Assassins - Ian Watson & Andy West

by Ian Watson

  “Okay Dr. Leclaire, I’ll be there Monday morning.”

  “No, not here,” she practically squealed. She didn’t want him in her office, in her space. “We could have lunch,” she suggested, with as much warmth as she could muster. “At Elephant Walk.”

  “Where?”

  “Massachusetts and Walden, one P.M.”

  “It’s a date,” answered Jack smoothly. He rang off.

  “Shit!” She banged her fist on the desk. “Shit!”

  It was a couple of minutes before her mind stopped reeling. When it did, she turned Terry’s photo over so that he wouldn’t watch her. She simply couldn’t wait for more from Walid. It was paramount to stay ahead of Jack, so she needed a short-cut, preferably at least a couple of hard facts. A blunt attack was called for, to uncover anything that might help, however unlikely that seemed and however long it took!

  She put her phone on hold, then tapped furiously at her keyboard, connecting to the private Harvard libraries and CMES archives, plus the public web too. She kicked off half a dozen searches centred on Sinan al-Din ibn Nasir, using all acceptable variants and including various tags to filter the inevitable high hit-rates. It was a pretty common name structure. Then she leapt up and got the coffee machine going, fuel for a long session. She opened the large boxes of books at the back of her office, which she’d never got around to unpacking, and scooped out volumes until they littered the floor, searching for half-remembered works that contained references to the Ismailis and Alamut.

  Much of the time she cursed herself under her breath, ignoring her old tutor’s advice. If she’d researched this poem and its sources properly in the first place, she could have trotted out innocent medieval reality to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, then no doubt never seen them again. She brought up an image of the original fragment on her second screen, to remind herself of the target.

  The best image was in infra-red, though they’d tried UV and powerful back-lighting too. The linen-paper was in a pretty bad state, especially near the ragged edges at the top. The dim marks of six more words slid partly into the tear, tantalising yet not discernable, although the fourth might be the single letter ‘e’, signifying ‘and’.

  Hours passed. High on caffeine, she growled at cleaners and colleagues alike who dared to put their head around the door. Later still, she lost all track of time. She felt low now, and chill too in the empty building. The screen was starting to swim before her eyes.

  Then something curious made her alert. It was in Provençal; she’d only absorbed names and the general gist. Now she reread again, much more carefully, scribbling down a translation as she scanned the lines.

  …and so Sinaldin and Guy de Dieulefit journeyed long together from Jerusalem, renewing it is said the friendship of their grandfathers. Yet Sinaldin was sorely wounded in a quarrel with a Saljuq, enemies of his kind in Syria and Persia. Wherewith Guy gave succour, and raised Sinaldin slowly back to life. The two parted in Maselha (i.e. modern Marseilles, she glossed), though the Arab begged Guy to journey onward, being strangely afraid that the eastern plague would descend upon such a busy area of trade and shipping. In this his fear was soon proved true, yet Guy was called back to our Order here and knew fullwell his duty. Whereupon Sinaldin, bound for the diminished realm of Granada, bade him farewell and gave to him a great gift. Yet this gift was not of land or gold or other such substance of wealth of this earth, but of most precious Holy Water, which had the most miraculous power. So came Guy de Dieulefit back home, bringing news of the Holy Land and many messages of import from our brethren on the isle of Rhodes.

  She knew of Dieulefit, a town in Provence. What bell did it ring? And what was this document?

  She flicked to the top and discovered that she was looking at the administrative records for a village called Montlume, digitised only months ago. The item was dated 1350 AD, but seemed to be confirming details of land transfers actually made two and three years before. Montlume was quite close to Dieulefit, so Guy was indeed coming home. It was very fortunate for historians and researchers that scribes often got bored, adding gossip on the side. How had her frantic efforts managed to pull up this particular text?

  She backed up a page, and realised that her last search of the Medieval French Land Records (Provence, Orange and Burgundy), a long shot indeed, was mistyped. Her tired fingers had skipped two characters; she’d entered ‘Sina l-din’. The search engine had no doubt tried with and without the dash and the space characters, so Sinaldin was valid.

