The Assassin Lotus

by David Angsten

  “It’s a quote from the Buddha,” Anand said. “‘Do what you have to do, resolutely, with all your heart.’”

  I remembered Maya reciting those words that sultry night on the roof. At the time it felt invigorating. Now it just seemed sad. “Unfortunately, for Maya,” I said, “it didn’t serve her well.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “It served her purposes well.”

  “Dying, you mean? She was stabbed by a man from the CIA.”

  “Maya was fulfilling her dharma, her duty. She believed in the end that’s all we are: the actions that we take. The ultimate result is beyond our control.”

  I felt a sour resistance. “Whatever Maya thought she was doing,” I said, “she ended up killing—and being killed by—an ally. That wasn’t her dharma—that was a tragedy.”

  “That’s life in samsara,” Anand said. “We live in uncertainty and illusion. Even when we do see clear, the view is always limited, like a page torn from an infinite mandala. We must see the truth as best we can and act upon that truth. That’s really all we can do.”

  “Is it?” I said. “Maya would have been better off not getting involved at all. Maybe the lamas are right.”

  “Right for them, perhaps. But Maya’s dharma was Maya’s alone. That’s the road she chose. Remember: she did live long enough to kill a key Assassin—perhaps the very worst. And doing so, she saved your life. Maybe many lives.”

  We walked along in silence.

  “That line you laid on the monks,” I said, “about a fate that falls on men unless they act? Was that really a quote from the Buddha?”

  “I was rather hoping the monks would think so. In fact, it’s from G. K. Chesterton, a big-bellied British Buddha—though he actually didn’t think much of Buddhism at all. The English called him the ‘Prince of Paradox.’”

  A man of opposites—how fitting. “That’s a perfect name for you,” I said.

  “I should say…I’ve been called worse. We are all of us double inside.”

  His voice had grown weaker. Although stoically plowing ahead, Anand was clearly suffering. “Do you want to rest?” I asked. We’d been walking for nearly an hour.

  For a moment he appeared to be considering. Jamyang turned a hopeful face to him. “Go back?” he asked.

  Anand slowed to a stop. “Water,” he said.

  I pulled out the big plastic jug from my pack. He took a healthy gulp, then held it out for Jamyang. The monk shook his head, “no.” Anand handed it to me. I took a swig and capped it.

  We peered out over the path ahead. A breeze caressed the camel tracks trailing off into the haze.

  “Raising dust,” I said.

  Jamyang looked to Anand. “We go back Kutana?”

  With intense self-containment, Anand held his gaze on the horizon. “Walk on,” he commanded.

  And so we did. Resolutely. The three of us snaking across the bald-headed dunes...until a mile or so later Anand Pandava finally collapsed.

  85.

  To Kill a Man

  THE WOUND WAS ON HIS LEFT SIDE just beneath his belt, a smile of a slit some three inches wide. He had hurriedly taped it shut before we departed from the oasis, but with all the walking and bleeding the adhesive had given way, and the cut now bulged with a coil of his intestine. Jamyang pressed it back inside, bloodying his fingers, then held the slit together as he dried it with his robe. I stretched out several lengths of tape and sealed it up again. His skin felt chilled and clammy. We rewrapped the cloth bandage around his waist, then laid him back to rest against the gentle slope of the dune.

  The wound had stopped bleeding out into the sand, but he was still hemorrhaging internally. His face looked pale, his eyes staring vaguely. He was conscious, but groggy from shock. “A moment,” he muttered. “Just…a moment.”

  Jamyang watched him worriedly. He had only come this far because of Anand, whose confidence and courage had been contagious. Seeing him falter now suddenly undermined his will. The world appeared even more dangerous than he’d thought.

  The monk laid out Anand’s kukri knife neatly in its sheath. He noticed the sand beside it was blood-soaked. Scraping up a handful, he held it out to me. “Taklimakan thirsty.”

  The old lama at Kutana had been right.

