “We want things our way—you want them yours.”

  “And the Assassins want them another way,” Maeve finished.

  “Yes,” said LeGrand quickly. “We’ve seen the world they want. We’ve lived in it. Believe me, madam, you would understand our motives quite well after a year or two in the Chador. I don’t think a woman of great spirit, such as yourself, would abide Islamic Sharia very long without going quite insane. Is that what you want?”

  “It’s not what I want that matters here, Doctor,” said Maeve. “It’s what you want that I’m concerned about now.”

  “Me? You mean the Order? Why, we want the world we fought for, died for by the thousands. We want the destiny that Christendom so richly deserves, along with the spread of freedom and democracy, in a world where individual rights are respected, and the dignity of women is upheld.”

  “Doctor LeGrand,” said Maeve, “just a moment ago you were telling me how inconvenient it was that a billion Muslims were sitting on all that petroleum. You were lamenting that things might have been better if they were all shunted away on some island, safely out of the way. I must say, other men have gone about with the words freedom, equality and fraternity on their lips, and spread more misery across the globe than all the so called terrorists that ever lived. Take your friend, Napoleon, as a perfect example.” She folded her arms, her point well made.

  “I can see that this is leading us nowhere,” LeGrand sighed. “Well, it hardly matters. You’re here for the discovery, and so am I. My offer to lead you to the site still stands, if you can abide my company.” He looked askance at Maeve, a wounded look on his face.

  “Just a moment,” Nordhausen spoke up. “If you two are done with politics I should like to have some answers myself. You say your computers indicated a variation for this milieu.”

  “Of course,” said LeGrand. “The Ismaili Assassins are up to no good again. It has something to do with the stone, and the hieroglyphics. Who knows?”

  “Then you believe they are responsible for the damage to the stone?”

  “Who else?” LeGrand opened his palms, his jovial eyes reflecting the sincerity of his conclusion.

  “But why, Doctor, have you reasoned that?”

  “Why? That’s is not my charge. I’m an agent in place. It’s my job to observe, report, and execute specific instructions. Let Research and Outcomes quarrel over the rest.”

  Nordhausen thought for a moment. “And how do you receive your instructions?”

  “What? Oh, by special courier. We’ve learned that’s the only safe way to transmit orders. Just a little Spook Job, you see. All the agents have rounds to make, and places to be on particular days. We plan things very well. This entire week I was to be billeted here at the inn, during the run up to the discovery of the stone. The Order knew my whereabouts and sent someone through with a message last night. It’s really quite simple—in and out, a cool minute in eternity. We’ve perfected the technique quite well: Delphi and the oracle, the burning bush that spoke to Moses in the desert, the sudden appearance of apparitions. It’s really great fun.”

  “I see,” said Nordhausen. “Well it may please you to know that I think I ran into a messenger from the other side during my stay in Wadi Rumm.”

  “Oh?” LeGrand perked up, suddenly interested. “Do go on, Professor.”

  Robert looked at Maeve, but hearing no immediate protest he began to explain. “He called himself Rasil, the Messenger, and claimed he was to use the Well of Souls to reach Castle Massif with certain instructions. I didn’t know his destination at the time. That was not confirmed until Kelly and Maeve ran down the vectors and pulled Paul out. But the curious thing about this is—“

  “That will be quite enough, Robert.” Maeve had he
ard a little more than she was comfortable with.

  LeGrand looked surprised. “What? I was quite forthcoming with both of you. We’re in a Nexus. Please, rest assured.”

  “I’m afraid not.” Maeve folded her arms, shaking her head in the contrary.

  “But madam, please. I can assure you that—“

  “You have assured me of one thing already, Doctor,” said Maeve. “And that is this: until I have time to reflect on this matter further, I must consider you, and your Order, to be the gravest possible threat to the integrity of the continuum, and I will do everything in my power to see that your tampering is put to an end.”

  18

  Maeve’s pronouncement fell like a stone in the pool of silence that now filled the room. The ripples played over the expression of both Nordhausen and LeGrand, who looked at each other, and then back at her.

  “Come, Robert. I think it’s time we leave.”

  “Now, Maeve,” Robert began, but Maeve answered by getting up and striding to the door, obviously intent on vacating the premises at once, with or without her friend. Robert gaped at her as she went out the door, then turned briefly to LeGrand and stood up quickly to follow.

  “I’m very sorry,” he tried to apologize.

  “This is most irregular,” said LeGrand, a look of amazement on his face. “What about the discovery? I’ve made all the arrangements. And where will you sleep? Doesn’t that woman realize it’s a dangerous world out there?”