“This way,” she said. “But we part company at the first turning. I’ll point you in the right direction from there.”
They walked on in silence. A few dozen yards down the street, they came to a crossroads, and she halted.
“Down there,” she said, pointing. Then she looked at him. There was something in her clear eyes that he hoped he wasn’t imagining.
“If you happen to find it within the next couple of hours, please come and meet me by Valens’ Aqueduct,” she said. “There’s a book fair I need to attend, but I’d be so glad to see you there.”
“I will do my best.”
She looked at him again, then away, quickly.
“I know you will,” she said. “Thank you, Ezio.”
FORTY
The picture dealers’ quarter wasn’t hard to find—a couple of narrow streets running parallel to one another, the little shops glowing in the lamplight that shone on the treasures they held.
Ezio passed slowly from one to another, looking at the people browsing the art more than the art itself, and before too long he saw a shifty-looking character in gaudy clothes coming out of one of the galleries, engrossed in counting out coins from a leather purse. Ezio approached him. The man was immediately on the defensive.
“What do you want?” he asked, nervously.
“Just made a sale, have you?”
The man drew himself up. “If it’s any business of yours . . .”
“Portrait of a lady?”
The man took a swipe at Ezio and prepared to duck and run, but Ezio was a little too quick for him. He tripped him up and sent him sprawling. Coins scattered everywhere on the cobbles.
“Pick them up and give them to me,” said Ezio.
“I have done nothing,” snarled the man, obeying nevertheless. “You can’t prove a damn thing!”
“I don’t need to,” Ezio snarled back. “I’ll just keep hitting you until you talk.”
The man’s tone changed to a whine. “I found that painting. I mean—someone gave it to me.”
Ezio whacked him. “Get your story straight before you lie to my face.”
“God help me!” the man wailed.
“He has much better things to do than answer your prayers.”
The man finished his task and handed the full purse meekly to Ezio, who pulled him upright and pinned him to a nearby wall. “I do not care how you got the painting,” said Ezio. “Just tell me where it is.”
“I sold it to a merchant here. For a lousy two hundred açke.” The man’s voice broke as he indicated the shop. “How else will I feed myself?”
“Next time, find a nicer way to be a canaglia.”
Ezio let the man go, and he scampered off down the lane, cursing. Ezio watched him for a moment, then made his way into the gallery.
He looked carefully among the pictures and sculptures on sale. It wasn’t hard to spot what he was after, as the gallery owner had just finished hanging it. It wasn’t a large painting, but it was beautiful—a head-and-shoulders, three-quarter-profile portrait of Sofia, a few years younger, her hair in ringlets, wearing a necklace of jet and diamond stones, a black ribbon tied to the left front shoulder of her bronze satin dress. Ezio guessed it must have been done for the Sartor family when Meister Dürer was briefly resident in Venice.
The gallery owner, seeing him admiring it, came up to him. “That’s for sale, of course, if you like the look of it.” He stood back a little, sharing the treasure with his prospective client. “A luminous portrait. You see how lifelike she looks. Her beauty shines through!”
“How much do you want for it?”
The gallery owner hemmed and hawed. “Hard to put a price on the priceless, isn’t it?” He paused. “But I can see you are a connoisseur. Shall we say . . . five hundred?”
“You paid two hundred.”
The man held up his hands, aghast. “Efendim! As if I would take such advantage of a man like you! In any case—how do you know?”
“I’ve just had a word with the vendor. Not five minutes ago.”
The gallery owner clearly saw that Ezio was not a man to be trifled with. “Ah! Indeed. But I have my overheads, you know . . .”
“You’ve only just hung it. I watched you.”
The gallery owner looked distressed. “Very well . . . four hundred, then?”
Ezio glared.
“Three hundred? Two-fifty?”
Ezio placed the purse carefully in the man’s hand. “Two hundred. There it is. Count it if you like.”
“I’ll have to wrap it.”
“I hope you don’t expect extra for that.”
Grumbling sotto voce, the man unhooked the picture and wrapped it carefully in cotton sheeting, which he drew from a bolt by the shop counter. Then he passed it to Ezio. “A pleasure doing business with you,” he said, drily.
“Next time, don’t be so eager to take stolen goods,” said Ezio. “You might have had a customer who wanted the provenance on a painting as good as this one. Luckily for you, I’m prepared to overlook that.”
“And why, might one ask?”
“I’m a friend of the sitter.”
Flabbergasted, the gallery owner bowed him out of the shop, with as much haste as politeness permitted.
“A pleasure doing business with you, too,” said Ezio, aridly, in parting.
FORTY-ONE
Unable to keep a rendezvous with Sofia that evening, Ezio sent her a note arranging to meet the following day at the Bayezid Mosque, where he would give her back the picture.
When he arrived, he found her already there, waiting for him. In the dappled sunlight, he thought her so beautiful that the portrait scarcely did her justice.
“It’s a good likeness, don’t you think?” she said, as he unwrapped it and handed it to her.
“I prefer the original.”