  I turned and peered ahead into the haze, struggling to control my own mounting sense of dread. The wind was picking up. The hour was getting late. We were standing in the middle of the empty desert, no cell phone reception, no ambulance to call, no way to save Anand if he fell further into shock. A full-blown dust storm might whip up in an instant. Nightfall would bring a bitter cold. And out there ahead of us, at any moment now, returning with the jade box of soma lotus seeds, Mahbood might appear, dagger in hand, ready to further slake the Taklimakan.

  For a long moment I stood there, debating what to do: try to keep Anand conscious and send Jamyang for help, or sling the man between us and try to walk him back to the car.

  I crouched down beside him. “How do you feel?” I asked.

  The luster had left his eyes. His face was losing color. “Long road,” he said.

  “Looks like it ends here.”

  “Mine does,” he said. “Not yours.”

  The suggestion rankled me. “There’s no way we’re going ahead without you. No way.”

  “Not Jamyang, perhaps.” He looked with tenderness at the monk. “He’s on a different road.”

  “Enough already with the roads,” I said. “I’m starting to think you got stabbed in the head. Look around you—there’s no ‘road,’ there’s no ‘dharma.’ We’re in the middle of the fucking desert! If we don’t get you to a hospital, you’ll die.”

  “Anger is good,” he said. “It can help subdue your fear.”

  “Did you hear what I just said?”

  “Yes,” he said. “If I stay here, I may die. But for sure I will die if I try to move.”

  He was right. That he’d made it this far was astonishing. “Then we’ll send Jamyang,” I said. “He can bring you help.”

  Anand gazed off despondently. “There isn’t time,” he said.

  The words were tinged with pity; a plaint, I sensed, not for himself, but for my own predicament. Anand had faced the truth. There was nothing more he could do. It had taken him less than a single minute to accept the fact he might die.

  Clearly, the onus had fallen on me.

  I stood up. My mind ablaze. Frantic for some answer. I looked back down the way we’d come. Then peered ahead at the trail.

  Jamyang stepped up beside me. I asked, “How much farther to the stupa?”

  He paused a moment, considering, then turned to me and shrugged.

  “You told us it was only a few miles,” I said. “It feels like we’ve walked five.”

  “Perhaps is…not so close,” he said.

  It occurred to me suddenly that he really didn’t know. He had only made the trek once, several years before—while riding on the back of a camel.

  How far had we come? Even I had no idea. Anand’s pace had slowed us down; some deep sand as well. And in the desert, distances were difficult to judge, especially—

  “Take this.”

  We turned. Anand was holding out the kukri.

  “I wouldn’t know how to cut a loaf of bread with that,” I said.

  “Take it.”

  I did. Reluctantly. The knife felt weightier than the dagger in my pack, with the blade loaded heavily toward the tip.

  “To cut bread, use a bread knife,” Anand said. “To kill a man, no blade can best the kukri.”

  “Unless it’s in the hands of the Hashishin,” I said. “I don’t stand a chance in a knife fight.”

  “You’re right. You must kill him before any fight begins.”

  “How?”

  “Stealth. Surprise. Deception.”

  “Easier said.” I practiced slicing and stabbing the air.

  “Keep your wrist straight,” Anand suggested. “The blade is angled down. To stab, thrust fo
rward, like a punch. Or better, raise the knife like an axe…bring it down hard through the skull or the shoulder.”

  The idea repulsed me. “I won’t have the nerve,” I said. “I won’t be able to do it.”

  “You will,” he said. “When you see what must be done, you’ll do it.”

  “What makes you so sure? You don’t know me.”

  “You saved my life in the square.”

  “That was an impulse,” I said. “I don’t know what got into me.”

  “What got into you was already there—you simply got out of the way. When you see clearly what must be done, you don’t take the action. The action takes you.”

  The action takes you. “So ‘I’ have nothing to do with it?”

  “You have your body, your brain, and your weapon. But the most important thing is your decision to use them. That decision must be made sometime well before the battle. You have to make a choice. In that place deep within yourself. That when the moment comes, when you have to act, you will do whatever is necessary.”

  “Kill him, you mean.”

  “Resolutely. With all your heart.”

  “Right. You said you’re double inside? I’ve got like a whole convention going on.”

  “Just keep it simple,” he said. “You won’t be able to think.”

