The Assassin Lotus

by David Angsten

  I almost began to relax. Until, at some point—I couldn’t say exactly when or why—a peculiar sensation at the edge of awareness began to assert itself, finally urging me to confront the suspicion I was secretly being observed. I stopped walking and abruptly turned around. Scanning the flock of faces, my eyes settled quickly on a small, dark man.

  The man turned and perused a food stall. Inky-haired, beardless, he wore a tilted rug cap, along with a dark gray jacket and slacks, not unlike the Assassins. He gestured toward a cauldron and was served a mound of pilaf. I watched, and waited. Something about him intrigued me. His youth, his nonchalance, his air of haughty solitude. It all seemed dimly familiar, and I tried to recall if I’d glimpsed him at some earlier point in the day.

  I couldn’t say for sure; I’d seen a lot of faces. Yet something about this diminutive fellow seemed wrong to me, even sinister. Maybe it was only his resemblance to the runt, the sicko who had gutted Sar and tortured Oriana.

  For a while I just stood there in the midst of the throng, waiting to see if he’d look at me. Waiting. Waiting.

  Subtly, barely moving his head, he glanced in my direction.

  The look sent a shiver through me. The man, I felt certain, was my tail.

  As if to demonstrate indifference, he turned his back and gorged on the pilaf, shoveling it in with his fingers.

  Slowly, I backed away, then turned and casually continued up the street. Blood pulsed as Woolsey’s words echoed in my head: Stabbed in broad daylight on a crowded street.

  I glanced back. The man’s eyes were on me.

  57.

  Tower of Death

  I SWIFTLY MADE MY WAY through the crowd, then ducked into a side street. The moment I was out of view I bolted. People stood aside, staring as I passed. A mongrel in a doorway started yapping. The narrow, twisting corridor eventually disgorged me, and I found myself on another crowded thoroughfare. Heading once again in the direction of the tower, I scurried past a strolling pack of European tourists. Then I tore off Woolsey’s prayer cap and ran flat out for several blocks, duffel bag bouncing at my side. Finally, I came to an open plaza and paused in a doorway to rest.

  The street curved away behind me; if my pursuer was there, he was hidden. Across the square stood an old brick mosque and a complex of religious buildings. A smattering of tourists strolled between them, while behind a closed gate, a caterpillar line of white-turbaned students were filing into a school, an Islamic madrasah. At the end of the plaza, looming above rows of violet-tiled arches and glistening turquoise domes, the golden-brown brick Kalon minaret muscled up into the sky.

  I checked the street again, then hurried toward the tower.

  The closer I came to it, the taller it seemed to grow. Forty-five meters, Woolsey had said; roughly 150 feet. I grew dizzy staring up at it. Horizontal bands of patterned brick, with intricate, ingenious variations, gave the simple, tapered column a dazzling complexity. The gallery at the top, with its crenulated crown, made the minaret appear both organic and ancient, like the stalk of a giant, budding plant petrified by the desert. You could see why it had survived the merciless gaze of Genghis Khan.

  When I reached its massive base, I turned and scanned the plaza. There was still no sign of the stalker, and Woolsey was nowhere in sight.

  Access to the minaret was through the adjacent mosque. I paid a small fee to the attendant inside, then climbed a staircase to the rooftop, where a brick bridge crossed to the tower’s elevated entrance. Walking out across it, I suddenly felt exposed, and again experienced the unnerving sensation that I was being watched.

  I paused to survey the courtyard. There were hundreds of archways, windows and doors—a honeycomb of impenetrable shadows.

  “OPEN YOUR EYES, DURAN.” Even looking directly toward me, still you cannot see!

  And if he cannot see me, I thought, he had certainly missed the others. The sly, beardless Uzbek, now slipping off into the mosque. And over there, under the arch, the patient Hashishin.

  Yes, he was one of us, of that I had no doubt. Not Mahbood, not as smart, but clearly an Assassin.

  I had watched him follow the American; the Uzbek had followed him. Who was this rat-haired Mongol? Slinking through the shadows. A local floater, hired to kill? A Taliban connection? Perhaps a spy dispatched from Delhi to avenge their whore in Rome.

  Duran was equally blind to them both, as he now was blind to me. I might cross the square in the light of God’s sun and wonder if he would even notice. Americans must suppose all Middle-Eastern men look alike: dark, bearded, dour. And act alike as well: quarrelsome and dyspeptic—unlike the saintly Zionists they so worship and admire.

  Here he comes, there he goes. Allah mocks him to wander blindly. No doubt he’ll be sightless in the Hereafter as well, and even more astray from the Path!

  THE FEELING WOULDN’T DISSIPATE; the tension seemed to grow. Yet still I could see no one. I continued across the bridge. Stepping through the minaret’s doorway, I started up the pitch-black stairwell.

  A figure suddenly emerged from above. I drew back with a gasp.

  “Forgive me if I frightened you,” the old nun declared. She stepped down into the light. Giggling female voices followed. “Come along, dears.”

  It was the three cell-phone sisters I’d seen at the Bolo Hauz mosque. Judging from the accent, they were Irish. Some “interfaith cultural exchange” I imagined. The two following the mother superior looked to be barely in their twenties.

  I pressed against the wall as they passed by like shadows. A phrase bubbled up from Sunday school. “Who walks in darkness and has no light,” I said.

  The last young nun looked back from the doorway. “Yet trusts in the name of the Lord and relies upon his God.” She smiled sweetly. “Isaiah,” she said. “The Muslims take him as a prophet as well.”

  “Hey,” I shrugged, “whatever gets you down from the Tower of Death.”

  “That’d be 103 steps,” she said.

  I laughed. Mother superior called from the bridge. The nun grinned warmly and went out.

  I headed up the stairs. Irish nuns. Where was I, Bukhara or Belfast?

  The stairwell quickly faded into blackness. Shuffling up the spiraling steps, I grew disoriented, and kept a hand feeling along the constant curve of the wall. My eyes couldn’t seem to adjust to the dark. The image of the nun in the bright, arched doorway had imprinted itself on my rods and cones, or my optic nerve, or the back of my brain—wherever it is visual stimuli linger before they’re filed away or forgotten. My optic nun lingered in reverse silhouette, like a photographic negative or a cameo relief, a bright white angel in a black archway, hovering incessantly before me. I probably should have ignored it and thought about something else, or followed the sister’s humble example and simply counted steps. But with all the anxiety I was feeling, I couldn’t stop wondering if it wasn’t some kind of a sign. A vision sent by Isaiah, as if the prophet were insisting I remember what he said through the mouthpiece of a Belfast nun.

  After-image or God-sent vision? Transcendent or mundane? Maybe the two together, both sacred and profane?

  These are the kind of thoughts one has while ascending the Tower of Death.

  When finally I emerged into the rotunda at the top, bright beams of sunlight through the arches made me flinch and stagger. I steadied myself at the barrier wall and peered out over the city.

  Every corner of Bukhara lay visible. Low-rise, flat-roofed structures stretched to the hazy edge of the desert. Below, the vast rooftops of the mosque and the madrasah, dotted with rows of structural domes and crowned with blue-green cupolas, bordered the open plaza I had entered from the street. A few scattered tourists cast long, sweeping shadows. The vantage would provide me, as Woolsey had predicted, a wide-ranging, unobstructed view of his approach.

  It was only minutes ‘til show time.

  I heard some spoken French behind me, and turned to see a student couple heading down the stairs. Wind whisked through the vacant arches. I
circled the gallery and discovered I was alone. For some reason, this increased my anxiety. Ever since my near fall from a church tower in Greece, I’d been afraid of heights. The gallery floor felt unsteady beneath me, and the slanting beams of sunlight made the room appear askew. Woolsey had mentioned that criminals used to be thrown to their deaths through these arches. Looking straight below now sent a tremor up my spine.

  Death is always with us, just one small step away...

  A bent mullah in a white turban, with a shadow stretching several times his height, shuffled with aching slowness in the direction of the madrasah. Opposite, beneath the glinting, violet-tiled entry to the mosque, the two young nuns posed before the upheld cell of their super. I studied each of the other tourists milling about in the plaza. None looked particularly sinister; for the moment it seemed I was safe.

  “Okay, Woolsey—it’s time.” I wondered if he’d found the manuscript in Baghestani’s office, and whether he’d make it to the minaret without being followed—or killed.

  The French student couple finally exited below and crossed the little bridge to the mosque roof. One behind the other, they filed down the stairs.

  Someone else was coming up. I squinted down in disbelief as he stepped out onto the roof. A piercing shock went through me. It was the beardless little man in the rug cap.

  There was no mistaking him. As he walked across the bridge, he glanced up. I pulled back, instinctively, then realized at once there was no point in hiding: The man already knew where I was. Somehow he had managed to follow me and, without crossing the open terrain of the square, had slipped in through another door to the mosque.

  They must have caught Woolsey, I thought. Forced him to tell what he knew, then killed him. Now they were coming for me.

  58.

  I am the Assassin

  I LOOKED DOWN AT THE PLAZA IN A PANIC. The plodding mullah, the Irish nuns, the tourists savoring the sights—for a second I thought about shouting for help. But if this man was a Hashishin, clearly nothing would deter him, and by the time any policeman arrived on the scene I would already be dead.

  All I could think of was the knife at my throat. In Rome, I’d been helpless to stop it; I couldn’t let that happen to me here. I dropped my duffel bag to the floor and pulled out Woolsey’s dagger. The edge looked keen as a razor. Lifting it into the sunbeam, the blade appeared to ignite. I felt simultaneously empowered and absurd. Did I actually have the nerve to stab him?

  I practiced slashing it through the air and thrusting it like a sword. My gestures seemed awkward and stiff. Fighting in the open, I wouldn’t stand a chance. Surprise was my only advantage. Emerging from the pitch-dark stairwell, the assassin would be momentarily blinded by the sun. I propped up my duffel bag on the windowsill of an arch, hoping it would draw his attention. Then I hid behind the doorway, crouching low, and braced for the moment of attack.

  What seemed like a full minute passed in silence. Nothing stirred but the breeze. My bent knees and ankles trembled. The knife started shaking in my hand.

  Breathe. Breathe.

  I am the assassin now. I am the assassin—

  From the resonant stone of the stairwell came the faint echo of his steps. The sound grew louder, closer, quicker, the echo fading fast—

  He was there.

  Lunging from behind, I swung the dagger around his throat, knocked off his cap and grabbed his hair. The man yelped as I yanked his head back and brought the blade to bear. “Don’t move or I’ll cut—”

  His elbow slammed hard into my gut. Gripping the fist that held the knife, he twisted me over his leg. I fell and tumbled onto my back. Before I could react, his boot slammed down full weight on the dagger, pinning my hand to the floor.

  I looked up in a daze

  His face contorted, upside down: “You?” The man wasn’t holding any weapon. He lifted his foot off the knife. “And I thought you’d be glad to see me.”

  I rose up, stunned, gaping. My fingers stained black. “Phoebe?”

  The former blonde’s blue eyes sparkled. Her face had been darkened with make-up and her hair dyed a bluish black. “It’s ink,” she said, pinching a lock. “Try finding a colorist in Bukhara.”

  I stared at her, aghast. “I could’ve killed you!” I said.

  “For a second there I was terrified they’d already killed you.” She picked up the knife, admiring it. “Looks like you got to them first.”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “That was left as a—Why are you wearing those clothes?”

  She put on her prayer cap. “Flea market, vintage Uzbek. You don’t like?”

  Somehow she had managed to flatten her chest. “No, not really,” I said, still barely able to speak. A simple stroke of eye-liner made her face look Asiatic.

  “They’re searching for a blond femme fatale,” she said. “Why make it easy for them?” She looked over my boots and duster. “Where have you been, the Outback?”

  “Something like that,” I said. I could not get over the shock. “Phoebe—”

  “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  She was looking up into my eyes. Her gem-cut blues were the one thing I could not fail to recognize. They had an uncanny effect on me, stirring that ache of longing I’d tried to bury in my heart. “I’ve missed you,” I said. “Every single day.”

  She lightly touched my hand. “I’m glad to hear you say that.”

  “You haven’t changed a bit.” I gently took her hand in mine.

  “Just a little,” she said. Her gaze fell to my lips.

  My gaze fell to hers. “This would get us in a whole lot a trouble down on the street, Mister.”

  Our faces moved closer. “Is that why you lured me up here, cowboy?”

  “Not exactly—oh my God.” I’d forgotten. “Woolsey!”

  I rushed to the railing and scanned the plaza.

  “The man you met at the funeral?”

  I turned to Phoebe. “You were there? Why didn’t you—?”

  “The two of you were being watched,” she said. “I couldn’t approach you without being seen.” She stood behind a pier of the arch, gazing down into the plaza without exposing herself to view. “The same man followed you here.”

  Woolsey had said we had more than one tail; one of them had apparently been Phoebe. “Where is he?” I asked.

  She nodded toward the mosque. “There, at the entrance.”

  I squinted down at the archway, the same place where moments before the nuns had been snapping pictures. At first I saw only an elderly Uzbek ambling past with a cane. But now, peering into the dark recess, I perceived the barest hint of a figure backing away from the light. “What’s he look like?” I asked.

  “Beard. Suit. Haven’t seen much beyond that.”

  “The man is an Iranian Assassin,” I said.

  Phoebe peered down. “He’s been waiting there since you arrived.”

  A flash of fear shot through me. Waiting? For what?

  “There’s your friend,” Phoebe said.

  Woolsey had reached the end of the street. Glancing about like a paranoid, he padded across the open plaza toward the minaret, clutching the satchel to his chest.

  “We’ve got to warn him!” I said. Leaning out, I waved my arms. Woolsey saw me and stopped.

  The figure emerged from the archway. His shadow swept across the pavement as he headed straight for Woolsey.

  The professor was searching for something in his bag. I shouted down to him, “Run!” He turned, saw the stalker approaching and frantically scurried away.

  Around him, tourists were gawking up at the lunatic who’d just shouted from the tower. I pointed down at the Hashishin. “Stop that man—he’s got a knife!”

  Screams erupted. The Assassin drew out his dagger as he closed the gap on Woolsey. Startled tourists fled in panic. Phoebe gripped my arm. “Jack—!”

  Woolsey cried out abortively as the men’s long shadows merged. The killer’s shining blade flamed upward, then abruptly plunged. />
  The professor, stumbling, collapsed.

  Quickly disentangling Woolsey’s satchel, the Assassin fled with it across the plaza and disappeared down the street.

  59.

  Silk Road Tea House

  NO REASON TO CARRY EVIDENCE of the killing he just committed.

  The Assassin had discarded the shoulder bag, tossing it away as he raced up the street. I picked it up and saw that the leather was splattered with the victim’s blood. There was nothing left inside. Whatever my colleague had been after, he had taken.

  On the next block, I caught sight of him again, crossing at the corner. He was clasping a thick sheaf of papers against his chest. Careful to keep my distance, I followed him around another block. He appeared to be doubling back, his initial course having been a feint of misdirection. Finally he disappeared through a doorway off the street. A sign in English read “Silk Road Tea House.” Looming overhead was the ubiquitous minaret, glowing with the last rays of sunlight. We were mere blocks from the scene of his crime. Police sirens wailed in the distance.

  I sunk into the shadows. Let him relax a little, I thought, allow him to believe he’d shaken off any tail. At least five minutes would need to elapse before I could go inside.

  I pulled out my disposable and dialed the Ayatollah. After describing to him the Assassin and the killing I had seen, he told me he believed the papers were a research manuscript, and the key to finding the source of the lotus seeds. “It is vital you obtain these papers for us as soon as you possibly can.”

  I peered at the door to the tea house. “Who is this Assassin?” I asked.

  The Old Man considered a moment.“It is better for the task at hand if you know nothing about him. This brother has fallen under the sway of the devil. I fear you may be called upon to redeem him as a martyr.”

  BY THE TIME WE MADE OUR WAY DOWN from the tower, a large crowd had gathered around Woolsey. Gaping tourists strained for a view, while locals gibbered in break-neck Uzbek and hollered into their cells. Where had all these people come from? Neatly turbaned clerics from the mosque and madrasah, students, shopkeepers, sightseers—all had poured out from the surrounding buildings and converged on the site of the stabbing. I heard no English spoken, only the single word, “British.” Over the clamorous din of the mob, sirens ululated; police and paramedics would shortly be arriving. If Woolsey was still alive, we’d have only seconds to talk with him.