“Paul!”
“Here me out. You get to Cairo and lay low. Stay out of trouble. In particular, be wary of a man named Ahmed.”
“Ahmed? Who’s he?”
“Nobody knows. He was a mysterious figure that appeared in Cairo just before the Turks were set to land. He called himself the Mahdi, and he stirred up insurrection in the city.”
“The Mahdi? Oh, the Muslims always call on the image of the Mahdi when they want to stir up trouble. Remember that Shi’ite Mullah in Iraq?”
Paul thought for a moment. “Muqtada al Sadr? Yes. He raised his Mahdi Militias and raised hell for a while. Holed up in An Najaf, if I remember. That was quite a scene at the Shrine of Ali.”
“Exactly. These Muslims are always calling up images from their religious mythology to add propane to their politics. This Ahmed was probably just the same. What would you say to the disaffected masses of Cairo if you wanted to ignite a revolution against their oppressive Western occupiers? You’d claim to be divinely guided; you’d claim to be the Mahdi they have been waiting for all these centuries to liberate them from the deceivers and infidels. The Arabs have been wrapping their politics in religion for millennia, but I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Be watchful just the same.”
Nordhausen seized on Paul’s concern and drove home a point. “You think this man… you believe he may be an Assassin—an agent from the future?”
“I have my suspicions.” Paul folded his arms, one hand stroking his chin. “There were several odd things in the history that began to stick out in my mind when I bored into it again. Did you know that there were at least two obvious assassination plots against Napoleon during this campaign? The first incident occurred just after he landed and seized Alexandria. Upon entering the city Napoleon and his party were making their way through a very narrow street and they were fired upon by a man and a woman with a musket. The second incident was an ambush by a Nablousian on the 24th of May, 1799, as Napoleon’s troops retreated from Syria. The shot barely missed Napoleon’s head; they caught the man; four Guides put their carbine muskets to his back and pulled the triggers simultaneously. Now get this… All four guns misfired and the man leapt into the Red Sea, swimming for all he was worth. The entire troop fired at him as he went, but not a single shot hit home. He escaped.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Nordhausen said, giving Paul a mollifying glance. “What are you suggesting?”
“It’s odd, that’s all. It has a smell about it I don’t like. There were two attempts on the life of a Prime Mover and both failed. Either Napoleon’s Penumbra was already solidifying his position in the Meridian or… Well that second example was ludicrous! Very suspicious.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can see one of the carbines failing to fire at the assassin,” Paul concluded, “even two. But all four?”
“Are you suggesting the carbines were… tampered with?”
“I don’t know what I’m suggesting, but it seems that the assassin was living a charmed life too.”
“Assassin—“ Nordhausen was quick to pick up on that, the connection obvious to Paul’s discovery at Massiaf.
Paul nodded his agreement. “I’m just worried. This is shaping up to be a crucial Nexus on the Meridian. This business about the Rosetta Stone is becoming a magnet. Both sides could be at play in this, Robert. They could have agents there for the same reason we’re planning to go. In fact, they have decades to try and figure out what we’re up to here tonight. Suppose they do? If anything goes wrong, I’ve got these fallback extraction coordinates programmed, just in case. Be in Cairo, at the fountain square in the city center, on the night of August 1st. Be there at sunset. Can you remember that?”
“August 1st? But we’re only going to be there 48 hours, Paul.”
“Assuming all goes well.”
The professor stayed his effort to placate his friend and nodded his assent. “You really are worried.”
“I’ll run a Spook Job at sunset on the 1st of August to see if you made it,” Paul continued, “and every night thereafter until we spot you there.”
Robert had a wan expression on his face. “Can we survive that long—in the past, I mean.?”
“What?”
“Remember your mission to Massiaf? That Jabr fellow told you that the Walkers had but seven days. You started to fade, and it was just our good fortune that Kelly snatched you out before…” he seemed to stumble over his own thought now.
“Before Paradox took me?” Paul pressed on.
“Yes. Paradox. Well if we get stranded there how long will we be able to sustain ourselves in that Meridian?”
“We really have no way of knowing. Remember, they were using the Well, and I was not prepared to go through. In fact, I went through prematurely. Here we have the Arch.” He was trying to shore up his friend’s resolve now, and bolster his courage. “We’ll have solid pattern signatures on the two of you. That means we can run Spook Jobs and use the quantum scan feature of the Arch to try and locate your patterns. Besides, I don’t see how Paradox would come into play here.”
“You forget that I know all about the glyphs. It’s all in my head, Paul. How will time account for that when the Arch plops me down a day before the damn Rosetta Stone was even discovered!” A long silence settled between them until Paul spoke again.
“No worries,” he began. “You’ll be protected in a Nexus for the duration of the mission—at the very least. After that, you’ll be back here and…” he stopped himself, needing truth now as he was sending his friend off to centuries past. He looked at Robert a long time before he spoke again.
“You know what they say about discretion being the better part of valor. Just be careful, Robert. Hear me?”
Part V
Rosetta
13
An hour later Robert and Maeve were down in the Arch watching the dizzying spin of light and shadow. The sound of the generators was very loud, and Maeve could feel the thrumming vibration as the Arch moved up to full power. Her throat tightened and her heart quickened in response. She felt a dreadful sense of fear and anxiety as they edged up to the thick yellow line that marked the boundary between this reality and some other. She wanted to close her eyes and shut the moment out, pretend that she was simply at home in her herb garden and the world was not askew. But a furtive glance at Nordhausen bolstered her courage. He was gazing at the whirl of color, his eyes alight with a sense of awe and excitement.
“Ready?” he asked, extending a hand.
“As ready as I can be,” she said. The professor’s hand closed around hers. She held fast to her parasol with the other hand, the beaded purse now dangling from her shoulder by a thin spaghetti strap. Everything was going to be fine, she told herself. Kelly was on the job in the operations center, and Paul was with him there, both able technicians. It was just a trial run—a Spook Job, like the little jump she had made to the Arabic Library to scout out Paul… just a brief manifestation to make sure their breaching point was clear of contamination in the target area. It would only be a few seconds…