The Lion of Cairo

by Oden, Scott

  16

  The echoing call of the adhan brought a swarm of congregants to the Gray Mosque. Assad watched them from the corner of his eye: men of a dozen nations bound by faith, men of influence drawn to Cairo for reasons of their own design. The Assassin spotted a delegation of black-clad Maghribis, envoys of the Almohades of Andalusia, walking arm in arm with dispossessed Seljuk princes in fine silks and gold; he saw Turkish atabegs and Bedouin shaykhs; stern sharifs of Mecca and brooding mullahs from the Persian hinterland; Sudanese captains and Egyptian admirals; scholars and judges; merchants and commoners. Men who would be at one another’s throats on any other day, in any other place, put aside their disagreements in order to make their submission to Allah.

  The Faithful fell into formation like veteran soldiers, kneeling on their rugs, their serried lines stretching across the courtyard. The eldest among them, those poor of sight and hard of hearing, sat in front and faced the mihrab, the niche indicating the direction of Mecca; beside the mihrab, a pulpit of gilded and arabesqued wood towered over the congregants. From its height, the prayer leader—today a venerable cleric from Upper Egypt—would deliver the sermon.

  Assad expected the Prince of the Faithful to arrive under a banner of spectacle. Instead, the Assassin witnessed only a slight flurry of activity as servants laid cushions and intricate rugs to one side of the pulpit, in the shade of the colonnade; even before they had finished, a knot of grandees filed in—eunuchs in muted silks who hemorrhaged jewels from throats and wrists—followed by a man whose hawkish and demanding manner fit well with what Assad knew of the vizier. Bringing up the tail of the cortege was the Fatimid Caliph Rashid al-Hasan li-Din Allah.

  Assad studied Alamut’s potential ally with a critical eye, seeking outward signs of the sort of decay that might prove him unfit to rule. The Caliph’s physical appearance did not foster hope. Too thin by far, al-Hasan had a sallow complexion and sunken eyes that stood in stark contrast to the resplendence of his dress: a khalat of crisp white linen, pearl-sewn and girdled in cloth-of-silver, and a snowy turban sporting a brilliant spray of peacock feathers held in place with an emerald brooch. Slight tremors ran through the young man’s body, and sweat beaded his brow; still, despite his obvious ill health the Prince of the Faithful showed signs of life—he muttered something to his vizier, shook off the hand seeking to guide him by the elbow, and made his own way to the cushions his servants prepared for him.

  With an upraised hand, Rashid al-Hasan acknowledged the men who gathered to pray. He allowed his gaze to drift from face to face; those he recognized received a cursory nod by way of greeting, while others were satisfied with simply being in the Caliph’s notice. After a moment, Assad felt the young man’s eyes on him.

  In any other setting, the demands of protocol meant men of all ranks must abase themselves, to show their respect for the descendent of the Prophet through an endless parade of bowing and scraping. In the mosque, however, all men were equal before God. Thus, there was no affront when a rustic holy man of the Hejaz caught the Prince of the Faithful’s eye and held it, nor was there disrespect in the slow inclination of the Sufi’s head. Rashid returned the gesture; his brows knitted as though the sight of Ibn al-Teymani inspired … what? Was it consternation or fascination? Did he see through the Sufi to discover the Assassin underneath? Assad doubted that, but he had little chance to deliberate it further. As one, the congregation followed the prayer leader’s example and clambered to their feet.

  The venerable cleric from Upper Egypt, raising his hands to either side of his face, called out: “Allahu akbar…”

  17

  To Gamal’s eye, the streets surrounding the caravanserai of Ali abu’l-Qasim were nigh deserted; even the Berber guards had withdrawn to the interior courtyard, no doubt to make their submission to God alongside their fellows. All that remained of the robust ebb and flow of foot traffic from the Nile Gate to the Qasaba were a handful of ragpickers, miserable men reduced to abject poverty using the lull brought on by the demands of Moslem piety to root through the middens and trash heaps of a rivals’ territory. Gamal’s lip curled in a sneer of contempt.

