I interrupted. “Please, just tell me: Where is Baghestani?”
They stopped. The first woman approached me with great earnestness and, pointing into the air behind her, began to elaborate detailed directions I couldn’t begin to decipher. She walked two fingers across the palm of her hand, then tapped on the face of her watch. It seemed that wherever it was I was going, I had better hurry to get there. The Professor was leaving, or would be leaving, or maybe had already left.
The one place name the two women kept repeating sounded like “Bolo House.” I pictured drunken Uzbek frat boys wearing shoestring neckties.
“Bolo House,” I said. The women nodded excitedly. I thanked them both and ran out the door.
MY DESTINATION, it turned out, was the furthest thing from a frat house. By asking “Bolo House?” to every person I passed, and racing off in the direction they pointed, I eventually left the campus altogether and entered the streets of the Old City. Cars were apparently not allowed, but there were plenty of tourists and locals on foot. I’d ask the way and then run off, tunneling between pale walls of clay, twisting out into clearings and then back into meandering lanes. Dripping with sweat, running out of breath, I finally arrived at a deep, green pool in a gorgeous, tree-lined plaza, the jewel-like setting of an extraordinary mosque.
The Bolo-Hauz mosque.
I paused to catch my breath.
The beauty of the scene struck me like a painting, some luscious Orientalist tableaux by Gérôme. Beneath the soaring columns of the mosque’s elegant portico, a mixed congregation in blue and green prayer caps and multi-colored headscarves stood behind a white-turbaned mullah. Facing the grand entryway with upraised hands, he appeared to be conducting some ritual or ceremony, or waiting for some figure to emerge. I began to realize they must be part of a wedding ceremony and started looking for the bride and groom. The maids had been so afraid I’d be late, I wondered if it was the professor himself getting hitched.
Across the way, tourists waiting to enter the mosque loitered restlessly at the edge of the pond. Many busied themselves by taking pictures. As if warding off vampires, three Catholic nuns in light summer habits held up their cell phones like crosses.
Still, no bride and groom emerged.
I approached the prayerful congregation as discreetly as I could. Like the mullah, all were facing away from me toward the high-arching entry to the mosque. The group had arranged itself neatly into rows, with men standing in front, women in back, and children and young teens in between. Although I couldn’t quite see their faces, many in the adult rows appeared to be college-age, and I assumed they must have come from the university.
The worshippers recited a short prayer together. Unlike Faraj in the desert, they didn’t kneel or prostrate themselves, but they did end with “Allahu Akbar.”
Peering over the crowd toward the men at the front, I thought I caught a glimpse of Baghestani in a prayer cap.
The group intoned another prayer, and another “Allahu Akbar.” Then I heard a final “Salaam alaikum,” and the assembly began to disperse.
I moved through the departing crowd, seeking out the professor. Solemn faces eyed me warily; mothers safeguarded their kids. Maybe it was Sar’s duster and the cowboy boots, or the lack of any covering on my sweat-soaked head. But their suspicion of a stranger seemed a little excessive; I wondered if I was breaking some taboo.
Finally I spotted the lanky man I’d thought was Baghestani. He was actually the guy with the handlebar moustache in that photo with Borzoo in Tehran.
“Excuse me, Sir? Sorry to bother you—I’m looking for Professor Baghestani?”
He scowled at me in disgust. “Is this some bloody joke?” Brushing past, he hurried off.
I watched him enter the street. When I turned back toward the portico, now largely clear of the crowd, I noticed a group of men remained in front of the entryway. They had assembled themselves around a bier draped with a Persian carpet, and were lifting up, in unison, a long, white-shrouded corpse.
Is this some bloody joke?
Shuffling along like a human centipede, the men bore the body toward the open arms of a hearse.
I looked back at the Persian rug. Garden of flowers and vines.
Baghestani was gone all right—gone to paradise!
54.
