I turned away and searched the upstairs for weapons and found nothing that provided any answers. So I stole one of Mr. Mouradipour’s clean shirts from a hall closet. In the bathroom I washed the blood off my face and throat, ran fingers through my hair, and took a moment to look at the blue eyes in the mirror. They were filled with doubts and questions.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked the man in the mirror. He had no answers at all, so I went back downstairs.
I found Ghost standing in the living room staring at Krystos, who stared back as if mesmerized. I clicked my tongue and Ghost looked at me with a strange expression in his brown eyes. He was not trembling as much as before, and there was more wolf than shepherd in the look he gave me. Maybe it was the smell of fresh blood or the sight of wounded prey. Or maybe the stress had pushed him into a different head space.
“Ghost,” I said, and for a moment he did nothing except stare.
I took a step toward him. It’s a pack leader move, challenging and demanding. He would either back down or go for me.
“Down!” I ordered.
And, with only the slightest hesitation, he lay down. He didn’t roll. I wasn’t asking that of him. But he obeyed my order.
I squatted between Ghost and Krystos. I don’t know if the Greek had participated in the horrors upstairs, or if he even knew about it, but he was part of this team. Apparently the leader of the team, and that put the whole thing on him as far as I was concerned. He could read those thoughts from my expression. He read other things too.
He began to cry.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
CIA Safe House #11
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 12:59 p.m.
I stared at Krystos for a long time without speaking. Twenty, thirty seconds. It always feels longer when you’re holding the low cards. He may have been a tough guy when he had a gun and a crew, but when it came to toughing it out with me, he was holding four low cards and a joker.
Silence and patience were my cards while I waited for him to break.
“P-please…” he said in a hoarse whisper. “For the love of God.”
“Is that what you are, Krystos? A man of God? A true believer?”
“Yes.”
“Your friends, too?”
He glanced around at the dead. “Yes.”
“What’s that mean exactly, being a ‘man of God.’ To you, I mean.”
The word was a tough one for him but he came up with him. “Ordained.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re a minister?”
He shook his head. “Priest.”
“Bullshit. What about going to hell for torture and murder?”
Krystos raised his bound wrists and nodded toward his left arm. “Sleeve,” he said.
I pushed his sleeve up and there was tattoo of a cross with Latin words written in an arch above and below it. Above was
AD EXTIRPANDA
Below the cross
EXURGE D ET JUDICA CAUSAM TUAM
“What’s that?”
“Permission,” he said.
When I did not respond, he said something that I pretty much never expected to hear anywhere outside of a Dan Brown novel or an old episode of Monty Python.
“The Holy Inquisition.”
Interlude Six
Fortress of Alamut
Alborz Mountains, Northern Iran.
June 1192 C.E.
Hassan ibn Sabbah sat on a couch that was draped in rich fabrics. Pillows littered the stairs of the dais on which the couch sat. Two warriors stood at the foot of the dais, naked swords laid across their naked arms, their faces as hard and unmoving as stone. The scent of hashish wafted through the chamber and out onto the breeze where it was whipped away high above the mountains.
A carpet lolled out like a great tongue, rippling down the stairs and stretching across the long reception chamber. Sewn into the fabric with delicate skill were fantastical battles. Eagles attacked dragons and tore them to pieces; desert djinn ripped the hearts from crusaders. It had been a gift from Ibn Sabbah’s much missed old friend, the mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam. How Ibn Sabbah wished that his friend had lived to see this day. To see what Ibn Sabbah had accomplished.
He accepted a cup of juice from a servant who then bowed himself away from the dais, and as he sipped Ibn Sabbah studied the fifty men who stood in silent rows on either side of the runner carpet.
His fida’i.
His assassins.
His sacred killers. Guardians of the secret shared with him by his cousin, Ibrahim al-Asiri. Guardians, too, of the faith. Men who would be used to spill the blood of the infidel in the cleverest plan Sabbah had ever heard. Preserving the word of God through the spilling of blood.
A door at the far end of the chamber opened and Ibn Sabbah’s chief advisor entered, followed by six bare-chested guards. Between each guard staggered a man in shackles. The prisoners were freshly washed and wore simple but clean clothes. Ibn Sabbah did not allow prisoners to be mistreated, and he absolutely forbade any unwashed person to enter this room or draw near to that precious carpet. The rows of assassins watched dispassionately as the prisoners were brought to the cleared space to the right of the dais and well away from the carpet. Ibn Sabbah nodded to his advisor who produced a key and unlocked the shackles.
Ibn Sabbah studied the three men. Two of them stared at the floor, terrified, confused, and lost. The third stared up at Ibn Sabbah with the defiance sometimes seen in the eyes of a man who is doomed but who wants to spit in death’s eye. A brave man, which was doubly impressive because this man had seen other prisoners taken from the cells, day after day, and probably heard their screams. This man knew that none of those prisoners ever returned to the dungeons. This one has heart, Ibn Sabbah mused.
The advisor nodded to the guards who trotted over and laid their swords at the feet of the prisoners.
“Pick them up,” ordered Ibn Sabbah.
Only the brave man raised his eyes to Ibn Sabbah. The man was a Sunni with a full beard and gray eyes. “Why? So you can snigger as fifty men cut us to pieces? I spit on such cowardice.”
He made as if to do so, but Ibn Sabbah’s voice stopped him.
“You have a chance to live,” he said. “Do not squander it on an insult that you cannot take back.”
Ibn Sabbah snapped his fingers and a single fida’i assassin stepped out of the line and padded silently to stand facing the prisoners. He carried no sword and had only a small curved dagger in his sash. The brave prisoner stood with lips pursed, but he did not spit. He eyed the assassin and then looked again at Ibn Sabbah.
“This is not a trick,” said Ibn Sabbah. “I make you an offer. Take up those swords and face my man. If you kill or incapacitate him, then you may go free. I will give you each a camel and a pouch of gold coins. Before Allah I swear that I tell the truth.”
The three Sunni prisoners shifted uneasily. The brave one continued to glare at Ibn Sabbah, though now there was doubt in his eyes.
“And if we fail to kill him?”
“Then he will assuredly kill you.”
The brave Sunni nodded. “Which one of us fights him first?”
Ibn Sabbah smiled. “All three of you will fight him. Three men, three swords against my man and his knife. Surely even men such as you-thieves and pirates of the desert-could not call those unfair odds.”
“Your word before Allah?” demanded the brave Sunni.
“May His wrath wither the flesh on my bones and make dust of my household.”
The brave man grinned and fast as lightning he hooked his toe under the blade of the nearest sword and kicked it into the air, caught it like a magician, whirled and charged at the fida’i. The other men, even cowed as they were, bent and snatched up the weapons and joined in, knowing that God had granted them mercy when they believed their lives were over. The three of them charged toward the assassin, closing the few yards in a heartbeat, swords glittering as they struck.