She elbowed him playfully. “Buffone,” she said, as they began walking. “This was a gift from my father when we were in Venice for my twenty-eighth birthday.” She paused in reminiscence. “I had to sit for Meister Albrecht Dürer for a full week. Can you imagine? Me sitting still for seven days? Doing nothing?”
“I cannot.”
“Una tortura!”
They’d arrived at a nearby bench, on which she sat, as Ezio suppressed a laugh at the thought of her posing, trying not to move a muscle, for all that time. But the result had certainly been worth it—even though he really did prefer the original.
The laughter died on his lips as she produced a slip of paper; his expression immediately became serious, as did hers.
“One good turn . . .” she said. “I’ve found you another book location. And it’s not far from here, actually.”
She handed him the folded slip. He took it and read it.
“Grazie,” he said. The woman was a genius. He nodded gravely to her and made to go, but she stopped him with a question.
“Ezio—what is this all about? You’re not a scholar, that much is clear.” She eyed his sword. “No offense, of course!” She paused. “Do you work for the Church?”
Ezio gave an amused laugh. “Not the Church, no. But I am a teacher . . . of a kind.”
“What then?”
“I will explain one day, Sofia. When I can.”
She nodded, disappointed, but not—as he could see—actually devastated. She had sense enough to wait.
FORTY-TWO
The decoded cipher led Ezio to an ancient edifice barely three blocks distant, in the center of the Bayezid District. It seemed once to have been a warehouse, currently in disuse, and looked securely shut, but the door, when he tried it, was unlocked. Cautiously, looking up and down the street for any sign of either Ottoman guards or Janissaries, he entered, following the instructions on the paper he held in his hand.
He climbed a staircase to the first floor and went down a corridor, at the end of which he found a small room, an office, covered in dust; but its shelves were still full of ledgers, and on the desk lay a pen set and
a paper knife. He examined the room carefully, but its walls seemed to hold no clue at all about what he sought, until at last his keen eyes noticed a discrepancy in the tilework that surrounded the fireplace.
He explored this with his fingers, delicately, finding that one tile moved under his touch. Using the paper knife from the desk, he dislodged it, listening all the time for the sound of any movement from below—though he was certain no one had noticed him enter the building.
The tile came away after only a moment’s work, revealing behind it a wooden panel, which he removed, seeing in the faint light behind it a book, which he withdrew carefully. A small, very old, book. He peered at the title on its spine: the version of Aesop’s Fables put into verse by Socrates while he was under sentence of death.
He blew the dust from it and expectantly opened it to a blank page at the front. There, as he had hoped, a map of Constantinople revealed itself. He scanned it carefully, patiently, concentrating. And as the page glowed with an unearthly light, he could see that the Galata Tower was pinpointed on it. Stowing the book carefully in his belt wallet, he left the building and made his way north through the city, taking the ferry across the Golden Horn to a quay near the foot of the tower.
He had to use all his blending-in skills to get past the guards but, once inside, was guided by the book, which took him up a winding stone staircase to a landing between floors.
It appeared to contain nothing beyond its bare stone walls.
Ezio double-checked with the book and verified that he was in the right place. He searched the walls with his hands, feeling for any giveaway crevice that might indicate a hidden aperture, tensing at the sound of the slightest footfall on the stairway, but none approached. At last he found a gap between the stonework that was not filled with mortar, and followed it with his fingers, disclosing what was a very narrow, concealed doorway.
A little more research led him to push gently against the surrounding stones until he found one about three feet from the floor that gave slightly, allowing the door to swing back, revealing, within the depth of the tower’s wall, a small room, scarcely big enough to enter. Inside, on a narrow column, rested another circular stone key—his third. He squeezed into the space to retrieve it, and as he did so, it began to glow, its light increasing fast, as the room in turn seemed to grow in volume, and Ezio felt himself transported to another time, another place.
As the light was reduced to a normal brightness, the brightness of sunshine, Ezio saw Masyaf again. But time had moved on. In his heart, Ezio knew that many years had passed. He had no idea whether or not he was dreaming. It seemed to be a dream, as he was not part of it; but at the same time, somehow, he was involved, and as well as having the feeling of dreaming, the experience was also, in some way Ezio could not define, like a memory.
Disembodied, at one with the scene that presented itself to him, yet no part of it, he watched, and waited . . .
And there again was the young man in white, though no longer young; whole decades must have passed.
And his look was troubled . . .
FORTY-THREE
Altaïr, now in his sixties, but still a lean and vigorous man, sat on a stone bench outside a dwelling in the village of Masyaf, thinking. He was no stranger to adversity, and disaster seemed, once again, poised to strike. But he had kept the great, terrible artifact safe through it all. How much longer would his strength hold, to do so? How much longer would his back refuse to buckle under the blows Destiny rained on it?
His ponderings were interrupted—and the interruption was not unwelcome—by the appearance of his wife, Maria Thorpe, the Englishwoman who had once—long ago—been his enemy, a woman who had longed to be counted among the Company of the Templars.
Time and chance had changed all that. By then, after a long exile, they had returned to Masyaf. And they faced Fate together.
She joined him on the bench, sensing his lowered spirits. He told her his news.
“The Templars have retaken their Archive on Cyprus. Abbas Sofian sent no reinforcements to aid the defenders. It was a massacre.”
