Assassins - Ian Watson & Andy West

by Ian Watson

  Guba ordained a feast of punishment, which Hakim and Sadiq must attend.

  In the past both doctors had witnessed horrible pain caused by disease, accident, and violence, and had maintained professional detachment, but never previously had they been privy to torture. Not until that afternoon of the disembowelments.

  Wood was piled low, with much kindling to ignite it. The naked Igwe were fastened to three upright frames of stout bamboo, secured to bases fitted with rollers contrived from cylindrical gourds. Thus, with a bit of effort, the contraptions could be trundled close to a fire, or pulled away. At first, the three prisoners were positioned equidistantly and very close to the as-yet unlit wood, while a mass of men, women and children looked on avidly, hurling occasional insults at the despised Igwe. Then Guba produced a knife.

  “He’s going to mutilate their genitals,” whispered Sadiq. “Burn their pipes and their balls before their eyes. Or else stuff those in their mouths, to choke on while their ravaged flesh roasts. The Igwe warriors will try to be stoical, until they finally fail and lose all further dignity.”

  Hakim forbore to comment on such speculation. He felt morose. This ceremony didn’t serve God’s purpose, and it robbed him of his subjects too. Yet he acknowledged that in witnessing whatever would transpire, he was like a knife-blade himself, being honed to greater sharpness on a whetstone, being purged of any remaining mundane sensitivities, as was necessary in a tool for the ultimate work.

  Sadiq’s guess was wrong…

  Guba stood atop the wood then, one by one, he opened the lower abdomens of the three youths, from the navel downwards. Each flinched and bit their lips bloody, but not one cried out. With rags soaked in a bowl of some yellow substance, Guba somehow minimised the blood-flow. Then he slid his hand into each wound and wrenched free the intestine. He cut through this to separate it from the rectum, brown liquid and lumps oozing over his hands, then he pulled out an arm’s length of pale tubing; and now each warrior squealed gaspingly like a girl as his inner essence was removed from him. The audience whooped and jeered.

  Guba pranced around on the wood, pulling out yet more intestine. Hakim was well aware that the intestines are ten times the length of a human body, and the adults were experienced at gutting animals, but to the children in the audience Guba might have seemed like a conjuror. The tormented Igwe issued piercing squeals. Guba wrapped the leaking ends of their three innards around one another and united them with a band of thorns, which he fixed to a stout post beyond the wood-pile. Then he signalled for assistants to roll back the frames. Inevitably this wrenched out more wet tubing and had the doomed prisoners screeching and writhing on their frames; but more importantly this procedure lifted the joined entrails quite high above the intended fire, tautening them.

  Only then was the kindling lit, so that the victims, if perception still held sway, could soon behold juices from the cooking of their agonised bowels dripping into the flames. The hissing of liquids was background to a cacophony of torment, and the pervasive smell of tripes assaulted Hakim’s nostrils.

  Word reached the Igwe village soon enough. One of Guba’s warriors, who was very fleet of foot, sneaked near, deposited a tangle of cooked and thorn-spiked intestine, bellowed a few swift words of what had happened as a taunt, then sped away.

  For Hakim, the result of this was to bring disaster, yet also, subsequent triumph…

  Southern Ethiopia: April 1158

  Igwe warriors slipped into the village just before dawn, grey shadows in a world drained of definition and colour. The first that Hakim, Sadiq and Yaqob knew was hullabaloo, so that they seized their swords, and were quickly at the door of their hut in the quarter-light. The tall thatch of a hut near Guba’s took fire as cries rent the air. Like great dark moths, the three men headed for that illumination.

  Warriors were jabbing at one another with spears. The intruders wore the heads of hyenas as hats and across their backs carried one or two additional spears in bamboo quivers. Guba stood unsteadily, clutching the weight of one already thrown that had lodged in his shoulder. His two guards lay dead – no, one was still moving unless that was an illusion of dancing firelight. Villagers were beginning to flock, with whatever weapon they had snatched up.