  I looked at the knife in my hand. Down hard through the skull. Down hard...

  “What if I miss?” I asked. “What if I blow it? What if it’s him coming after me?”

  Anand frowned in thought.

  “That’s it, then, right? I’m off to paradise?”

  He stared off vaguely into the desert. “There is…one thing you could try.”

  “What?”

  He looked at me. “You’ll think me a nasty man,” he said.

  As if I didn’t already.

  86.

  What You Have to Do

  DETACHMENT. ENLIGHTENMENT. The calm of self-surrender.

  I felt about as far away from these things as a cipher under a spotlight cowering on a stage. My spotlight was the desert sun; the stage a pit of sand. I ventured out, locked inside my separateness. No state of cosmic oneness could be conjured into consciousness. No sense of being “empty” or divine. I was not infused with a sudden burst of valor, nor did a bold clarity of vision spur me on. Uncertainty and trepidation stalked my every step. Frantic second thoughts continually boomeranged.

  I had left them the jug of water, and already I was parched. Dehydrated and fatigued, how long would I survive? Would I be in any shape to face the murderous Mahbood? Would I be able to muster the courage to actually kill him? If it did turn into a knife fight, what did I think I would do? Anand’s wicked idea had seemed deranged. And even if I did survive, surely I’d be injured. How would I keep from bleeding out with all those miles to march? Night would fall. I’d be lost. The cold alone would kill me.

  Even the supposed urgency of my cause now fell into doubt. Was stopping the Iranians here really worth my life? Was saving the old doctor up to me? This was not Phoebe I was marching out to rescue. This was not my brother, or Oriana or Anand. I was risking my life to help a man I barely knew. And to confront a man who’d take pleasure in disemboweling me.

  Fear pervaded the desert. Not selflessness, not Brahman. The faith of Anand and Jamyang could not dispel the air of doom. In fact it seemed to border on insanity. Were these two monks really pilgrims on the road to the so-called “Truth?” Or credulous dupes deluding themselves with visions of invincibility? My last glimpse of them, stranded and defenseless, made me think even the old Gurkha must have fallen into doubt.

  Still…I walked on. Deeper into the desert.

  God, give me strength. Keep calm and carry on.

  Prayers and exhortations, the weapons of the weak. Woolsey no doubt recited them on the way to his execution—futile mutterings to save him from his separateness. But he, too, was wrapped inside an envelope of skin, as easily slit open as a valentine.

  Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. The prayer welled up, unbidden. He leads me in the paths of righteousness… I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

  The House of the Lord. The Refuge of the Buddha. The Infinite Ground of Being. All noble names for that walled paradise, the Kingdom of Heaven Within. A place that now seemed to have vanished, if ever it truly was there.

  Here, now, in this place, set upon this desert trail, trekking toward my fate, I was enmeshed in the dream of samsara, the dream we all are dreaming, the “truth” that is our lives. That dream now seemed the only truth. Nothing lay beyond it. Not God, not Brahman, not paradise. Not a heaven above or a kingdom within. Not even a dream of awakening.

  My heart raged inside me as if struggling to escape. If what is here is all there is, and nothing lies beyond it, then why forfeit my separateness, why sacrifice myself? My separateness was all I had—my skin, my soul, my life. Why wasn’t that worth saving?

  The thing to do seemed all too clear. Halt this fatal march. Return to Anand and Jamyang, go find Dan and Phoebe. Save my friends, save myself. Fight another day.

  I stopped. Looked back.

  Phoebe. My love. Come back to me, she said.

  The low sun cast shadows into the hollows between the dunes. The atmosphere had cooled. The haze that hung so long in the air had lifted like a veil. A vivid stillness replaced it. Above me the sky shone a violent blue. The ochre sea beneath it seemed to shimmer.

  I’d been walking for nearly an hour, maybe even more. Around me, in all directions, empty desert stretched out as far as I could see. Infinite and strange, yet claustrophobically real, it seemed as if I’d awakened in the bell jar of a dream, my skin prickling with perspiration, my breath a hollow whispering.

  You have to make a choice...

  I turned and peered ahead at the camel tracks trailing off into the shadows.