  This same absence of traffic which aided the ragpickers forced Gamal’s fedayeen to remain still and inconspicuous so as not to draw attention to themselves. Even he had trouble spotting them. One stood just inside the shadowed mouth of an alley; another crouched down beside a jumble of old wicker panniers; the remaining two loitered on the far side of the caravanserai, using the terrain to their advantage just as Badr had taught them.

  Gamal himself lurked in a low-roofed alley across the street from the caravanserai, sheltered from view by a latticework door; its twin at the far end stood open, creating a breezeway between the two buildings that stank of animal dung and ancient brick. He leaned his shoulder against the alley wall and dabbed at his watery eye with the sleeve of his burnoose, wincing at the discomfort. Cursed sand! Like the heat and the oppressive stench, there was no respite from the powdery grit. It swirled on the slightest breeze and invaded every crack, crevice, fold, and wrinkle; sand clogged his nostrils, flayed his throat, and abraded his eyes. More than anything, it made him long for the fountains and gardens of his native Damascus. He—

  Gamal froze. He felt a presence behind him; heard a whisper in his ear that was both colder and sharper than the knife blade laid suddenly across the back of his neck. “Have you forgotten our master’s teachings, Gamal?” the Heretic purred. “Death comes on black wings for those who give in to discomforts of the flesh.”

  “I … I’ve not forgotten, ya sidi,” Gamal replied, his voice grim. “It was careless of me to lower my guard. I deserve the death which awaits me.” Closing his eyes, Gamal tilted his head forward. It would have taken nothing, a simple motion on the Heretic’s part, to rip the killing steel across Gamal’s neck, to slice through muscle and bone and sever his spinal cord. But the blow never came.

  “Give thanks to Shaitan that I need you alive.” Badr al-Mulahid sheathed his dirk. “What have you found?”

  Gamal exhaled. “We followed them to this place,” he said. “I made inquiries. A man called Ali abu’l-Qasim dwells within. It seems the Gazelle is his daughter.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “I’ve not laid eyes on her, but the man I questioned was fairly adamant. He called her Zaynab.”

  The name provoked a rare response in the Heretic: a smile, though humorless and thin.

  “The name means something to you, ya sidi?”

  “It means you’ve done well. Keep your men in place and out of sight while I work out a stratagem by which we might gain entry; failing that, we need a way to flush the Gazelle from her bolt-hole. I am done with waiting.”

  Gamal leaned forward, peering through the latticed door. “Perhaps a fire?”

  The Heretic weighed the idea of a conflagration, but then dismissed it with a terse shake of his head. “Leaves too much to chance. Without a proper cordon in place she could use the chaos to slip our grasp, and that cannot be borne.”

  “A diversion, then? Some odd goings-on in the street for the guards to focus on? While they’re distracted, our fedayeen could enter through the back or cross from an adjacent roof.”

  Again, Badr al-Mulahid rejected the idea. “No. If the Emir of the Knife also hides within he will see through our ruse and we will become the hunted. In close confines and on unfamiliar ground, it can be easier for one man to kill many than for many to kill one. No, we need a way to lure the Gazelle…” Badr al-Mulahid trailed off in mid-sentence. He glanced sidelong at Gamal, then over his shoulder; his eyes narrowed to slits.

  “Ya sidi?”

  A sudden zephyr of air through the breezeway brought a familiar stench to Gamal’s nostrils, and one not easily forgotten: rank sweat and rotting garlic. The smell of the Mad Caliph’s Mosque and the beggars who dwelled within. Though ham-handed, their attempts at stealth—betrayed by the crunch of a heel on sand and the faint wheeze of pleuritic lungs—meant he doubted
they had come as allies. Had the fools gotten it in their minds to try and rob him? Ignorant wretches! Do they think I carry a whore’s weight in silver on my person? Gamal squelched the urge to whirl round and curse the beggars for their impudence. Instead, he followed the Heretic’s lead and remained motionless …

  Then, with a barely perceptible nod, Badr al-Mulahid wheeled; steel flashed in the gloom of the breezeway as he drew his dirk. Three men sought to take them unawares; three beggars, scabrous and filthy, their weapons makeshift cudgels and knotted strangle cords. The speed of the Heretic’s movement caught them by surprise, but it came too late to alter their plans.

  In the tight confines of the alley, the three beggars rushed in to die.