  “Protect Guba at all costs!” Hakim shouted. Sadiq rushed forward, swinging his scimitar, though Yaqob slipped away. Hakim reached Guba to pull him back inside his hut, but an Igwe hyena spied an opening and bounded, thrusting his spear deep into the Priest-Witch’s navel. The Igwe shrieked in triumph as Guba buckled, clutching at the agonising shaft, even as Sadiq sliced through the killer’s neck. As Hakim dragged Guba into the hut, Sadiq cried out, for a spear thrown true outranked his sword. Sadiq fell, the first daylight painting blood upon him. Hakim stared and saw no movement at all from his companion; Sadiq was dead.

  Guba was dying slowly in agony, no matter that Hakim had poured the rest of the violet liquid into the belly wound, no matter what else he attempted.

  This was a disaster for God’s purpose, disaster for the proud villagers too. As tradition demanded, immediately after Arwe’s death Guba himself had taken the most suitable youth as his own apprentice, a young man named Garbu, so called because his mother had given birth while on a lake in a fishing boat. The afterbirth was thrown to a crocodile because its smell attracted the reptile, an auspicious event. But Garbu only possessed a little knowledge as yet and, with Guba dead, the apprentice would have no way of acquiring more. So the villagers would have to accept the suzerainty of an experienced Priest-Witch from another community, who might or might not choose to continue Garbu’s training.

  Sadiq’s death was likewise a disaster. Even in his grief, though, Hakim realised that losing Yaqob would have been worse, if there’d been a choice. A translator was essential to the work of forging an ultimate weapon to sweep the world clean of unbelief. Yaqob’s cowardice must be overlooked.

  Hakim saw to Sadiq’s speedy burial, while corpses of the overwhelmed Igwe raiders were dragged into the forest for hyenas to eat in a kind of poetic justice. One raider without serious injury had been captured. The dying Guba could decide nothing, so the enraged population thrust their captive into the cage of weeping monkeys. The monkey spirits might make their own judgement and exact a vicious revenge on behalf of the ravaged village.

  Guba hung on for two days, but when his spirit departed Hakim no longer had an official sponsor, though he did have credit with the villagers, and fortunately the almost useless Garbu treated Hakim as a kind of advisor… until such time as the elders would yield to the inevitable.

  South End, Boston, Massachusetts: May

  It had seemed very reasonable to Abigail to meet Paul Summers at a café in South End, on Tremont Street. She could hardly expect a comparative stranger to come out to Harvard on her say-so, especially when she hadn’t felt able to say very much over the phone. So, to him the choice of venue.

  Jack’s obnoxious personality still left a bad taste in her mouth. She’d no doubt the ICEman would stoop to anything to dig up dirt, whether on her or within medieval history. He might just as easily manufacture dirt. About that she could do nothing, but she could preserve some privacy, so she made doubly sure that no tail was stuck to her on the journey out from Radcliffe. She’d turned off her mobile too; though she wasn’t technical, she recalled that they gave one’s position away.

  She’d gotten off the subway at Copley, just to see her favourite Boston vision again, Trinity church captured in its entirety by the glass of the Hancock tower. Then she hurried on down Clarendon Street towards Tremont, throwing in a few more twists and turns for good measure. Having a little time to kill, she circumnavigated leafy Union Park. Despite her preoccupations, she admired the ornamental ironwork on the surrounding houses. She loved the combination of chasing shadows and sun and rain, which made the leaves shine and the urban scenery dynamic. Finally she arrived at the Café Lorca, a name that seemed propitious in view of the poetisa of Granada, until she recalled how the 2
0th century poet Lorca had been murdered, by fascists, there in his own home town in Spain.

  She was still a little early. A couple of bronzed young blond guys in white tee-shirts and blue jeans with big belt-buckles were chatting quietly over the remains of some croissants. Otherwise there was no one except for a languid, dark-haired man behind the counter who sported a head-to-thighs plastic apron adorned with a Jackson Pollock splash-art painting.

  A big poster on a side wall advertised a Spanish bullfight, a tight-buttocked torero splendidly clad in silks and sequins. Neat butt, thought Abigail, though disapproving of that sport.

  She ordered a camomile tea to calm herself and took from her bag The Forgotten Queens of Islam. When Jackson Pollock brought her tea, he glanced and murmured whimsically, “Queens of Islam, eh? Well, what do you know.”

