Assassins - Ian Watson & Andy West (16 page)

“Around midnight one of our own…ah,
congregation… came across the body. He ran first to the mosque for
assistance. It may help you,” he suggested, “to reminisce about
Walid, whom you surely knew better than I. It is a way of letting
his merits live afresh a little longer. It will console.”

As he, already, was consoling her in such a
noble way.

“I guess you know why I was consulting Walid
in the first place,” Abigail began.

Her visitor spreads his hands. “No, I
don’t
. It was just the other day that Walid spoke about you,
in glowing terms I might add, though only briefly. Which is partly
why I’m here. Walid and I didn’t go into details. We both had so
many calls on our time.”

Time, that Walid had so unstintingly devoted
to Abigail’s little quest!

“Time,” said Kamal almost telepathically,
“which was tragically to be cut so short. Walid simply expressed
his admiration for your work and said you’d uncovered something
important and puzzling.”

To this kindly man, Abigail said, “You must
still be very busy. I don’t want to use up
your
precious
time.” Another reason why he’d arrived at her door so early, yet
had the courtesy not to mention.

“I have,” replied Kamal with evident
sincerity, “absolutely as much time for you, as Walid himself
had.”

Southern
Ethiopia: August 1158

The scrawny, scabbed, suppurating Igwe had survived
for a month in the cage, the object of jibes and sharp jabs. Hakim
refrained from speculation about how he himself might have fared
there, and peered studiously. To his surprise, the youth suddenly
scrabbled to his feet and staggered towards the doctor, a baleful
rage burning in his eyes. Monkeys leapt up the bamboo poles,
screaming and chattering. Collapsing upon the container of dirty
water near the bars, the Igwe immersed his forehead, then lapped
like a beast. Moments later, the prisoner turned aside and vomited.
Blood issued from the Igwe’s nostrils and one of his ears, as
though his head was trying to burst.

Hakim spied a rash of purple spots amid the
dirt and sores on the Igwe’s dark chest. And surely the youth’s
neck was swollen too.

The signs of plague! Which could only have
been caught in the monkey cage! Caught from a monkey! No villager
showed such signs, nor had come closer to the prisoner than a
spear’s length.

An amazed Hakim rejoiced. Despite all the
setbacks, his planning and patience had not been in vain. Here was
his first reward.
Praise God!
At least one of the monkeys in
the cage must carry the seed of plague within it, without itself
dying. To that extent, Arwe was proved right! Yet the mechanism of
transference couldn’t be from ingesting the blood or tears of a
weeping monkey.
Was it from biting?
The Igwe had several
monkey bites upon his flesh. Yet if so, why did Arwe have Hakim
drink
blood in the protection ceremony?

Hakim’s mind raced like a steed, then he
hurried to find Yaqob. Whatever the explanation, they must alert
the villagers at once, claiming credit for the event.

The villagers danced ecstatically, hooting and
jeering as they witnessed the mounting agony and bizarre delirium
of the Igwe, horribly tortured by his own body.

By noon the next day the prisoner was dead, a
disgusting bag of flesh upon the floor of the cage. Black boils
protruded in his groin and armpits, like toads trying to burst
through the skin. Orange spots infested his thighs like beetles.
When a warrior speared one of those boils in the groin, a
foul-smelling liquid spilled out. Sniffing suspiciously, the
monkeys had drawn as far back from the corpse as they could.

Only the very next day, a hunter brought into
the village a small monkey tethered to a pole, a
young
monkey, whose hair was
grey
.

“Oh!” effused Hakim to Yaqob, to God, to
anyone who would hear, “this is most excellent indeed!”

Scarcely a week passed after the death of the
prisoner than a young warrior displaying unmistakable tokens of
plague staggered into Hakim and Yaqob’s hut. Swaying and dizzy, he
demanded that this foreign Priest-Witch cure him.

This was all that Yaqob translated before he
made an urgent excuse and darted from the hut, leaving Hakim no
option but to behave as a charlatan, making passes with his hands
and chanting verses from the Qu’ran as though those were magic
spells. After pacifying the doomed man somewhat, Hakim hustled his
‘patient’ to the thorny corral for cattle at the edge of the
village.

