Assassins - Ian Watson & Andy West (7 page)

What exactly had that note said
? With
shaky fingers she eventually brought up an image of the plague
document, then focused down upon the Provençal scrawl at the
bottom.

Hospitaller

Have Pity

She’d lay a hundred to one that this
Hospitaller was Guy. And both he and Safiyya were bound to the
Ismaili man of rank, Sinan al-Din ibn Nasir,
Sinaldin
.

She leaned back, trying to still her mind and
think carefully. Having ignored her watch for hours, she now
checked it. 2.23 am.

Did the chapbook once belong to Guy himself?
Why keep those two pieces of paper together? The poem of his
friend’s lover, and an account of plague scribbled with a direct
plea. At least
someone
had kept them together, someone aware
of the relationships involved.

She checked dates. The plague mentioned in
Montlume’s records was the first great wave of the Black Death to
strike Europe, reaching Marseilles in 1347 AD. Was the poem about
plague?
…death / swells and overflows
: swells within the
victims and overflows the land? Had Safiyya given literary
expression to
the
major disaster of her era? If so, was
esoteric Ismaili wisdom irrelevant? Yet why would the Imam be so
central?

Disciplined by many years in academia, she
put speculation firmly aside. Information had to come first;
figuring it out came second. Having got her teeth upon a thread,
she wasn’t going to let go until she’d pulled it all the way.
Recharging with more coffee, she launched back into information
space.

The thread of Sinaldin and Guy pulled and
pulled, unravelling the tapestry of history to reveal complex
subplots.

Guy’s father had been a knight of the
Templars, transferring to the Hospitallers when the Templars were
forcibly disbanded, around 1312 AD. Guy’s grandfather was a Templar
too, very high in the Order, a Grand Prior. So if Sinaldin and Guy
were
renewing the friendship of their grandfathers
, why on
Earth had a Grand Prior from Christianity’s leading military
monastic order been consorting with a Muslim? And why had their
offspring continued the relationship?

She drew a blank on Sinaldin’s family and
history. However, she had clues. He was Ismaili, a man of rank, and
his enemy was
a Saljuq
, no doubt a Seljuk Turk. Plus, she
now knew he probably came from Syria or Persia, or had connections
there.

Soon she discovered that the Nizari Ismailis,
a secretive medieval sect, had created a network of well-defended
fortresses throughout Syria and northern Persia. Regarded as
heretics by most Sunni Muslims and probably by some Shi’a too, the
Nizaris had many enemies, though their traditional foes were Seljuk
Turks.

Shit! This was bad, for it would pique Jack’s
interest. The Nizaris’ chief castle was at Alamut, none other than
the
eagle’s nest
Jack had already picked up on, the place
from which the sect and its leader had gained their lurid title,
the Assassins of Alamut
. From the early twelfth century, the
Imams there had claimed leadership over all Ismailis.

Alamut was overrun by the Mongol hordes in
1256 AD, long before Safiyya wrote her poem. Though Nizari
fortresses further west survived longer, most historians considered
this period the end for the Assassins. Yet it didn’t take much
digging to find newer research, theorising an extended or even
permanent survival of the murderous sect.

If so, it seemed plausible that Sinaldin’s
family had occupied positions ‘of rank’ in the Nizari hierarchy. As
a youth, his grandfather may even have been at Alamut and seen the
Imam there, shortly before the Mongol conquests. Alas, it looked as
though Jack’s superficial connection via the word
eagle
could be confirmed by real evidence, even if circumstantial at the
moment.

“Damn him!” Abigail muttered to the chill air
of her office. “He’ll think he’s on to something.” It wasn’t right
she should be racing a secretly racist cop to the resolution of
medieval puzzles and poetic meaning. The security services had gone
mad. The American government had gone mad!

She ignored fatigue and furiously opened more
search windows, in the process opening a Pandora’s Box of shocking
historical happenings.

Though the Templars and the Assassins
apparently alternated between conflict and truce, Abigail smelled a
strange reek of complicity about their relationship. Various modern
scholars pointed out a close alignment between their hierarchies
and rituals, even their robes; white with a red cross for the
Templars, and white with red trim for the Assassins.

Other writers claimed that these similarities
were superficial, yet both organisations rode roughshod over the
proclaimed belief-systems of their respective religions. Both too
cherished mystical secrets often bundled up in the name Gnosticism;
and seemingly that’s what eventually sealed the fate of the
Templars.