  It dawned on Abigail then that Café Lorca was a gay hang-out. Lorca had been homosexual, hadn’t he? That macho torero’s neat butt on the wall was being mischievously misinterpreted!

  Just then ringleted Paul Summers arrived, wearing a crumpled creamy suit and orange-red striped shirt, carrying a laptop case.

  “Hi, Dr Leclaire. Tea for me too,” he called to Jackson Pollock, then sat close. “You sounded kinda conspiratorial and bottled-up-angry on the phone,” he murmured.

  “I sounded both those things? I thought I sounded neutral.”

  He grinned. “Didn’t work. Er, why neutral? Do you think your phone’s bugged? Dr Leclaire, you can rely on my discretion.”

  “Call me Abigail.”

  “Well, I’m Paul. So what’s bugging you, in either sense of the word?”

  Momentarily, she glanced at the gorgeous torero.

  “Don’t you feel comfortable here, Abigail?”

  She shrugged.

  “Hey, it isn’t totally my scene either, but it’s calm at this time of day, and the intrepid reporter goes everywhere. I have to see someone at the Center for the Arts down the street.”

  He hushed as Jackson Pollock brought another camomile.

  “Are you familiar with ICE?” she asked.

  “As in with tea in summertime?”

  “What I mean is the US Immigration…”

  “And Customs Enforcement,” he concluded for her.

  Tight-lipped, “What would you say if I told you that ICE are covertly filming everyone who visits the Roxbury mosque?”

  He mused a moment. “I’d say that’s invasive and paranoid and maybe illegal behaviour, unless there’s a specific reason, in which case I’d love to know what that reason is. But I’d also ask how you know about this covert activity, and why you’re telling me.”

  “Because it makes my blood boil that innocent people can be spied upon by some fascist government acronym with millions of undeserved dollars gotten for so-called homeland security!”

  A burst of sunlight opened up onto Paul’s face. His curly hair shone like a halo and his eyes twinkled. “Canadian accent, right? As some people might observe regarding your righteous ire.”

  “Look, I’ve been practically threatened with deportation by somebody who did say just that!” Not exactly; though almost.

  “ICE?”

  For a surreal moment, Abigail imagined that he was offering cubes to cool herself.

  “Threatened,” continued Paul, “based on filming you visiting the mosque, you mean? So you got asked by ICE why you were visiting the mosque, is that it?”

  Abigail suddenly felt defensive. Talking to the press was a double-edged sword, and she wanted to keep her research out of this.

  “The details aren’t important. I have a good friend at the mosque… a cleric, but also a scholar. He’s helping me with some research into a medieval poem. But it’s the principle that counts, spying on people illicitly. You have to tell the public about this!”

  Paul pulled out a notebook, but his expression was sheepish. “Abigail, I take it you have no proof whatsoever, which means it’d be very dangerous for us to publish.”

  Abigail’s principles evaporated. She turned on a seductive gaze. “It’s a noble cause.” As he looked down to write, was he hiding a blush?

  “I know people, I’ll do some digging.” He grinned lopsidedly. “If I can get a reasonable hint of corroboration, I’ll publish.”

  Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Cambridge, Massachusetts: May

  Terry felt wounded, frustrated and angry, yet terribly guilty too. What he was doing was wrong; there ought to be a better way. Yet he had to know, he had to. It wasn’t his fault that Abigail was being evasive. Lately, his relationship with the woman he loved seemed as much torture as joy. A cool determination in his veins alternated with fury.

  The weather was unstable, like his mood. A high altitude wind was breaking up sullen grey above. Occasional ragged gaps appeared, sending waves of brilliance washing over the buildings. Massed windows were briefly transformed to jewels before the light moved swiftly on, or disappeared as jealous clouds stopped up the hole again. In between such bursts of sun, spatters of wind-blown rain flew.

  Another guy was kicking his heels further down the street. Blue jeans, short beige rain-jacket, good-looking, muscular, sandy-haired. No doubt waiting for his girl too; no doubt to greet her warmly. Terry swallowed back bile that rose in his throat. If all was well, what he was doing wouldn’t harm Abigail, he schooled himself. But in his heart, he knew that things were far from well.