Maria’s lips parted in an expression of surprise and dismay. “How could God have permitted this?”
“Maria, listen to me. When we left Masyaf ten long years ago, our Order was strong. But since then, all our progress—all that we built—has been undone, dismantled.”
Her face was a mask of quiet fury. “Abbas must answer for this.”
“Answer to whom?” replied Altaïr, angrily. “The Assassins obey only his command now.”
She placed a hand on his arm. “Resist your desire for revenge, Altaïr. If you speak the truth, they will see the error of their ways.”
“Abbas executed our youngest son, Maria! He deserves to die!”
“Yes. But if you cannot win back the Brotherhood by honorable means, its foundation will crumble.”
Altaïr didn’t reply for a moment but sat silently, brooding, the subject of some deep inner struggle. But at last he looked up, and his face had cleared.
“You are right, Maria,” he said, calmly. “Thirty years ago, I let passion overtake my reason. I was headstrong and ambitious, and I caused a rift within the Brotherhood that has never fully healed.”
He rose, and Maria rose with him. Slowly, immersed in conversation, they walked through the dusty village.
“Speak reasonably, Altaïr, and reasonable men will listen,” she encouraged him.
“Some will, perhaps. But not Abbas.” Altaïr shook his head. “I should have expelled him thirty years ago when he tried to steal the Apple.”
“But my dear, you earned the respect of the other Assassins because you were merciful—you let him stay.”
He smiled at her slyly. “How do you know all this? You weren’t even there.”
She returned his smile. “I married a master storyteller,” she replied, lightly.
As they walked, they came into view of the massive hulk of the castle. But there was an air of neglect hanging over it, of desolation, even.
“Look at this place,” growled Altaïr. “Masyaf is a shadow of its former self.”
“We have been away a long time,” Maria reminded him, gently.
“But not in hiding,” he said, testily. “The threat from the Mongols—the Storm from the East, the hordes led by Khan Genghis—demanded our attention, and we rode to meet it. What man here can say the same?”
They walked on. A little later, Maria broke their silence by saying, “Where is our eldest son? Does Darim know that his brother is dead?”
“I sent Darim a message four days ago. With luck, it will have reached him by now.”
“Then we may see him soon.”
“If God wills it.” Altaïr paused. “You know, when I think of Abbas, I almost pity him. He wears his great grudge against us like a cloak.”
“His wound is deep, my darling. Perhaps . . . perhaps it will help him to hear the truth.”
But Altaïr shook his head. “It will not matter, not with him. A wounded heart sees all wisdom as the point of a knife.” He paused again, looking around him, at the handful of villagers who passed them with their eyes either lowered or averted. “As I walk through this village, I sense great fear in the people, not love.”
“Abbas has taken this place apart and robbed it of all joy.”
Altaïr stopped in his tracks and looked gravely at his wife. He searched her face, lined now, but still beautiful, and the eyes still clear, though he fancied he saw reflected in them all they had been through together. “We may be walking to our doom, Maria.”
She took his hand. “We may. But we walk together.”
FORTY-FOUR
Maria and Altaïr had reached the confines of the castle and began to encounter Assassins—members of the Brotherhood—who knew them. But the meetings were far from friendly.
One approached them and made to pass by without acknowledgment, but Altaïr stopped him.
“Brother. Speak with us a moment.”
Unwillingly, the Assassin turned. But his expression was stern. “For what reason should I speak with you? So that you can twist my mind into knots with that devilish artifact of yours?”
And he hurried away, refusing to talk any further.
But hard on his heels came another Assassin. He, too, however, clearly wished to avoid any contact with the former Mentor and his wife.
“Are you well, brother?” asked Altaïr, accosting him, and there was something challenging in his tone.
“Who is asking?” he replied, rudely.
“Do you not recognize me? I am Altaïr.”
He looked at him levelly. “That name has a hollow sound, and you—you are a cipher, nothing more. I would learn more talking to the wind.”
They made their way unchallenged to the castle gardens. Once there, they knew why they had been allowed to penetrate so far. Suddenly, they were surrounded by dark-clad Assassins, loyal to their usurping Mentor, Abbas, and they stood ready to strike at any moment. Then, on a rampart above them, Abbas himself appeared, sneeringly in control.
“Let them speak,” he ordered in an imperious voice. To Altaïr and Maria, he said: “Why have you come here? Why have you returned, unwelcome as you are, to this place? To defile it further?”
“We seek the truth about our son’s death,” replied Altaïr in a calm, clear voice. “Why was Sef killed?”
“Is it the truth you want or an excuse for revenge?” Abbas responded.
“If the truth gives us an excuse, we will act on it,” Maria threw back at him.
This retort gave Abbas pause, but after a moment’s reflection he said, in a lower tone: “Surrender the Apple, Altaïr, and I will tell you why your son was put to death.”
Altaïr nodded, as if at a secret insight, and, turning, prepared himself to address the assembled Brotherhood of Assassins. He raised his voice commandingly.
“Ah, the truth is out already! Abbas wants the Apple for himself. Not to open your minds—but to control them!”
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