Jealous of the Templars’ hundreds of castles,
their 35,000 utterly loyal brethren, their seaports, fleet,
hospitals and secret drugs, plus their vast banking system, Phillip
the Fair of France and Pope Clement V combined forces to bring the
Order down. They arrested 15,000 on a single day. Under torture,
some confessed to trampling and spitting on the cross during
initiation ceremonies, as well as other un-Christian acts and
doctrines including a denial of Christ.

A few of the elite, knights and priors and
the Grand Master himself, Jacques de Molay, were burnt at the
stake. Over a period of five years or so, thousands of Templars
were gruesomely interrogated. Most were just sergeants or lay
brethren, not privy to the inner rituals. The souls of their feet
were burned off, or lead weights placed on their chests until they
were slowly crushed. Some had their teeth ripped out and steel
needles jammed into the raw nerves, or were gradually filled with
water via a funnel until they suffocated.

A scattering of Templar knights from Castille
and Provence were so horrified that they fled to Islamic Granada in
southern Spain,
the
home of Safiyya
, where they
became Muslims. An interesting insight into Templar mentality,
mused Abigail, considering that Muslims were supposed to be mortal
enemies of the warrior monks!

King Phillip couldn’t be seen to take
everything. A good portion of Templar property was officially made
over to the Hospitallers, and some knights discreetly transferred
to that Order. Apparently Guy’s father had been clever enough or
lucky enough to manage this, and so avoided persecution.

The loyalty of the Nizaris to mainstream
religious practice was even more questionable than that of the
Templars. Most of their assassinations were carried out against
other Muslims. Abigail was shocked to find that at one time they
even offered to turn Christian and ally permanently with Crusader
forces in the Holy Lands. On several occasions they’d fought
alongside Frankish armies against the Saracens.

The proposed alliance never got off the
ground. Had it done so, the Nizaris would probably have interpreted
Christian beliefs as idiosyncratically as they did those of Islam.
For the Nizaris considered the Sunni Saracens and most other
Muslims as no nearer to religious truth than the Christians;
effectively infidels. Only their own mystical doctrines counted,
their own relationship with God.

And what about the 2,000 Bezels a year paid
by Syrian Nizaris to the Templars for about twenty years in the
late twelfth century? A tidy sum! Some said a tribute; some said a
subsidy
from the greater organisation to the lesser; some
said payment for services rendered.

Abigail sighed and tried to stretch the
stiffness out of her shoulders. What a fascinating maze of impiety,
power and military sectarianism. Though what relevance had it to
the papers in the chapbook?

At the very least it seemed that the families
of Guy and Sinaldin had a long association of some kind. Even
before Guy saved Sinaldin’s life, probably there was great trust
between the two men. Might both be steeped in the secrets of their
respective traditions, the Templars and the Assassins? Might their
families have been part of an alliance of survival for these
theoretically terminated organisations? Might they share arcane
beliefs that transcended both Christianity and Islam? Was there
Gnosticism in the poem? If only she had the rest of it!

Abigail felt that the strangeness of the
early hours was leading her into fantasy. Yet her oft-proven
instinct for hidden truths burned bright. There was
something
here!

Maybe the Holy Water was part of a Gnostic
ritual. Surely there was more to the gift than revealed by
Montlume’s scribe. Ordinary folk would be fooled by ‘miraculous’
holy water, but well-travelled men of lordly rank, returning from
the Holy Lands? Maybe there was some special symbolism in this
Water.

Abigail re-focussed on the screen and forced
her weary brain to digest more.

Through sustained contact with the Assassins,
the Templars absorbed Ismaili philosophies, acting as a conduit to
inject these into Europe. Individual Templars, who escaped the
destruction of their Order, covertly continued to teach the
Gnostic-Ismaili doctrines and mystical techniques they had acquired
and augmented in the Holy Lands; the true secrets of the once
powerful knights of the Temple. Like fungi in the dark of a forest
floor, these teachings flourished beneath the canopy of
Christianity, gradually giving rise to the occult arts in
Europe…

There were diagrams of eight-pointed stars, a
crescent and Byzantine cross combined, other strange symbols. She
flicked to another window and read of Hasan II announcing the
spiritual Resurrection at Alamut. As Walid had mentioned, Shari’ah
law was annulled, replaced by feasting during Ramadan and the
abandonment of sexual restrictions. She moved on to tales of
Assassin initiates, high on hashish, being shown the Garden of
Paradise…

As though she’d taken hashish herself,
visions began to occupy the screen: pentangles and swords and cups
of blood, white-robed Arabs and Europeans deep in ritual, tortured
men with ragged mouths and silent screams, the plunging arc of the
assassin’s knife, plague sweeping through populations like a blight
through wheat, Holy Water sparkling in a vial.