  Only the other night she’d needled him about his college courses yet again, then made noises about leaving Boston when her stipendiary finished. Did he like Spain? The lost poetisas of al-Andalus cry out to be discovered! What on Earth would he do in Spain? He’d reacted badly, counter-attacked. But she was obsessive about her work these days, and was devoting less and less time to him!

  His aromatic cassoulet had saved them from a full-scale row. Her favourite dish and not too easy to find even in Boston’s diverse restaurants; it had taken him months to learn the perfect recipe for the Québecois style of the dish. But later, conversation was stilted and sex mechanical, almost embarrassing. Yet he still loved her, yearning for moments of shared joy that might already be history, certainly would be history if her domineering father used his wealth to shield her. He knew he wasn’t approved of at all, and suspected that previous boyfriends in the same position, possibly all of Abigail’s boyfriends, had found impossible barriers to a relationship mysteriously appearing. Perhaps the manipulative old tyrant had offered to fund an extended research trip to Spain.

  Abigail appeared, at the Radcliffe doorway where they’d often rendezvoused before sharing a late lunch together. One of the few times their schedules could regularly overlap. Yet she hadn’t wanted to meet him today. Important appointment. Critical research. That evasive tone he was coming to know so well had cut through his love and loyalty, to reach raw anger beneath.

  It had to be another man! Why else would she keep stuff from him?

  Abigail paused to assess the weather. She was wearing her red retro-coat with the big belt. Good, an easy beacon to follow. Staying well back, he followed his love. He noticed that Beige-jacket-man was also on the move. Perhaps the guy had been stood up after all. Terry sympathised.

  Almost immediately, something felt wrong. Abigail was walking far faster than she usually did, and took apparently pointless turns. Where was she headed? Had she realised he was behind her?

  After a zigzag through several streets, it became obvious that the beige-jacket guy was following her too. Utterly perplexed, Terry dropped back a little. Fortunately the stranger didn’t appear to have spotted him. But who the hell was he? Another cheated boyfriend resorting to the same plan as himself? Was everything he thought he knew about Abigail completely wrong?

  Confusion temporarily overrode Terry’s other emotions. In a quiet side-street, Abigail glanced behind her. After that, Beige-guy stayed much further back and was more cautious at corners. Terry was obliged to fall still further behind, following the follower rather than Abigail herse
lf.

  Whatever was going on, Abigail had kept him completely in the dark. Terry’s fists clenched and his teeth ground as he walked.

  They ended up at Porter subway station. It was tough keeping them both in sight through to the platform, but Terry’s seething emotion kept him sharp. Clever Beige-guy pulled level with Abigail, but some distance to her left and hidden by a knot of students. Her continued glances behind, usually made from her right side, would never pick him up.

  Terry risked the same carriage as Beige-guy, one behind Abigail’s. He kept his head down, nevertheless feeling as though everyone in the packed space was aiming a stare directly at him, probing his debased mood and exposing him. An alien desire to scream his frustration, and lash out at other travellers, was surprisingly difficult to suppress.

  In a narrow field of vision threaded through a dozen intervening bodies, Terry saw the mysterious follower take off his jacket and discreetly turn it inside-out. Now he was Blue-jacket guy, silently mocking Terry for his lack of knowledge or expertise. Terry thought about pushing up the aisle and challenging him right there, but then the train screeched to a halt and Abigail had hopped off on to the platform.

  Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts: May

  He clung to them both through a change of train and the exit from Copley station, but covert pursuit was much harder among the swarming shoppers and tourists in central Boston. In only a minute or so, he lost them. Sweating and desperate and dropping all pretence of subtlety, he barged through the crowds in an attempt to catch up.

  Then he slammed right into someone. They both tumbled to the hard pavement, though Terry landed on his hands and knees and was up again in a moment. The other man was face down, possibly winded, struggling to rise.

  “Sorry sorry, sorry,” Terry offered speedily, torn between continuing his frantic search and ensuring that the man was alright. But then realisation dawned as he took in the blue jacket, the sandy hair.