Women and children, some men too, had
followed Hakim and his unsteady charge, curious or anxious. Opening
the bamboo gate to the cattle compound, Hakim half-carried the
plague victim inside, then began waving his arms and shouting to
expel all the skinny humpbacked cows.

This was all that he could think of by way of
quarantine, as recommended by some Arab physicians. Isolation
seemed instinctively the best course of action. Hakim’s mind worked
furiously. Centuries earlier, Procopius had stated that contact
with people already displaying symptoms wasn’t dangerous. The
dangerous time was the dormant period, while the seed of plague
grew in a man before its harvest of symptoms came forth; as Arwe
indeed had known.

This sick hunter must have been carried
plague for a long time unawares. Mixing and mingling. Could he
somehow have passed the seed on already? Was it far too late for
quarantine?

The man displaying the deadly tokens had
prodded the Igwe prisoner with his spear on at least two occasions
witnessed by Hakim, and, yes, he’d then licked the bloody tip of
his spear, sneering.

Blood on the spear had somehow transferred
seeds of plague in its infancy to the owner’s body.

But how? By ingestion? Or had the young
warrior perhaps nicked his lips or tongue on the sharp point…?

With the shafting clarity of lightning in the
night, and the vision of a bloodied spearhead between parted lips
dazzling his inner mind, Hakim understood
exactly why
his
experiments hadn’t succeeded – and how Arwe had cunningly protected
him.

Forcing the previous prisoners to consume
blood and organs from weeping monkeys had failed to give them
plague,
because the seeds had no way to enter their own blood,
only their gut!
And those three Igwe mustn’t have had any
cuts or wounds in their mouths
.

The essence of plague harboured in either
monkey or man, Hakim realised, must enter the bloodstream
directly
in order to take hold! And invulnerability to
plague must be subject to this same rule. There’d been an open
wound in his mouth on that evening of the protection ceremony. Arwe
had seen to that by knocking out the tooth; an acute observer, he’d
probably been aware of the condition for weeks. No doubt the
cunning Priest-Witch would otherwise have resorted to an alternate
plan, maybe nicking Hakim’s lips with a sharp edge of the monkey
skull.

Right now Hakim couldn’t concentrate on this
realisation. Some women and older children were taking charge of
the expelled cattle to stop them from wandering off. All other eyes
were upon him. He shut the bamboo gate, then spied Yaqob at the
edge of the crowd.

“Come here at once!” Hakim bellowed.

Sheepishly Yaqob pushed his way forward.

“You dog, you deserted me!” Immediately Hakim
regretted his hotly spat words, and contrived a smile. “If you had
gone from me, as dear Sadiq went from me, I would have been
inconsolable. Oh I feared you had run from the village.”

Yaqob looked shamefaced. “I beg forgiveness.
I was overcome by fear. But bands of Igwe scouts are lurking in the
forest. I realized that my place is here, so that we may protect
one another.”

“So then, good Yaqob,” replied Hakim. “Which
is the greater fear? Of possible disease here, or almost certain
capture and torture? Come now, we must organise our hosts to
protect themselves.” Now at least he could issue instructions that
would be understood.

Charlestown, Boston, Massachusetts: May

Jack Turner shut off the phone, then threw it across
the room. He swore, then felt guilty as the Reverend Collins was
staring intently at him from the wide-screen TV. He restarted the
inspirational sermon, yet only seconds later halted the DVD again.
He couldn’t concentrate, and the familiar order of his
Swedish-style flat was little comfort. It was bad enough to be
roasted by his boss; to get roasted at home, on a Sunday of all
days, was unprecedented and deeply unsettling. Very little passed
unnoticed by the chief of the Investigations Division of Boston
ICE, apparently even when he’d just returned from vacation. Yet
ultimately, it was all Mam’zelle Leclaire’s fault.