Her head slammed onto the keyboard and woke
her. It was 5.26am. God, she must get back to her flat!

Cronkite Graduate
Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts: April

The phone rudely pushed Abigail into wakefulness.
Sweating and confused, she grabbed the intruding device.

“Hello?”

“Hell, at last!”

“Oh, hello.”

“Well there’s no need to sound so
disappointed!”

“Sorry. I’m not disappointed, just tired. I
worked late last night. Research stuff.”

“Hey I miss you Bee, and you didn’t return my
calls!”

Guilt flushed Abigail’s face. It was a good
job he couldn’t see her. It seemed her most commonly used word to
him these days was
sorry
.

“Sorry, my mobile’s playing up again. Doesn’t
always charge properly.” This was true, but not the whole truth.
“And I never know when you’re sleeping or at college during the
day. I wish you’d give up that bar job, or at least work someplace
that actually closes before morning!”
Unlike, say, her
office?

But this was an old bone of contention
between them. Terry had started working in bars before they’d met,
to support his tardy and protracted bid for a college degree. The
hours didn’t clash with lectures. Yet the nearer he got to those
qualifications he supposedly needed, the less progress he actually
seemed to make. Further requirements would mysteriously appear.
After a trek of many years through business studies, computer
engineering, even philosophy, Abigail realised Terry was never
going to finish. The truth was that he loved pleasing people, loved
charming them. And as long as it was inside a swanky hotel or club,
or maybe a fashionable downtown restaurant, he absolutely loved
working in bars.

“It’s good money,” replied Terry defensively.
“You could’ve emailed from work or something, I was worried about
you.”

“Sorry.”
Damn
. “I’m on to something
new with Safiyya al-Ballisiyya. You know how I am, I’ve got to
unravel it.” She admitted this much, but decided it wasn’t wise to
mention about Jack Turner and the ICE interest. Terry would leap to
her defence of course, but he’d be hugely angry too and would
probably ring everyone from the local police to the president. That
was a complication she didn’t need.

“I
do
know how you are. Obsessed!”

His voice was light though. She thought she’d
got away with it. But then…

“Is that all Bee? You
are
telling me
everything?”

She knew that low tone well, the one that
descended almost into a growl. It was the surfacing of Terry’s
jealousy.

“Yes,” she answered, swiftly and flatly. It
was liaisons with imagined lovers he was probing for, not
arrangements to meet government agents with imagined plots, which
stretched fantastically back into medieval history and poetic
literature.

“Jesus! You’re seeing someone, aren’t
you?”

“Terry. Don’t be ludicrous. I don’t do
affairs. I have one lover, and it’s you, and I’ll see you tonight.
Sean’s got your shift, right?”

“Right.” Diminished, but not puppy-dog.

“OK. Later.”

She hung up.

It was 10.37 am. She’d only got to bed around
6.30 am. She flopped back down onto her pillow, and wondered why
life was so difficult sometimes.

Southern
Ethiopia: October 1156

The Priest-Witch’s name was Arwe, and he was reputed
to be a hundred years old. From Yaqob, their interpreter between
Arabic and Oromiffa, the common local language, Hakim and Sadiq
learned that Arwe took his name from a potent ‘serpent king’ of
ancient times, who was killed by an ancestor of Bilqis, the Queen
of Sheba. Arwe was both famous and feared in this rain-forested
region of southern Ethiopia, a vast land of great contrasts.
Indeed, once Yaqob had grasped that Hakim’s mission was to discover
any traditions concerned with pestilence, their guide-interpreter
fell into a strange mood, brooding overnight. Only the next day did
he finally recommend a long journey to consult the redoubtable
Arwe, though for an increased payment due to risk. Yet Yaqob’s
modest greed had reassured Hakim, rather than irritating him.