Woolsey
THE MAN WITH THE MOUSTACHE had covered two blocks before I finally caught up. He was walking at a fast clip. I strode up alongside him. “Sir, I’m sorry—”
“You’d best not follow me,” he said. The accent was British, not Aussie.
“I just want to know what happened—”
“Ask the police.” He glanced over his shoulder and picked up his pace.
I looked back and saw no one. Then had to rush to catch up. “I travelled a long way to meet the professor. I know you were his friend. If I could just—”
“I told you, it’s not safe—”
“That’s why I’m here. The professor met with my brother shortly before he disappeared. A friend came to find him, and now I’m afraid she’s—”
He turned into an alley and stopped. “This friend of yours. Describe her to me.”
“She’s…blond. Late twenties. Attractive. Five foot…seven, maybe.”
“American?”
“Dutch.”
“Student?”
“Archaeologist. She—”
He put up his hand. Footsteps sounded. He looked to the corner. The steps grew louder until…
A squat, covered woman appeared, bearing a basket of laundry. She passed the alley without a glance.
The Englishman turned back and looked me over. “I suggest you remove your coat,” he said. “And here, take my duppi.” He scraped off his embroidered prayer cap and handed it to me.
As I put on the cap and rolled up the duster, he peered around the corner. Suddenly he pulled back and started down the alley. “This way,” he said. “Quickly.” He resumed his rapid pace. “Professor Baghestani was murdered yesterday. Not far from here. Stabbed in broad daylight on a crowded street.”
“My God.”
“The murderer attempted to fight off the police until he was killed himself.”
“Do they know why—”
“There’s no motive as yet. The police are looking for a blond woman who fits the description of your friend. Yesterday morning she was seen entering Borzoo’s office. She was the last person to talk to him. No one has seen or heard from her since.”
Phoebe. I wondered if something had happened to her, or if she had fled the city.
We had entered a street of shops and stalls, thronged with tourists and locals. As the Englishman threaded his way through the crowd, I noticed him glancing behind us.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We’re being followed,” he said. “We’ve been followed ever since we left the Bolo-Hauz mosque.”
THE ENGLISHMAN bellied up to a door lightly carved and studded with brass. As he flipped through his keys, I glanced back at the motley of citizens sauntering along the street. We had walked countless twisting blocks and I still hadn’t spotted our tail.
“Do you think we lost him?” I asked.
“No. And there’s more than one, I’m afraid.” He twisted the key and the door swung open. We entered into the dark. “They already knew where I lived,” he said. “Now they know you’re here, too.”
Coming off the sundrenched street, I couldn’t see a thing. I followed the clack of his footsteps down the pitch-black passageway. Another door was opened and we entered a bright courtyard of weathered wood, bougainvillea, and flaking walls of white-washed clay. A gnarled vine climbed a wriggled stairway to a balcony. We ascended to another door and entered his apartment.
As he crossed the room to the sunlit window, I heard him whistle the opening bars of God Save the Queen. He peered down from behind the curtain at the bustling street below. “Welcome to the last British outpost in Bukhara.”
It was yet another
book-lined bunker, with a writing desk, a sitting area with an old TV, and a tidy single bed in the corner. The casement windows looked out on a brick and stucco skyline punctuated with turquoise domes and a crown-topped minaret.
The Englishman swept the curtains shut and flipped on a shaded floor lamp. “Keep calm and carry on, as we say.”
I heard the whistled bars again, and turned to see a green parrot inside a mosque-shaped cage. “So you’re the whistler,” I said. I raised an eyebrow to its owner. “Patriotic parrot?”
He nodded toward the television. “Cricket fan,” he said. He fed the bird some seed. “With all this...espionage, I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know that Darzee doesn’t talk.”
“Thank God for small favors.”
“Thank Allah,” he said. “Believe me, the bird’s no Anglican.”
As if on cue, the parrot whistled.
I smiled and reached for the Englishman’s hand. “Jack Duran,” I said.
“Pleasure to meet you, Jack. My name’s Conrad Woolsey.”
“Those men you saw following us—you say they already knew where you lived?”
