Assassins - Ian Watson & Andy West (12 page)

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 20
^th
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.