Sobieski and Lorraine exchanged a confused look. They didn’t know what to make of this. Envoys of the Ottoman host, clearly—but for what reason? Within days, if not hours, they would be engaged in a fight to the death. What did this signify? They could see that the riders were dressed in ceremonial costume and didn’t seem to be armed. More intriguing were the camels, which were huge, adorned with exquisitely embroidered fabrics and precious metal trimmings, and carried large carved-leather packs hung across their backs.
Sobieski studied the lead horseman, who now straightened and slowly pulled his coat wide open, as did his consorts, to show that they were unarmed. Indeed, no muskets, pistols, or sabers were strapped across their chests. The lead Ottoman turned to show the guards as much, then turned back to face the king and made a gesture asking for permission to approach the enclosure.
The Polish king was a hard and naturally suspicious man, but he was also a pragmatist. If this was another formal demand for surrender, he would have two of the envoys executed before the third, who would be allowed to return to his master to relay its rejection. But a summons for surrender didn’t require three loaded camels. Was there something else on the sultan’s mind? A call to negotiate a truce, perhaps? Something that might spare the inevitable deaths that were to come, even with victory?
The commander of the guards looked to Sobieski for instructions. The king motioned for the riders to be let through.
Shadowed very closely by the guards whose swords were still drawn and ready, the three men moved as one, advancing in triangular formation with measured pace until they were standing no more than fifteen feet from the gathered commanders. There, they bowed again.
The leader said, “I carry greetings from his eminence my lord padishah Mehmed the fourth, the sultan of sultans, khan of khans, commander of the faithful and ruler of the black and white seas and of Rumeli, and from his most valiant serasker in this holiest of campaigns, the grand vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha.”
Sobieski studied the Ottoman as an interpreter translated his words. The envoy, a tall man who was not out of his twenties, was sweating profusely, but the king saw no fear in his eyes. It was clearly more from the long ride under the harsh summer sun while dressed in full ceremonial regalia: baggy salvar trousers, long boots, turban, and a flowing red coat.
“My greetings to your eminent master, soldier. And what is the purpose of your venture?”
The envoy bowed again. The two men with him did the same. Then he straightened and looked the king straight in the eye.
“I have been sent to convey a message from my master.”
Sobieski frowned. “And what would that be?”
The man didn’t react at first. Then a wry, curiously serene smile seeped across his face and he said, “He wishes you a peaceful journey,” before adding, “Allahu Akbar.”
And with that, he slipped his hands in his pockets, and before the king, the guards, or any of the commanders could even react, he blew up.
As did the two other envoys and the camels—a massive explosion that ripped through the royal enclosure and reduced it and everything around it to flaming debris.
Confusion and panic streaked across the gathered troops as they watched their leaders disappear in a raging fireball. The real horror, however, was yet to descend on them, the one that was now being heralded by the piercing war cries and the deep, ominous thuds of Ottoman kettledrums echoing out from behind the nearby hills.
In that instant, in a blink of an eye, everything changed.
History changed.
Sobieski wouldn’t lead his winged hussars to a crushing defeat of the Ottoman army in the fields outside Vienna. He wouldn’t save the city, nor would he stand before the grand vizier’s ravaged camp in victory and proclaim “Venimus, vidimus, deus vicit” (“We came, We saw, God conquered”). The grand vizier wouldn’t flee to Belgrade, where, on the sultan’s orders, three months later—on Christmas Day, as church bells were ringing across Europe—he would be strangled, decapitated, and have his head skinned and stuffed and presented to the sultan at his hunting palace in Edirne. Three years later, the Duke of Lorraine wouldn’t retake Buda from the weakened Ottomans. Max Emanuel wouldn’t liberate Belgrade two years after that. Prince Eugene of Savoy wouldn’t deal a crushing blow to the sultan at Senta in 1697.
There would be no miraculous victories, no “Age of Heroes.” They were all dead, blown to bits in the meadow outside Tulln, with no one to fill their illustrious boots.
Nothing like this had ever been done before.
The Ottoman envoy had used explosives that were twenty times more powerful than gunpowder. In fact, up until that day, the sticks strapped under his coat and stowed in the camel’s pouches had never been seen. And they wouldn’t have, not for another two hundred years. Not until 1867, in fact, when Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist, would invent his Extradynamit blasting powder.
The sheer audacity of the method of attack was also unheard of. Until that day, the concept of a suicide bomber had not existed. It would only rear its ugly head for the first time even later, in Russia in the late 1800s, when Nobel’s invention would become the method of choice for suicidal revolutionary assassins.
Which is how it all should have been.
But wasn’t.
And all because of a man who stumbled onto a great secret in an underground crypt in Palmyra.
1
PARIS
The dizzy, light-headed feeling was vaguely familiar.
Although Ayman Rasheed had done it before, the last time had been years ago. And the sensation was so bizarre, so intense, so overwhelming that after each trip he’d wondered if anyone ever got used to it. Not that he imagined many others knew about it, let alone had experienced it. There had to be some others, though, surely—after all, it had been out there for centuries, millennia even—but if so, where were they?
Or, rather, when?
He had no way of knowing, and he’d long since learned to avoid speculating about it. It only led down a bottomless rabbit hole of questions and infinite possibilities.
This time, though, the sensations were far more intense for the simple reason that Ayman Rasheed wasn’t in good shape. In fact, he knew he was barely clinging to life, which was why he’d had to make the jump as quickly as possible.
As his eyes struggled to adjust to the faint light of the streetlamps on the bridge looming over him, he felt the dizziness return. He muttered a curse and spat out some blood before huddling down and scanning his surroundings, alert to any potential threat, the cool air floating up from the river cutting a bone-deep chill into his naked body.
For that was how he always arrived after a jump: bare-skinned, stripped of any clothing or possessions.
The Paris he’d arrived in was very different, of course. Beyond what he could see, it was smelly, the air thick with pollutants, a stench that felt more disagreeable, even poisonous, compared with the stink from the lack of modern sewage that he’d grown accustomed to over the last couple of decades. It was noisy, too—that was the one thing that always hit hardest, even at this time of night, when the city was mostly asleep. An ambient buzz, a thrum, distant gears and pistons from cars, buses, generators, and all kinds of mechanical contraptions burrowing almost surreptitiously into one’s consciousness from everywhere and nowhere.
He’d forgotten how noisy that world was.
He coughed up more blood and felt a renewed onslaught of dizziness and nausea. This wasn’t good. He needed his strength and all of his guile to pull this off and save himself. He shut his eyes for a moment, concentrating on calming his racing heartbeat, willing his senses to fall into step and guard him from any potential threat. He just needed to get to the hospital. Just that. The rest would take care of itself. Any other outcome was inconceivable to him. After everything he’d been through, after everything he’d achieved, he couldn’t allow it all to come to a pathetic end, here, alone and anonymous, a naked, tattooed corpse curled up in a dark corner on the banks of the Seine.
1
AH: