Nick held one lens of the bifocals like a magnifying glass over the spot that Hadad indicated. There he saw a blacksmith’s touchmark etched into the hilt in Latin letters — the initials AA.
Hadad retrieved his bifocals and returned them to their place in the head of his cane. “Ayan’s family once had a smithy in the Ankara Citadel. I trust you have the resources to find it, if it is still there, but I must caution you. The Hashashin are not as dead as the world believes. The man you fought today is proof of it. The wisest course is to leave them be.”
Drake snorted. “We can handle them.”
Hadad shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Perhaps.”
Nick stared down at the knife, the beautiful inlays, the strange, dark alloy behind them. “Hadad, if the Hashashin have been in hiding for eight hundred years, why would they surface now?”
“Only one reason.” The old man stood, sweeping a couple of halva wafers from the plate as he stepped around the table. “Armageddon is approaching.” Then he melted away into the passing crowd.
CHAPTER 21
The Emissary smoothed out his white hooded robe and shifted his hands behind his back, clasping the lifeless prosthetic fingers as if they were real. In this pose he gazed across the Nile from the window of a forgotten watchtower, considering the thousand minarets of Cairo. He admired their workmanship. Each one was beautiful, unique. And like the mosques below them, each would soon become entirely meaningless.
The time of the true Qiyamah rapidly approached. The time long predicted by Ismaili scholars when mankind would join together in enlightenment, and these places of both worship and segregation would become merely architectural curiosities. But the advent of the Qiyamah required a purge. Looking out from the watchtower, the Emissary could see the path to Armageddon in a whirling, winding pattern of outcomes as complex as the motifs that adorned those many minarets. That was his gift — to see events unfold before their time, to shape them as he saw fit, to use them to draw an opponent to destruction.
Armageddon would bring both global peace and personal justice. The man who had stripped the Emissary of the one thing he cared for would now be stripped of everything he loved, piece by piece, outcome after outcome. The dominoes would fall one by one, bringing Nick Baron’s world crashing down around him, until he was left in the same state he had left the Emissary — utterly alone.
Then the two of them would die together.
The Emissary withdrew from his vision and turned expectantly to face the open archway to the tower’s spiral staircase. A half second later, a young Syrian appeared. Kateb, the assistant security clerk from the Latakia weapons storage facility, entered the room carrying a brown leather satchel.
“Ya Sheikh,” said Kateb, offering a short bow. “I have brought the item you…” The clerk’s voice faded. His eyes fixed on an old wooden desk in the corner of the room where a white-haired Pakistani busily soldered electronics together. A shiny metal box on the edge of the desk was marked with a yellow-and-black radiation-hazard label.
The Emissary smiled reassuringly. “Do not worry, young man. The material is quite safe in its present form.” He gestured toward the man at the desk. “Dr. Wahish has assured me so.”
Before Kateb could respond, another man entered the room, this one carrying a green canvas backpack. He stepped around the security clerk and silently approached the Emissary. The newcomer wore the practical attire of a desert traveler — a brown vest and a tan shirt over loose-fitting olive pants, a black and tan shemagh scarf around his neck. There was a curved knife in a simple leather sheath tucked into the sash around his middle. When the Emissary nodded, he set the backpack down and withdrew a metal box marked LITHIUM-6.
“Excellent, Amran.” The Emissary took the box and motioned his lieutenant aside. “Dr. Wahish?”
Without a word, the Pakistani doctor rose from the desk and unfurled a six-foot roll of plastic sheeting onto the floor. He set the box of lithium-6 on the sheet and opened it. Inside, there were a number of soft silver chunks of metal, suspended in mineral oil. The doctor used a pair of tongs to transfer two small chunks into a metal cylinder the size of a 35-millimeter-film canister, spilling only a few drops of oil on the plastic. Then he closed both containers. He put the box on his desk, a good distance from the box with the radiation-hazard label, and then handed the small cylinder to the Emissary and returned to his work.
Kateb watched all of this with mild interest, patiently waiting his turn. When all was complete, the Emissary signaled for him to come forward. He approached, unconcerned that he was now standing on the plastic sheet. “Ya Sheikh,” said the clerk, bowing as if starting a rehearsed scene over again, “I have brought the item you requested.”
When the Emissary said nothing, Kateb hesitated, unsure of himself, and then handed over the satchel.
The Emissary opened the flap and checked the thermos-sized cylinder inside. Satisfied, he slipped his small canister of lithium-6 into the bag with it and lifted the strap over his head, letting it settle at his side. He smiled at Kateb and gave an almost imperceptible nod.
In the awkward silence, Kateb shifted his weight from one heel to the other. “Ya Sheikh, about my payment.” The clerk did not see Kattan’s lieutenant slip around behind him, or hear him draw the knife from its sheath.
CHAPTER 22
Dr. Patricia Heldner sat at her computer, reading data bursts from the airborne team watching over Quinn during his transport back to the states. She started typing a response to one of them when she heard a gentle rap on her office doorframe.
“Yes, Dick?” she said, still typing. She did not have to look up. She recognized the knock. It was the knock of a man who entered every office in this bunker with a loud, boorish comment or the pound of his fist against the frame — every office but hers. Pat and Walker knew each other too well for him to wear that facade around her. Now in her late forties, Heldner had played doctor and team mom for Dick’s operations long before the Triple Seven came into being. She knew all his secrets, and he knew hers — like the fact that not all of her shoulder-length red hair was still naturally that color.
“How’s our boy, Pat?” asked Walker, coming around her desk so that he could see her monitors.
Heldner pressed enter to send her message and then sat up in her rolling chair, straightening her white lab coat. “We’re still touch and go. Quinn is on the C-17, headed for Landstuhl, and unless the flight surgeon does something stupid, he’s going to live. Whether or not he’ll ever see field ops again remains to be seen. He won’t be shooting so much as a cap gun for months, I can tell you that.” She glowered up at Walker. “When Nick checks in, I want to talk to him.”
“You want to yell at him. There’s a difference.”
“He’s the team lead. It’s his job to protect them.”
“And he does, as best he can. You know that. You’ve seen how far he’ll go to protect his own.”
“From the dangers that he puts in their path. Just like you, I suppose.” The doctor wasn’t really looking for a fight, but she wasn’t averse to one either, not while one of her boys lay bloodied and unconscious on a gurney, thirty thousand feet over the Balkans. “Don’t think that I don’t see the pride in your eyes every time Nick takes his team into the field. You think he’s a younger version of you.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re being unkind.”