  And why not? Given that the great philosopher Abu Nasr Muhammad al Farabi was known in the medieval West as Alfarabius, then surely Sinan al-Din ibn Nasir could be Sinaldin. And the dates were contemporary with Safiyya, albeit at the later part of her life.

  Then it hit her, with a shock so sudden that she physically jumped. She gasped out loud, still barely able to comprehend what her instinct had divined. Our Order. She remembered clearly now: Dieulefit was unusual in being ruled jointly for centuries, half of the administration being provided by the Knights Hospitallers!

  Guy de Dieulefit was a Hospitaller, and he’d come home to his Order in Provence. Sinan al-Din had travelled with him to modern Marseilles before going on to Granada where his lover waited, the poetisa Safiyya bint Yusuf al-Ballisiyya. There was a bond between the Ismaili and the Christian knight. And so the two sheets of paper she’d found in the chapbook must be linked!

  What exactly had that note said? With shaky fingers she eventually brought up an image of the plague document, then focused down upon the Provençal scrawl at the bottom.

  Hospitaller

  Have Pity

  She’d lay a hundred to one that this Hospitaller was Guy. And both he and Safiyya were bound to the Ismaili man of rank, Sinan al-Din ibn Nasir, Sinaldin.

  She leaned back, trying to still her mind and think carefully. Having ignored her watch for hours, she now checked it. 2.23 am.

  Did the chapbook once belong to Guy himself? Why keep those two pieces of paper together? The poem of his friend’s lover, and an account of plague scribbled with a direct plea. At least someone had kept them together, someone aware of the relationships involved.

  She checked dates. The plague mentioned in Montlume’s records was the first great wave of the Black Death to strike Europe, reaching Marseilles in 1347 AD. Was the poem about plague? …death / swells and overflows: swells within the victims and overflows the land? Had Safiyya given literary expression to the major disaster of her era? If so, was esoteric Ismaili wisdom irrelevant? Yet why would the Imam be so central?

  Disciplined by many years in academia, she put speculation firmly aside. Information had to come first; figuring it out came second. Having got her teeth upon a thread, she wasn’t going to let go until she’d pulled it all the way. Recharging with more coffee, she launched back into information space.

  The thread of Sinaldin and Guy pulled and pulled, unravelling the tapestry of history to reveal complex subplots.

  Guy’s father had been a knight of the Templars, transferring to the Hospitallers when the Templars were forcibly disbanded, around 1312 AD. Guy’s grandfather was a Templar too, very high in the Order, a Grand Prior. So if Sinaldin and Guy were renewing the friendship of their grandfathers, why on Earth had a Grand Prior from Christianity’s leading military monastic order been consorting with a Muslim? And why had their offspring continued the relationship?

  She drew a blank on Sinaldin’s family and history. However, she had clues. He was Ismaili, a man of rank, and his enemy was a Saljuq, no doubt a Seljuk Turk. Plus, she now knew he probably came from Syria or Persia, or had connections there.

  Soon she discovered that the Nizari Ismailis, a secretive medieval sect, had created a network of well-defended fortresses throughout Syria and northern Persia. Regarded as heretics by most Sunni Muslims and probably by some Shi’a too, the Nizaris had many enemies, though their traditional foes were Seljuk Turks.

  Shit! This was bad, for it would pique Jack’s
interest. The Nizaris’ chief castle was at Alamut, none other than the eagle’s nest Jack had already picked up on, the place from which the sect and its leader had gained their lurid title, the Assassins of Alamut. From the early twelfth century, the Imams there had claimed leadership over all Ismailis.

  Alamut was overrun by the Mongol hordes in 1256 AD, long before Safiyya wrote her poem. Though Nizari fortresses further west survived longer, most historians considered this period the end for the Assassins. Yet it didn’t take much digging to find newer research, theorising an extended or even permanent survival of the murderous sect.

  If so, it seemed plausible that Sinaldin’s family had occupied positions ‘of rank’ in the Nizari hierarchy. As a youth, his grandfather may even have been at Alamut and seen the Imam there, shortly before the Mongol conquests. Alas, it looked as though Jack’s superficial connection via the word eagle could be confirmed by real evidence, even if circumstantial at the moment.