“That’s right.”
“Who are they?” I asked.
“I’m not exactly sure.”
“Have you told the police?”
“No. Not yet. I need to sort out a few things first. Once I go to the police I’ll have to remain in their protection. And I can’t be sure how safe that will be.”
Two quick knocks at the door startled me. I turned to Woolsey in alarm.
“It’s quite all right,” he said. “You may come in, Rashid.”
The door opened just enough for the young boy’s face to show. He had the Mongoloid features of the Asian steppe I’d noticed of so many on the street. Woolsey asked if I’d like some tea, then spoke to the boy quickly in what I assumed must have been Uzbek. The kid nodded briskly and was gone.
“Landlord’s grandson,” the Englishman explained. He gestured to the pair of wingback chairs and asked me to take a seat. After all the walking I’d done, I was more than willing to oblige.
On a low table between the chairs sat an ivory and ebony chess set. The regular kind.
Woolsey noticed me looking. “That was a gift from Borzoo,” he said. “We used to play on that very set every Friday afternoon at his office.”
“I went by there,” I said. “I saw the set he has there now. Very strange.”
“Indeed. Borzoo was from Iran, and what you saw was a Persian variant called Tamerlane chess. It’s named after the Mongol warrior king who supposedly invented it during the years he ruled over Persia. Borzoo is…was…writing a book on Tamerlane’s mausoleum. He purchased that jade set on a recent trip to Samarkand. He was quite keen on it…” Woolsey gazed off forlornly. “In the last few weeks he’d been teaching me how to play.”
The Englishman seemed to be struggling to grasp the reality of Baghestani’s death. I asked how they had come to be friends.
“That was on account of quite another game,” he said.
Conrad Woolsey held a senior professorship in history at Cambridge. A year ago he came to Bukhara on sabbatical to research a book on the so-called Great Game—the 19th-century rivalry between the British and Russian empires for supremacy in Central Asia. He met Baghestani while guest lecturing at the University of Bukhara. Along with their mutual passion for chess, both shared a deep interest in the history of the region and often traveled it together.
“Borzoo was Muslim, of course. I sometimes accompanied him to mosque on Fridays. And on those rare occasions when I could find a church, he would accompany me.”
It occurred to me the two of them may have become more than simply friends. “I saw the picture of you together in Tehran.”
“I met his sisters and brothers there,” he said fondly. “All those lovely nieces and nephews. Of course, he didn’t know it at the time, but as it turned out that was Borzoo’s final trip home.”
“Was it only to see his family?”
“Mostly. Why do you ask?”
“I was told he did some work for the Ayatollah’s government.”
“That was years ago. Borzoo was an expert on the history of the Ismailis, a minority branch of Shi’a Islam. He was hired to direct the excavations of their most famous landmark, the Alamut castle in northern Iran.”
I remembered Dan’s Iranian sketchbook, filled with drawings of ruins. “My brother lived for a time in Iran. I wonder if that’s where they met?”
“It’s possible. However, the important question now is why your brother met with him here.”
“Yes, I’d like to know that myself.”
Woolsey noticed something and slowly tilted toward me. “Forgive me for asking, but…I wonder if you could tell me how you acquired that nick on your throat.”
I’d nearly forgotten the scar was still there. “Close shave,” I said, wondering just how much he knew.
He eyed me shrewdly. “Much too close, I’d say.”
“Did the professor ever talk to you about a sacred lotus plant?”
Woolsey looked intrigued. “Sacred?”
“It’s called soma,” I said.
The word brought a gradually tightening squint to his eyes, the historian’s brain buzzing through a labyrinth of connections. Finally he emerged from it and returned his gaze to me. “I think it would be best, Jack, if you start at the beginning. I want you to tell me absolutely everything you know.”
Sinking back into his armchair, he tented his fingers beneath his moustache and waited for me to begin.
55.