  Faster than the eye could follow, the Heretic sidestepped, one callused hand catching a cudgel in mid-descent. Its wielder—a lean, hatchet-faced Arab with a matted beard—gawped as Badr wrenched the weapon from his grasp and struck him a backhanded blow across the face. Bone crunched, and the man dropped like a felled tree.

  A second beggar skidded on his heels, stumbling to avoid the body of his fallen comrade. The fellow opened his mouth; his lungs racked as prelude to a bellowed warning. The Heretic gave him no chance to voice it. Lunging like a swordsman, Badr drove the end of his purloined cudgel into the beggar’s mouth with savage force, snapping his head back. Blood spewed from broken teeth.

  Beside them, Gamal grappled with the third beggar, a sinewy Ethiopian who tried to loop a strangle cord around his neck. The fellow was slippery, his limbs covered with sweat and a thin film of oil. Cursing, Gamal rammed him up against the alley wall; four times he elbowed the African in the belly before the man doubled over, gasping for breath. Gamal took advantage of his adversary’s weakness. He stripped the cord from the beggar’s hands, reversed it, and drew it round his thin neck. The Ethiopian’s eyes bulged. He thrashed and kicked as Gamal tightened the garrote.

  “I want that one alive,” the Heretic growled.

  Gamal nodded; he throttled the Ethiopian to the brink of unconsciousness before easing back, allowing him to gulp a lungful of air. The Heretic slit the throats of the two he’d cudgeled for good measure. Wiping the blade clean on a torn galabiya, he turned to their unfortunate captive.

  “I will ask you only once: why are you here?”

  The Ethiopian had no fight left in him; he rolled his eyes up, indicating Gamal. “Him,” he croaked. “S-seller of carpets.”

  “What about him?” the Heretic said.

  “S-she … She w-wants him … alive … d-doubled his offer…”

  “She? The Gazelle, you mean?”

  The Ethiopian nodded.

  “Wily bitch,” Gamal grunted, perturbed at being a marked man. “Al-Hajj’s informants must have come running to her.”

  “No matter. This display of proud spite has given us the perfect avenue to reach her. Finish him, then give me your robe.”

  The Ethiopian opened his mouth to plead for his life, but before he could utter so much as a syllable Gamal planted a knee in his spine and cinched the strangle cord tight, sawing the knots deep into the flesh of his throat. This time, there would be no reprieve. While the beggar died, the Heretic stepped out where Gamal’s men could see him; he raised his hand and gave the signal to regroup.

  The Ethiopian kicked his last; Gamal shoved the corpse away, straightened. After a moment’s respite he shrugged out of his linen burnoose. “What do you have in mind, ya sidi?”

  “She seeks the seller of carpets alive, does she not?” Badr al-Mulahid replied, stripping off his khalat and passing it to Gamal. The Heretic’s eyes lost none of their murderous fire. “Then that’s what she will get, the gods’ mercy upon her!”

  18

  From the pulpit of the Gray Mosque, the venerable cleric from Upper Egypt preached of Hell’s fires and damnation; he preached of past Fatimid glories and the need for unification against the Infidel invaders from across the sea. He preached of salvation through holy war. By and large, Assad reckoned his exhortations fell on deaf ears. He read skepticism on the faces of those men around him. Men who believed the sun had set on the Caliphate of Egypt; men who believed the wars in Syria and the Lebanon had little to do with them. True, the fire to reclaim holy Jerusalem from the Nazarenes yet smoldered in their breasts, but the flames were not what they used to be and it would take more than impassioned rhetoric from an old cleric to renew the call for jihad.

  More surprising than their collective apathy, however, was the Caliph’s reaction to it. Assad watched him with all the subtlety his art would allow; he watched a shadow of confusion flit across young Rashid’s pale features, followed by bewilderment and even a flash of anger—like a man who discovers the cherished truths of his childhood are nothing more than convenient lies. He wants to believe, Assad thought, and he wants others to believe, as well. He recalled Daoud’s judgment of the young Master of Alamut—brimming with dreams and ideals not yet tarnished by disappointment or grown faint with age—and wondered: could he say the same of Rashid al-Hasan? Was the Caliph an idealist, hobbled by a pragmatic and ambitious vizier, or a dilettante who is appalled today and jaded tomorrow? Assad had no answer either way.