  “Damn him!” Abigail muttered to the chill air of her office. “He’ll think he’s on to something.” It wasn’t right she should be racing a secretly racist cop to the resolution of medieval puzzles and poetic meaning. The security services had gone mad. The American government had gone mad!

  She ignored fatigue and furiously opened more search windows, in the process opening a Pandora’s Box of shocking historical happenings.

  Though the Templars and the Assassins apparently alternated between conflict and truce, Abigail smelled a strange reek of complicity about their relationship. Various modern scholars pointed out a close alignment between their hierarchies and rituals, even their robes; white with a red cross for the Templars, and white with red trim for the Assassins.

  Other writers claimed that these similarities were superficial, yet both organisations rode roughshod over the proclaimed belief-systems of their respective religions. Both too cherished mystical secrets often bundled up in the name Gnosticism; and seemingly that’s what eventually sealed the fate of the Templars.

  Jealous of the Templars’ hundreds of castles, their 35,000 utterly loyal brethren, their seaports, fleet, hospitals and secret drugs, plus their vast banking system, Phillip the Fair of France and Pope Clement V combined forces to bring the Order down. They arrested 15,000 on a single day. Under torture, some confessed to trampling and spitting on the cross during initiation ceremonies, as well as other un-Christian acts and doctrines including a denial of Christ.

  A few of the elite, knights and priors and the Grand Master himself, Jacques de Molay, were burnt at the stake. Over a period of five years or so, thousands of Templars were gruesomely interrogated. Most were just sergeants or lay brethren, not privy to the inner rituals. The souls of their feet were burned off, or lead weights placed on their chests until they were slowly crushed. Some had their teeth ripped out and steel needles jammed into the raw nerves, or were gradually filled with water via a funnel until they suffocated.

  A scattering of Templar knights from Castille and Provence were so horrified that they fled to Islamic Granada in southern Spain, the home of Safiyya, where they became Muslims. An interesting insight into Templar mentality, mused Abigail, considering that Muslims were supposed to be mortal enemies of the warrior monks!

  King Phillip couldn’t be seen to take everything. A good portion of Templar property was officially made over to the Hospitallers, and some knights discreetly transferred to that Order. Apparently Guy’s father had been clever enough or lucky enough to manage this, and so avoided persecution.

  The loyalty of the Nizaris to mainstream religious practice was even more questionable than that of the Templars. Most of their assassinations were carried out against other Muslims. Abigail was shocked to find that at one time they even offered to turn Christian and ally permanently with Crusader forces in the Holy Lands. On several occasions they’d fought alongside Frankish armies against the Saracens.

  The proposed alliance never got off the ground. Had it done so, the Nizaris would probably have interpreted Christian beliefs as idiosyncratically as they did those of Islam. For the Nizaris considered the Sunni Saracens and most other Muslims as no nearer to religious truth than the Christians; effectively infidels. Only their own mystical doctrines counted, their own relationship with God.

  And what about the 2,000 Bezels a year paid by Syrian Nizaris to the Templars for about twenty years in the late twelfth century? A tidy sum! Some said a tribute; some said a subsidy from the greater organisation to the lesser; some said payment for services rendered.

  Abigail sighed and tried to stretch the stiffness out of her shoulders. What a fascinating maze of impiety, power and military sectarianism. Though what relevance had it to the papers in the chapbook?

  At the very least it seemed that the families of Guy and Sinaldin had a long association of some kind. Even before Guy saved Sinaldin’s life, probably there was great trust between the two men. Might both be steeped in the secrets of their respective traditions, the Templars and the Assassins? Might their families have been part of an alliance of survival for these theoretically terminated organisations? Might they share arcane beliefs that transcended both Christianity and Islam? Was there Gnosticism in the poem? If only she had the rest of it!

  Abigail felt that the strangeness of the early hours was leading her into fantasy. Yet her oft-proven instinct for hidden truths burned bright. There was something here!