The Old Man
FOLLOWING ANOTHER DOUBLE KNOCK on the door, Rashid backed into the room, carrying by the handles a steaming samovar. I gathered up the mandala pages assembled on the floor, Woolsey removed the chess set from the table, and the boy set the copper contraption down and proceeded to prepare our tea. He worked silently, without a wasted move, and seemed barely aware of our presence. I watched with growing fascination his choreographed routine—un-stacking the teapot and the delicate china, heating the pot and then emptying it out, measuring the dry tea leaves and refilling again from the spout, finally setting it up to brew over the stack—until the boy, with a neat little nod of his head, vanished from the room without a whisper.
Woolsey had been pacing all the while in a fever, mulling over the story I had told him. When he noticed the boy was finally gone, he strode back to retake his seat.
“This group of Mahdists recruited from the Quds Force—I believe that Borzoo knew who they were.”
I waited, watching as he filled our cups with tea.
“I told you that he was hired to direct the excavations at Alamut. In the 11th century, that mountain castle became the headquarters of the Ismailis, a minority sect of Shi’a Islam that felt under threat from the dominant Sunnis. Their charismatic leader was a brilliant Iranian scholar from Qum named Hasan-i Sabbah—‘the Old Man of the Mountain.’ Hasan was determined the Ismailis should not only survive under the Sunnis, but should ultimately subvert them and rise up to rule. He believed they were destined to build the foundation for a new Islamic utopia.
“It was a seemingly unimaginable dream,” Woolsey said. “The Old Man knew he could never accomplish it by preaching and conversion alone. At the time, Sunni Islam was the entrenched orthodoxy, enforced by the vast military empire of the Seljuk Turks. Open insurrection would quickly be crushed. Random acts of violence would be futile.
“So Hasan forged a new way, a more effective and efficient approach to what’s now called ‘asymmetrical warfare.’ With years of careful indoctrination and training, he developed a small force of highly disciplined and dedicated commandos. Sent out in secret from Alamut and other mountain redoubts, they performed systematic, targeted killings. Sunni sovereigns and scholars, Turkish princes and ministers, Seljuk generals and politicians—none were immune to their knives. They raised the art of political murder to a level that had never been seen before. The force became
known as the Hashishin—the name that gave us the word ‘assassin.’
“Their method was deception, and their courage and daring were legendary. Sleeper Hashishin would covertly infiltrate the governments or the households of their enemies, living secretly among them, often for years, awaiting the call to execute a killing. They chose the most difficult and protected targets and, oddly, the most dangerous mode of attack. Although they had access to poisons, bows and crossbows, invariably their weapon of choice was the dagger.”
“Up close and personal,” I said.
“Precisely. The knife is more frightening. Which is also why they preferred to slay their victims in public. The killings had a ritual, almost sacramental quality, a mixture of cool planning and fanatical zeal. And no Hashishin could be taken alive—they would rather die fighting than submit to capture.”
I remembered the runt I had shot in the pit, reaching for his dagger even as he died.
“The Old Man,” Woolsey went on, “was the great-grandfather of terrorism. His Assassins’ self-sacrificing mode of attack, showing no emotion in the face of death, struck such terror among potential victims that it often made their actual murder unnecessary. Fear itself became a method of persuasion. For example, a victim might wake one morning to find a Hashishin dagger lying on his pillow. This was a plain hint to the targeted individual that he was not safe anywhere, that perhaps even his most trusted servants had been turned, and that whatever had brought him into conflict with the Assassins would have to be stopped if he wanted to live.”
Woolsey rose up anxiously and strode across to the window. He cracked open the curtains and peered down at the street. “What we’re dealing with here, Jack, is the revival of a cult—a messianic cult practicing an age-old form of terror.”
I slowly turned my gaze from him to the steaming samovar. As my hand drifted up to the scar on my throat, a question I’d asked before came to mind again: “Why did you say those men who followed us already knew where you lived?”
Woolsey released the curtain. He crossed to a trunk at the foot of his bed, lifted something from it and carried it over to me. It was wrapped in a pillow case.
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