Jack stroked his chin thoughtfully. Leclaire
had given the mosque story to Paul Summers, but no reporter
would’ve published it without confirmation. From who? Grunty Hogan
of the Intelligence Division, most likely. For three hundred bucks
in a plain envelope, either out of Summer’s own pocket or more
likely reimbursed afterwards by the
Globe
. Hogan did have
his uses in other regards, which is why Jack tolerated the man; he
was a channel for information or disinformation that Jack wanted
leaked, and Hogan knew not to overstep certain bounds. In this case
though, Hogan must have thought that watching a mosque where
foreigners
gathered was a routine precaution, which any
sensible mosque should probably expect; besides, if a reporter
already had wind of ICE surveillance, it wouldn’t stay much of a
secret for long…

Now, to add insult to injury, he’d been told
in no uncertain terms to lay off her.
Daughter of Leclaire
Enterprises, eh?
Whatever Daddy’s goddam little empire was
called in French. And he’d already lost two days physical watch on
her because handling the critical Afghan passport scam had eaten
all his resource. For all he knew, she could be consorting with
terrorists right now!

Well, Jack wasn’t going to let go. A big bad
fish was moving somewhere just under the surface, he could sense
it, and Mam’zelle was his only line to the critter. Yet maybe he
could even turn this situation to advantage? He retrieved the
phone, fortunately unbroken, and called Grunty Hogan at home.

“Grunty, Jack Turner here…. Yeah, right,
not
a social call. You’ve been a naughty boy, confirming the
mosque surveillance to that
Globe
reporter… Come on, I know
it was
you
. And there’s heat coming down on account of it…
Yeah, on
me
… But you can make things right instead…You’re
damn right you’ll have to! What I want you to do is contact that
Globe
guy, Summers. Say you have something else of interest
for him, meet him wherever you do. Tell him, sell him, same thing
in your case, that the boss has cancelled surveillance of the
mosque. Yes, I know… but here’s the bit where you need to box
clever. I want you to let slip that
all
surveillance of a
female professor at Radcliffe Ladies College… no, I know it isn’t
called
that
… okay okay, just say Harvard, has been
cancelled. Yeah, that’s the assignment number, I see you’re
over-informed
as usual, but
don’t
mention her name.
Yeah, she’s into medieval research. There’s no need to give a
reason… just mention she has heavyweight connections. Yeah, like
it’s just chatter. Do you think you can manage that? Good.”

Jack hung up.

And now, though this needed to be done in a
black way, unauthorised, Paul Fucking Summers’ phones would be
bugged. Confident that Mam’zelle herself wasn’t bugged, Summers
would have no reason to suspect that he himself was. That way,
clever Jack could follow
part
of the story at least. With
luck, he ought to be able to work out what Mam’zelle was up to, as
long as she trusted Summers, told him stuff, which seemed to be the
case. And maybe, just maybe, she’d let something slip if she
thought the heat was off. In a week or so, he’d quietly restore the
taps on her landlines too; theoretically at least official
buildings required lesser approval and, stretching a point or two,
the university was official.

Dan Siegel was the guy to call next; a little
dull but loyal and reliable, codename Chronicles. Not that Jack
would be using a codename when calling the guy at home during the
day that should be set aside for rest and prayer.

“Sorry to spoil your Sunday, Dan, if indeed
I’m spoiling it… Glad to hear not… This business about Abigail
Leclaire… we need to stop following her around right now, and I’ve
already seen to that, but I need to have a little chat with you
about Press guys who abuse their freedom, and about phones…”

Two minutes later Jack hung up again, and
sighed heavily. All this was definitely spoiling
his
Sunday.

Southern
Ethiopia: September 1158

The village descended into chaos, yet Hakim’s thought
was consumed more by intricate puzzles about transference of plague
than by the plight of the villagers. All the old writings agreed as
regards rampant contagion – and the devastating progress of plague
through nations, with its virtual erasure of entire cities, is what
made the disease so attractive as the ultimate weapon against
unbelief. Hakim was now convinced that the bloodstream must become
seeded. Yet the villagers were certainly not biting each other, nor
transferring bodily fluids into the veins of others by a different
route. A paradox!

At first Hakim’s authority was sufficient
that he could tour the village constantly, inspecting for signs of
plague and, if found, ordering the afflicted person to proceed
forthwith to the former cattle corral, or in some cases be carried
there. He had the corral guarded, and its occupants supplied with
food and water. Believing himself protected, Hakim shirked no
contact, often carrying or tending to victims himself.