  He leads me in the paths of righteousness...

  Paths that lost so many: Maya, Oriana, Sar, Woolsey. Names that seemed to gnaw at me. Lives severed, incomplete.

  That place in you, that place in me…

  Could I bring myself to abandon Dr. Fiore and Faraj? Let the butcher Mahbood walk away with the seeds? The Assassins commit more murder?

  Do what you have to do, resolutely…

  The path seemed to tug me like the current of a river. Before I was even aware of it, I was trudging ahead on the trail.

  Why did it seem I had no choice? What was it kept me going?

  Honor? Pride? Ego?

  Or dharma, duty, selflessness. Submitting to the will of God. Acceptance of my fate.

  I was on that dharma road connecting East and West. Assert the self? Surrender the self? It seemed I must do both. My heart insisted on it.

  God. Brahman. Emptiness. The Truth. Perhaps they’re only the names we give to the need we have for meaning. Or perhaps they are the names we give to the Source of meaning itself.

  I walked on.

  87.

  Go Deeper

  I HAD BEEN WATCHING MAHBOOD from the ridge for nearly half an hour. His progress had been slow. The short-handled spade, designed for planting tent stakes, was ineffective digging in the deep, compacted sand. He appeared to have reached about four feet. How far down would he go?

  At the wall beside the stupa, the white-haired monk sat bleeding. Mahbood had beaten him within an inch of his life and threatened the old geezer with his dagger. But the threats had fallen on deaf ears, and now the Assassin—sans knife—was back down in the hole again, digging away with his spade.

  Anger and impatience fueled his endeavor. Until my shadow fell on him, he hadn’t noticed my approach. “Kind of you to dig your own grave,” I said.

  Mahbood turned, slowly, squinting up at me as if I had long been expected. “Deeper,” he said, nodding toward the monk. “That’s all the old-fart will tell me. ‘Go deeper.’”

  The monk sat silent, eyes swollen shut, the white of his beard a w
et crimson.

  I picked up Mahbood’s knife and tossed it away. “Six feet should do it,” I said.

  “Any deeper than that, I’ll let you take over.” His insolent gaze dropped down to my dagger. “Unless you’re above digging ditches now.”

  I glanced again at the monk. “I did your dirty work at Kahrizak, Mahbood. Only I never enjoyed it like you did.”

  “No? How about now? Have you enjoyed taking the lives of your brother Hashishin?”

  “My brothers have been misled. In Bukhara, they tried to kill me.”

  “They serve the Ayatollah. If you have a problem with that, you should take it up with him.”

  Mahbood went back to his digging.

  I considered various ways to bring the devil’s life to an end. Quick slash across the carotid? Slow puncture to the spleen? “You’ll have to take it up with your Maker,” I said. “The Ayatollah will have nothing to do with you.”

  “You speak now for the Ayatollah? Now that you sacrificed Arshan?”

  “My brother was killed by the hand that betrayed him. I speak for the Bringer of Judgment, who takes your soul by night and knows all you’ve done by day.”

  Mahbood paused, resting his shovel on his shoulder. “You quote the Koran like a pious little mullah. All your fancy talk from Qum. You sound as pompous as Faraj—”

  “Faraj lied. I speak truth. Isn’t that simple enough for you?”

  “Faraj lied about Islam. He spoke the truth about you.”

  I swung my dagger at his neck. In a flurry his shovel deflected the blade and his fist came down on my foot. The fist held a wedge-blade dagger. I howled and fell to the ground.

  Mahbood pulled the short blade and stuck it up under my jaw, one jab away from my jugular. His sweating face breathed into mine.“People can lie under torture. But they can’t lie for long. In the end I always find out what a man really believes. Peel back the layers of his lies.”

  A cool steel blade slipped under my shirt—Mahbood’s other hand had my dagger!

  “What do you believe, little brother Vanitar? That your beautiful young mother really died giving birth? That your limp-dick old daddy was a saint?” The fire in his eyes seemed to burn into mine.“Mirrors don’t lie to you. Faraj spoke the truth. It’s obvious why the two of you looked so much alike—”