  Maybe the Holy Water was part of a Gnostic ritual. Surely there was more to the gift than revealed by Montlume’s scribe. Ordinary folk would be fooled by ‘miraculous’ holy water, but well-travelled men of lordly rank, returning from the Holy Lands? Maybe there was some special symbolism in this Water.

  Abigail re-focussed on the screen and forced her weary brain to digest more.

  Through sustained contact with the Assassins, the Templars absorbed Ismaili philosophies, acting as a conduit to inject these into Europe. Individual Templars, who escaped the destruction of their Order, covertly continued to teach the Gnostic-Ismaili doctrines and mystical techniques they had acquired and augmented in the Holy Lands; the true secrets of the once powerful knights of the Temple. Like fungi in the dark of a forest floor, these teachings flourished beneath the canopy of Christianity, gradually giving rise to the occult arts in Europe…

  There were diagrams of eight-pointed stars, a crescent and Byzantine cross combined, other strange symbols. She flicked to another window and read of Hasan II announcing the spiritual Resurrection at Alamut. As Walid had mentioned, Shari’ah law was annulled, replaced by feasting during Ramadan and the abandonment of sexual restrictions. She moved on to tales of Assassin initiates, high on hashish, being shown the Garden of Paradise…

  As though she’d taken hashish herself, visions began to occupy the screen: pentangles and swords and cups of blood, white-robed Arabs and Europeans deep in ritual, tortured men with ragged mouths and silent screams, the plunging arc of the assassin’s knife, plague sweeping through populations like a blight through wheat, Holy Water sparkling in a vial.

  Her head slammed onto the keyboard and woke her. It was 5.26am. God, she must get back to her flat!

  Cronkite Graduate Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts: April

  The phone rudely pushed Abigail into wakefulness. Sweating and confused, she grabbed the intruding device.

  “Hello?”

  “Hell, at last!”

  “Oh, hello.”

  “Well there’s no need to sound so disappointed!”

  “Sorry. I’m not disappointed, just tired. I worked late last night. Research stuff.”

  “Hey I miss you Bee, and you didn’t return my calls!”

  Guilt flushed Abigail’s face. It was a good job he couldn’t see her. It seemed her most commonly used word to him these days was sorry.

  “Sorry, my mobile’s playing up again. Doesn’t always charge properly.” This was true, but not the whole truth. “And I never know when you’re sleeping or at college during the day. I wish you’d give up th
at bar job, or at least work someplace that actually closes before morning!” Unlike, say, her office?

  But this was an old bone of contention between them. Terry had started working in bars before they’d met, to support his tardy and protracted bid for a college degree. The hours didn’t clash with lectures. Yet the nearer he got to those qualifications he supposedly needed, the less progress he actually seemed to make. Further requirements would mysteriously appear. After a trek of many years through business studies, computer engineering, even philosophy, Abigail realised Terry was never going to finish. The truth was that he loved pleasing people, loved charming them. And as long as it was inside a swanky hotel or club, or maybe a fashionable downtown restaurant, he absolutely loved working in bars.

  “It’s good money,” replied Terry defensively. “You could’ve emailed from work or something, I was worried about you.”

  “Sorry.” Damn. “I’m on to something new with Safiyya al-Ballisiyya. You know how I am, I’ve got to unravel it.” She admitted this much, but decided it wasn’t wise to mention about Jack Turner and the ICE interest. Terry would leap to her defence of course, but he’d be hugely angry too and would probably ring everyone from the local police to the president. That was a complication she didn’t need.

  “I do know how you are. Obsessed!”

  His voice was light though. She thought she’d got away with it. But then…

  “Is that all Bee? You are telling me everything?”

  She knew that low tone well, the one that descended almost into a growl. It was the surfacing of Terry’s jealousy.

  “Yes,” she answered, swiftly and flatly. It was liaisons with imagined lovers he was probing for, not arrangements to meet government agents with imagined plots, which stretched fantastically back into medieval history and poetic literature.

  “Jesus! You’re seeing someone, aren’t you?”

  “Terry. Don’t be ludicrous. I don’t do affairs. I have one lover, and it’s you, and I’ll see you tonight. Sean’s got your shift, right?”