  The service ended with fresh prostrations and an invocation in the Caliph’s name; aided by his son, the elderly cleric hobbled down from the pulpit and made his way to where Rashid sat, to make his obeisance to the descendent of the Prophet. Others pressed close, too, though more to pay their respects to the vizier than to the Prince of the Faithful. The rest trickled out into the Bayn al-Qasrayn.

  Assad kept his place as the crowd around the Caliph slowly thinned. The grandees chattered amongst themselves while the vizier stood to one side, exchanging low words with a black-clad mullah. He needed to make his move and soon, before the opportunity escaped him. He was on uncertain ground, now: he had never targeted a man for conversation before …

  Unexpectedly, the Prince of the Faithful got to his feet. Consternation rippled through the bedizened eunuchs as Rashid stepped through their ranks to survey the mosque’s corners and colonnades as though seeking something. His sunken eyes lit on the false Sufi, Ibn al-Teymani; with a resolute nod, the young man started across the courtyard, his servants scrambling in his wake.

  Jalal cut short his audience with the mullah. He moved to intercept the young Caliph, gestured back toward the entrance. “The palace beckons, Great One.”

  “The palace can wait a moment,” Assad heard the young man reply. As he neared, Assad bowed low at the waist.

  “Peace be upon you, O Prince of the Faithful,” he said.

  “May I sit and partake of your shade?”

  The vizier rushed up, glaring at what he took to be a crippled holy man. “Great One, I—”

  The Caliph silenced him with a look that could curdle milk. “Did I not tell you last night that I wished to talk with a Sufi?”

  “You did, Great One.”

  “Then have done and go wait with the others! I will speak with this man alone.”

  “As you wish, Great One,” Jalal replied, offering a deep salaam—no doubt to hide the murder dancing in his eyes—as a gesture of reconciliation. He backed away. The Caliph returned his attention to Ibn al-Teymani. “May I?”

  “I would be honored, my lord.” Assad allowed a look of open curiosity to cross his face even as he thanked Allah for this stroke of good fortune. “How can I be of service?”

  Pearl-sewn linen rustled as he sank down on a cushion one of his quick-thinking servants set into place. It was plain the young man was exhausted; one hand twitched uncontrollably and the muscles of his jaw clenched and unclenched; sweat soaked the collar of his khalat. All were telltale signs of a man emerging from an opium haze. “I seek the benefit of your wisdom. How are you called, my friend?”

  “Ibn al-Teymani, my lord,” Assad replied. “Of the Hejaz.”

  “Does the path you follow place much stock in dreams, Ibn al-Teymani of the Hejaz?”

  “All men who see
k the benefit of wisdom should listen to their dreams, my lord,” Assad said, slipping deeper into his role as a holy man. “Who is to say our dreams do not bring us closer to Allah?”

  Rashid leaned forward, his brow furrowed. “Have you any facility at their interpretation? At reading the dreams of others?”

  Assad pursed his lips. “I have not practiced the interpretation of dreams in many years, O Caliph, but there was a time when it was my consuming passion.”

  “Indulge me, then, Ibn al-Teymani of the Hejaz. Will you listen to my dream and render without fear your learned opinion?”

  “I am not so learned as the sages of Cairo, my lord,” Assad said, bowing. “But if the simple wisdom of the Hejaz can bring you solace, then who am I to refuse you? Speak, O Caliph, and I shall listen.”

  “It is a strange dream,” Rashid said after a moment, his voice low. “I am sitting in the Golden Hall of my forefathers watching a grand gala unfold. Around me are courtiers and scholars, men of rank who share my admiration for the fine dancers leaping and twirling to the music of the flute and the tambourine. Other musicians fill the air with silvery birdsong. It is a fine evening, and I am content.

  “Suddenly, a man staggers through the dancers, a Circassian—one of my mamelukes—and he is wounded unto death. There is a sense of urgency about him as he fights his way through the crowd and up to my seat. He is frantic to tell me something. But when he opens his mouth to speak, all that comes forth are gouts of black blood. Afterward, darkness falls and there is naught but chaos and screaming.”

  “This Circassian, was he an enemy?”